A New Year's Appetizer

Hey internet friends!
    I am totally still alive and I have a plethora of wonderful things to post here. Christmas was great and super busy, and followed immediately by my younger brother's wedding, so I haven't posted any of the things I've made lately. So enjoy my three redesigns of Calvin and Hobbes for Joe Olson's class. Realistic, for girls ages 4-8 and for boys ages 9-14.

Holdin' Out for This One

You ever sit down to work on a project and magic just seems to flow from your pencil and everything just comes out perfectly on the first pass? If so, post your name and address in the comments so I can come and hunt you down. It just doesn't happen like that for me. It took me three to six passes on each of these characters (not counting all of the wood-shopping just to figure out what I was doing) and I still sort of want do another pass, just to fix a couple of little problems I'm seeing.
Anywho. This is a character line-up for a story I'm calling Hero! until I think of a better title. I did this for Jake Parker's Character Design class. It was a great class and I look forward to taking a class in comic book design from him next year! I promise that I'll have something great to post for you before Christmas.

Happy Halloween!

Here we are at one of my favorite holidays of the year. It's right up there in the gluttony/super-fun triumvirate with Christmas and Thanksgiving. Plus I get to dress up in an awesome costume! And no one will know that I'm weird enough to do that on any day of the year if only I could build up the nerve. This is Fenris in his Hellboy outfit a la Mike Mignola. Boy was too embarrassed to show off his tights. It's not like he didn't have other options. The Abraham Sapiens costume was only a few sizes too big. And there were all sorts of goblins and ghoulies he could have been instead. *snicker*

Run tubby, run!

     Some of you may know that I never try to post any sort of actual self portrait. This is honestly as close as I get. So, someone has sort of let himself slip over the past couple of years and now he has to buckle down and endure the pain and humiliation inherent in any weight loss program. Boo.
     The whole exercise thing isn't really a problem. I'm more than happy to walk (no running. I hate running.), lift heavy objects and even, dare I say it, participate in sport-like activities. The real problem is that I have no choice but to engage in that practice celebrated by masochists the world over: dieting.
     As I'm sure most of you know, the root word of "diet" is "die." That is what I would rather do most days instead of denying myself the wondrous bounty of the metaphorical global buffet. But thanks to past transgressions, I have to either substitute pressed sawdust for the foods that make me happy or look like I frequent the regular kind of buffet. So, I suffer.

Art is AWESOME!

Having artist friends is so cool! This is a work I commissioned from my friend Michelle Weaver. Sir Tiger With Fur Slicked Back is 6"x8" in gouache on Arches paper with a light sprinkling of awesome sauce. Check out Michelle's work and make sure that she doesn't give up painting and become a mafia hit woman because her art didn't sell. I love her animals in suits. I asked for this one after seeing Sir Owl and Lady Owl.

For Sale?

So...I may just have a job illustrating a childrens' book! Trick is, I've never done anything freelance professionally. I have no idea what to charge! I'm excited to do the job, it seems like a fun challenge, and I don't want to scare the client away with a high price, but I don't want to undercharge for a major undertaking either. What are standard rates for this kind of thing? What kind of price tag do you put on creativity?
Oh! And does anyone have a couch I can crash on...preferably on a non-American continent? Fenris is going to kill me when he gets out of those ribbons.

Two posts for the price of FREE!

Um...hi friends. I'm still alive. I know that all three of you who regularly check this thing were wondering. I just haven't had any kind of finished stuff to put here. But now I do!

Meet the Space Pug! He is not mine! I just added the poor paint job. The space pug himself is the work of the talented J Borutski. I have no idea who that is. I just painted his line art for my digital painting class. Also for Sam's class, I made a super-awesome-character design!
His name is Fenris. He's not quite done, but I'm close. Fenris is a hero fallen on hard times. Heroing is great and all, but there's no money in it and he has had to fall back on mercenary work, bodyguarding, and bounty hunting to get by, and since he's picky about who he works for and sticking to his Hero's code, he still doesn't make much. But he's got the crest from the (tragically short-lived) heroes' guild, and he's going to live up to it even if it kills him.
There's a lot more to the story. He has taken up with a young hero wanna-be and is showing him the ropes, one thumping at a time. It's amazing how one little assignment leads into a lot of extraneous, really fun, work.

Waterbending Awesomeness

So, I managed to win over a whole slew of new Avatar: the Last Airbender addicts in the form of my family. I just sat down one afternoon and thought it would be fun to watch one or two episodes and before I knew it, everyone in the house, one by one, had gathered around and plopped down on or around the couch next to me. After that it became a nearly nightly ritual. We watched three or four episodes a night until we finally finished it up Thursday night with one of the most awesome season finales of all time! I. Love. Avatar.
I have also decided that, given the option, I would be a waterbender. Most people want to be firebenders, but they just aren't as cool. Most of them seem pretty off kilter to me. The waterbenders use Tai Chi, which is a style that focuses on precision, balance, and on using the force of an opponent against them. It's a style based on the push and pull and flow of nature. Which is pretty awesome as far as I'm concerned. Plus, as my dear friend Aaron pointed out, Katara could have easily taken over the world. The world is basically three fourths water you know. As are most living things...
Oh! By the way, this is my post for day 23: Cat. 'Cause there ain't no cooler cat than Briar here. And yes I know I skipped day 22, but I've drawn it, I just didn't get it scanned yet. It'll be here soon.

Animate my world

Here we go again. In a mere two weeks I will be applying, yet again to the animation department here at BYU and I have high hopes and one mediocre attempt at animating a back handspring. I'm thinking about adding the tail properly if I have time this week, but the odds of that actually happening don't look good. What do you think?

I feel so violated...

So, apparently I have been tagged. I'm not certain how I feel about that. I guess it stands to reason. I mean, first they tagged livestock, then they tagged unpopular minorities and known mutants, I suppose that it was only a matter of time before they got me.
I guess the rules are that if you are tagged, you must write twenty-five random things about yourself. That's a lot of stuff that few, if any, people really want to know about. I imagine that they ask for twenty-five because they know that only four or five of them will be even remotely interesting. That being said, here goes nothing.

1. I have an "irrational" fear of zombie invasion and several viable plans should zombie infestation become a possible problem.
2. I am an animation junkie. My latest addiction is Avatar: the Last Airbender.
3. My other animation addiction is Kung Fu Panda. I love Kung Fu Panda.
4. I enjoy writing short stories and once wrote a story involved three separate cultural mythologies.
5. I have eaten more species of animal than most of the people I know including, but not limited to: Dog, Monitor lizard, Swordfish, and Sea turtle. No hot dogs were involved. I don't touch that garbage.
6. My favorite board game is Arkham Horror. I only play once every couple of months and only in broad daylight.
7. My younger brother has a scar above his left eye because I pushed him off the top of a refrigerator box when he was three or four.
8. I also hit him over the head with a toy hammer as an infant. It might explain a few things...
9. I sprained my ankle doing a back flip last October.
10. I am 23 and still in the Virgin Lips club.
11. Is one of my favorite numbers. It's just so symmetrical.
12. I like to make sushi and pack it as a lunch.
13. I spent last summer working for a secure government facility...as a graphic designer.
14. I am an orange belt in Kajukenbo. Look it up.
15. According to the Chinese Zodiac, I was born in the year of the Ox, in the hour of the Dog and my element is Wood. Whatever that means.
16. This is the longest blog post I have ever written.
17. I hate monkeys.
18. I can do things with a jump rope that most people would never even think of. (Nothing kinky, just cool tricks like jumping rope while sitting down.)
19. I speak five languages including English: Ilonggo, Tagalog, Aklanon, Cebuano and some Welsh.
20. I will be touring Ireland and Wales with the BYU Singers in April and May.
21. When I meet someone, I secretly decide what animal they make me think of, subsequently labeling them forever. If I chuckle for no apparent reason every time I see you, you now know why.
    
22. I've always wanted to start a kazoo band, but never found enough people who were dedicated to the art of the kazoo.
    
23. I have been to the moon...twice.
24. I have a pet polar bear named Frank. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Transdimensional Metaphysics in 1978 and is known for his signature yellow ascot. He is also invisible.
25. By day I am a mild mannered college student, but at night I use my remarkable shapeshifting powers and arcane might to fight the forces of darkness that are poised to strike down the human race and rend reality as we know it.

Well, I guess that's about it. Now I'm going to go see what I can do about removing this tracking collar and using it to set a trap for those freaking aliens.

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.