Red

Here's a little concept art I did recently as I was trying to nail down a look for a short Red Riding Hood picture book story I was thinking of writing up some day. While it's not the best stand alone illustration, I'm happy with the look of the character and her world. I'm sort of working on figuring out two styles, one more of what some might call a more traditional "comic book" style for my stuff that is geared toward kids in the middle grade age range and something more like this for the younger, picture book set.

Portfolio A-Go-Go!

I updated my portfolio site. I hope you love it. odditycomics.com

Time Turtle!!!

Time Turtle's adventure through...Time!!!

New piece, hopefully for my portfolio. We'll see if it makes the cut.

I'm gearing up for the Northern Ohio SCBWI conference in September and I'm trying to revamp much of my portfolio before then. I'm wicked excited about this conference because it has been about 2 years since I last attended one. It's always really informative and a good time.

I love looking through old Polaroids.

Look how cute Mongo was back then.

He's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast...

And he's gotta be fresh from the fight!

Gym Sock!
Hero to all the kids of Squaresville Middle School!

The Raging Cycloptic Janitors of the Fifth Dimension don't stand a chance.

It's Beach Time!

I've been hanging on to this one for a while because I just couldn't seem to get the crab right. I think he's looking pretty good now.

Mysterious tales of suspense... and mystery!

If you were a kid who was into mystery novels, would you judge this book by its cover and beg your parents to fork over cold hard cash for it?

Mind you, this isn't a real cover to a real novel. Not yet anyway. For now it's just a new portfolio piece that I worked up this week.

I think I'd like to do more book covers. They're a hoot.

I don't really keep a proper sketchbook...

but I should. I do sketch quite a bit, mostly little character heads on scraps of paper that I find around the office. I was taught in art school (and I've heard countless artists say it since) that I should keep a running sketchbook at all times. I'm not the biggest fan of drawing in the bound books. I dig my loose leaf. So instead I have tons of loose paper that I shove into folders for projects or just a random sketch folder. Using an actual sketchbook would probably make sense, but I've stopped buying them because I usually only fill them half way, put them away and forget about them. I did once fill a small moleskine which was a cool experience because it gave me this sense of accomplishment. Maybe there's something to sketchbooks after all. I'm rambling because my brain still waking up. Rambling to end in 3...2...1...

The sketches above comprise some of my favorites over the last couple months. Except one, which is a few years old and has appeared on this blog before. I needed it to fill a space. One of these is a character sketch from a project that I'm working on now, but the others are just random characters. However, who knows, they may show up in a story somewhere down the line.

Tremont Art Walk

Attention People of Earth: Will you be in the Cleveland area this Friday? Will you be in need of activities to stimulate your mind and entertain your eyeballs? I implore you to consider spending your evening at the Tremont Art Walk and swinging by Studio Le Beau for free refreshments, free pizza and the opportunity to freely stare at images of cartoon characters fighting robots. A smattering of artworks, created by me, will be available for public viewing this Friday at Studio Le Beau in the historic Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. 2360 West 11th Street.

Style Test

Fooling around with a sort of old-school style test. It reminds me of brochures I would have seen at the school nurse's office back in the day. "Robbie feels happy because he has high self esteem."

Personally, I think Robbie looks happy because he's walking through the park on a wicked nice day.

I inked it all scribbly with an ultra fine point Sharpie and then colored it in PhotoShop. I've got a book Idea that might lend itself to a style more like this than my usual art style. I might have to do some tests with actual images from said book.

Astounding Tales of Thrilling Adventure

The Professor is slashing prices all over the place.

So the concept that I had for this and the five pieces that I posted before it was to create brightly-colored, energetic illustrations that could be stills from the greatest Saturday morning action cartoon of all time. In reality, I don't know what that show is. It became mostly cool, somewhat quirky characters fighting an army of robots.

Visually my style is influenced by a lot of cartoons, especially shows from the late 90's early 2000's like Dexter's Lab, PowerPuff Girls and Samurai Jack. For this project I went full-on Samurai Jack mode and lost most of the line work. Those shows mean a lot to me because even though I didn't grow up with them, they started hitting the airwaves while I was in college and they helped point me in a new direction as a storyteller and cartoonist.

Another notable thing for me about this project is that, while I'm framing it in the context of this imaginary cartoon show, I didn't give any consideration to the story. That's pretty rare for me. Usually I can't do any personal work without the creating a story around it. Even when I'm doing random sketches of people's faces, my brain starts forming a back story for them as characters. Mostly this is fine with me. I see myself as a storyteller. Sometimes it can become burdensome, so I intentionally set out to avoid thinking about a story and just focus on crafting the images. Of course, most of these characters have shown up in my work before and I'm sure stories about them will creep in to my head eventually.

For now though, it was just a really fun project and I'm glad to have done it.

Maxin' and Relaxin'

Because sometimes, you just gotta.

Battle Royale w/Cheese

Getting down to my last few pieces for this series. I think I could draw cartoon battles all day.

Awe Yeah Buddy!

I just want to be clear... I don't hate robots.

I like 'em just fine. Quite a bit in fact.

I just don't mind seeing them get punched in the head because, y'know... they're robots.

Especially evil black and green robots.

The Big Purple Fist of Impending Doom!!!

Look out Octobot!!!

I'm having a ton of fun with these images. It's good to dive into a personal project now and then. Seems to help get the creative gears turning and keep me from burning out on client work.

As much as I enjoy the client projects that I have, there is no greater feeling than just sitting down to create whatever I want.

These robot parts just keep piling up...

Here's a new piece featuring my Professor character and a horde of defeated robot minions. This one is a bit of a departure from my previous illustrations of him due to the colored background and shading. Not a big difference. I'm going to spend the next week or so working on similarly themed images, though they won't all feature the same characters.

And now a viking drops some knowledge on all a y'all.

I can't keep him off the microphone. I don't even bother trying anymore.

Amazed, amused, baffled and perhaps even...STUNNED!

Not sure what the emotion is here. Mostly just a sad attempt at ridiculous copycat Manga face to break the blog silence.

Blog silence resumes.

Nah, Just kidding. I'm going to start using this thing again real soon.

Honest.

It's 20011 Y'all

And it's time to get ill.