The Return of Dr. Johnston (+Alex and Halsev Converse)

I like this character.  I really do.
So I went ahead and drew a bunch of sketches of it:

Click to enlarge

Dr. Johnston needed some expression.

Alex and Halsev's expressions are more in context in this comic:

Happy Summer!

Chicken in the Bread Pan, Pickin' Out Dough! (plus pandas)

I realized that raccoons and violins don't fit too well together.  In fact, the only logical animal to play the fiddle would be none other than the Tasmanian devil.

Hopefully, at least a few people will get the joke; my binturong design is among my best-sellers, so this little devil may have a chance.
In case you haven't figured it out, here is the origin of this silliness:

And here's the design on a T-shirt:

Yup.

In other news, I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 yesterday.  Pixar cannot beat Dreamworks this year; the plot was a bit cliche, but good, the art was incredible, and (holy pistachios!) fight scenes everywhere!  But even with the copious amount of legendary-fighting-ness and general Jack Black-ness, there was a decent amount of character development.  And the Jack Black-ness had been significantly reduced.  I like Jack Black, but this is an animated action movie, not Tropic Thunder.
Granted, the fight scenes lacked the epicness of the original, which had two insanely awesome brawls, (Tai Lung's prison escape and the bridge fight) but the new villian, Lord Shen, is among my favorite characters.

Just look at his design:


From About.com

Now, imagine that doing kung fu, with its whippy tail and all.  For a few moments at a time, you can't help but forget he's pure evil and a half, and just think, "pretty burdie!"
Then he stabs a rabbit or something and you remember that the peacock is the bad guy.

Frankly, I can't believe Dreamworks is still in the shadow of Pixar.  In terms of graphics and animation, Pixar's Wall-E or Finding Nemo may be the best 3D animated movies ever created, but in general, it doesn't compare to the art in Dreamworks' recent movies.  Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon easily have some of the prettiest animated sequences I've seen, and the storylines are relatively great.  HTYD even manages to avoid the typical Disney ending, a trap that Pixar almost always falls into.

Seriously; it's not just kids watching animated movies.  Give us something that ends on a melancholy note, or maybe something bittersweet.  Heck, give us something incredibly sad.  Shane Acker's 9 (Focus Features) has been the only 3D computer-animated feature film I've seen with a remotely sad ending, but the story wasn't fantastic.  Studio Ghibli has some great art and great storylines, not all of which end on a completely happy note, but it's all 2D animation, so it's not quite relevant to what I'm talking about.

If you should take anything out of that long digression of a ramble, it's that Kung Fu Panda 2 is a great film, 8/10 stars!

See it twice, once for the story, once to see all the purdy-purdiness of it all.

What's more, school's out!  Cheers!

Happy summer!

New cheetah design! + summer, speakers, and bookity-books

Yay!  My school-related workload has been reduced to the point that I can do stuff again!  Stuff like, say, design Cuddly Critters, play with my guinea pig, go to the zoo, and volunteer at the prairie.  It's awesome.

I'll have to read two novels over the summer, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has far fewer pages than last year's combination of Welcome to the Monkey House and Fast Food Nation.  Last summer, my school began a school-wide summer reading program that requires all students to read the same book.  The book of choice was A Long Way Gone, which is sad, uplifting, and purposeful, but frankly, most students (including myself) couldn't get into it.  This summer, we're all reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, which should be more interesting, considering that the author is Neil Gaiman.

And really, who doesn't like Neil Gaiman?

But aside from the reading, I should have a fair amount of time to be rather productive.  I plan to make a few plushies, reread the Dirk Gently books, watch The Joy of Painting on Mondays and Wednesdays and Wyland's show is on Mondays and Thursdays, and not go to summer school, among other things.

But the school year isn't over yet.  I still have to make a bottle rocket and mousetrap car before the break arrives.

