Who remembers the Hair Bear Bunch?

I barely remember this cartoon, but I have an old Gold Key comic that made me a happy camper as a young-un. These guys tripped me out. If I recall the plot properly, they'd escape from the zoo each episode, then hop on their invisible motorcycle to have their fantastically formulaic adventure! The 'fro just slays me!

I keep meaning to develop my own vision of these classic characters, but I love 'em so much that I I find myself sticking really close to on-model. We'll see what happens when I get to Space Ghost and the Herculoids...

This is almost entirely done in Procreate on my iPad, but the special effects and fuzzy background were added in Photoshop.  Also, the light, smooth tones on the bears were done in Photoshop, but mostly 'cuz I can't figure out how to do 'em in any of the apps on my iPad.

Happy New Year, part 2!

I friggin' love the new Star Wars--plot holes and convenient script contrivances be damned!

As part of my New Year of tributes to the influences of my past (and sometimes present), here's my take on Rey--my second favorite of the new characters. BB-8 is in my #1 spot, but I find tech harder to draw than pretty girls.  I'm working on this piece a bit more--adding background elements and such, but was too excited to wait to post.

I did this one entirely in Procreate for iPad, with a Pencil by 53. Hope y'all dig it!

Happy New Year!

2016 is going to be my year of tribute. I'm going to share my homages to the pop culture icons of my youth with you, my fellow groovies.

One of the great tragedies of contemporary media is the death of Saturday morning cartoons. I used to schedule my Saturday morning based on the 2-page illustrated ads in my favorite Bronze Age comics--making notes in my Han Solo/Chewbacca spiral-bound notebook as to precisely what time to switch from ABC to NBC to CBS in an effort to watch ALL my favorite cartoons! I went through phases--sometimes it was Hanna Barbera's funny animals (from Yogi Bear to Scooby Doo to the Wacky Races to the Laff-A-Lympics); other times it was action/adventure (Just wait 'til you see my homages to Filmation's Tarzan and Flash Gordon). 

I've been doodling Jabberjaw, The Hair Bear Bunch, and Speed Buggy, and will post as I finish! My goal is to make an homage map, of sorts--I'll draw all the characters in detail, but the backgrounds will be really abstract for each one. Once I have anywhere from 20-100 characters done (I think of additional inspiration each day), I'll composite them into a single large poster scene. I don't really know why I'm doing it, since I can't really publicly sell licensed characters--but I'm getting a lot of joy out of it. I draw stuff that makes me giggle, and I'm giggling my butt off doing this!

Is there something you'd like to see? Let me know, and I'll perhaps work it into my schedule. I've decided to stop short at the Smurfs, Transformers, He-Man, GI Joe era--I don't have as much of a connection to that stuff. I guess I was too cool for school for a decade or so, and didn't come back to Saturday morning cartoons until Batman, the Animated Series began.