Greasing the Gears

A little rusty... I think, but definitely immobile as far as progress has been.

I've been SO busy too! There's no eloquent way of putting this, and I've been meaning to get around to doing something to celebrate this fact, but I'm a dad now!

Still feels a bit surreal but I think I'm filling into the shoes pretty well, albeit a little strange to walk in from time to time... it's the sleep deprivation that gets to me when I'm not careful.

Anyway, inbetween some free time to myself I pick up a game of League of Legends here and there with some friends when I can... and I recently decided to pick up on the remaining week of an art contest that's being hosted; doing a 4 sequence single page comic strip.

It's an art contest and I'm always up for a challenge, and I'm feeling pretty good about this one so far!

We'll see how far this piece takes me, all I know, is that it's a step in the right direction to get me out of this procrastinating funk... plus it's always nice to know there's something to strive for; victory, a goal, some sort of golden trophy to reach out to.

We'll see what happens this coming 24th.

Simple Pleasures

My wife and I share very little in common, we are in fact complete opposites and I love that. However, it's healthy to find some middle ground for both parties to meet up and share.

One of those things is the ability to sit and joke around with stupid, silly stuff which might make no sense at all but give us some of those simple pleasures in life. How Charina and I do it is by making up band names.

These happen by accident mostly but I've documented quite a few names of fictitious bands over the years we've been together because it's one of the rare occasions that my wife, who is also an illustrator to some degree, will collaborate with me and we'll actually spend some time over and genuinely have a good laugh and a great time over the concept.

For this particular piece, it was made up over the course of a week of constantly bringing up this one band name that she was stuck on, "Something, Something, Something." To which I rebutted, "Quit, quit quitting!" And then that suddenly clicked with me.

I ended up condensing the band name, which I formalized as QUITQuit-Quitting to Q3, and that they'd be some sort of New Jack Swing project who collaborates with other performers to do covers of other New Jack Swing bands (Like Bobby Brown or New Edition).

I love the album name to this one, "Skinny is for Punks."

It was originally going to be called "Fresh 'n Firm." But I couldn't quite land the concept integrated with the title so I ran with this one which I had the fortunate energy of being able to work out flawlessly.

The two guys there have names, I couldn't let the concept down so simply: The Red Panda is named Ferdinand Suyumi (synths, backing vocals, programming) and the Lemur is Ahmet Sanghira (guitar, main vocals).

I've always wanted to do this, make up mock album covers to bands that don't exist except in my mind and... I'm not sure why I never did this earlier because I've a good list of fictitious bands I could work with now and other album covers I could do of those bands.

Would be a good step to keep me in check because I merely find myself working on something periodically, as opposed to feverishly as I used to.

CRUMGARI Unicorn - I Call Him Omega

I vaguely recall the difficulty my mentor, David Christiana, would stress about the technical aspects of painting or rendering anything under moonlight.

Knowledge I never forgot, but I remember him telling us that it would always have this funky green hue to it... almost milky, but green. Even more so to convey anything red under moonlight because the effect always renders red in this dark gray hue making anything red under moonlight almost impossible to convey without looking weird.... It was always a difficult thing to explain and I easily understood why... what I didn't know was that he had a lackluster for unicorns as well.

I never paid much attention to it till a few years later (now that I'm knee deep in some fandom for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic...) when a colleague of mine, Jojo Seames, posted up on her facebook about two things Christiana told us never to paint (I somehow never got this memo): Red things under moonlight, and unicorns.

To this effect, there were apparently five students I went to school with, or were going to school at the time of, who had painted unicorns that were red... CADMIUM red, under moonlight.

These people ended up calling themselves CRUMGARI (Cadmium Red Unicorns in Moonlight Guerilla Artistic Resistance Initiative)

Apparently all it takes is to convey a cadmium red unicorn in moonlight to be a part of this merry band of anarchists... which I gladly had to take up on the opportunity of:

Did you know mentions of unicorn date as far back as Ancient Greece?

I had no idea that the Greeks were one of the first in documented history to make mention of this mythical beast, yet ironically, is not mentioned in any of their mythology (That would be left to Pegasus, the flying horse!)

I thought this an amazing opportunity to assimilate three great aspects, two within a single culture, and fuse them together with post-modern tenacity:

Spartans

Unicorns

and My Little Pony...

I name this majestic beast, "Omega" as evidenced by the um... "cutie mark" emblazoned on his flank.

RED95 - Sweet Tooth Extraction

Wow these are old... according to the file details-- September 29, 2008...

Feels like forever ago that I thought about wanting to work on RED95 and it seems like the closer I get to even wanting to get started, the farther I get.

Not sure if anyone else ever feels this way or has the same problem with their own projects... as far as people wanting to get some sort of creative thing set out into fruition, but most days... I think that's the problem involved.

I spend more time wondering WHEN I'll get started and not actually getting started.

There are other factors involved, life, liberty, the pursuit of h... wait, doesn't this stem off from someplace else profound? Hmm...

In any case, one day, it'll happen. When?

*Sighhh*

The Alien Boy

I actually worked on a children's book previous to this by the same group of guys I've done before... it's nothing major (not yet as they seem to surmise, haha) but it at least gives me the sense that I'm actually doing something productive with what I went to school for.

Anyway, this year starts the mark of another project by the same guys; the author titling this particular story "The Alien Boy"

I won't get into the details of the thing since it's way too early to really deliberate any details except that when I read it, I had an amazing time imagining the characters that'll be portrayed!

I'll be meeting with the guys today about what I've got lined out so we'll see where it goes from here....

Giving back to the Community

I've never been much for fan art... I mean I have. I've done it, I just never get around to doing it as much as I believe I should.

But lately I've been listening in to a local Conservative talk radio station here in town on the frequency 104.1FM "The Truth" and there's been one guy in particular I've been diggin' well into.

On the show he's known as "The Beautiful Man," James T. Harris.

Anyway, I'll just leave this here and get to something else in the mean time, haha!

I actually intend to do more stuff like this... as I said, for me to 'give back to the community'. Who will be the next victim in town, illustrated? I'm not quite sure... but I'm certain it'll be just as fun as this was :)

1/19/2012 -UPDATE

Workin' on some vinyl assassin LOVE, representing local radio host and menacing DJ: TOBY ROBERTS!!! from 91.3FM KXCI!

1/21/2012 Update

Toby! TOBY! TOOOBYYYY!!!

(In black and white)

Now in color! WOOOO!!!

01/25/2012 Update

Today on 104.1's The Truth, when James T. Harris was on, there was a point in the show where I called in to weigh in on a certain topic; but in the time that I did that I also let known that I was the particular artist in mind that did the piece he now uses has his Facebook profile photo (so amazing, haha!)

In that time... about an hour or so later, there was talks about my artwork again and Ross, the producer, caught a bit of flak... it was all fun in games but I still felt responsible for his shame hahaha. I find this as a means to hopefully repay that debt, if there ever is any, there is now.

I wish so bad that I could have a copy of that segment that went down today-- I was DYING when I heard it go down in my car. I wanted to call back and rebuttal, hopefully save Ross but... my phone had died long before.

Producer of both the Jon Justice show and James T. Harris-- Ross Williamson! THE SEXY SIDEKICK!!!

06/29/2012 Update

Been meaning to work on this for a LONG time now and ... well, it took another night of Italo from Under Surveillance's David Wright to set things off and get me going again:

It's so far, simple but far from done...

Almost there...

(I've no idea when I'll finish this one...)

VICTORY!!!