Bill v Chupas p4

I'm not sure why Bill beating the crap out of these little goat suckers cracks me up, especially the one he punches in mid air. Probably got the idea after watching this video a few years back.

Hey how'd that farmer guy get upside down?

B-Day Sketch #8

Falcor for Amanda

B-Day Sketch #7

Bilbo & Smaug for Glenna

Bill vs Chupas p3

A fun but slightly more involved page layout. The line art is still sort of a mess, but I have to keep posting a page each week and moving on to break the bad habit of redrawing the same page over and over again. Yes I know his tranquilizer gun disappeared in the bottom panel, I will have to draw that in later.

B-Day Sketchbook 5-6

Not sure if the layout works for this one, but I'm trying to get these done in a timely manner, so... good enough. Good grief Mom.

Magical Mojo Forest Fantasy for Mom

Apologies to whoever took the Eiffel Tower photo I basically just traced.

Eiffel Tower for Deliza

I've always had an irrational fear of drawing buildings (which I'm going to try to conquer shortly), but monsters on the other hand...

Eiffuh... AIEEEEE!

Bill vs Chupa p.2

Experimenting with different rendering techniques in Photoshop. I've been toying around with this little story idea for a while now. I love drawing the chupacabra, I've got a lot of sketchbook doodles of him. He's sort of a mix of bush baby, vampire bat and feral cat. Below is the original second page from a few years back, drawn in pencil.

B-Day Sketch #4

Unicorn for Purp Carey

B-Day Sketch #3

Okay, so consider this a warning. Ask me to draw something like this: 

A lumberjack from the future (ie. human but with machine body part upgrades), extremely hairy, some hairstyle from the future, and it wouldnt hurt if his nametag had the name "Jake" or some cooler futuristic version of the name Jake hahaha.. Also, wouldnt hurt if you subtly showed the effects of our worlds pollution on the wildlife habitat...

And you're going to get something that looks like this:

Robo-Lumberjack for Jake Brenneman

Apparently I imagine manly-men in the future styling their hair in the fashion of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

B-Day Sketch #2

Octopus Drummer for Mike Ginn

This was fun. Probably one of the most technically complex things I've attempted to draw, so pardon the roughness of the sketch. Confession: I drew over a picture of Terry Bozzio's ridiculous drum kit.

Birthday Sketchbook #1

Sandy Koufax for Uncle David

Bill vs Chupa p.1

Depending on the size of your monitor you may want to open the image in a separate window for a better view.

Bill the Platypus vs. el Chupacabra
Page 1

Bill the Platypus is a character I created in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Originally just a cartoon platypus, he has evolved into a tribute to the great 90's cartoons I grew up with like Ninja Turtles and Darkwing Duck, which were themselves parodies of the nitty-gritty comics of the 80's. He is a bounty hunter who specializes in the capture of illegal human-animal hybrids. One big source of inspiration is Mike Mignola's Hellboy. I always like how in the comics, nobody ever blinked at a big red devil showing up to exorcise their house. Bill sort of works that way - he's a ridiculous looking character in an otherwise realistic world.

Traditionally in comic books there is a penciling stage, an inking stage and a coloring stage, done by three different artists. In an all-digital workflow, these stages all sort of blend together. The lines are dark like inks, but the drawing is still a bit loose. Artists working in pencil often sketch in blue (which doesn't show up on a photocopy) then draw tighter lines on top. In photoshop, it's as simple as applying a special adjustment layer and drawing over the top, as many times as needed to get the line art to where it needs to be.

This is a page I've drawn before, in pencil. Here's the original scan from a few years back. Contrast got a boost and lettering was added in Photoshop. I used this as the base layer.

Original Pencils