What if Pee Wee Herman and Forrest Gump Hung Out?

I had a thought the other day when I heard that Pee Wee Herman was getting another chance at a show.  It's kind of weird how he's this odd grown man - an odd old man now - and he wears these way too small for him suits which made me suddenly think of Forrest Gump - because they have similarly short haircuts, tiny suits, and little intellect.

And what if they were hanging out together?  Anyhow - this is my version of these two characters.  I couldn't stand that box of chocolates line, but it's iconic…I'd like to think that Pee Wee would also have  a snide remark for him if he tried that line on him...

Charlie Brown, you Pinhead!

"We have things of such good grief to show you"

My obsession with Hellraiser has reached a new low.  I did my original Hellraiser sketch:

And since he had a round head, I kept thinking about Charlie Brown and how his noggin lent itself to Pinhead's pins…in his head.

And then to further complete the circle (or the very long stretch), all you have to do is change blockhead to Pinhead and boom - instant crossover.

I looked up some Charlie Brown reference and picked out colors that were in his sunday comics - this one I completely ignored illustrator and did the entire thing in Photoshop.

Hellraiser Chatterer

While Pinhead had his addiction to acupuncture, The Chatterer, while not very talkative, had such a cool look.  Inside one's mouth, it's a horror show.  Have you ever looked under your tongue?  It's disgusting!  Well Clive Barker's imagination brings this out by pulling back the lips and exposing how brave dentists really are.

Anyhow - this is my version of the Chatterer from the Hellraiser series.  I got into them recently and have been obsessed with drawing the characters.

This was sketched out in photoshop, cleaned up in Illustrator and then painted in Photoshop.

Hellraiser Kid

This kid is quite the hellraiser!

An out of control acupuncture session…

I saw that Hellraiser was streaming on Netflix…and within a week I had watched 7 Hellraiser movies!  It turns out there are 9 movies!  And another one (that sounds like  a remake of the first) coming soon.

Here is the original sketch.  I opened it in Adobe Illustrator to clean up the lines and then painted it in Photoshop.

kid drawings

Developing a possible cartoon pitch

 version #1

version #2

How did I start buying stocks?

I've always been interested in stocks.  When I worked for Disneyland way back in the forever ago, I had them take a little bit out of my tiny paycheck which would be used to automatically purchase their stock.  With that I got a cool 5 stocks in Disney...because I only worked there for a few months before moving to Burbank to work in the fast paced world of shoes.  Eventually I got my animation job, but at first it was shoes. 

And what goes in those shoes?  Feet.  So many feet...so many unique smells.  Actually - it wasn't a lot of unique smells, a lot of people's feet smell the same.  Bad.  It was strange at how someone would come in to try on a shoe with the dirtiest foot.  We were urged by our managers to put on the shoes for them, they'd just hold their foot out and wiggle their toes in giddy anticipation of me trying to force a shoe that was clearly too small onto their enormous hoof.  After a few too many soul scaring experiences, I just started lightly tossing the box of shoes in their direction and walking to a safe (clean air) distance.  If you have a foot fetish, I'd suggest working in women's shoes, because you get right in there and get an eyeball full of toe fungus and gnarly appendages.  So it cures you of your urges and you never want to look at another foot again.  But that's not what I'm supposed to be talking about...

My five Disney stocks sat and sat and sat.  I didn't do anything to them because I didn't need them for anything, and selling them wouldn't net me too much - When I got them in the first place they were in the $30 range...I checked a few years later and saw (during the dark, Home on the Range and Meet the Robinsons days) that the price had gone down to the mid teens.  It was disheartening, but that's what stocks do.

So I left them.  Suddenly - just 14 years later, I checked out the price for Disney stocks and they were around the $80 range!  Sadly, I still only have 5 of them.

