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[RABBIT PUN OR ROBOT PUN HERE]

I set up another Sculpey project for my niece and I, very similar to last year's project. It's not just the Year of the Rabbit, it's the Year of the METAL Rabbit, so I chose a robotic rabbit as our subject. Here are the results:

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The gold rabbit with the red eyes is mine, the silver one with the dark blue eyes is my niece's, and the terra cotta one at the bottom is the prototype that I made while planning the project. If you're curious about the process, please check out last year's project (the process we used for this year was very similar). I would point out that my rabbit has extra "rivets" in the ears--I wasn't sure how I felt about that (maybe it's too busy?), so I didn't have my niece add that to her sculpture. All in all, I think these turned out nicely!

One of my brothers-in-law observed that the rabbits have a Cylon-esque quality. However, knowing myself, if there's any subconscious sci-fi influence at work here, it's probably from the Daleks! For the record, if this post had been made a month later, the title would have been EASTERMINATE!!!

Wascally.

Today is Chinese New Year's Eve, which means tomorrow is Chinese New Year, which means the Year of the Rabbit is nigh! Nigh, I tell you! Here's a drawing to commemorate the occasion:

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I crafted this piece to stand in contrast against the one I drew last year. And yes, her bling is a gold carrot pendant. Hey... carrot, karat! How clever am I? That wasn't even on purpose! I am crushing it today!

Gong Xi Fa Cai, you nerds!

There's No Business Like Snow Business

Happy Holidays!

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Unseasonably Ghoulish

Sigh. Computers.

Almost there with setting up the new computer, but I'm not yet quite able to do my normal computer coloring thang. Which is why you get this seemingly random piece today:

I had some surplus of holiday spirit left after last Halloween, so I whipped up this pen sketch and slapped some marker colors on it. In theory I would have saved this for October of this year, but I am tired and defeated after dealing with my computer situation for the past week and a half. HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

x_x

[TIGER PUN OR STRIPE PUN HERE]

Changing it up a bit today--step into the third dimension with me, won't you?

Knowing in advance that I would be watching over my seven-year-old niece on the day of of Chinese New Year's Eve, I planned a little art project for the two of us. All it took was some Sculpey (colors: terra cotta, white, and black), thin wooden dowels (to internally support the connection between the head and body), some beads (for the eyes), two wooden plaques, and some high-strength adhesive (to glue the beads in, and to glue the finished tiger to the wooden plaque):

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The top two rows are photos of the tiger that I sculpted, the third row is my niece's excellent work, and the fourth row is the partially finished prototype that I sculpted a few days prior to project-day.

To break it down quickly--I sketched out the rough geometric shapes that would be necessary to build the tiger, and then built a partial prototype to make sure that it would be do-able, and made some basic notes about how much Sculpey would be necessary for each part. I planned out the project so that I would sculpt along with my niece, showing her along the way how to make each component.

On project-day, the first components that I sculpted with my niece were the claws, teeth, nose, and inner ear. We baked those pieces first, so that they could be easily inserted into the un-baked components. After that we sculpted all the white parts, then the orange (terra cotta) parts. Next, we assembled the components, and lastly sculpted the black parts and added those last. It was important to move from the lightest colors to the darkest, because Sculpey leaves just enough residue on your hands to stain the other colors. It was inevitable that some of the white would get stained, but the results would have been a lot messier if we had started with black.

My niece did a great job--she really didn't need much help creating the components, except for the stripes, which were all cut by me. I think you can tell in the application of the stripes that she and I were both starting to feel fatigue, and I sort of rushed us through that part because I just wanted to finish the project while I still had her attention.

After the sculpting and assembling, we made indentations in the head with "decoy" beads in the spots where we wanted the eyes to be. We removed the beads, and then baked our almost-finished sculptures. I didn't want to bake the beads, because I didn't know how the heat would affect the plastic. And I threw away the "decoy" beads, because they now had residue from the black sculpy on them.

After the sculptures baked, we let them cool, and we each picked out eye colors from the bag of multi-colored beads. My niece chose a lighter sky-blue, while I opted for a mid-range blue/cyan. I don't trust seven-year-olds with high-strength adhesive, plus at this point her attention was fully absorbed by Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets playing on TV, so I attached the eyes for both sculptures, and then fixed each tiger to its wooden base.

If you compare the finished pieces to the prototype, you can see that the prototype actually has a better, more defined torso. I can only attribute this to the fact that I didn't have the time to fine tune each piece on project-day, but overall I think things turned out well, and it was a lot of fun. I'm a so-so sculptor at age thirty-decrepit, but my niece is advanced at age seven!

The Lady Or The Tiger?

Chinese New Year falls on Valentine's Day this year. However, like non-Chinese New Year, the festivities take place on New Year's Eve (in this case, Saturday the 13th), so please plan your celebrations accordingly. Incidentally, it's the year of the Tiger:

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This piece was a lot of fun to draw and color. I wanted to do something less direct than my typical "here's a picture of this year's Chinese Zodiac animal" schtick, and I'm happy with the results.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Kensei Nikorasu!

