Giddy Santa 2019

THIS JUST IN:
It's that time of year when Santa is getting a little too giddy.

That time of year where I play around creating new character versions of Santa.

Christmas Card 2018

This will probably only make sense to people who buy toilet paper. If you don't get the joke, go out and buy toilet paper soon.

Christmas Card concept for 2018

Daily Quick Sketch: More Monstas and Bunnies sketch stuff

Had this sketch laying around since the end of last year. The sketch was an idea I had envisioned and quickly jotted down on paper before forgetting it. It helped that it was the holiday season, which inspires this type of work. Looking at the image now, a half-year later, there are many changes needed to improve the composition. Mostly the sizing of everything is off. The characters and the tree need to be bigger with less emphasis/detail to the background.

Inked rough sketch of a concept for a Monsta and Bunnies calendar

I would like to create a calendar of this subject one day. This one would be December's image. I know the subject and images would work well, but I'm still undecided on what style medium I would want to use for final images. Time will tell.

Original pencil sketch of the holiday concept

Daily Quick Sketch: Santa? (Updated)

Well . . . better late than never.

During the holiday break, I did many Santa doodles - trying to design new and different designs for Santa. I never had the time to post these during the holidays, so here are a few you can see now, post-Christmas.

This one was inspired by Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit style. It's the only Santa I colored and posted to Google+ to see it they would "auto awesome" the image with a snow effect (like they did to my Santa image from last year.)

Wacky Santa highly inspired by Nick Park of Aardman Animations (of Wallace and Gromit fame)

Still haven't seen the effect be made on the image, maybe they stopped doing that effect to the images due to too many people complaining that Google was altering their images.

This one was made because I was thinking of all the versions of Santa around the world. Many Santas were inspired by national traditions or fables. Our American Santa image was heavily inspired by the poem "The Night Before Christmas" and visually branded by Coca Cola's advertising in the early part of the 20th century. But what if another American classic had inspired the look of Santa instead . . . that's when I thought of one of America's most popular fables, Paul Bunyan.

This one I call Lumberjack Santa. A Paul Bunyon inspired Santa sans his big blue reindeer.

His open coat/bare chest was inspired by the Ghost of Christmas Present, in which several old "A Christmas Carol" movies had the ghost seemingly naked underneath his huge robe.  I was going to include a huge blue reindeer too . . . but didn't get around to it.

Here are a few more doodle sketches from around that same time:

Rushing Santa - always seems like Santa should be rushing around , especially in December.

This was a little weary Santa, looking like he a bit tired of it all . . . 

Not sure what to make of this Santa, but his mustache is definitely too crooked.

Daily Quick Sketch: Heppy Santa

Been quite awhile since I posted anything here.

My job has me running in circles, fried and exhausted. But things are starting to slow down and there is the holiday break soon approaching. So I thought I'd throw in some Holiday images in the next week.

First up . . . It's Heppy Santa, Kids!

Heppy Santa was create using ArtRage Pro 4.5 with the ink pen for outlines and charcoal settings for coloring

I've been sketching many different Santas lately, mostly for work. Trying to find different ways to draw him and alter his appearance.

The original pencil sketch, one of many various Santas I have been designing these past few weeks 

Creative Process:
This one I simply wanted a big, grinning, funny Santa.
Once I drew the grin, it inspired me to make a huge and wide mustache to cover the lips. Then once I curled the mustache -- I had to do the same for his hair. Small hat + huge body; always one of my favorite character trait combos. Of course giving him tiny hands really helps make the image look even more weird. I just always love making big bulky characters with thin arms and legs . . . it's very pleasing to me for some reason.

To help soften the image, the outlines were toned down to a bluish hue. A nice, snowy, cool-toned background was thrown in to counter the warm Santa suit and create a proper environment for the character.

I liked this Santa so much -- I created a new cover image for my Facebook page using him (in a kinda creepy way though)

Illustration Friday: Spirit (Updated)

Illustration Friday: Every Friday a word is given on the website, IllustrationFriday.com. Artists and illustrators then submit an image that represents that word all during the week.

This week's word: SPIRIT

Marker and Ink image of Santa for Illustration Friday's word of the week - Spirit

Thought Process:
First thought was the "Christmas Spirit" since it is the middle of December. This made me think of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" which as everyone knows -- is loaded with spirits. But I didn't want to draw a ghostly figure . . . instead I was looking to show the emotional spirit of Christmas. So who better to do that than ol' Saint Nick. 

Pencil sketch of the Christmas spirited Santa. The original idea was to have him in his red long-johns.

But I didn't want to draw just another Santa image. I wanted the image to show Santa's Christmas spirit on a more personal and emotional level.

By taking away his coat and hat made it seem like Santa was casually relaxing at home; This is not the business-like gift delivering Santa . . . it's the happy and jolly "Thank God that's over and I have 355 days off from work" Santa. 

UPDATE

The background was pretty bland for a cheery spirited Christmas image. And just for good measure, I figured adding a snow storm in the background would help instantly convey that this dancing fool was indeed Santa. (Though, skipping around in a snowstorm like that without proper clothing - it'd be a miracle if he didn't catch pneumonia!)

UPDATE UPDATE
Okay, this is weird.
Somehow either someone or some program turned my non-snowflake falling PNG image into an animated GIF. I found it animated like this several days after I uploaded my original non-animated image to Google+.

Perhaps Google does this to some images automatically? I doubt it, since that could be a few legal problems I'm sure Google lawyers would warn against.

So I think this snow effect is something that Google+ does automatically to snowy images. I've seen several images on there that have this same animation - so i'm guessing that is the answer.
Real nice touch . . . Thank You, mystery animated GIF making app or person! 

My Santa drawing that was mysteriously turned into an animated snowing GIF image

For those interested, I found a webpage that explains how to make this snow effect.
Link: http://www.vlogg.com/13203/convert-photo-snow-falling-animated-gif-using-google/

Christmas is coming!!!

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

Running Santa made with Color Pencil on Bristol

Santa Banana

Okay, back from Shanghai after being away for two weeks. Let's get back to posting again!

Here's a wacky one I was thinking about when I was deprived of about 48 hours of sleep while in China: