Princess Projectra's night at the Tiki bar...

Man, this one is defining a whole new workflow. I drew this in my sketchbook, then used my phone to take a picture of the linework. I cleaned it up a bit, then used Illustrator to vectorize the linework. Dumped a PNG to Procreate and colored/composited. The background is from Frax HD, and back to Photoshop for final compositing.

Are there Tiki bars on Saturn?

I'm mashing-up the nifty Tiki style of the 1960s with some of my favorite characters. So, for some reason, i think it's funny if each character is drinking a wondrous beverage. More to come, so stay tooned!

Diana's Adventures in Tikiland...

I picked up the new Making of Moana book recently, and it's friggin' inspirational!  It triggered this Tiki-inspired Wonder Woman that I hope you find giggleriffic.

Hunter Gatherer Fred!

Yabba Dabba Doo, y'all! Another take on everyone's favorite caveman. I did the figure work in Procreate on iPad with an Apple Pencil. I converted to vectors in Adobe Illustrator and plopped it into Photoshop to composite with an old background image.

Yabba Dabba Doo! How I'd update the Flintstones

So I really enjoyed the new Flintstones comic from DC Comics, and I really wasn't expecting to. The cartooning style didn't really resonate with me. I've been a Steve Pugh fan for over a decade, but I think the stylistic approach he took is a little too realistic. The Flintstones needs a layer of abstraction to work. I would have liked to have seen a Ben Caldwell or Sean Galloway kind of approach. Not saying I could do nearly as well as any of those guys, but I was inspired to take a stab at Fred and Wilma, dancing the day away at a hep vacation getaway..

What if Wonder Woman was a mermaid...

Second one in a 3-part series of DC mermaids!  Main figure and background entirely drawn/painted in Procreate on iPad with an Apple Pencil.  The cosmic fish tail fill was produced with a tricky combination of Frax (to generate an interesting fractal pattern) and Percolator (to lay a cool star pattern on top).  Final composition was done in Adobe Photoshop, with a smidge of Illustrator.

Mer-Batgirl!

Mer-May seems to have had an effect on me.  Crossed with my love for Bronze Age comics, this is the kind of design that pops from my brainstuffs. The original pose was a quick gesture from my sketchbook.  All illustration and digital painting was done on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil in Procreate. The final layout/design is a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Hope y'all groove on it.

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.

Paleo Kara, cover version

This will likely be the last of this series for awhile.  I have a ton of projects that have been patiently waiting for my attention.  Worry not--more to come as soon as I clear my plate a bit!

Master of the Mystic Arts

The Doctor, The Duck, and The Dread Dormammu! Illustrating my love affair with the Bronze Age of comics!

Devil Dinosaur meets Tigra!

Another love letter to the comics of my youth! They just don't make 'em like they used to.

1,000,000 DC Diana

So, who's seen the classic Raquel Welch film 1,000,000 BC?  It shaped my 8-year old mind into the strange and wonderful place it is today.  I love dinosaurs, ape men, iguanas with cardboard fins stuck to their backs, and of course, beautiful and powerful paleolithic cavewomen!  I'm on a roll, combining all that with some of my favorite DC comics layouts from the 70s.  Keep an eye out--more to come!

Age of Ultron

I drew this long-legged Natasha a couple years back.  Included to accompany a word about the new Avengers film--Age of Ultron.  I'm not big on reviews, but I do like to talk about comic-book geekdom.  The first 15 minutes made me downright giddy--this is the kind of hyper-choreographed superhero violence I've been waiting for since I was 8.

Then the pacing began to irritate me.  Superdoubleplusgoodfastcrazyridiculous beginning that came to a screeeeeeching halt for our heroes spend a stupid amount of time hiding out at a farmhouse.  This was time wasted on character development previously established in earlier films.  Why not take more time building Ultron's motivations?  I think, therefore I am, therefore I take out the human race?  All within about 8 seconds of "birth".  What about the Vision?  There was absolutely NO time taken to develop his character.

On the subject of powers--what were movie Vision's?  Controlling his molecular density?  Did he pass his arm through a robot then solidify, or just reach through with this super-strength?  And Scarlet Witch?  She seemed to have some reality-bending powers, some telekinetics, some mind control.  I know these characters from comics, but they don't do much more than resemble the characters I'm familiar with.

The film looked awesome.  It sounded great.  The dialog was snappy and entertaining.  It had bits of everything I love about a superhero movie, but was ultimately less than satisfying.