I now realize that I learn a lot more working on these quick little cartoony pieces than on more complex pieces. The stripped down style really lets me concentrate on form, motion, composition, and color, instead of sweating the details. I think the result tends to be a more cohesive illustration.
BTW, I watched Nightmare on Elm Street recently–it holds up pretty well!
The subject is Loo-Kee:
My re-design of Loo-Kee isn’t terribly drastic–I made his rainbow-colored 80’s leg warmers and wristbands into armored braces made of gold and engraved precious stones, and tied his feathered mullet back into a pony tail. I made his overall details a bit more feral and bestial, and armed him with two daggers–I figure Loo-Kee is probably able to handle himself in a fight if he’s a rebel spy in a war against the Horde.
Lastly, I discovered that nerdy Asian guys with mohawks are a dime a dozen at Comic-Con. In aisles crowded with cosplayers, action figure collectors, fanfic writers, and miscellaneous dweebs, I would encounter my dopplegangers… each time we would lock gazes, and time seemed to stand still. Sizing up each other’s mohawks, a hypothetical battle would be waged in the deadly electric path betwixt our steely eyes. In another time and place, under different circumstances we might have been friends, but here and now, we were fated to be enemies. There would be no conflict yet–the pact of the immortal mohawk forbade endangering the lives of mortal nerds. But soon… soon, our destinies would be fulfilled, for there can be only one.
Sorry, sometimes I lose my damn mind. Comic-Con will do that to you.
For now, to commemorate the recently ended Comic-Con, a ‘Con:
This is Shockwave, drawn with a modified transformation that I came up with. The original toy had a gun barrel which was essential for the gun mode, but served no purpose and had no venue of storage in robot mode–my revised transformation imagines that the gun barrel could split apart and slide back on Shockwave’s arms. That’s all. Sleepy-time now.
By the powers of black magic and unholy witchcraft (AKA the miracles of modern technology), this entry in my blog is being auto-posted while I am away. As you read this, I am at Comic-Con, wasting my money on action figures of obscure nerdy characters, wasting my time at super-nerdy panels, and most importantly wasting my dignity ogling super-hott booth babes. I will be back next week, and I’m sure I will have a thing or two to say about Comic-Con.
If you are at or heading to Comic-Con, please check out my previous post to see some shameless plugs of my friends and cronies peddling their wares at Comic-Con.
This is a little last minute, but for those of you who are heading to Comic-Con, please allow me to suggest the following points of interest:
That is all.
He’s wearing a Starfleet Excursion Jacket, and lemme tell ya, it was a pain finding decent reference for it on the internet. Hmmm… if this is today’s illustration, what could the next post be? Hmm…
Given my complaint about seriousness, it was pretty funny to me when I found out that the Joker’s tagline for The Dark Knight was “why so serious?” At any rate, I’m looking forward to The Dark Knight.
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really know anything about Rosalina, other than what I got from skimming her wiki. I haven’t actually played Super Mario Galaxy, but Rosalina is one of my drivers of choice for Mario Kart.
I don’t have anything planned for the immediate future, but I think you can expect to see more Nintendo characters from me. There’s a simple yet iconic quality to Nintendo’s pantheon that makes them a lot of fun to draw.
Continuing from where I left off with the race track royalty of Mario Kart–here’s Daisy:
I don’t have much to say about Daisy. So just enjoy me not rambling on. Starting now… period.
It’s out today (Wednesday, July 9), so go support your local comic book store and buy a copy! Right now! Or order it online! Right now!
But at least it provides me a convenient segue into my next couple of posts–in the latest incarnation of Mario Kart, the Princess characters sport sleek-looking jumpsuits when they ride motorcycles. I thought the jumpsuits were really sharp, so I decided to draw the foxxy blue bloods of the Mario-verse. First up, naturally, is Peach:
If I actually owned the game, or had some decent reference, I might have drawn her (or the other Princesses) on one of the cooler looking motorcycles. OH WELL!
Today is Independence Day in the States (the holiday, not the thing with the aliens). What better way to celebrate than with my favorite Jonny Quest character, Race Bannon, all-American secret agent and tough guy (not to mention bodguard and tutor to Jonny and Hadji):
I whipped up some wallpapers collecting the Quest cast–the backdrop was taken from a public domain photo, and is meant to evoke the Florida Keys, base of operations for the extended Quest family. For your convienience, both fullscreen and widescreen versions are available below–please enjoy:
Josh and Vinny have got an all-ages book coming out from Shadowline and Image Comics later this year, and there’s an interview about it at Newsarama, along with some great preview art. The book is titled Dear Dracula, and tells the story of a weird kid who decides to write a letter to Dracula instead of Santa Claus. I had the opportunity to read Dear Dracula in advance of its release, and now I’m really looking forward to seeing it in stores. But, in the words of Levar Burton, don’t take my word for it–check out the interview and the preview art!
Dear Dracula is available in the July edition of Previews catalog from Diamond Comics (you can find it on page 160 of Previews and the order code is jul08 2222). It’ll hit stores in September, just in time for the Halloween season–ask your local comic book store to order it. And after you do that, be sure to check out Dear Dracula on Myspace! 
I’ll wrap this series up on Friday–be there or be square.
And for today’s illustration, here’s Hadji, Jonny Quest’s best friend, adopted brother, and partner in crime.
When I drew this originally, Hadji was supposed to be levitating in a display of his trademark mystical powers. I guess that isn’t really apparent with no background as context.
._.
This is Jonny Quest himself, accompanied by his tenacious bulldog, Bandit. You might have an educated guess as to what the next three posts will offer!
This piece represents one of my earliest forays into computer coloring. All things considered, I’m surprised that it still somewhat holds up (and I’m not just saying that because it got me free action figures). The good news (depending on how you feel about things) is that this will probably be the last Flashback Friday for a long time. I don’t think I have anything else in the vault that I don’t find embarrassing. But then again, if I get desperate, you never know.
Second, I know you ladies are all wondering, how does a guy who spends his Saturday drawing pink kitties manage to stay single?
*sobbing and incoherent babbling*
Anyways… today’s post was drawn for a re-design challenge at the He-Man.org fan-art forums. The thread is here, my post is here. The first round voting polls are here and here, and the final vote can be found here–I placed 4th out of the finalists.
The subject is Clawdeen, the feline mount of She-Ra’s foe Catra. There has been a lot of debate about Clawdeen’s gender, owing to the fact that the toy is identified as a “she” and has feminine-looking eyelashes, in spite of otherwise resembling a male lion (it has a mane like a male lion, however it lacks a tuft on its tail). In contrast, the cartoon version simply looks like a male lion (I don’t recall if its gender is ever specified).
My solution to the gender question was to make the toy and animation versions of Clawdeen into separate characters. The toy version, retaining the name Clawdeen and the specified female gender, gains an armored helm–I leave it to the reader’s imagination whether the plume of hair is Clawdeen’s mane, or simply a part of the helm. The cartoon version becomes Clawdius, Clawdeen’s mate. I swiped the name from Lion-O‘s dad.
I did my best to make Clawdeen feminine without resorting to the heavy-handed shorthand that the original toy suffered from (eyeshadow, long eyelashes). With Clawdius, I was striving for a groomed, submissive feel, to contrast the feral and somewhat crazed look of Manticore. Considering I had the handicap of working with almost nothing but variations of the color pink, I’m pretty happy with how the colors turned out.
