Season's Greetings

Here's a holiday message from the stars of my animated film, "The Case of the Midnight Murderer."

Have you seen the trailer yet?  It's not exactly festive but here it is...

Don't forget to show a little indie love and become a fan of the film on Facebook.  I haven't posted much on there as of late but I've got some stuff to post soon!  Notice how whenever I write "Facebook" it's a different colour?  That's cuz I've conveniently linked the word "Facebook" to take you to Facebook so you can become a fan of the film on Facebook.  Facebook.

Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!

There's not a lot to say about this one.  Just about everybody watches this this time of year and with good reason.  It never get's....get's...sorry...memories not what it used to be with this steel plate in my head.  Whenever someone fires up the microwave I piss my pants and forget my name for about half an hour or so.  I used to eat Squirrels but I found out they were high in cholesterol.

Where do you think you're going?  Nobody's leaving!  Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas.  No, no.  We're all in this together.  This is a full-blown, four alarm holiday emergency here.  We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye.  And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

Classic.  Happy Holidays everybody.

Pork Cops

I'm currently working on a short starring the "Pork Cops."  Here're the turnarounds for the cops themselves as well as the perp they're after in the short.

The idea for the characters goes all the way back to art school when I doodled the Pork Cops in a sketchbook and tossed them in the 'maybe one day' pile and then forgot about them.  I didn't have a plot or anything at the time, just the characters.  Something sparked my memory of these guys though about a year ago and it seemed like the perfect cartoon to do when I was finished with "The Case of the Midnight Murderer."  After almost 2 years of animating a black and white comedy-noir cartoon I thought it'd be really fun to do something super cartoony and bright and different.  It's taken a while to get rolling on it though.  I had wanted to jump into this as soon as I wrapped Midnight Murderer but I was a little too burnt out to dive into anything that wasn't paying me right away.  I finally storyboarded it in March and then got really busy with work and stuff and it was October before I was able to revisit it again.  October is also when I volunteer at the Vancouver Film Festival and Writers Festival so it was painfully slow getting to where I am now.  The characters are ready and so are the backgrounds.  Here're some backgrounds.

Hmm...

 The short has a very urban setting.  My original plan was to actually film and photograph parts of downtown Vancouver and have live action backgrounds.  It would've been a neat contrast to the cartoony characters.  Ultimately though when I decided on my plot and all the gags I wanted to include any amount of live action wasn't gonna work.  So I went the opposite with crudely proportioned buildings and wonky perspective.

Some undies.  No biggie.

There're a lot of these city street backgrounds.  The short moves at breakneck speed and I didn't realize what my BG count was getting to till I started drawing them.

These look dangerous.

The city is called Vanzoover.  My first idea was Zoo York and then I found out that was already taken.  It was a bitch trying to come up with something else even half way clever.  It didn't even occur to me for the longest time to consider spoofing Vancouver which is pretty funny considering I'd been thinking about actually using the real city at one point.

There's some action in a construction site too.

Last but not least the climax takes place on this grassy knoll type spot.  I'll be starting animation on this thing this week and hopefully get it done within 2 weeks.  I'm pretty sure I can keep that goal barring any unforseen events.  This'll be a seven minute short give or take and I'm gonna see if it can get some festival play so I won't be able to post the finished short online immediately but I'll probably post some stills and what not once it's all together.

The Social Networks.

Have you ever tried juggling?  I have, a few times, but I'm not very good at it.  I tried juggling bean bags, but I dropped them.  I tried juggling pieces of fire wood but I almost rendered myself unconscious.  And I once tried juggling chainsaws in Mexico and had to flee the country to avoid a manslaughter charge.  Okay I made that last one up...I've generally avoided juggling chainsaws regardless of my geographical position.  These days this is all the juggling I do...

