My Toon Platoon Entries

Since I haven't posted much lately, I decided to put up my Toon Platoon entries for those who haven't checked the site out yet.

Some of these entries I spent time on, & some I quickly sketched out. You'll see as you scroll down:

Week #1 - The first topic on Toon Platoon focused on the HALO video games. I decided to put a comic spin on the somewhat serious nature of the game by putting poor ol' Master Chief on a blind date with Samus from the Metroid games. Personally, I think Samus is WAY cooler than the Chief.

I inked this with a Size 1 Pigma Graphic Pen & colored it with Prismacolor pencils. It has that hand-drawn quality look that I like, but the coloring was a pain. I tried something way different the next week:

Week #2 - Mascots was the second topic, & I thought I'd put a little more effort into my submission. I drew & inked the sketch on paper, scanned it into the computer & colored it completely in Photoshop. This was my second attempt at coloring using the program, but I think I got the hang of it by then. I even put a gradient & shadows in the picture.

Although the picture went over big, I had two problems:

1) The whole Photoshop process was WAY to time consuming. I spent nearly two days coloring.

2) I got complaints that using Photoshop was cheating, since I was the only member who owned the program, which made me a few steps ahead of the others. I agreed, so I stopped using Photoshop for Toon Platoon submissions. Until the majority of members get their hands on Photoshop, I'll be hand coloring my entries.

Week #3 - The third week was Prehistoric Animals. Since I'm in college now, I have to balance work with pleasure, so by the time the week was nearly up, I had no time to draw out something for the Platoon. This was the beginning of a long line of near-late entries.

I lightly scribbled some rough construction work in pencil, but mostly I drew it with a Sharpie marker. It shows, don't it?

Week #4 - This week was a bit more fun. Even though this was another near-deadline entry, I put a little more effort & time into the drawing. Usually, I draw the sketch in pencil & ink/clean it up later with a pen. This week was the reverse. I drew it in pen, then shaded it in in pencil.

Week #5 - I drew this in literally one minute. The whole drawing is basically a shade job, shading everything in using the side of my pencil. It looks sloppy up close, but it looks decent from a considerable distance.

Week #6 - I planned on doing a colossal epic drawing for this week. It was originally going to be various Mario baddies (Bowser, Wario, Donkey Kong, etc.) on a bowling team. Donkey Kong was gonna throw barrels, Bowser was gonna shoot fire, & I think Wart was somewhere in the background. It was gonna be a great piece... but once again, I lost complete track of time & the week was near the end.

I quickly drew this with a marker & shoved it on the site. It's not what I wanted, but at least I submitted something.

Week #7 - This last piece was part of our just-finished Political Cartoons week. I decided to draw what Santa really did with Thanksgiving.

This is my first color submission since the Photoshop debacle. But instead of using a computer & mouse, I used some old markers I had stored away in my art drawer. Some of them are nearly dry (you can tell near the base of Santa's coat), but I think it came out fine.


I'll make sure to post new submissions up here as well as over at Toon Platoon. For a better description of each week's entry, click on the Toon Platoon link on the sidebar & scroll down 'til you find my posts. You can also click "Michael J. Ruocco" near the bottom of one of my entries & it'll take you directly to every submission I posted up.

Go check out Toon Platoon once in a while & see the other member's submissions as well. & don't forget to leave comments!