No hippos for Christmas

Happy New Year! It's time to introduce Marty the New Years Rhino! Because there aren't enough holiday themed animals. It seems like every year there's a new one. First there was Rudolph, then there was Nestor, the long eared Christmas Donkey and his cousin Dominic the Italian Christmas donkey (who irritates me to no end and is probably not very popular at parties), next came Olive, the other reindeer, who was, in fact, a dog; and that hippopotamus, and the abominable snow man (Who, along with Frosty is suing for Canadian citizenship. Shouldn't be a problem.) and the plethora of critters who don a red cap, black boots and false beard and tack "Santa" to the front of their name. You know: Santa Mouse, Santa Bear, Santa Tapir...they're all over the place. Marty here ought to fit right in.

Ding Dong the witch is dead! Or something like...

I love this time of year. You know, when peoples' thoughts turn to the ideal of "Peace on earth, good will to men," When everything gets covered with snow, and - best of all - classes are out for the semester.
See, Thanksgiving vacation is great and all, but there's still all of that schoolwork that I was supposedly working on during the break. With the Christmas break there's none of that. A guilt free vacation! Huzzah!
In honor of the death of finals, I give you the only final that I honestly enjoyed. No offense to any of my professors should they stumble across my blog by some bizarre anti-miracle, but their exams, papers and projects brought me a negligible amount of joy if they brought me any. This project, on the other hand, brought me much joy. I mean how can you NOT be inspired by a hippo-ridin' finger-slinger and his mexi-fish sidekick? Merry Christmas all! Just in case I don't come up with something else by then.

Thanksgiving!

Ah, it's that delightful time of year again! That beautiful holiday where we eat turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie until it comes out of our ears on the pretense of showing gratitude for...um...everything I guess. Or it might have something to do with a radically conservative group that arose from the reformation in Europe that traditionally wore belts on their hats.
Either way, I'm awfully excited about that pie.
This is the Thanksgiving Pie Puritan-Bot. His job is to make sure that I eat enough pie to choke a yak over the holiday break. If I don't, there's no telling what he might do with that vaguely musket shaped object in his right hand. So, you know, don't keep me from eating pie. It takes a lot of pie to choke a yak. And whip cream too. Can't choke a yak without whipped cream.

Happy Halloween!

Yes, I am well aware that Halloween is long past, but shouldn't we try to keep the holiday in our hearts all year round? That's probably some other holiday...oh well.
Honestly, I just didn't have these things in my hot little hands until yesterday. I finished them up a little too late to scan them before turning them in, so I had to wait until Joe decided he had waited long enough to convince us that he had actually deliberated over what sort of grade we each deserved.
I'm really pretty pleased with these pieces though. The graveyard could use some work, but I think that that is pretty indicative of a graveyard, don't you? At least it's full of happy ghosts. Or at least remarkably toothy ghosts. And vaguely angst-y gargoyles...er...gargoyle.
I really like the skull weasel though. The assignment was to redo our toy design (you might remember the angry weasel) to a Halloween theme. I actually like the concept picture for this one even more than the finished product. So I've included that one too. Whee! (The finished one is the one one the bottom by the way.)

A Pic-i-nic Basket?

As the weather gets colder, my thoughts, like millions of other people in the American Northwest, turn hopefully to the prospect of the ever so distant spring. Well not really. I've still got Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to. And Snowball fights, and sledding and all that jazz. But it sounded good.
I suppose I could try to pass off the sausages as my homage to Oktoberfest, that delightfully pseudo-German holiday celebrating foamy beverages and suspicious animal by-products. It is today after all. And what event is complete without an ant or two? This little guy is just a scout for the rest of the shiny black horde of course.
I'm actually pretty pleased with the marker work on this one.

Two Days!

So, I know what you're thinking. And shame on you! But you're probably also wondering why I have posted my little aliens twice. I finished the original in plenty of time to turn it in on Tuesday afternoon, but good ol' Joe gave us two extra days to work on it! So I started over. I'm infinitely happier with this take anyway.

Intergalactic Space Smugglers

What else is there to explain? Now I know that, to the untrained eye, the alien on the left looks almost indistinguishable from an elephant man with a large scoop out of his head, but he is, in fact, an eleph-I mean alien. An Elephalien. Yes, he is an Elephalien. Obviously. And the one on the right is a...um...not-fish-man-guy. That is, of course, a rough translation of his own, otherwise unpronounceable, language. In other news: I'm awesome.

