What a cool and unexpected surprise–someone on Twitter got my Halo Kitty fan art tattooed! 🙀
(My drawing was originally posted in 2007)
Halo Kitty–INKED!
Video Games
Super Scale Bros
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!
It’s-a Them!
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. 😂🤓
The Original King of Koopa
It’s Bowser, looking like his original goofy sprite! He definitely needs to be depicted with his hammer(s) more often. 😎
The Original Peach
Here’s Princess Peach, looking like her original sprite! It always looked to me like she was sitting. Anyways stay tuned, more OG Super Mario art coming this week. 😎
It’s-a Him!
Happy Mario Day! Based on his sprite and colors from his original appearance in Donkey Kong. 🤓
Fury Swipes!
A little something for #PokemonDay! This isn’t *the* Meowth, but it’s *a* Meowth, and *any* Meowth is one of my favorite Pokemon.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to figure this out, but when I’m drawing digitally, I do way better with a jaggy scratchy brush than a smooth one. I think it’s probably because I’m scruffy and scrappy like Meowth. 😼
Head over to my Instagram if you want to see a bit of behind the scenes video!
#HappyPokemonDay nerds!American Ninja
I haven’t played Street Fighter in ages, I was always always bad at it, but I love it dearly. And I’m always happy to see the next generation of characters, so here’s some fanart of Kimberly, from the upcoming Street Fighter 6! Happy 35th Anniversary, Street Fighter! 💪❤️
Yatta!
What can I say, I love an obscure costume variant! Here’s Chun-Li as seen in her outfit from the original ending of Street Fighter II. ✌️
ink on paper
a few marker sketches from the past year plus…
a blue dragon…
an Oliver Queen/Ken Masters mash-up..
Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy…
and a practice Dr. McCoy (TOS era version) that actually turned out okay, along with a bonus Data…
Another rare mushy moment
A little something I drew for a friend’s wedding, featuring the favorite characters of the bride + groom:
Center (from top to bottom): Ultraman, Snoopy, Totoro, Groom and Bride.
Groom Side (from left to right): Optimus Prime, Hobbes, P-Chan, Ranma, Aang, Pikachu.
Bride Side (From left to right): Crayon Shin-Chan, Anpanman, Sailor Moon, Old Master Q, Doraemon, Maruko.
Sorry Charlie
Here’s another Street Fighter character–Guile’s army buddy Charlie:
click above for larger view
Less talking and more drawing for me. Back to it!
(Still hanging at 2 missed posts.)
His theme goes with everything…
Here’s one of my favorite Street Fighter characters, Guile!
click above for larger view
I lieu of me rambling at length, just listen click on the video below and get psyched for whatever you’re doing:
(This is a late post for Friday. Hanging in there at 2 missed posts. I feel like catching up on those last 2 posts is the procrastinating blogger’s equivalent of “losing the last 10 pounds” for a struggling dieter.)
Ghost’s Best Friend
I finished the game Ghost Trick over the weekend, and I liked it so much I felt compelled to draw a little piece of fan art:
My posts have been a little stagnant recently, so I thought I’d try something a little different on this one!
Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 18! AND TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS!
Today I’m posting another round of commissions for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE. Before I get to the sketches, I have two announcements…
* * *
ANNOUNCEMENT #1:
As you may or may not know–the Cheerleader won one of her appeals and the courts are now recalculating her fees. For the moment, Help The Cheerleader donations are on hold because we don’t know what the final amount is going to be–it’s entirely possible that after the adjustments, the amount owed will be covered by what has been raised so far.
So, as of a few weeks ago, our goal was likely attained, but several people remained on the commission list. I decided to complete the remaining commissions and simply ask the requesters to donate $20 per sketch to the charitable cause of their choice, strictly on the honor system.
It was important to me to honor all the requests, because without the requests, we never would have generated the attention which brought in donors who gave to the cause even though they couldn’t get sketches. The chain of events was fragile, and with any missing component, it’s possible that we wouldn’t have been able to raise such a huge sum.
Thank you, once again, to every last person who donated (whether or not they were able to get a sketch), and to every person who helped spread the word!
