Don't get me wrong, I love studying hand anatomy as much as the next artist. I could stare at pictures of an good abductor digiti minimi all day long, or I could work on my comic. Sometimes you don't want a sixty minute anatomy lesson for your cartoon style illustrations. Sometimes you just want a quick peek at all the know good hand positions…
If you haven't seen the Animator vs. Illustrator series from Buzz Feed Video on YouTube, I highly recommend it. My 9 year old, who wants to be a concept artist, loves this series and asked if we could stage our own version of the show. The topic for the head to head friendly drawing demonstration was "If Mochi ice cream were people". The kid…
I don't recall VHS tapes having the ability to show subtitles. Perhaps that's why, over my countless viewings of the original Star Wars trilogy, I misheard a lot of lines. This Thanksgiving while watching A New Hope for the mid-hundreds time I was reminded of one of my favorite misheard pieces of dialogue. It took until 2002 and the release of Attack of the…
Whether in another castle, under a spell or in distress, princesses are problem magnets. How's a young elven knight to know which princesses to save and which ones to dispatch. It's a quandary as old as time. I drew this comic entirely in Procreate on an iPad Pro with a 1st gen Apple pencil. The font is Back Issue from Blambot and was imported…
I spent a lot of time playing the 2015 iOS game Shooty Skies. The team from Mighty Games, formally Hipster Whale of Crossy Road fame, did a great job making a fast, fun and frenetic shooter. Crossy Road got mini blind box figures several years ago, but Shooty Skies, a better game in my opinion, never got a blind box or Funko pop. What's…
I think of art as a two step process. Step 1: Inspiration. Step2: Creation. Sure, there's more to it. A lot more. In fact, each of my over simplified steps contain an number of sub steps. I don't like sub steps. Research, refinement, structure, appeal...ughh. All that stuff sounds like a lot of work. This work saps the motivation from the moment of inspiration…
This was a half day project to see if I could sculpt and paint a "from scratch" original Funko Pop using Sculpey's Ultra Light polymer clay. When selecting a subject for a project, especially a Pop, I gravitate towards characters that aren't already Pops. Considering the prolific nature of Funko, this is challenge. Enter Wolfgang from Klei Entertainment's excellent survival crafting game, Don't Starve.…
The art direction and character design in Supercell's 2016 mobile game Clash Royale is fantastic. The knights, skeletons, jousty guys and the kings all have a fun, smooth, cartoon, vinyl thing going on. I'm not a big Clack of Clans or Clash Royale game player, but I like the art enough to try and sculpt out a one day version of the Blue King.…
We all want our polymer clay models to resemble a smooth designer art toy cast in vinyl or resin. The problem is, it takes a lot of work to get rid of the bumps, nicks, finger prints, indentations, uneven surfaces and bits of clay stuck to the outside. The bigger problem is, solving one of the above issues can actually cause of some of…
There are several easy-to-correct factors that cause polymer clay or sculpy clay projects to burn. All of these factors come down to heat. Heat, is what causes things to burn. Controlling heat and how and where that heat hits your model is the key to consistent clay bakes. You Don't Know the Real Temperature The temperature gauges on cheaper ovens, like toaster ovens, should…