Meet my 'little' Friend.

This is one of my imaginary friends. One of. His name is Ryan. I didn't choose that name, my cousin, Ryan, did. He looked at it and immediately told me that his name had better be Ryan. So it is.
I drew this as an exercise for my Drawing for animation class. The assignment was
1) Go buy four copies of the National Geographic and read them in order to learn something.
2) With these delightful new thoughts buzzing around our heads we were to create an appropriate imaginary friend for a ten-year-old.
I'm fairly pleased with him. The first article I read was about a lion reserve in Africa. When a lion dies, instead of allowing other animals to eat it or selling it off for the fur (Which really isn't all that desirable at that point anyway) they build a pyre and burn the critter. Hence the flaming lion. Ta-DAH!

Viva la Revolution!

Alright! Look at how consistent I am in updating my blog! It helps that I have a class that keeps me finishing work too.
This week we chose the theme "Revolutionary Rodents." I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, except that I definitely needed to draw a mouse of some kind in a coat and waistcoat. But I wasn't sure how to incorporate him into the theme.
Then I watched a delightfully well edited The Last Samurai and had my excuse to use him! The movie takes place during Ta-Da! The Meiji revolution. Perfect!
For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese history and the Samurai X/Rouroni Kenshin Manga/Anime, the Meiji revolution was a particularly turbulent time in Japanese history when a group of insurgents overthrew the existing shogunate (Government by Sho-gun, aka Guy with big sword and crazy armor) to place the emperor back on the throne. The idea was that the emperor would get back to the traditional work of being the spiritual head of the country and allow his loyal advisors to take care of the more mundane work of running the country. A major characteristic of this time was the encroachment of western ideals into Japan, the fall of the traditional feudal system, and the disappearance of Bushido(Samurai) culture. Hence, The Last Samurai.
I actually studied that for fun. There may be something wrong with me.

It's like Christmas!

Check this out! I'm going to stuff two thingeties in this post!
This is a designer toy that I designed for my drawing for animation class. He's an ANGRY weasel!

This one is a texture exercise, were supposed to apply a bizarre texture to some object. I chose a cliff-face-laptop. I don't really have anything to say about these things today. I just wanted to get them on here!

So Cold...so very cold

I think this picture illustrates the way I feel about blogging. I am one of the penguins. Probably the one about to be skewered by the newly flung one. If comments are any indicator, I am one of the three people who actually looks at any of this stuff. And I make it! The only search engine that actually found this place was someone looking for the origins of "The Spring has Sprung." If you like, let me know! Leave comments!
Now, before someone gets me on the whole penguin/polar bear thing, yes, I am aware that they live at opposite poles. The polar bear has obviously had those particular birds imported. I drew it for my Drawing for animation class. I like it. The bear is based on Mike Kunkel's HeroBear.

The Curse of the Werewolf

Here's the Little Red/Big Bad Wolf combo I promised. It's not the original drawing, but it was good. There's dialogue that goes with this of course:
BB: Stop that!
Red: Stop what?
BB: Making that face!
Red: What face?
BB: Your "We-just-stopped-ten-minutes-ago" face.
Red: Well we did.
BB: I can't help it. It's all these trees!
What were they thinking. I wonder how he proposed?

Da Bears!

I don't understand how people can update these things regularly! I can only assume that they are either somehow paid for the things that they post, or have absolutely nothing else to do. That, or they're faster and more talented than myself.
Anyway, Goldilocks and her three bear pals are at it again, only this time they are forming their own little mafia. Goldie is their front man (?) of course, most people don't react well to bears running their mob, but Little Bear is the real brains of the outfit. How do you think all of his stuff manages to be "just right" all the time? Hmm? He uses that "little" garbage to his advantage too. I mean, how old is this bear anyway? The story has been around for as long as I can remember. The only explanation I can think of is that the little ursine mastermind has some sort of gland problem that he uses to his advantage.
Originally I had planned to post a Bonny and Clyde picture of Li'l Red and the Big Bad Wolf, (You know they were working together) but I couldn't pass up the expression on Papa Bear's face!