One of the biggest things for any kind of artist is getting your stuff seen by people.  That used to be pretty much impossible to pull off unless you were lucky or had an agent or something to book appearances and gallery shows.  That was back when you had to wear a beret and a smock at all times so that people knew you were an artist.  In today's world that means the internet, and everything that comes with it.  You can only hold out for so long when a new Social Networking site crops up before jumping on the bandwagon.  Truth be told I actually have some fun with all of these sites.  YouTube lets me post my animation for the world to see.  I like writing and ranting on Blogger.  I like looking at art of all kinds on Deviant Art.  I like posting rapid project updates and smart ass commentary on Twitter.  I like the reach of Facebook and keeping it active with stuff.  And Tumblr...well I'm new to Tumblr but I'm sure I'll have fun with it too.  There's just so many of them!  And I'm sure there's more to come too.  Here they are if you wanna check out, or join or follow or what not.

You can see my official Outhouse Cartoons website here.
You can become a fan on Facebook here.
You can follow me on Twitter here.
You can watch me on Deviant Art here.
You can subscribe to me on YouTube here.
You can follow me on Blogger here.  No link for this one...you're already on Blogger you nut!
You can follow me on Tumblr here.

And while I'm at it too.  You can also follow my twice weekly webcomic, "Cowman" via Blogger here.  And become a fan of my film, "The Case of the Midnight Murderer" on Facebook here.

50 Years of Bond

I'm a 007 fan, as many people are.  This year marks not only the release of the 23rd Bond film but the 50th birthday of the James Bond film franchise and as a result the character and the movies have been discussed a lot lately.  I'm even set to help my photographer friend, Brad of BWD Photography with a Bond tribute photo shoot.  All this stuff coalesced and I drew this poster you see here.

When I envisioned this thing I got pretty excited but it was a little bittersweet.  I had to move a project I've been struggling to get rolling on to the back burner to do this.  Sometimes you have to take advantage of an idea while it's fresh or you won't do it all.  Can you spot and name all the stuff?  I won't do all the work for you but here's a list of everything included in this poster.  See if you can find it all.  Don't be afraid to imdb if you have to, but try to do it without.

Astin Martin - from Goldfinger(1964) and beyond
Tatiana Romanova - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Domino - from Thunderball(1965)
A snake - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Torture chair and knotted rope - from Casino Royale(2006)
Crocodile - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Nick Nack - from The Man With The Golden Gun(1974)
Submarine - from Thunderball(1965)
The Golden Girl - from Goldfinger(1964)
Martini Shaker - from any of them
Missiles - from most of them
Tiffany Case - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
May Day - from A View To A Kill(1985)
Tracy Bond - from On Her Majesty's Secret Service(1969)
Blofeld - from You Only Live Twice(1967)
Skis - from The Spy Who Loved Me(1977)
Scottish Flag - not from any of them really, but he was born in Scotland
Jaws - from The Spy Who Loved Me(1977) and Moonraker(1979)
Largo - from Thunderball(1965)
Vodka - from any of them
Plenty O'Toole - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Space Shuttle - from Moonraker(1979)
A shark - from License To Kill(1989)
Playing cards and Poker chips - from many of them
Oddjob - from Goldfinger(1964)
Doctor No - from Dr No(1962)
Grant - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Auric Goldfinger - from Goldfinger(1964)
Francisco Scaramanga - from The Man With The Golden Gun(1974)
Pussy Galore - from Goldfinger(1964)
Octopus - from Octopussy(1983)
Octopussy - from Octopussy(1983)
Solitaire - from Live And Let Die(1973)
Q - from From Russia With Love(1963) all the way to The World Is Not Enough(1999)
Laser watch - from Goldeneye(1995)
Honey Ryder - from Dr. No(1962)
Vesper Lynd - Casino Royale(2006)
Moneypenny(Lois Maxwell) - from Dr. No(1962) to A View To A Kill(1985)
M(Judi Dench) - from Goldeneye(1995) to present
M(Bernard Lee) - from Dr No(1962) to Moonraker(1979)
Jetpack - from Goldfinger(1964)
Felix Leiter(Jeffrey Wright) - from Casino Royale(2006)
James Bond, modeled mainly on Sean Connery - from Dr No(1962) to Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Satellite - from Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Helicopter - from From Russia With Love(1963)
Martini glass - from all of them.  The man liked to drink.
Gun barrel - from every single one of them.