ANNOUNCEMENT #2:
As of earlier this week, ALL COMMISSIONS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED AND DROPPED IN THE MAIL!
We initially had well over 150 commission requests, but may people never responded to our follow-up emails. By my final count, that’s 108 finished commissions. This includes 88 commissions with donations going directly to Help The Cheerleader, and 20 commissions with donations going to the honor system (as outlined in Announcement #1, above).
I still have a couple weeks’ worth of commissions to post, so please stay tuned! For now…
* * *
Here are the last 3 sketches paid for by donations to Help The Cheerleader:
click above for larger view
From left to right:
AND… the first 5 sketches for the honor system donors.
click above for larger view
From left to right:
Tune in next week for more commissions. Thanks for reading!
Help The Cheerleader Commissions, Round 11!
Here’s the eleventh round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.
click above for larger view
From left to right:
Also, just an FYI for those who are curious–the sketches are NOT drawn to scale–I size them for the blog posts in order to give a sense of character heights. The actual sketches are all close to the same size.
I will continue to post new commissions next week! And even though commissions are closed for now, remember it isn’t too late to donate to Help the Cheerleader.
MACHO WEEK!!! (Part 2 of 3, The Moldy Oldie Edition)
MACHO WEEK continues, with a piece of vintage nerdery from my archives, drawn and colored in 1999. TWELVE years ago.
Let’s think about this people. That was before 9-11, before the dot-com bust, before the (still ongoing) energy crisis, before I owned a car or a DVD player. I was fresh out of college, just starting out full time at the day-job after interning there for 2 years (same day-job that I have today, by the way), and living in a tiny studio apartment that paradoxically had a huge walk-in closet (which I filled up with comic books and action figures–mostly Beast Wars at the time).
So… I confess, this was drawn to impress a geeky girl who I was talking to at the time. Believe it or not, the subjects in the illustration were our common points of interest–and there’s the Macho One himself, front and center! Oh, and I’m in the picture too, inbetween Optimus Prime in Pikachu, because apparently I have a raging ego. For what it’s worth, I think the girl was in fact impressed by this. However, things didn’t work out for a number of complicated reasons which I will not bore you with. You know how it goes.
click above for larger view
Man, just look at this thing. It was one of the first things I ever colored in Photoshop, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff, using the Dodge/Burn tool to render the shading. WHAT WAS I THINKING?
And yet, here we are, twelve years later. My drawing is a little better, and my coloring is much better. And I still pretty much won’t shut up about Macho Man, Transformers, Batman, Pokemon, Miyazaki movies, and Bruce Lee.
Tune in on Friday for the final installment of MACHO WEEK!!!
Plumbing the Depths
So I actually finished this drawing on Friday night, but didn’t have time to post it until now, which is, you know, super-lame of me.
Aaanyways, here’s everyone’s favorite plumber:
I’m just playing around with doing some marker sketches (actually, there’s color pencil in this one too). I do not consider this experiment a success. Will be playing around with markers on and off in the coming weeks, please humor me.
Squawk.
Sometimes, like a jerk, I waste hours and hours playing Angry Birds, a game meant to be a casual distraction, which has instead become an obsessive… obsession. Other times (still like a jerk) I post a super-late blog. Here is such a blog post now:
On Friday night I was too tired to draw, so I went to bed with the intention of playing a few levels of Angry Birds and then going to sleep. Fast forward to: me staying up until 9:30am, when I finally went to sleep (cursing at myself all the while). Woke up a few hours later and headed to the Long Beach Comic Expo, where I hung out with Dustin and Peter Nguyen (they are not related!), and drew this. Peter was kind enough to lend me a pen so that I could ink it. I drew another piece too, which I came home and inked, and will be posted this week in a timely manner, unlike today’s sketch.
I’ve been in sort of a rut lately, in addition to being busy with assorted other things. It was very eye opening to me that I was able to go hang with some friends, and even on very little sleep, bust out two drawings very quickly. I guess even weirdo recluses such as myself need to occasionally leave our secret lairs and get a change of scenery.
(But seriously, Angry Birds is really fun.)
