WIP Wednesday - SNAKES OH MY GOOOOOD

Well, it's been a fun little break, hasn't it? That is totally it and not forgetfulness on my part.

Well, actually, I was camping for about two weeks back there. So yeah! Which, actually, led to a lot of neat stuff in my sketchbook, which I will try to scan and upload this weekend. We will see, we will see.

In the meantime, it's WIP Wednesday! And it is still totally Wednesday because I haven't gone to bed yet! And on that note, we see the return of the 'Late Night Theater with Rex', there to absolve me of any posts full of fatigue-induced typos and dumb wordings!

**Also also, on a technical note, something weird is happening between flickr and blogspot and I am waaaay too sleep deprived to figure it out and make it pretty again, so as a consequence of that... uh, you'll get to see into my flickr account too, I guess./professionalism**


Aaaanyway, today is a very special episode of WIP Wednesday. Not only have I accidentally made it an actual feature instead of just a one-shot-joke, but I have something new, something strange, someth- OMG CARTOON SNAKES YEEEEEE--

Ahem.

I've been playing around with the dudes from here, sketching them and then drawing them in Illustrator. Interesting process. Blah blah blah, more padding about the process and my thoughts on the matter, and now snakes.

Starting with Colby the Cobra:



I was playing around with his colours, mostly because there may be other snakes that have black or brown as a secondary colour on this little team, but the general consensus so far is that black and tan is the best combination thus far. So, yeah, will probably go with that when I make fancy wallpaper for him later. *cough*



VICKY I love you more every time I draw you~~~!

Ahem, excuse me. See, Vicky is an eyelash viper. Again, I'm playing around with colour combinations, and now, patterns as well.

See, the problem is, I like her in green, but I have seen a picture of a pink morph on the eyelash viper (among many, many others), and my brother is insistent that I not give up this opportunity to have a female animal character that can actually be pink and have 'eyelashes' in real life. I am torn between this, but since she is my character and not his, I'll probably go with green. This is okay because if I am to believe every breeder site I read, pythons and constrictors can sometimes come in pink. Pinkish. Albinoish. -ahem-

The yellow morph was thrown in for kicks. So, yes. To my Mom, what does you and your office think? loyal readers, what do you think?



And finally, the most WIPish of the batch today/tonight, but my favourite snake in the group, Horatio the Hognose snake.

Seriously, Hognose Snakes are awesome.
Normally I'd be happy and willing to give you the spiel on why these are the best snakes ever, but I'll let this youtube video of its defensive techniques do the talking.

Aaaanyway, I at least put in the effort to give Horatio a pattern on the top left. Probably not an accurate one, though. The others are more bases to pretty up when I am not tired, but also there so I can have fun with his expressions. Man, he's the best.

I know what the last two in this snakey five-man-bad are going to be, their names, and what they look like, so they will be... um. Let's say next week. *bites lip*

So... yes, I'm still alive, and still drawing ridiculous stuff. Hi guys!

Illustration Friday: Slither

I told myself I wouldn't do anything snake-related for this prompt. Slither. It's just too obvious.

Then as the night wore on, my mind kept returning to how reptiles are often bad guys in the cartoons and movies and books I could remember, and then I started getting annoyed about that. Finally, I determined that what my reptilian friends need was better press, and what better way than a cutesy cartoons where they are the heroes for once?

"Okay, gang, so whoever our litterer is, they're shedding. If I'm right, we can follow this trail right to them, but we might have to split up," Colby the Cobra said to his fellow Slither Scouts, and adding, after a moment, "Sorry, Horatio."

So yeah, here we have the 'Slither Scouts'(or Slither Squad, Serpentien Serpentine Scouts, something like this)! A club of a few young snakes out to explore and have fun and solve mysteries when they can).

Colby the Cobra there is the leader, and to the left is Vicky the Viper, contemplating the evidence. The little guy on the right is Greg Garters, who is not yet in the club and so does not have a nifty blue bandana. Hiding behind him is Horatio Hognose.

There's a Python and a Boa in the club also, but I was having trouble deciding exactly what species I would use as their base, and I was running out of time. If your eyes are keen and my hands are talented, then you might see that Colby is an Egyptian Cobra, Vicky is an eyelash viper, and Horatio and Greg's species are like right in their names, but I think Horatio is some manner of Eastern Hognose, while Greg is... the Common Garter, basically. Yeah, I know, some of these guys aren't even in the same hemisphere, but I'm going to play the cartoonish creative liberties card, and say it's more interesting to play with snakes from around the world instead of restricting myself to one country or continent. As well as the typical 'this is a world where snakes talk and solve crime and wear cutesy little bandanas and you have a problem with ' card also.

So yeah, I could rant on for a good 500 words on why snakes are cute with proof, and I could also go on about the personalities and stuff on the Scouts up there, but I am le tired and I need to also work on that 'posting/picture ratio' thing. Maybe when I sketch out these guys some more, I'll make another post.

... And yeah, the background is... not as nice as it could be, but the deadline was ticking closer and the snakes were the focus of the picture.

... Which either came out blurrier than I wanted it to, or I really ought to go to bed. I'm going to say the latter, because there are birds chirping outside.

HI ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY! Man it's been awhile. Next post will explain my lapse in posting, I swears it, right now I need to sleep. Did I mention how tired I am?

Assignment [Blog Illustrations]

ARGH I AM FALLING BEHIND HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN
But more on this later.


Ahem, yes, assignment. These are some spot illustrations for this blog, right here, and I would tell more but I am so tired I am falling asleep at the controls. So! Let's make this brief!

I don't have a proper header illustration yet - I have a sweet concept, but, er, it's not quite done yet and I don't trust my sense of judgment when I'm in this state of mind (sleeping). So for now, here are two spot images as placeholders:



This is a chestnut, to be used just after this part: We all rode our bikes to find the source and ended up at the farm on which our chestnut tree stood. Terrible fire - barn burned down and a few animals were killed. Quite a spectacle for young kids. We stayed for hours and all got in trouble when we got home because our parents didn’t have a clue where we were.

Originally I was going to do some cutesy cartoony Reader's Digest-esque thing with kids playing this game, but then... I didn't, either I couldn't get the kids to look right, or I figured it was too complex for a little breaker image.

Soooo between that short story and its ending and stuff, I thought I'd draw the chestnut-on-a-string. Broken, to look more interesting, and because an intact nut would probably be in competition, not laying on some surface or another.

Also, its broken and discarded state would symbolize something deep or another in reference to the burnt-down farm, and then the eventual uprooting of the tree to make way for the campus. Like... the end of its era or something.
(Don't take what I'm writing too seriously right now, since it is like 2:30 and I have been sleeping terribly this past week so I am like REALLY tired you guys)

Er... as for my process, I drew it in pencil, inked it terribly, fixed it up a little in photoshop, and... coloured it. *thumbs up*

The same process more or less goes for this one:



Which is an interpretation of Rick Court realizing that he is making less money as a banker than he did as a steelworker. Ah, those sweet summer jobs, right? *looks fondly back on that Riverboat kitchen... good times*

... Right, professionalism.

Alternate drawings for that thought bubble were a little $500 bill with wings, flying away, or $500 flying out the window, because I can do math and this is totally what was meant in that segment. Alternately, it was going to be a black tie, posed to mimic that chestnut earlier. With a $500 price tag, possibly. But... er, it wasn't working out, I think. I don't know, I just found this file coloured on my computer and the other one wasn't, so...

I SWEAR I will try to finish that other big illustration by sometime tomorrow! Really!

But for now I am actually typing with my eyes closed so I will return later with edits and wonderful drawings just you wait and see you guys
Goodnight everybody!