DONKEY KONG is coming!!

I'm in the midst of working on preliminary sketches, character designs and layouts for my upcoming DONKEY KONG piece, based on another old arcade favorite of mine. I'm having a great time puzzling through interesting layouts and poses (there's so much more you can do with giant gorillas and valiant carpenters), and I have enough ideas to perhaps do 3 or 4 pieces, so we'll see how that goes.

I thought I'd share some of my sketchbook work. I don't usually share sketchbook scans and I don't really keep a traditional sketchbook, mainly cause I don't think my sketchbook stuff is any good. It takes some noodling on an idea before I get it the way I want it usually, and I'm trying to be a bit more loose and uninhibited with my sketching. More scans soon.

Accompanying my sketches are some DK tribute pieces I like by other artists that I came across whilst doing the ol' Google reference search (I also use something called "books"). I wanted to see what other artists had done with the Kong, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't treading on someone's toes by doing something too similar to another piece.

The first piece is a bit of fan-art by someone who goes by the name Question Josh. Simple, but a decidedly different and original interpretation. DK sort of reminds me of Homer Simpson in this one. Original image can be found here



The next piece is a twisted bit of eye-popping fun by Jorge R. Gutierrez. It's got a great style and an almost creepy metaphysical slant.



The new Donkey Kong Jenga game. I don't know how this works, but I want it!



More sketches tomorrow!

"STEAM-POWERED EX-PRESIDENT GOES ON KILLING SPREE!!"

Another sketch for my animated series concept. This may look like Abraham Lincoln, but it's not! He's been reborn (through the twisted and perverse birth canal of black science) as L.I.N.C.O.L.N.!! What does L.I.N.C.O.L.N. stand for, you ask? Easy -- it stands for Lethally Intelligent Non-Confederate with Obscenely Large Noggin, what else! I based this design (quite obviously, if you're an old-school Marvel Comics fan) on the wacky yet adorable villain M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing -- they don't make bad guys like they used to. I'll give you L.I.N.C.O.L.N.'S full story when I post his final design -- just thought you'd like a tease of giant-floating-Lincoln-head-with-a-civil-war-era-canon-in-his-hat for now. You're welcome.

"AND ON BASS GUITAR... SCHRUBB!!"

Rough sketch for my character SCHRUBB. Schrubb is the bass player for the super-group that is the focus of the animated series/ comic book/ action figure line concept I'm smack dab in the middle of creating. I've come up with plenty of rough concepts for things like this before, but this is the first one I'm actually carrying through to the stage where it will actually be ready for proposal to an actual company (check you local listings in about a year or so). I'll give a more in-depth description of the concept once I hammer out a few more details. I don't want to really finalize any of the designs or the overall concept until I've visualized all of the major characters and worked out their connections, backgrounds, plot elements, etc. It involves music, science, the supernatural, and a hefty dose of far-out mayhem and bizarre characters.

The core of Schrubb is simply he's an early 70's refugee bass player who doesn't talk, and whose face (indeed his entire head) is concealed by his shrub-like head of hair (hence the name -- clever, eh?). His glasses (which are already in the process of being redesigned to better emphasize their arcane nature) allow him to see well beyond the range of normal human sight. Sometimes this will mean a very broadened spectrum of sight, sometimes this will extend to the temporal, sometimes it may even enable him to see into your mind!! I'm still working on the details, but I'll post more when I've got it.

Pop-Monkey enters the blogosphere (or whatever the cool kids call it)!

Well, well well... I guess it's time to bite the bullet and give in to the siren song of modern technology! It's blogging time! I used to ridicule the folks who thought themselves so self-important that their every thought was worth posting on the internet for all to see. But, when it comes to the self-promotion an artist must engage in, web presence is a must -- and, since I'm too dense when it comes to web-stuff to make my own website right now, a blog will have to do for now.

I'll be posting works-in-progress, from sketches to finished pieces, on this page, as well as random other stuff that I need to express to relieve the pressure on my poor poor brain. I don't sleep much these days, so don't count on coherent or intelligent musings about the state of our world. I would love to write a better introductory post to kick things off, but you don't care what I have to say, and I have work to do anyway. So, here's a few introductory sketches to get things started! Enjoy! Opinions, criticisms, and job offers are always welcome.

These images are for an illustration to accompany a poem about being fat. Both the name of the poem and the author escape my mind right now -- I'll add them later. First is the initial sketch: I had envisioned a montage of disgusted faces hovering around the obese woman as she walks down the street. Later, I decided to merge the faces in with the surroundings, so it wouldn't seem so "floating heads". The end result might be a tad too humorous for the tone of the poem, but I'm fairly happy with the final result. I inked the woman and the heads and colored the whole thing in Photoshop.