The Man in the Hat!

Yup, the man in the hat is almost back. Is it strange, all these icons from childhood and adolescent times, making their way back onto the silver screen?

That depends. Are you talking about franchises in television or film? If it's TV then hell yes! Seriously, what's next? A Hogan's Heroes movie!? Don't get me wrong: I loved Hogan's Heroes, but somehow I don't think it would really fit into our current military situation. A bunch of American pilots held prisoner in an Iraqi prison, escaping into the desert to do what exactly? Help the locals rebuild their homes? Or maybe turn it around: have a bunch of Iraqi prisioners in Guantanamo Bay, escaping at night to help the local Cubans smuggle their cigars onto US bound ships.

Or maybe the Beverly Hillbillies! It would be great except for every self-proclaimed hillbilly in the country suing the film for defamation of character. Now Gilligan's Island... I'm still holding my breath for that film. It's sure to be undergoing a treatment any day now. Maybe Jonny Depp will play Gilligan...

As for Spielberg and Lucas, not so strange. It's just the same guys doing what they've always done. Are they different now than when they were younger? Of course, but not so different as they are the same. Might the new Indy flick waft into your consciousness with a big ol' nose-holding stinkola? Sure, but probably not. I assume it'll be a lot like most adventure flicks these days: some corny stuff, some eye-rolling moments, and a lot of funny, way cool looking, over-the-top fun. It's a ride, that's all, and I plan on tapping into my childhood and enjoying said ride for all it's worth. Color me a sucker, but I'll leave my cynicism at the door.

Guess Who's Back?

Big Blowout Moving Sale!!!

OK, not really a sale, but I'm starting a new blog. Why? Don't really know; just felt that I wanted/needed a new start. I've been out of the game for a bit, so starting again warrants a fresh start. In my mind at least. Please feel free to come by and visit. I like writing to the crickets but I still welcome any human visitors who happen to find their way around.

http://flinginggraphite.blogspot.com/

Happy drawing!

Golf

The time: ancient history. Me? A kid. Opinion of golf: silly; certainly not a sport. Jump forward to my early 20's. I get to play a few times with a couple of friends. Maybe all of three times, and never more than 9 holes. The experience was fun but you'd have to jump forward another eight or nine years before I would grip a club again. Never watched it on television during that time. Nor before. Maybe my dad would fall asleep on the couch while entertaining the idea of watching it. Maybe I would catch glimpses of it as I passed through with friends. Or girls. Or both. Or neither. Then, my bachelor party. A few friends and I gathered for a full 18 holes. We had a couple of carts and luckily Johnny Knoxville had yet to show just how much fun you can really have with one of those things. So we were only mildly annoying out on the course. We let plenty of people play though, had a ton of laughs, especially when one of my friends got frustrated. We were merciless. Still I had no intentions of ever really getting into the game.

Then Dan Panosian, the Urban Barbarian, got involved with a comic strip for Sports Illustrated through Marvel Comics (written by Chris Eliopoulos). Dan the muscle bound destroyer-of-worlds made it look easy:



Golf still wouldn't have shown up on my radar except that Dan had to bow out (obviously too popular and in demand in other arenas) and he graciously suggested handing over the drawing duties to me. Luckily the fine folks at Marvel said OK, so I wasted no time into making a mess of things (colors by Chris Sotomayer, edits by Nick Lowe):




Suddenly I'm drawing people playing golf, which leads to me watching it regularly on the ol' boob tube. I gotta wrap my mind around what I'm doing, right? I gotta know who these people are that I'm drawing and what in god's name they're really doing. The strip only lasts for a year and a half, but as if the enjoyment of drawing it weren't enough, I got hooked on the game.

Birthday money last year: spent on a cheap starter set of golf clubs. Got some balls from a used Sporting Goods store (that's where I get all my balls; it's the place to go for affordable balls). Buy "Golf For Dummies" by Gary McCord (former pro who you'll find on CBS nowadays). Springtime arrives and I start frequenting the driving range. Any ball that actually goes more than 25 feet usually careens way off into the nets on the right side of the range. I get a couple of chances to play 9 holes. Ugly. Fun, but ugly. Then winter hits. I live in the Chicago area, so winter means no golf. I grew up in the south where that's not necessarily the case. Now, Chicago. I love the windy city but man o man do I hate the winters. No need to elaborate.

Finally. Finally! FINALLY!! Spring 2008 decides to show it's little head. I've got tons of work to be doing (which I'm plenty thankful for), but find it difficult to remain indoors. I'll be working late hours now to pay for my lack of discipline, but it's completely worth it. I head out today for the driving ranges. Only been once so far this spring. The course, however, is practically empty. Now why would I just go to the driving range when there's an entire course calling out to be used? I gave into temptation, ponied up for 9 holes, and after playing golf less than 10 times in my whole life I get my first birdie. I could die happy. Yes, I know it's completely silly, but it's truth. And no lessons other than that book, which I'm still only a quarter of the way through. I haven't even finished reading about how to swing the damned club yet, but I cannot wait.

