Tea for three

Tea is one of the best things you can ever have the fortune of drinking.  Most people waste it by slogging a tea bag into a cup of water.

The real way to drink tea is getting loose leaf tea.  The cruddy bits in the bags are what's left over from the good stuff.

I did a series of drawings for Happy Pantry based on a little bit of word play.  Only the first one is used...the other two were deemed not Happy Pantry worthy.

Tea He easily led to Tea She.  But then as I was going for the third...trying to think of how to make a tea an it - I remembered Cousin Itt from the Addams Family.  He always wore sunglasses and a bowler hat.  So, if Cousin Itt happened to be a tea cup, it would be a weird little hairy tea cup with a hat.

Not for Happy Pantry consumtion

These are illustrations for our Happy Pantry Facebook page - www.facebook.com/happypantry - fun stuff, but we ended up having better illustrations or felt that we didn't need to talk about pee...

I thought it was particularly funny - but since we're trying to appeal to moms and kids - it was deemed off brand.

This next one was fine, but we have a better illustration in mind so this went in the scrap heap:

Check us out on facebook!  Buy stuff from our store!  Or do none of the above!  Horray!

Happy Pantry sells items now!

It's the thing we've been working on for the last year or so

The Happy Pantry Store is finally open for business!

We currently have a bunch of cute necklaces with a variety of adorable illustrations:

These are just a few of the characters...many more at the store.

We also have a great looking apron and towel:

artwork...

I've been very busy with all the Happy Pantry stuff my wife and I have been working on.  Here's a sample of some of them...

Microstock report for January 2013

I'm pretty sure I skipped a month, but here's a fully updated microstock breakdown:

Shutterstock let us down last month - every month, if you get more than $100 sold, Shutterstock pays it out.  Sadly, in December, we only sold $91...but it gets added on to the next month and we'll collect February 1st.

We still haven't added any new files - and a lot of the sites are selling less - but they're still selling, and that's why I figured we might as well put out a report.

instead we're working on actual licensing.  We've drawn a series of characters we call Happy Pantry and they even have their own facebook page. 

Star Wars: Darth Gonzo

Disney recently purchased Star Wars - and a lot of people immediately started photoshopping Princess Leia into pictures with the Disney princesses, or putting Mikey ears on Darth Vader.

I thought it would be awesome if another Disney property was mashed up with Star Wars.  What about a Muppets Star Wars?  Obviously Luke would be Kermit...or would he? - because Miss Piggy should be Leia, but that would mean that Kermit and Piggy would be attracted to each other AND brother and sister.

Oh well...that's for Disney to figure out.  But hopefully sooner than later!

I drew this:

Darth Maul was one of the few good things to come out of the first trilogy.  Too bad his death was such a lame end.

microstock report for October 2012

This was a pretty decent month.  We've moved on past microstock licensing and are currently working on creating an actual line of characters that we can license for real (or is it called macro licensing?).  Those are over at www.happy-pantry.com and we've even set up a facebook page (now in it's second month!) at www.facebook.com/happypantry.

But it's nice - even though we've not contributed anything to these microstock sites, they continue to produce for us.  If you're interested in even just dipping your toe into the microstock pool - check out shutterstock first.  And once you have a handle on that, look into the other sites.

Microstock report for September 2012

Shutterstock - this was only the second time in the history of licensing illustrations from this site that we didn't make the minimum payout amount for the month (we were off by one dollar!).

We had some high numbers for August - and since we're still not uploading new images, it wasn't going to be too likely that we sustain that amount each month.  Slowly each site is selling less and less, but we have other projects taking up our time, so microstock licensing isn't as important.

Microstock report for August 2012

This is our microstock report for August 2012:

It was a much better month!  In July we saw a sag in all of the sites - none more disappointing than Istockphoto which was at an all time low of $5.38 - but this month many of the sites rallied back with high(er) numbers.

Shutterstock, as always, led the way with.  It helped to have 2 EL sales (that's a $32 download).  And it continues to sell the most on a daily basis.

One big surprise was Istockphoto - we used to have sales of almost $100 a month on this site - and it waned slowly lower and lower, until last month we only had $5 in sales.  Well this month it finally beat Dreamstime (which has been a consistent second place).

Overall it was a nice month - several sites reached their payout amounts and overall we reached $302!  Here's to hoping September continues to treat us kindly.

Star Trek Kids

We had some friends that had a Spocktoberfest party last night.  That's a Star Trek themed Octoberfest party, for those of you who didn't get the mashup.

