March 7, 2007

Home Sweet Home

Pencil sketch with some extra shading and shadowing in Photoshop.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:31 PM | Comments (4) | Sketches | Stumble

February 27, 2007

Fast Sketch

Here's a relatively fast sketch for use in a promotion at work. The main promotions guy will take a segment of the character for a promotion he's designing ... the hands will be holding the product ... hence the rather stiff look there as a good section of that will be covered up with product and a bit of glow (cuz, ya know, it's gonna be a great product).

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:09 AM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble

February 17, 2007

Li'l Muerto

Well, the damn DeadEx delivery was finally made Friday ... about 10 minutes before I got home, so sadly, I didn't get to give the dude a piece of my mind. But ... just for putting up with all the ranting, I'll show you what I've been working on since I got home Friday. A new cartoon character I'm calling Li'l Muerto at the moment. He's a young Grim Reaper trying to pass through "regular" school.

Interesting, but I like the plain sketch better than any of the colourings so far. I'll have to keep playing ... maybe switch from colour pencils to Sharpies and see where that takes me.

At any rate, the lightbox has gotten some very heavy use already and I'm so glad that stupid delivery FINALLY got here a week after it made it to town!

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:11 PM | Comments (8) | Sketches | Stumble

January 13, 2007

THERE it is!

So THERE is where I left my brain!!! Great good gods, I've been looking for that thing since the beginning of the year.

Too damn bad it's been outside so long. Wonder if it still works.

To answer Peety, yes, this is one of my sketches ... it's my first attempt at using colour. I've used watercolour pencils here. Most of the background was smudge sticked first. In addition, I used a barely damp kleenex on the sky and the upper portion of the grass as well to blend those areas just a touch more. I used a dry kleenex on the road and the bottom area of the foreground to blend those areas.

I'm still a bit irritated with the perspective on the road being all screwed up, but ah well. Such is life.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:13 PM | Comments (6) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

December 19, 2006

Exit ... Stage Left

I sketched this, this morning after reading that Joseph Barbera died Monday. Co-creator of such time-honoured cartoon classics as Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo, he was absolutely instrumental in bringing the art of animation to television.

He will be missed ... we're grateful that he didn't go into banking, but that he shaped so many of our childhoods instead.

Exit ... stage left.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:57 AM | Comments (3) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

November 26, 2006

22 Inches of Pure Happiness

It's been a busy four day weekend for me, as it has been for a lot of people in the U.S. Luncheon with the not-in-laws on Thursday ... a nice time of playing trivial pursuit ... a quick bite for dinner ... and then home to watch a video or two. I went to bed early as there was ONE thing I wanted to get during the insane shopping period called Black Friday.

Yeah ... I did.

You see, I adore my laptop beyond belief. It's a bit old now, a 2003 model, but it's a 17" PowerBook G4 and I love it. Since it's my only computer and I do a lot of graphics work, I really prefer to have a big screen so I can see my graphics ... and still have a little bit of room for the tools.

But Best Buy was offering a Westinghouse 22" LCD monitor for $200 on Friday morning. It's a $500 monitor there usually. And, well ... I get tech envy easily. All I could think of was ... ooooooooooooo, think how big I can make the artboard in Illustrator!

I set the alarm for 3:30, but just happened to wake up around 2:45 ... I tried to make myself go back to sleep, but no dice. So, I trucked on down to Best Buy, which was due to open at 5 a.m.

No traffic. This is a good sign. I figured I might have a chance at getting my delightful new monitor. I tried not to get my hopes up too high, and sure enough, when I rounded the final corner, I just about drove back home. I was sure I would never get my monitor. Here it was, 3:50 in the morning ... and there was already a line past Best Buy, and past the next TEN freaking strip mall stores. With a heavy heart, I joined the futility of the line anyway.

Long story short ... I got the last of the 22" monitors and I am just beside myself with joy. Now, when I need to run Illustrator, I take the laptop to my home office, plug it in ... suddenly i have a dual screen. 22" of pure happiness on the left side ... 17" of pure laptop happiness on the right side.

And, in honour of the happy new monitor, I finished one character for an animation I'm doing for a friend. Here is Kirby, in all his Westie glory:

Now I just have to finish the motorcycle, the character of my friend and a good background and I can begin actually animating the thing.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:58 PM | Comments (8) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble