A Beastly Alphabet for Beastly Children Christmas Gift

Stuck on what to get your child for Christmas? Why not give the gift of knowledge...and monsters?

The book is designed for ages 3-10, although many older kids enjoy reading it too. It teaches young children the alphabet and teaches older kids folkloric facts about beastly creatures.

The book features Beastly creatures from around the world. From Agloolik to Zombie.
The book is coil bound, hand drawn, and colored digitally.
It is $20.00 per book. If you would like a copy you can contact me at jade_pm@hotmail.com.

A Beastly Alphabet for Beastly Children is a great way to get kids to read! After all, what is more fun then monsters?

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, lend your ear this way...

WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL it's getting to that time of year again. One of my favorite seasons, I think only second to Easter. Or maybe tied with Easter.
And what with my parents singing secular Christmas songs in the kitchen, using YouTube as a karaoke machine, (we don't sing the religious ones 'till Advent starts, we're Catholic in case you haven't noticed, anyway) so I thought I would get into the holiday spirit and draw a picture of Jolly Old St. Nicholas.
At the First Council of Nicaea.

If that doesn't get you in the Holiday Spirit I don't know what will!

Varried Version of Rider Pride

and one lonely bomber fan. Also Erin's shirt is one of those "future Rider Fan" shirts. I did take some liberty with this picture. Namely we can't fit that many people on our couch, and there is no way in Hell very-pregnant-Erin would be sitting in the middle.

At the Doggie Spa

True Story.

Little Black Mouse

Just a little animation exercise.
I'm going to do more little exercises like this more often, including a few e-cards I'll probably send to a few family members.
And I dunno why the background in the still shot is pink, when it's supposed to be gray. Guess it was a rendering thing.

Characters

Continuing with the Sports boards, here we have the Hockey Player. It was obvious I wanted to incorporate ice in his design, but without making him look like The Iceman from X-men. (You now have the 90s cartoon theme from X-Men running through your head. Ha Ha) I also wanted to keep him a little 'Other Worldly' so I made what little skin you see on his face a bit pale and sickly and, of course, gave him the glowing eyes. The scarf-mask he's wearing is a bit hard to make out, but it's a skull mask. Again I left his jersey grey to be altered for different teams.

 

This next one is not one of the sports themed board characters. I designed this character with a rather intricate background in mind. I originally wanted the background to be an ocean with a lot of shark fins protruding from the surface a few sharks breaching the water, transitioning to a city with tall buildings and this character in the middle. Buuuuut, I kept over-thinking it, and I was losing the character in the background. So after much wailing and gnashing of teeth and trial after trial, I ended up making a brick background and the character crashing through the wall. Which in itself took forever since I drew and coloured the bricks individually, trying to mimic the texture of real brick walls. Completely forgetting there was a much easier way to accomplish that texture. Oh well. The REALLY annoying thing, is that as I type this, I have figured out a way that may have worked better for the design I originally had in mind. Rats. Enjoy this character. ENJOY IT!!!!

20 minute skull drawing.
This drawing always makes me laugh. I drew it for the background of a board which features a Skeleton character longboarding. It took me 20 minutes to draw the skull, and I forget how long to colour it. I then copy and pasted it multiple times for the background, and adjusted the sizes and layering. What makes me laugh, is that the company has used this skull for another board too. It's funny how I will pore myself into one design, like the shark, for hours and hours, growing more and more frustrated as I am unable to get the result I was going for, and then praying it will be accepted. And then my little 20 minute drawing will be used on 2 separate board designs. Frustratingly Hilarious.

Even More Designs

I was asked to do some sport themed boards for KickIt Longboards, but they didn't want the characters to be your typical athletes. Instead they wanted the designs to be more intimidating and only resembling human. For the basketball player I decided to make sure it had wispy wings and large teeth and canines. As I roughed it out, I added a tail to the creature since it was beginning to remind me of a bird of paradise. So it became the Basketball Player of Chaos instead. In the finished design, you don't really notice the tail since it is covered in shadow and obscured by a basketball hoop. Either way I'm glad I threw it in.

