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.

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.

more t-shirt designs!

My wife and I collaborated on these designs.  What that means are these were her ideas, her drawings, and I helped out a tiny bit (and she made me upload them to the site).

For the final t-shirt design we decided to lose the balloon as we wanted to make a clean and simple design that appealed to both men and women and felt the balloon 'babied' it up:

Please vote for this design by clicking this link to Deviant Art and then clicking "I'd wear this"

And then she drew this:

Which we turned into this design:

And this is what it looks like on the t-shirt:

And vote for this one too!  There's no limit to the amount of different t-shirts you can vote for...but I'd appreciate the votes for ours!  Make sure you use this link to Deviant Art and click "I'd wear this"

Thanks!

Deviant Art: Cute Monster T-shirt Contest

Click here to vote for my t-shirt design!  Click on "I'd Wear This" to vote.  My design will only be capable of winning if you vote!  You have to be a member of Deviant Art to vote - but it's well worth it!  So come on...what do you say?

A friend of mine told me about this contest that Deviant Art was holding (the deadline to enter ends tonight at midnight).  I did a bunch of quick roughs:

But I didn't like how any of them turned out so I kept trying and did a series of really terrible drawings that I won't post here...but then I drew this one...and while it's still kind of wonky...it demanded that I finish it:

and that led to finishing it in Adobe Illustrator.  I did the drawing as I wanted to finish it (the one on the left) and then because the rules of the contest strongly suggested that the illustrations be confined to 7 colors (which is easier for them to print) I changed my color palette to comply.

The color swatches at the top are all the colors in the drawing...my original finished piece had 13 colors, so I had to really pare it back to get it to seven.

And this is how it looks if it was on a t-shirt:

My friend, Leonard Dill,  also entered the contest - His illustration is almost as good as mine (and some would say it's better) - Click on his name and also vote for him!  Do your good deed for the day...or two good deeds...don't be lazy, it's totally worth it!  Here's his t-shirt design:

IF: Slow Monster Race

I just finished a drawing where the frankenstein kid was racing a little dracula kid down a path (in my previous blog post) and I had a thought....a little frankenstein kid wouldn't be terribly coordinated to do a spot of running, much less race anyone...so I thought about redrawing him a little more stiff and a little less runny...and then I thought, "What if there were a bunch of slow monsters running a race...?" - and that's where this illustration came from:

It's always quite funny in a horror movie when you have a slow moving monster chasing someone that's running...and that person looks back to see where the monster is, doesn't see anyone and then turns around and the monster is in front of them!  It's horrible writing...or just supernatural forces at work...

Anyway - what if you gathered all these monsters up and had them enter a race together?  Well, out of these three, I think the Frankenstein would be the most coordinated of the undead (especially since he has the freshest brain)...and would win easily...but since zombies have a knack for stumbling about and ending up at the right place at the wrong time, he could easily come in second without even trying.

Here's a quick color job done in Adobe Illustrator:

Monster kids on the run...

I did this illustration specifically with Illustration Friday in mind.  The topic this week is 'Racing'.  So I thought about having these little monster kids racing down a path.

 I did this rough drawing in Adobe Photoshop and then printed it out so I could revise it with my blue pencil.

I have the characters worked out and the background pretty much as I want it...so I'll be taking this into Adobe Illustrator to clean-up.

This is a close-up of the Frankenstein kid - so far he's my favorite character to draw:

Frankie Stein sketches

I'm working on a new project - I've been neglecting the blog a bit, but only because I've been doing a lot of sketching lately, and not so much finished illustrations.

Here are a couple of illustrations involving little Frankie Stein.

I've pretty much got his character down, and need to work on the supporting cast of characters...and that should take a while as there are a lot of little characters...

Freddy the kid: Freddy Krueger

I've always wanted to go as Freddy Krueger for Halloween. I never did, but one year I bought the glove. 10 bucks. I thought it was pretty bad ass.



Anyhow - I'm in the middle of doing a series of entertainment icons...and since halloween is coming up, I've been concentrating on horror movie icons. One of my favorite villains has to be Freddy Krueger. My dad had my brother and I watch the first Nightmare on Elm Street when we were kids and we spent that night huddled in our beds, scared out of our minds...I remember looking at the door to our room, expecting some form of monster to come tearing through at any minute.

As I grew up - the picture that haunted me the most was of the girl in the body bag walking up the steps (from a basement? I can't remember)...and a creepy scene where Freddy is walking down a alley way scraping his arms against each wall. I saw that scene recently and couldn't believe it used to scare me. His arms grow long to reach each side of the walls, but it comes across as so cartoony. Maybe it's still scary, I'm just watched too many horror movies...

Hellkid

It's been pretty hard finding time to do these...but I'm still trying to fit them in. I've been quite busy at work, and have been finishing up some freelance at the same time. Since it's almost halloween, I've been trying to get all the halloween related illustrations up. I've been working on a headless horseman, but the bridge behind him hasn't really been working out so well...so I decided to take a break from that and work on my kid version of Hellboy. Why do they call him Hellboy, if he's a man? It makes it hard to name a boy version...so I've changed the name to hellkid.

In the original drawing I didn't do Hellboy's big hand, so I modified that in the cleanup...to reflect a first befitting Hellboy.

Lil' Godzilla

Here's Godzilla.