The Sky goes on forever

Doing another run of Sky sketches. She shall be art carded during Thursday night's stream!

The last family portrait.

Here's a drawing for the final family portrait: The chaotic Et horde.  While the first three family photos were all cordial, I doubt that would be possible for the Ets. Thus, chaos and stressed parents.

Some touchups are needed, mostly on the arms.  Gene, be lucky you have a left arm at all. I was almost done before I realized all I'd drawn was an empty shirt sleeve for him.  Actually, speaking of Gene missing body parts, I forgot to ink his tail. It's in the original sketch, so no worries. But, anyway, this is the foundation for the next step.

Color inside the lines!

It's time for the fun stuff with this Mothers Day card: The coloring! Here is attempt #1. (Click the images for larger versions.) Tomorrow I get to do this again and again. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but colored pencil is my old unruly friend. (It's a harsh, unforgiving medium - but I love it anyway!)

Oh, right, the blog!

Whoops! Sorry for disappearing unannounced. I'm doing another week in DC, and that means I'm mostly too busy with family things to do all the bonus stuff. I probably should have said something about that, but it totally slipped my mind. Sorry again!

Anyway, let me contribute something to this world: The *other* part of the Mothers Day card! Once approved, it will be copied and colored, making the world a better place. Enjoy!

If I was on the ball, I totally would be offering prints of this card as a donation incentive... but I'm not. :-( Oh well, I'll just have to kick the *next* holiday's ass instead!

What a mother needs

In a family of seven, you can keep your flowers, cards and candy - mommy needs some sleep!

This is a spec sketch related to the mother's day card project. Let me tell you, it's a pain in the rear to draw SEVEN characters together (this is why illustrators charge by the figure!) and get the proportions even somewhat right. What I have here isn't great, but that's what roughs are for - figuring out the basics and going from there. If all goes well, I might have something to sell down the road!

Look a gift horse in the mouth!

A momentous thing has happened: I may have a colorist! Matthew of Sometime Alone has offered his time to color my Sunday strips until I drive him batty with my corrections and nonsensical swatches. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to not abuse this generous offer. (It's not like I can *pay* the poor lad, as I have no income myself.)

Naturally, the second Sunday strip that pops up on the list is one that can be *very* elaborate, with lots of characters. (These sketches are me fleshing out ideas.) Hmm... what to do? Will this be the strip that drives him mad? LET'S FIND OUT!

Nesting dolls

This idea takes on the Et swarm in costume, with my choice of having them depict Russian nesting dolls!

I struggled to find an idea for what the doll design should be, and then it occurred to me: Themselves! It doesn't come across well in sketch form, but I want the designs to be simplistic, painted versions of their normal attire. If I pull it off, it can be cute!

What do you guys think about including the top parts of the dolls? I included two to show how it would look. The other tops can always be put in the background.

Let's make a wallpaper!

My Precocious fans are so awesome, they have earned a new wallpaper from me. As the theme this week was on the Precocious families, that's the plan for this wallpaper. I am very open to feedback, though, so you squeaky wheels out there may get some grease.

Here are some early sketches, focusing on individual families. I went with the Ets and Ovens as they are the most colorful, but I'll try to mock something up for the tamer Pingos and wholesome Linkletters. I'm also not opposed to a group shot - in fact the Et sketch from below was taken from such a group sketch that may turn into the wallpaper.




This is your time to be heard, people! Any suggestions?

Et too, Michelangelo?

Enough about my damn paintings. This blog needs to get back to CARTOON ANIMALS! Family friendly and adorable cartoon animals happily working together. It's like a candy-coated Brad Bird movie!

This was the backup sketch for the Family Webcomics splash art, rejected because it was entirely unclear that they were viewing webcomics on a computer monitor. Hey, they could be a really warped family viewing hard-core pornography - it's just not clear!

I did feel bad about the cutting of two children from the FAMILY art, so I went ahead and inked it. I feel the worst about little Mikey, who was meant to be the primary Et young'un. The only line he's had so far was when he was off-panel, locked away. (And I can't even be certain he's the one speaking.) Most of the time, he's the innocent one who gawks at chaos created by other children. Granted, that's *kinda* his role anyway, but he'll eventually interact more. It's just not fair that Frida, the kid supposed to just be part of the crowd, got her own panel to shine - readers even learned her name! Frida is the one you *expect* to be cut, but she's fun to color and that keeps letting her sneak into strips. Oh well, Mikey still gets his time to shine in this summer's big storyline.

Anyway, I'm trying to get the most of this image. It's now a lame wallpaper on the Precocious site and available for order as a print and magnet and whatever on the DeviantArt page.

Fun for the whole family!

I was raised on newspaper comics, and I strive to make a newspaper-worthy comic. I'm talking figurative newspaper here, as currently most newspapers are in sad decline and no longer worth the trouble. Whatever, it's the TONE I want to capture, and the delivery method can change. Oh, and it has.

I've signed on with two groups, both in the family-friendly comic vein, and I am greatly enjoying this current goody goody mentality.

