Red Monkey: Sketches Archives

February 27, 2011

Major Tool

Sometimes you try and try and it just doesn't work out the way you'd hoped. That was what happened with this illustration, unfortunately. The penciled sketch turned out pretty well, but when I went to ink it ... well, it just didn't come out right. And when you add in my abysmal lettering ... ah well. I want to throw this out there anyway, while it's still topical. (That's the problem with being a slow illustrator, still. Getting the idea out there fast enough and well.)

If you've never seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, this won't mean anything at all to you ... but if you have, I posit that Dr. Horrible needs a new foe/hero now that Captain Hammer has tasted pain. I mean, Captain Hammer is just a wuss compared to ...

MAJOR HAMMER

Major Hammer, Major Tool - Charlie Sheen

Not sure what I'll do with this - if I had an Etsy store set up, I'd offer it for $15. Meh. If anyone's interested, leave a comment.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:23 PM | Comments (1) | Sketches | StumbleUpon Toolbar Stumble

December 4, 2010

The Box Lid

All right ... here are some picture of the now-finished box lid for the Plants Vs. Zombies game. Click the images for a larger version.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:34 PM | Comments (2) | Design | Sketches | StumbleUpon Toolbar Stumble

November 28, 2010

A Little Overboard

I get these wild hairs from time to time. Something just strikes my fancy, and on a whim, I have suddenly committed myself to a huge project. Last year, it was making a Sculpey piece for everyone in our department. This year it was another Sculpey project ... but a little bit different.

I watched a few friends on Twitter conversing with someone who sounded intriguing. So I followed her. She was having a rough year. Her body was attacking several organs and things were looking serious. After several surgeries and more tests than you could shake a stick at, she finally had a diagnosis of Lupus, something I've rather feared for most of my life. (I've been tested for it from time to time and had doctors bandy the word around since I was in high school.) Through it all, her kids seemed so sweet and loving.

So one day, she's tweeting about the kids playing their made up game of Plants Vs. Zombies in the backyard and she's just basking in their imagination, ingenuity and sense of fun. I mean, Plants Vs. Zombies is an iPhone game. Kind of a strategy game somewhere between board game and video game. And they are making up their own version to play in the backyard. Later on, she tweets that her two kids had asked Santa for Plants Vs. Zombies toys. I'm sure that PopCap is planning on making some at some point, given how wildly popular the game is ... but as of mid October when she tweeted that, there was nothing.

This sounded like an excellent Sculpey project to me. Two sweet kids. Imaginative. Hard year. Yep, just the kind of project I like.

I looked around the web for some screen shots, since I'd never played the game. Found out what their favourite characters were ... and went to work.

And ... umm ... I went a little bit overboard.

I kinda built them a board game version (they'll have to make up their own rules, though).

The full project isn't quite done - I'm waiting to get something back from the printer, but you'll get the general idea from these pictures:

An overview of the whole - the box is just a mockup, printed in tiles (that's the piece I'm waiting to get back from the printer):

Picture of sculpted characters from Plants vs Zombies

And then there are the watermelon-catapult things - these are apparently the kids' favourite plants:

Picture of sculpted watermelon catapults from Plants vs Zombies

Then there's an angry "Wallnut" and a pair of zombies that are only loosely based on the game. As much as I love working in Sculpey the stuff is amazingly soft once you start working with it. Which means every time you touch it the slightest bit, you affect the sculpture. And if I've mixed colours to get a specific hue, I can guarantee the stuff is so soft, I'll never be able to get my finger prints off of it completely:

Picture of sculpted Wallnut and Zombies from Plants vs Zombies

Then a couple more zombies which are more directly based on the game:

Picture of sculpted Zombies from Plants vs Zombies

Then there's the peashooters:

Picture of sculpted pea shooter from Plants vs Zombies

Then there's the snowpea shooter and a trio of mushrooms:

Picture of sculpted snowpea and mushrooms from Plants vs Zombies

And finally, a quartet of sunflowers to round everything off:

Picture of sculpted sunflower from Plants vs Zombies

And because I can't leave well enough alone, I ordered some custom cut foam and built a box for the whole thing. Sculpey is fairly sturdy if you don't drop it on a hard surface, but why not stress that this is a little fragile?

Picture of the custom box interior with pieces

And then a final image - this will wrap the box lid and make it look like a board game:

I should say a few things:
One, I respect copyright. This is a one-off art piece made specifically for these kids and I made it clear on the box that Plants Vs. Zombies is PopCap's baby.
Two, I won't make another one.
Three, I've accepted no money for it. I did this on a whim for some kids who needed an extra-bright spot in their lives this holiday season. That's it.

September 10, 2010

Doodle (?) Dude ... of sorts

Well, this is not exactly a Doodle Dude, really. It's more a week-long theme ...

At any rate ... here's a kind of a doodle ...

More of a Post-It Note ™ scribble, really ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Sketches | StumbleUpon Toolbar Stumble

September 2, 2010

Doodle Dudes ...

Ridiculously quiet here, I know.

There's more going on than I can write about ... instead I show you a couple of recent Doodle Dudes ... first up is James ... not sure what he's contemplating, but he's thinking hard: