Jet Engines and Severed Heads

Today, after a long hiatus from blogdumb, I present to you two variations of the jet ninja. This specimen of ninja deadliness is particularly hard to find in it's natural habitat. Mostly because when you're trying to find it, it is stalking you for a swift and violent kill. Fortunately for you, I can sketch motion that cameras can't even catch: these two jet ninjas are but one example (are but two examples?).

You can identify a jet ninja by the loud roar of the engine. Unfortunately, since they always travel faster than the speed of sound, the final identification will be up to your severed head. The only person that has ever faced a jet ninja and survived is, of course, Chuck Norris. But even he lost a piece of his beard.

Average Joebot

I mentioned in a previous post how drawing a humanoid robot, for me, usually represents a sort of "average joe" or humankind as a whole. It's a little deep so I don't really expect you to get it.

Conversely, drawing an average Joe always represents the plight of the robot. Humans have always built robots to work. They make cars, vacuum our floors/haul cats, kill/spy on stuff and generally do our bidding, regardless of how repetitive and boring it is.

These careful illustrations represent these robots. I hope that by drawing them as a human face you can appreciate their contributions to our society. Perhaps by showing our appreciation, even this small bit, we can convince them to preserve a few of us when they finally rise up. Until that day, you can appreciate these Average Joebots.

Powerguy and the Slope Intercept Form

This piece is a chilling diatribe on the struggle of good against evil, rendered in four-part harmony with subtitles for the hearing impaired. If you carefully examine Powerguy's face, you will see all of the emotions of humanity, etched in his features and fed into the power of his attack. The elongated body shape translates the desperation and passion into line art in two-dimensions: X and Y. You can find Y rather easily if you have X, the slope (M) and the Y intercept (B) with the equation Y = MX + B. This simple slope-intercept form describes a line and art is made of lines.

Superheroes

These are some characters that I draw somewhat frequently. I waited awhile to post them because I was afraid that if I started right off with this cast of characters, the sheer awesomeness would drive readers away. As it is, by posting a chunk of the cast of characters at the top of this post I violated Awesomeness limits in three states.

Multi is a sort of tortured soul. Her super power is ghost-like facets of her personality that assist her. She's mostly bad but not necessarily because she intends to be. She had a rough childhood and you should give her a break.

Powerguy is the superhero's superhero (like a man's man but on a mutant level). He basically trained Superman, Spiderman and a lot of others. Powerguy is the good guy. He mostly keeps a low profile, usually appearing only now and then in the margins of notebooks and meeting agendas to fight Darkscary. Which brings us to the third character.

If you don't largely understand Darkscary by the picture and his name you should probably take an IQ test and maybe don't reproduce. He's dark. He's scary and he wears a powerful robotic suit. He's the bad guy.

Lobotomy is neither good or evil. He's really clueless and really lucky. He's a sort of wildcard. You could be fighting a dude and right as he tosses you in front of a freight train the train derails, missing you by a fraction. Or maybe the train hits you but a fragment of your exploding body embeds itself in your enemy's skull and he dies too. It's a tough call. So, nobody really wants him on their side but they don't really want the enemy to have him either. This character was not my idea, I credit a mysterious force called the "Jackotron".

The last guy is the mandatory genius professor. This bores me. Darkscary might kill him and ressurect him as an evil robot. That would be more interesting. And I could draw more robots. I like to draw robots.

Realism Causes Confusion

It's Friday-Four-for-One day! The theme of today is super-heroes. It's a well known fact that the comic industry is really flagging lately. There hasn't been a new comic-based movie for at least a week and now all people are thinking about is Megan Fox Transformers and GI Joe. As such, most of the top comic publishing companies have been hounding yours-truly for days*.

Basically, they want a more playful superhero that can still convey the deep emotionality that is present in the modern comic. Artists such as Brian Ching** are stuck in a rut of realistic artwork and have really taken the "comic" out of comics. Many readers are confused about the line between reality and comics. When Spiderman came out there were four men in their twenties that died after leaping off of a tall structure, only to realize that the radioactive spider that bit them did not, in fact, bestow any web-slinging abilities. One female was injured when an upside-down kiss went awry.

It gets worse. Immediately upon the release of Wolverine, James Heller, 35, of IA was rushed to the hospital to have steak knives removed from between his knuckles, doing serious damage to his right hand.

To help people understand the difference between comics and reality, top publishers are moving to a much looser, cartoony style to counter the ultra-realism of the big screen. A spokesperson from a major publisher (who asked not to be identified) told me:

"Basically, most of our artists are stuck in realism and it's confusing our customer base. We feel like if superheroes had Popeye forearms and giant anime feet, people would be less confused. You never see Japanese people actually trying to build robot suits or fighting with swords. This is because people realize that the figures in anime, with their ridiculously giant eyes and weird-shaped heads, are figments of imagination. This is where we're failing."

With this in mind, I have been working to train top artists in the industry to be more loose in their style and purposefully exaggerate more areas than simply muscles, hips and boobs. This collection is not for sale as part of the terms of my agreement with top publishers.

Piece Details
Media: Black Bic on Mead notebook paper
Size (rough): Various
Price: Under contract

* Comic publishers, please don't take this serious and file a lawsuit.
** Brian Ching is actually my favorite artist. If I ever meet him I will eat his brains and take his knowledge.