I left the jersey grey, and put it and the rags on separate layers on the photoshop file so that the colors could be changed to match different teams.
This turned out to be one of those drawings that you have an idea for, but you know its going to be a pain for colouring due to the details. The little wispy hairs took majority of the time in completing this design.

The Firey Football Fiend.
After giving wings to the basketball player, I found myself going for a sort of elemental theme for each sport. So for the football player I wanted to incorporate rocks some how, but I didn't want the rocks to be just rock shaped armor. So after some research on rock monsters, and a bunch of thumbnail sketches, I came up with this:

 

I'm rather pleased with how it turned out.

Longboard designs and charchters

This was the first design/character I was commissioned to do for KickIt Longboards. For those of you who don't live in Saskatchewan, or have few memories of your experience here, we get some intimidating looking clouds that slowly advance, and makes you wait for the destruction it wants to unleash. So it didn't take me too long to find a storm cloud I could reference for this design. I don't like storms, they keep me awake with a terrified dog for most of the evening and the really bad ones threaten to tear the roof off, or knock over the trees around you.But I do know quite a few people who love storms, quite like this little dude.

I didn't even notice until my brother pointed it out, but there is a face in the storm cloud. See if you notice it.


 When I make these designs, I usually draw them on paper first and go over the drawing with an India ink pen, then I colour them in photoshop. I have an old tablet, so I find I have more control drawing with the paper and the pen then I do with the stylus. But it tends to get a bit tricky trying to draw a background on paper that will fit a whole board. Luckily, I can rely on the Layout Design classes I took in college, that taught me how to draw backgrounds for camera pans, to create things like this:

And of course Character Design helps with things like this:

Some of my more recent work

So here is some of the designs I was commissioned to do for a Longboard company. These roses actually got omitted from the particular design I drew them for, but I'm still rather pleased on how they turned out.

And this little dude is Mobius.
I will be uploading more of my work as the days go by.

Multi-Purpose Hot Tub

Expect more uploads soon.
Hopefully.

Dr. Penguin Makes Science Look Good

He's blinding you with Science!!
Result of a conversation I had with my brother. Blame him.

SUUUUUUMMMER TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMME!! AND THE LIVING IS......NOT ZOMBIEEEEESS!

 

Years later, Thomas put some jelly beans in 2 year old Christopher's pocket. He said "my Godson needs to know that pockets can hold candy!!" 

A Beastly Alphabet for Beastly Children

SCIENCE!!!

I was talking (texting) with my friend Donovan one day, and he was saying that he had gotten too much sun (him being pasty), and then jokingly (at least I hope it was jokingly) said "Messes with the mind! Right Dr. Penguin?"
....Then this happened...

Piratey Whales! YAAARRRRRR

A much cuter, kid friendly, version of the Whale-Tooth Pirates. This time a actual Orca, Sperm Whale and Harbour Porpoise, instead of a society of people who have based their lifestyle off of them.

YARRR!! Toothed-Whale Pirates!

So, as I was expanding my knowledge of animals via the Wild Kratts TV show, I learned there are two categories of whale.
Toothed Whales and Baleen Whales.
aaaaaaaaaand then my brain said "HEY! LISTEN! TOOTHED WHALE PIRATES THAT PREY ON THE PEACEFUL BALEEN WHALE PEOPLE!!!!!!"
and I said "......k"
So this particular crew is made up of a Orca (Killer Whale) Captain, the big guy in the back is a Sperm Whale, and the little guy is a Harbour Porpoise.
I shall shortly be posting a more cartoony,animaly version, since when I told my nephew I was drawing Pirate Whales, this wasn't what he was expecting.

Grade 7's Psycodelic Elk Walk

CAUTION BRIGHT COLOURS!!!
This is from the last class I taught.
I drew out a walk cycle of an elk and gave the individual frames to the grade 7s to paint. They were only allowed to use shades of the primary colours (although some colours did get mixed)
I didn't tell them what I was doing with the final pictures. I then showed them this video. Only one kid figured out before the rest it was a walk cycle.

