IF: Identical

So I wanted to do this once for last week's Illustration Friday theme which was "Tall" but I was busy trying to survive the week from hell.  But I guess this kind of fits in with this week's theme, "Identical", as well.  Kind of.  Whatever.  I know it's not the most original as I'm sure I've seen pictures of people with legs like trees many times before, but it was in my mind and I finally sat down and just did it late last night.  Not the best feet I ever drew, but they've always been a bit of a pain for me. Hands too.  And no, the man is not Amish.  I just didn't know what kind of hair to give him.  The hat seemed like a better idea at the time.

IF: Lonely

Holy smokes this one took me a while!  I decided to try something different for a change: my patience.  I typically don't like taking more than a day to work on any single piece.  I get too impatient and/or start second guessing myself.  This time I had an idea and stuck with it.  Even though my mind was telling me that it was stupid or that it wouldn't make sense or would be too hard to see.  I had also skipped the past couple IF themes so I thought I owed it to whoever to put more effort, or at least time, into this week's piece.  Even after I had finished all those freakin' lines I felt like there was still something missing.  I figured out at the last minute that I needed to put the cap for the marker ( that's what that little black blob is) on the window sill.  For whatever reason, that seemed to complete it for me.  I know there are bigger issues that I should have corrected like, "where's the glass for this window?" or "aren't the shutters supposed to open to the inside of the room?".  Oh, well.  At least I got the marker cap.

Illustration Friday: Suspend

Click to make bigger.  You can almost taste the energy.

Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme: Suspend.  This was a fun memory from elementary school.  Every recess we would run out to the monkey bars and play the game of "chicken" until some kid lost an eye.  I remember the bars being red hot from the sun and that most of the time kids would give up from their hands burning before the kicking could even start.  One of the techniques we would use would be to get a fist full of sand and rub our hands together to really rough 'em up and give us extra grip on the bars.  Good times.  I bet more people would be involved in presidential debates if this is how they were handled.

Illustration Friday: Refresh

So here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme: Refresh.  Etch-a-Sketch was the first thing that popped in my head.  I just got back into town from a frustrating, out-of-state business trip and I had a ton of gobbledeegoop swimming around in my head.  I just wished I could shake my head and make all the nonsense disappear.  But, drawing this seemed to work just as well.

Illustration Friday: Space

Here's my piece for the theme: SPACE.  If you look it up, it turns out that NASA apparently had quite an issue getting their space monkeys to survive the trip mainly because of parachute issues.  Parachute issues!  You'd think they would have tried it out on watermelons first if they were trying to work out the parachute bugs.  So I'm sure the chimps (or rather rhesus monkeys) would have turned down the offer given the track record, had they been given the chance.  

Strip Search

Here's a quick attempt I made at a graphic novel excerpt.  I was facing writer's and artist's blocks and wasn't sure what to do so I just did what I know.  Sittin' in an office, hatin' on my job.  Keep in mind this doesn't look like me (I don't even have close to the amount of hair this guy has and I don't smoke)and my office isn't that big, nor do we have that many employees.  But I do work off a flat screen monitor.  I didn't bother drawing perfect frames or worrying about spacing.  I just drew it quick, inked it and later on colored it in.

Click to make bigger.  Bigger make read better.

Silly, no?  Here's some other "excerpts" I did when I had a free minute on some note paper.  There's no more than what you see.  I just made it look like they're part of a bigger story.  One of these times I'll have an idea good enough to expand on.

I always thought that it might make a neat story if Nosferatu never died in the movie and instead lives quietly alone in an apartment complex.  Then his neighbor would bring him terrible news articles and he'd go get vengeance on the villains.

Here's me and my partner in crime, Nick.  We work on animated shorts under the name: Illumation.  Here's a peek at our story development process.  Basically we just jabber on at each other until one of us says something worth making... like Eagles!  You can check out our blog at http://illustrationanimation.blogspot.com/ for other fun nonsense.

I know, I know.  The whole "aliens and their lack of sexual interaction" joke has been done enough.  It seems like we're always making them way too interested in our asses or we make them out to be a bunch eunuchs.  Oh, well.  I gave her a belly button though so you know she didn't come from no egg!

I'm sure I'll send more of these down the road.  Maybe next time in color!

Pug Pun



It's inconvenient 'cause they're always squirming.

It's been one of those days where you have more work on your plate than you have time in the day and so you just don't do any of it.  I took a minute to clear my head and this is what came out on my whiteboard.  My sister has a pug who's always trying to pull this kind of crap.  Now I have to get back to what I've been paid to do.

UPDATE- The previous picture I posted said "Ya got pug in yer eye!" but the phrase I was going for was supposed to be from "Here's mud in yer eye". So I made a revision. If my dad ever read these things he would have caught that. That's why you do your research before you just start sketching things.

The Funny Side of the Force

I know Chewbacca was taller than this.  But I did get Han's red stripe.

I had a funny picture of a sad wookie in my head and I was trying to figure out what exactly would make him unhappy.  It just so happened that one of my dogs "sprang a leak" earlier that morning so I thought it would be funny to see Han Solo scolding Chewbacca.  He seemed to yell at him for everything else.  And I doubt the walking carpet ever used a restroom.  This seemed like a completely reasonable situation to me so I took a break from my work and put it up on my whiteboard.  And for all the Star Wars geeks out there, I made sure to look up the proper spelling of Chewie. 

