Colors! me bad

So I've been pretty quiet here lately. The only free-time drawing I've really been doing has been on my DS on the way to work. So here are my latest commute drawings from the past couple days. They might be digital, but without an "undo" feature, this is the closest thing I've done to painting in a long time. If I set this up correctly you should be able to click on these and see a video of the drawing process.

Another masterpiece!

The Mighty KC...

Wakka wakka!



I know the likeness is terrible, and the coloring job is..."questionable" at best, but for something that was nothing more than an Illustrator doodle (which last time I apparently lied about shying away from) I'm not going to sweat it too much. I'm actually not horrified by the clothing folds. It's not like I busted out some sweet ass textile origami or anything, but I have a hard time drawing that shit with a pencil, so getting something that doesn't look like a toilet paper mummy with a mouse is a victory in my book. Fun fact: if you "flip horizontal" over and over again in Photoshop, it looks like he's rapidly punching you. Pretend you stole his pudding and watch his fist fury EXPLODE.


Mo' dem doodles:











Also, almost all of this stuff is reference free, for you fuckers who think I can't draw more than a stick figure without looking at a photograph.

-Todd

Shameless Self Promotion...

I apologize for breaking the unspoken rules and making a non-art post, but since I was talking about this in the comments earlier, I thought I'd go ahead and reveal the (rotten) fruits of my labor:

Spladow.

It's a work in progress, just to get a template up that I can screw around with. I'll probably make a new banner image, maybe separate drawings and digital work, and add links to things like this blog. I realize this isn't going to win any awards for web design, but I'll be damned if even this simple little thing didn't take me the better part of a 9 hour work day to build(though most of that was just trying to learn how to do ANYTHING in Dreamweaver besides give myself a migraine).

If anyone has any recommendations or helpful advice, I'd really love to hear it. Thanks!

-Todd

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

Blahsome!

Another girl. I'm not confident about those proportions. I think the head may be too large, and the legs are probably too short. We'll chalk that up to the irrefutable catch all excuse of "style." I also think there's some wackiness going on in the collarbone and shoulder areas. On the plus side, I kinda like the way the strands of hair turned out. Not the big, flippy/curly clumps, just the loose strands. I'll have to incorporate those into something that's not garbage at some point.




-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.

Mermanarchy!

More Illustrator/Photoshop dicking around. I figured I had kind of a nautical theme going with the squid thing and pirate dude, so here's a mermaid, that, knowing me, probably looks like a dude. I got a little ambitious on the color, using gradients and other madness I have no real understanding of. Something looks a little off when I flip the image in Photoshop, but I can't quite figure out what that is exactly...

Piratical...

"Wow Todd, that's totally a face. Do you not charge money for dazzling us with such excitment?" Yeah, it's boring, but it took me literally six fucking hours, so go to hell. I wish I'd made him more grizzly, and gnarled, with more exaggerated style and, like, barnacles and scurvy on his face and shit, but working, as I do, with a mouse (as I'm so fond of mentioning) I tend to fall back on the safety of straight forward structure. Maybe next time. Next time I have, again, six fucking hours of free time. Also, I totally cheated and basically drew half a face. If you look not so closely, you can probably see that I mirrored the ears, hair, and beard. I did that because real faces are 100% symmetrical in real life.



Yeah, weird placement of the image. I was feeling frisky.


If I may detour into (further?) arrogance, I have to say that looking back on what I used to do with Illustrator, I've made huge strides. Check out this piece of shit I found in my Photobucket account:


Seriously? I don't like to toot my own horn, but toot toot mother fucker!

Lastly, 2 posts in 2 days= I win!

Cephalopodunists...

Goofing off at work, trying to brainstorm a new logo...which then somehow became a shirt? Yeah, I'm not totally in love with my own work at all. I mean, everyone else is, but I'm not.

This little piggy...

I was trying to help my sister design the invitation for her Vet School prom, and these were a couple of the assets I tried freehanding in Illustrator. I had planned on doing a whole bunch of drunken, dancing animals, but ultimately fell victim to a lack of time, as well as complete frustration with how things were turning out. Ah well. The pig works better than the cow, in my opinion.





It is my desperate wish to get back to drawing and posting soon. I've just been WAY too busy at work lately, and I can't seem to break the video game vice when I get home from work. It's been like 8 months since I physically put pencil to paper and the longer I wait, the more fearful I become of getting back on the horse. Goddammit I'm getting out my drawing supplies TONIGHT!

Excellent work of late brohams. I may not post/reply often, but I'm watching. Always watching...

100th post

And apparently I am still incapable of
drawing anything but cartoons of myself.

numero dos

a logo

Photoshop Hero

Outside of SCUMMVM, most DS homebrew applications hadn't really appealed to me enough to justify purchasing the necessary gear to run them. That changed though, when I saw Colors! I just set it up today, and this is the first image I've drawn with it, but I suspect my bus rides just became a lot more productive.

Never Knit From The Book of Forbidden Patterns

Never draw from it either.
This was intended for Illustration Friday,
but I'm too embarrassed by it's crappyness.

The One Free Man...

Having finished Mass Effect, I finally sunk some time into The Orange Box the other night, and blew through Episode I and II in about 1 sitting. God damn do I love the Half-Life series. Portal and Team Fortress are pretty rad too, but the Half-Life games are the highlight of the package for me. I find that storyline more compelling than, say, Star Wars, and they're pinnacles of the medium to boot. Anyway, I wanted to draw some stuff from the series by hand, but it was too busy at work with finals and shit for me to feel comfortable with people potentially looking over my shoulder. I decided to just goof off in Illustrator piece by piece when I had time. Nothing amazing. The final version is my new avatar on bombunists.com, but I figured since I hadn't posted here in awhile (or even looked at it, sorry for the lack of comments on my part, bros) I'd post up another WIP. I don't know why I share these, they're just fun for me to look at sometimes and see how I went about making whatever P.O.S. I'm shilling.

