Undertale 2: Skeleton puns out, Mummy puns in

     Well it's that time again.   I know it's been a while, but it's not as if I haven't been doing anything.  I'm just getting pickier about it, I suppose.  Something I would have put up a year or two ago isn't necessarily going to cut it anymore, now I feel like I have to bring the thunder.  Or the chunder.  Here, chunder.

      Trying to slap together figures that don't like weird and stiff is difficult as hell.  This one isn't that interesting but Mr. Crouchy there ain't bad. 

     Here I was trying to convey a message with body language.  This woman is describing a very famous internet image, and if you don't immediately recognize what she's referencing, I'm a little jealous of you.

 Interesting faces are also a dilemma.  What the hell even is this guy, he's kind of a DEVO viking, with a little bit of Hulk Hogan or something.

    I want to do more with this one, burnout idiot teenagers are sort of my favourite thing.  Just smelly dumbasses causing trouble because there's nothing else to do, bumming smokes and peeling out in shitty cars.

     I didn't know what this was to start, but it turned into a caricature of Beavis and Kathleen Wynne. 

    

      I had coloured this one at first, but I'm still struggling with making everything not look like I vomited skittles all over it. 

     "When she sees you're packing a meaty mighty worm"

     A return to a classic theme of mine, "Angry Woman"

      I'm still a bit terrible with the perspective rulers in Manga Studio, but I figured out a much easier way to improvise them with the burst tool.  In my head this is some kind of Mad Max highway chase, but the car on the left just so happens to look like like a wiener.

 
     Here I tried to capture the frustration that comes from when you really, really want to smash a city, but it turns out you're too large to fit through the front gate.

     Anyway, I've also been watching a lot of Bob Ross recently.  There's not much I can say about him that hasn't been said a thousand times over already, so let's just assume I said all the standard things.  The methods he uses are of course meant for canvas and paint, but there are things about his technique that can translate to digital media.  Here are two examples I'm sure he would be ashamed to receive credit for.

    
     "Undertale 2: Escape to Piss Mountain"
     Yeah, eat that one Bob.  This is because of you.

     This one is called "Meat Curtains".  Yeah, yeah, I know.  There are more but these are the two that I thought were the best, so let that sit on your mind for a minute.

     I did another comic strip, haven't really finished it yet though.  I want to paint it in, but that takes forever and I wanted to push out an update.  

     Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Raising A'arih Zoh'Nagh

     Whoops, I left the kettle on the oven.  By that I mean I was doing things, and didn't put any of it on here for about 2 months.  Continuing with that analogy, now everything is a burnt, shitty husk on my stovetop.  The smoke alarm is going off, the neighbors are wondering about the smell, and the cat is freaking out at all the commotion.  If you're wondering what I was working on that could possibly take TWO WHOLE MONTHS, well, brace for the tepid.

     Pretty dumb and straightforward first.  I get hung up on ideas and have to run them into the ground before I can move on, and here's the friendly fat finale of my fish people obsession.  I tried to paint him and make it look better but the first round of colour choices was pretty abysmal, so he got benched in favour of something that's less of a botch.

      This didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, but what ever does?  This is a re-imagining of Morphus from the Shitty Wizards strips I've been doing.  Now he's a sentient slime that hi-jacked a skeleton he found and uses as a structure.  This finally makes him what he should be, since his full name was always Aaron "Morphus" Blobman (heh get it amorphous blob man heh).  The facial features didn't come out very well in the painting, but I'm starting to get a handle on what's going wrong.

     You might have to blow this one up to be able to read it.  This was an awful lot of work for a really, really stupid joke, and I realize that.  I guess the joke itself took a backseat to working on everything else.  Still a lot of problems to work on, but you can probably imagine that I'm tooting my own horn silently over here.

     I'll try not to let the next one take so long. 

Q: Are we not men?

     You may have heard of a band called DEVO.  Many people know them as a one-hit-wonder from the 80's, and those people are either stupid or deprived.  In 2010, they released a surprisingly good album called "Something for Everybody", a criticism of western society at the time. Here, check it out:

     Good, right?

     There's a song in there called "No Place like Home", which at first listen, sounds like a pretty straightforward condemnation of how we're destroying the planet and fucking ourselves over.  However, in the context of the entire album, it comes across more as Mark M. expressing emotional agony over some loss in his life.  It's driven home by the line "Can't have a rainbow without the rain, can't have a painting without the pain, can't have a lover walk out without the love leaving with them."

     With that line in mind, I've been experimenting with digital painting, so brace yourself for the pain.

     I started with some already existing sketches.  I know you still probably don't know/care what a beholder is, just bear with me.

     Bob Ross I'm not, but then again I don't think he would dabble in this particular genre.  I'm a bit of a pioneer, when you think about it.

     Ok, I was actually pretty pleased with this one, which is kind of embarrassing.  Of course there are still problems, the anatomy is a bit wonky and the head fin doesn't really line up with the face, but it's probably the best colouring I've done so far.

     Something went wrong here.  I didn't exactly set out to make "Owen Wilson with a Railgun" but that is what happened.  It was all going well until the face, and then I realized the gun perspective was off and it was also a little crooked.  Ah well, at least I kind of managed to make it look glowy, so it's not a total failure.

     Here's another comic that 4 people will understand.  Also I guess the joke has sort of been done already by Justin Roiland in the form of "Gazorpazorpfield".  Whatever, I don't think he'll mind.  What's he going to do, anyway?

