Redraw #1

I'm going to indulge myself on the "blog" part of the sketchblog for this post. Sorry...

I was going through the shit in my Photobucket account today, probably the first time I've looked at any of it in years. It's like a time capsule that when you open it, a fist flies out and punches you right in the face. Seriously though, it was kind of nostalgic, and a little surreal. I don't do ANYTHING the same way any more. I used to work mainly in pencil and Micron, whereas nowadays I do a quick sketch in a red animators lead at best, and then do most of the work in the computer. Previously, I favored straight lines and sharp angles, now I try to keep things as soft and round as possible. I put thick black outlines on everything, until I eventually wised up to the fact that doing so flattens everything out and kills any sense of depth. My coloring is still atrocious, but a few years ago, I handled everything with the airbrush tool in Photoshop, giving all my stuff a smudgy, dirty look. Today, I mostly stick to big blocks of color, and while I admit that coloring is one of my biggest weaknesses (still, I can't resist doing it), I think my current technique is at least cleaner. I used to hide the things I couldn't draw, or leave them out completely, as is clearly demonstrated in the following image. All of my figures wore big, baggy pants because I had no clue how to draw legs. I was influenced by anime and manga. I shied away from women even more than I do in real life. Unless I was feeling particularly adventurous, I drew strictly head on, or in profile, with hardly any action at all. I mean, I was a disaster. Shit, back then I used to sign my name to my drawings, instead of the little "diamond" symbol I made that I use now. SO MUCH CHANGE.

It's really inspired me to go back and redraw some of that garbage. Hopefully to see some improvement (I could wipe my ass with most of this stuff and improve it tenfold), but also as an experiment to see how I'd approach the same subject the way I draw now. First up...


I remember how unusually proud I was of this when I first did it. I drew a girl! I drew a girl in 3/4 view! This was also one of the first things I ever colored in Photoshop. As soon as it was done I went flying off to conceptart.org to post it... WHERE. I. GOT. KILLED. "Her nose is too big. Her head is too big. What's up with her lips? She has the neck of a giraffe. You call that a coloring job? Motherfucker, she has an ADAM'S APPLE!" It was one of the first (soon to be many) times I was evicerated on a public art forum. The feeble minds of these godless savages were too infantile to recognize the greatness I had lain before them! I probably made the most progress I've ever made during my early days on conceptart, PencilJack and The Drawingboard, simply because I had my ass handed to me so often, and I was so embarrassed, that I HAD to practice to avoid further flogging. It was awesome.

I'm well aware I'll never be known as a pin up artist. I'm just not very good at drawing women. But at least now I'm not scared of them, and the fact that you can (usually) tell when I'm trying to depict the fairer sex is a MARKED improvement from past efforts. The 2009 version is far, far from great, but I do think it's at least better. I got pretty lazy on the pigtails and feathers, my coloring is wack, I wish I hadn't overshadowed under the jaw, and I'm not sure my proportions are accurate. All that said, no adams apple=WIN! Progress has been made! The composition sucks, but I wanted to keep this as close to the O.G. as possible. My main goal was just to draw less of a circus freak, not to make a print or anything.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I needed to exercise the heebie jeebies I got browsing through those old drawings. I'm not trying to imply I'm king shit now or anything, or even that I'm any good at all, but I did need to prove to myself that I've made some strides, however small.

I labled this post with a #1 hoping that it will motivate me to do more. Unfortunately, one old habit I've never broken is my incredible, contemptuously disgusting laziness.

Sorry for the long post.

Tiger Up Yer Butt!

When I set out to do this, my mantra was "simple, cartoony", but as it went along, I added more detail, and now it's become "awkward, weird." That's cool baby, the T-Man rolls with the punches. I did play around with some new coloring techniques, so it's not a total wash. I used Adobe Illustrator's Live Paint for the first time, and I worked light to dark rather than dark to light. If I had any confidence in myself to follow through with it, I'd say maybe this was the beginning of a series of Street Fighter characters. Since I know myself better than most, I say this very well might be my last post ever.




This was an experiment I did while I was fucking around with ways to manipulate photos in Illustrator. It kind of looks like shit, but I learned a lot of stuff. Primarily that Suzy's dad looks pretty awesome in shutter shades.



