Saturday Morning Redux, Part 1: Fangface

Inspired by Paigey's recent roller-derby X-Men, and Gris Grimly's "grimlified" cartoons, I've decided to try my hand at re-designing the old Saturday morning cartoon characters that I grew up with and loved as a kid. First up is Fangface. I've always had a thing for monsters, especially werewolves. (Still do!) A Saturday morning cartoon starring a goofy-looking kid (I could relate) who turns into a werewolf that fights monsters and solves mysteries, that was pretty much as good as it gets for 10-year-old me.

I even had this board game (check out that car!):

So Fangface seems like the best place to start. I just streamlined him a bit and put a little bit of my personal style into him. I gave him 2 little bottom fangs, like any respectable werewolf should have, and really pushed his mouth and made it this big silly slobbery thing. And I got rid of those Groucho Marx Eyebrows, but still tried to keep him ferocious-yet-silly. Overall, I'm really happy with him and can't wait to do the next one (I'm totally open to suggestions, by the way!). Hope you guys like it!

Here's my blueline sketch:

And here's the big furry guy in color:

Zombie Pirate Pete

So, I've been posting lots of character designs on this blog, but something I haven't really posted yet are facial expressions. So let's start with Zombie Pirate Pete. ZPP is one of the adult characters from my animated show idea that I've been talking about, "Witchamazoo". He lives in a cave off the shore that's filled with piles & piles of "treasure" of virtually anything imaginable. So he's the guy the kids in Witchamazoo come to when they need any kind of bangle, bauble, or trinket. The trouble is, he has no short-term memory. So every time the kids visit ZPP they have to remind him that they're his friends and they're not there to steal his treasure. They only have a few seconds after they convince him before his memory fades and they have to start all over again. (Imagine if "Memento" was a comedy.) So as his memory & mood shifts so do his facial expressions. So I roughed out a few that would happen during the course of an average conversation.

Here are some blue line sketches of a few facial expressions from our befuddled buccaneer:

Cleaned-up black line roughs:

Color roughs:
And color roughs with color line art:

Who's Who in Witchamazoo

 About this time last year I introduced you to Mikey the Wolfboy, one of the characters from a pitch I'm developing (with my Producer friend Barb Nash) for a children's animated tv show called "Witchamazoo". What is "Witchamazoo"? Well, if you took "Strawberry Shortcake", Lauren Faust's "My Little Pony", and Disney's "Recess", and mixed them all together and poured it into a land inhabited by friendly monsters, that gives you an idea of what the show is all about. But this post isn't about the show itself, it's about the designs.

 This is the main cast of characters from the show. (from left to right: Marrina (a gossipy gyspy girl), Ermagard (an earthy witch girl), Tad (an athletic fish boy), Alex (a vegetarian vampire boy), Mikey (an adorable werewolf boy), and Basil (an awkward man-made boy).
Here they are in blue line cleanups:

Converted into black line art, feet lined up, prepped for coloring:

Color roughs:

Color roughs with color line art:

  As you can see, Mikey underwent some minor design changes since last year's post, as did the rest of the cast. More on that, and the evolution of Witchamazoo, in my next post...

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!