Choro-Q Week: Day Three

These take a long time to make. A lot longer than I expected. I'm also having trouble finding the cars I wanted to do...I'm not giving up, but I'm feeling the challenge.

Choro-Q Week: Day Two

Tax day...This is tonight's car. Not far enough along to post yet. I chose the Choro-Q-ized Toyota AE86 from Initial D. I'm not a car guy. I've never crawled under a car or purchased special parts. Until earlier this evening, I never even changed a tire. But I am the son of a car guy - I have collected hotwheels and micromachines, built a ton of 1/25 scale cars, sanded down a great deal of bondo, and spent enough time around guys with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth t-shirts to at least have a grasp of the culture.

These little cars are a lot of fun to make. See you tomorrow.

Choro-Q Week: Day One

Choro-Q cars are little pull-back racers. They came here in the states as Penny Racers. These rad little vehicles are cutesy caricatures of real cars. I have included a picture of the original illustration from the cover a Japanese Choro-Q game from the Playstation 2.

I've been wanting to try my hand at vectorizing more mechanical objects. Working with such a limited palette allows me to focus on the form of the car without getting too lost in little details. Building the drawing up from simple shapes still proves challenging, but I'm learning every step of the way.

My plans going forward are to work from a photograph, as well as some more of the illustrations. My ultimate goal for the week is to produce one completely original piece. I will document the creation of that one throughout the week.

Dragon Week Sketches

Three sketches and a revision. I didn't like the way the tail looked on the baby dragon, so that changed. I've got some work to do as far as vectors are concerned, and next week's theme should be a doozy.

Dragon Week: Day 4

Ancient dragon sketch. Baby dragon sticker. Also, 100 posts!

Dragon Week: Day 3

In sketch form due to bill-paying and Batman...
One of the more well-known and dangerous abilities possessed by all dragons is a breath weapon of some kind. Most often, dragons breathe fire as illustrated above by the adorable dragon whelp. However, it is possible for a dragon to breathe all kinds of deadly stuff: poisonous vapor, acid, intense cold, cascades of electrical energy, and sometimes rainbows.

Dragon Week: Day 2

Ouroboros. Really fun to say. A sweet, dragon-related, symbol for infinity.

Used 'pattern along path' style for scales (very taxing on my computer's memory when it came time to scale and move it). I've been looking at some great vector illustration and trying to break down how the artists produce the shapes and strokes they use in their work. I like the way the head turned out, even if it kind of looks weird in relation to the rest of the body.

Dragon Week: Day 1

Welcome to theme week - seven days of stickers based on a theme too good for just one sticker. This week's theme is dragons!

I love dragons. As a huge nerd, it's hard not to think dragons are awesome. Dragons are fearsome adversaries with huge treasure stashes, ancient beings with terrible power, and mystical avatars of forgotten deities. They also come in a veritable rainbow of sizes, shapes, colors, and motivations. Hence, dragon week.

Today's design is dragon scales. When I saw the completed version of this sticker, I thought about a banana covered in shiny, yellow, scales. I think it's time for some sleep.

One last thing: the king hippo, eggplant wizard, and Pit stickers are scanned and ready to be finished up this week. I also have a couple Adventure Time stickers from over the weekend that will show up soon.

King Hippo

I figured out in the course of my sketching, why I've ended up with so many monster stickers - I love the little creatures. My favorite parts of videogame instruction manuals and strategy guides are where the publisher hides all of the monster data. I remember pretty clearly, now, how I would fill sheets of paper with the goombas and turtles from Mario 3. That's the stuff that really got me thinking about drawing for a living - and I haven't really had a reason to look back since.

I didn't play the original Punchout back in the day. Captain N was about as close as I would get to King Hippo until the Wii remake a couple years ago. Just the same, that character design is just as imposing and iconic today as it was back then.

Actual stickers to be completed no later than...Saturday.

Eggplant Wizard

Finalized Pit design (bottom left). Also, eggplant wizard will be a sticker. Reminder to myself to talk about monsters tomorrow...

Happy Valentine's Day

Some sketches of Pit in honor of the holiday. Not sure where I'll end up going with this one.

Nanner Rabite

Not dead yet. Got a lot of catching up to do. Look forward to theme weeks starting next week. These will be based on ideas that I could fill sketchbooks with.

Today's sticker is a rabite from the Seiken Densetsu series - which came out here as Secret of Mana (and a bunch of mediocre to terrible sequels). Secret of Mana was a formative gaming experience for me: it showed me how much fun an RPG could really be, it had some of the most incredible graphics at the time, and it established my favorite party role (support and healing courtesy of "the girl"). Here's to that.

Expect lots of dragons, tiny cars, and transformers to invade the blog while I continue pressing forward.

Nannerbik...what was I thinking?

White background? Image pulled from a google search? No sketch? Shoddy curves? Seriously disappointed with this one. I think it just sort of got away from me.

Should have posted yesterday...

Wasn't entirely happy with these sketches for a fu lion statue sticker. Just the same, I meant to post these last night. I did more research and elaborated on the original concept to create a better layout. That will be done tomorrow evening.

Stay tuned for tonight's sticker.

NannerLucha

Luchadores are pretty awesome. I don't know enough about the culture to really create something compelling at the moment. But I really wanted to do something for Saints Row: The Third. So here's Killbane.

Chiquita did a luchadore sticker already - a great one, as you can see in the first image. I didn't really want to step on their toes unless it was unique. I think I achieved my goal here. It would be really cool to revisit this curiosity, do some research, and make my own cool mask. For now though, I'm studying typography and brushing up on my design knowledge.

NannerDrip

Wanted to try doing something interesting with negative space this time around. Not sure what inspired this one, but I didn't have the picture in my head until late in the day.

NannerOni

I'm really pleased with the way the hairy brow turned out on this monster. The scan inspired me to connect it to the nose and create a wild shape that describes a bunch of different surfaces. I would like to do some sort of fur-covered creature next.

I've noticed myself creating a lot of monsters and Asian-inspired designs. That may be a sign that I need to venture out a little more. I don't expect to stop creating either one (I cannot deny how fun it is to draw from those wells) - but I will try some new and different stuff.

Oni Preview

A sketch I scanned and mirrored in Photoshop. This is what will be going into my inkscape document to be turned into a vector. I've been drawing a lot of little monsters and puppets lately. This is partly because I've been wanting to work on better looking fur - but it's also just really fun to make up these faces.

Based on this sketch, it would make a lot of sense to go with the horizontal format. I think if I do that - I will take a break from that format for a while. I don't want to over-do things like border breaks, yellow backgrounds (as opposed to blue), and flipped formats.

NannerMonster

He's a friendly monster with a big belly. Not much more to say there. It was a fun sketch that became a fun sticker.