mandrake...

Olivia posted a picture of some wonky carrots she grew in her garden - so I spiced them up when I saw another friend leave a comment saying they looked like Mandrakes....

Original photo

new and improved....

Charmander fan art! Pokemon...go!

 Or stop - who knows if anyone is still playing....

There's something about that R2 Unit...

I've been drawing a lot of R2D2s...but it wasn't until I drew C3PU that I thought about Rtoot...so, of course I had to draw that.

What's nice is that now it's in sticker form!  These are only available at cons that I go to - so they're fairly hard to get.

And his toots stink...in case you were wondering.

Happy Pantry: We have new tote bags! And they're Milk and Cookies!

We recently got in a new order of Tote Bags for Happy Pantry:

They're only $10 on our website - www.happy-pantry.com

Art dumpedy dump...

I had a bunch of random drawings I thought I'd pop up here - just because they don't really belong on their own post and I wasn't really going to do anything with them anyway.  But maybe I'll post some to instagram?

 This was for our stock images site - I thought the idea of two knights facing off would look pretty awesome.  And I was right!

 This is for an undisclosed project I was working on late last year.  I did a version where the kids looked quite young, and they wanted them aged up a bit - so I redrew them as older versions.  I did several styles (with version 2 being my favorite), but they ended up not doing anything with the project, so these drawings just sit here on this blog not doing anything...

 Here's the kid version - they were deemed 'too junior' which could be a death sentence for a show trying to appeal to the older kid audience.

 I was drawing a kid, and this time for a junior show I was trying to develop, who would end up in a monsterous situation.  I wanted him to be as innocent as possible, and maybe have a hint of anime hair.

 Speaking of Monsterous - this was one attempt at the monster that finds the boy above.  As you can see, he's even cuter than the boy is.  Below is version two.  This is yet another project that we didn't get too far with.

 This is for Happy Pantry - Even Mona Lisa was a fan of our aprons.  They're still available on our website at www.happy-pantry.com - and only $29.99!  She's smiling because she's adorable in her new apron!

 At the time I drew this, I was developing a series of cute monster toys.  This was a stitched up doll.  I thought it was rather cute and slightly scary.

 Also for Happy Pantry - Peas on Mars.  Says it all.  It's terrible, and that's why it never made it past the rough drawing stage.

 I drew this shortly after I drew Leonardo deCappucino - I thought it would have been funny to have a silence of the hams...but also, possibly, a little too adult for the kids.  I originally drew his iconic mask as well, but Tracey vetoed that - this cutesy ham was my last ditched effort to get it made, but to no avail.  The boss said no.

And finally - here's the last picture in our art dump.  Another project we were developing - I think this is from 2010 or so, I wanted to have three kids that were kind of reminiscent of Edward Gory/Charles Addams characters and the feel that those guys put into their cartoon/comics.  I won't say much more than that as I still want to develop this into something...maybe...at some point.

Pig Goat Banana Cricket - Pig Ball

I did a Spongebob ball a little while ago and I wanted to do more Nickelodeon characters - so my next one is Pig from Pig Goat Banana Cricket.  It was a fun show that wasn't given enough of a chance - and only went 2 seasons.  The style is so different and fantastic - I loved the line quality and the colors.

I've done all of the characters - and by all, I mean Spongebob and Pig - without faces, and just tried to get all their colors and markings - but that means no nose or eyes, and those could really make it obvious who it is, but I wanted it to be more about the ball which represents the character rather than just replicates the character.

Happy Pantry: French Onion

We went to France way back in 2015 - it feels like so long ago, even though it was just over a year.  While there I did a colored pencil version - and I always wanted to take it over and polish it up on the computer.  So I redrew it and fixed all the things I hated about the hat, and turned it into something I want to make prints of...hopefully someone will want a print.

Here's the original colored pencil:

And here's the photoshop illustration:

I actually looked up reference for what that frenchy hat looks like - other than that, I really liked it.

SpongeBall RoundPants

I was drawing a ball as a prop design for Spongebob:

 

And that got me thinking about Spongebob - and if he was round what would he look like.  So I blew up the ball up to a larger size and drew this:

SpongeBall RoundPants

Just when you thought it was safe to drift in the ocean...

It's not safe in the ocean with all those saws lookin' to cut someone.

Just when you thought it was safe to drift off on the cool ocean breeze....