"Here's to swimmin' with bowlegged women."

Show me the way to go home.  I'm tired and I wanna go to bed.  I had a little drink about an hour ago and it's gone straight to my head.

Jaws is one of my favourite all time movies.  And Quint is one of my all time favourite movie characters.  And his portrayal by Robert Shaw may also be one of the best all time performances.  His Indianapolis speech is a work of art both as a performance and a piece of screenwriting.  A speech that was apparently rewritten and reworked more times than the famously buggy mechanical shark named Bruce.  The story goes that Shaw himself rewrote the monologue before filming the scene.

37 years later and Bruce the shark still looks fake as hell.  But the movie is so well written, directed and acted that you still don't care.  It'll always be one of the best.  I rewatched it for the 8 billionth time a couple weeks ago and I drew this afterward.

So...eleven hundred men go into the water.  Three hundred and sixteen come out and the shark took the rest.  June 29th, 1945.  Anyway we delivered the bomb...

Ellen Meets Twain

     A couple weeks ago I was trying to decide on a movie to watch.  I can't remember exactly what was on when I turned on the TV but it was annoying so I changed the channel to something while I was thinking about film choices.  I ended up flipping to PBS' broadcast of Ellen Degeneres receiving the Mark Twain Prize for humour.  My intent was to just watch 5 minutes while I looked at the PVR but I ended up watching the whole damn 90 minutes.  It was hilarious.

     So anyway, I drew this the next day.  Just got around to colouring it.  I've always liked Ellen anyway, but I had been thinking about watching an action movie or something bloody...so the fact that a PBS award ceremony stole my attention is pretty damn impressive.  

     Mark Twain himself didn't actually attend the ceremony  which I thought was kinda douchey of him.

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein

For years I've said I wanted to read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.  As a kid Frank was my favourite of the classic movie monsters...I went as him for Halloween once or twice.  The whole idea behind the crazy doctor and his monster is cool and creepy...and the fact that it was written by a nineteen year old in the nineteenth century just made the book more intriguing.  I finally got around to reading it this month.  I always knew the original Universal Pictures version of the story differed from the novel but I was still pretty surprised at just how different.  Even the movie entitled "Mary Shelly's Frankenstein" as I recall has a lot of changes in it although it's definitely closer than the Karloff version.  The book moves pretty slow actually and tends to wander on tangents that aren't always necessary.  I thought it bounced back and forth between painfully dull and genuinely freaky.  Shelly's descriptions of the monster are quite vivid and that's maybe what I was most surprised by when I read the book.  I don't think Frankenstein's monster has ever been depicted on film they way he's described in the book.  I drew this while I was reading it...

Here's how Shelly herself describes the wretch.  "His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath: his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing: his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriences only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips."

I figured if his skin was translucent from being stretched so thin then it would have been difficult to keep the ends together when sewing.  So I made sure to show some exposed meat beneath the skin at the seams where the stitches are barely holding him together.  It was a myth for years and years that your hair and finger/toe nails continued to grow after you died and I wondered if that's where Mary Shelly's idea for his flowing black hair stemmed from so I gave him long claw like finger nails.  I also skewed some of his parts so  he wasn't quite put together right, which is why his abs kinda stick to the one side.  I also cut a hole over his heart and then stitched it back up cuz I figured a delicate organ like that might've required frequent reaccess while he was being built.  And I reasoned that he might not have a lot of cartilage left in him either which is why I pulled his nose back like a skull.  This isn't a bad drawing but I think if I were designing him to appear in a movie or something I'd take a couple more passes.  I'd probably experiment with the stitching a bit, maybe see how it would look if it were more excessive and I'd definitely play more with his posture.

Of course...there's still a lot to be said for the classic...

Vancouver International Film Festival

I just finished my fourth volunteer stint at VIFF.

