Framed Zombama!

Super-pal Brian Lott was kind enough to order one of my ZOMBAMA prints from my CafePress store and he sent me a pic just to prove it, cause he's a dirty liar and I require photographic proof of everything he says. Here it is, framed and mounted -- don't you want one?

"UGLY STICK" inks

Just finished inking my UGLY STICK t-shirt design. As with most of my work, the pencils have been printed out as a blue-line image on bristol board and inked with about 95% brush and ink and 5% pen.

For inked illustrations, I'll sometimes ink a separate color-hold layer to use as a map for the flat shading and/or highlighting. This is a scan of the shading inks for this piece...



This gets scanned in and layered underneath the lineart, like so...


It gives me a nice hand-drawn lighting template so I don't have to mess around with lassos and paintbrush tools quite as much and it prevents the whole thing from coming off as "too-digital".

Preparing to scan and color right now. More soon!

ZOMBAMA IS COMING... TO TEEFURY!

Okay, I've gotten the okay and confirmation, so here's one of the exciting things coming up next week from your fiendly neighborhood Pop-Monkey. I was recently contacted by the very cool and incredibly talented artist and t-shirt designer Jimiyo who informed me that the also-cool t-shirt website TEEFURY (they sell a fine new shirt every day for just $9!) was interested in printing and selling my soon-to-be-cult-hit ZOMBAMA design! It's scheduled to be available for sale starting March 30th at midnight and running through midnight on the next day. That's only 24-hours to buy as many ZOMBAMA shirts as you can get your supple little hands on! My mom has already committed to buying an even hundred, and you're not going to let her show you up again, are you? 'Cause that last time was just shameful!

Anyway, I'll give everybody the high-sign the minute the shirt goes on sale, but consider this your advance warning. I'm including a sneak-peek of the shirts provided by Jimiyo so you can bask in their splendor and start donating organs for cash. Hey, don't be cheap -- THEY'RE ONLY NINE BUCKS! Do the right thing and make sure my daughter gets some peanut butter with her bread this month.


As a little teaser, my next "surprise" also involves zombies and t-shirts... more to on that later next week.

UGLY STICK!

Got some exciting things coming up, but for now, here's the revised and finished pencil drawing for the UGLY STICK t-shirt design in progress. Inks and colors soon!

DARKSTALKERS TRIBUTE SNEAK-PEEK

Last year Udon Publishing produced a nice little art book called the STREET FIGHTER TRIBUTE. This book was a collection of hundreds of pieces of fan art based around Capcom's Street Fighter video game series, culled from submissions they received after putting out a call for entries. I had a couple of friends whose pieces were published in the book, and I would have loved to contribute, but I found out about the contest only a couple of days before the deadline and it was too late for me to submit anything.

A few months ago, I found out they were doing the same thing with Capcom's DARKSTALKERS game series (which I'm also a fan of), so I made sure to get started early so I wouldn't miss the deadline this time. I initially resolved to do several illustrations based on a few of my favorite characters, thinking I had plenty of time to complete at least three illustrations, increasing my chances of getting published. I sketched out poses and character designs and worked out 4 illustrations that I wanted to complete. Alas, my various freelance pursuits caught up with me and I was only able to finish one of the planned 4 pieces. So much for planning, but I gotta put the paying jobs first.

Anyway, the characters I chose to illustrate were Rikuo, Q-Bee, Hsien-Ko (my favorite), and Anakaris. I figured there would be a ton of entries featuring Morrigan and Felicia (probably the two most popular characters), so I wanted to avoid them. The one I managed to complete was Rikuo. I would have loved to finish Hsien-Ko, and I had a pretty cool pose for Q-Bee, but it wasn't meant to be.

I'm not going to post the whole image here, as Udon "recommends" against spoiling the images before the book is published, but I will provide a tiny peek (one of the inks and one of the colors), and you can bet I'll post the entire image here once the book is published (or sooner, if I find out the piece didn't make it in).

"You don't know what 'disgusting' really is."