On a very different note, Zazzle has some new products!  This video should give you a hint as to what it is:

If you haven't figured it out yet (hopefully, you have) they're Doodle speakers!
These speakers have been getting pretty good reviews.  At least, Zazzle sellers say they're pretty good.

Here are a few of my speakers:

All of the Cuddly Critter designs are also on speakers!

The speakers are available in my Zazzle store.

Happy summer!

Happy Towel Day!

Successful trip to the zoo

Last weekend, I went to the Brookfield Zoo for the first time this year and came back with nearly 600 photos.  Better yet, a fair number of those photos came out quite snazzy!  Here are a few:



It was terribly cold despite the warm-to-hot weather of both the week before and the week after, and the harsh wind and constant rain didn't help much at all.  However, having just taken four AP tests and having been kept away from zoos due to massive quantities of homework, nothing was going to stop me from seeing the African wild dog pups!  They were born in November of 2010 and I really wanted to see them while they were still puppies.

So I did!

The rather dismal weather actually became a plus; a lot of the animals were more active than usual, especially the big cats and wolves.  Even the sloth bear, who probably has yet to walk around her entire enclosure, was up and about.  It was an excellent day for zoo-going, paired with the excellent thought of AP classes being effectively over.

In celebration, let's have a video, shall we?



Cheers!

Easter's Coming Up!

Hazel's holiday photos have returned!
This time, she's posing as a Playboy bunny the Easter bunny!

To get an Easter Piggy card, you can either go to Redbubble or Zazzle.

Here's a preview of one of the Zazzle cards:

A horizontally oriented version is also available on Zazzle; Redbubble only has a horizontal card, but has posters and other prints of this image you'll never want or need.

Happy Easter!

Dr. Johnston

Meet M1320, better known as “Dr. Johnston.”


Dr. Johnston is a genderless, genetically engineered, humanoid rodent. Its less intellectual counterparts are usually assigned to jobs as assistants, help, and in the military, but Dr. Johnston has proven itself a noteworthy competitor in the scientific fields.
Dr. Johnston has written several books, including Humanity: the Perspective of a Non-Human and GM, GE, and the Next Generation, and has won several awards and honors in its field.
—
Now that formalities are out of the way...

M1320 is one of the most revered and absolutely hated GE rodents of its fictional universe. At the moment, it appears to be correcting someone, perhaps Minister-General Halsev, on technicalities. Those two clash quite often.
It’s still a concept. So far, Dr. Johnston doesn’t have pants; it’s genderless, so that’s okay, right?


Here are some sketchies:


Dr. Johnston sketches and concepts; ignore the creepy thing in the top left 0_o

 

Halsev's clothing concepts with the anatomy gradually falling apart

 

Halsev and a GE rodent (Alex, perhaps) discussing politics, which is odd because Halsev hates the GE rodents.  Plus, the style looks inconsistent.  I shall have to work on that...


Are the GE rodents uncanny valley enough, or should I step up the creepiness?

New Digi-Art?

I like where this sketch/WIP is going so far, but I'm not entirely sure what to do from this point; at the moment, I can't draw buildings and my human anatomy is, for lack of a better word, blargh-ish.

If it means anything, the fellow in this sketch appeared previously in this post.  Good old Minister-General Halsev.  He doesn't always play video games.  In fact, he almost never plays video games; that just isn't what politicians do.

Various songs by Muse kept playing in the back of my head while I was scribbling this.  Halsev isn't a particularly oppressive guy and never directly partook in a revolution, so I'm not sure how Muse fits in.

I tried to embed the "F***ing f***ing f***ing little f***er" song, but the original music video had embedding prevented.  Of course, this video is the more likely to induce seizures, so it's all good. (kidding, kidding... though it does have flashing lights...)

The cat.
I think it's name will be Marie.  Or, considering the atmosphere of the sketch, maybe it should be Joey... Josef... but that could be silly and contraversial.  Charlie, Albert, and Erwin are reserved for other cats in Halsev's lifetime.

Well, I should work on my homework.

