Lindy and Chuckles Crash the Granfalloon

Here's the pitch I put together for a 3-minute short for Nickelodeon. These aren't full storyboards, just enough to give the hiring team an idea of the story, dialogue, and jokes.

The idea is based off of the old Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton flicks, almost all of them featuring the main character as some sort of starving bum who falls into a mess of trouble and narrowly escapes it in the most dangerous and hilarious way possible.  We care because it’s obvious from the outset that the main antagonist isn’t really the Butler or the Cop or the Uptight Lady, it’s the entire world.  If they can get by, well then I can too.

Incidentally, a “Granfalloon” is a word made up by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to describe a group of people who are connected through their collective pride of something meaningless.

I don't know if I'll get it, or even if I'm allowed to blog it before any given date, but oh well: here it is.

Welcome to the Machine

Concept art for a comic I'm going to attempt to work on. It's about government.

A Chinese January!

Happy New Year in what is technically the third post of the year.  Which means excitement has had time to build up for the regular unleashing of the images from my annual Christmas calendar.

This year, the theme was "Around the World," and the Jaunary image is China, for Chinese New Year, which is in Jaunary this year.

It's all a very twisted circle, here.

Also, the lady is selling steamed pork buns there (which you would know if you read the sign) for 4 yen each, which, as of January 2014, is the price of steamed pork buns in China.

Rudolph The Sad-Nosed Reindeer

This was fun.  I need to do more of them.

Medusa in the bathroom

It's a little bit amazing how we, as a species, equate physical beauty with inner beauty, when they are demonstrably not related whatsoever at all. 

It also presents a challenge to visual artists: how do you make an ugly thing that doesn't also look evil?  I figure it's probably cheating to just take physically gorgeous things, and disfigure them.  "This lingerie model has a wart!  Stare in horror at her blemish!" 

Or stare in quiet appreciation at the 99.99% that still looks quite awesome.  But it's still weird.

Getting Ahead

Eventually, after millions of years of progress and evolution, we just start faking it.

Earth Daze

Earth Day is here, and I'm proud to say that it's the first holiday since Christmas that contrasts the popular Who-ville morel of "Stop being such greedy little wenches!" with the unrestrained capitalism of "Hey! buy our product! It's green now!"

I should point out that all the numbers in this comic are as accurate and up-to-date as I could find. Most of them came from 2003 to around 2006. There are no statistics on how much trash the entire world throws away each year, so I used estimates based on America's output. What staggered me was that we produce more air pollution than we do physical waste--by weight! Do you have any idea how much a ton of CO2 is? Holy crap!

Linked

I like puns. Also up at Illustration Friday, through the link.

Democracy in ACTION!!

Quickly now, vote for your favorite caption! Or come up with your own! Or come up with some one else's! Or just tell me what you think!

Are You Funemployed?

I'm currently working on material for a webisode series by a bunch of fellow SCAD-grads called Funemployed. It's quite a zesty enterprise, and involves such erudite and saucy topics as beard-growing, chugging contests, self-defense, and internships. From the top, that's Jay (Michael Lippert), Lockwood (Alex Harris), Ted (Ted Evans), Amy (Kate Carson-Groner), and Bill (Dan Hale).

Above are the main characters, and more finished design and process work will come soon, because I've been woefully neglecting this blog since December, and you person deserve something big.

Time enough for everyone else

I was walking somewhere and thinking about the nature of time, which I do a lot, when suddenly, this visual metaphor for the way we slice up our day to deal with our various external obligations popped into my head.

I'd write more, but I'm very busy right now.

Last bit of Business

One final little art thing from summer I never got around to scanning until now.

Autumnal Musings

Yay! It's fall!

Fired up! Ready to Go!

I went to the College Park Obama rally on Thursday. The part that really got me was not the fact that, yes, young healthy people like me will be required to buy health care, and it wasn't the solitary jerk who tried to shout the President down and was hauled off by a 300-pound security guard, it was his "fired up! ready to go!" anecdote. When you're in a stadium full of people shouting "Fired up!" you can't help but join in, and you definitely can't help but feel fired up yourself.

Of course, 30,000 people fired up about a health care reform isn't necessarily all that useful after they leave the arena and haven't miraculously become members of congress.

New: live sketch from the rally, before Obama came on. You could tell the marching band was running out of songs when they started playing "Copacabana".

A Hysteria of American Health

Bottom line being, America (the country I know best) has always been a little loopy on the subject of health care. We could be doing worse, but why bother, when it's so easy to do better.

Rules of Engagement

Really, when someone calls out a gay Jew and America's first mixed race President for being Nazis, you have to imagine they're playing by a completely different set of rules.

The Health Care Battle

This battle has been getting more poisonous over time. The Republicans keep spewing lies out of whatever orifice would make the most noise, and Obama patiently attempts to debunk them out of his mouth. In the meantime, the bill itself continues to get watered down in a vain attempt to get bipartisan support that plainly is not coming. Conservatives seem to have thrown out that page of their narrow dictionary.

For what it's worth (nothing), I say we make the entire system single-payer. It's simple, it's cheaper, and it means that I, a freelancer, get the health care that I probably need. At the very least, we could cut the Insurance companies down to non=profit organizations. No other country allows insurers to draw a profit from sick people.

Let it be said I never demonized anyone who didn't do anything wrong.

Monroe sketches

Marilyn Monroe. Beautiful people are somehow harder to caricature than ugly people. Probably the lack of humorously large noses.

Anagrams of the Wretched Famous: 1

Did you know you can rearrange the letters in "Sarah Palin" to spell "A Plain Rash"?

The more we pay attention to this admittedly interesting but now fairly useless woman, the bigger and more annoying she will get.

If you happen to be in Long Beach (possibly to pick up your 81 Day Racecar t-shirt) and you hop into the Aquarium of the Paciic, and you go to the new shark exhibit, you may notice some familiar illustrations on the display...