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...