SPIDER-WEEK (part one): Spidey & MJ

In honor of this weekend's long-awaited release of "Spider-Man 3", I've deemed this SPIDER-WEEK on the Studio Blog-O! There will be various Spider-Man related art (and only Spider-Man related art) posted over the course of the week (I'll bet the anticipation is killing you already). Superhero-y stuff is not necessarily my strongest point, but I've been having fun with these. It's a good time to be a geek.

We'll kick Spider-Week off with this little number: Spidey & MJ enjoying a nighttime swing. You enjoy it, too, why don't you?

--Andrew

Life of Bill

Today's post is a financial comic depicting what happens in the life of a dollar bill. The comic was done for the Spring 2007 edition of U Magazine. The client was Big Blue Dot. Special thanks to Brian & Jen for this one! It was a fun project.

--Andrew

And for you enjoyers of the behind-the-scenes glimpse, here are some of the conceptual sketches I did for the client when developing how the comic would look.

Harry Potter Sketches (Round Five)

Yet another round of Harry Potter art with some characters from book four (I'm just wrapping up the re-read of book five, so will probably have a couple of sketches from that one at some point soon). Enjoy!

--Andrew

For you purists, yes, I realize Madame Maxime's hands and feeet are described as being rather large like Hagrid's, but I decided to take some (extra) creative liberties with this design.

Colbert vs. ColBEAR

This piece was obviously inspired by the Flying French Bear from the previous post. When I posted that piece on my deviantART gallery, someone suggested that a French Bear would be Stephen Colbert's worst nightmare. One thing led to another,and I ended up slapping together the following illustration. As usual, my capturing of likeness is nonexistent, but hopefully it's still worth the cheap laugh it's meant to be! Enjoy!

--Andrew

Sacre' Bleu!

A friend had a dream about a bear that could fly and speak French. Naturally a concept as rich as that has to be drawn. So I drew it, though I interpreted it as I saw it in my own head and not the exact way it appeared in the original dream. Also, I used the colored pencils again. Enjoy.

--Andrew

A Fat Rabbit (& Other Doodles)

Well, the Character Meme from the previous post apparently had a rather positive effect on me, because I've been doodling and brainstorming characters ever since filling it out. A new character (yet another goofy animal) has even appeared, evolving from the sketches I made of the old character, "Robbie", for the "12 Characters" chart. You guys know me well enough by now to be a bit dubious of any of my comic-idea brainstorming, but this post contains more of it.
--Andrew

The newest character is, as the attached pictures will attest, a rather portly rabbit: He's proving to be fun to draw. Does he seem appealing enough otherwise?


I found myself at a bit of loss for what color he should be. I'm leaning towards yellow, but I also tried green and blue. What do you think?

And here's a series of some of the completely random doodles that have been done this week. You can see from the first sample that the rabbit was the traditional "Robbie" cat design and briefly a bear and monkey before I found myself drawing him as a rabbit and kind of found that sticking. He even ends up teaming up with Jenn and a few other characters throughout the doodles. Random and ridiculous ideas abound...

Character Meme

(Long post, this.)

I found a "Character Meme" going around at DeviantART and decided to participate. So, I randomly selected 12 of my characters ranging from modern day all the way back to high school and set about answering the provided questions. This was a fun little waste of time...and not even a complete waste of time at that, since it served as a sort of reminder how much fun it can be to write and brainstorm with some of these guys.

Since the majority of you will be unfamiliar with most (if not all) of these characters, I created this handy chart for you to refer to. After that, the meme begins:

List 12 of your original characters:
1.) Bueno
2.) Jennifer
3.) Drew
4.) Fatback
5.) Skinny McLean
6.) The Cat
7.) Heidi
8.) Melissa Stone
9.) Lenny
10.) Robbie
11.) Karen Killjoy
12.) Andy Poopneck

01) Who would make a better college professor, 6 or 11?
Karen Killjoy would make a better professor than The Cat. She's clever and he's an idiot. Still, Karen's quite emotionally unbalanced and knows 101 ways to kill a man with one hand tied behind her back, so I'd be wary to put her in such a controlled setting.

02) Do you think 2 is hot? How hot?
I'd say Jennifer's pretty darn cute, sure.

03) 12 sends 8 on a mission. What is it, and does it succeed?
Andy calls Melissa Stone over to his laboratories to film a story about one of his latest scientific inventions. He successfully manages to hype things up enough that she comes with a crew from the Channel 10 to do the story. Upon arriving at Andy's residence, she discovers his "invention" was a nice breakfast he cooked. Andy concedes he just wanted to meet Melissa Stone after seeing her on the local news all these years.

