Stretching perspective on this morning warm up. Another day, another barbarian rabbit.

Another one of these because that's the way the mood was swinging today. More ink, which is a good thing, and added to the mix, for the pose, was some baseball. Got him into the proportions of the latest version of the character, so it worked out ok. Face isn't my favorite but it is accurate. I think that when things are troubling me, I need heroes, be it in video games, movies or whatever. And the more basic the heroes, the better. That's why I think I'm spending time with this ugly guy instead of doing more constructive things. To be fair, I did work on a commission today, and did quite a lot on it. Still, I was itching to make barbarian, so I did.

Needed a little therapy this morning so I did some pencilling and redesigning of the barbarian blue rabbit. I think ink and character design are the two things that get me going the most. My partner claimed that Blundt looked, "like a heroin addict" so I squatted him down a bit. Perhaps this thought came from watching Conan last night. Don't know. In any case, my drawing and inking style seem to change based on mood. The more realistic, it seems, the less good the mood. The more cartoony, the better the mood. Mostly. Hadn't noticed it before. Wonder if my color choices are reflected here, too.. -Might- do something with him. Then again, I might do something with half the stuff I created. In any case, it was good to get out the brush. Been doing too much digital stuff lately and my heart is obviously in the ink bottle.

And one last of these for the day. Obviously channeled a bit of Kirby in this one, though that wasn't my thought when I drew it. Still, look at those flat fingers! :"D

Did another one of these because I had warrior rabbits, BLUE warrior rabbits on my mind. Will I do anything else with him? Who knows? My folders are full of characters waiting to tell their stories. Some will never get their chance. Regardless, I've been looking at Paul Pope's work lately and really just totally digging his ink, so I reached for the brush. I think that no matter what media I get into, ink will always be my passion.

In response to yesterday, came home and sketched this last night after work. This morning before work, I inked and colored it. Why is he blue? No idea. And why the little red underwear? One of the things I admire most about Frazetta's work is that he had no problem attiring the men the same way he did his women. I don't know another fantasy artist that did men as alluring as he did. Is my work alluring? No, but I do like the goofiness of a warrior just wearing skivvies.

Morning warm up. Just wanted to do something loose, I'm not looking to change the style of the comic AGAIN. Mostly I've been trying to learn to think more in three dimensions and more dramatically. My stuff is too grounded in old cartoons, too much set up as if it's being watched on a stage. If I'm going to do action, I really need to move the camera around more. And all the cool kids are doing it. :"D So this isn't Sharp, this is Blunt. There. That makes it better.

EDIT: Added the original page with some other head sketches. Now, off to work.

Got another of these done before heading off to visit the inlaws. Got to put it on the back burner again so I can prioritize better. Still, only about 11 more pages to be done before I can call this ready for publishing.

Yah, it's been a long time since I worked on this at all, but since I got Tamino up on the iTunes bookstore and Gumroad, I've been thinking about getting this finished so I can re-release it there. My first finished comic and there are still good things about it, I think. Don't want to redo the whole thing just the first 30 pages or so which means I'm past the halfway mark. Haven't drawn the otters in a long while. Lucco's still my boy.

No, this isn't the same image as yesterday exactly. I slept on it and decided that I didn't think his face in the lower image was appealing, a word that comes up time and again when I read about animation character design. I believe it's important. A character can be ugly or strange, but it should always be appealing. Even looking through the book on Nickelodeon cartoons or watching old Popeye cartoons will show how amazingly broad the word 'appealing' can be, and yet look at a movie like "Rise of the Guardians," and see that 'appealing' can be missed just as easily. So I gave Sharp hair, changed his coloring a bit, softened his expression. The eyes really weren't working. I wanted that green, but green was clashing or strobing. So I went with a grey green which I can intensify for emotional scenes. There's something very slightly mournful about the color which appeals to me and visually (might) suggest something less than 100%, if that makes any sense. My heroes are people, slightly flawed. No Supermen here. Anyway, whether all this will mean anything in the end or not remains to be seen, but I think about it a lot. Now to actually make the damned comic...

Well, it's been nearly a month since the last posting. That has mostly to do with having gone to Europe and Boston for nearly two weeks and a general lack of inspiration otherwise. Well, got to get back in the seat. Still poking about with these designs as I really want to go for a more commercial look. In the background, I am actually working on the script for this as well which is also important. Having watched a lot of cartoons, I'm hoping I have at least some of the vibe of 'what the kids are watching these days,' though I'm not going for the CG look at all. Onwards and upwards.