So! I drew a little guy called Defaultie the Student Loan Owl into a DS comic a few months back. He briefly won the hearts of weirdoes the world over before fading into quiet obscurity.

…Until I completely randomly found a hand made hat that looks exactly like him! It was the best coincidence ever and made my month.

Here are some desktop patterns for nice people who like pixel owls:
1024×768px | 1280×854px | 1440×900px | 1920×1200px

Man. It’s koo-koo deadlines tonight, so I present to you this simplification of the Big Wheel from DS #1470. This reduced color version was to be made into a t-shirt, but I was never totally happy with the color options.

It’s clearer than the original, but lacks a little of the charm the small details added. the perspective on the front wheel and handles was a pain in the eunuch units, but I’m pretty happy with it.

Beards! Magical chin covering of the ancient world! I have been known to sport one from time to time, only removing it when it proved to be too much of an impediment to my soup-eating regimen.

Here’s a beard-man I drew as a sketch for a t-shirt that was never made:

Here’s a faux pop-art tribute to one of my heroes, THE WOZ:

(click to zoom it)

You will repeat after me:

“Beards are almost as hot as they are practical. There is no need to waste time shaving every day.”

“Beards are almost as hot as they are practical. There is no need to waste time shaving every day.”

I call this my “Manly Mantra”. It is pretty much the only manly thing I’ve got going for me.

Le Yay, Le ARRRRGH.

Yay: The Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta came out today, just as FTP Batman predicted it would. I got to use it for a little while today on an Intel Core2 iMac and must say that the performance boost is very marked and extremely welcome. I can see myself saving a good half hour a day, some days. It’s nice to be able to get performance out of a small machine that would have required a 70 lb. tower two years ago.

The interface changes are also pretty good! There are some new ways of doing things, none of which really hurt my eyes or feel unintuitive coming from the previous version. Once I bang on it a little more, I may have to do a quick review.

ARRRRGH: I mistakenly erased a folder of comics on my HD, thinking it was a folder on a USB drive. Say a prayer, I only need to recover three PSD files. (and even if I can’t, I have the exported GIFs to recover the ideas from)

Here’s a panel for an upcoming DS Sunday comic that is on one of the e-wads I’m trying to recover:

It’s a comic about outer space and aliens. I’m a huge Art Bell & George Noory fan, so the chance to talk about this stuff to a larger audience is quite tempting. We Are Not Alone… in thinking that the X-Files was pretty much the best thing on TV before it went off the rails and started contradicting all the plot lines.

Two sketches of Red in 3D. Neither is exactly right, but I learned some things in making them:

CRUSH ALL LAPTOPS:

And lastly, a title panel from an upcoming Sunday comic:

Digging around the dusty pixel vaults this weekend, I found some creepy little treasures. Behold how dumb I am!

Lance Koppel, the ROFL Waffle:

(Very old art I just found, circa 1999 or 2000.)

ORIGINAL BELZER:

(The t-shirt only two people I know other than myself would wear, but we’d wear it every day. Circa 2003.)

Magic 8-Ball Covers:

(”America’s Most Accurate Undergarment!” Earlier this year.)

HEROES OF THE BLOGOSPHERE #1: Wil Wheaton

I tried to get him to work at 32px by 32px, much smaller than I usually draw. I think he’s mostly recognizable. The “problem” with guys like Mr. Wil (who is not to be confused with a Wii) is that they do not have any weird features you can exaggerate!

This dude is SYMMETRICAL, which I guess is what all of us animals with spines and limbs are going for. I think the secret to drawing him is in how his pinch up a tiny bit when he smiles. I stare at people too much, huh?

I might do some other versions with little identifier icons on them. Watch this “space,” EL ROFL LOLZORS.

Who’s next?

Like a total dingle-head, I totally forgot who sent me these awesome pictures of DS stickers stuck on Rubik’s Cubes. I love seeing 2D shapes mapped to real 3D forms! (computer models just don’t do it for me)

*It was in fact Brenda Cantu who sent them in, but who is too polite to publicly correct me!

I am honest-to-Batman not sure if this little doodle has ever seen e-print! It was a preliminary sketch for the “I Win” t-shirt, did a little cleanup work on it for this blogification.

Geometric stuff is really fun and really hard to make work at low-resolution. You usually have to get some of the angles wrong in order to make the visual average of all the angles look right. Push a little too far one way in order to let the image push back the other way. Hard to explain, but a great way to wile away an hour.

I think I shall try to do some celebrity portraits this week. I call this series “HEROES OF THE BLOGOSPHERE” and you are welcome to suggest names. (I have one in mind already)

In over six years, I can’t believe I only drew my first pixelated acoustic guitar today.

More colorful stuff returns tomorrow!