Bunch O' Witches

Had to draw a witch the other day to replace some wingdings used as art.  I sketched these two out and asked which on they wanted: the fantasy...or the REALITY?

I ended up drawing a really traditional witch for the final.

Speederbike Racin' Girls

Vector "King Sweetums"

A few months ago I had a painting in an art show, the theme of which was "The Muppets", and I attempted to draw the monster Sweetums as a Frazetta-Conan-type barbarian, complete with topless slave girls.  Well, I did it using ink, watercolor, and colored pencils, but it didn't turn out as nice as I'd hoped.  I thought it would be a nice break to go back to traditional analog media, but it wasn't.  It just reminded me how out of practice I am, and how unforgiving those techniques can be!

So I'm taking the drawing, for my own experience and enjoyment, and re-creating it in Illustrator, my daily medium.  I am starting to be convinced that while I can pine away for "traditional" painting, I just don't do it anymore!  I am learning to like what I get from vectors, the clean lines and everything is editable, and of course the undo keystroke alone is worth going digital.

So this time around...I'm a lot faster in vector, and there's also no show deadline this time, so I can really develop some detail, the real trick here will be finding the right balance, and not over-doing one section and then having to remove elements or bring everything else up to the same level.  Right now I'm just blocking things in and trying not to isolate colors but have things be consistent throughout by holding to a tight palette of (mostly) of warm tones.  I actually like the flat, graphic nature of vector art, so I'm not too concerned with a lot of gradients, blends, feathering, stuff like that.  (I guess I'm a dinosaur in the Illustrator world who learned to like what it could do before transparency was an option! and I'm okay with that.)

So I'd like to post a few articles on my progress with this piece.  The original watercolor, and it's development, is here if you care to compare: "King Sweetums"

SWAT team

I've been working on a fun project with lots of animation scenarios in it. So far I've come up with some things I think are very cool (that's often the elusive holy grail for illustrators), and while the schedule is rigorous, that just means there's not enough time to pick the images apart until there's not much of the original goodness left in them.
Here's a sketch of a SWAT officer/investigator. Hope he'll make it to the final stages. I actually think I'll go with the simpler version, so he's easier to animate quickly.

Hip-Hoppa

Lots of meetings this week...lots of boredom, sketching. ;-)

Archaeology Girl

Here's another character from the same project as the mouse in the last post. She was going to be a teen archaeologist. At one point she was deemed "too sexy" for what we were trying to do, another point she looked "too mature", so she was re-worked a few times but ultimately scrapped. Just like the mouse, I really liked this character.Guess she was kinda sexy...

More Random Stuff

Monster Magnet

Here's a bevvy of sketches of classic monsters. Shooting for a cuter, more cuddly monster for youngsters. Switched from drawing a boy vampire to a girl because, well, he was starting to look like The Count from Sesame Street. I won't bore you with the story of how they were rejected.