The Wombat King, Again!

And here's the wombat king which I'm calling done for right now because I'm sick of working on it after a year of horrendous missteps and redos. In all of its tangenty, strangely composed, questionably-perspectived glory! I really do like this piece, and it taught me a bunch about photoshop and layer types and different surface treatments and whatnot.

Also I think all my superhuman struggles with this piece paid off because I got that dumb platypus painting below this done in like a day. And that feels pretty good, even if it is just a goofy sketch I painted over. Hurrah and good day :)

Rupert, the Reluctant Platypus

So at my new job my mighty ignorance of even the most basic Photoshop tasks became glaringly apparent. But my awesome patient coworkers have taught me about masks! And keyboard shortcuts! And basic organizational skills! It's been a wild ride and I think it deserves its own blog post pretty soon someday when it's not midnight but for now here's this platypus I painted yesterday:

Blog on the Range

I spent seven years in a place called Dripping Springs, Texas. We had goats that lived in a barn at our high school, there was a barbecue smoker directly outside the biology hall, and the Ag. teacher had students shoot and bring in dead squirrels for the annual taxidermy fiesta. It was a colorful time in my life, and although it goes against everything I believed when I was actually living there, I sort of miss it from time to time and a faint, mesquite-scented poof of longing emits from the nostalgia lobe of my brain. This sometimes manifests itself in an insatiable desire to draw armadillos. So that's pretty much what I did.

Ancestry!

This guy is the predecessor of the little gargoyle Bertram from a couple of posts back. Although it was fun to paint this on a piece of wood, I realized that it would be an almost complete nightmare to animate all this... stuff! He needed a good dressing down, but I still keep this little piece of board on my bookshelf for company.

Sketches!

A couple of recent sketches that I wanted to preserve for posterity! I like how diabolical the old man looks. In high school I had this unshakable curse where everything I drew, even when it was supposed to be dark or scary, always ended up turning out cute. I guess I'm proud that I can draw things now that don't look like they're about to give you hugs. Oh, you know, except for the little dragon guy, there. He looks like a hugger.

Vectors are Awesome.

I really like playing around with vectors in Photoshop because you can get that Toon Shader look without having to go anywhere near Maya! Also, the pen tool is very zenlike. No particular significance to the dog other than how I think he's cute.

Bertram!

This little guy is the main character of the film I'm currently working on. He's lived in hermitlike seclusion on the top of a tower for hundreds or so years and has a good deal of misunderstanding with a pretty likely nemesis.