Someone has resurrected this thread, so now it's time for some more stick figure movie scenes.

These are very rough sketches I banged out for a PBP I'm involved with.  My goal was to do "realistic" takes on some of the classic JSA characters.  So their costumes mostly aren't form-fitting, and are made of materials that make sense for the late 1940s, but they still have the look of the original characters.  Some of them were pretty easy, really.

There wasn't much to work on with Mr. America.  He wears a poet shirt, a cape, and a mask.  So I just departed completely and gave him a suit and tie.  The Americommando outfit is heavily inspired by the WWII Ultimate Captain America outfit from vol. 1 of the Ultimates.  It'd be a pretty much standard uniform with a different cut and different colors - and on actual operations he probably wouldn't wear it too often, because then he'd be sniper-bait.



For Dr. Fate, I went with a long cassock instead of tights.  He loses some of the Egyptian motif of his costume, but not all.  The embroidery on the cape and cassock would be reminicent of the metalic parts of the classic costume.  I'm thinking he might also wear gold demigauntlets, which would just look cool.  One alteration I might make is to go with the half-mask version of the helm instead of the full facemask, but I think the full one looks cooler.





Dr. Mid-Nite doesn't change much at all.  His costume could be made from fabric and leather quite easily.  I might make the jerkin heavier, like actual armor of some sort (light armor, though).



GL also stays pretty much the same.  To dress him up a little, I think it might be neat if he wears a tabbard with his badge on it.  I might also change the cape.  The heavily starched collar would be pretty annoying in real life, so one with a lower collar might be better.



Wildcat was also pretty easy.  I imagine him as kind of a merchant marine type guy, so he's got one of those neat black sweaters with the leather patches on the shoulders, and some pants.  Pants are very important.

Here's one more.  There's one more story that's really worth doing cover art for that happened before this one, then we'll have to wait for more to get done.

This one's the uncompressed PNG.  Let's see what it breaks. :)

Poor, neglected blog.  It's a shame no one loves you.  I'm only posting here so I can copy it over to another site.

I suppose you deserve some explanation.  See, the thing is, I'm posting journal entries for my MC character, and she likes to doodle in her diary.  There's a file-uploader on the blog engine, but for some reason it's not working for me.  Linking to images I post here is, so I'm posting them  here to show them off there.

And here's another one.

It's a long story.

Here's something I sketched, because I was bored.

Some backstory for those not initiated:  On a PBP, I'm playing a girl with an elaborate Chinese dragon tattoo - only the way I initially described it, it doesn't really look very traditionally Chinese.  The dragon's torso has to be too narrow, and its limbs have to be too long.  This is not a huge issue, since describing the tattoo has happened about twice in the history of the game.  But it still bugs me a little.

So last night I sketched out a new design, and today I did some more sketches.

There's the basic idea (with boobies and a butt, as Steve pointed out)

Four dragons coil on her limbs, with the upper two "holding" a yin-yang with their tails.  Chinese characters run down her spine.  (There has to be writing, since that's one of the few things that matter game-wise)

Here are some slightly more detailed sketches.







The limbs on the dragon should probably actually be a little bit shorter than I drew them here, but it's close enough to get the general idea.

One of these days, I've got to get around to scanning the rest of that tarot deck.  But for now, here's a picture.

And another.



And one last one


And one more.

Time for some more tarot cards.  It's past time, really, but it's not like I'm punching a clock here.

These are rough sketches.  They're not as bad as the Badly Doodled Tarot, but they're not remotely finished work.  I'm just trying to get some ideas down for how the pack of werewolves my MC character is allied with look for better sketches later.

Mike gave me a lot of trouble, and I'm still not completely happy.  From his (brief) description, he strikes me as a huge, aryan type.  I'm not sure he looks big enough here.  (Sure, it's just a head shot, but it needs to convey his size.)




Theresa's description didn't give me a lot of details about her body type.  Her wavy hair might not look wavy enough here, either.  (And I just noticed I only inked half the cord on her little talon)




I'm not completely sure this is actually Jack.  The last two members of the pack didn't identify themselves, and there might be more that weren't at the meeting with Li.  His nose didn't quite come out right, either.  I was going for a somewhat beak-like nose.  I have another sketch somewhere that does a better job.




And here's "the other guy."  I have names for three members of the Heart Rippers, and I have descriptions for four.  One guy was supposed to be a tall, thin black guy who looked a little on the unhealthy side.  I went for prominent bone structure and a kind of shaded look to the eyes.

I missed last night, so today's update will be extra big.

There's the entire suit of Cups.  And here's the card back.




We'll start on Wands next time.  I'll probably try to space the updates out a little more evenly this time.

Here's some more.

This odd little idea struck me yesterday while I was doodling on the back of a card catalog card.  (We don't actually use them anymore, but our leased book vendors keep sending them, so we use them as scratch paper.)  I was also somewhat inspired by The Stick Figure Tarot.

I present the first few cards of The Badly Doodled Tarot.

This is an adaptation of the Rider Waite Tarot, executed entirely on index cards with sharpie markers.  I know, I know, I should have done it on the backs of card catalog cards, but those wouldn't have scanned as well, and the one little hole on the side would get in my way.

Anyway, without further ado:

Here's a slightly naughty, very sloppy sketch of two more MC characters.  Tracks is an NPC associated with Brigid (a PC), so I thought it'd be fun to have her feature in his portrait.  I'm not sure I like the idea enough to do the full sketch that way, because then I'd feel obligated to do it for all the other NPC portraits.

Here's another Mythic City portrait.  I decided to do a little more complete job on this one, so I'll probably come back to Diesel again later, too.

Mythic City is a game I play in.  I decided tonight that it'd be fun to do rather cartoon-ish portraits of various characters.  For some strange reason, I decided on Diesel here as my first one.

I'll try to get another one done some time this week.

Most of the ink came from a nifty little brush pen I'm trying out.  The drawing is just a little to small to use it to best effect, but it'll do.  I may work a little bigger on the others.  If so, don't feel bad Cale.  It doesn't mean I love you less than everyone else :)

David G.

Here's some more doodling from work.

Still considering what I might do with David's Nearly Adequate Web Comic, or if I want to do something completely different in the same style.  I like the sketchiness and think it could be used to interesting effect.

Prepare to be unimpressed.

I know.  Wow, huh?

Sorry for the quality.  I did this in pencil and rammed the threshold all the way up to make it visible.  I've been thinking that I'd try to put up SOMETHING on my blog every week day for a while.  This is today's entry.

But I know you're asking yourself "why?"  Or else you're looking for more Unisystem stuff.  If you are asking "why?" I have an answer.  Long, long ago, I had a webcomic called David's Nearly Adequate Web Comic.  It was kind of mildly amusing, but suffered from fairly bad art, and from the fact that I didn't have the time to really dedicate to it.  So I've been thinking about maybe rectifying that situation, possibly.

If I do restart DNAWC, it'll be with some changes, like much simpler art, as seen above.  The simplified art will mean some changes in the script.  In fact, I'll probalby throw out the old one and start all over, with a different take on the comic.  I'm still in the early stages of thinking about it.  I have a couple more sketches to throw up, and after that we'll see.

There's an RPG.net thread about Darth Vader's costume.  Someone posted a picture often seen in the more fanboyish parts of the internet of a girl in a sort of "bondage queen Vader" outift that, while cool, never quite worked for me.  So this evening I sat down and hashed out a rough sketch of what might work better.

Very rough sketch.

Really rough.

You have been warned.

(Because it's a really, really rough sketch)

My improvements over the original are mostly keeping elements from the real Darth Vader costume.  The armor on the legs (now equipped with spurs) and the paldrons (now attatched to the collar with chains) harken back to the real deal.  The cape-like thing extending from the helmet both feminizes the suit even further, and harkens back to Vader's cape.  If I were to really make this costume for some insane reason, I'd use sheer black or gray fabric with a metalic tint.

The main problem I had with the original bondage queen vader design is the abrupt cut-off of the helmet.  I think the collar solves that nicely, and transitions well to the halter top.  I made up for covering up the top of the breasts by throwing in a little undercleavage.  Cause that's just the way I roll.

(Well, really I roll nothing at all like that, since I'm a short, fat guy instead of a hot babe, and I don't do cosplay)

Here's one more that turned out pretty well, I think.

This one is a fairly lackluster effort, but still amusing.

