Even Zombies Have Gestures

Alec Stevens, one of my instructors at the Joe Kubert School, use to stress the importance of gesture drawings. Capturing the essence of the pose in its most simple form. At the time, I was a perfectionist, holding my pencil in a death grip and drawing every line with a concentrated purpose. I did very little sketching, and even when I did, I would never ever show these "imperfect" drawings to anyone without a lot of internal pain & embarrassment. As much as I tried, I could just never loosen up to do some decent gestures. Not even in life drawing class. Thanks to Alec pushing me, his lessons stuck with me over the years, even today. I'm a much different artist now than I was then. Gesture drawings are the beginning of every great pose I've ever done. And cartoon zombies are no exception! I'm working on a project for a friend that I can't discuss at this point. But I can tell you that I'm drawing cartoon zombies. As I'm fleshing out some of the zombies, I wanted to share a couple of gesture drawings with you. Why? Because I rarely show anyone these early-stage sketches, and because I wanted to say THANK YOU, ALEC STEVENS.

Sug-ARRRRR Me Timbers!

I know it's taken a bit longer than expected to unveil the winners of the "Design Your Own Breakfast Monkey Villain" contest. But now that it's finally almost time, I thought I'd lead into it by showing you a few BMonkey villains that you haven't seen yet. Beginning with CAP'N ROTTENMOUTH. Cap'n Rottenmouth happened when a girl I was dating did the WORST pirate impression I'd ever heard. It came out sounding more like half pirate/half leprechaun. It made me and Gerard laugh so hard that it became a running joke between us, and we decided that he needed to be a BMonkey character. But the question was, what do we do with a leprechaun pirate? Well, we know that Crazy Boy is addicted to sugary cereal, and the sugary-est cereal we could think of Cap'n Crunch, who's kind of a pirate-like character. So the leprechaun pirate became our Cap'n Crunch. He'd be the mascot of Crazy Boy's favorite cereal, "sailing the seas of cavities" as he rotted the teeth and minds of not just Crazy Boy, but of cereal-loving children everywhere. So here's my updated design of that character. What we have is a bearded red-headed midget with messed-up teeth, wearing a green pirate outfit and carrying a shillelagh. The hat is an obvious nod to Cap'n Crunch. As always, here's the color rough and the uncolored blue line clean-up.

 

COMING UP NEXT: The Breakfast Monkey's  arch-nemesis, COLONEL SUPPER! Stayed tuned!

Hard Boyle'd Halloween, Part 1

It's a little-known fact that I am a humongous fan of masks. All kinds of masks. But I especially love vintage Ben Cooper-style Halloween masks. I just love the bold and simplistic pop-art look of them.

(The second one from the top I actually remember wearing in first grade.)

I'm also a big fan of vintage Halloween crafts, or Halloween crafts made to look vintage. A lot of which are made with paper mache. I was looking at one of my favorite contemporary crafters, Retro Rudolph's, and I was inspired to put my love of masks and paper mache crafts together. So I've decided to design and make paper mache Halloween masks, done in retro Ben Cooper style. I sketched out a few thumbnails at work the other day, and here they are:

 

I don't know if I'll actually use any of these, but it's definitely the direction I want to go with them. A majority of them will probably end up being devil masks, just because those are my favorite. I don't know how many I'll do. This is my first time using paper mache since like third grade. So I'll either love it and churn out mask after mask, or I'll hate it and do just one or two and will have gotten this creative bug out of system. I'm hoping I'll love it and have a bunch of them to sell online. And maybe keep a few for myself. I'll put up a new post after I finish my first mask...

The Bubble of Solace

 In 1999, I took a left turn in my art career and left DC Comics to pursue a career in animation. This Summer, I made my return to the world of comics. Well, sorta. My actor friend Melissa Roth told me that she was going to be in Piper McKenzie's new play in the Comic Book Theater Festival titled "The Bubble of Solace", and that they were looking for artists for some comic book segments. First of all, I am a big big fan of Piper McKenzie. Their plays strike a very specific chord with the nerd in me. So already I was excited about the idea of working with them. Secondly, I'd get to draw comic book stuff again, which I'd been itching to do. So I contacted writer/director Jeff Lewonczk, sent him some rough character sketches, and I was in. I was super-excited about the "Bertie" segment, an Archie comics parody. I'd get to draw my version of Josie and the Pussycats? Um, yes please! I think mainly because of my enthusiasm for that alone, Jeff decided that "Bertie" would be the segment I'd work on. Here's one of my favorite panels, brilliantly colored by Jeff to look like old 4-color comic book printing.

 I saw the play last week, and let me tell ya, seeing my work up on a huge screen with the cast doing voices (backstage) in lieu of word balloons, and actor Roger Nasser hilariously interacting with the panels, I loved every second of it! Because of the interactive nature of it, I treated the panels a lot like an animatic. When it's all put together on screen, some panels are almost animated, like when Professor Finkleblatt is lecturing (Roger's character) AJ and telling him that he has the power to change the story. With colors again by Jeff.

