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.