Sheephoarder Done

Here's the finished colored cartoon. Note how I added in a background for more context. I really think the perspective adds to the sense of a house bulging with livestock. I debated between red and blueish gray for the gal's hair color. A younger version of the hoarder won out.

Wool-In-Progress

An upcoming Incompatibles installment. You'll note in the previous rough sketch I posted of this that I was conflicted between using a shepherd versus a woman. I split the difference and put a crook in the lady's hand. I think it works with the planned caption well. I took the original sketch and outputted it in blueline, then I went over it with a blue lead pencil and rendered it out further. Once I was happy with it, I inked it in quickly.

I scanned the previous image and blasted out the blue, leaving the ink behind. I then converted the remaining image into a refined, faint blueline for final penciling. I actually have cut out inking from my process—at least for my Incompatibles work—and use my pencils as my final art. I simply scan it into p-shop and adjust levels to arrive at my finished piece. Here's the resulting drawing. From here I go to digital cleanup and coloring. I used a different pencil/paper combo this time around and I really enjoyed the feel of it—even the roughness of it. Strange how the feel of the drawing implement and paper can enhance the making process—not in just the appearance of the art, but also in the enjoyment of making it. You may notice that I adjusted the woman's mouth. She looked a little too happy in the previous version. 

Final Batman Cartoon

Here's the final colored version, complete with caption. This was kind of tricky color-wise and in the framing. I ended up zooming up and cropping out some of the bat cave and computer console. It just helped the focus of the composition in relation to the joke.

Dent Found

Wow, I totally thought this image was lost to the ages. I recently resurrected my old Powerbook and while rummaging through the drive, I found a small folder of Peck images. This drawing just really captures the atmosphere of a fictitious Sactown and the coolness of Dent.

Movie Review: Brave

Okay, I live in a world where I take it for granted that Disney/Pixar are hands-down THE most formidable entertainment tag team in the world. Their effects, animation/cinematography, character development, and stories are just so head and shoulders above the rest. And they've hit so many home runs in a row, you get to the point where your expectations are just so high. I think, however, I've finally experienced my first let down in their latest installment, Brave. Now, let me be clear, I give the movie an enthusiastic thumbs up. In fact I was so amazed at the animation (i.e., the bear playing in the stream)—it's just so stunning seeing where the technology has gone—but past that, the rubber meets the road at that pesky stretch of highway known as Story.
     Brave is your typical "girl-doesn't-to-want-conform-to-society's/family's-expectations" vehicle. And that packaging has worked so many times over, from Cinderella all the way to the more recent Tangled. I mean, think about how many times the premise has been used in the last 60+ years for Disney. But this time it just felt forced. Now, I don't think the vehicle is flawed, but I do think the story has to be exceptionally bullet-proof in order withstand the scrutiny of discerning movie fans these days. Let's face it, we sort of expect everything to be well-made. We're spoiled that way. And a weak story can't be frosted with slap-stick and special effects—not that those are bad things, but in this case it just really felt like a diversion from the less-than-sterling narrative. To Pixar's credit, they built an incredible world—lush and vivid with incredible detail. I'd watch it again, just to freeze frame it and study the backgrounds. But it all comes back to story. Story. Story. Story. "B+"

Bat B&W Final

Here's the final for the next Incompatibles installment. This was fun doing visual research on stalactites. Batman's eyes look like two pieces of coal right now, but I'll fix that digitally. I will also take care of the image on the big screen when I go to color in p-shop.

Bat In Progress

Here's an Incompatibles in progress. I scanned the previous thumbnail from the road trip roughs and cut it up in p-shop. I adjusted the elements on different layers then re-outputted this version as a blueline to work out details and relationships better.

Here is the value study two steps later. You can see the adjustments that were made from the rough. I've zoomed the action to bring more focus to the characters. I really want to showcase the size of their bellies, but I think that will be more stated when color is added.  I love Robin's face at this point, but I'm not totally sold on Batman's mug. More tweaks will happen when I go to final pencils.

Value Study > Finished Drawing

Value study before rendering the final pencils. Here I decide what's going to be shaded by hand and what's going to be colored in p-shop.

And here's the finished b&w drawing. I made a lot of adjustments and additions in the detail. Compare the mane, saddle, ribbon, reins, mailbag and stirrup between the two versions. And below is the final colorized panel. I really enjoyed doing this one.

road trip roughs

Here are some Incompatibles sketches I did during our family vacation in Utah this last week. Many of these sketches are no more than 2–3 inches square. I like to render out ideas small, then—if I like what I see—I can scale them up on the computer and print them out as blue lines for further tinkering.

I can't give away the captions until they're finished, but some might be obvious.

The nuances of the pony and rider here can really tweak the interpretation.

Hehe.

Baa.

Sometimes it's nice to space out the elements in the drawing, then select/overlap them in p-shop, especially ones involving a lot of structural perspective. I haven't tweaked this one yet, but will repost it when I've reworked it.

A crude little scrawl, but I like it.

An eventual twist on a Pavlov's dogs.

game design

I'm working on new card game right now. It looks nothing like the standard set of cards above—it's even more pictorial. The game involves nuances of some well known standbys (i.e., War, Crazy Eight, and Uno), but the game-play and design is infused with enough originality to steer it well clear of patent issues. Which reminds me—I need to look into patent registration at some point. 

I just tried the latest iteration of the game out on my family tonight. It really helped to work out some of the major bugs involving card numbers and ratios. My aim is to make this something that could be played one on one, but also be just as enjoyable in a group setting. It's so interesting how things that seem so clear in your head become quickly obsolete once UX testing begins. In no time, we figured out the game wasn't intuitive enough and had too many "attack cards" (I'll explain later).  Nobody could win—at least not so far as we could tell for the first 20 minutes we played the game. So I whipped out my sharpie and neutralized half of the attack cards and we dealt out another game. It was night and day in terms of play. Still lots to figure out in user testing, so some of the illustrative aspects of the cards will remain crude until I have a firmer idea of game play.