Jackalope: Mythical Warrior Rabbit of the West.... or something.

So I was reading Sherman's Lagoon the other night, and in this one strip Sherman brings home a stuffed Jackalope, and he tells Megan (his wife, if you don't read the comic) that "It's the mythical warrior rabbit of the west"
..............
And then this happened.

Jacks Awesome Song

Just in case you missed it:
Awesome, Awesome, Riiiio, Awesome.
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. Awesome, Awesome,
AWESOOOOOOOOME, HUM, hum, Awesome, awesome,
SPIDERMAN!

A continuation in random recordings of my nephews. The next one will be of my one niece.

Grade 7's Poster

 

So I told the grade 7's I was teaching, I would draw them a picture for their classroom.

I asked what picture they wanted, and they all at once started shouting things.

Robot

Unicorn

Troll

Creeper (from minecraft)

squirell

A guy holding 2 swords

A girly Faerie

Gargoyle

PeguinOctopus

and Dinosaur with the lower half of a Lion

So instead of choosing one thing to draw, I just drew them all.

The Unicorn and Troll are from my Beastly Alphabet for Beastly Children book that i'm trying to get published.

How I Draw a Swamp Elf

Here is how I drew the whole thing. It's all drawn in real time for the first few minutes, and is silent. That's because I used this drawing to show the grade 7 kids I was teaching, why they needed to structure their drawings, and I was speaking while it was quiet.
I wanted them to see how rough the whole thing begins, and that it didn't have to be perfect, that they could make it better as they drew.
Plus I wanted them to see how much work goes into making a drawing like this.
Be warned the music is a little loud once it starts.

Swamp Elf

 

Swamp Elf. My nephew has taken to posing like this if you ask "can you be the elf."

Makhor Man

Makhor. Their horns are swirly!
Makhor are cool with their swirly horns and long hair on their chest and living high in the mountains, but I had a lot of trouble turning those goats into a person who would consider them a creature to base his society off of.

CAUGHT ME A MARLIN

I've been watching BBC's Planet Earth, leading to a lot of interesting drawings. Not a Marlin, it's a Sailfish.

Isaac's Joke

Another cat short, featuring the voice of my nephew Isaac.

He done poked the bear

Stupid jerk blocking me in for 40mins.
Also, i've been doing more work on Darcy the Dragon, I've got a storyboard thumbnailed out and everything. And like 3 pages of Darcy the Dragon heads.

Concept Art

 So, I haven't been able to upload anything because the computers are stupid, and randomly decided to make it very difficult for me to show off my work.
So here are some of the things I've been working on, now that I can upload things again!

One of the things I've always wanted to animate is Roger Whittaker's song Darcy the Dragon
It's taken me a while to get to it though, since I was never really satisfied with the design I had at the time. There was a while I was designing Darcy in Flash, and had his character mostly roughed out. However I started my 3rd year at Redhouse, and put that on hold. I fished it out recently and decided that Darcy had to be re-designed. Here are some of the concept sketches. Near the bottom of the page,  I was beginning to feel like I was getting close.

I left the designs for a little bit, not wholly satisfied. When I came back to it,  I didn't feel as though the design did Darcy justice. So I started again, toying with different animals for inspiration, namely a goat, a duck and a Boxer Dog. Random, but that's what these sketches are for.

Finally, I managed to get to a design that I was happy with. This is the design I will use to animate (if all goes according to plan, so who knows.) Darcy the Dragon.

 Recently, a friend sent me a text about a number of random bottles in her house that were leaking. She said that a gnome must be poking holes in them. She suggested I make a cartoon about it. I'm hoping to do so, and if it is received well, I may attempt to do a series of it.
So here is some concept designs of what the gnome may look like.

I want the short to be in the style of a documentary, like 'the house hippo' commercials they had.
I'm not so sure on the hat though. Comments?
p.s the picture in the corner is of the gnome shot-gunning a pop