Happy spring :)

Tails to Tell

My family and I got back from Houston, Texas, yesterday.  We visited my sister and her family, then we all went to Brazos Bend State Park to see some cuddly ally-gators :)

This one seemed particularly sinister.  And big.

This one was kind of cute. Its tail is in the first photo :)







None of the alligators desired to converse with us, though my sister did toss some bread to a small-ish gator.  My nephews seemed at least somewhat interested, but preferred to run off-trail and make us run after them.  This here's my 4-year-old nephew with a giant, stegosaur-shaped strawberry he picked at the strawberry farm:



Yum yum!

 Those strawberries were good.  I taught those kids that cows say "woof," y'know.

But back to the reptiles.
Alligators are pretty awesome animals.  I'll just let Wavy explain it all:

Anyway, Texas was fun; I got to see my sister, her husband, (he keeps fishies!) and my nephews; I met a guy with the same hairstyle and style of dress as my AP Physics teacher; I saw some maned wolves at the Houston Zoo; and I got a bag of yummy green apple licorice.  You can't ask for much more than that! :)

Whadda-do, everybody! :D

Happy spring!

Deru Concept- I Needs Halps! D:

Well, there's the Deru v2.1 or so.

I'm having trouble designing this fictitious dog breed; it's not like a species, in which case I can go haywire and place it in a fitting environment afterwards, or just build it off an existing environment and go haywire from there.  Instead, it has to fit human necessity.

It's meant to be an "all-around," hardy, working dog breed. It lives primarily in northern regions and should be able to herd livestock, guard property, track game, and survive on its own, if necessary.
Ultimately, these dogs will become a feral variety in the northern provinces of Raleia that will occasionally interbreed with the local Raleian wolves, producing "wolves" with noticeably dog-like features.  A few of my characters are such wolfdogs, so I figured it would be best to design the dog before the characters.

I aimed for a sort of shepherd-spitz-malamute-pitbull-wolf-elkhound... thing... with a dash of the real-life Balto.  However, it turns out that AKC standards won't help at all; the best sled dogs are mixed breeds (like Balto! Except his owner wasn't a fan of his body type and castrated him. Oh, well.) and the majority of breed standard-meeting purebreds are near-useless in practice. On top of that, many of the breed histories are partially falsified. Not helpful at all, that.



If you can, in any way, critique or redline my deru, it would be incredibly helpful! :)

MEOW

I decided to watch Cats 101 today while eating my Eggo waffles.  Mmm... waffles...
Mumford & Sons was number one on the VH1 Top 20 Countdown this week, so to celebrate, here are some accordion-playing red pandas:

And an unrelated violin-toting raccoon:

It's only toting the violin; it can't possibly play it like that!  The bow isn't even touching the strings!
I'll have to look up these instruments.  My goal is to create the most awesome fantasy band ever, with the cutest (and furriest) musicians and the best instruments known to humankind.  Of course, I think accordians and banjos are among the best instruments.  I may be the pseudo-band's only fan.  They won't even have music, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

Moby Dick fanart may come about soon.  It's a great book to read if you have a lot of time and very little to do.

Maybe I'll make a design or two for my Zazzle shop to raise money for the Japan tsunami relief effort.  Half my family lives over there, (far from the directly affected areas, thankfully) so it only seems right to at least try and help out.

Happy spring!

The Dreariest Time of Year

The snow is almost completely gone; the dreariest time of year is soon to begin.

Spring?
I couldn't possibly be talking about spring!

But alas, I am speaking of spring!
Why is it so dreary?  It's rather simple, really:
The ground, the trees, the bushes, absolutely everything, save for the people, is bare.  At least winter has snow and incredible light; the sunlight is always yellower in winter.  Even in fall, the light is great, and after the leaves turn brown and fall, everything becomes a bright, gold/orange color.