No artwork to share just yet, so I thought I'd share a funny story. While eating dinner tonight, my precious, darling 7 year-old daughter seemed to be having trouble eating part of her dinner. It wasn't anything particularly kid-unfriendly (it was chicken) so I asked her why she wasn't eating it.

"It's disgusting!", she responded.

I told her that with her relatively sheltered and pampered life (compared to those standard parental fallback "kids-in-less-fortunate-countries"), she really didn't know what "disgusting" really was. I told her I could cook her something truly disgusting tomorrow night, so she'd have some standard of comparison and perhaps learn to not complain so much.

"What are you gonna make me eat, Hobo Snot?" she shot back.

I found that endlessly funny, not just because of the way it sounds, but because I find it adorably perplexing that a girl of seven would immediately think of something so bizarre, and yes, disgusting as "hobo snot". She's definitely her daddy's girl. Hobo Snot would make a great band name, doncha think? There's a future illustration in there somewhere...

I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE NOT BUTTONS!

Bunch of preliminary artwork for some upcoming odd button designs.

DONKEY KONG WINS!!

Finished polishing off my first DONKEY KONG illustration last night (though I may still tweak it here and there). Been working on this one for a while in my "spare time" (between 10pm and 3am), but I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. The coloring actually didn't take as long as I thought it would -- as usual, the added effects and details took a bit longer to hammer out than I'd have liked.

Apologies to all you Mario fans out there -- looks like the little-carpenter-that-could bit the barrel! That's right, "carpenter". Mario (or "jumpman" as he was known before being given a name) began his career as a carpenter before he was shamed out of the profession and had to learn plumbing from his brother, Luigi.

Apparently, Mario used to be a bit of a bad guy before Nintendo decided to polish up his image and pit him against King Koopa. I love the game DONKEY KONG, but couldn't we play as the gorilla instead? He's a much more sympathetic character once you know the story behind the game. Apparently, Mario kept DK as his pet, yet treated him poorly, keeping him locked up in a cage and perhaps beating him while the poor ape is forced to watch from behind bars as Mario incessantly makes out with his hot girlfriend, Pauline, right in front of the imprisoned beast! Can you blame him for busting out, kidnapping Pauline and tossing barrels and flaming fireballs at the creepy carpenter? I'd do the same thing! Mario was later recaptured, of course, only to have his son come and rescue him and take out Mario in the process. Is it any wonder DK went crazy and eventually holed up in a greenhouse, communing with insects (see DONKEY KONG 3)?

Anyway, this time, much to the distress of Pauline, Donkey Kong wins and Mario eats a barrel. Hooray! I wonder what ever happened to Pauline anyway? Mario seems to have taken the golddigger route, ditching the sassy lass for the royal Princess Toadstool. I think you made a big mistake, Mario -- sure the princess is loaded (except their currency is probably mushroom-based), but Pauline is way hotter! Your loss.

Critiques and feedback are appreciated, please. The second DONKEY KONG illustration is underway and I'll post more progress on that when applicable.

DONKEY KONG LOVES PAULINE!

Here's the final large drawing of Pauline and Donkey Kong for my 2nd DONKEY KONG based illustration, done over the weekend. Inks and colors coming soon.

SLEESTACKS!

I just saw some new Sleestacks!
You might know they're remaking yet another childhood favorite of mine: LAND OF THE LOST. Just caught the trailer for the new movie (starring Will Ferrell) and I got to see the new Sleestacks in all their glory!
The original show was poorly produced and, though I enjoyed it as a child, I certainly wasn't wowed by the rubber dinosaurs and shoddy bluescreen work. What did hold my attention, though, were the Sleestacks. Clearly just men in suits, yet somehow they creeped me out and seemed very eerily alien to me. Maybe it was their big expressionless eyes, or the sounds they made, or both. I dunno.

Anyway, can't wait to see them on the big screen, and I hope the movie doesn't take itself too seriously (doesn't look like it). The new design looks pretty cool as they didn't stray from the original designs much at all except to add some detail and alleviate the "rubber suit" feel. I do feel a Sleestack illustration coming on, though...