I actually drew this shortly after last year's festival.  My intention at the time, I think, was to actually send this to VIFF in case they wanted to use it to promote when they were looking for volunteers.  Of course I completely forgot about it and never even sent it.  I found the drawing when I was cleaning up not long after I'd already signed up for this year's volunteer roster and a day or two later they were done looking and we were getting our schedules.  I still liked the drawing though so I scanned it and coloured it and even sent it to a couple of local newspapers just before the festival started...but I don't think anybody printed it.  If they did, they should've told me.  VIFF runs for two weeks and as a volunteer you get a free pass to all of the movies that you can fit into your schedule.  I didn't see a ton this year but I've packed in a lot in passed years.  Some people manage to see over a hundred, I don't know how they do it.  Even with my small amount of movies, it's still two weeks of shift work, running from theater to theater and eating mounds upon mounds of fast food.  It's fun but I'm always glad when it's done.

Commission With a Side of Awesome Sauce

You may recall a couple months ago I posted a commissioned drawing of a guy, a girl and a couple of cats going up against an army of zombies.  If you don't, check it out here, and try to keep up.  Well anyway, that drawing was commissioned by the guy in the drawing as a gift for the girl in the drawing.  Make sense?  Hopefully, cuz here we go again.  The girl in the drawing then recently commissioned me to draw a new drawing as a gift for the guy in the drawing.  I feel like I could've explained that more concisely but I'm happy with how it turned out none the less.  Anyway, here's that new drawing now, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out and thankfully so were they.  Kim described it as 100% awesome sauce.

Now I know what you're thinking, "jeeze Dylan, isn't it kinda crass to plaster your company name and logo all over that poster?"  Well it would be, but those are just watermarks and I assure you they were not included in the version I handed over to them. 

I was given pretty clear instructions for the first poster.  Caillin really knew what he wanted, right down to the basic composition.  For this new one though I was given pretty much free reign to come up with something.  Kim gave me a run down of things she'd like to try and convey with the poster...I took that and we decided to keep with the same theme as the first poster so the two of them could work as companion pieces.  I came up with this, somewhat based on the poster from the original Conan The Barbarian poster.  I googled that though and it turned out I really wasn't remembering that poster correctly at all, so this may or may not look much at all like Conan, save for the raised arm.

Here're the stages of the drawing.  I draw it out in blue so once I ink it I can scan it without picking up my construction lines.  I used to have to erase all that stuff when I was done drawing...it burns the hell out of your arm and covers the desk and floor with eraser turds and who wants that, right?  It was another fun gig.  I'd like to do more of this kinda stuff.

Teachin' Summer

Last week I finished off a summer of teaching.  I teach Flash animation once a week at Vancouver Film School, which I'll be picking back up again in a couple weeks, but in addition to that I also taught classical animation at the Port Moody Art Centre for ages 9-12 this summer, that may also pick up again as a once a week after school class in the fall, along with a claymation class.  But most of my summer teaching was done at Koko's Activity Centre, also in Port Moody.  Koko's offers two classes a day along with plenty of play time so parents can drop them there for the whole day if they want.  At Koko's I taught Claymation and Comics and Cartooning for 5-12 year olds.  There's a big difference between teaching 9-12 year olds at the Art Centre and teaching 18-25 year olds at Vancouver Film School.  But there's an even bigger difference between teaching 9-12 year olds at the Art Centre and teaching 5-12 year olds at Koko's.  Most of these kids were on the younger side and not all of them were necassarily interested in animation or drawing or at least not for a 3 hour stretch.  5 year olds have enough energy to put the Energizer Bunny out of work...in fact I don't know how it hasn't happened yet(or maybe it has, I haven't seen that bunny in a while).  I can only assume bribery is at play.  The world's energy crisis could be solved if scientists devoted more time to harnessing this power.  One day it will happen...but maybe not in our life times.