The point of all this? No point. Just me obsessing. It must be the weather. Oh, Gary McCord? Great book! I would definitely recommend it. If only I had known as a kid that I would end up loving the game so much. Drawing? Yeah, it's a true passion for me, but I watch TV and I think those golf people get paid better. Somehow I don't think Bob Ross and Tiger Woods live in the same neighborhood. Oh well, I still love what I do, but I'll dream of golf while sitting here drawing...

Another sketch

One more sketch that I felt worth throwing some ink on. I just used a Pitt brush pen on top of the pencils in my sketchbook.

These sketches all come from finding interesting pics in magazines, ones that for one reason or another have something of interest for me to study. I like sketching but sometimes feel that the time used there could be used to work on finished pieces. I know that there's a real benefit to just sketching (and doing it often) but when I'm doing other work for pay I'm having to split a finite amount of time between sketching and starting to build a new portfolio. It's always a struggle for me to figure out how best to use my time.

Holy Toledo! Here we go again, Buckaroo.

Yes, it's been more than a year and a quarter since I last posted. On my previous blog, that is. For what it's worth i didn't really draw much during that period (let's just say I was distracted), but I'm back in the saddle and hoping to actually get a little serious about this whole drawing thing.

For that reason I'm sort of starting over. The old blog is still around but I wanted a fresh start, so here it is.

When you draw for a living you do whatever pays the bills for a large portion of that time and believe you me, I'm no exception. I am going to try, however, to move the work that I do more towards the things that I'm actually interested in. Don't get me wrong, if I'm getting paid to draw it, I'm interested. The truth, however, is that some things are more fun to draw than others. So here's to the fun stuff and to fitting it in as much as possible.

First off, however, are a couple of sketches to sort of get my dormant drawing brain back into gear. I'm working on some paying jobs at the moment but I'm trying to find an hour or so each day (or more if I feel I can justify it, or if I'm overwhelmed with the desire to procrastinate) to just draw whatever my heart desires. I've got some ideas for building a new portfolio but to start with I've just got to get into the groove again. These are my first efforts.

Thanks for peeping.

Holy Toledo!

Yes, it's been more than a year and a quarter since I last posted. For what it's worth i didn't really draw much during that period (let's just say I was distracted), but I'm back in the saddle and hoping to actually get a little serious about this whole drawing thing.

When you draw for a living you do whatever pays the bills for a large portion of that time and believe you me, I'm no exception. I am going to try, however, to move the work that I do more towards the things that I'm actually interested in. Don't get me wrong, if I'm getting paid to draw it, I'm interested. The truth, however, is that some things are more fun to draw than others. So here's to the fun stuff...

Meanwhile, here are a couple of sketches to sort of get my dormant drawing brain back into gear.

Volleyball Recovery

I did these drawings for work the other day and thought I'd stick them up here. I had to do a quick sequence of a guy running into frame to recover a volleyball, then realize it's cold and exit.





Then I had to repeat the performance but with a female character. Simple, but I thought it was fun to get two different performances out of the same action.

more Simon, slow but steady

Here's a couple more Simon Brizdale pages, coming along slowly but surely. I've got all of these pages lettered already but I'm waiting to get the whole story done to reveal all of that (and colors, which I have yet to start). Oh yeah, and there's a cover sketch there as well; almost forgot...

Gett 'er done, one bit at a time

Just a little more pencilling stuff to add to the other day's stuff.

Another new year!

Still busy but determined to find time for Simon. That being said, here's some various panels of upcoming pages in their penciled form. This is what they look like before I ink them. I draw them with blue col-erase pencils on marker paper, reworking it til it's what I like (sometimes redrawing on several sheets), then lay another sheet on top and ink with Pitt brush pens.

I used to be so against anything but an old fashioned brush and india ink, but boy are the pens convenient. I like the Pitt pens because they actually use india ink, so I don't have to worry about how they will age. I've seen with other pens/brush pens that don't use india ink how they will bleed and turn red or other various things as they age, often leaving stains on any and all things touching them.

If you go to a comic book convention and look around at the original art for sale you will see what I mean, and it's really sad to see some great art destroyed because of inferior quality tools being used. Oh well.

Happy New Year to all. Here's to a great year...

The light at the end of the tunnel...

I say that but I'm probably jinxing myself. Busy is good though, so no complaining from me.

