Monkey

My latest "funny animal" figure, which is almost fully Poser-ised.  I've been on a bit of a roll with these recently, so more to come.

Proverbs 11:24

I liked drawing the little green pixie things in this one.

I've only just noticed that some of these cartoons have the words entirely in upper-case and some don't.  Some will need the captions re-doing.

Break from Blender

Having spent a while trying to learn to use Blender I've temporarily put it on hold to do something easier (like finishing off my Space Penguin and giving him a gun, see above).  Essentially I've returned to Poser, Wings 3d, Blacksmith etc. with my tail between my legs and have spent the past week trying to complete a bunch of unfinished characters and make accessories for them.

Tortoises

This is my first effort using Bryce's option to import images into a scene.  I looked for a suitably descriptive Bible passage to accompany the scene but in the end realised that what I wanted to say could be said in just those five words.

Lemmings

(I like this quote so much that I decided to use it again.)

Why are you downcast, o my soul...?

I periodically get depressed, and it occurred to me recently to try and vent the frustration of this by channelling it into a picture.  I'm still not sure whether this pic works or not - ideally the ball would be hanging down instead of diagonally, but then this could be explained by imagining that the character and his balloon are drifting in a left-ward direction.  (Also the shadow on the ground should really be towards the right of the picture!)

Integrating 3d and 2d

Discovered last night that it's possible to import images into Bryce with a transparency mask, which opens up a lot of possibilities.

As A Man Thinketh

A good example of why you should always do your research before drawing a picture.  Having heard the above verse on many occasions and decided that it would be a good one to illustrate, I was quite suprised to discover that it wasn't in the Bible.  The "As a man thinketh..." verse that gets quoted so much is a paraphrase of Proverbs 23:7:

"For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee."

In the end I just decided to use the line as you see it here, because it's still a good quote.

People - Argh 2

Just about managed to get this done in time for Climbers on Sunday.  David's head and Nathan's speech bubble are both cut-out windows with a strip of paper behind them.  As the strip is pulled, Nathan's speech bubble changes from the man stealing the sheep to David stealing Bathsheba, and David's face changes from stern to convicted.

I figured it would be a bad idea to give cutting mats and scalpels to a bunch of 6 year-olds so did the cutting out myself the night before.

Proverbs 13:12

I'm not sure about this one.  The original sketch had the thirsty chap in the desert finding the dried-up well and, unseen to him, a cluster of rain clouds beginning to produce raindrops in the background.  However, I wasn't sure if people would get what was happening with the rainclouds, so decided to go with the more obvious idea above.  I'm not certain, however, whether the cluster of trees is a convincing enough explanation for why he's not spotting the lake full of happy bathers just a short distance away.

People - Aaargh!

I am trying to draw a picture to be used in Climbers (Sunday School) this Sunday, something to photocopy and hand out to the kids to colour in.  The subject is "Nathan Accusing David" - unfortunately a major obstacle is my inability to draw human figures.  It's been a pain in the neck forever - I can draw animal characters, robots, almost anything except people.  Every cartoonist/illustrator develops their own "visual language", a kind of shorthand to enable them to draw most things on spec as the story demands.  Charles Schultz, for example, had his own unmistakeable shorthand for children and you wouldn't mistake his round-headed, dot-eyed, virtually legless characters for anyone else's.  Yet somehow I've never managed to come up with my own solution to this visual problem.

btw I've also been attempting to make this blog look a bit more presentable, fiddling around with layouts, widgets etc.  So if it looks a bit of a mess for a while, that is why.

The curse of never finishing

I've been putting the creative pursuits on the back burner for a spell while concentrating on more pressing matters (I had a GCSE biology exam recently which was a bit of a stinker!) but now that it's out of the way I've been attempting to finish off the unfinished pics on my computer (and there are a fair few) and complete some of the unfinished models as well.
My creative process generally goes like this:

1. Start a drawing or comic strip or model.
2. Keep going with it until I hit a snag - for example, I'm making a model monkey and can't quite work out how to do the feet, or have done a cartoon but am really struggling with the colouring stage.  There is usually something that keeps the process from being straightforward.
3. Abandon it for a later date and start something else.

Very rarely do I simply sit down and see something through to completion in a single sitting.  As a result an awful lot ends up never getting finished, and this is one of the issues that keeps me from being properly functional as a creative person.  Also, one's failure to finish things contributes, in itself, to a general sapping of morale ("what's the point in starting anything?")

Anyway, a couple of pictures have seen completion this week, which has helped to boost my enthusiasm somewhat.