Anyways, some times I had a whole whack of kids and was against the ropes the entire class.  I spent a lot of time drawing custom stuff for the kids to colour if they weren't too into drawing themselves, I cranked out a lot of drawings that way actually.  Other days there though, wouldn't be as many kids and I'd actually have a chance to just sit with them and draw myself.  Here's a comic I started drawing on the first day of Comics and Cartooning.  I didn't get too far...

I thought by the end of that first week I'd actually have a complete comic...but that didn't happen.

Here's some random doodles I did one day.

That yellow dude with the green hair is Koko himself.  Or my take on him anyway.  They actually shot a live action Bananas in Pajamas style TV pilot with Koko as the main character and they got me to do a couple of the voices.  I won't get into that now though.  That Spider-Man drawing was inspired by a kid that apparently came to the afternoon classes dressed as Spider-Man...I always missed him.

Here's some sculpting I did one day during the claymation class when the kids were actually managing to keep themselves busy.  This is what happens when I'm bored.

These got a good laugh from the kids, and one of them actually used these guys in his movie.

One sunny day I actually had no kids at all.  I got some work done on my laptop but when the battery died I dug up some art supplies from the back and doodled some more.  Here's an okay drawing of Batman.

I was starting to draw a close up of his head when I got word that I was free to go.  At that point there obviously wasn't gonna be any late comers.  I actually drew a really cartoony version of Batman for one of the kids that I really liked, but they brought that one home.

Anyway, that's what I was able to walk away with from my time at Koko's this summer.  These and some paychecks, but I'm not gonna scan and post those.  Teaching's fun...glad to have a bit of a break though.  Now I can catch up on some other stuff.

Sketchbook Stuff

Like I said in my last post, I haven't had a lot of time for random drawing lately.  I've been teaching Flash animation at Vancouver Film School part time and some summer art classes for kids at a couple places as well.  I've also been working away to keep up with my Cowman comics...which is fun but a lot of work.  I try to work really far in advance but it caught up to me when I was finishing off "The Case of the Midnight Murderer," which I'm now submitting to film festivals.  And speaking of Cowman by the way I posted an in depth making of a Cowman comic over on the Cowblog a couple weeks ago if anybody's interested.

But enough about all that.  I bought a new sketchbook to take with me when I went away for the Easter long weekend and I never even cracked it open, it's been migrating around the house waiting to be used and it just wasn't happening...until last weekend when I finally sat down and did some drawing.  Here's what came out of that weekend.

I'm not gonna tell you what that Eggman drawing is based on if you don't already know.  That Gypsy psychic lady was loosely inspired by 'Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,' and might serve as a character in a graphic novel idea I have some notes scribbled down somewhere for.  That's it for now.  Hopefully I'll have some new stuff to post before too long.
By the way, if you're not already following me on Twitter and Facebook, you should check it out, I post some cartoons on there that don't always get the blog treatment as well as updates on other stuff coming from the Outhouse.

Happy Canada Day, Eh!

First post in 2 months!  I haven't had a lot of time for random drawing lately, been really busy.  But I thought I'd etch out some time for a little Canadian pride and draw this for the Canada Day long weekend.  Can you pick out all the Canadian stereotypes?  There's like 15 of them I think.

The Bro Jake Show!!

So a month or so ago I posted a drawing I did of the Bro Jake Show.  Turns out they liked it, Alece from the show got in touch with me and they asked me to add in Nikki Omen, their board guy.  Here's the updated pic.

But wait!  That's not all!  There's a reason they wanted this updated...cuz they liked the drawing so much they printed on t-shirts for themselves...check it out!

This was cool for all kinds of reasons.  I was pretty stoked to see Outhouse Cartoons tagged in photo on the Bro Jake Show's facebook page.  This...pretty much made my week last week.  Thanks guys!

Random Stuff That May or May Not Have Been Rejected

I was reminded of this the other day.  It's a logo I designed for the Riot Girls...a roller derby team from Vancouver.  They had a contest last year to redesign their logo and a couple friends told me I should enter.  I gave them three different iterations, one shaded, one not, and one with their name slapped across the front.

Needless to say they didn't pick mine but I'm not sure if the contest even went forward as planned.  I think it was supposed to be a fan voting thing on their facebook page but I never heard anything more about it after I entered.  Either way it was fun to do, I actually did the drawing while on vacation and had to wait till I got home to colour it, which was an interesting challenge.  I had to keep the colours to a minimum for printing purposes since they'd be putting it on all kinds of different items had it been picked, and I had to keep it to their colour scheme.

Here's another drawing that evidently didn't quite cut the mustard, but I still liked.  The Flaming C of Conan!

The Flaming C is the superhero alter ego of Conan O'Brien.  He was created by Conan and 'Batman The Animated Series' legend Bruce Timm during a segment on the show last year.  It turned into a regular gag on the show with animated segments and some teases of a Flaming C movie which at this point may just have been a joke.  They put out a call for submissions of fan art for a 'super secret project' so I entered this.
That's an evil NBC peacock if you were wondering...and a Razor that wants to shave Conan's beard.  That super secret project as far as I know turned out to be a gallery at the San Diego Comic Con...and it all wound up on the official Flaming C website in the fan art section.  Mine was mysteriously absent from both locations...don't know what that means.  The site has a lot of stuff, lot of styles and types of artwork...even has a macrame Conan, so I always wondered if they even got my jpeg, but I'm not gonna be that sap who submits the same art more than once.  There's also of course the distinct possibility that they didn't like it...or maybe Andy Richter didn't like that I drew him wearing a mini dress.  I still like the drawing though and Conan's still a pretty awesome guy, so here it is on my own site to show some fandom.  It fits in well at the Outhouse.

Ninja Toitles

I bought 'Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles' on DVD last month because I'm awesome that way.  Like any healthy male product of the 80's I was obsessed with that show growing up and that first movie is still pretty cool if you ask me.  After I watched it I drew this...

This isn't a bad drawing but I thought I could do better.  It's more or less the classic turtle design drawn in my style.  I wanted to mix it up a bit so I did some more sketching and played with the proportions to make them stubbier and a little less anthropomorphized...a bit closer to the original Eastman and Laird drawings.

 I ended up doing a whole character line and added Splinter, April and Casey.  In the original comics(which I've never read) April was actually a lab assistant or something, not a reporter like in the cartoon and movies...so I split the difference and drew her in street clothes, note the yellow jacket though.

Apparently in the new Michael Bay produced movie that they're working on they've decided to make the Turtles aliens instead of mutants.  There's an expression for that, I can't remember exactly how it goes but I think it rhymes with 'DUCKING MUPID.'  I have an unrelated movie suggestion myself though...I think Bebop and Rocksteady would be great in that new 'Gone With The Wind' remake I'm sure somebody wants to make.  Don't you think so?

Night of the Living Commission

Here's a drawing that Caillin Buck hired me to do. 

See the watermarks?  That means it's his, so back off.  The concept was all Caillin's.  He gave me specs on the characters and their outfits and a couple photos of the cats that these ones are based on.  I designed the Zombies totally from scratch but the composition is more or less his too.  It was a fun gig.  I invented the weapons though.  See the girl's stick with a playstation controller tied to it?  I'm proud of that and fully intend to build a working prototype for the pending zombie apocalypse.  You and me both know it's coming, it's only a matter of time.

The Evolution of James Dashiell

Here's a partial turn-around of James Dashiell, the main character in "The Case of the Midnight Murderer."

I refined the character a bit more as I got him Flash/animation ready but this is more or less the final design.  Dash is a private dick, he's new to the game and doesn't really know his way around a magnifying glass yet.  He spends a lot of time trying to act tougher and cooler than he really is, spouting out hokey lines of gibberish that probably sound quite eloquent and profound in his head.  His posture in the turn-around is somewhere in between his cocky showmanship and his less self confident true self.  This isn't always how he looked though.  Here's the first drawing I have of him from back when I was like 14...

