Mom's 50th birthday went by successfully! Yay huzzah! Youtes is going slow lately but I have been involved with other projects lately, big one's been MY LIFE but I think most of the art projects that I've been setting up for lately I'm in for the long term.
Charlie and Caitlin (Chuck or Bill tell me if it's spelled differently) Rose are taking the helm this years project which I helmed last year, the annual Halloween couldesack. This year's project is a DARK WONDERLAND. I found these pictures on my computer from a while ago of one of the first printings of the wonderland stories.




I must admit I love the dreariness of the landscape. The dull colors makes it rather depressing already and a tad surreal. Definately will have to take a class in storybook artwork while at SCAD.

Best Animated Shows on Television Right now...
When people ask where I get my inspiration from it mostly is from television, movies, and literature. These are some of the most enjoyable shows that i've been watching lately.

1. Family Guy- Seen on Cartoon Network, also on Fox for new episodes. It's quick witted and always hilarious. People may not like however that it pokes fun at everything and really pushes the envelope.


2. Life and Times of Juniper Lee- New to Cartoon Network An 11 year old asian girl who saves the world on a constant basis. One might be screaming 'Kim Possible ripoff' but Juniper Lee is focused around humor and often tlks about things that are relavent to now. And with a talking scottish dog as a pet, who couldn't love this show?




3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force- A show about nothing. Shake, Meatwad, and Frylock three random food products, it's been running for three years now but I only just now decided to watch. And you know what? It's funny stuff! Give it a try, it's on Adult Swim, some people get turned off by the fact that they're a shake, a ball of meat, and a floating fry box.


4. Camp Lazlo
Feels like a spin off of Spongebob somehow, but make no mistake Camp Lazlo has a flare all it's own. Although Lazlo's imagination sometimes can become of annoyance, his friend Raj, a pink elephant with an indian accent is brilliant. Each character has been given his own flaws and desires and then pumped with sillyness. I can always watch this with Mikey and Katie. It's on Cartoon Network.


5. Spongebob Squarepants- A huge cult icon, Spongebob and especially Patrick and his Bertlike neighbor Squidward always give me a laugh. This show has always been creative but the repetiveness on some jokes and gags make it hard to watch sometimes.


6. Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends- Although repeatable sometimes in terms of storyline and constant screaming, Bleu is one of the funniest characters on tv. The style is also very loose and the ideas are always creative. It's on Cartoon Network



7. Sam and Max
Okay, so it came out in the 90s and I had to get it on ebay in vhs format. Nonetheless, Sam and Max was one creative show, it's one flaw? The comic strip it's based off originally was intended for teens/adults and for the kids show alot of the unnecessary violence and swearing was lost but the dialogue was still as sophisticated as ever. If it was only made now and produced on something like Adult Swim, it would fit right in and be gobbled up. Oh well.




8. Full Metal Alchamist- a show about two brothers trying to locate the Philosophers stone to bring back their now dead mother, one brother lost his arm, the other his entire body and is now stuck in an enormous robotic suit. I'm not a big fan of japanese cartoons persay, but this rather well drawn, especially the brother in the metallic suit, and i see it as a brother show, one that you watch with your brother and smile. It's on adult swim and is a little violent at times, there's a cannibal sometimes....


9. Avatar- probably Nickelodeon's freshest new show other than catscratch (yeah not a fan of rugrats anymore, they killed it long ago) It also appears that they've done their homework on this one as there's a whole history to the series and the style is japanese but it's with an american flare.



10. Catscratch
Three cats, with an awful lot of money, and one is scottish. Good times.

spam trap
do not read

Just went to work tonight since the cyst,
It was a great source of inspiration for the upcoming Youtes return.
I wish I could tell you of the ideas that popped in my head but you'll just have to wait and read.

