Tuesday, July 31, 2007

A Hodge-Podge of Random Non-Sequential Doodle Pages for the Purpose of Online Blog Viewer Entertainment

Just listen to the title & you'll catch my drift.


Here's Cannibal Chicken (middle) getting acquainted with Steve-O (left) & Randy (right). I will discuss these three guys in more detail in a later post.



I drew this while visiting a great uncle that I've never met before. He makes mozzarella. I wanted to give it to him as a gift, but since his old age prevents him from seeing, hearing or understanding correctly without the aid of someone else describing it to him, I decided to keep it for myself instead.




Like many artists/cartoonists, I bring my sketch book everywhere I go. I drew this at a friends block party. For some reason, when I'm around a group of people, my mind goes blank & I have to ask them what to draw. Usually it's their favorite animal (if not something vulgar, raunchy or suggestive in any way).

Here was a stage idea of mine for Smash Bros. I drew out to explain to a friend. For those of you who don't remember or didn't grow up during the golden era of classic video games, this is the Robotic Operating Buddy (or R.O.B. for short). He was Nintendo's trojan horse for the home video game market. Although the machine itself was a piece of crap, it drew many curious onlookers, observers & willing consumers to the NES. His original purposes may have gone the way of the Dreamcast dodo, but he still lives on (mostly in cameos & honorable mentions, like in F-Zero GX, Mario Kart DS & Star Fox).


My idea of the Smash Bros. stage was that the various platforms were made up of R.O.B.'s body & parts (his head, shoulders, claws, & disks). Various parts of him would move up & down or side to side. He would grab disks, or crush you with them if dropped. Once in a while he would shoot lasers out of his eyes.


It may seem a bit confusing to those not familiar with R.O.B. or the Smash Bros. series, but some of the hardcore/understanding fans might get the point I'm trying to get across.



Speaking of Nintendo, here's a few of my favorite Mario enemies from days gone by. As a matter of fact, "Koopa Troopa" was once my nickname to some people. Hey, it's a lot better than "Blooper", "Wiggler" or "Boo".




Here's a self-portrait of myself...



...& one of my father. I'm definitely using THIS design in my cartoon someday!

Here's a drawing I did of young Randy & Steve-O. I'll be using this & the drawing below in a already-planned, extremely-lengthy future post.

The hardest kind of characters for me to draw are either ones that are female or ones that are cute. Although they basically fall into a similar category, here I will focus on the "cute" part, which I'll crudely call "Key to Kuteness" (Yeech!).

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of cute? Probably babies, puppies, kittens & bunnies, right? Cuddly, innocent little furry mammals with big eyes, huge black, shiny pupils, eyelashes, rosy cheeks, big head & tiny body, right? Well, part of that stereotype is true: the key to drawing cute (as well as feminine) is DIFFERENTIATING PROPORTIONS.



In the page above, you can see a few Randys that are cute, & some that are not so cute. The Randy on the top right & middle bottom seem much cuter than the other two.
There's a fine line between drawing "young & cute" & drawing "old & ugly". Every wrong or misplaced line & the character in question will age in 10 year increments. Since my drawing style is somewhat sloppy & very crude, it's a lot harder for me to pinpoint what needs to be altered without ruining the drawing.

Just say I wanted to draw "baby" Randy... how would I make him look younger without just putting a diaper on his butt & a pacifier in his mouth like some other cartoons do? Like I said, the key to cute is DIFFERENTIATING PROPORTIONS. To me, to make a character seem younger, all I do is make some big features smaller & some small features larger. I went & made his nose, eyes & body smaller & his head bigger. Also, the length of the limbs also comes into play: the younger they are, the shorter the limbs.

Also to note, I usually measure my characters by "heads". With Steve-O, I usually make the torso & the length of the legs the same length as the head (3 heads tall). Just by shortening his legs & his body by half, he became not only a head shorter, but a few years younger.

Randy is usually 3 heads tall. Baby Randy is about 2.

Some people have more "fool-proof" ways of creating baby/young characters. Since I'm more-or-less a novice, I still need work.

See you tomorrow!

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