I’m not the kind of guy to go bragging about my kids – I know everyone thinks their kids are the greatest, as they should, but lets face it, most kids are simply average and don’t merit any sort of special acknowledgement unless they truly do something worthy of mention, just like everyone else. Basically, it’s just annoying when a parent constantly praises their kid for mediocre achievements. Commend them when they do well, encourage them to put forth the effort, but let them know when they fuck up. That’s just my opinion.

Not sure why I felt the need to preface this post with all of that, but I’m sure you’ll come up with a reason why.

Anyway… My 5 year old son draws all the time, just like a lot of other young kids, and his stuff is usually pretty good for his age. He generally spends most of his drawing time on images of Star Wars characters, Batman and that Blade guy from The Puppet Master (no, he hasn’t actually seen that movie). He’s also pretty anal about accuracy and details on these established characters, making sure everything is just right.

There are countless drawings he’s done that I think are fairly amazing for a 5 year old to be able to produce, but I’ve never posted a single one. He’s done everything from elaborate battle scenes, with full color, between Obi Wan and Anakin on Mustafar and X-wing and TIE Fighter dog fights above Tatooine, to simple head sketches of Batman and Captain Rex. Most of these always amaze me on some level, but looking at them, you could probably figure it was drawn by a kid between the ages of 4 and 10.

Then there was this sketch I found laying on my desk the other day. After completing it, he didn’t even bring it over to me to show off for approval, like he usually does. He just left it sitting there, thinking nothing of it, I’m sure. It’s a simple little line drawing, but when I saw it I was blown away. It’s not full of scratchy lines and careless, “5-year-old kid attention span” proportions and generic facial features. The lines are fluid and rhythmic, the proportions show character and it looks like there was real thought put into it. It was the first drawing of his that didn’t immediately look like it was drawn by a little kid – I thought that was something special. I was genuinely impressed and made sure to tell him as much. So to show him how much I liked it, instead of putting it up on the fridge with a magnet, I told him I’d put it on my website for the world to see… A world populated by about 3 people.

Click for a larger image.

bald guy

Like, almost a year ago! Here’s a sketch for it (OMG!). Even though Zuda failed to stick around long enough for us to get this project done on time, we’re still planning on hitting the streets with this shit eventually. Schedule’s tight these days, so doing this creator owned stuff takes for fucking ever!

wood

Big update in the color section.

I added a bunch of Chaotic TCG and Dinosaur King card illustrations to the color gallery. Both of those properties are handled by 4Kids Entertainment. I think the majority of these were done in the latter part of 2009, but recently got word that it’d be okay to put these up publicly. I have more Chaotic and DK cards on the hdd, but doubt they’re worth showing — They were either rushed or done when I really just didn’t feel like working, which always makes for a garbage end product.

That’s the problem with doing illustrations for a living. That creative process is fun and rewarding, but can also be exhausting and that creative mojo isn’t always there. Of course, you can’t expect clients to only offer you work when you’re in the mood, just doesn’t happen that way.

More color-oriented work going on at the moment, but that stuff probably won’t make its way here for another couple of months, at the earliest.

Until the next update… And happy V-day (wife made me cookies).

-Bob

Oct 072009

Yeah, we’re gonna do Zuda, right in the A — this sketch has something to do with that.

Edit: OR NOT!

noah sketch

Yesterday I played the new Batman: Arkham on PC a little bit. Wasn’t necessarily a game I had been anxiously waiting on, but I like The Bats and the combat style of the game looked like fun. The eye candy isn’t bad and the gameplay is enjoyable for a while. But, just like most other 3rd person adventure games, it gets old after a while. The most recent similarity I can think of would be Assassin’s Creed. Plenty of fun climbing buildings, jumping across rooftops and silently killing people for a while, but then it just gets repetitive because that’s ALL there is to do. With games like this, there’s also not much reason to replay after you’ve beaten it, which really diminishes the value for me. And I understand that in order to keep these action/adventure games somewhat fast paced and easy to get into, you can’t bog it down with too much depth. So, for what the game is, it’s pretty good, but I guess I’m just not a huge fan of the genre.

Anyway, I did mention the graphics in the game being pretty nice to look at, just like my wife, but the character modeling on Batman has him looking like a roid freak, a real hulk of a Batman, also like my wife. Really, he’s built like a tank. I know Batman is a muscular chap, but I think he could’ve looked a little better if he was slimmed down just a bit.

So yeah, here’s a quick sketch I just did, along with a shot of Batman from the game.

(Update: Brendan has a much more in-depth and entertaining review of the game on his blog here.)

Batman

bat tank

Apr 302009

A few Captain America sketches I did for a buddy of mine, John Rauch, who’s putting together some coloring tutorials at Digital Webbing. John’s lending his color talents over at Marvel these days so giving him one of their characters to use in his example seemed appropriate. Besides, I’ve never drawn this guy so figured I’d take a shot at it. Maybe they’ll stick the two of us on an Avengers book :P

Seriously though, if you’re interested in checking out John’s process on this just head over to Digital Webbing and take a look. Cary Nord also has some basic drawing lessons going on in the same section that are worth checking out.

You can also check out more of John’s work here. Not that he needs a plug or anything.

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Mar 162009

I’m disabling comments throughout the entire site due to the disgusting amount of spam I get to delete anytime I log into the backend. The shit is unreal, and it’s always pure garbage… Even if I allowed the spam comments to make it through to the site, I can’t even imagine somebody actually clicking on the mess of nonsense links in the post. Even if you were a 6 year old, mentally retarded roll of toilet paper that’s been living off small amounts of nail polish, you’d still have enough sense not to give this rubbish a second look.

So, because 90% of the spam I get doesn’t seem to be some form of guerilla advertising for a product, service, or even a scam, I’m going to assume that it’s posted solely to waste my time whenever I go through my comment queue. And in that case, if you’re a spammer, if you’re here to post some nonsense, whatever country you’re from, whoever you work for… Fuck you. And please, take that personally.

Here are a few sketches I did as a try-out for a little character design gig. The guy wanted a western looking succubus (without a cowboy hat), so I whipped these 3 out and sent them over.

It was evident that the client liked these and wanted more as we corresponded a bit and negotiated a rate, but it seemed that I just could not go low enough. And trust me, my final offer was very low – any lower and the job would’ve hardly been worth my time.

And I don’t fault the client one bit, if he can get professional work for pennies, why wouldn’t he save his money and go for that. What bothers me is that there are guys out there, apparently of professional caliber, that are undercutting like crazy. I don’t know if they’re younger and living at home, if they just do this as a hobby, or if they’re simply desperate for work, but it makes it difficult for those of us that do this for a living to actually make any real money. It’s unfortunate, but you just move on to the next job.

The rare beast, chesnark: part cheetah, part shark, with the tongue, fangs and venom of a black mamba snake. Why would such a fiercely horrifying beast need venom? Just in case… just in case.

Some of my latest shit. Just playing around and trying a few new half-assed techniques in Photoshop. What a god damn blast!

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