Couples' Dinner Ruined

Gary and Lexi hit a rough spot in their relationship... again. Hoping to make things better, Gary took Lexi to Esposito's, the Italian restaurant. It's a shame Lexi didn't have the best time!

Another single panel strip, I'm beginning to get the hang of these I think! After Gary's encounter with the elephant (as seen recently on the blog) I decided to write them an aftermath. I had the idea sitting around of someone spelling salt over their dinner so this was a perfect oppurtunity to use it, will Lexi ever get a good day?

While I usually use a base coat of pen ink shaded with pencils, I decided on doing the opposite this time! This means the shading has to be blocked rather than using gradients it's still a beautiful effect and perhaps easier given that pens are hard to find in lighter tones. The only issue with is is that some shadows may be too dark, such as the shadows on the table and this was the case for Gary's skin until I went over it with a second coat of pencil. Additionally I am concerned about John's arm which just looks weird and unpleasantly shaded.

How are you liking this new comic strip format that I'm trying out? It's quite fun and I'm going to try for strips with more than one panel soon. Maybe you've got a funny dinner story worth sharing to the world, see if you can turn it into a comic strip!

The Upside-down Face Challenge

By now it's a fairly old trend but it's something to give a try. Two heads, four faces, one challenge!

I used to have a book like this but I can't seem to find it anymore. But that didn't stop me trying and I managed two designs. The first face I tried is to the right. It is indeed strange when you think the hairs of his brow are actually above the eyebrow, leaving a chunk of bare skin. While this way round he looks close to a monkey man, flipped around he looks like a rather shocked elderly man! I think I prefer his face this way, it looks more realistic.

Faces Flipped!

The second head was an equal attempt to make a believable face both ways but this one came out rather strange. In the first photo you can see a relaxed, bearded man with a most unusual forehead. In the second he's an excited, eccentric person! The eccentric one looks like they could've been a mad scientist while the other looks like a reformed rebel with many tales to tell about his rebellious days. The strip of red in the hair was just to break the symmetry, something the first head failed to do.

Which way round do you prefer these heads, I can't really decide myself! If you want to create some quirky looking characters this is a good challenge for you, it had me challenged a bit.

Moths Help You Write Your Resume!

There was an Internet meme I came across one day which was of a moth. The message was not to fear them as they can you to write a great resume, application form, whatever you want to call it. As soon as I saw this Agrius Moth came to mind and now he's helping his nephew out!

That's right, Agrius is not an only child! On rare occasions that Monty's parents can't get a hold of someone to look after him, they have to call in on the help of uncle Agrius Moth. Today Monty was trying to write his resume but was struggling. He's not excactly a top student and had never really paid much the lacking information he was provided in writing a resume.

Luckily for Monty, Agrius knew what to do and so took a look at his resume. In a matter of seconds, Agrius claimed to have improved his resume for him. When Monty took a look at it however, all that had changed was the screen's brightness. In the end, Monty was able to improve his resume and even ended up improving Agrius'!

Designing another moth person was fun, though in Monty's case he is more human than moth. There were a couple of pale coloured moths that inspired the colour scheme for Monty, giving him some Harley Quinn styled leg wear! Regarding colours, I was testing a new pack of 50 pens which I was able to get for just a few pounds... They were crayola. There are a good few new colours to work with here and while the quality is nothing like Ohuhu or Copics, they still serve the purpose of providing nice vibrant colours.

I think I'm starting to turn to a comic strip style of work, which actually suits my characters pretty well! Do you have any comic strips or maybe a web comic? I hope they're doing well, and if you haven't got any, what's stopping you from starting?

He's so Cute, but She's getting Mad!

It's Gary and Lexi again, and they've crossed paths with an elephant girl. But she's new to the area and is still has to get into the habit of not treating humans like cute dogs!

I remember reading somewhere that Elephants apparently see us the same way we see cute dogs, which if that's the case then awesome! I don't need it to be true though, this is inspiration enough for me to create this loveable madness. This elephant girl from India has found Gary and finds him very cute, not stopping for one moment to think that he may be accompanied by his significant other, Lexi!

Designing the elephant character started out a bit challenging, trying to work out how best to apply the elephant head to a humanoid body. I considered a rounded head and trying to apply tusks to the body but instead went with a squared head that the trunk would line up with.