GAH!!!!  That's horrible!  His feet looks like hooves and I can only assume his shins were broken for some reason.  Maybe he welched on a gambling debt that I forgot to write about.  "The Case of the Midnight Murderer," was a short story I wrote in highschool...I actually wrote a series of them but Midnight Murderer was the only one that's still any good.  It wasn't until several years later that I thought there might be potential in adapting it into a movie.  That's when I drew this next incarnation.

This is a much better drawing but at this point I hadn't even written the script yet and was still deciding on the approach I wanted to take with the whole thing.  I ultimately decided I wanted it to fall somewhere between this more cartoony version and a more comic bookish type of style that would fit into the stark film noir shadows I wanted to populate the movie with.  Here's some sketches from his development into the movie version.

Every character in the film is in some way modeled physically on an actor from the 40's.  I essentially cast the movie like I was a 1940's movie mogul who could afford any actor he wanted.  The end result of each character doesn't necessarily resemble the actor that much though.  It was just a jumping off point to get me started and in the end all that mattered was that I liked the look of the character.  Dash sort of fell through the cracks though in that way.  He tries to act like Humphrey Bogart but he's not very good at it, he's a lot younger than Bogie was in these movies and should maybe even look a little baby faced.  I looked a lot at Dick Powell...he was also too old but he was as much known for playing hard broiled gumshoes as he was singing and dancing in musicals, so he had the goofball quality to counter balance the tough guy.  In the end, Dash looks like a vague amalgam of Powell and Bogart who's had a face lift to look several years younger.  I'm also told he looks a bit like me and I can't fully argue that.  Here're some early drawings of his outfits...I don't know why I drew his legs so long in these.

I have a lot more clothing sketches.  I watched a lot of old movies with a clipboard in hand and just drew stuff that I thought looked cool, so a lot of Dash's earlier outfits are mixed in with everyone else.  His trenchcoat is based pretty closely on Bogie's coat in Casablanca.  It had a lot of layers and flaps and stuff which I thought made it a lot more interesting than most of the other coats I looked at in my research.  He wears that coat for the lion's share of the movie so I thought it better look interesting.  Here's some really bad drawings I did for a quick and dirty colour test.

The movie was always intended to be in black and white but I wanted to have some idea of colour early on to help in defining the gray tones.  I literally just scribbled down the line work with a Uniball and did some quick pencil crayon colouring.  Next up we've got some action poses!

Nothing much to say about these really...just an opportunity to make sure he'd look good doing the stuff he needed to do.  Down below is one of many fully rendered pencil concept drawings.  I just posted a whole whack of concept art over on the "The Case of the Midnight Murderer" Facebook page.  If you haven't already liked that page I recommend you do...I post stuff like this on there once in a while that I won't necessarily post anywhere else and with any luck I'll also have updates on festivals and opportunities to see the film in the coming months.

Republic of Doyle

Got into "Republic of Doyle" last summer.

It's a Canadian show, for anyone who doesn't know, about a P.I. in Newfoundland.  This is the cast if it wasn't obvious.  I really like the drawing, but I'm a little so-so on the likenesses.  I think Malachy's bang on and Rose is pretty good.  Tinny's not bad but maybe a little more cartoony compared to the rest of them which makes her look a little younger by comparison maybe.  Still like the drawing though...I'd just be doing some more tweaking before I'd pitch "Republic of Doyle: The Animated Series."  I like that Canadian TV's been getting better respect in the last few years.  I think if you asked about favorite Canadian shows twenty years ago, the response would pretty much start and end with SCTV.  SCTV will forever be a classic(and maybe a future blog post) but I think we have more to add to the list.  Doyle is one of them.  Props to my cousin for introducing it to me.

