Today I’ve got another ~10 year old piece, freshened up with new colors:

 
It feels good to color these old pieces. It’s great coloring practice, plus I’m taking care of unfinished business with more proficiency than I ever could have when I actually drew these pieces.

(This counts as post #1 for this week, so I’m keeping steady at a deficit of 4 missed posts.)

So, at the end of the 20th century, there was a line of Jurassic Park action figures subtitled, Chaos Effect. The line centered around genetically engineered dinosaur hybrids. So while other people in my peer group were contemplating college graduation and finding a job versus moving back in with their parents, I was half-assing my classes while sitting around drawing fan-art of a spin-off of a movie action figure line.**

._.

Here’s Ankyloranodon, an ankylosaur/pteranadon hybrid:

 
Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect was actually a pretty cool toyline. I bought several of the figures, and they’re boxed up somewhere in my end-of-Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-esque closet full of toys. I would not be opposed to artistically revisiting these creatures. BUT I AIN’T MAKIN’ NO PROMISES.

**For the record, I graduated in 4 years, with a decent GPA, and I never moved back in with my parents.

When I post some old piece of art because I’m too busy to post something good, it probably feels like I’m punishing you, Dear Reader,. I apologize for these terrible artifacts that I inflict upon you from time to time, but please understand that the person who’s truly being punished is me.

My crimes: Poor planning resulting in a sub-standard post and drawing poorly “back in the day.” For the latter crime, there is no statute of limitations.

The sentence: My crude scrawlings from 13 years ago will be posted here, to be seen and derided until the internet falls into ruin.

 
This is some fan-art of Chichiri and Tasuki, two cool characters from a generally mediocre and melodramatic anime, Fushigi Yugi. Actually, all the characters in that series were cool, except for… oh you know, like, the MAIN four characters. But I digress.

I’m really not proud of this–the only thing I can say in my defense is that that this was drawn as an in-joke, because Fushigi Yugi was the one terrible anime series that we had to sit through at an otherwise excellently programmed anime club back in ye olde college dayes. Of course I can’t explain why I don’t have any fan art pertaining to the numerous good anime that we watched (Gundam Wing, Evangelion, YuYu Hakusho, Escaflowne, Macross plus, etcetera).

Woof.

I didn’t have time for a new or good post today, so instead, I unproudly present a Moldy Oldy from the long forgotten year 1999.

I wish I could impress upon those of you who aren’t artists precisely how incredibly uncomfortable it is to look at one’s old drawings. The feeling approaches but falls short of actual physical pain. You look at the piece and immediately you remember where you were in life. Where you lived; who was making your life hell at the time; how badly you were dressed; how awkwardly you carried yourself; what toys were on your shelves; and what crude techniques passed for “drawing.” (On my own for the first time in a tiny studio apartment; some jerks who are no longer my friends; short-sleeved rayon 90’s button-up shirts; extremely awkwardly, IE slightly more awkward than the current day; Beast Wars and some Playmobil; techniques to be detailed below)

Other than being on my own for the first time and the toys, the last days of the 20th century were dark indeed. But at least there was Digimon:

 
You have to understand something–this was drawn in early ’99, before the Digimon anime came to the states. This was back when Digimon were “those things like Tamagotchi, except they fight and stuff.” And you’re saying, because you’re a confounded toddler, “WTF is a Tamagotchi?” To which I respond: GET OFF MY METAPHORICAL LAWN, YOU DAMN KIDS.

I forget the names of these two Digimon, and it’s late, so I’m too lazy to look it up. Also: I don’t recall what kind of reference material I had to go off of (the internet was pretty shaky back then, y’all), so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my renderings. Please don’t interpret this as a callous attitude towards Digimon–I actually love Digimon, particularly season 2 and 3 of the cartoon (AKA Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers). I’m just too tired to dig up my Digimon book right now. Yeah, I have a book, SO WHAT?

Anywaaays… my crude artistic process back in the day was as follows:

1) Pencil terrible artwork.

2) Ink said artwork with a weird mish-mash of unprofessional pens. (Steps 1 and 2 haven’t changed)

3) Make clean photocopies of the lineart. (This is back when photocopy machines made awesome crisp copies, with BLACK blacks. Go ahead, try and photocopy something with a lot of black areas. The copy machines at Kinko’s absolutely suck nowadays. Also, back in ’99, there were plenty of 24 hour copy shops around, so I could go get my photocopies whenever I finished my drawing, even if it was 2am. I’m getting off track here. Moving on…)

4) Color a photocopy with a combination of colored pencils and markers, praying that I don’t screw up so bad that I have to start on one of the back-up copies. (This was back when the idea of running Photoshop on my personal computer seemed like a distant pipe-dream)

5) There you go, you drew a thing. (Incidentally, the image you are looking at is a scan of a color photocopy of the original colors, which, as I’ve discussed, were done over a black and white photocopy. No, this is not a joke–the original colors were given away)

Dark days… dark days.

(I’ll be back on Friday with another leftover commission, and hopefully on Monday with something new and at least slightly better. HOWEVER–I did find a whole cache of terrible late 20th century drawings. So I just might lean on the Moldy Oldies again in the future. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)