This is a big image, so click to see the full version.



Do you like the way I skipped a huge chunk of steps where I kept tweaking, adding and removing details? Haven't you learned vast insight into my work process? YOU'RE WELCOME.

I bet I think this pictures about me

en espanol por favor

doodleydoo part 2... while at a meeting

I did this when I probably should have been paying closer attention to the work.. (I did take some notes though)

Mars pic

Here's my sorry contribution to that John Carter of mars book I mentioned to you a few weeks ago.

I draw stuff thumbtimes

Blogunists

We have this blog that we use at work to keep all of the students and staff up to date on important University happenings that we may receive a lot of questions about. Back in the day, I used to be one of the primary contributors, both in writing the posts and maintaining the site. As of this semester, I've pretty much taken a back seat to let someone else have a stab at it. For a couple of years we had this really generic template in place that I threw together in Photoshop. It was yellow and green Mason colors with photos of the campus, the Johnson Center...it was pretty fucking lame. Now that it's in new hands, we figured we'd redesign the look a bit to match the current "theme" we have going on at work. The theme is "The J-Team" and we deck out all of our shit with A-Team or military style decor. The current show runner assembled the one that's in place at the moment, but he asked me if I wanted to contribute anything. I had grand plans of a propaganda styled background, but I couldn't get it to work out in a way that I was happy with. I cobbled together the left over assets I'd made into this half assed monstrosity:



It's entirely too busy and confusing. Graphic design is not something I have any talent for, though it is something I'm constantly wanting to research and improve upon. Anyway, I was supposed to leave work 5 minutes ago, so I'm shutting the fuck up.

I guess if we ever get around to redesigning the Bombunists site, I've got a load of assets we can use in a pinch.

doodleydoo

Here's a tarzan looking dude I drew... (while driving in rush hour traffic on 395)



and this was some sort of concept I was working on of the "R&D lab at the Scudco factory" I think I was originally hoping if I came up with some really inventive, I would make a very well crafted version that I would submit it to Rob in the far flung hope of getting it printed in the pin up gallery of the new Scud book. after a few minutes, I gave up on it.

Stumptown

Margaret and I went to the Stumptown Comics Fest this past weekend. Above is simply an artist's rendition of an actual exchange of dialog at said fest.

Fuck you, Gunston!

The editor of Mason's newspaper, The Broadside, saw my facebook gallery and asked if I would do some cartoons for the paper. "Sure" I said. Why not, it's good for a resume (ha!) right? Well, they needed one by Monday, and since I'm leaving straight from work tonight to go to Myrtle Beach, that means I had about 2 hours to get the first one done. Fuck. I also took all of my art supplies out of my bag so I could use it to pack. All I had was a ballpoint pen and Photoshop. Fuck fuck. Anyway, I say all this not to excuse my shoddy work, just to...ok, yeah, excuse my shoddy work. It was a rush job! I didn't have my fancy ass brush pens, colored leads and Microns! The articles sharing page space were about our mascot, Gunston, possibly being replaced, and something about tasers on campus. I combined the two:



(click to biggerize)

Originally, I, of course, had Gunston getting tasered right in the cajones, which is why he's posed that way, but then I thought maybe I shouldn't get fired before I'm ever even really hired, so I flipped him around and stuck it in his ass instead (if I had a nickle...).

Whatever, I'm going to the beach.

learning illustrator

This was my first attempt at drawing a picture in Illustrator (and trying to learn how to actually use the program) I had to check out a few tutorials. This image was for a magician friend who was putting together a "magic barmitzvah" website. He requested that I redo the face to make the kid look younger. I haven't gotten around to that yet.

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)

Agamemnon

Some stupid comics I made

(He's Magneto, Get it?)

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.

Dumbledorks...

So, Suzy has this desktop wallpaper on her work computer of a Prince image I drew about a bazillion years ago that I fucking HATE. The likeness is bad, the coloring is bad, the drawing is bad. It's bad. I keep asking her to change it, but she says she won't until I draw her something else to replace it. I didn't know what else to do, as I don't really want to draw Prince again, so, I figured with Pottermania sweeping the world, and Suzy being a fan of the material, perhaps I'd try giving some of those characters a shot. Below is my very rough, preliminary explorations of some of those muggle fuckers.








The scan quality is shit, as I had to adjust the hell out of my levels in Photoshop to get my super light red pencils to even show up. My goal is to eventually have at least Harry, Snape, Dumbledore and Voldemort in the image, but if I'm feeling ambitious, maybe I'll try to work an owl, or Ron and Hermoine, or Spock or Gimli or one of the other characters I presume are in the books (that I don't read) in there somewhere. But yeah, I think I'm going to try and document my progress here in the blog.

My progress which will probably stop here, because really, how often do I ever finish anything?

Avatard...

Sorry to double post in one day. Made this tonight in Illustrator using a mouse. It's pretty goddamned hard to "freehand" in that program without a tablet, so excuse the hands and the overly circular head. Also excuse the fact that my pants are down and my junk is on glorious display. I cropped it out, but it's there. Oh, it's there.



(EDIT: Well fuck me, I just realized I uploaded a messed up version where the "paint drips" of the graffiti style bomb logo totally don't match the rest of the image. Damn. I'll swap it out, but I won't have the chance to do so until I go back into work on Monday and have access to the computer I used to do this.)