But in spring?  All of those fallen leaves have turned black from the mud made by the melted snow, the green buds are few and far between, and the natural lighting is usually poor.  It's getting warmer, but the only major highlight of the season is the thunderstorms.

Additionally, it's usually the heaviest time of the school year in terms of homework.  I'm supposed to be doing a research project on Melville's Moby-Dick, but I'm only 100 pages into the book when I'm supposed to be halfway through.

On the plus side, it's a very good book.  If you're into nineteenth century novels, this one's quite shiny.  It even has a bit of humor every so often.  I think.  Neither my neighbor, who read the book last year for school, nor the student in my class who is reading it now will agree with me on that.
Either I'm terribly wrong or I've read too many works from the nineteenth century. (mostly in the form of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe; I love that book!)

Right.  Spring.
So it looks like I won't be able to go out and photograph much; I nearly went through November and January without picking up my camera.  The elk photograph above is from yesterday's visit to the elk enclosure.  It was nice to be using the camera again :)


Ah, forget it.
At least the warmer weather means I can go volunteering again!
And volunteering means photo time!  And warmer weather means migrating critters!
And a trip to Houston.  Heheh.  Farewell, dull, Illinois spring!  Helloooo, semi-exotic Texas!

On another note, I'm rather tempted to draw-paint a whale.  I like whales.
Supposedly, they taste pretty good, too.

House Drudal

House drudals are considered domesticated animals and can be interesting pets. However, they are also considered to be dangerous due to their aggressive behavior, particularly toward other pets, and should only be kept by experienced owners.


These animals have two sets of eyes; one that perceives visible light, and another that can sense infrared light. The drudal’s second pair of eyes increases the ability of its wild counterparts to hunt in caves and at night. They also make the house drudal an excellent mouser.

Height: 14-20”
Weight: 50-80 lbs

Wolf Calendar

It's an absolutely terrible time of year to make a calendar, but I believe this one is justified.

Nearly every other wolf calendar available is filled with photos from the free domain.  Many of those containing original photos contain wolfdogs and/or dogs.  A few actually have good, original photographs of actual wolves, but they're usually all of the same set of individuals, namely, the Wolf Park wolves, or the same weather, which gets rather dull after a while.

And I'm not just talking about Zazzle.  Professionally published calendars are the same.  I just got a daily wolf calendar in which every photo was shot at the same facility, so the calendar only has 6 or so different wolves.

This calendar is different, though; 12 full-color original photos from five different facilities, with 4 varieties of wolf (including the red wolf) and perhaps 10 different individuals.

And a bison calf.

It's currently available on Zazzle.

Random Sketchdump

Click to enlarge

Various sketches from my Charlie the Unicorn sketchbook, drawn between the summer of last year (2010) and today (February 2, 2011).

The first three in the top left are GM rodents (the third being a no-nonsense scientist character) and the top-right is meant to be a T-shirt design (it's a bit of a pun, really).  The humans on the bottom are a few of my human characters, Micheal "The Ferret" Feriett and General Halsev, (and his adventurous white cat, Albert) playing video games.  I'm guessing it's Super Mario Brothers on Playstation 2 :D

Guinea Pig Tricks


Hazel Lee does a few tricks for us here, including the standard "doacircle" trick.  She'll actually "doacircle" in both directions, but didn't feel like going "otherway" this particular day.

I didn't get around to teaching my last guinea pig, Acorn, any tricks early enough for her to be at all interesting in that aspect, (she was in every other, so it's all good) but she could "doacircle" and we would pass a little wooden cylinder back and forth every so often.  Our favorite game was blocks; I would hand Acorn a block, and if she approved of it, she would take it from my hand and drop it.  It was more fun than it sounds, trust me XD

Hazel Lee is proving to be a smart cookie, though; despite her general dislike of being outside of her cage, petted, or cuddled, it looks like we could become good friends through training :)

Manatee~!

Photoshop Elements 6 and Bamboo Fun Tablet

Products with this digi-art are available in my Zazzle shop.