Mwahaha!
Today I finally figured out how to paste a links section into my template so I can give credit to the Rose boys who got me on here.
I found this link last night http://www.born2haunt.com/ got to admit the guy has some talent. Charlie oughto use some of the ideas from this website for the halloween couldesack this year. Which since the trees were removed made it harder for the kids to be creative. It's hard to be scary with baby trees.
Now onto Youtes.
Youtes is hopefully going to be copyrighted very soon, I've finished the paperwork and I just have to print out pictures of each of the characters I want copyrighted. That way when I go into business with comixpress they won't try and double cross me if infact the comic becomes in any form popular. Right now, I'm working on the creation of a 60 paged comic collection of new Youtes comics. Whether the comics will keep their original sunday style, or be free I'm still deciding. Comixpress isn't accepting any new material until September, which is fine with me, it'll give me time to start writing and coming up with ideas. I got a rough estimate of the cost, the book will likely end up costing you about $15. But seeing as how it'll be all in color and is a collection of more than one Youtes story it really is a great thing. Hopefully when they produce a Graphic Novel I can publish an Ultimate Youtes Collection... but first things first right?

Although I feel as if I have scarier pictures of Dr. Syn as the Scarecrow, I definately like his yellow eyes. They definately stand out and I do enjoy how he's erupting from the marsh. This being my first picture from the 'hope to someday turn into a graphic novel but need Disney's help to do so' is a step in the right direction.

Struggling to paint

Just wanted to talk about this one really fast... the cover for the hopefully new Youtes comic collection is based on a painting hanging up in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The original title of the painting was "Hope is: Wanting to Pull Clouds" and after several failed attempts at creating humorous covers based on other concepts, this seemed the most appropriate. However originally David was going to be pulling as well with Chris but then that would give the reader the false assumption that the story of Youtes falls upon Jason, which it doesn't. Everything has to be done for a reason, which is something I'm starting to realize and include in my storytelling.

The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh
This is a drawing I did based off the character created over a hundred years ago written by Russell Thorndike. It was then picked up by the walt disney company and made into a live action movie in the 60s/70s. Since then the property has been rather dead. This is my rendering of the character. The eyes were inspired from the Hellboy comics. I like his clothing in this one picture it sort of looks like ancient robes that of a warrior and his hat reminds me of Indiana Jones a bit. But I definately think this is an improvement and is much scarier. I have gone on with this picture and played with it in Photoshop, I'll dig it out later.

Ah the first blog,
I think i'll keep this more art related than about my personal life.

Was working on a female character the other evening for the new Youtes comics. Quite impressed with how she came out. Her name is Bagmi. Basically whenever I start with a new character I can usually get the design I like by the third or fourth time. But with girls, it takes me a little longer. Especially when I know them. Now if you go and read the old strip at www.youtes.com you'll notice that there was three other girls that I added to the series from the beginning. Lauren, Alley, and Renee. The problem with Renee, is that I sort of added her into the story just because I knew the person and I thought it'd be cool to have her in there, yet it served no purpose to the story. Alley was sort of the slutty mean girl who would use all the boys to her advantage and then dump them. Lauren was supposed to be the anti Alley, but over time she became just a girl with a beach tan fettish and her passion for soccer died out after the first few months. She just became the butt end of all the bad stuff to happen and she just came out as this real jerk of a woman although in real life she's quite sweet. Out of all the girls introduced to the series from the website, the one that still has the most potential is Alley alhtough Lauren had more comic strip time. Now I thought about it and Bagmi has the potential to work and be successful in this environment with the three guys on crazy adventures. Because she's funny and cooky in real life I can easily bring that to the character and it'll fit better. I need to be careful not to make her out to be another Lauren. What's also great about Bagmi is that she's Indian (from india). Something that I've been having difficulty adding to the strip is cultures and races other than whites but for the longest time Black people would be hard cause they would always come out weird. I hope to change that with the new Youtes.
This sketch took me a bit of work to get something pleasant. Two days of thinking about it how to make her keep her indian traits yet in the youtes style... ouch. Kept starting with the head but it would always come out wrong. It wasn't until I tried drawing the entire body that it finally worked and came together. I love the hair. It's all one thing but it could easily be made amazing in photoshop. Don't you hate it when you do something really neat and you don't have a single idea as to how you did it?
Inspiration for Bagmi came from multiple places. I looked heavily online for pictures of Princess Jasmine, Juniper Lee, and some former characters that I've created before. The pictures were used more as references than guides in order to create Bagmi. The raised eyebrow seems to become more of a common trait among my work. Hope you enjoy