8-Bit Player

I love videogames...thats like deeply encoded in my DNA. I love the newer games on Xbox 360 and PS3...and I love sports games, first person shooters (especially!!), adventure games, racing games (just a smidge below FPS's) and just about everything in between (ooh and fighting games! I'm looking at you Tekken and Street Fighter). But what I REALLY love, are the classics. I love Super Mario, Metroid, Zelda (but to be honest, I've only played Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker...but all of those are ridiculous!) So I just had to do a Super Mario pic...and when I was done with that...I just had to do a Metroid pic. And when I was done with that...a lil' bit of Street Fighter came out. And probably when I'm done with that...I'll tackle Zelda. But in the meantime in between time, I just thought I'd post up what I've done so far. Hope you enjoy!





And a lil work in progress of my Street Fighter pic...


Without Wax,

Spidey Circa '98

If you are a new reader to my blog, I should let you know that I've always loved drawing. I've been drawing since like 1st grade, probably even before that, but thats when I remember actually picking up a pencil and deciding on drawing certain things. Around middle school is when I really got into it, and around the end of middle school to the beginning of high school, I thought to myself that this is what I want to do for a living. Well, when you're that age, everyone's telling you that you should be a doctor or a lawyer...and for me I was great at 3 things: art, science and math. And people keep telling me that art isn't profitable, and that if I wanted to do both math and science, I should become an engineer...and thats what I went to school for and got my degree in.

So I put art away...I put it away for almost 5 years...and then I picked it up again around 2005. Parts of me wish I had went to art school, cause I really don't know any other artists, and I would love to be in an art community where other people are pushing each other to be better. And I wish I was more serious about art then as I am now, because there's no telling where it could've taken me if I stuck with it. Anyways...

I was cleaning up today and ran across an old 11x17 sketchbook. I thought I lost it when I left for college and I'm glad I didn't. It is however all battered up and wrinkled and stuff. Back then, it was all about adding ridiculous amount of detail, even when I should've been working on anatomy and dynamic poses and stuff. Ah well, its fun to reminisce. Here's a picture of Spiderman and Carnage of Marvel fame...from when I was around 14 years old. Looking at this makes me so mad at myself that I didn't pursue art like I did. Always go after your passions, and never settle for anything less.

The pic is broken up into two pieces because my scanner can't scan pics that large. And to see the detail that I wanted to depict, I had to scan them at 300 dpi, so the file sizes for each eclipse a meg. You should've seen the sizes before I compressed them. Inked with a .35 mm pen, and colored with my personal fave...Crayola color pencils.

What's Old Is Now New Again

I was in a little of an art funk and I needed a little bit of inspiration. So I was browsing through my old sketch books and came across a drawing that I did at the beginning of 2006. My artwork has changed since then, but I found a great picture to color and try new things with. I posted this a while ago, and I also posted it a while ago when I was an 'active' member of a comic sketch forum called Pencil Jack. There, it was critiqued that the way that I rendered it, it made him look 'bulbous', but that was the graphic style I liked and was going for (even though in retrospect, I kinda agree)...not being bulbous though. I thought it would look different colored...so I went for it.

In retrospect, my inking then definitely wasn't the greatest...my lines were all wobbly and all over the place...but I tried my best to clean it up a little. It was fun doing this, and while I was doing it...I found out some cool and interesting things...which I'm currently working on...which will be posted soon.

Lions, Colors and Throwbacks Oh My....

This post was inspired because someone (*cough cough* Teems *cough cough*) wanted to see some color pictures. They're not the best, but they're all that I have at the present time.


So this is a drawing that I did a while ago for someone. At the time I was working on a now defunct graphic novel and they saw me doing sketches and drawings for it and asked me to do a picture for them. At the time it was cool cause it allowed me to draw something different than my novel and for me to draw something I don't normally draw. I can only assume though that this picture is now crumpled up in a land fill somewhere entertaining sea gulls and what not. So, as you can see, its of a lion cub. I guess it turned out okay, nothing major really. I decided to add color to it, and it finally turned out like this:
These are 'old' pictures, so they were uploaded through a digital camera and not the current scanner I have access to. The smear in the lower right hand corner is me covering up the person's name that I put there. I think this was the next to the last picture that I drew for someone else...and I really don't like doing it actually. I wish I copied the last one I did before I gave it away, but I didn't. Lessons learned I guess.

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And these here are the old school throwbacks!! I used to love some Looney Tunes...and I loved basketball. Put them together, and its like the ultimate mashup!! And then some little movie called Space Jam came out and totally ripped my idea!! Anyways, these pictures are ridiculously old...from like 1995 or so. Yeah, I was drawing then too. I think for my age then though, I was pretty good...too bad I gave it up and only recently came back to it. I was about 11 to 14 years old when I made these pictures, so if they aren't the best, bare with me. Oh, and these were done on a huge tablet, I can't remember the dimensions, but the paper was at least 3 times the size of standard 8x11 paper.

This right here is the oldest one. Its of the Tazmanian devil. I drew this when I was about 11 or 12. I guess he's supposed to represent Shaq (the Orlando Magic used to be my favorite team). Other signs to tell this is an old picture? Well, thats the old Pistons jersey of Grant Hill...and the NBA on NBC logos I had going on there. And yeah...those shoes you see are the old Penny Hardaway's and the patent leather Jordan's. Hey, what can I say, I was and will always be a sneaker buff.



This one right here is of the Chicago Bulls in their prime. Bugs as Jordan, Wil E. as Pippen, and Sylvester and Kukoc. Yeah...I told you I loved basketball. All the characters I drew from memory, which is why Bugs looks a tad off. And by looking at these old pics, I see my body proportions were off too...but you learn I guess from old stuff. Anyways, I drew the patent leather Jordans again (funny how they made a hell of a comeback), and on 'Pippen' he has the old Nike Pippens (I had a pair of those...the re-released Air Uptempo's), and I forgot the name of the shoe's I put on Sylvester. Oh, and Tweety is in the pic too, but somehow he got cut off. Oh, and around this time I found out that mixing red and orange color pencils looked wicked, so I had to start putting that in all of my pics then.


I loved my red-orange pencil, and it went to work in this picture. We've got Wil E. as Kevin Garnett, Daffy as Penny Hardaway, Plucky as Lil' Penny, Guy from the Monstars in Space Jam as Patrick Ewing, Marvin and Van Exel, and I don't even know what the Red Haired guy is...I just drew him in cause he was cool in the cartoons. Oh, and Tweety as the ref. This was just an excuse to fill that whole page with random coolness such as the shoes, the red color, and characters I liked. I wish they still made those Penny Hardaway shoes though...I wanted a pair!!






This was the last picture I made in that sketch pad. Someone showed me a picture of Dragon Ball Z before it was even airing here in the states, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Turned out when I actually saw the show, it was 95% filler and wasn't all that great at all. Anyways, here are 'inspired' characters from the series. As you can see, I still didn't give up the red and orange at all. I thought it would be cool if his 'blast' made a shockwave when he shot it, hence the concentric waves and such in the background. And I wanted to draw the street all torn up...so that's whats going on there. Even after all these years, that pic is still unfinished. Damn shame.

Yep...I hope you appreciate the color, and the brief flashback down memory lane.

Oh, the color pencils I used were good ol' Crayola.

And as always, clicking on the pics will make them bigger.

-Charles