Here's another piece of Domino Girls art - the first panel of issue 2, colorized by the magic of the lasso tool and the paintbucket tool.  I'd love Domino Girls to be more "solid" looking, and am experimenting with ways to make it look a little better.  The picture here was done to look a bit like sepia toned photographs.  I'm thinking that I'll go for a more straight black & white look in the actual comic, so the colored bits will look better.  (As it is, gold would just look like part of the usual color scheme)

I have yet to try anything fancy like filters.  We shall see how that goes, but only after I get a new computer or more RAM.

Funny how her face never looks the same way twice, isn't it?  Mostly that's because I'm not terribly consistent.  But also it's because I haven't quite found an image that completely "clicks" for how Li should look.

Anyway, here's a look at Li's tattoo from the back.  I'm thinking of doing another one from the front.

Here's a new one

Inspired by RPG.net, a word done entirely in MS Paint:

It shouldn't prove too hard to guess.  I did it at lunch today.  I could have done better at home, with two monitors.  The next one (should there be a next one) will go better, as I've figured out the order of operations better.

Another day, another attempt at foreshortning.  This one seems moderately successful.  I also wanted to try a little inking stuff that I think went okay.

Xian Li is a character I'm playing in a WitchCraft PBP.  She has a big dragon tattoo on her torso and one leg, and smaller ones on her arms and legs, along with tattoos of some ancient Chinese characters.  In the game, the characters are supposed to be untranslatable.  For this picture, I used the character for Thunder (at least according to Google Image Search) for the one that shows up on her thigh.

And to real calligraphers everywhere, I apologize. :)

So, after finishing up my nightly comic panel, I was bored and still in the mood to draw.  A responsible person would have started the next day's comic panel, but not me.  Oh no, not me.  I whipped out this, which is far from perfect, and I'm not sure the character it's supposed to be a sketch of really looks like this, but it's a fun sketch.

If there were a caption, it would probably say something like "Owls are really rather stupid," or "This skirt looks nice, but it's hell to walk in."

Hey everybody,

I just did a really cool panel for Domino Girls, which you will get to see in several weeks.  But I liked one particular part of it enough that I also did a sketch I've decided to share.

I should sketch more.  I should do a lot of things more, for that matter.  But since that's not very likely, you'll just have to enjoy Phoebe: schoolgirl from Hell.

Here's a sketch of Reliquary herself, with limbs and a head.

I'm not sure about the mask.  Among other things, I think she probably has a public identity, making a mask that isn't body armor kind of silly.  She'll have other variations of the costume, too.  I have a sketch around here somewhere loosely based on Kim Possible's fighting outfit, and another one that's a more traditional superhero costume.  This one is somewhat inspired by a picture of Mary Marvel in a Black Adam version of her costume that looked kinda cool.

Two quick pieces from a really nifty Mutants & Masterminds PBP I'm playing on rpg.net.

First, a mockup of the logo for my character, Reliquary.  (She is not a floating, headless torso in game - I just wanted to see what the logo would look like, so I did a quick body to sketch it on)

Second, my completely misinformed version of what Robert Edwards' character, Spitfire, would look like.  Except she doesn't, since his idea of "short hair" and mine are different.

(That said, I gave her anime hair.  IRL it'd be shorter than I drew it - just not a crew-cut like he imagined.  And he gets to be right, since it's his character)




Now, I really need to get some more gaming content on this blog.  I'll see if I can find time for more Gargoyles this weekend.

So, we're going into issue 2 of Domino Girls now.  Issue 1 runs 26 pages, of which the current one is page 17, I believe.  I'd actually like to be further ahead than that, but I don't always get what I want.

There are a few things changing, which will become apparent once you all start seeing the new pages.  One of them is that I'm trying a little harder on the art.  I'm getting a bit faster, which has let me spend more time making each panel look nicer.  Also, daily practice has probably made me a bit better than I was when I started late last year.

So anyway, I had this idea for how to render a particular scene, and before I started it, I dashed off a quick sketch.  The drawing is very simplified, with just vague shapes instead of any kind of well-rendered figures.  I just wanted to see how the composition and shading would look.

(Which probably won't stop Lisa from complaining about Phoebe's hair.  But hey, at least Phoebe got legs.  Diana is just a hovering torso and head with one arm.)

I haven't had much to post lately, but here's some nifty stuff.  These are the original drawings that Lisa will transform into nice, pretty buttons for Domino Girls, so all my loyal fans can have a Domino Girls link on their web pages.