Month Monsters

If you're like me, and I'm going to assume you are, you probably have one of those tacky calendars hanging up in your office that you got from some rep promoting their business or a family member that thought the thing you needed most in your life was monthly pictures of pugs in "cute" outfits.  And you probably stare at that calendar, month after month, wishing that it would metamorphosize into the inspirational and motivational bulletin it was intended to be.  Well, this doesn't exactly inspire anything, but it's fun, easy and takes you away from what you've been paid to do for a little while.

April - Abigail.  All little monsters like to hang upside down.  Just like my little girl.

May - Mitchell.  Rockin' an '80s cell phone and hoping to get some reception.

June - Jeffrey.  He's just a hairy cycloptopus takin' a bath.

I was given a classy American Landscape calendar from an isurance agancy somehow and I noticed that there was always soemthing missing from them.  Every month there was this beautiful scenery with a big hole in it.  And what fills holes?  Monsters, of course.  So I've decided at each month to add a creature of some sort into these majestic landscapes using only the basic office supplies: pencil, pen, highlighters, scissors, and tape.  I would have used a glue stick if our Purchasing Manager wouldn't be so cheap, or if we hadn't laid off our Purchasing Manager.  Oh well.

"Well I don't have a lanscape calendar and I can't draw" you might say.  No worries.  You can apply the same idea to almost any calendar and you don't need to draw anything if you don't want to.  Have a kitten calendar?  Take facial features (eyes, mouths, etc) from pictures of celebrities or coworkers and put them over the felines. Pictures of horses getting on your nerves? Deck them out in stickers and ads like they belong in Nascar.  Girls in bikinis?  Well, if you have to do something I suppose you could give them hilarious tattoos.  Or for added fun, do it to your coworkers' calendars and see how long it takes them to notice.

Attitude Adjustment

My monitor showcase.  It's usually more cluttered but I always clean up for guests.



The robot was a concept for my grandma's birthday card.  The middle one is my typical office empoyee with water cup.  The other guy is in his underpants 'cause I didn't want to draw clothes and having him fully naked seemed like a bad idea.  Might of helped ratings though.




I drew the bunny at the airport last week on my way to a meeting.  There was a kid sitting next to me who was nervous about flying alone and this seemed to cheer him up.  I'm not sure why though.  He must drink a lot of bad coffee.  The frog was just because those were the highlighter colors I had at the moment.  The "office pirate" was a concept I had for a daily comic strip.  It turned out that my idea had already been done (several times) for paper and web comics so I've put that idea on hold and trying to deveope another.  He's a good looking character though, so I'll have to put him in somewhere.


So I've spoken with friends and family who have read this blog and they've all commented that my theme is just a little too depressing.  Not that hating your job is depressing or out of the ordinary. But the fact that there is little-to-no inspiration or any kind of good news really turns people off.  And since I've always tried to turn people on, this constructive criticism really hit me.  So from now on I will make a serious effort to quit whining about my job and try more to show the wonderful ideas to help get through your day at the office (or wherever you're holed up in).  Because some things won't change.  Does my job stink for someone like me?  Yes.  Will it get better? Probably not.  Will it get worse? Most definitely.  Can I still have fun? You betcha!  Here's some photos of my own inspiration.  I constantly draw simple doodles on Post-it notes and other scrap paper.  Some of the better (or at least clearer) sketches I stick up on my monitor.  Kind of like my own little pep squad letting me know I haven't lost myself completely in this tempest that (for the time being) provides a steady paycheck.  I'll create some more posts very soon with some good ideas on creative ways to spend your time in the office.  Let me know if this still doesn't turn you on.

Quick Draw

Because my days are usually filled with back-to-back phone calls and angry emails, I find that I don't always have the time to sit and put some decent effort into a nice sketch.  So I've been challenging myself to create quick illustrations on my whiteboard in my office.  It has been another rough week (3 years running) so I drew a worn out fella having a smoke.  The whole thing took me just under a minute (it would have taken longer had I added hair).  I figured I should take a picture and save it before I or someone else erases it. 

Just some things

 Here are some pictures I drew on my whiteboard and some random paperwork.  Most of them are from last year and I know I've shown them to friends already but they seemed worth posting and I didn't really have anything to say.



My Lucha Libre pinapple I mentioned in my "Crappy Little Story" post last year.  Can you undertsand the words that are coming out of his mouth?

 



Yeah.  Don't know what I was thinking.  I just needed to draw something.
It received mixed reviews from around the office.  I didn't know it was an exhibit.



This is one of my favorites.  Simple in design and humor.
There's just something funny about a can of soup being portrayed as "gangsta".



My latest "creation".  Not sure where the thought came from on this one.
I guess it's supposed to represent the "little guy" taking on "the man".  Who knows.



New Year...Same S#!*

Well, the new year has proven to be off to the same start as we left the last one.  The economy continues to spiral downward and, as a result, companies continue to have lay-offs.  Such is the case with the company I work for.  And as it is whenever lay-offs happen, the duties of the fallen are put upon the remaining employees at no extra pay or compensation.  So I have been a bit busy as of late and have not had much time to attend meetings (I guess that's the silver lining), and therefore produce my motivational doodles.  So this time I am presenting some of my sketches from last year that I never uploaded.  I found them drawn on scrap paper and post-it notes and randomly hidden among other documents far less important.  Enjoy.