Answer: We are DEVO

Dumb Nerd Shit

      Like it says in the title, I draw a lot of dumb nerd shit.  I think I was 7 the first time I played Dungeons & Dragons, so now I blame Gary Gygax for permanently ruining me.  We live in a time where all my hyper-dork hobbies as a kid are celebrated now, and I kind of hate it.  I'm trying to be an outcast over here, even if it is way easier to get a group together to throw dice these days.

     I have this problem where I still buy sourcebooks for roleplaying systems, even if I have no intention of ever playing them.  I usually liked the art.  It was rarely by professionals in the early days, so it was page after page of bizarre and upsetting outsider art.  For every Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, or Moebius working for Heavy Metal, there was an Errol Otus and a Kevin Siembieda, confusing the hell out of you.   I can't quite capture the vague off-puttingness of, say, a RIFTS sourcebook, but I AM obsessed with fantastic creatures experiencing high school drama.

      BEHOLD! I know Beholders aren't supposed to have bodies BUT I'M CHANGING THE RULES I'M THE DM.

     I'd smile like that too if I could cast "Protection from Law (Sor/Wiz) 1"

     Mind Flayers about to throw down on a headcheese sandwich.  Ok enough dork stuff, this next one is called "Tom Waits for a pizza".

     Alright I lied one more dork thing.  It's a mash-up of my experiences living in Dartmouth, N.S., with some waaaaaacky Lovecraft thrown in.

     It's too bad there isn't a larger crossover between Lovecraft fans and people who've lived in Dartmouth, because otherwise I just come off as calling people mean names.  I've never been to the Dartmouth in England, but I'd like to think they have roving hooligans bumming smokes too.
  
     Anyway if that drawing looks less like shit than usual, it's because I'm getting better with the tool selection.  It's all coming along.

Dump Cakes

  
     I'm still at it, don't worry.  Or worry, whatever.  Here's a bunch of stuff that I've worked on but maybe not finished.  I need to get better at linework still, but my sketches are getting noticeably better.  Observe:

     I think it's pretty clear that this guy is a winner, regardless of whether he has that belt or not.  The belt is great though.

     I accidentally drew Mega Man.  You know Mega Man, right? Of course you do, he's a Nintendo character and that's all anybody seems to give a fuck about these days.  After I did this I realized he needed some new enemies, and it was on me to create them.

     If you defeat a Mega Man boss, you gain his power.  Can you guess what power you gain from defeating "Babyface Fucknuts"? The answer may surprise you!

     Next is Axenose Manguy, with the devastating power of having an axe for a nose.  Nintendo, if you're reading this, I'm for sale.

     The fantastical powers of D.J. Dirty Dants are self-evident and need no explaining.

     His partner in rhyme, M.C. Fancy Pance, will dazzle you with his mad style.

     Mega Man, maybe you should just not bother trying to fight Existential Crisis Man.

     Kick me in the Stuff Man may actually be the most difficult robot master to defeat, as your initial instincts actually play right into his hands.

     Dr. Not actually a Robot is hiding a dark secret, defeat him to find out what it is!

   
     The Stab Bird has no time for this, is leaving, and taking the Mega Man premise with him.  *FWOOSH*

      This is Hommir Simmsa, a completely original creation of mine in no way inspired by anything.  Look at how much fun he is having!  Surely there is enough material in this character for three decades of rock solid entertainment.

     Ok calm down Hommir, HOMMIR CALM DOWN PUT DOWN THE GUN HOMM-

     I really tried to not give this woman a broken spine, but I'm only one man.  

     The entire basis of this picture is the mouth.  The mouth was the first part drawn and everything flowed around it.  The mouth.

     There's a trend online of people drawing "sexy demon girls", like taking old-school pin-up styles and adding wings and horns and uh, pitchforks...sulfur.  Demon stuff.  I started out ok with the body, things got away from me a little bit when it came to the head.

     So that's some of what I've been doing.  I have endless folders filling up with more but most of it is either really similar to this or worse.  I've also been screwing around in flash again, working towards releasing a cartoon with some actual animation.  Don't hold your breath on that one though, if I really buckle down on it I might have it out by December. 

Dump cakes,

Nick

Open Mic Night

     I switched over to a different drawing program recently.  It's called Manga Studio (I know, weeb territory) and it seems like it's better for this kind of thing than Photoshop.  This strip was done with Manga Studio -

     And this series was done with Photoshop -

     I don't have an awful lot to say this time!

Why hasn't anyone thought of this yet, it's so obvious

     Not that I haven't been putting effort into Shitty Wizards lately, but I really think it's the kind of thing that deserves my best.  Towards that end I've been a little scrambled on what I focus on with regards to practice.  Right now I'm trying to get a better feel for colour, it can make a mediocre drawing less awful when done right.

      At first I thought maybe I was overusing the neck/chin fat rolls, but after consideration I realized it's not me, it's HUMANS that are overdoing it on the rolls.  I'm just drawing the world as I see it.

      With an eye toward the future, I think it's time we advanced some technologies to the point of making old tools obsolete.  My first proposal is that we develop a system of high-speed travel slots that will allow Slot Goblins to quickly get to us and chew our nails, rendering the classic nail clippers a tool of ages past.

     The advent of the slots would pressure the goblin community to push harder in higher education, improving quality of life for all.

     HORSE DAWWWWWGS!

     FIGHTING EEEEVIL THEY'RE

     HORSE DAWWWWWGS!
     This is my new 80s cartoon idea, still ironing out the merchandising rights but I expect it to be the next big thing.