Aside from Lexi and Gary, this piece has colour schemes based on the original 'Elmer' book. I looked at the elephant parade to see if any of the elephants had decorative scheme that I could use for the costume and then chose the duo of elephants covered in a flower pattern. The blue was close enough to an elephant-ish skin tone while the red and gold would suit the costume. The background is based on the third illustration from the book, using colours from the background and an identical sky gradient. I ought to get into the habit of mixing up my colours to create more interesting schemes and while I didn't create the scehemes for this illustration, it's a step in the right direction.

This elephant has meant no harm but Lexi really doesn't seem to be happy! Who will Lexi be cross with, and what might happen to Gary? You'll see this duo again quite soon!

2019 - Mix'n'Match Shipping Results

Thank you everyone who voted on this year's Mix'n'match Shipping challenge. You were given the chance to decide on which characters out of a possible twenty would be shipped this Valentine's Day. Before we get on to the results, here is a recap of last year's results.

Last year was a five piece ensemble, that's quite a date! Rapunzel and Tarzan were swinging through the jungle and had been deemed a couple while Lego Batman was creating of vision of his beloved Joker on the face of Kiosk Keith, leaving Olaf heart warmed to the point of melting. Unfortunately, Olaf melted completely that day and because of this Keith got the sack and had to leave yet another jungle! Batman went on to swing through the jungle with Tarzan and Rapunzel, but Tarzan was left heartbroken when Rapunzel left him for a richer man, a Lego man. Are they still together? That remains unknown!

Ten franchises, two characters from each, you were given the chance to create chaos and here are the results.

The lowest in votes and reviving hardly any love are a quarter of the characters:

Ladybug
Ida Noe
Sonic the Hedgehog
Rose DeWitt Bukater
Holly Wiloughby

Next up are are three characters who scored no more than 7% :

Dec Donelly
Jack Skellington
Chat Noir

Six of the characters tied with a score of 8.3% :

Jack Dawson
Gumball
Sally
Thor
John Esposito
Amy Rose

Four characters were so close and came in second place, able to double the score with 16.7% :

Princess Bubblegum
Thanos
Penny Fitsgerald
Sayori

It was clear who one of these winners was going to be from the start and the other winner came out by surprise, in fact their respective partners almost won this poll themselves! So without further ado, here are the winners.

Monkia

(Doki Doki Literature Club)

Marceline

(Adventure Time)

Let's be real, it's not difficult to ship Monika with anyone, she's not fussy! This may the be most believable ship I have created since starting this challenge but how does this ship stand out from anything else? Well Monika is able to give Marceline something she thought she'd never get, a reflection! No it's not Marceline's actual reflection but is a projection created by Monika as a token of her love - and you thought I'd forgotten Marcline being a vampire had no reflection didn't you?

Making this piece was quite fun, I decided to create the Just Monika screen capture traditionally and then Marceline's reality digitally as a neat juxtaposition that would save my screen looking too much like the real game art! Plus this meant I got to have fun with effects such as the glowing keyboard, the atmospheric lighting and the screen's glow, an opportunity which would have been wasted if I did this the other way around.

Thank you to everyone who voted this was a delightful experiment and this challenge will certainly be returning next year, there may even be a video on YouTube for it who knows? I'll leave you with this question though; does Marceline maintain her realtionship with Monika or will the lonely game character be deleted?

Technobian Cafe

It's Tenvad everyone! And she's joined by Paddy as they have met up in the local Technobian cafe. It's a lovely place where technological beings can sit down and charge up, chat, read or just get new batteries.

So I took a practice in isometric style illustration (I hope that's the right name for it), I haven't drawn in this style since I was sixteen and doing technical drawings! I did use a ruler back then, but I'm gonna need to persuade myself to use a ruler more. Don't be like me guys, use a ruler!

Designing a cafe suited for Technobians was a little tricky, given the purpose of a cafe is to supply food and drink. Obviously this cafe would have to supply an electrical charge, so I came to the idea of booths that someone could sit in and relax while they charge. Each booth has a number, a socket and a little red button to press if they need any help.

This is the sort of stuff I should've been thinking about back when I created Tenvad. Technobians have received little artistic attention from me, due to finding myself rather restricted with them. There's only so much they appear to be able to do in comparison with humans, but maybe that's because I haven't tried hard enough to focus on them? I want to do Tenvad and Paddy justice by giving them more opportunities, things to broaden their horizons and give Tenvad some experiences.