Don't Eat the Flowers!

Blegh. I had a rough time uploading this one. So, this past weekend we went camping. Isaac wanted to go camping for his birthday, so we went. I have arbitrarily skipped all of the man-eating mosquitos and terrifying camp food, I figure that everyone is pretty familiar with all of that by now.
No, I would much rather talk about the adventure that we had the second day out. By this time, Isaac had discovered, once again, that he didn't actually like camping. He would have been just as happy to pitch a tent in the back yard and enjoy all the comforts of home. The campsite didn't even have an electrical hookup for his nintendo system! How could anyone expect him to live like this!?
Needless to say, he and Ian locked themselves away in the camper/trailer/thing and played Magic: the Gathering until it was time to leave.
While they were locked away, Mom, Dad, Alex and I decided to go hiking and Geocaching. (Geocaching is an entertaining little diversion where you get hopelessly lost in the wilderness on the pretense of looking for a box of useless trinkets that may or may not hve been hidden in said wilderness sometime in the past.) Mom gave up after about half a mile, claiming that she had a headache and headed back for the air-conditioned car.
The three of us who remained on this ill-begotten quest continued to trudge through the darkening woods. My two companions failed to obey some of the most important rules of woods-trudging.
1) They left the path. You should never leave the path! That's when the really nasty things come to get you.
2) They picked the mushrooms. Dad found these weird looking brain-coral-type mushrooms and wondered if they were edible, so he picked them and carried them around in his hat.
3)They may or may not have taken a drink of the swamp water. They deny it, but I'm sure that they did. I know for a fact that Alex ate a flower. That's just as bad.
This was the resultant tableau. They don't remember it, of course. Mushrooms and swamp water tend to have that effect. Russian forests are pretty good for me. Usually I end up in the Welsh countryside...

I am not yet dead!

WooHoo! I've been out of school for almost three weeks now and haven't updated my blog even once! That, my friends, is sloth. Admittedly, two of those three weeks had me out in California, on tour with the BYU Singers (Have I mentioned how mind blowing that is by-the-way?) and the other week at my new job, but still, you would think that I could squeeze in a few minutes to write a little bit about what's going on.
So, like I said, I've just started a paid (yes really) internship at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls as a part of the graphic design team! It's fantastic! I'm always trying new things and they usually keep me pretty busy. I had a few spare minutes yesterday and spent a little extra time practicing with Adobe Illustrator.
Hence the picture. Back in high school, Nick (The artist formerly known as) Flatland and I came up with an idea for a comic strip about the incarnation of death moving in with a college student. We originally just called it Death & Dan, but I've decided that I like Dante's heights better. It's catchier. The little guy in the corner is Death...I know...you expected him to be taller, didn't you...

Finals! Blegh.

Check this out! This was my final project for my intro to drawing class. It's colored pencil on dah-dah-dah! paper! I'm fairly pleased with it. It's so nice to be finally finished with finals for the year. I hate finals week. Somehow they manage to pack an entire year's worth of stress into three days. My adrenaline gland is still going nuts! But it's finally over! I'm going to go do absolutely nothing for the next three days before life throws me another curve ball.

Nick is a panda!

Alright, so you know that game that everyone plays at some point in their lives where you ask each other stupid questions with no real relation to life as me know it? Don't lie, we've all played it. Just some of us play it more often than others.
I play it more often than I care to admit. What can I say? I'm easily entertained. One of the most common questions asked is the old standby, If you were an animal, what would you be?
Most people either know their answer immediately, or hem and haw and refuse to say and expect you to pick something for them. I usually pick naked mole-rat for them. Just out of spite. But this one was for a friend. We took a few randomized polls and the results came back that he was a panda bear. I whipped out a little doodle in my sketchbook about it, then forgot all about the whole thing until he started pestering me about two weeks ago about, and I quote, "the old bear." So I sketched something, scanned and colored it, and here it is.
Now for some panda facts:

1. Scientists originally thought that the Giant Panda belonged to the family Procyonidae, which is Latin for "Animals who wear masks and dig through garbage cans." Then, because of its overwhelming resemblance to a bear, the scientists decided that it might be more like said bear than a raccoon.
2. The main reason that the scientists were confused is that the panda is obviously shunned by other bears because of certain embarrassing lifestyle choices. I mean, what self respecting bear would be caught dead munching on bamboo? Healthy - maybe, socially acceptable - not for bears.
3. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the first non-Chinese person (wow, that was a masterful use of the English language) to shoot a panda. I imagine he also enjoyed clubbing baby seals.
4. They, like human children are required to watch those nasty health videos about "Reproduction." No really. They do. In zoos and stuff. It was on wikipedia, it must be true right?

