Back to the Future — But, like… not.

So, I’m in a video game gallery show in Chicago in February, and thought I would post a few concepts I’m working on… starting with a Halo / Super Mario Bros Mash-up.  SMB is —shockingly— the fist/oldest video game I can remember playing, back on the ol’ NES.  Halo, is for all intents and purposes the “newest” game I play.  And look!  I’ve mashed them up!

The next idea is a full blown, almost comic style Mario going all “Mission Impossible” on us.  This is the first of several ideas that center around the notion that a couple of badass dudes from Brooklyn might not venture into magical demon-infested realms quite so lightly equipped.  I mean, these guys are from New York in the 80s… damn right they’re packing some heat.

Heed your muthascratchin’ conscience already…

…and do an awfully nice thing like vote for my latest Threadless submission.  If you care to add some sort of hyperbolically cool comment, that would be lovely as well… Like, “Oh my stars in heaven if Threadless doesn’t print this shirt I fear my guts will simply explode out of my belly button in anguish!”

In other news, I’ve made another sketch that involves censored cusswords.  I’d tell you about it, but I’m more interested in seeing if you understand it on your own.  All I will say is that the pun in play is “Vampire Hunters.”

Highly comical

More hero-type drawings have escaped from my sketchbook. I have it on good authority that they are out searching for a stash of Red Lobster biscuits.

In which a buddy builds a bigfoot

Max Bare is a cool Chicago-based illustrator you’ve probably never heard of, with a unique & dynamic style as well as part ownership of a kickin’ Wicker Park gallery/art-collective thingy.  He was also my roommate my freshman year at SCAD.  Between the Pokemon & PowerPuff Girls wallpaper, the lewdly adorned neon sign in our window, and the relative dearth of cockroaches, we probably had the best dorm room* in our hall of Dyson House… or yeah, something like that.

He and his pal Zoki (of Low Carb Comedy fame) have decided to team up on a new comic book, called Mystery Afoot, in which a Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster team up to investigate the mysterious world of well, cryptozoology, I suppose.  Sounds pretty cool to me.

In any case, he asked if I would like to contribute some Mystery Afoot art to be used as an accompanying pin-up for their first issue.  I agreed that this would be a terrible use of my time, but that it would be fun and cool nonetheless.  Here are my sketches so far:

* SCAD dorm-shots shall be diligently sought, displayed, and delightfully ridiculed.

Today I made a Wolverine happen in my sketchbook

Wanna see?

That is all.

Well, except for this.

Feel free to add your own suggestions!

The going gets weird

Fresh viewables today, of the somewhat wacky, bizarre, or otherwise questionable variety.  I really have no idea where all the eyeball-related what-have-you came from.  None-the-less, it makes perfect sense to me that if a pirate gets his eyeball cut out in battle that that eyeball would then be “dead” and could reasonably take the form of an eyeball skull…  So there.

In other news, it is currently about 6AM and I haven’t slept yet, so good luck with the sense and the making of it by me.

Larger individual versions can be scoped at the ol’ flickrbox:  //Evil Eye //Pirate Eye

In the category of illustration that is merely needlessly gory, I give you the following:

You see, despite having had a Wacom tablet for a couple years now, I have only very recently discovered that the “brush” tool in Adobe Illustrator is pressure-sensitive.  Yes, astonishing quickness, I know.  Anyway, I have been trying to take full advantage of this lately, as well as trying to get as much practice with it as I can.  Another thing I’ve been meaning to practice more lately is the comic book type of character, such as ol’ Wade Wilson up there.  So there it is.  Clean dynamic line-weight + comic style illustration.  A match made in… well, Illustrator, I guess.

There’s another Deadpool below in which I tried to flesh out the color a little.  Foolishly, I decided to do this before I actually finished drawing the character.  Given my my lack of practice, it is probably going to take me about 10 more tries to achieve any sort of passable foreshortening with that semi-machine gun he’s toting.  Maybe I should give him a lollipop instead.

The things we do when we lack things to do…

Also known as, This Recession and All its Buddies can at Least Buy Me Breakfast.

Anyway.  I have been lacking client work lately.  There has been, as they might say, a dearth of client work.  And, left to my own devices, as they say, I have seen fit to spend my time doing all sorts of things that are–they might say– unproductive… For instance, I have been catching up on my reading (about 2,000 pages in the last three weeks thankyouverymuch).  But mostly, I’ve been making foolish stuff like the following.

Dinosaur War - Work in progress

Turtle Transit Authority - WIP

Something Strange, as they say...

Speaking of reading.  One of my recent reads was Cormac “Turbo Buzz-kill, as they say” McCarthy’s The Road.  Good book, but dire.  Nightmarish, as they say.  Jiminy Cricket.

 

 

Trough-pissers / Evil-doers, beware.

Man, one of my favorite Ypsi bars is apparently considering installing a trough style urinal.  GROSS.

For anyone who has not experienced The Trough, I have one thing to say about it: Multi-vectored close-quarters spray-back.

Seriously. One should not have to foster concerns regarding how much of another man’s urine may accumulate on his person whilst visiting the loo.

In case you’re wondering, yes, it IS drop-random-British-colloquialisms-like-they’re-hot-potatoes-day.

IN OTHER, NON-POTTY NEWS:  I’ve created Frankenfeather– Mad Raptor Scientist.  His wisdom.  He used it for eeeeevil.

With powers comparable to Wonder Boy

I tuned in for the last five minutes of a late night edition of Sportscenter and witnessed the following: a Big Lebowski quote, a Doobie Brothers reference, a Tenacious D reference, a Burger King reference, and what may have been a Simpsons reference.

Those dudes be crazy.

I also found the image below in an old notebook of mine.  In these days where I occasionally long for the familiarity and ease of an undergraduate college classroom, I sometimes forget how bored I was at times.

(I ate your teacher.  He tasted like stupid.)

Sketchy is as sketchy does

Sometimes you’ve just got to listen to your inner whiskey otter and sketch something.

He of the wet nose and icthibourbon breath...