PINOCCHIO VS DRACULA in color

While digging around for another old picture I found this. It's a color version of a black and white drawing I posted a long time ago. I figured I'd go ahead and post it since I haven't posted much lately. If you snoop around you can find the black and white version.

In other news, I've just recently completed a 32-page Gold Key style comic book. Now I'm looking around for a printer who does newsprint. That's surprisingly difficult to find these days. Supposedly the newsprint paper is dusty and mucks up a digital printer. It's funny because back in the day newsprint was used because it was cheaper. Now it's more expensive than fancy shiny white paper. I wanted newsprint for nostalgic reasons. If anyone knows where I can get a comic book printed the old fashioned way let me know.

THE SCREAMING WILHELMS #16

Here's the next installment of Screaming Wilhelms. This one seems more like an editorial cartoon rather than a traditional comic strip.

And for those of you who want more reasons to keep looking at it, here it is with a little color in it:

If you'd like to see more Screaming Wilhelms comics, click HERE.

Nasty Sinaster

Nasty Sinaster is a villainous creep. He delights in the misery of others. He looks like the Blood Count  because they may possibly be distant relatives. Probably the main difference is his hair isn't as kempt.

It's fun to draw something after being lazy for so long. A lot of things have happened since my last posts. We moved, I got kidney stones, and gangrene in my appendix. I'm healing up pretty good now and am starting to feel better than I have in a long time. The appendix hurt pretty bad but if I had to vote I'd say the kidney stones were a little more miserable. The appendix only hurt until it was cut out. The kidney stones just kept on hurting and hurting for weeks. I didn't realize this but kidney stones have sharp points all over them and that's why they hurt so bad. The biggest one I had was slightly smaller than a B-B.

The silver lining is I lost a lot of weight! I didn't feel like eating for days on end. I'm sure the weight will come back but while it's off I'm gonna take a bunch of photos of myself doing regular everyday things. Then when I'm old and see the photos it'll look like I was normally a thin person.

HILLBILLY SKETCH

Alongside monkeys and Frankenstein, hillbillies are one of my favorite things (even though I don't draw them that often.) I like the easy-going world they live in. Li'l Abner, the Beverly Hillbillies and those Foxfire books are all I have to go on, but it seems like the hillbilly life would be the greatest thing ever.

You wouldn't need to do anything but sit on your porch on the front of your shack perched on the edge of a cliff, and shoot guns, play music and nap. Occasionally you'd bathe "whether you needed it or not" in a tin tub out in the front yard.

If you didn't like your neighbors, you'd shoot at them. It's just plain simple logic. Bullets never kill people when you're a hillbilly; they only burn your butt a little. No big deal! Every once in a while you might need to fight off a pack of wolves, or fight off Bigfoot or a bear, but the benefits far outweigh the bad stuff. You can steal pies out of window sills and eat till you're fat, and no one would care since nobody else is beautiful either. That is, except for the women. They all look like Daisy Mae and Ellie May.

If you know how to read and write you could probably become mayor. If you know how to count you could be the richest feller in the county. All the old women would have super strength, so you'd never actually have to do any backbreaking work yourself. You just sit and play your homemade banjo while your woman plowed the turnip patch.

The hillbilly above came from this doodle. I didn't like the other 2 guys that much so I didn't color them.

PROCRASTINATION COMIC

Here's a comic strip about my favorite pastime. It's another comic that could go on forever. Maybe it would be funny as a really thick book.

Here's an alternately colored version (which I do a lot of times, because sometimes one color looks no better to me than another, and I have difficulty settling on one.)

And here is is in black and white. I believe I like this one best. The slightly varying gray tones remind me of old UPA cartoons.

CAP'N CRUNCH COLORING BOOK

Of all the cereals I think I enjoyed Cap'n Crunch the best, with the monster cereals at a close second. Cap'n Crunch had the best prizes and I liked the way they drew him back then, with the eye bags.

Here's a coloring book I found on Ebay. It's a strange image on the cover. Jean LaFoote is twisting the Cap'n's mustache. Is that a torture? It doesn't look like it hurts. Is it humiliating? Lots of times people will twist their own mustache when they are bored, or when they're thinking up an evil plot. This torture is a failure in my opinion. Much like if he were to twiddle the Cap'n's thumbs for him.

Some of the pages inside were colored. Look at it! It's obvious this kid has no understanding of human sclera! Now that I think about it this is a pretty violent picture for a kid to be coloring anyway. What's going on in the head of THIS kid? Why'd he pick THIS page?

For fun I removed the color. I POSTERIZED the drawing down to 8 colors so there wasn't a whole lot to have to deal with, and then I used the REPLACE COLOR feature, and changed everything (other than the blacks) to white. It only took a few minutes, and TADA!

It seemed too white so I replaced that tan background.