Zack Kassian: Canucknuckle Head

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a HUGE hockey fan!  Okay, actually that may not be entirely true...I am however brimming with local pride and definitely cheer for the Vancouver Canucks every year.  A friend drew a Canucks contest to my attention and I was pretty eager to sign up.  The mission was to draw one of the Canucks' three newbies in pretty much any style you want, I chose Zack Kassian...largely at my friend's behest.  The contest is hosted by Deviant Art which I conveniently already belonged to, you can vote for my picture by clicking HERE and following the instructions.  And you'll have no problem recognizing my entry because here it is right here...

That vote link again is right here, in case you wanna, you know, vote for me...wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  KnowhatImean, knowwhatImean...

While on the topic of the Canucks I thought I'd also post this drawing right here.

I drew this during the playoffs last year and actually used it as my profile picture on Facebook for a while.  I took it down during the riot...at that moment a bloodied and beaten hockey player didn't quite seem as cool.  I'm over it now though, cuz I think it's a pretty cool drawing.  Go Canucks!!

Samsung Galaxy Note

So like two months ago I applied to an ad on Craig's list to be a caricaturist for a Samsung event.  I thought maybe it was gonna be a booth at a trade show and maybe the phone had facial recognition or something so they were using caricaturists as a marketing gimmick to draw people to the booth.  Turns out no.  The Samsung Galaxy Note is like an ipad-iphone hybrid with a stylus pen and they wanted me and a bunch of other artists to draw people's faces on the phone itself using an app called Smemo.  We were stationed at traveling booths in malls all around Vancouver.  First was Metrotown, which was craaaaaaazy busy, then was Pacific Centre which was surprisingly dead, then was Park Royal which was somewhere in between.  We were hooked to TV monitors so that Looky Lous could watch us draw and people seemed to think that was pretty cool.  After the first 3 weeks they extended it for a month but this time we were fanned out, each artist was on his own and stationed in stores that sold the Note.  It was an interesting, sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, and often tiring experience.  Here's some of the stuff I drew on those phones...

These ones above are some of the first ones I did, before I really figured out the best way to use the drawing tools in Smemo.  Drawing's kind of a neat gimmick but the app isn't really meant for it and you have to figure out the best way to cheat with the options you have.  These were coloured with the pencil tool.  You can't do layers in the program so you have to really focus to keep the colour in the lines.  Kindergarten all over again.  Once I figured out the better way to approach it I started to loosen up and get some better results.

These are randomly picked from the first 3 weeks.  If you use the pencil tool with a light gray colour you can sketch really loosely and get your construction lines down.  Then if you use the highlighter tool with a low opacity you don't have to worry so much about running over the lines and you can build it up by going over certain areas to add shading.  Then you can add your darker lines on top to finish it off.  In Metrotown we had so many people lining up that the phone was struggling to keep up with me, I was drawing so fast.  As I got more comfortable with it I was able to get more cartoony and exaggerated with the faces.  The early ones were a bit more static and realish cuz I was too focused on getting them done to experiment with the proportions.

This was the first one that I was able to go more cartoony with and he didn't even know I was drawing him at first.  He was watching in awe as Sujan, the artist next to me, drew somebody.  I saw his face and immediately had the cartoon version in my mind so I had to draw him.  Eventually he caught on to what I was doing and loved it.  He said he looked like the Pope of Africa and started showing random strangers as they went by.

This was another guy that didn't know I was drawing him.  He came over to ask if I could draw him, saw that I was already half done and couldn't stop laughing.  He was pretty stoked and said he wanted to use it as his passport photo.

This was a creepy, drunk teenager that was hassling the girls at the booth in Park Royal.  I drew him accordingly.

Here's a couple couples.  I did a lot of them.

Whenever I was stationed on my own in a store it was really dead and I rarely ever had anyone ask for their drawing.  So sometimes I just drew their staff...sometimes they didn't even know it till I was done.

My second to last week was at the Vancouver Celtic Festival.  I was really popular there and unfortunately didn't have time to email myself very many drawings at all.

My last day was in a store in Coquitlam and it was really dead.  I drew Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh from a Gray's Anatomy still in a BellTV poster in the store.

And Ghost Rider.  I also drew Ghost Rider...and Yoda and Cowman.  That is all.