Can I get a Paw...?

I've been thinking of doing a series of these for a while now - and I thought I finally had time to get one of them.  There are so many options for this parody of the iconic Jaws poster, and I know a lot of people have done Jawas - but I still would like to do my take on that...but first, I give you PAWS!

Shrek goes Minion again

When the new overlords come, they tend to white wash everything towards their way of looking, doing and thinking.  With Comcast buying Dreamworks, maybe we can expect to see some of this with them?  And why wouldn't they use their most popular property, the minions, to breath some much needed life into the old tired Shrek?

Of course, it's a painful process...and it's a rather painful experience for the ones who have to change.

Shrek goes Minion...

Comcast bought Dreamworks - bringing Shrek and the rest of the terrible Dreamworks cast of characters into the Minions family and Universal.  Maybe this will help them change their stories from something terrible to something watchable?  We'll find out soon enough!  Maybe to make Dreamworks more successful, they can have him actually join the Minions movie!

I'd expect them to not be very thrilled with such a eventuality...

Spongebob: food centerpiece

I did this for an episode of season 9 of Spongebob Squarepants.  It starts as a pile of food, and Spongebob works his magic and turns it into a centerpiece for a wedding.

It's on screen for just a few seconds  - but each picture took a couple of hours, at least, to draw.

Angry Birds and nonplussed Pigs

I'm addicted to Angry Birds.  I don't know they came up with the concept - but having little birds launch into green pigs and destroying precarious structures just keeps me enraptured week after week.

They had a movie that came out based on the game - but I don't know if I need to see that - I'd rather the interactivity that comes with the game.  And it's weird that the movie versions all have arms and legs...it's like they couldn't just figure it out with what they had originally designed.  But, I guess, it's easier to emote and to interact, not to mention move about if you have limbs.

Doctor Strange.....love!

I grew up with Doctor Strange comics.  My parents were big Kubrick fans, and had the Doctor Strangelove movie on laserdisc - they watched it all the time, although I never actually saw it myself.  But it seemed like I was always hearing about Doctor Strangelove, and thought it was a fun comic book thing, only to find that it was some weirdo black and white movie - a very talky one at that.

With the new Doctor Strange movie out, I thought I'd do a bit of a mash up between the two.

Happy Pantry: who likes refills?

Our niece said this one fine morning, and we had to turn it into a Happy Pantry drawing...

Leo and Jason

 This is from an idea i had to do celebrities as Happy Pantry characters.  The idea was turned down so hard by Tracey that I never did more than this.  I think of it as one of my finest illustrations ever.  And....one of the worst.

These have absolutely nothing to do with each other - but I wanted to post them.  So here they are.

Happy Pantry Kitchen Towels

This is one of the first things we made for Happy Pantry:

Mr Latte kitchen towels.  They're available on our website www.happy-pantry.com

Go on - fill your kitchen with something cute.

Birthday drawing....

It was somebody's birthday today - so I thought I'd draw them something.  It's funny because if someone asked me to draw something I'd be hesitant and drag my feet, but sometimes an idea hits me and I want to get to it before anything else.

It's just a quick sketch - but this person really likes mermaids - and collects all sorts - so I thought I could do something mermaidy for them.

making merchandise - the happy pantry way...

Well, it's probably the way a lot of people do it.  We do all the designs and figure out the sizes we want the product to be and then we send all of that information to a company in China and have them make it all.

Here are some pictures they sent us - we're running low on the tote bags we made last year, so we're getting a new, bigger order - and with a couple of additional designs!

 This is one of the bags we originally ordered from them, and it's sold well enough that we needed more!

 This is one of our newer designs - we did a very small run on them back in December, and they've all but sold out - so we decided to get a bunch.

 This is another of our newer designs that we had a small run of in December - this one completely sold out, and quickly - so we had to get more.

And then there's this onion.  This is part of our original three tote bags for Happy Pantry.  And it's one of our favorite designs.  We just didn't like how, this time, the colors turned out.  Luckily the company works with us to make sure the quality is up to our standards, so they did a couple of different versions (above) which were not to our liking, and finally figured out that instead of doing the standard screen printing, that they would use a heat press - and the results are below:

It is exactly like our drawing!  It translated almost perfectly!  So we're excited to get them in.  They are currently on a slow boat - and should be in by the end of May!