Halloweeniness

Happy Halloween, everybody! I had a pretty excellent sketch adventure day, and I hope you did too. Pictured below is a wandering pack of wild Sawyer-sauruses in their natural environment--scavenging for candy.


Also, incidentally we live half a block away from an auto glass shop. When I rode my bike home from school today, what happened to enter my field of vision but this beautiful creature. However, by the time I dropped my stuff off at home and came back to sketch it--travesty of travesties--it was gone. Luckily, it had only been moved into the garage. I talked the owners into letting me into the garage to sketch it. We talked about guy stuff (that I have no idea about) like cool cars--this is a 1963 Thunderbird. They don't make 'em like this no more though, I can tell you that much.

In other news: baby oil.

A freaky green dude

So, Halloween is nearly upon us, and here are some recent sketches.
I love the trumpet--it's just an awesome instrument with so much soul. I had lotsa fun with this sketch, so I'm hoping to make some time to do a little more with it later on. We'll see. With any luck I can make some time this weekend.

Today, we watched Charlie Chaplin's City Lights in our character animation class. After watching the boxing scene, I couldn't quit thinking about how tough-looking those dudes in the ring were, so I spent my next class period doodling this:


And (in case you thought I'd forgotten), I've upped the ante once more in our pre-halloween freak out fest. Feast your peepers on this beauty:
Yep. "Shrek the Halls limited edition shampoo." Okay, we all know that straight to video/dvd releases are lower in quality, so I'm not here to tell you about how horrifying I think that cinematic trainwreck will be. After all, straight to video releases are about making money for studios so they can produce more cinematic releases later on--and we've all probably done paid work that wasn't up to our artistic standards to help make ends meet.
What's really scary (and nonsensical) to me is the idea of Shrek selling shampoo. Shrek is a bald ogre, and the most hair we ever see on him (thankfully) is his eyebrows...which are admittedly kind of bushy, but hardly warrant the use of a buble gum scented shampoo/conditioner combo. Anyway, here's to Suave for cooking up this pre-halloween's weirdest surprise.
I hope you're all excited for Halloween, and that you get a ton of candy! May strange, inexplicable and sugary things happen to you and your loved ones this year!

T'is the Season

Yup. From our friends at Man Groomer.com--everything you've been waiting for. So, I don't know that this is necessarily any scarier than a home paternity test, but the idea that an adjustable-armed back hair trimmer is available for purchase to the general public kind of frightens me. There are some jobs that only a professional should attempt. And even then, I feel sorta sorry for the professional whose job it is to take care of the hairy back of society.

On a related note, today our little family happened to travel up north to visit some close family friends (who are practically family) for a dinner get together. On the way there we counted a number of billboards that advertised either laser hair removal or liposuction--I can't believe how obsessed we are with our bodies; it's unhealthy.

But, I digress--now, onto the funny pictures!


Here are some recent sketches from around church and school.
The look on this kid (the one on the right hand page)'s face was priceless. His parents walked away and he had no idea what to do with himself. Of course, instead of helping him I drew him.

And speaking of helpless children. Here's one of Sawyer at dinner time...which is another instance of me drawing instead of helping. I'd better be careful before this becomes a habit.

On Thursday of last week, Disney story artist Mark Walton (who is also the voice of the hamster Rhino in the upcoming Disney feature animation Bolt) came to lecture at our school. He sort of looks a little bit like Sigmund Freud, but Mark is Mormon so I'm pretty sure he doesn't smoke--let's pretend it's a bubble pipe.

A sketch of somethin' brewin' in m'brain.


Some dudes from church today. After not drawing with this pen for so long, I forgot how much fun it is, but I really like my Uniball Jetstream 0.7 mm ball point. Unlike other Uniball pens, the ink doesn't come pouring out the minute you touch the pen to the page. Groovy.

Upping the Stakes

As promised, more scary stuff for Halloween month. This week's offering (slightly scarier than imitation pasteurized process cheese food): a home DNA paternity testing kit.
Do we seriously live in a time and place where this type of kit is commonly needed around the house?
Freaky.

In other news, monkeys are awesome.

And in further additional news, I am (making an attempt at) animating Roger from 101 Dalmatians. I know treading where Brother Kahl carved the definitive path is risky business, but I figured it will be an intense challenge that I stand to learn a lot from. Here are some thumbnails of Roger dancing, and below, a key frame from an upcoming animation.

Also, here's the mom design from the children's story that I'm currently illustrating. Matronly, don't you think?

Up playing way too late

For a guy that has class in 6 hours, this may not have been the wisest decision.

Dairy Scary: and other offerings

In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday (hooray!), I am making a scary post...of sorts. The other day, while flipping through the paper for coupons, my dear wife, Allison found the image noted below:

Yep. You read right. "Imitation Pasteurized Process Cheese Food." You know, there's a reason that imitation food-like items such as this are only 89 cents a go. I hope none of us have to be brave enough to find out exactly why that is.

I'm just trying to get you warmed up for Halloween. This is only a little bit scary, I'll admit--but hey, it's still early in the month.

Anyhow, here are some recent sketches from my school notebooks.

There is this totally radical (replica of a) traditional Chinese horse sculpture in the Asian and Near Eastern Languages department office at BYU. I took a moment to sketch it before a meeting with the professor that I work with (I'm a TA for Japanese 201 in my spare time).
More fun faces from classes.
My favorite part about this is that the fellow pictured on the left-hand side of the page below had such floofy hair and a great jersey on (which I didn't get, since I was taking notes beneath the drawring). He looked like a baseball star from the 1970s...I don't know what to tell you about the lady to his left.
This is a sketch I did a little while ago--a design for an upcoming personal project. I have so many things brewing on back burners that my creative stove top sometimes feels 17 feet deep...I can't even reach some of the ideas that I put on the back burners ages ago. On the other hand, though, maybe it's best to let some ideas stew for awhile--like a delicious curry--then hopefully it'll get tastier with time.

And here are a couple of concept character sketches from an illustration project for work that I've got due at the end of this month. It's about a family, but so far I've only really gotten a feel for the boy and the father. More to come as it becomes presentable!