May 9, 2008

Doodle Daze

So, quiet week, eh? Perhaps on the blog, but certainly not life this week! I had another job interview Monday - my favourite kind, we talked for a bit and then Tuesday, I was emailed an assignment to complete. The catch was I had 48 hours to design, cut, and code a website of approximately four pages. They wanted to see creativity, use of colour, movement and sound. In 48 hours. Design a site look, cut the images apart and optimize them. Build at least one Flash piece - design, code. Put Flash into a page. Code all the pages. Write a rationale for the choices made and insert that on the pages. Cut a small sound byte to use in another Flash piece to demo sound. Forty-eight hours. Not a week of work, but nearly a week's worth of work in two days.

I was busy this week, working feverishly from Tuesday morning straight through until Thursday morning - and then attempting sleep and some finesse work later Thursday.

So, this week is also Doodle Week according to my bud, Claire. She's designated various days with various kinds of doodles, and while Animal Doodle day isn't until tomorrow, that's what I have to show today.

These are all sketch versions of images I'll be using in the baby book I'm painstakingly doing by hand para mi sobrino.

 

 

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:23 AM | Comments (6) | Sketches | Stumble

May 4, 2008

More Drew Moss practicing

After the vampire Batgirl the other day, I decided to practice the rest of Drew Moss' excellent page.

So, here's the center three panels:

No more rats for her. It's strictly bag lunches from now on. Yum.

She doesn't like to fight but happens to excel in it.

The Bat gives her a bracelet that feeds her hunger. He says it will make her normal but she is always hungry.

I think I'll try the rest of the panels later on this week or next ...

However, there's a slew of things bubbling up this week, so I'm not sure whether I'll have time or not.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:48 PM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble

April 27, 2008

Holy Vampire Bats!

So my favourite way to improve my drawing - particularly drawing people standing in poses that aren't utterly stiff - is to find someone else's work and copy it. It's a time-honoured tradition and it's earned me a few friends along the way. I first practiced some of Mike Rohde's excellent SketchToons back in December of '05. Later it was "RubberyJido" over at deviantArt just this past September as I learned how to use my Copic markers.

Earlier this month, I discovered Drew Moss over at deviantArt. I instantly adored this comic book page he drew introducing a "new" Batgirl. So far as I can tell, this isn't something from DC officially, just a concept that Drew came up with. You should check out the full page he did - the text and design had me thinking this was going to be an actual Batgirl book.

His Batgirl concept is on the left and is inked, so the blacks are quite stark. Mine is on the right and is just a pencil sketch, so the blacks are muted.

Not too shabby. I can always see plenty of flaws, the most irritating of which are the changes I made to the face. Stare at it long enough and it's quite obviously off-balance. Meh. Still, it was good practice for me and I think I'll probably try to draw the bulk of the remaining panels as well. I need the practice and I enjoy the stark b/w drawings to help me really concentrate on shadows and light.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:33 PM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble

April 20, 2008

Ninja Mandy

Playing in Illustrator with one of my favourite cartoons: The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. I obviously need to spend some time in Painter and work through some tutorials on background painting as I'm really unhappy with the basic lame background here.

On the other hand, I was really happy with both the freehand sketch of Mandy and the version I did in Illustrator as well. So I give you now, Ninja Mandy:

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:49 PM | Comments (6) | Sketches | Stumble

March 25, 2008

Sketchy - yet another update

At this point, I'm flitting around the web looking up pictures of rusted junk ... and illustrations of rusted junk. Do I want him realistically rusty? If so, I'm headed in the wrong direction at the moment. Do I want him cartoony-rusty? I may already have made him too busy if that's the goal.

Then I remind myself that this piece is an exercise in learning Painter - sure, I want a nice looking piece when I'm done, and I'd love to be able to use at least a version of him in an online comic. But the real goal - learning Painter and improving my eye and my experience. :)

So, this is the little robot guy in the middle of my learning to use Painter and in the middle of rusting him up and attempting to add some depth. Remember ... he's still in process.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:05 AM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble

March 21, 2008

Sketchy - the next update

So, I'm continuing to play in Painter and try to get the hang of the program. I've actually only done a little bit with pastels, pencils and markers, but nothing with acrylics or oils. I'd always thought that the Painter program was only going to be useful to people who, well, were used to painting.

So, this is the little robot guy in the middle of my learning to use Painter and in the middle of rusting him up and attempting to add some depth. Remember ... he's still in process.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:55 PM | Comments (3) | Sketches | Stumble