So Tracey and I decided (mostly it was Tracey) to do cupcakes and cookies with a Star Trek theme.  We made the cupcakes and spray painted them silver (which felt more space agey) - I drew this little kid in a Trek shirt and did two variations which we cut out and (using toothpicks) placed on top of each cupcake:

There's the red shirt guy that will usually die before the episode ends, the middle one is Spock and the right side guy is based on Kirk (before the weight gain).

and here are the red shirts in cookie form:

Lotzi: taught

I did this for the Illustration Friday topic this week - Teacher.  Sadly I'm finishing it on Thursday night, so it won't see much time on the site as it resets every Friday.

Lotzi's pose was inspired by my time in history class.  It was a general art history class - and even though I was quite interested in the topic, I made the mistake of scheduling the 8:00 class.  And I've since become a morning person, I couldn't get up before 10 back then...well, I could, but I need frequent naps in class.  I still ended up learning a lot, but it probably would have worked better if I was actually awake for more of the class...

I created this in Adobe Photoshop...starting with this sketch:

 Then I solidified some of the lines and revised the drawing a bit:

And then it was just a matter of cleaning up the lines on a new layer and painting color and texture on a different layer.

Oh - and I had another teacher in junior college that insisted we always hold our writing implement - the reason was that if you're not holding your pen/pencil then you probably weren't going to take notes...or, at least, you were more inclined to take better notes if you were holding something to write it all down with...

Zombee

I love zombies.  I was trying to think of a different take on it - or even a possible bad guy to accost the hero of a story and I thought, "what if it was a zom-bee?"  So here it is.

I created this in Adobe Photoshop.

Microstock report for July 2012

It was a very slow month for microstocks in July.

We barely made our payout amount on Shutterstock with $106.

Across the boards we had small dips at each site.  The only bright spot is that we had a couple of sales on Veer that finally made me add it as a category (and take Canstock off, since it's barely made $100 in 3 years and only made fifty cents this year so far).  And I signed up for a few new sites - the best one, so far, is Depositphoto - which had just about $5 in sales...not bad for a brand new site...well, in such a slow month.

August is already shaping up to be a better month.  On day one we had an EL and an OD (that's $28 and $2.70) on Shutterstock (which is already closing in on $50 for the month of August...or almost half of what we made in all of July).  So we'll see if it can continue!

IF: Carry

This week's Illustration Friday Theme was Carry.  I thought a good way to tweak the topic would be to do a drawing of the Stephen King horror movie Carrie.

I did two versions.  This first one is the pg-13 version.

This is the R rated one:

Lotzi: All three in the series

And this is all three in the series together:

Lotzi doesn't hear any evil, speak any evil, or see any evil...unless he wants to.  He reserves the right.

Lotzi: Speak no Evil

This is the third and last in the series:

Lotzi doesn't speak any evil...unless you talk about his mother, then he might have some choice words for you...

This was my original drawing of Lotzi: Speak no Evil - but it looked too much like he was surprised or horrified...and I really had to stretch his little arm to come up to his mouth, so I redrew it where he was looking down and could hold his mouth closed more comfortably.

Lotzi: Hear no Evil

This is the second illustration in the series:

Lotzi doesn't hear evil because he's too busy listening to Weezer (but only their songs from the 90s).

I adapted the pose from the illustration on 'Lotzi: See no Evil"

Lotzi: See no evil

I thought of this the other day and thought I could do a series of drawings of just Lotzi - with no real bg or anything to distract from him.  And possibly do it as a way to showcase some of Lotzi's character.

First up is See No Evil:

I don't see no doggone evil!

As you can tell, Lotzi is very passionate about his senses...or is it his lack of sense?

This is also the look my wife gave me when I tried to suggest we go to Comic-con this year...

This was originally drawn in Photoshop:

 I cleaned up the lines in Adobe Illustrator (where I adjusted the horn and solidified the lines) and painted it in Photoshop.

Lotzi: Off Model surprise

I liked the idea of this drawing - as a companion piece to the previous post where Lotzi is about to draw on a piece of paper...the only problem with this one is how off model Lotzi is. So please ignore this post and move on to the next one.

I just thought he looked cute enough that I should post it.  Especially how he's slightly up on his toes...

Lotzi: Piece of Paper

The best thing about drawing is that you start with a blank piece of paper (or, these days, a blank screen on your cintiq) and you can do whatever you want with it.

It all depends on one's education and experience as to what comes out...

Anyway - this is my most recent illustration:

That's how I hold my pencil (only, with my left hand)