Moldy Oldies: Digital De-evolution!

~ J.Ho

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.)

Gorn This Way

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments

I watched through all three seasons of Star Trek (The Original Series) while I was working on commissions last summer. Of course, if you were following me on Twitter, you would have known that, and you would have been witness to all the super hilarious (and hyper astute) observations that I made during my viewing.

Anyways, the point is that my brain really shifted into a Star Trek kind of mode, and I would occasionally take a break from commissions and draw something Trekish. For example, I re-imagined what the Gorn captain from the episode “Arena” might have looked like, if he was dressed a bit less like a go-go girl:

 
This Gorn, as I have depicted him, is a big-time Gorn patriot. The emblems on his wrist bracers are from the Gorn Hegemony, the symbol tattooed on his shoulder is from the Gorn Confederation (Starfleet Command, Interplay), and his triangular belt buckle is a reference to the Gorn Empire (Starfleet Games). What I’m saying is, this guy is really draping himself in the Gorn flag(s). There was actually one more Gorn symbol that I found during my research, but I just thought it was too fussy, so I didn’t use it.

I realize that my use of the various Gorn symbols probably conflicts with canon of the Star Trek universe on multiple levels. I’m a rebel like that.

Miscellaneous rejected titles for this post: The Gorn Identity, Gorn to be Wild, Gorn in the USA.

MODULOK WEEK (Part 2 of 2)

~ J.Ho

As promised, here is my take on the toy version of Modulok:

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I added some Horde-emblem armbands to Modulok, but colored them in white rather than the standard red, since Modulok already has plenty of red going on. Also, I envision Modulok as being loyal to Hordak, so the emblems are also a subtle cue that Hordak is beginning to build a faction of loyalists to rebel against his elder brother Horde Prime.

The Modulok toy came with two heads, so I couldn’t resist creating yet another version of the character, utilizing what I always thought of as the alternate head:

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This guy is supposed to have a leaner build than your average Masters of the Universe character–think of a luchador or a cruiserweight wrestler. This calls for a little nerdy character bio, am I right? I’M RIGHT!

* * *

PROFILE: Silent, and relatively small in stature, MODUOS hardly appears threatening. However, when his master and clone-father Modulok is threatened, Moduos explodes into action, demonstrating his mastery of exotic grappling maneuvers and acrobatic striking techniques.

When creating him, Modulok tampered with the development of Moduos’s brain, resulting in Moduos being a machine-like drone. Moduos is not protective of his master–he is simply programmed to react. However, what Modulok has failed to understand is that Moduos is gradually developing a higher awareness and has begun to silently observe and question the world around him.

HISTORY: The cruel and brilliant scientist Modulok originated from a planet that has been enslaved by the Tyranid swarms for thousands of years. He escaped from the rule of the Tyranid, and travelled light years away where he encountered Hordak and the forces of the Horde. These two disdainful and evil beings clashed, but each quickly found himself respecting the other. Hordak appointed Modulok as his lead scientist, and Modulok shared stolen Tyranid technology with Hordak, as well as warning him of the creeping Tyranid fleet.

Hordak correctly assessed the Tyranid as a serious threat, in spite of their long distance from Horde territory. He attempted to inform his brother and leader, Horde Prime, but was dismissed out of hand. The seed of discord was planted in Hordak’s heart, and ever since that precise moment, Hordak has grown increasingly malcontent with his brother’s leadership. Modulok has used this to his advantage over the years, manipulating Hordak in the hopes of pitting the Horde against the Tyranid.

Behind Horde Prime’s back, Hordak and Modulok have formulated a plan for Modulok to infiltrate Tyranid-Space with a small force of elite Horde agents, with the goal of gathering intelligence and carrying out high risk sabotage missions and terrorist attacks. Ultimately trusting no one but himself, Modulok created a clone offspring to be his bodyguard for this extended mission–and thus was Moduos born.

* * *

Yeah, that’s right, I included a little incidental Warhammer 40K crossover action in that bio. So what?

Also posted on the He-Man.org fan-art forums. My post is here, the entire thread (including some of my previous sketches) is here.

MODULOK WEEK (Part 1 of 2)

~ J.Ho

Hey look, I drew a thing from He-Man! Remember when I used to do that all the time?

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Today’s subject is Galen Nycroft, better known as the cartoon version of Modulok. Of course, in my typical strange manner, I have decided that Galen Nycroft and Modulok should be two different characters. They’re both scientists–Modulok being an alien in the employ of the Horde, and Galen being an Eternian human who mutates himself with a sample of Modulok’s DNA. I’ll post my drawing of the toy version of Modulok on Friday.

Also posted on the He-Man.org fan-art forums. My post is here, the entire thread (including some of my previous sketches) is here.

Leftover Commissions! Spoilers and Repeats…

~ J.Ho
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I had two requests for today’s leftover commission:

For a long time, Robin was one of my favorite ongoing comics, so naturally, Stephanie Brown (Robin’s ally and sometimes love interest) became one of my favorite characters. I prefer her as Spoiler, but she’s still fun to draw as Batgirl.