04) What is or would be 9's favorite book?
Probably some really obscure novel that even I'm not aware of.

05) Would it make more sense for 2 to swear fealty to 6, or the other way around?
I doubt Jennifer would swear fealty to a hapless moron like The Cat. He could probably pretty easily be convinced to swear fealty to her, though.

06) For some reason, 5 is looking for a roommate. Should s/he share a studio apartment with 9 or with 10?
Well, the last time they existed in any continuity, Lenny and Robbie actually already roomed together. So this would become a "three's a crowd" scenario if Skinny McLean moved in. Either way, it doesn't matter. No one other than Fatback (Skinny's original roommate) deserves to have to live with Skinny.

07) 2, 7 and 12 have dinner together. Where do they go, and what do they discuss?
They go to Joe's Diner, Moundsville's token greasy spoon. Heidi is acting like she'd rather be anywhere than stuck here with Jennifer and Andy. Jennifer tries desperately to engage Heidi in conversation, because Andy just creeps her out and she'd rather not talk to him. Heidi soon starts to get very irritable with Jenn because she only wants to be left alone. At this point, Andy suggests they have a catfight. When Heidi sees just how annoyed Jennifer is at this boldly ridiculous suggestion, she immediately begins to engage Andy in conversation. She's trying to get him to say more things that will annoy Jenn, who ends up not sticking around much longer.

08) 3 challenges 10 to a duel. What happens?
Robbie flees in abject terror, locks himself in his room, and isn't seen again by anyone for at least a solid week. Drew probably challenged him to said duel simply to see this reaction and get a chuckle.

09) If 1 stole 8's most precious possession, how would s/he get it back?
Bueno just wouldn't steal anything of any value from anyone. He might steal some bit of tempting food from Melissa's plate, though. And I don't think she would want that back.

10) Suggest a title for a story in which 7 and 12 both attain what they most desire.
"Does this Fame Make Me Look Rich?"

11) What kind of plot device would you use if you wanted 4 and 1 to work together?
Bueno uses food and the promise of more food to get Fatback to help him in whatever ways he needs. Fatback's skull is as thick as his temper is short, so Bueno will have to use all of his cleverness to make this "team-up" work successfully, though.

12) If 7 visited you for the weekend, how would you get along?
We'd be able to peacefully coexist if nothing major happened, but I don't think we'd become friends. Heidi's not an easy person to be around.

13) If you could command 3 to perform any one task or service for you, what would it be?
Well, Drew is in many ways a cartoon reflection of myself, so in some senses he already does whatever I want to do.

14) Does anyone on your friends list write or draw 11?
No one usually draws any of my characters. But this one even I haven't drawn in ages (except for on the chart I made to accompany this survey), because I'm too lazy to do comics lately.

15) If 2 had to choose sides between 4 and 5, which would it be?
Jennifer simply wouldn't care what the outcome of any conflict between Fatback & Skinny McLean was. They fight incessantly with no good cause, so it would be a pretty moot point to bother taking sides. She'd just simply pay no attention to them at all.

16) What might 10 shout while charging into battle?
"RETREAT!!!!!"

17) If you chose a song to represent 8, which song would you choose?
"Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" by Aretha Franklin

18) 1, 6, and 12 are having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. There is only one scallion pancake left, and they all reach for it at the same time. Who gets to eat it?
There will be a brief scuffle between the three of them. Andy will ultimately win.

19) What might be a good pick-up line for 2 to use on 10?
I don know why Jenn would want to "pick-up" Robbie, but if she were so inclined she might get his attention with something like, "Have you tried this new hand sanitizer? It really kills a lot of germs!"

20) What would 5 most likely be arrested for?
Disturbing the peace...at the least.

21) What is 6's secret?
The Cat is too dense to properly keep any secrets for very long.

22) If 11 and 9 were racing to a destination, who would get there first?
Karen Killjoy would get there first. She'd sabotage Lenny in an unnecessarily thorough manner before the race even started to make sure of this. Oddly, she'd probably be resourceful enough to win even if she hadn't cheated.

23) If you had to walk home through a bad neighborhood late at night, would you feel safer in the company of 7 or 8?
I don't think either of those two would make me safer in such a neighborhood. But there's a chance Heidi knows some of the people from this neighborhood, so maybe I'd be safer with her.

--Andrew

Jenn & Bueno: Swingin'

Jennifer and Bueno passing the time on a tire swing. Enjoy.
--Andrew