It was time to take a good hard look into stocks.  You could make a lot of money, but you could also lose a bunch.  The big thing is to invest in good companies with good people running them.  How can you tell?  I'm still trying to figure that out - but there are a lot of benchmarks and numbers that are readily provided on sites like finance.yahoo.com.

I had no idea there were so many companies that were trading publicly.  What do you do to find a good one?  Invest time to find a good one?  That sounded like a lot of work, so I just typed in best stocks, best penny stocks, best stocks 2014 and so on.  Each search had a number of websites telling you to pick this one, or choose that one.  It's a horrible way to do it as you're relying on their research with your hard earned monies.

When you're speculating, you end up doing a lot of market watching and start biting your fingernails...as the stocks go down, the tips of your fingers are next to go and if you're (un)lucky enough to choose a stock that's a real dud, feel free to chew through your fingers as it's probably the only way you'll be able to keep yourself from making a mistake like that again.

If you're not trying to gamble (that would be speculating on penny stocks and day trading), then you want to pick up a book like "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.  I have to warn you, it's incredibly dull.  But it'll get you on the right path to choosing a stock (or a portfolio of stocks) that are smart(er) choices.  There's always a bit of risk involved, so start off only using discretionary funds, not your kid's college fund and especially not this months rent.

I only have a small portfolio consisting of 4 stocks.  Every one I've picked so far has gone down almost immediately since I purchased them.  I have yet to eat through my fingers, but it's still heart wrenching when there's no news and the company you purchased suddenly tanks a few dollars a share.  Sticking with good companies, even when their price drops a little bit, is usually a good idea - because the price goes back up...usually...eventually.  Hopefully...!


We'll see how it goes...

new sketch and possibly a new character?

I finally have a new and improved way to draw!  I got a cintiq of my very own.  I've had one at work for a while, but if I wanted to do any drawing at home, it either had to be awkwardly accomplished on my wacom tablet, or on a piece of paper.  And who wants to draw on paper?  All those trees screaming in pain as someone uses an exacto knife to cut each piece of paper off of it....or, at least, that's how I assume paper is made.  It can't be squished into pulp and then flattened.  Or, what would be a tedious process, trees were broke up into splinters and then glued together.  Or into long thin strips and woven together.

In any case - it's like my food - I don't care where it comes from, as long as it tastes good.  And doesn't give me ebola.  Sadly, even that statement isn't true.  I'm more interested in how my food is treated before it's slaughtered for me - and I can't eat at a fast food restaurant because of their evil ways.  It's my own fault for looking into it.

Anyway - This is the first sketch from my first attempt at working on my brand new cintiq.

This was all done in Adobe Photoshop.

Also - I got this sucker more than 2 weeks ago, but I have an older HP laptop and the technology of the cintiq aren't completely compatible, so I had to figure that out.  Turns out one has to open the back of the cintiq and unplug the cord for the DVI cable and replace it with a VGA cable.

Mighty Yeti logo design contest

My friends over at Mighty Yeti are currently in the midst of their Kickstarter campaign to help fund their first two interactive children's books.

Josh and Jennie Book, the creative minds behind Mighty Yeti, started a design contest where all sorts of adorable little kids sent in their versions of the Mighty Yeti logo.  Obviously it's terrible, but it's great to see the little ones try (fail, but at least they tried).  So the Books called out some of their animation friends and I decided to throw a couple of designs their way:

My wife immediately said I was being rude - but the Mighty Yeti logo is the top half of a cute monster head peeking over the name.  Since you only see the top half, it made me think about what if he was that way because he'd been chopped in a gruesome way (not the pleasant way, not that there is one).  I thought it was a funny drawing, but since they're making children's books, it's not very appropriate, so I had to go back to the drawing board:

I have several under drawings where I was exploring whether he'd be sitting or standing, or if he had a big furry tail...I decided against a lot of those and believed a fun little pose would have him reading one of the Book's children's books...

The rough drawing was created in photoshop, transported to illustrator to clean up the lines and then copied and pasted back into photoshop to color.