Murf•Bot Prob-O-Matic #13 - Enamel Pin Project

I've been designing products and characters for many years. Name a major character from the last 80 years, and there's a good chance I've made a product or toy based on it. I also have a large collection of my own characters and stories — and sometimes, like for this project — squeeze out an all new character on the spot.

Many of you probably know my brother Tom's work, especially if you follow The Planetary Society or his company, Chop Shop Store. A few months ago, Tom mentioned he was running another Super League of Science for 2026 and suggested I give it a try.

The theme is science — and my work needs to be fun, unique, with a touch of weirdness. That took some time to nail down. Since these would be enamel pins, the character should be compact, cute, and humorous.
The first ideas that came to mind were robot-related. I already had a few robot character designs, but this project needed more — it needed a science hook. I started thinking about an accident-prone robot, one whose entire existence was to prove Murphy's Law true.

Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
Fun fact: it's named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr., who worked on U.S. Air Force rocket sled experiments in 1949. After a technician wired sensors backward, Murphy grumbled about it — and his colleagues turned the remark into the now-famous "law." Murphy himself reportedly hated the pessimistic spin it got. (Worth noting: it's not a real "law," scientifically speaking.)

So I asked myself: what could possibly go wrong in science? Turns out, plenty. I started a list of hazards and accidents scientists face all the time — contamination, mutation, explosions — and before I knew it, I had a dozen.

With the concept coming together, the next question was: what would the mascot actually look like?
At first I thought it'd be a tiny bot with:
• a bucket for a head
• a pixel-faced monitor robot (too many of those already)
• a used paint-bucket head (liked the body and arms)
• a few more options

Character design sketches that would eventually lead to the Murf•Bot Prob-O-Matic #13

I thought there were quite enough robot characters with a TV monitor or HD screens for heads or faces. A bucket head character seemed funny, but it didn’t quite work for this situation. I wanted something amusing, cute —especially with Murphy’s Law in the equation.

That’s when I thought of giving the character a toaster for a head. I’d seen toaster-headed characters before, but a toaster is such a simple electronic device that can become chaotic fast: forks, for instance, or those movies where someone tosses a plugged-in toaster into a bathtub—bwahaha!
This was the chaotic mascot I needed for this project, perfectly suited to embrace Murphy’s Law.
To complete the concept, I decided to make it a retro-style toaster with a bobblehead spring for a neck.

** Below is a collection of sketches I made while creating the Murf•Bot character. As you can see, sketching a character is a great way to test changes—trimming away what doesn’t work, focusing on what does, and practicing how to draw the character from different angles.

Combining all of this into one final turnaround reference, I convert the finalized character into clean vector images. This is the image I’ll refer to whenever I feel I’m losing the character design from memory.

My official turnaround reference for my own personal check on the character to be consistent

Now I have the challenge of updating all of the final artwork images to match this exact character. As you can see, the first few designs will need work in certain areas—like the bulkier lower-leg calves. (And I’ll double-check that the toaster lever is always on Murf’s right side of its head. Can’t tell you how many times I messed that up.)

© 2026 Arrrggghhh Ink LLC. Murf•Bot character and all related artwork are proprietary. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A few words on: Email, Messages and Requests

Just wanted to touch base with those who write me about this blog and with those who make requests for me to create things for them.

• First, thank you for visiting my blog and having an interest in what I do here.

• Second, I don't allow comments on my posts for one major reason: I cannot police or control comments every waking hour of the day. I hope to someday create more picture books for children; I cannot afford to have people cursing, arguing, or making crude comments on this blog.

• Third, this blog's software doesn't have a good messaging system. But everyone is more than welcome to continue sending me questions and comments. I do eventually read comments/emails sent to me from this blog, but... please don't expect quick turnaround responses.

Finally, please do not send me requests. That is not why I have this blog. This is a blog of my random thoughts and sketches. It's a public diary, even though I don't know what I'm going to post next.

I often get requests to post more images of what I do for a living, which is product design. There are too many legal reasons why that's not going to happen. It would be unprofessional for me to show designs that are exclusive to any client. Occasionally, I will post work-related designs, but those are usually either out-of-date or they no longer have any legal restrictions.

Again, thanks to all visiting this blog.

Christmas Toon - My Santa for 2024

This year's 2024 Santa image was created via physical pencil sketch, into Procreate for some "pencil setting" inking, and then under-colored and text added using Photoshop. ("BWAAH!" created using AI generating Ideogram.com.)

My wife and I enjoy watching Kathleen Madigan's weekly podcast; she's one of our favorite comedians. She often talks about her touring, including places she visits, foods she discovers, and gifts fans give her at shows. On one particular show, she mentioned a place called The Fainting Goat, where she purchased a small plastic goat figurine that makes that hilarious screaming sound we've all heard in videos. It never fails to be funny, and she uses it in nearly every podcast.

My 2024 Christmas Cartoon

When I do a Christmas cartoon, I want it to be unique. It's too easy to do the usual Christmas gags, puns or traditional jokes. So the goat scream was my influence in this image. Hopefully you can hear that goat scream in your head, (I certainly did as I was drawing it. Never not funny.) 

The original sketch

Adventure Time Thoughts

I miss seeing new Adventure Time cartoons.

There don't seem to be as many original shows out there that push the imagination envelope. (Yes, there are shows like Rick and Morty, Hilda, and a handful of other great cartoon series out there. But to me there seems to be a void with new original content from the past 2 years.) As an illustrator and character designer, I'm not watching as many cartoons anymore - we need more Adventure Time-like, Steven Universe and Hilda shows to bring back true imaginative storytelling.