You'll notice Tenvad is holding a couple of tickets, this is because she and Paddy are going to attend a concert, one that is Technobian friendly! Hopefully that's something you'd like to see because that's going to be happening pretty soon. The future is looking bright for Technobians, and hopefully there may be more of them on the way!

Let's Play Wink Murder

Or as it's also known, Wink Indisposal! Let's travel back in time to a day when Droey, Anne, Ida and John were playing Wink Murder, a lovely game to be played in large groups (I'm not gonna fit many more people in this crowd am I?) where you have to identify the murderer before they wink everyone to death!

First thing I realise as I write this, I meant to use my sepia toned pens since this is technically a flashback! Awh nuts! Must remind myself in future to do that, what else am I to use sepia toned pens for?

So for the second time ever, we have little Droey and young Anne, as for John and Ida this is a first. Droey and Anne originally appeared at a younger age in the 25 Facial Expressions challenge on Day 5. There was no colour and they were in winter suited clothing, so they as well as Jhon and Ida would have to have costume designs and colour schemes sorted. That said, the only differences with Anne is that she has her natural hair colour of blonde and sports a bow.

Droey's hair colour used to be lighter and yes indeed I did formerly wear shorts! The shirt design I understand looks like a bloodstain shirt, which actually suits the game pretty well. However the full design would show ketchup on the tip of a French fry, which you'll get to see if young Droey makes another appearance. I actually used to wear a fair bit of green and yellow back then, so I combined the colours into a hat with my initials on, similar to a hat I used to own.

John's costume (excluding Anne's) is the most similar to his present day look. John used to wear a lot more green, including a rather snug jacket. When he was young John had a phase when he wanted to be a policeman, so loved to play this game and arrest people with his toy handcuffs.

Ida's colour scheme is kept the same, with the exception of changing gold for yellow. She used to have longer hair and was also a little rounder than she is these days. Her favourite piece of clothing was a sleeveless turtle neck sweater, sporting her favourite colour of orange.

The spots in the background are inspired by police lights to suit for the arrest of Ida Noe, charged with the murder of Droey and a few other kids. She'll be out in about five minuets in time for he next wink murderer to play! As drama students would know, this is a game that can be played as a warm up, that's an advantage that comes with taking performing arts classes! Do you have any memory of playing wink murder, or were you a wink murderer yourself? Come on, confession time!

Droey's Job?!

It's only temporary, but Droey got a job somewhere local where he's familiar with one of the employees! But it's not all that he hoped it would be.

Droey doesn't get many opportunities to work but one day he was in luck. His friend, John, works with his family at their Pizza Restaurant and John had some news for Droey.

'Droey, there's a job going at my restaurant! We're taking in anyone we can get, you in?'

'What kind of work is it?' Droey asked cautiously, things weren't always as straight forward as he hoped when John was to be taken into concern.

'Easy work for for easy money, it's a no brainer!' John firmly placed his hands on Droey's shoulders. 'Plus you've got a friend in high places there, you'd be an idiot not to go for it!' Droey considered the proposal, if he was at least working in a field that his friend would to close to and was deemed capable, it seemed the job would be worth a shot.

'I'll take it!' Droey decided.

'Yes! You won't regret this!' John promised.

Droey regretted it, well at least he did when he discovered just what his job was. John had him working in the kitchen, drying dishes. It wasn't a difficult job, just incredibly tedious.

'I would've thought you wanted me here as a waiter.' Droey grumbled.

'Ah yeah but we're not short on waiters.' John calmly replied as he leaned against a broken dishwasher.

'No but you need some dish driers, don't you?'

'Ooh yeah, and luckily for me there were two people who happened to need temporary work!' John grinned. 'Actually I don't think you two've met! Droey, this is an old friend of my cousin's, Eliza. Eliza this is my mate Droey.'

'Yeah, sorry about the ranting, not making this much fun am I?' Droey blushed, but Eliza didn't mind. She was actually amused by Droey's wit and as John left to do his deliveries, the two dish driers got chatting. About a week later, when the new dishwasher arrived, Droey and Eliza had become firm friends.

Can you remember meeting any of your friends? Maybe you can recreate how you met as an artwork?