Played about with some colored pencils and brown paper last night. Brown is so much better a background than white, I think. Might have to do more of this.

EDIT: Did do some more this morning. Ricci's on top, with a more atmospheric and dark take. Not a happy camper.

This year's holiday card. And yes, I am that bad at wrapping presents.

Just a quickie for fun. Love those little water polo hats.

Was away at a little convention last weekend. I don't generally 'sketch' but had a lot of down time and did a page of the guys. I was actually pretty happy with how they came out. I worried that I'd forgotten how to draw them but now they come more easily than ever. Just some quickies.

So I SHOULD stop making these, but so far I haven't. My guess is that Zombison's toys just got sent to the 3/$1.00 bin and he's none too pleased. So.. yah.

So the 'Changed Animal' needs a villain, though I have other things I need to be doing. So here's... Zombison! The cigar is VERY un-PC but it went with the mustache and toupee. Just a character sketch.

Just one more for this little non-series. Can't help it. The little guy is fun to draw.

Like I don't have enough to do. Fake promo for a fake cartoon. Never happened. Ink and Illustrator, thrown together in about an hour. Whee!

EDIT: And here's some more I put together during the rest of the day:

Another upcoming page for Tamino that I was pretty happy with. 20 pages done so far since the last posting but I want to finish the chapter before uploading them, hoping that more folks might want to read the comic.

I haven't posted a new page of Tamino in two months. I'm trying to get the second chapter done before I do that as people didn't seem interested in the smaller chunks I was posting it in. I have 19 pages drawn and am just starting to color some of them. So far, I'm pretty happy with the results. These are the first four, without text. I hate not having anything to show.

Played with two different media today that I don't normally use; oils and Artrage. I'd like to do more with both. Oils are like butter in many different ways. ArtRage, even in its oil paint mode is really utterly unlike oil paint, which is fine. They each have their strengths, though Artrage doesn't smell.

Just some sketching I've been doing between pages of Tamino. First, an experiment in watercolor, which I don't use enough. Ghiroy in WC and ink. Lucco seems to come a lot more easily now than when I was doing "Fite!" which is kind of annoying. I was using some of Ben Balistreri's poses as reference to see if could learn something with my own character work. He makes it look so easy! Ghiroy's poses are my own and he, too is coming more easily though I've yet to do any work on that comic as there just isn't time. Stupid retail job. And the kids from Narnia! Soon (not) to be a saturday morning show!

One of the recent pages of Tamino, and one of which I'm pretty happy. I've been told I use color well. If only I could use color well -professionally!-

Finally got around to doing some actual sponge painting. Quite simple once the image is worked out in advance. I can see where there would be a lot of expansion in some of the highlights and shadows but for a first try, I'm pretty happy. Gouache and colored pencil, approx. 5x7.

Playing about with this stencil/spongepainting style in photoshop. I decided to do a little 'fan art' from "Kung Fu Panda," in this case, one of the rhino guards. Just playing about to get a better feel of the filters/style.

Messing about with the sponge painting thing. This would be fun for a kids' book, if I could come up with a story. Both done with photoshop.

This is the first 36 pages of Tamino all put together in thumbnails. It's the first time I've ever even thought about a color key or any such thing. In this case, about 6 pages in, I realized I wanted to tell the story in 4s. The layout and this beat are meant to feel very steady over the length of the comic, so that when I do play with them, a jarring sense is more acute to the reader, or so I hope. Looking at the comic this way also helps me see where to tweak things, and I also now realize that looking at a set of 4 at a time before publishing helps smooth things out.

Title card for a T+D cartoon. TV is perfect now; there are no faded old prints or even projectors any more and reception isn't an issue. So why am I nostalgic for this kind of crappy reproduction? Damned if I know..

Dimbo and an as yet unnamed antagonist. Reused an old background just for some quick and dirty context. The headless man is a retiree who just wants to fish and finds the perfect river. Problem is, Tricky and Dimbo had found it first. High concept, I know.

I mostly just have time for my web comic, but if I did have more time, I'd be developing ideas like this further (thought that, too is likely a waste of time). I have this image of a variety type show like the old Huck Hound show with Big Dum hero as the star, and these guys, Trick and Dimbo as another feature. They'd be a sort of Bugs and Elmer kind of arrangement with the fisherman (developed later) as their foe.

Also, I have to remember to start putting copyright notices on everything, not only because it's a good idea but just in case that stupid orphan works bill gets passed in any form.

Some recent t-shirt designs:






The latest page of the web comic:



What with the retail job and this, things have been busy.

And I had to do one for the otters as well. Fite shirt design. Might be more if I actually sell any of these things.

Merchandise! Haven't tried this before. I don't expect to really make anything doing this, but I thought I'd give it a try. This is the design for the first bit of goods from one of my comics that's not a book. Tamino on a t-shirt. If it goes at all well, I'll try this again. Or I'll just design shirts that I'd like to wear and buy them myself.

Big Dum Hero's arch nemesis. Poor guy's not even really evil, he's just sort of cranky. Can barely pull a card from his sleeve, either.

Another one of these things. I'd love to do a strip of this guy written in the style of the humor from "Rocky and Bullwinkle," but I just don't have the time and am likely not that funny.

Wasting time when I should be doing other things. Also, have been watching much too much Rocky and Bullwinkle. This might be a fun show to work on, if I were an animator.

The next four all in a row.

This is the first four pages of the new comic all put together. This comic is meant to be told in '4s,' meaning that there is a beat or difference every 4th page. I like the idea of the whole thing being a accordian folded print when it's done, but it would be huge.

The next two in the series. I'm not so happy with the Cat Woman, and will likely go back and replace her with Conan. Still, these are fun to do.

First of the new web comic. I'm trying to combine Japanese woodblock aesthetics with some 50s era animation and a little cubism thrown in for fun. I'm trying to do two pages of this a week for about 100 pages total. Ink and Illustrator.

First two in a new series, an ABC of B-movie characters. Just for fun.

This is a year's worth of work at a glance. I have a whole sketchpad full of stuff for the next comic, and have been really struggling to decide which style to go with. Putting all the examples together with color really helped me see what worked and what didn't. Now here's hoping I can follow through.

Some random stuff. The above is a practice bit while learning to paint with Photoshop. There is so much to learn, but I was fairly happy with this. Used a sketch, Illustrator and PS and managed this in a couple hours.






And those two are continuing tests for Ghiroy. The character design for this is nearly driving me insane as I can't quite decide what I want or how far to take things. There's a whole pad full of this stuff and if I want to make a go of it, I have to decide soon.