It's not as bad as it looks

     It's that time again. Still hammering out the kinks in drawing anything that isn't an unpleasant face at a 3/4 view, but I think I'm getting ideas across.

     

I tried messing around with how panels work, there's a lot to it.  I'd like to avoid uniform, static panels, but it's pretty easy to jumble it all up.  Here's a stupid way to depict a pistol firing.

     I'm still drawing landforms too shiny.  Light and shading hard, etc.  After I decided bandits would probably live in a badlands region, I thought I should at least know a little bit about them.  Did you know Hell's Half Acre is an actual place?

     I'm still not very good at building design, but this is all early sketching anyway and can be changed pretty easy.

     The story I'm working out here is about three idiots in over their heads. Write what you know.

     The incompetent men plot their heist.

     This one is a little older, throwing ideas at the wall for a later part of the story. 

Not a lot to say this time because this is all early draft stuff that will likely be left behind, but for now it's support structure.  Further updates as events warrant.

Dalliance in blue and gray

      Here's another huge dump
     

      I entered a phase where everything is Muppets, even if it's a self-portrait.

      A different take on the Choober, something I mentioned last update. Hook blob has had enough and is leaving.

      If you aspire to anything in life, let it be becoming the little bro on the casio. 

      Monster design verdict: Still lopsided.  This is a Warrens Anger, I figure they're about the size of a cat and live in areas prone to rat plagues.

      I have this issue where I can't make creatures threatening; they always come out a little endearing.  Here's another example:

      So I've been working more on trying to organize something longer.  Still in the blocking out phase and everything is placeholder, since I have no idea how to even approach something like this.  I suppose iterative is the best way to approach it, even though that will take an assload of time.  Here's some first draft nastiness.

      I'm trying to avoid too many words in each panel, because huge text dumps reflexively make me look away.  I think this is one of those situations like that first flash animation I did, where you can see the progression of figuring out basic things. 

      That doesn't really qualify as a joke but don't you worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out, like maybe a butt, or someone slipping on a banana peel and landing on a butt.
     

      God this is going to be filled with so much witty back-and-forth.  Heart pounding stair climbing ACTION. 

      This is Hugh, raider boss of Wolverine Gang.  He is a 100% original character and is in no way The Humungus from Road Warrior, nor is he Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

     The punchline of every joke I ever write is "someone is stupid" so prepare for a lot of that once I start nailing down dialogue. 

So, anyway

Rude gestures

 I had this idea for a longer form project.  When I tried thumbnailing it out, I realized that type of composition is not something I actually know much about.  So, while I'm trying to learn more about that, here are some miscellaneous whatevers; some related to the story idea, some not.
     

      I tried to make something that looked dangerous, but I botched that and made it kind of adorable.  It looks like it wants to play you songs on a Casio or chase a laser pointer.

      So the bigger guy here was also supposed to be intimidating, all coming at you with crab claw pincers, but the sketch sort of looks like he's got lunch under control.  Linework would probably make a huge difference on that guy. 
     The choober is my favourite. I don't want to say too much about it, but I definitely have plans for it. 

      These are just throwaway gesture line things.  Gesture is one of the utter fundamental basics, which I still forget about and struggle with sometimes. 

     Still some difficulties on anatomy and perspective.   Other than the arm and gun being weird I kind of like this page. 

     Some stiffness in my action poses yet, so I made the face because I wanted someone to look at it approvingly.  Anyway, here's the first draft of a thumbnail of the thing I'm trying to figure out.  There are more pages of thumbnails but it's all chaos and scribbles right now.

     Also, I've been continuing to try learning about digital painting.  There are more than a few failed attempts at that sitting on my hard drive, but I do feel like there has been improvement.  Now and then I notice there's a tool I wasn't aware of and I'm all like

Ok

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.