Upon viewing the bad stuff in the book I think, "Wow! That kid needs to do a better job!"

Some of the pages are colored by a kid with more expert abilities. He even did Jean LaFootes' whiskers. When I see this good stuff I think, "Wow! This kid is too old to be doing a coloring book!"
So sayeth a 41 year old guy who bought a Cap'n Crunch coloring book.

AVATAR MOVIE POSTER AND A DENIM JACKET

I was noticing the other day how similar these 2 images were. I know it doesn't mean anything; I just thought it was interesting.

DR. BLOTZ: SCIENCE EXPERT, and BRISBANE #1

Is there anything more naturally humorous than digits and coding?!

You might think I'm being lazy with the coloring, but I... uh... eh, you're right. Sometimes when I read a comic with tons of ink work and lots of coloring I don't enjoy it.

If it looks like the illustrator spent hours on a page I feel guilty if I don't in turn look at it for that many hours. I like thinking the gag was still funny and enjoyable to the illustrator by the time the drawing was finished, and not a hated and despised thing.

If I see a comic nowadays with the airbrushed shading I unintentionally take that into consideration while I try to read the story and it slows down the action.

This depends on the genre of the comic for me. If it's a scary story then I do like seeing the heavy tooling and long hours of work. That maybe even adds to the scariness and creepiness when I know the illustrator's fingers, eyes and neck where in pain by the time the page was finished.

There. I rambled again. I haven't rambled for a few days.

DISGUSTFUL DARRELL

This guy is pretty fun to draw. He's mostly a triangle with the top point bent over.

I still ain't sure what color he should be. I guess red seems the most obvious.

Here's the original sketch. Nothing really changed. I kind of like these original fingers better, without the claws. I'm not sure about his name either. I was wanting a character who did mean tricks to people. I have lots of mean prank ideas in my head and this would be a way to get them out of my system without actually maiming people.

MR. SMOOTH

This is one of the easiest comics I've ever made. I only had to draw a single picture. I'm happy with how it turned out.
Even though it's the same picture from frame to frame, it somehow evokes a continually changing body language as it goes. I sense a coldness in the lady in the last panel, and an uncomfortableness in the man. It was sort of intentional, but mostly accidental.

I might do more Mr. Smooth comics in the future. I can use this same image and just change the text. I didn't give it a title yet, because I'm still working on one. Mr. Smooth is ehh. Maybe Mr. Buttertongue, or Mr. Sugartongue would be funnier.

Hope everyone has a happy Christmas.

SLIM and SLAM #1

Here's a whole new set of characters. I can't stick with anything! Eventually I wanna do more Blood Count comics but I keep getting distracted. I added some yellow shades to this because people like color.


Here's what it looks like without color:

I hear all kinds of techniques when it comes to chess. One guy told me you have to think 7 moves ahead. That's ridiculous! Who can do that?! And then if the other guy doesn't move like you wanted him to, your plans are down the crapper. I used to know some 3-move winning trick back in the day, but I've forgotten it now. I'm sure it's easy to look up on the googlenets. I remember it was something to do with moving a pawn out of the way so the queen and bishop could slide out.

MYSTERIOUS MOON OF ZANZIGRORX

I don't know why someone would have a switch like that on their suit, but it seems science-fictiony and high-tech to have one.

It's a symmetrical (on a color wheel) color scheme. There are names for color schemes like primary, analogus, triadic, quadratic, blah blah blah... HECK! I cain't remember all that! It's easier to just remember to keep the patterns symmetrical on a color wheel.

If the color wheel were a bicycle wheel, then I'm talking about the spokes of the wheel being symmetrical. The amount of spokes isn't as important as their symmetricalness.

The easiest is the "I" shape, which is just 2 opposite colors on the wheel.

The "Y" shape looks good. The 2 arms of the Y can swing out at any angle as long as they swing out symmetrically with each other.

On this space alien picture I used a "peace symbol" shape.

Yellow is the root color, and then flanking the yellow symmetrically on either side is green and orange. His suit is nearing blue which is not a part of this color scheme, but since it's almost white, it doesn't really disrupt anything too badly.

Purple is a safe color to use since it's exactly opposite of the root color yellow, and keeps the symmetrical formation of the color scheme. Actually I could just as easily say purple is the root color and yellow is the opposite. "Root" color doesn't really mean main color; It kind of delineates the centerline of the color scheme spoke arrangement. I could use or not use the purple and I'd still have a symmetrical spoke arrangement; likewise I could take or leave the yellow and it wouldn't really disrupt anything as far as a color scheme goes.

It's not important to have exact proportions of each color in your color scheme. In fact it's better to pick one as the main color (and it doesn't need to be the root color) and then use the others in small quantities. The smallness of the color doesn't affect the noticability of the color. If it's a symmetrically-shaped color scheme it will work even in tiny doses.