One is a business card.  I've been meaning to get around to this forever as I'm always meeting people, telling them about my work, and having nothing to give them.  Recently my good friend Mark organised an exhibition in his church to which several people contributed and some of the folks who saw the work expressed an interest in purchasing it.  This included some of my pictures and some by another lady, Barbara, and neither of us had left anything with our contact details on, so getting connected with potential customers was more complicated than it needed to be.

And here's another piece.  A big part of being functional as an illustrator or cartoonist is not only working when you feel like it, but keeping on going after the buzz has stopped.  If you only ever do it for pleasure, it should be left as a hobby rather than a career.

(By the way, the rainbows in the above picture were a complete nightmare to do!)

Blender

So I've started playing around with Blender again, only to find that they've changed the interface (which actually, looks a lot better but now that learning curve starts all over again!)  Blender is a program I've flirted with on and off ever since becoming interested in 3d but have always abandoned it because the interface is such a nightmare to master.  There are several factors that have brought me back this time, however:

1. Functionality.  They've built in all sorts of cool stuff over the last couple of years including sculpting tools and a new auto-rigging script.
2. My current, complicated pipeline: model in Wings 3d, texture in Blacksmith 3d, rig in Poser 6, create morphs/facial expressions in Blender.  There is so much importing and exporting and fiddling around involved and it would be nice to do everything in one program.
3. Cost of upgrading.  At $150 a pop it ain't all that cheap to upgrade Poser every time an improved version is created, while you can always get the latest version of Blender for nothing.

On top of all this, Poser has definite limitations, not to mention bugs.  I've just recently attempted to master rigging with it again, only to find myself running into issues, and not for the first time.

Work in progress - Penguin

I'm having serious problems with Blogger at the moment.  It appears to be having difficulty letting me post a picture and insert text from my laptop.  My recent upgrade to the newer version of Internet Explorer may or may not have something to do with it.  Anyway, I'm currently on my computer at work and am able to add some text to this post.

This little fella and his accessories were modelled in Wings, textured in Blacksmith 3d and imported into Poser.  The rocket pack is a work in progress which I shall have to come back to.  I've recently decided to have another go at mastering Blender, which may keep me occupied for the time being.

Zillatron

I did this picture years ago. He was meant to be part of a series of cute robot characters but he wasn't quite cute enough. I imagine his backstory being something like: A film director (James Cameron?) wants to make a movie about a giant robotic dinosaur destroying civilisation, but rather than using CGI, decides to spend billions of dollars building a 100 foot tall fully functioning robot prop. The robot prop then goes berserk and eats everyone.

Blue Guardian

This character has evolved gradually from a copy of Acroyear from the Micronauts to his current form. A while ago I became briefly fixated with modelling robots, partly because the process of modelling organic characters had become so frustrating. The nice thing with robots is that you just have to make a bunch of basic parts and then stick them together. Easy.

Green Lantern

...sort of. I've been slightly fixated with the character lately for some reason, possibly something to do with the recent film trailer, or perhaps because there is something so refreshingly un-dark (and un-Wolverine and un-Batman) about this magic ring-wielding guy in the silly suit. Anyway, I also made this dog character a while ago and just wanted to do something with him.

Eye Pod

I'm intending to do a series of this depicting the universe's most dangerous aliens with a little profile for each one. Only managed to squeeze out one so far.

Planet of origin:
The EyePlanet (located in the constellation of App'llll.)

Modus operandi:
Likes to attach itself to its victims and suck out their brain matter through their ears, all the while producing a tinny, rhythmic noise that will sound, to bystanders, like a rock or dance track that they almost recognise but can't quite make out.

Usually found in:
Buses or train carriages.

Proverbs 14:10

This was drawn months ago but I've only just managed to colour it in :(

Work in progress - Monkey

Another cute animal model. As you can see from the picture, I've run into a bit of difficulty with the feet overlapping, and am trying to figure out a way to remedy this without pulling the poor guy's legs in opposite directions.

A couple of works in progress

Two of the characters I've been working on over the last few months. The fish has already been rigged in Poser but thanks to the limitations of Poser I can't for the life of me figure out a way to make the mouth open and close properly. (The Pixar guys make this sort of thing look so easy!)

Back again

Crikey, how long has it been? (Way too long probably!) In an ideal world I'd get far more creative stuff done and post it on here, but in the ideal world I wouldn't have to earn a living. Anyway...

Just lately I've been making models in Wings 3d. Lots of them. Not finishing any of them, mind. I've just got this irrepressible urge to make funny animals. Go figure.