The movie I've been working on is finally filming, and I'm still doing storyboards for it. I will share some of those at some point - maybe once the movie is released. Meanwhile I got to design and draw a tattoo that will play an important roll in the film. No harm in sharing that much at least:



Before things got so busy for me I was beginning work on a new Simon Brizdale story. I got the first 4 pages pencilled. I was going to use pencils as the finished art but have since changed my mind. I like my work better inked, which also just happens to make some of the things I like to do when coloring in Photoshop a lot easier, so I'm trying to scratch time for that nowadays. Anyway, here are the pencils for the first 4 pages. Nothing exciting going on yet, but the fun begins soon enough. Hopefully I'll be able to make some good progress over the holiday season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed...






Meanwhile I hope everyone has a great holiday season. Cheers.

Busy is as busy does

No, I haven't forgotten about this little thing, but work has been rather busy of late. Fun stuff coming soon, I promise!

Simon says...

..."don't forget to drink your ovaltine!"

So here's Simon, finally. I have been wanting to change my style a bit, but I needed a little help and guidance so I pulled out some style sheets I have from Don Bluth's "Dragon's Lair" and used Dirk the Daring as my basic body shape guide for Simon. All of these sketches are taken directly from those style sheets as a way of getting my brain used to the proportions of characters drawn in that style. They're fun to do and have helped a lot. So anyway, here's Simon. Now on to some page work...

Don't you love computer problems!?

I'm just glad I survived the last two and a half weeks. I have another computer at work (which saved me) but I still didn't know if I was going to recover a lot of important work. In a nutshell: my hard drive went and got all corrupt on me, so I had to take it to the apple store. I got a new hard drive and thankfully they recovered about 90% of my files.

So that's why I haven't posted anything in a month. I've kept busy though. Once I get what I've been working on ready to post I'll share it, but 'til then here are a few old pieces of Simon Brizdale art that I have laying around. New stuff soon. By the way, only in the first shot here, the group shot, does Simon appear - all of the other sketches, from this post and the last one, are other characters (the ones who needed more design work).

Oh, and remember to back up all of your digital stuff!!!

Simon Brizdale

Over the years, drawing stuff all day, I have come up with a lot of ideas. Most of them get a page or two of notes in a sketchbook and then get logged away, mostly to be forgotten. Every once in awhile, however, I come up with an idea that I feel has real potential. One of those is Simon Brizdale. Over the past three years or so I have been writing constant notes about the character and his life and times. The actual name for the comics I would like to do is "The Chronicles of Simon Brizdale". At this point I've got most of his life fleshed out in a pretty detailed fashion.

I've got about 10 or so short stories ready to be drawn, plus several longer stories that would take 3 to 6 issues of a typical comic book to tell. Then there's the epic scale story that brings his whole life jouney to an amazing conclusion.

Right now? It's just a bunch of ideas, a heaping mass of potential. The goal? Do something with it. So some of this blog will be given over to sharing the process of creating these stories and building up a collection of them. I don't know how quickly it will go, but every little bit is something.

I have drawn one short story for Simon, and eight page story that was in an anthology published by Komikwerks.com. It was a decent attempt to get the basic concept of the character down on paper, but he has evolved since then. I hope to retell that first tale after getting a few short stories done.

Anyway, after all of this yada yada yada, here are a few sketches done recently as part of my attempt to redesign the characters and figure out how I want to handle the art for this monstrosity of an idea.

Merry ol' Merlin

More designs for the animation project I'm working on.

Usually when I have to design a character I get an initial image in my head about what that character would look like. I tend to follow my instincts and get that initial mental image down on paper. Sometimes it's fairly accurate and sometimes it's not, but it's always a good starting point.

Merlin has been done a thousand times and I felt that there was no need in this case to stray too far from the basic idea that people have come to accept for Merlin. So the sketching begins and the process here went something like this (in my head):



1 - too "Gandalf"



2 - too "Merlin" from Disney's "The Sword in the Stone" (a film I always liked)



3 - too... oh, I dunno, too stern maybe



4 - again with the stern



5 - too "Santa Claus"



6 - too "Ming the Merciless"

And then, finally, I got him. Then I do a few more sketches to make sure I can repeat the performance to my own satisfaction, and add the body. That part will get more attention later, but for now I think I really like him.



He started out rather skinny but went to plumpville as the designs went along. I figured: he uses magic all the time to do all the little chores around the castle, so really all he has to do is sit around, sip lemonade, and practice his spells. That, to me, says pleasantly plump. Having never really seen a more massive Merlin also helps because maybe it will bring a bit of freshness to the character. That's the idea anyways. Here's to hoping...

He's got a few funny things about him that I'm keeping secret for now - don't want anyone stealing the ideas. ;-) They really add to his character though, so hopefully at some point I'll be able to share that stuff.

Happy drawing!