Daily Sketch

Who are these guys? What are they doing? What are they looking for? They’re in some scary place, but where? What are those things behind them, with the scary eyes?

I don’t know…

Sometimes the story comes to us right in the middle of things, and conveniently leaves out the beginning and the end… and the characters’ names, places, etc. The monster and the alien have been loitering around the fringes of my imagination for the last six months, looking for some sort of trouble to get into (here’s a link to their first appearance — in color, no less). I have a few more sketches of them I plan to post in the next week or so… and that might just be all I have on them. As much as I’d love yet another diversion, I really can’t afford one. We’ll see…

I’m not exactly certain what the story is here. Are they explorers stepping out on a strange, new world? Or are they residents of a dying planet taking one final look at their homeworld before leaving for the last time? Maybe they’re just looking for a gas station to get directions to Mutant World, the amusement park of the future. Who knows…

Here’s the original sketch. I drew the pointing alien first on some 6″ x 9″ paper, decided he needed friends & drew them, then I did the saucer (I mean, how else do you expect them to get around, mm?). Finally, I scanned it, then used Painter to composite the aliens and saucer together, and add shadows & background with the charcoal tool. And that’s the truth…

Millions and billions and zillions of years ago, when the Earth was young and teeming with all sorts of freaky mutant lifeforms, frogs were a lot bigger and meaner than they are today. This is an artistic rendering based on fossils dug up in my back yard of the vicious three-eyed Space Frog. Not exactly sure what the deal was with the third eye — a laser rangefinder, maybe? Details are sketchy on this feature, but suffice to say the Space Frog needed to be a badass because the flies it feasted on tended to be well-armed…

Remember this little guy?

I remember after I finished him, I looked again and though to myself, “Gee, if I made a couple of changes, he would make a neat little dragon.” Well, here’s version 1.0 of the dinosaur-as-dragon (click on him for a larger version):

I’m not completely happy with this version. I want to do something different with the legs, maybe shorten his torso up, make his shnozz a little bigger. ‘Cause dragons have big shnozzes. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway…

Our hero from How Space Wars Begin striking a couple of poses. Ees glamourous, no? He’s going to get a couple more shorts to star in, although the whens and wheres have yet to be determined…

A couple of images with anger-management issues. The guy on the left is mad because the lazy artist didn’t finish drawing his feet properly, leaving him with unattractive bricks for feet. Curse you, lazy artist!! The scary monster, on the other hand, has always been a bad seed. No doubt a passing kitten or puppy set him off. Curse you, scary monster!!

A random evil-looking dog, and one of those African egg-eating snakes you’ve no doubt read so much about (me, I prefer my eggs over-easy, but to each his own.). I think this one got a hold of either an ostrich egg or a minivan…

Okay, we have another dinosaur and then… I don’t know. Not sure what’s up with this other dude.

Maybe he’s screaming because the dinosaur is standing on his foot. Or maybe he just looked into the mirror for the first time and realized how truly ugly he is.

Another recently-discovered caveman drawing — this one depicts the ferocious Subasaurus Rex. This carnivore* stalked the plains and forests of the Triassic period, often near deli shops and coffee houses. Despite its fierce and bloodthirsty demeanor, its miniscule size meant it was only able to terrorize unsuspecting cold cuts and hoagie buns. Often mocked by larger dinosaurs, Subasaurus Rex eventually faded from prehistory, no doubt nursing a deep grudge…

*Actually, it was fond of ordering extra tomatoes on its prey, therefore making it technically an omnivore. Most Subasaurus Rex would argue that since they prefered spicy mustard to the yellow stuff, they were “bad” enough to qualify as true carnivores. Yeah. Whatever.

Some ancient dinosaur sketches. These were found on cave walls somewhere in France or Burundi or Christmas Island or some damn place where they draw pictures of dinosaurs all day. Anyway, these are believed to be the mysterious Doofasaurus, so named for its habit of chasing parked cars and trying to annoy the bigger dinosaurs, no doubt leading to its early extinction…

He’s not really evil — he’s just hungry. I can relate…

This week has been locked into doing one scene for Scary Monster Vs Lucky Frog. Forty-two individual masters to ink. The next scene has thiry-seven masters. My eyeballs are ready to fall out of my head. The flipside is, things look pretty good so far. And everyone knows eyeballs are overrated…