The plot thickens… just like pudding I guess. Lumpy. Who is this strange newcomer? What is he hiding? Why does that vase remind me of Charlie Brown? Tune in next time for another exciting installment in the mysterious world of Detours! Or something like that.
More experimentation with dark backgrounds. I was tempted to expand this dialog over two pages, giving me the chance to show more of the cable car station. In the end, it didn’t seem like the pacing would be right. I wanted to emphasize this was brief interaction.
…and that’s about it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled interruption.
It was a dark and stormy night… No, scratch that. It was dark and ridiculously cold. As in, “my car is all the way across the street so I’m going to wait here till spring”, kind of cold. When I arrived down at Touch of Europe, a few starving artists were already lurking in the shadows, working in their sketchbooks. I pulled up a chair and scrawled out this quick sketch of Cassie sitting across from me. Emphasis on quick. As you can see, she was wearing all kinds of layers which provided lots of folds and textures to try and sort out, as well as protection from the cold… as long as she didn’t go outside.
Hmmm… I probably shouldn’t have mentioned who this is supposed to be. Now everyone can tell how much it doesn’t really look like her. Oh well. Sorry Cassie! Another DrawnTown in the books. I’ll be looking forward to the next one. Maybe something in the Caribbean?
You can see what other people were up to over at Graphic Content.
Another year, and another comic page! Snaps your head back, doesn’t it? A lot more thought than necessary went into this page. I had to design the cable car station as well as the new character that runs the place. I kind of like how he turned out though. What do you think?
Around my house we always seem to sucker ourselves into creating at least a few hand made Christmas gifts. The wild goose chases trying to find obscure materials are always epic. This year one such gift was a batch of fancy hot chocolate mix. First we had to find and perfect a hot chocolate recipe. We were forced to drink many steaming mugs of hot cocoa over the course of our research. It was grueling work, as you can imagine.
However, simply handing people a pile chocolate dust doesn’t work very well:
Merry ChristmaaaAchoo! …oh, sorry about that. Don’t worry, it will melt into the carpet, and disappear in no time…
We needed packaging for our “awesome hot chocolate.” I didn’t want to resort to the classic, but not very classy, canning-jar-with-label technique. After some goose chasing, we were able to supply ourselves with plastic bags from a candy-making supply store that looked perfect. Of course a zip-lock bag full of powder isn’t exactly decorative. Dress it up with some shiny foil wrapping paper, however, add a whimsical custom label, and you’ve got something nearly presentable.
You’ll notice we’re still transporting plastic bags full of a fine powdered substance… across state lines… so look for us on the news this Christmas Eve.
Below is how the final product turned out:
For more photos:
Growing up, I spent many hours pouring over Calvin and Hobbes books and trying to redraw the best/most hilarious facial expressions I could find. Sneezing, laughing, furious rage, he could do it all. How do you communicate that much emotion with so few lines? I obviously still don’t know… But one thing I do know is that facial expressions are key to bringing characters to life. Thanks to Bill Watterson, any cartoon character I draw will need to be a facial contortionist. This sketch is a few warm-up exercises. Pace yourself Zeke. You don’t want to sprain an eyebrow.
I have been trying to find excuses to use my Wacom tablet in the hopes that I will develop some level of skill with it. Some level above zero is preferred.
This sketch was one I discovered laying around when shoveling off my desk the other day. It was originally something I worked up while brainstorming video game ideas. This was my first take on a mechanical obstacle course game concept. That’s about all the farther it got, although there may be some potential there… Anyway, I took the rough pencil sketch and dropped in some color using the tablet and some secret techniques I picked up from Tony Cliff. Now obviously this isn’t very refined. (Why didn’t I go back in and fix some of the perspective flaws?) But it was fun, and way easier than my efforts before I had the tablet.
Lets see what other sketches need some color around here…
I’ve been interested in working some darker tones back into the drawings, so I like the way this page came together. The feel of the first frame is especially good. What is Zeke going to run into next? I have no idea. I guess we’ll find out together!
I keep calling this an experimental comic. That may be the equivalent of slapping “beta” on any site that still has some kinks to work out. However, I do end up experimenting with one thing or another on almost every page.
On this page, for example, I tried to draw Zeke looking more straight at the “camera.” You can see this especially in the second frame. This was much more successful than my freaky first attempt. Generally it is getting easier to rotate the character in my head and draw him from different angles. It would be really cool to do one of those 3D clay models like the animation studios use! Someday I’ll have to get to that.
What site is complete without a swarm of social network sharing icons? For that matter, what site doesn’t offer a set of vector-based icons for free? Well, in the interest of solidarity, here is my set:
And for the bonus round…
Gadgetopia Behance