 

 Or when AJ confronts Melvin about his plans to kiss Bertie.

 

And here's a photo of AJ interacting with Finkleblatt. The panels obviously got flopped for staging. (photo courtesy of Jim R. Moore):

 The following end sequence is possibly my most favorite of anything I've done in my career so far. In this scene, AJ is rejected by Bertie and chastised by Melvin. AJ loses it and starts tearing up the pages of the comic book, effectively massacring the entire Bertie crew. (I'm posting these panels without the 4-color f/x.)

 And in the end, Professor Finkleblatt transforms into The Nightmarer, a ghoulish character similar to EC Comics' Cryptkeeper. In the final panel where we close up on The Nightmarer, I got to switch gears and did a dark, gritty dry-brush horror comics style. So much fun!

Jeff even made a mock comic book cover, the one AJ picks up for the audience to see before we get transported inside the pages. Have I mentioned the man is brilliant?

Humongous thanks to Jeff and Melissa, Piper McKenzie and to the entire cast & crew of "The Bubble of Solace". It was an absolute pleasure to work with all of you!

Winners of the "Design Your Own Breakfast Monkey Villain" contest!

Last month I announced my very first contest, to design your very own Breakfast Monkey villain. We got an overwhelming response, and I even recruited special guest judge NISA CONTRERAS, Production Manager of Cartoon Network's VENTURE BROS and ROBOTOMY. It was tough decision, but here are the winners:

Grand Prize: AMELIA SALT for her character Cap'n Bedsheet!

Two runners-up: MADDY for her character Aryne Alchemist and Kate (MusicRox16) for her character Mr. Toastinator!

CONGRATULATIONS GUYS! And big big thank you's to everyone who entered! And to Nisa Contreras for her help and invaluable insight. You guys rock!! I will post drawings of the winning entries next Saturday, July 25th on my Youtube page. Don't miss it!

Pancakes & cream,

 Joe

Mikey the wolfboy

This little guy is from a project that I've been wanting to do for years, a pitch for a little kids' show called "Witchamazoo". The premise is kind of "Strawberry Shortcake" meets "Groovie Ghoulies". I don't want to give too much away about the show just yet, but Mikey the little werewolf boy is my favorite character. And possibly my favorite of all my character designs so far.
I've recently joined Patch Together, where I hope to get started on having some of my designs made into toys. My first submission is The Breakfast Monkey. I really want him made into a plush toy. If you do too (and honestly, how could you not) PLEASE join Patch Together and vote for him and leave a comment about how much you want a Breakfast Monkey plushie. The more positive feedback I get, the better my chances are of getting BMonkey toys made. I'm submitting Mikey next. He'll be up in a few days from now. I really want to make soft vinyl Mikey toys, so make sure you vote on him too! (UPDATE: Mikey is now up and available for voting: HERE)
Here are my blue-line and color roughs. In the color version, I've added Mikey's best friend, a tiny blue flea that Mikey has simply named "Bug".

Vampires Will Never Hurt You (but hide your donuts!)

It's been a while since my last post. I've been super-busy moving this month, and I've had no time for work. And I'm still not fully moved in yet! But I finally had some time to make a new Breakfast Monkey Youtube video, and to tell you about a new BM villain, MAGIC DRACULA! Magic Drac is our tribute to actor/comedian Rip Taylor. As you know by now, I'm a pretty big Sid & Marty Krofft fan. Rip played the genie Sheldon on the show "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters", which I always thought was freakin' hilarious. Just the idea that these teenage boys were friends with this super-gay confetti-throwing sea-genie wearing a cape and boxers...so damn funny. And I thought, how funny would it be to have that same personality in a vampire character? The result is Magic Dracula, a flamboyant, glittery pastry-vampire. No, he doesn't suck blood, but he just lovvves the insides of jelly donuts and chocolate eclairs, ruining Breakfast for donut-lovers everywhere. Obviously, this puts him on the Breakfast Monkey's shit list.
As always, here's the blue line sketch and the color rough:

 

Which brings us to my next topic: I'M HAVING MY FIRST CONTEST! The contest is "Design Your Own Breakfast Monkey Villain". Your baddie can be anything you want. He doesn't have to have anything to do with food, but he does have to make our little breakfast imp's mornings pretty miserable. I want everyone to be able to enter, so don't be intimidated if you can't draw very well. I can get a pretty good idea from just a rough little sketch. Parents & friends are allowed to help! And if you can't draw at all, that's okay too. Just send me a written description of your character, and I'll do the rest! Send all of your entries to me at joeboylenyc@gmail.com by May 31, 2011. The grand prize will be a drawing of your character by me, which I'll sign and send to you, and your character will appear in a future episode of "The Breakfast Monkey", AND you get an exclusive Breakfast Monkey t-shirt! This t-shirt won't be available anywhere else, so you'll be the only lucky duck in the world who owns it! Pretty sweet, right? And runners-up will get a signed drawing of their character! Okay? Okay! So get to it, Monkey fans!