And at no extra cost to you, dear reader, here are some more leftovers, which happen to be repeats of some of the commissions that were not leftovers:

 

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From left to right:

I have a few more repeat requests in the bank, but I’m saving those for a themed post…

BERSERKER BARRAGE

~ J.Ho

During the course of working on all the Help The Cheerleader character busts, I would occasionally take a break to draw… a character bust? Man, what’s my problem…

At least I had enough sense to switch up the routine by coloring this one digitally. I actually hit a point where I was really craving the feel of working in Photoshop, so this was a good break that helped me stay fresh and ready to get back into working with markers.

I generally prefer Wolverine in his brown costume with larger ears, but recently I’ve become more appreciative of the smaller ears and whiskers that he sported in his first appearance.

Also, even though I was a staunch Wolverine fan long before the Marvel/Capcom games, I can’t ever think of him without thinking of this:

Bite my shiny metal fan-art…

~ J.Ho

Hey look, I drew a picture of that one robot that bends things, even though I’m not at work!

 

Before anyone asks–this is strictly fan-art, drawn and colored in my spare time for larfs!

It’s a lot of fun to take something that you draw on an almost-daily basis and put a new spin on it. I included the developmental sketches in the background so you could get an idea of how this drawing came to be.

I was able to bank some art during my time off over the holidays, so hopefully that means regular, timely posting for the next few weeks! See you back here on Friday, meatbags!

JASONBOT.COM starts here!

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments

Please correct your bookmarks and readers as necessary!

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Greetings, Programs!

Welcome to my new blog, now hosted on my very own domain: JASONBOT.COM!

You will find that all of the posts from my old blog have been imported to the new site–however they have not yet been altered, which means that some links are going to redirect you to the old site. My apologies for that! Over the next several weeks (possibly months) I will be working hard to make sure that the links in every single post are updated. I’ll also be overhauling the post tags/categories, and just generally trying to class the joint up. The details aren’t important, just stick around.

For those interested in a little background–I started my old blog on New Year’s Day of 2007, with a goal of posting 2 color sketches a week. I took about 6 months off in the latter half of 2010, however, by my calculations–adjusting for the the intensified posting while I was working on the Help the Cheerleader commissions–I still averaged roughly 2 drawings per week. So, with 5 years in the can on the old blog, it seemed like a good time to begin anew.

Whether you’ve been with me since the beginning, or only just stumbled upon this blog, thank you for reading! I hope you stick around for my nerdy scribblings and my geeky ramblings.

A special thanks to Kevin Church, who I obliquely referred to in my very first blog post, and who very generously worked his magic to create a blog template (for this site) that fit my needs and wants!

Okay, that’s all for now. Regular posting should resume this Tuesday. And off we go!

Happy New Year, you nerds!

Leftover Commissions! The Bat and the Breaker… and the repeats.

~ J.Ho

(Oh hey, I was supposed to start posting twice a week, wasn’t I? My holiday schedule has been a little crazy. To make it up to you, I’m posting a little extra today. ALSO, make sure you tune in on New Year’s day for another post and an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.)

So, here’s the part of the Help The Cheerleader commissions that I haven’t really talked about yet… in addition to the 108 commissions that I completed and delivered, a lot of people who requested commissions never answered my follow-up emails. Which is no big deal. But as it turns out, I still drew a lot of those commissions while I was waiting to hear back from people. In fact I finished like 30 of them.

._.

The lesson here, kids, is never work on the project until you’ve heard back from the client/donor! Anyways, no harm no foul. I’ll be posting the leftover commissions over the next several weeks (possibly months), and at some point I will probably be selling them off. Stay tuned for details! For now:

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From left to right:

ALSO… did I mention that within the leftover commissions, there were a few repeats?

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From left to right:

  • Batman
  • Batman
  • Batman
  • Batman

The Batman sketch that was paired with Bane was the last of the 5 Batmans in this post. The 4 Batman sketches directly above are shown in the order that I drew them, from left to right. The general way I drew Batman (and in fact, all of the commissions), is patterned after a Batman that I drew earlier in the year. Y’KNOW, IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN THAT SORTA THING.

That’s all for now. Please do tune in on New Year’s day for another post and the aforementioned IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

More Snow Than Man…

~ J.Ho ~ 2 Comments

As per the traditions of my people (my people = procrastinating nerdy illustrators), I’m posting a Christmas blog barely in time for the holiday.

Today’s drawing is an homage to the holiday season, the Aurora Borealis, and to Shotaro Ishinomori, the father of the Japanese Superhero. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the cyborg snowman, SNOWBORG 12-25!

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This was supposed to be quick and simple, but I got really into making it SHINY in the coloring stage. Since I haven’t been doing much digital coloring recently, I think maybe this was exactly the right thing to get me to brush the dust off the old tablet.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, dear reader!