A Halloween Doodle

I have to say, out of the classic Halloween Monsters, I think the werewolf is my favorite. Lol the idea here is that this werewolf, when he's a human, works at a very busy McDonald's. It's a good job, the only issue is there is a high demand for working nights. He's filled out shift requests asking not to be scheduled at night, even medical requests, but his manager isn't buying it. Little does he know . . . :)

Some things to work on (Monster of the Week)

I was watching a video about fundamentals by Feng Zhu tonight and was inspired to "brush up" lol.  It's amazing how no matter how long you draw, how long you paint, or how many miles your pencil odometer reads, the basics can always improve.  Lighting, perspective, gesture, color— as much as they seem like elementary principles, they are infinitely deep.

This was a quick sketch from last night that ended up looking not unlike a "Venusaur" from Pokemon lol, though that was not the conscious intent.  I learned a couple of things while working on it, simple concepts, but to me that's what makes them important.  The first thought (echoing advice given me by Justin Kunz recently) was that I need to focus on stroke control.  The second thought had to do with light.  I didn't use a spheretest on this one, and as a result wrangled for a while with my values.  They still have issues.  The thought occurred to me though, that the value patterns on a given isolated object are the sum of their lambert shading (spheretest-based lighting) and occlusion. Basically, in most situations everything lights as simply as a sphere, plus extra dark spots for the crevices.

And that was boring.  Here's an awesome:

Electric Eel Powers Christmas Tree

"Paris: City of Love and Mutant Catfish"* aka "The South Beached Diet"?

AKA also Monster of the Week :}

      So I was driving on Friday listening to NPR and heard a story that caught my curiosity.  Apparently, a species catfish translpanted to France from Eastern Europe in the 1980s has recently developed some rather radical feeding behaviors.  In their native environment, catfish are quiet, nocturnal, bottom feeders.  In the last 30 years, hower, their behavior has changed— they've started beaching themselves to attack pigeons in broad daylight.  Check out the video:

Wow, be careful where you walk your dog! The idea that these fish are changing so quickly intrigued me.  If their behavior could change so completely in 30 years, what will they look like in 30 million?  So I decided to do some doodles.  One of my favorite sketch games is "Projected Evolution"– basically, you take a creature and guess what it will turn into in umpteen million years.  A great example of this is the gorilla bats in the BBC's Primeval.  They project that some time in the distant future, bats will evolve into a ground-based superpredator that still operates by echo-location.  

Here's one way to play this sketch-game yourself–  you can take 2 very different animals and say "in 30 million years, elephants and rhino beetles will switch ecological niches."  Read up on what they eat, any particular behaviors they have, and look at pictures to learn what is unique about their anatomy and how it helps them survive. Then, as you draw, you start with the elephant's current design and ask yourself questions about what anatomical changes would need to be made for it to function as a matchbox-sized organism.  For one thing, elephants have evolved to have sparser hair than most mammals, as they easily maintain heat by virtue of their enormous bodies (partial mass homeothermy for you nerds).  If an elephant were to shrink, it would need more hair, as it would have much less mass to maintain heat.  Rhinoceros beetles are insects, which means the materials and structures in their bodies will only carry so much weight,  Even in prehistoric times, land based arthropods would max out at 2.5 feet (and those were scorpions, not insects).  What needs to be changed in the Rhinoceros beetle's body if it's going to be 13 feet tall and support 7 tons of weight?  What changes in the shapes of its legs will the elephant need to burrow and scurry? These are the kinds of questions that will lead you to new, creative solutions and fun creature designs.

Projected Evolution Doodles

The image above started as a 4AM flashlight doodle, which I played with more the next day.  I projected that the Catfishes' beaching behavior and desire for land-based food would lead it further and further on to land, paralleling the way amphibians developed in the Devonian period.  Its ray fins would become sturdier and stubbier to pull it along like a crocodile for excursions of increasing duration.  In the doodle at top left I evolved the catfish into an entirely land-based predator, but kept his fin because I thought it looked cool (which is allowed lol).  Obviously these aren't to be taken as serious scientific projections, but it's a fun exercise in creature design.

Listen to the aforementioned radio segment at TheWorld.org:

http://www.theworld.org/2012/12/pigeon-hunting-catfish/

See the never-mentioned cool spikily catfish picture:

http://www.aqua-fish.net/imgs/articles2/bristlenose-catfish-4.png

Watch as catfish tries to beat the unmentionable Dennis Rodman's NBA rebound record:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/catchfish.asp

*Technically not paris, but the Tarn River in Southwestern France.  It made a better title Q:{)   (a frenchman with a berret.  Or a coonskin cap).

Monster of the Week Nov 28 2012: Tapioca Golem

 Lol I was inspired this week upon review of one of my favorite childhood TV shows to try something new.  It struck me that the Power Rangers had fought a brand new villainous monster every week since I was 5– and I was curious if a list had ever been compiled.  It turns out that a certain self-sacrificing, saintly geek has been laboring for years, like a limner monk in a monastery, to compile a complete Power Rangers bestiary.  The resulting tome can be found HERE.  It turns out that in 19 American seasons (ie not including the Japanese show, which dates back to 1975) the effects artists on the Power Rangers shows have designed and fabricated 1026 separate monsters. Mind. Blown.

I thought about all the monsters in my sketchbook that never see the light of day, and how some of the earliest ones I ever drew were inspired by the Power Rangers'   "Monster of the Week" formula.  So here's one from this week :)

This first monster, true to Saban camp form, is based on my culinary arch nemesis: Tapioca pudding.  I always had my suspicions about tapioca; though I am not a picky eater I could never manage to stomach more than a few spoonfuls.  Maybe it's the texture, maybe some long forgotten traumatic childhood experience, or perhaps it's the uncanny resemblance tapioca has to this guy from the aforementioned show.  However, tonight after scanning the drawing I looked up tapioca on Wikipedia out of curiosity and felt justified.  Did you know the Tapioca plant is a natural source of cyanide?   Lol it's perfectly safe for human consumption, but I bet my 8-year old-self would have taken that bit of trivia and run with it.