BIG RED.

This one was for my Illustration Concepts I class. We were given the assignment to take an action scene from a well-known fairy tale and place it into a different time period. Like half the class, I chose "Little Red Riding Hood", even though I had desperately, desperately tried to find some way to do "The Snow Queen", my favorite fairy tale. I was quickly reminded that particular story isn't so much action-packed as it is super-dreary. Anyway, I did a weird little twist on the piece and instead of having the classic Woodsman Plus Axe vs. Wolf scene, I wanted Red to fling the stone-filled wolf into the river (honestly, I haven't read it in a while, so I may have come across a weird version in my childhood). I have no idea where the Mexican wrestling stuff came from, but the mask/hood thing just worked and there it is: Big Red against the Big Bad Wolf. Also, I kind of surprised myself when Red turned out nothing like Tex Avery's.

Speaking of scantily-clad ladies... The results from Project: Rooftop's Vampirella ReVamp contest are up and, as it turns out, I'm a finalist. I didn't get a top three prize, but I got a critique from the judges, which was nice enough (I must defend physics-defying underboobies for the first time in my life, because if Vampirella's universe can keep her business together in that classic tissue and dental floss costume, she can certainly pick up some double-sided tape and deal with underboobies). Check out some other entries!

Oh, I actually ended up staying in New York City for the majority of the weekend, so I missed the Baltimore Comic-Con. I still plan on attending the Small Press Expo, unless something more epic comes along and pulls me from the state again. I'm not sure what will keep me away from seeing Jillian Tamaki and Kate Beaton, though.

GO TEAM NATIVE AMERICAN SPIRIT THINGY.

Oh. Hi. I'm back. In a desperate attempt to distract myself from this year's excruciatingly embarrassing Emmy Awards ceremony, I'm posting my latest Character Development assignment. We were told to create a team of 3 - 5 characters, differing in as many ways as possible. The first team I thought of was the Fantastic Four, which consists of on skinny guy, a curvy lady, a big fellow, and a floaty dude. After throwing the elements of the Thing and the Human Torch into one weird entity, I went with that basic dynamic. I was making up this team's story as I was drawing and I've decided that it's a half-dead cowboy (more of this kind of stuff), a psychic Native American princess (I tried to make her curvier than my usual ladies, keeping some of Douglas Lovelace's loose drawings in mind), and a wise-cracking ghost chief (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin of Home Movies fame). Together, they're treasure hunters, targeting mainly battlegrounds and graveyards. That sounds like a solid Saturday morning cartoon that you'd never let your kids watch, right?

In other news: Baltimore Comic-Con next weekend, followed by the Small Press Expo the weekend after that. So many illustration geek get-togethers, so little time. Please do say hi if you see me at either of these events! I enjoy meeting fellow artists, contrary to what my socially awkward conversation skills imply.

THEY COULD SMOKE BACK THEN.

Wow, I'm still alive! Sort of! Skipping to the end of a rather lengthy and uninteresting run-down of the school year so far, enjoy this ink rendering of a sad air hostess from the 60s.

It's a piece for my Character Development class, which sounds like it should be geared towards children with self-confidence issues but it is actually a character design course taught by Brian Ralph. The only prompt we were given was "The Only Survivor" and since I've been wanting to draw vintage flight attendant uniforms since I saw this collection, it seemed like a prime opportunity. I should also note that I borrowed heavily from the technique I used for my Hellboy piece and I'm slowly getting more confident in working this way. Now if only I could do the same thing with gouache...