IF: Wheel

Yeah... I dunno.  This week's IF theme was "Wheel".  I had a different idea before this one but it just wasn't "working" for me.  It felt like a forced joke.  This one (for whatever reason) seemed to come naturally.  I was debating on the design of the rickshaw, whether or not the top should be up, should the crocodile have a fan or umbrella, how should the rats' tails go, and other things when I just decided to give them blank stares on all their faces and try to drive home the point that "yes, this is just one of those odd things".

IF: Wings

Granted this is a cape and not actually wings but I took the advice of my own piece and didn't take it too seriously.  I was debating whether or not to put Robin in there as well but he always seemed to have this spirit anyway and I didn't think it would be as ironic. 

IF: Myth

So it's been a while since my last post (a really long while) so I decided to go ahead and sneak a Illustration Friday submission into my schedule.  A bit of an odd choice for my first post of the year, I know.  But the theme was "Myth" and there were plenty of pieces of Bigfoot, unicorns, Medusa and Lance Armstrong.  I saw "Rise of the Guardians" recently with my son.  And although I thought the design of the Tooth Fairy was original, I still think that anything that would buy a left over piece of your body for a quarter (or a dollar due to inflation) would look a little more creepy.  Like Peter Lorre with wings.

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. 

 

A Crappy Little Story

Wow. My apologies to whoever reads this thing.  I hadn’t realized how long it had been since my last post.  Been pretty busy I guess.  Don’t think I had a change of heart and started “feelings” for my job.  No sir.  My opinions of the average workplace have not changed and are filled with just as much boredom and loathing as ever.  So I will reaffirm my position with a story too good to keep to myself.  It’s completely true and even comes with an illustration as all great stories do.  Let’s begin…

It was a late Tuesday evening and I had just trudged back to my work room after a particularly loquacious staff meeting.  To help shed some of the vocational misery, I went to my whiteboard and started to draw a quick sketch.  The illustration ended up being a simple caricature of me holding a plunger.   A dialog bubble presented the phrase “I’m tired of cleaning this shit up.”  This was just a simple, metaphorical statement regarding my tasks of having to fix mistakes made by others.  It was not meant as anything else.

The very next day I needed to use the office restroom.  When I entered the territory I had noticed that the fan had been turned on (a clear sign that something terrible had just occurred).  I approached the chair with caution and found that not only had the toilet been clogged and backed up with sluggish liquid to the brim, but the floor had small, off-colored pools surrounding the bowl like disgusting, fluid land mines protecting Hitler’s bunker.  The plunger stood next to it like the step child no one pays attention to, cold and sadly unused.  I went back into the main office, having not been able to use the facilities, and walked the halls to see who was responsible for the act and what, if anything, they were doing to remediate it.  To my disgust (but not surprise) I found everyone working at their desks, typing away at emails and talking to nobody in particular on the phones.  No one was running for paper towels.  No one was searching for disinfectant that was surely never purchased.  No one was doing a damn thing to clean up the disaster in the men’s room!  I knew who the culprit was of course, through process of elimination but I did not call them out.  I honestly wasn’t sure what I would have said.  “Clean up your shit!” would have been appropriate but for some reason it sounded foolish in my head.  So, having worked in maintenance during previous employment, I found a pair of gloves, fixed the clog, and cleaned up the mistake left by someone else.  Just like my drawing had predicted. 

The following day the individual responsible came in my office to discuss something and noticed my cartoon on the board.  “Oh, was that you who fixed the toilet?” they asked.  As if they had thought that Santa Claus had come in early with a brigade of janitorial elves to magically clean the place up.  The person went on to tell me how they tried, oh how they tried, to unclog the porcelain beast.  I wanted to ask how they tried since the plunger seemed to be void of any kind of moisture and that no form of material was laid down in attempt to absorb the yellowish debris. I wanted to, but more than that I wanted this man out of my office.  After the apology was made and the slightly embarrassed (but not embarrassed enough in my opinion) man left my room, some fellow employees, having heard the story, came in and drew brown gobs to my picture for added effect resulting in the final picture you see here. 

I guess I should be careful with what I decide to draw on this apparently cursed whiteboard.  But then, I was going to draw a pineapple in full Luche Libre ensemble, so whatever.

Meeting Minute Mad Libs

Here's a little game you can play while you're sitting waiting for the meeting to end and hoping that no one else decides to bring up an issue that will keep everyone there another half hour.  If your meeting has minutes or notes printed out for everyone, try picking out certain words to create a funny sentence.  You can highlight, underline or circle the words (I suggest you do it lightly so no one else catches on to what you're doing). 

Here's one that I did during a meeting.  I later went back over all the other text with a marker so you could see the specific words I chose.  The sentence now reads "Charlie recommended A hard set of caulk be installed up Ben".

  A childish choice, I know, but it kept me entertained during the two hour snoozer.  I also drew a monkey.  Remember to keep a serious face while you're going through and picking out the words.  Make it look like you're really studying the notes.  Then later you can write them all down on sticky notes and post them around the office for more fun.

My sentiments...exactly.

If you're like me, you probably don't care too much for the job you're in right now.  But, with the economy being in the shape it's in currently, you don't really have the opportunity to just drop everything and say...oh, I dunno...become a undersea explorer or bounty hunter.  You probably have a family or pets that like to eat.  So you go to work, do your job, get your cash money, and hope you still have your boring job tomorrow.

Well this is a tribute to what really goes on in my head while I'm sitting in the typical meetings that most people call "bored meetings".  Here I'll post my doodles and thoughts and hopefully provide some ideas on how you can help pass the time away silently in your meetings without letting anyone else in the room know that you haven't been paying any attention.

Here's a few of my sketches I did during a late night staff meeting.