Cyber-Kei Cutie V. 3.0

Aaaand here she is once again! The Cyber-Kei Cutie! If she isn't ringing any bells, I last drew her all the way back in 2011 (and before then back in 2007!). 

I feel like this is gonna be one of those images I'll return to every four years (that seems to be the time intervals on this one) just to see how far I've come art-wise. Expect a collage of all three images to come soon.

Anyway, it's funny; as I was colouring her last week, someone had asked me what her name was. In all the times I was drawing and revamping her, the thought had never occurred to me to bestow a name upon her!

What would you lovely folks name her? :-)

Drunken Karaoke Madness: Wanda Style!

Okay, by a show of hands, who here remembers Wanda and her big-ass glasses?

Well, here she is again with some slightly less big-ass glasses rocking some B-52's after one too many mojitos.

Why yes, I was feeling a mighty need to hit up a karaoke bar while drawing this. :-P

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 18: Did You Know That Flamingos Are AWESOME?

See? Told you I'd post something tonight to make up for my Sketchavember boo-boo yesterday. ;-)

Once again, Day 18 proved to be one of those days where everything seems to just fall into one glorious place of "right". I guess you could say the direction I went for this sketch card was Lisa Frank with a Tumblr attitude.

Though if I really wanted to go full-out Lisa Frank, I would have added more rainbows, sparkles and animal prints.

Still, the colors look suitably like late 80's/early 90's vomit, don't you think?

Cyber-Kei Cutie: V. 2.0 (Plus WIP Pics)

By a show of hands, who here remembers my "Cyber-Kei Cutie" drawing? Well, in case you don't remember (it was four years ago) here it is.

As you can see, I felt like revamping one of my older drawings not only to fix some of my own errors (those damn fingers!!) but as a challenge of sorts to see what I can do to update it with my current drawing style and techniques. Once again, I felt like trying some more grey tone stuff.

Heh, four years from now I'll probably be revamping this again but for now, I'm still pretty satisfied with how this came out. At least I got the fingers on her left hand in their proper places.

Coupla Couples: Tracy and Wanda

The usual associations of this month are starting to creep up on me and it's showing through in my art!

So yeah, anyone remember Wanda? Chances are you probably remember her big-ass glasses.

Not only did she get a new, smaller pair of glasses (those other ones were fake plastic ones) but she also found a new girlfriend at the optometrist's! D'awww. It all began with Tracy's observation of the Sailor Moon button on Wanda's purse which led to a mutual geek-out session, then coffee, then dinner and so on and so forth. Sailor Mercury's their mutual favorite.

I might draw a few more couples. We'll see.

The Gingerbread Lolita Improved (With WIP Scans)

I was going through my old Christmas Lolita card designs earlier this month and I couldn't help but notice how, well...amateurish they looked. I had a lot of weird things going on anatomy-wise, the coloring looked a little shoddy and some of the eyes looked lop-sideded. Sure, there's always room for improvement no matter where you are with your craft but looking at those cards elicited memories of older drawing and coloring techniques that I've long since drifted away from (my skin tone pencil crayons are probably happy and well rested because of this). They just no longer fit in with my current work.

I didn't have a whole lot of time to revamp the entire set so I just decided to focus on one design and update it just for my own personal sake.

For reference, here's how the Gingerbread Lolita looked three years ago...



Hope this is considered an upgrade of sorts!

SKETCHAVEMBER Day 29: Scurvy Bunny (plus Stitchy Bunny and Bunnies Spew Rainbows/Spewey Bunny)

Day 29 of Sketchavember has proven to be a day of sorts for resurrection. I'm returning to a series of images that kinda fell on the wayside this time last year: a bunch of "cute-but-not-necessarily-cuddly" bunnies!

"Scurvy Bunny" is the most recent addition to the bunch. Doesn't disease, mangy matted fur and rotting teeth fill you up with warm and ooey-gooey fuzzies? ARRR!



"Stitchy Bunny" was where I last left off...or at least the last one I was most happy with. There was one I completed last year but never posted since I was never completely satisfied with it. Expect that "missing bunny" to get a complete overhaul. Back to this bloody little bunny; what was intended to be a cyber-esque bunny ended up going in a guro-nurse/B-grade horror movie direction. For the record, the bunny is NOT beheaded.



Finally, here's the one that started it all in the first place: "Spewey Bunny" (or "Bunnies Spew Rainbows"). Many days and nights watching "Superjail!" are to blame for this cheerful abomination. ;-P

Expect at least three more bunnies to be added to the roster soon.

SKETCHAVEMBER Day 19: Wanda's Big-Ass...Glasses!

Barely defeating the clock once again, Day 19 of Sketchavember has me drawing some very large, very colorful glasses.

I gotta admit, I love this little spur-of-the-moment character design. I think I gotta use Wanda in another drawing some time. ^_^

SKETCHAVEMBER Day 4: Robot Unicorn Costume Attack!

"Open your eyes for me..."

Day 4 of Sketchavember brings a continuation of what I was working on yesterday: a completely over-the-top costume design inspired by the crazy addictive online game "Robot Unicorn Attack" over on Adult Swim's website.

Are your eyes burning from the rainbowrifficness of it all? :-P

The mane is attached to a hairband with the ears and horn and the tail is a belt. I can imagine the hooves being achieved with clear color paper. The same kind of material they used to make those old school 3D glasses.

