Heads Up!

~ J.Ho ~ Leave a comment

Yiiikes, I have been swamped and neglected to update this blog. I’m sure everyone is very distraught about this. Anywaysss, catching up:

When my dear friend Jeremy of Spy Monkey Creations/Battle Tribes asked me to design some new heads for the existing Weaponeer mold, I was more than happy to oblige! We brainstormed with the mighty Glyos All-Father himself, Matt Doughty, and these designs were the end result. Of course, strong influences from the lineage of Super Robots and their often organic antagonists should be noted.

The new heads are a little smaller than the original Weaponeers heads, and combined with the existing Weaponeer body, the proportions become reminiscent of the Jumbo Machinders of yesteryear.

The digital sculpts were done by @anthonyscotcoffey, and he absolutely crushed it. Being a 2D artist I live my art life in a very flat world, and it’s completely magical to see my drawings translated into three dimensions.

Like most Glyos figures, these new headsculpts can serve multiple purposes depending on how they are oriented, and the drill head in particular serves as a mini vehicle cockpit when placed horizontally. I was particularly happy when I came up with that!

I really hope everyone enjoys these, and can’t wait to see how people incorporate these new parts into their Glyos building!

Both of the shown colorways are available NOW, as well as three more colorways! Go HERE for details!!

Photos by @ridureyu!

2024: Year of the Dragon and then some!

~ J.Ho

The Year of the Dragon has a lot of alternates in different cultures, I decided to cover all of them! This was a lot of fun, but drawing 9 characters wiped me out! Note that I started this blog entry with the Snail on the posted date, but kept updating it until posting the Dragon on Feb 15, 2024 (several days after the actual Lunar New Year >_<U). I feel very relieved that next year’s Zodiac features no alternate animals!

2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac, so I conceived these characters as a group of Rangers (in the fantasy RPG sense), but for a futuristic setting. My aim was to make each character feel very distinct from the others, but still make sure the group’s costumes and colors felt unified and balanced as a whole.

Size chart below!

Lo!

~ J.Ho

The good thing about getting a burst capillary and drawing a little cartoon about is that the next time you get a burst capillary you already have a little cartoon ready for it. 🙃 #flashbackfriday

Ewok Through The Valley of The Shadow of Death

~ J.Ho

Ewoks: space teddy bears that murder (and possibly devour) space facists… what’s not to like? And what better way to celebrate Star Wars Day than with a hyper-nerdy OC? Anyways, this guy is an Ewok berserker known only as the Tiger of Endor. Most Imperials think his existence is a rumor fueled by Rebel misinformation, but that’s because all the Imperials who *have* seen him are dead… LOLOLOL May The Fourth Be With You! 😎

(I drew the lineart for this way back in 2015. Colors are brand new, the Rebel Alliance symbol is from Wikipedia (weathered by me), and the forest scene is a screencap from Battlefront.)

Retro Vibes

~ J.Ho

A retro heroine with retro sci-fi gear.

Also retro because I finished the lineart two years ago, but didn’t finish the colors until now. 😬 So, also #WayBackWednesday, I guess? 😅

Super Scale Bros

~ J.Ho

I wanted to put together a quick scale comparison of the last week’s Mario drawings, but I didn’t want to have a totally blank background, and I didn’t want to actually draw a background, so instead I did a quick manipulation of a screencap from Super Mario Bros. Laziness is the mother of invention!

Superman 85!

~ J.Ho

Been playing with some brushes I don’t normally use, and trying some new things–here’s a quick one for Superman’s 85th anniversary! (Late by a few days though 😅)

It’s-a Them!

~ J.Ho

Here are recolor(s) of the drawing of Mario I posted a few weeks ago. However this was always my original intent for the drawing, so the previous one was actually a *precolor*. Anyways, if you don’t know, this is Luigi and Mario as they appeared in their 8-bit NES Super Mario Bros sprites. I love how Mario’s colors feel like the subdued realtype version of him, and Luigi is the opposite–the white makes his colors pop so much more in a bright cartoony way.

*Footnote on today’s post and previously mentioned post: The sprites of Mario from Donkey Kong and Super Mario brothers are not identical, but they are incredibly close, with similar proportions and details. In particular, note the lack of gloves, the pant legs tucked into the boots, and the cap shaped much more like a cap you’d see a real plumber wearing, rather than the more typical Mario “captain’s” cap. However, the tuft of hair in the back is a detail specific to the Donkey Kong version of Mario’s sprite–for my purposes, that one detail didn’t warrant two separate designs.

**Footnote on my Mario drawings yet-to-come–many of them are NOT going to be sticking so closely to the sprites, it’s just that the first few characters I tackled are cases where the sprites are so different from how the characters were later visually defined. There’s something magical that happens early in the development of a fictional world where things are not so fully-formed and tantalizingly hint at all the paths not taken. But I also like exploring the paths that *were* taken, and ALSO finding new paths that literally no one asked for (uh oh, sounds like some “OCs” are brewing)! Anyways, more nerdy Mario stuff on the way. 😂🤓