First, as mentioned in the last post, is Kidjutsu, a site created to being comics to kids. When I was a kid, I spent my library time hunting down old Peanuts collections instead of blindly sticking with Judy Blume. I'll always claim I learned most of my vocabulary from reading Calvin and Hobbes. Comics are vital in getting kids to love reading, and Kidjutsu aims at providing kids a one-stop resource with tons of comic volumes to choose from.

Precocious will eventually join that line-up once I do some redrawing and reformatting. Finally, my tendency to create long story arcs pays off! I have issues - and they're not all mental!

The second site I'm pimping out is Family Webcomics, which does exactly what you think it does. It's very thorough in classifying and listing family-friendly comics, making it an excellent resource for parents. Precocious joined the list and I hope to be an active contributor there as well. It is my hope that when I am up against the wall, judged while a gun is held to my temple, I can point out I was a FAMILY-FRIENDLY guy. That could save my life! I'll admit that my family love might work more for a liberal family, but that's due to intelligence and being, you know, interesting. If a conservative mother is going to faint the second she reads the word "sucks" in her kid's comics, I can't really do anything about that. It's not like I could do or say anything to do more damage to her children than her anyway.

On the Family Webcomics forums, the creator, Mirz, put out a request for homepage splash art. This is something I can do! Here is my contribution to the cause:



Of course I had to feature my strip's giant Et family - with so many kids I can't fit them all in a square composition. I sorta felt bad about leaving Frida and Michelangelo out, so I started work in a second sketch:



This sketch hit a wall when I realized what a pain it would be to make it clear the object the family is viewing in the foreground is a monitor. But I did include all the children! Minor victory!

The Et Family! *click* *click*

What can I say, crazy families are on my mind.

Drawing something like this is a MAJOR challenge, since every character (well, not the twins) are different heights and sizes. I can't claim the shot is any good at all, but anyone remotely close to accurate is wild success at this point.

I still love how varied the Et family is, even if it means more trouble than it's worth when cartooning. Gene is a buff-colored kitty, Sky is a gray tabby, Tiffany is a calico, Michaelangelo is an orange tabby, Frida is a tortoiseshell and the twins are white. This counters an earlier Et family breakdown, but now that all of them have been drawn in the comic, the current roster is more or less official. (I can still alter colorings if I want, but thinking of doing the strip in color makes me cry in fear.)

Oh, yeah. In case you're wondering, eight new strips are done (nine if you count the Black Friday one) and progress continues. 24 strips to go before Precocious BECOMES REAL!

Back to the grind...

I'm home! Just in time to finish off another sketchbook. Even with the lack of art production in DC, this thing was completed far too fast. The more I work in a sketchbook, the less I work on things that need to be done. Ahh, such a bright future I see!



Here is the standard collection of sketches that didn't fit on other posts. First is one of the few non-profile Buds that were even half-decent. It's the same ol' consequence: Once I get a decent handle on a character, I move my focus to others. Then, when I go *back* to the character I DRAW THE MOST, suddenly I have to remember where the friggin' ears go!

The Max is a sketch I referenced in the Boys Wanna Fight post. It was too good to fit the crappy sketches, so it was replaced. Such is the story of my life. *sob*

Autumn is why my Bud drawings are sucking now! I lost confidence in drawing her, so she filled up my sketchbook! Bud went into the corner with Chinatown and Ruby Tuesdays. This sketch is my favorite (complete) one that didn't get posted yet. (I think...)



As everyone knows, my action drawing is rather sub-par. This was my attempt to better myself. As everyone can see, it is rather sub-par.



As mentioned in my Et kids post, Frida was too tiny for all her features. (Or I'm just incompetent.) To play around, I decided to do a Frida as Tiffany-sized, or Tiffany in a Frida costume. Whatever.



This was the final non-crap sketch of the sketchbook, so let's go out on that. Woohoo!

Be fruitful and multiply

These designs are hardly set in stone, but I've made my first attempts at drawing ALL the Et children. Going by age (right to left), here are the kids:

Tiffany, age 9 - Yeah, I think we know her. This is an old sketch. I added it just to show relative size.

Michelangelo, age 6 - Mostly he is the "extra" kid pulled in if I need another for a story. He's innocent enough to provide a contrast when needed. For his look, I went with a gray tabby kitty look and an old school TV cowlick hairstyle.

Frida, age 4 - As of now, her sole purpose is to exacerbate situations. If her surroundings are quiet, she is quiet. If kids are going crazy in the room, she adds to the chorus of insanity. For her look, I wanted to do a tortoiseshell cat, but that proved difficult. The final Frida will probably look completely different. This sketch was the second I made, where all the black patches were eliminated. I choked. I might not even keep the dual braids, as they conflict with the tiny figure. *sob*

"This" & "That", age 2 - I'm not sure what exact age they'll have, but terrible twos sounds right. They were going to be tabbies, one orange and one gray, but I decided simplicity was the best bet with my fumbling fingers for now. They exist to make adults regret procreation. Like the rest of their siblings, they are named after artists Gene and Sky admire (don't asked about Tiffany...), but we'll never know which artists as they are always referred to with duo nicknames. (Yes, they are often called Thing 1 and Thing 2.)

Overall, the goal is to use the extra Ets for general background chaos in family scenes. If I want to use them, they're there, but mostly they are just really annoying pieces of furniture.