Digital Sketch of a slightly small and young Finn from Adventure Time
using Adobe Fresco and a charcoal crayon setting, with a limited color pallet

I enjoyed the sequel post-shows and the Fiona and Cake series on Netflix, and feel there is so much more possible with the characters and history of the original. So, I started imagining a prequel series for Adventure Time. We have seen Finn as a baby, and were given several alternative reality versions of Finn. But I was thinking, what about Finn as a young kid, say 8 years old? That's a perfect age where he is becoming aware of the world, but is still not quite prepared to go out and bravely adventure.

I was thinking he'd be younger, smaller, and more immature. The series could explore the origins of Finn and Jake meeting characters for the first time. It could explain the gear Finn found and uses, such as his backpack and iconic bunny hood. (I know some of Finn's past has been explained, but there is still much left untold. At least, I believe there is... MORE ADVENTURE TIME!... please...)

Santa Design 2023 (AKA Is Adobe Fresco good?)

Merry Christmas! . . . and a Happy New Year!

Santa character for 2023

Every year, I draw a Santa (or a few). This is my personal annual challenge: to draw Santa differently each year, never repeating the drawings from any previous year.

This year, I created a Santa for the first time using Fresco, Adobe's competitor to Procreate on the iPad. Like Procreate, Fresco boasts an ideal interface and excellent control over drawing lines with a stylus like Apple's Magic Pencil, or on a Wacom screen. Note: Unlike Procreate, which is currently only available on iPad, most Adobe products, including Fresco, are available on all platforms, including Windows.

I would almost say my line control feels even better with Fresco. Depending on the smoothness settings, Procreate can sometimes alter a line's path, especially near the end of a brush stroke when lifting off the tablet.

The best thing about Fresco, to me, is that you can paint and draw in Vector mode. This means you can freely resize your drawing to any size without losing detail or bitmap blocking; all lines stay smooth. It's well worth a look, especially for any t-shirt designers or poster printers out there. I may find myself weaning off Procreate due to this excellent program... (Check here next year to see which program I use for 2024's Santa!)

Baby New Year 2023

Getting ready to kick in the New Year! 🎉

I've been doing variations of this image every couple of years. Each time, a slightly different look.

Kickin in the new year!!!

UPDATE C-BOT: The Smart Bot (supporting Picture Book character)

UPDATE: Color! (Originally published on Saturday, January 26, 2019)

It's been quite a long time since I stepped foot in this blog. 
Not only was the pandemic affecting everything, but this year has also been one family emergency after another. We are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, but still have a way to go.

Anyway, this is my attempt to slowly get back into this blog.

Inktober is approaching, I hope I can do some sketches during the month, but I'm not expecting to have much spare time.

The digitally colored version of the C-Bot, redrawn on an iPad Pro using Procreate

Today's quick sketch warm up. Possible support character for a fun picture book with robots. You can see the protagonist to the story here.

Original Inked Sketch of C-Bot using a Tombow brush pen

#Inktober2020 Day04 RADIO

With the prompt word "Radio", I instantly thought of the old Captain Marvel/Shazam villain, Mr. Mind. He definitely was one of the weirdest characters I remember reading as a child.

#Inktober2020 Day 03 BULKY

Good ol' King Mudsok.
Reposting an old favorite character from my story idea about the underground people,
A fair and kind-hearted leader, though one who would definitely dislike being labeled as BULKY.

#Scrawloween2020 Day03: WEREWOLF

#Scrawloween Day 3: WEREWOLF
This year for Inktober, I'm also following The Cartoon Art Museum prompt list jumping around the two lists, pulling and revising some old stuff, and of course, creating new illustrations.

#Inktober2020 Day02: WISP

#Inktober2020 Day 2: WISP
Created with Procreate on an iPad Pro.

#Inktober2020 Day02: WISP 

#Inktober2020 Day01: Cat

Well, October is here already. That means I'm about to attempt to do the month-long challenge known as Inktober for the 6th year.

This year, a slightly different approach; I'll be doing new character designs and using the prompt list of words from The Cartoon Art Museum's Scrawl-O-Ween for inspiration. (See the prompt list way down below.) 

Color version of this year's first #inktober image

The Inked version of the Day 01 image for the prompt word: Cat

The original pencil sketch of the character

2020 Prompt list for Scrawl-o-ween

B-bot: Developing another support character

This robot is a supporting character for my story, D-Bot. In the story, the main character often wishes it was another robot, B-Bot being one of them. B-Bot is a Builder Bot, hence the powerful arms.

A better color comp of one of the builder bots in D-Bot

The original color comp, which I found was too bright and McDonalds-ish

The original concept pencil sketch of B-Bot

Arrrggghhh It's Another Quick Sketch Video: Monster Dance

UPDATE: Daily Quick Sketch: Lil' Squire

In the past year, I rewrote my picture book story The Squire. At first, it was going to be a story about a little girl playing strong roles often portrayed by male characters. Then I rewrote the story to also include a stronger message about equality. That's where the twins' idea came into play. After all, twins should be pretty equal, right?

Adding more humor to the main characters of THE SQUIRE

The story became more of a dialogue between the twins. More humor was put into the characters reacting off each other. Their arguments intensified; hopefully in a seemingly funny way. I also found an ending that I feel fits perfectly with humor and hitting the key message of the story.

The original pencil sketch of Erica and Oliver, including their lovable sheepdog, Max

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Below was originally posted on 1-28-13

Been a while since I posted a daily sketch.  This one is a little girl dressed in a knight's suit of armor. I was just testing out the stylus controls again, making adjustments to the pen line.  I thought of making a strong little girl with a playful imagination of adventure and action. I came up with this quick little sketch which I immediately named "Lil' Squire."