Pain again

I haven't drawn my character "Pain" in more than a decade. I decided to sketch her up today - with all intentions of inking/coloring this one up later as well. Without looking at a source image, I got her pretty close to her original design, although I got the shoes/legging backwards and at first I completely forgot about the noose (which I went ahead and quickly added to the sketch.

Below is one of my original Pain drawings - amazing what you can find online! Back in the late nineties Pain appeared in a comic in a little fanzine mailer a friend of mine put together.

Pain is basically an intergalactic assassin ala Lobo. But cuter. She was killed at one point, and rebuilt (and subsequently completely redesigned by me,) and ended up with a hovering robot side-kick.

Now that I think of it, I even did a small animation of her in one of the first animation classes I ever took. Don't think that still exists anywhere anymore though.

The Dark Side

Overwhelmed by his shadow-self, Woodchuck Chuck succumbs to the darkness.

The Flying Fish

A character I designed with both flight and aquatic abilities. Dubbed her The Flying Fish, natch.

Woodchuck Chuck meets Flimsy

I recently began following Illustrator Rachael Smith on Twitter. Just the other day I discovered her blog Flimsy the Kitten and immediately fell in love with it. Not only is Flimsy a cute kitten, (and let's face it, even my cold heart can be melted by a drawing of a cute kitten,) but Rachael's sharp and quirky sense of humor is an absolute blast, and perfectly suited for the deceptively simple illustrations.

As I read through the blog, I began to wonder if Flimsy had ever become a super hero (because that's the type of thoughts I have.) Well it turns out she had, donning mask and cape and dubbing herself Super Flimsy.

Seeing the Super Flimsy cartoons inspired me to do a little fan art and team her up with Woodchuck Chuck. So without further ado, here it is:



And to see more fun illustrations and stuff by Rachael Smith, check out her website.

To the Post-It, Robin!

Another Post-it doodle. This one of the ever-lovin' Burton/Keaton movie Batmobile.

Roxanne Roll

I went to a concert last night, so aside from the ringing in my ears and hangover, I also have Rock and Roll on the brain. So I doodled this up real quickly during my class. I named her Roxanne Roll. Because I am cleverness incarnate.

Cat Gurl

A kid in my cartooning class asked me to draw a cat Girl (or Woman) character today. Since it's been done a million times by folks far better than me, this is what I came up with.

The kids were impressed. They'll learn ;)

That being said, it was brought to my attention that while I speak of cartooning projects I do for this little class of mine, I have never really explained what I am talking about.

So in a nutshell, I work at a summer camp (year round) and in the summer, as part of my job, I teach cartooning/Animation basics to each session (about 5 or 6 one or two week sessions through the summer months.) Kids can choose a few of their own activities, so sometimes I have a class of 10-12 or sometimes I could have a class of 2-3 kids, all varying ages from 7 to 15 or so.

Since there is such an age range and variety of skill levels, I tend to wing it, with a few projects I have pre-printed or make up on the fly. Mostly concerning structure, basic color theory, and a couple simple animation exercises. The two week classes get to watch cartoons on the last day, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and the ever popular Droopy. Droopy always gets an encore. Kids love those Tex Avery cartoons.

So any of the structure/basics type posts I've done here are likely derived from my scattered lesson plans. And a lot of the finished drawings I post during the summer start off as sketches in class. Because no matter what the lesson or the plan, kids pretty much just love to sit and draw for an hour or so in the middle of the day. And so do I.

The roughest toughest rootinest tootinest hombre to ever cross the Rio Grande...

The Black Angus in color. The only superhero bad-assed enough to protect the great state of Texas.

Head 'em up, move 'em out!

I haven't drawn my Black Angus character in years, but as I was flipping through my blog (yeah, I'm my best audience,) I stumbled onto him again and just had to do a quickie sketch. I'll ink/color this one up soon!

Supergirl and Batman walk into a bar...

I previously blogged about the cartooning class I teach in the summer, and how I discuss basic shape and form as templates for your final drawings. I have a few basic drawings of a mannequin I print out for the students to see the shapes and guidelines of a beginning sketch.


The mannequin is female, so I usually draw a female character as an example...


...but there's always a boy in the class who doesn't want to draw a girl (...you'll learn, son, you'll learn...) which opens up the opportunity for me to prove that the mannequin drawing is truly nothing more than a mere template...


...and that you can adjust your final drawing to suit your needs. This is where I discuss basic shape and form, and the differences in male and female basic body structure.

And if you have to draw a male character, Batman is always the go-to guy for me. ;)

Jinkies!

I wanted to doodle Velma tonight - (insert dirty jokes here) - The pose is relatively uninspired but otherwise it turned out pretty cute.

Pull my finger...

...I dare you.

Letting her hair down...

I did a little costume modification for Stinkarella today, and added hair outside the cowl. I imagine the hair would be white to contrast the black of the costume and to run with the skunk theme, natch. I like it.