Click on those sumbitches to biggerize them. You all know this by now, right? I get paranoid sometimes that my resized, pixelated images will be mistaken for the final product. I mean, they'll look like ass either way, but I want to ensure you're looking at the RIGHT ass. I want you to look at MY ass, the way God and I intended it.

I draw m'self... again

I want to re-vamp my website and thought about doing a portrait for my banner. This was just coming out way too creepy though.

Back to the old standbys...

Jesus Christ I'm RUSTY.

You should see the other girl. Heyooooo!

Oh, awesome! Now that the site is enfuego I've ONCE AGAIN lost all of my uploaded pictures and filled this blog with broken images! In honor of life kicking my ass:



Yeah, when I draw myself it looks nothing like me. Perhaps this is how I idealize myself, which, I guess says a lot considering the ideal me is broken, bloody and missing teeth.

Dragon Balls...

This was my most ambitious one yet due to the gun and all the shadows, so it's also my weakest one yet. The figure is hard to read, and the likeness is especially bad. Whatevs.

Supposedly the Chinese characters say "kung fu dragon", but I don't speak Chinese, so in reality they probably say something about testicles and candy (which would be ironic, as those were the characters I was actually looking for). Also, here's an earlier version before I went ape shit on doo-dads.

Sprinkles are extra...

I'm so sorry Geoff.

Warning: Mad Skillz Alert!

This took both a lot of time and a lot of talent.



*Sorry Ryan, but you totally looked like a pompous dick in that photo.

Happy Easter

Our mom may have called it our "Sunday best,"
but I assure you, it was the worst.

The Game Bastard...

(Alternate post Title: "The N Word.")

As good as it is, Smash Bros. fails as a concept as long as my man The Game Master goes ignored.



That's looking all kinds of wack and I know it. Much as I like dicking around in Illustrator, the things I'm not very good at (hands and feet especially) look far, far worse when I try to draw them with a mouse. The pose and body shape are kind of weird as well. Captain N ain't got no junk in the trunk.

Also! The orange gun is for fuckwads, it's gray all the way, baby! But, orange is what the character had, so I went with what was faithful. Was there really a concern at some point that someone would mistake the Nintendo Zapper for a real laser gun unless it was orange? Probably.

This is leftovers I started but didn't like where it was going and lost interest in. Why am I posting my trash? Because the higher I inflate my post count, the more I can lord it over the rest of you twats that I seem to be the only one who ever posts here anymore.



-Todd

Eye Rape...

Straight up, this is just total shit:



That was my attempt at an unsolicited caricature of my sister. Next time I'll save myself two hours and just say "Hey, want to see a caricature of you I made?" then I'll punch her right in the mouth. Her huge, ghastly, duck lipped mouth, according to what I've represented here. This isn't even a caricature, it's candy colored cartoon slander. It's libel.

That said, I'm going to make an effort to post more out and out garbage here. I know I trash talk my own work all the time, but speaking candidly (meaning, arrogantly), a lot of the stuff I deem failures I secretly am able to find small victories in. Like that "sasquatch" I posted a month back. I mean, it doesn't look like sasquatch (werewolf Hulk Hogan yadda yadda), but I think it's an overall solidly constructed face. It's like, if I made you a shit sandwich, yeah, it's probably going to be fucking disgusting and hopefully you're not going to want to eat it, but if it's got two slices of bread, some lettuce, perhaps a little provolone, I dunno, maybe an olive speared to the top with a toothpick, I still succeeded in executing the basic concept of a sandwich, right? Of course, it's an unfortunate deal breaker that it's got my shit in it, but even if I can't find my car, I'm still in the right parking lot. I think my astute and eloquently worded analogy has gotten my point across. Anyway, I want to post more stuff like this that just sucks out loud. Like, has no redeeming value whatsoever. Mostly to artificially inflate my post count by showing 9/10 of the stuff I actually draw, but also to hopefully stop worrying about presenting crap an allowing myself to move outside my comfort zone.

As an added bonus side effect, maybe you all will come to realize that I am not an infallible art god, and am instead just really, really, supernaturally good.

