Dangit, Robert, Stop Scaring Small Children With Your Face. Seriously. Put That Away.

You're a Superstar

I was reading up on stellar nucleosynthesis today... turns out, any chemical elements other than hydrogen, helium, and lithium are created by the immense heat and pressure in the heart of a sun. Elements heavier than nickle are only created by type-II supernovae. Which means that trace quantities of your body were made in the death of a massive star. A heavenly body that was 8 to 50 times the mass of our sun, and one to ten billion years old. You have some of that inside you. I like to think that's a pretty big deal.

For Jasper, my OC, I chose a specific breed: Irish Sport Horse, aka Irish Hunter. I'd consider that the equivalent of picking a race.

This was very closely related to his personality and character concept, not to mention his physical build and appearance (though, I didn't realize until later that I'd made him Irish and gave him a green coat).

His swooshy forelock was inspired by Superman's iconic curl of hair. I wanted give him a sort of hunky-dreamy sort of look. The ponytail and black ribbon bow was inspired by 18th-century hairstyles (Think Will Turner or Lieutennant Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean).

I actually did draw Jasper as a human at one point... I really should dig that pic up, I liked how it came out.

Hey guys

I’m just wondering, do you people with like pony characters make up the specific way your character would look if it was a human- like hair styles, race, etc.

I mean like

do you decide on the race your characters

do you decide on the body type

i mean whut.

Quick observation: publishers like Marvel/DC put out a 32 page comic every month... those books have like twenty people working on them: pencillers, inkers, colourists, typesetters, cleanup artists, etc... 

re: artists working themselves to death and why the HECK is this the standard

the entire thing about the death of an animator in japan due to overwork is exactly why i am completing chapter 1 of 1989nk in months, not weeks.

this has been one of my biggest fears getting this project off the ground. the standard for work output by artists is set so fucking high nowadays. we’re ALL expected to perform at the level of the outlier. (This was apparent to me as early as in Art School, when we were all treated like we were absolutely fucking useless for not being able to do an entire 5 minute 3D animated film all by ourselves like that one guy in our program.) Artists who overwork themselves and overachieve (whether by perceived necessity or choice) unfortunately create an illusion to consumers and employers that their level of performance should be the standard. It creates a nasty cycle, because more artists start trying to adhere to that standard and it gets passed on and on and on.

i’m honestly fully expecting my deadline for chapter one to be too long of a wait for some people. “This other artist got their 30-40 page comic done in 6-8 weeks, why is yours going to take 6-8 months?”

listen, its because i don’t want to not be able to draw for the rest of my life at 30. I dont want to destroy my wrist and make myself ill and make the quality of the comic suffer because i have to live up to the vicious overwork cycle that’s completely blanketed the digital art/media/comics scene. If another artist takes only a few weeks to do their comic? Fine, but you know, theyre most likely suffering BADLY for it, and even THEY shouldn’t have to do that. They really, really shouldn’t. Overwork and over achievement frankly needs to stop being praised and heralded, because its not only extremely damaging to the artist themselves, but it also creates that cycle i mentioned.

Trying to keep up with the immense production quantity and speed that other artists seem to be doing has never, ever been possible for me and I’ve occasionally tried, only to seriously break myself. Even the amount of work I do is considered a lot by some, so then how is it that to me, it always feels like chicken scratch? It feels like i’m STILL not doing enough, ever. Even with the amount of work I do, I still feel like a lazy sack of shit and feel crippling guilt when I’m taking a break to do anything else but draw. I constantly feel like I’m losing the race. That isn’t right. That isn’t fair.

i just really, really hope that people don’t see my production time for 1989nk and go “that’s too long, artists don’t take THAT long to do work” because. well. honestly, they should.

An Icosahedron. A while back, I figured out a nifty trick for drawing them at any angle whatsoever, and even in perspective.

Hatched it for penmanship practice. Nice little refresher exercise. 

Concept sketch for a piece of cover art... Evangelion Unit-01 suplexing a cyborg dinosaur into a volcano full of beer.

Long story. Don't ask.

Hey, look. I drew some keywork 'cuz I was bored. Then I inked it, really really badly.

True story.

I might do more of these, they're good practice. Straight lines aren't exactly my strong point.

On paper, this is 12 cm across... just under five inches. I really should be able to manage one about half as big, we'll see how that turns out.

Quick little study of my hand, 5-10 mins. Hands seem to put most artists on guard, but I love drawing 'em. Well, maybe more of a love-hate thing. I wasted half my time in high-school drawing my left hand.

Sweet Celestia in a bucket... when I sketch, I just fling lead everywhere, don't I? Tho, some of that is actually hair on my knuckles. I'm kinda scruffy.

Does that mean this counts as furry art? Guh.

Little sketch of another character. I spent a few hours working on military and law-enforcement gear for this setting I'm developing.

Not sure what this guy's name is... I'm calling him Galen for now, but it doesn't sit right with me.

I’m betting they all list each other as dependants. X3

How does Multiple Man file his income taxes? Does the IRS consider all his multiples as different taxpayers or do they all have collaborate and pitch in on one return file?

A bunch of quick and loose drawings. I do these as warmups whenever I'm having a hard time getting started and when I need to play around with poses for comics. No refs, just a heap of sticks and spheres.

I can't remember how long it took to do them... maybe three minutes per figure, though I usually go back and spend a few minutes cleaning up the ones that I like.