Clad in a festive holiday cardigan, and armed with an indestructable black blade, Sword Saint Nicholas ventures into primal forests to carve wondrous toys out of granite and petrified wood for the virtuous children of the world. For wicked children, Sword Saint Nicholas has a different gift--a swift death at the end of his black blade!

What is this hero's connection to the Shinobi Santa, Kage Kringle???

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Happy Holidays, Folks!

Maybe it's a trick AND a treat...

I've made promises in the past that I have yet to make good on. So maybe this is something and maybe it isn't, but for now, let's just enjoy it as an image appropriate to the Halloween spirit, shall we?

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Get off the internet and go eat some candy, you nerds! Happy Halloween!

Next of (Pump-) Kin

Wow, that's the title I came up with? Sorry everyone. Here's some more Halloween-themed fun... at least I hope it's fun?

This sucks (but it's supposed to)...

A little something for the season... a vampire bat greaser:

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This follows a few of my previous posts--Mummy, Golem, and Frankenstein Monster.

A Belated...

My momentary burst of energy over the rebirth of Scrabbulous was but a lapse. I am now returning to the cough syrup-induced haze from whence I came.

Kage Kuringoru Densetsu

(Posting early for the holidays, tune in on Friday for a bonus post... )

Josh says this in IM:

[23:25] JOSH: next time you guys do a sketch off
[23:25] JOSH: i'd like to see ninja santas

So you get this:

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KAGE KRINGLE, the Shinobi Santa, gives razor-sharp kunai to all the good little ninjas at winter time. He also gives razor-sharp kunai to naughty ninjas... kunai which are delivered to their hearts. So be good, for goodness sake.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, BLOG READERS!

Monsters of Breakfast (5 of 5): The Bite Stuff... PLUS WALLPAPER!

The Subject: General Mills cereal monsters.

The Twist: Drawing them in the style of Capcom's fighting game franchise, Darkstalkers.

It's Halloween, and here's the dude everyone has been waiting for--Count Chocula! Okay, maybe not everyone has been waiting for him, but the handful of people interested in this series of sketches have been waiting. Probably.

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Naturally, my interpretation of Count Chocula is based on his vampiric Darkstalkers counterpart, Demitri. This one was a lot of fun for me. I couldn't tell you why exactly... it's possible that I just enjoyed it more because it came together pretty easily. In particular, I'm happy with how the purply-brown color scheme and billowing cape turned out.

The pieces in this series were designed with a group composition in mind, so I've whipped up some wallpapers. For your convienience, both fullscreen and widescreen versions are available below. Happy Halloween!

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Something for the Season...

I'm very excited--Dear Dracula, a 48-page hardcover children's book, published by Image Comics, and created by my dear friends, Josh and Vinny, will be available for purchase this Wednesday (October 15, 2008)! If you can't find it at your local comic book shop or book store, you might try Amazon.com.

The book tells the story of a funny kid named Sam, who's obsessed with Dracula, and decides to write him a letter--honestly folks, a fantastic all-ages book, especially for the Halloween season.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I was inspired to cook up a little Dear Dracula fan art:

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I promised something more substantial today, and I delivered, right? I mean, come on, background, multiple characters, what more could you ask for? A better composition you say? Yeah, okay, this composition is a little weird. Bah, forget my fan art, just go buy the real thing. Seriously.

Not to be confused with the non-Chinese one...

(Posted early for maximum holiday appreciation)

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the year of the rat:

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A rough pen sketch, cleaned up and colored in Photoshop (2.5 hours total--pretty quick, for me).

A Winter Morning In Los Angeles

(Posting early)

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BONUS POST: 'Tis The Season

I had absolutely no plans for a Halloween post, but Charles first insisted (which had no effect), and then challenged me. I don't usually take the bait in such scenarios, but I also happen to be a fan of one Frankenstein's Monster, and thus today's l'il treat:

Timing me over IM, Charles challenged me to draw Frankenstein's Monster in 5 minutes, and ink it in another 5. The plan was to color it in another 5, but I didn't run into him again on IM, so I just went as fast as I could. It took me about 40 minutes to color and typeset this, because apparently, I am a sloth on downers. Oh well, under an hour is still pretty fast... for me.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, CHARLIE BROWN!

Happy New Year! Guh Wha--!?

It's the year of the pig! (That's on the Chinese Lunar Calendar, if you didn't know)



My technique is getting pretty routine now which means two things:

1. I should probably start trying some new things, and...
2. I don't have much to say about this.

As for why the pig is blue and purple with amber-colored eyes... I guess I just felt like giving him some fanciful colors.

Fun Fact: One of the rejected titles for this post was Should Auld Acquaintance Be Pork-ot. Seriously!