I'd been trying to come up with a good logo for a long time, and it clicked a few days ago.  These were the result.

There was this whole "Draw Batgirl" thing a while back, and then there was this whole "Draw Supergirl" thing, too.  Lots of really good artists did their renditions.  But why should being late or untalented stop me from adding mine?

So here's Batgirl

I'm not sure which Batgirl that would be.  Cassie is my favorite, but she's already got a costume.  This one is a bit of a "new school" look, with a longcoat rather than a cape.  I like the dual-toned gloves.

And here's Supergirl




Kind of a "cheerleader" look.  If it were in color, it would be white and red, I think. Maybe the top and skirt would be blue with red trim.  I think it has a rather pure, innocent look to it.

I also think I needed to adjust the scanner a little.  I cut off toes on both of them.  Oh well.

Enjoy.

So, Monday of last week, my friend and co-conspirator, Lisa Hartjes, asked me if I could draw her a unicorn with laserbeam eyes.

I don't get requests like that every day.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the first time in thirty-five years.  I'm a little hazy on what friends in grade school asked me to draw, but I remain confident that "A unicorn with laserbeam eyes" wasn't a popular request.

Lisa was going to be interviewed for a podcast at http://www.sonicsociety.org/.  One of the hosts mentioned that in the previous podcast there'd been a lamentable shortage of unicorns with lasers from their eyes.

So I produced this:




I hope that will suffice.  I enjoyed drawing the kirbydots.

Soon, we should have a real post with some useful content.  I just need to think of some.

In our neverending quest for top-quality content, we here at The Astounding Mr. Goodner's Amazing Electric Widgets scour the world (or at least my art board and "My Documents" folder) for the most amazing, most unique, most available writing and artwork.

Today's entry is no exception.

This is an unused panel from Domino Girls page 17.  I made errors in the background and the placement of Diana's mike.  I also wasn't happy with the way Phoebe's pants turned out, so I ended up redrawing it.  It stands okay on its own, though - except that Phoebe's legs turned out funky.

Oh well.  Life goes on.

This one is more experimentation, blending pencils with inks for a little more depth of tone.  At the size and speed I'm using, extensive stippling or crosshatching isn't practical, so I'm exploring other options.

The anatomy is a little screwed up.  I inked this one in a hurry.  I'm fairly happy with the general effect.  Computer coloring (grayscaling?) will probably work out better, if I can build up enough skills to be able to do that in a reasonable timeframe.

Domino Girls goes live on February 1.  I'll have to see if I have enough stuff for three more previews.  I'll try to do at least two.  And it's really time for some more non DG content on this blog.  I'll have to try to find some of that.

Two pictures today, an early sketch of Diana, and one of Phoebe that's been colorized.

Here's Diana, although I got somewhat better at drwing her hair.  Sharp-eyed readers might notice faint vertical lines marring the drawing.  (They showed up better before I compressed the picture for the web.)  That's because I do a lot of my sketches on the backs of pieces of paper I print out at work.  Reuising is recycling, after all.  I cut the paper in half to make it fit neatly in my workspace, which doesn't leave a lot of room for big sketches, but it's good for thumbnails and just playing around.




And here's Phoebe, who actually has arms in the comic, but does not yet appear in color.  We're still working on a way to do color that doesn't take too long.  I'm a really slow artist with a full time job, and I don't want to spend every spare moment working on the comic, so we're limited in what we can do.

Diana and Phoebe originated as WitchCraft characters (further verifying that Eden Studios owns my soul), and were originally identical tiwns.  They became fraternal twins for the comic because that would make it easier to tell them apart.  That also meant I could make Phoebe brighter and more flamboyant, and Diana darker and more somber, in keeping with their respective personalities.

Okay, time for some more preview artwork.

That's the gas station I posted a map of earlier.  The maps even came in a little handy.

Beginning in February (2/01/07, at 12:01 AM Eastern Time, I believe, but don't quote me on that) I will be providing artwork for another web comic - one significantly different from David's Nearly Adequate Web Comic.  Don't worry, though.  Nothing will interfere with the rigid schedule of updates I'm currently maintaining for DNAWC.

The new comic is called Domino Girls, and you can check it out at dominogirls.lisahartjes.com

Domino Girls is a modern occult story about a twin sisters who travel the country, playing jazz and blues and fighting monsters.

Here's an early peek at some of the art.  I'll post more later.