Why is it that I always come up with more costume ideas right after Halloween? Must be a sign that I need to hit up more conventions. ;-)

Yup, More Sketch Cards!

That's right folks! I've got even more sketch cards to share with you all. I know you're cheering in the back there. :-P



Without further ado, these are some ink sketch cards I completed at the Vancouver Comic Con a week ago.

I took a bit of a different approach with these cards. I did a lot of the pencil work on them a few days before the convention then I did all the inking work on site. It allows me to get these cards completed a lot quicker.

The card on the left came about when I was struck with the urge to listen to a lot of The Birthday Massacre as well as Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration" album. She's so sullen and spooky, no?

The right card came from a failed attempt at drawing an 80's new wave chick with a Flock of Seagulls hairstyle. I decided to take her in a more punk direction while still maintaining that hairstyle feel.



Finally, this is "Fascinate Me". I figured after drawing and designing so many fascinators, I figured it was high time that I designed a mighty pimpin' one for myself.

I also felt an urge to create something colorful after doing so much black and white work.

Sketch Cards Galore!

If you can't tell, I've been working like crazy on sketch cards lately (or ACEO's as they're often known in the arty world) and I'm going to share a couple today...

First up, I have "Love a'la Comic Mode". I'm highly certain the excitement for the upcoming conventions seeped into my brain for this one.

I was going to sell this one at Comix and Stories tomorrow but I came to realize that I love it too much to part with it. That and um...I'm kindasorta don't feel too comfortable about making money off of someone else's creations, be they characters or logos.

With all that out of the way, the girl is a diehard fan of the superhero comics (Batman in particular being her favorite). The guy's more into the "morbid" comics (with "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" being his very first comic book in his senior year of high school). Together, they widen each other's perspective on their beloved common ground: comics and sequential art.

So you see, mainstream and alternative comics fans can get along after all! D'awwww. ^_^

And yes, I did read/watch "Ghost World" recently. XD

These ones, though, I am selling tomorrow for $2 each. If you can't get your hands on them, don't fret because I'll be drawing plenty more of these on site.

And now, some quick comments on each card, from left to right, clockwise...

-Awww, homeless snail is homeless.

-Oh hey, it's the couple from "Love a'la Comic Mode". She's making goofy faces in front of her bathroom mirror wearing her rubber Batman mask and he's being all moody and poetic on a breezy autumn day. The latter image was brought to you by Silversun Pickups.

-That one was based off an old doodle in a sketchbook from two or so years ago. The lone white eye contact was a last minute addition.

-Business suits and cyber dreads make for a surprisingly spiffy combination.

-Totally had Little Boots on the brain while drawing this one. God, ballet boots are crazy fun to draw.

Finally, we have a fairly old-ish (well, old because this was done a little while before I got my hair cut and tips dyed black) self portrait done in the style of "Daria". Methinks I'm going to need to draw an updated version. :-P

Ultra-Sweet Tooth

Everybody loves cupcakes. You know you wanna eat this one right now and taste the biggest, crunchiest sprinkles you will ever devour!

Mmmyeah, I'm a sucker for taking cute, colorful pop-arty things and tossing in revolting subject matter. Yeehaw!

Devi: From a Time Ago Redux

So last weekend I was at the art supply shop with a hefty Christmas gift certificate in hand, ready to splurge on some much needed supplies plus some new goodies I was willing to experiment with. I wasn't able to get all I needed (with the exception of the black (100) Copic wide marker sold with the black inker set, the Copic wide markers weren't being carried by the store...yet) but I still managed to get quite a bit, including a new brushpen to experiment with: the Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen (B).

As practice, I felt like revisiting one of my old drawings "Devi: From a time ago..."

So, in other words, this is my first fan art post! Yippy Skippy! It's also my first post in which decide to show you some of the work-in-progress (WIP) scans!

Let's have a look, shall we?

Yeah, I tend to use really light pencils when I do initial sketches. Most the time, it's a 4H or 3H pencil if I'm working on rough shapes and general concepts and a 3H or 2H (depending on how confident I am) for the definite line art. If I'm feeling super confident, I'll go with a standard HB pencil. In this case, I was working with a 3H pencil.

Here's where I decided to play around with the new brushpen and use a more "sketchier" look I employed during an inking excercise in my comic book production class. I normally don't do my inking like this (my lines are generally much cleaner looking these days) but this particular style was so fun and freeing that I really wanted to give it another try. Who knew being overly faithful to sketchy pencil lines could lead to such an enjoyable (well, for me anyway because I'm selfish like that :-P) inking style?

And here we are! The final colored image! Yeah, you can see some of the scratches from erased pencil lines since I was working on a tiny sketch pad with "lesser" quality paper weight. (Tip: when buying a sketchbook, never go with a paper weight lower than 65 lbs.) For some strange reason, I felt like being faithful-ish to the inking/coloring in the scene from the comic "I Feel Sick" (such an underrated comic and, in my opinion, still my favorite of Jhonen Vasquez's works), particularly the scene in which Devi appears like this; the flashback in the goth club with Eric (the vampire kid) and Oblivia (the mummy who uses bees!). Well, it shows more specifically with the black highlights (if you can call them that) in the hair.


I'm pretty pleased with how this little drawing and inking exercise turned out. I sure hope to god I've improved since my first crack at this image!