Travis Touchdown...

No More Heroes is an awesome game. If you thought that Nintendo consoles shy away from adult content, be aware that this game contains a t-shirt featuring the slogan "I Love Tits" with a picture of, yes, some tits. Also be aware that I am doing everything in my power to procure such a garment for myself.

Moused this out while on the phone tonight. I couldn't for the life of me get the glasses to look right, but it wasn't worth spending any more time on.

Hopefully this marks the (no doubt temporary) end to my mouse/Illustrator experiments. My blog contributions have been way too heavy on that shit as of late. I've got 5 or 6 pages of ballpoint gesture studies I've been too lazy to scan that hopefully I'll get around to on Friday. Jesus it felt good to draw by hand again.



-Todd

Macho Biatcho

This was going to be my attempt at returning the favor of the avatar Geoff made for me. Unfortunately, it ended up looking less like a sasquatch and more like mid-transformation, werewolf Hulk Hogan. Also, apparently my definition of "macho" means nothing more than a handlebar mustache and a cigarette. Bikers are totally macho. James Dean can go fuck himself for half assing it and slacking on the 'stache.

Face Off...

I know this doesn't really take much technical ability, but I haven't drawn in weeks and I felt shamed by the recent (to me anyway) activity here. There was a month or two there where I posted every few days or so, I don't want to fall back to my old routine of posting once a month. I really want to make it a point to study more graphic design theory, because let's face it, this cluster fuck of shapes and hues in the background is like a technicolor dagger to the eyes.




The white globs everywhere are my avant garde, symbolic representation of semen. Artsy!

(click to get rid of the jaggies)

Pottery...

I think this is going to take awhile. I want to make sure I do a half way decent job, so, I'm trying to take the time to draw some characters, then refine them and play around until I get something I like. Mo' experimentin':





I was kinda happy with the colored version of Voldemort, from a stylistic point of view, until Kevin told me he looks too much like a zombie and needs to look more like a snake. A snake? I didn't know about that shit. Kevin needs to look more like a mindless kiss ass and less like a fucker. I'm in an awkward position, because I don't want to just do caricatures of the movie actors, but I don't read the books, so I don't know what's an essential detail to include, or what's allowed and what's not allowed when trying to do my own thing. Of course, I still haven't figured out WHAT I'm drawing or who's going in it, so maybe I should work on a composition first. I dunno, like I said, this is going to take awhile.


And I drew Ron as a fatass.


And yeah, that was supposed to be Ron.

Me Am "Mab Mab!"

Inspired by Kevin's recent avatar, I doodled this during a meeting at work today and afterwards cleaned it up a little in Photoshop:




Poor planning lead to me running out of space at the bottom of the page, so I twisted his left foot into an unnatural position to try and get it to fit. It ended up looking retarded (or, in Bizarro speak, AWESOME), so I did that lazy "fade out" shit.

Also, those aren't lens flares, technically. I made them myself, which means they're not tacky, but rather, FUCKING INCREDIBLE.

EDIT: Does his right arm, particularly, the forearm, look completely fucked? My eye keeps being drawn to it, which can't be a good thing.

Self Portrait

This drawing is all twisted and wonkey,
like my ego.

P.S. I'm growing the beard out again.

More of the same as before, but while I liked parts of the previous image, this one I'm classifying as total shit. This time it's supposed to be Trent...raising his finger in objection, maybe...to, like...all the computer monitors and CB radios behind him? Or something. See what I'm doing here is letting you write your own backstory to the image. That's actually genius. I fucking love this one.







Is me posting all of my little Photoshop/Illustrator/MSPaint experiments annoying? Be honest.

Jyeah!

Illustrator is a really fun way to waste time here at work. I need to see about sneaking my tablet into this motherfucker.



I don't know if this is a self portrait or what. It's kinda like me in places I guess(glasses, facial hair) but so help me god, if I ever start wearing my hat that way, somebody please kick the shit out of me.

Oh, and for the record, I actually drew in a city scape background, but it looked too jumbled and confusing when I shrank the thing down, so I dropped it out of fear that if I ever tried to crop this into an avatar or something, it would be unreadable.