Whew! I haven't done that much research at one time in, like, three hours! I'm exhausted! Peace. Out.

The Theatre, The Theatre

What has happened to the theatre? You might have noticed that I even spelled it the snobby British way.
So, in my theater 101 class (they don't spell it the snobby British way) I was required to get together with a group of bizarre theater misfits, which worked for me, and basically produce a show written by one of said misfits. I was just going to do the lighting design for the show, until I found out that the girl that we were going to have direct was in a main stage production at BYU and would have approximately three minutes in any given twenty-four hour period to do anything with this show. I offered to do the job and she melted into a sobbing puddle of hysterical laughter. Not an easy thing to do. I think it meant that she was glad to lose some excess stress.
Next on this delightful little list of events was the mysterious disappearance of our costume designer. No one knows where she went or what happened, she just stopped coming and we found ourselves short one member of the creative team. So I did it. It was more fun than the directing stuff. A lot easier too. And here it is in all its glory. Wheee photoshop! Bet you can't guess which one I play.

I did this!!

You know, I get just a little tired of these people who keep asking me to submit "My Portfolio." What? Do they think that I just keep all of the stuff I draw filed away somewhere convenient? And best of all, they want it filed electronically or on a CD. So I have to find a way to scan, photograph or wonkavision everything from sketchbook pages to massive 18 x 24 pages into my computer that possesses the storage capacity of a potato. Not an iPotato. Just a regular one. REEEHEEDiculous. Anyway, here is my favorite drawing of a hand. Which I put in my portfolio.

More animation fun!

Hmm...that last one isn't too impressive unless you loop it around to play over and over again. Try this one on for size.

Animation is my anti-drug

So, I just finished my Animation 160 class and this was the end result. Cosmo rocks!

So...Who's the cat?

I know what you're thinking...and shame on you! But you're probably also wondering, "What's with the tiger? Why doesn't this goober post a photo like a normal human being?"
That's easy enough to answer: I believe that photographs actually steal peoples' souls, so I never allow myself to be photographed.
No, that didn't come out nearly as funny as I thought it would. The truth is, I have something of a Cyrano de Bergerac syndrome. I hate my own looks. I find myself to be singularly unattractive and don't go to any great lengths to expose that fact to the world. Besides, If I draw a cartoony tiger dude, no one will try to compare it with any actual person.
Plus, no one can swipe my picture and info off the internet and use it to steal my vastly valuable identity in order to obtain secret government information that only I have access to.
My life is so much more interesting when I garnish it with little details that I make up in my head.
Anyway, Spring is lurking just around the corner and I am ecstatic! I like snow and all, but I am ready for spring. In honor of Spring, here is a poem that I did not write:

The Spring has sprung, the grass is riz,
I wonder where them birdies is?
The little boid is on the wing...
How absoid! The little wing is on the Boid!

What could make more sense?

I'm just adding this for appearances. It's not like anyone ever looks at this garbage, but I might as well get cracking and give them something to look at.
The other day, I was watching Bongo the Bear in my animation class. When we got to the delightful little dance number from the bears, I found myself wondering how on earth all those bears knew that dance. The answer was fairly obvious: Choreographers! In these bears' case, a little blond choreographer who probably has "Goldilocks" shoved between her first and last names. I am such a moron.

Ugh! I got run over by the band wagon!

Well, there you have it sportsfans, I've completely given in to the technology train and got myself a filthy nasty blog. What does "blog" mean anyway? It sounds like something that you do with mud. Or the Everglades. Or possibly mud in the everglades. Suffice to say, I've gone and done it. We'll just have to see how faithfully I update this booger. It's a booger blog now. How classy can I get?
So, in honor of "Blogging" here's my ten minute Bloggator. Whee! Tablets rock!