Jammin' in July...or a summer with SCOOBY!

Hello again. Yes, I'm still here! I've been jammed up after the July 4th holiday here with Scooby-Doo work for overseas. Plus I got back my approvals for the Power Rangers project I was working on and I have to make a few changes due to the fact that I drew the wrong bad guy who attacks the Red Ranger in the story. Go Figure, but these things happen when you have to crank some stuff out in a hurry.

I do have a lot of stuff to post but I will when I get a chance to! I will post stuff this week in a day or two for you all to see...Check back!

HAL & AL'S OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER FOR JULY 2008!

Here's the new edition of Hal & Al's Official Newsletter! I just laid it out this afternoon for Scott Innes to look at before we send it out as a group emailing to all our sponsors and media down south, and I have to say that we got a LOT going on! It's a busy month for Hal & Al! You can click on the image to get the big readable version!

GO, GO, POWER RANGERS! More sketch art...

Here's some more Power Ranger sketches for the main three Rangers that I'm mostly drawing. The Red, Yellow and Blue Rangers are the main Rangers for the Jungle Fury show and they're pretty cool in their design so I'm glad I have a chance to work on this material than the previous incarnations of the Power Rangers where I though the costumes were less than interesting. These sketches, as the other PR art I've posted here thus far, are what I submit and wait for approvals from Disney before I do the final art. These poses will be in the Jungle Fury style guide when finished and also the poses will be used in the second storybook I'm doing as well, so I'm doing as many poses as I can to keep the look fresh without reusing art over and over and it's nice having enough cool action poses and static poses of them just standing heroically to do more with for a layout.

As an aside, that's one of the things I hated about the Bratz work I did in 2004 was that the poses and character art were so limited in the beginning that they were reusing and flipping the art to get the maximum use out of every piece of art and it got really boring seeing the same exact art used all the time. Luckily they got new art for the Bratz during the second year of licensing but the first year was brutal. I wonder what the Bratz fans thought though...

ED, EDD N EDDY are back again!

Here are three more sketches of the boys I did. All on cheap copy paper and inked with a Pitt Brush Marker. I'll add some colored Eds stuff this coming week.

Yikes! What a busy week of work it is! Plus, I'm working this weekend. I'll be done the Power Rangers layouts today and then I got to do the layout for DCM's editorial, and still have to color my Alfie cartoon for it. I'm the busiest now that I've been in a while. Next week, I start the Scooby gig for overseas and get to the design of a logo for an appliance/home center. I got offered two new jobs yesterday that I had to turn down simply because I'm too jammed up.

Even More ED, EDD N EDDY!

I'm sitting here waiting for some files to download from an FTP so I thought I'd post some more Eds' art while I wait. Here are some portrait style Ed, Edd n Eddy sketches I drew. Enjoy! I'll throw up some color Eds stuff soon...

More ED, EDD N EDDY! The boys are back!

Here's more Ed, Edd n Eddy for ya! The boys were all drawn on cheap copy paper and inked with a Pitt Brush Marker. The inking style for the Eds might look like a sloppy, fast, loose style that is easy to create, when in fact, it is harder to do than one might think. It took me quite a few tries to get it down and these sketches are kinda how I warm up before I ink something officially for it. I have pencils sketches I have predrawn and before I ink, say a comic book story with the Eds, I ink four or five of these prelim sketches to get my hand, and more importantly, my head into the Eds' style. From that I can then burn right through the job. As always, you can click on them to get a bigger view! Enjoy!

THE BATMAN!

Here's four Batman sketches based on the current cartoon series, The Batman, and I did these just for fun. I followed the old Wally Wood art theory of "When in doubt, black it out" so I kept him draped in his cape so I wouldn't have to draw his body. It's a quick cheat though there is still the matter of getting his face and broad shoulders on model. I'll do some more DC heroes in full poses soon. This first one I inked fast and like the Smurfette one I posted on Wednesday, I dropped some quick color on it in Photoshop to make it pop a bit. The second was drawn with a number two pencil and the last two were drawn with a charcoal pencil and ink. Enjoy!

It's a SMURFY day! - in Full Color!

Here's a 25-minute warm up sketch of Smurfette that I drew this morning and I was going to post it just as a black and white piece, but I decided after lunch to color it in Photoshop and drop some flat color on it real quick just to make it pop. Luckily I was able to tweak the scan so that the sketch lines underneath the inks didn't show. Enjoy!

New Neely News...or a busy week of creating art!

In other news here, it's a busy, busy week! I got a lot going on which I have to get cracking on:

1) The second Power Rangers Jungle Fury storybook, which I've got 4 spreads left to draw and layout, to be finished up so that it can go out for approvals and then I can start doing the final art and the coloring part.

2) A Scooby-Doo project for Sweden! I'll write more about this soon!

3) A photo print for buddy voice actor Scott Innes and all the animated characters he voices. I have to take Scott's photo and draw all the characters he's done and place them all around him. I've drawn 20 of the main characters that are the most popular that Scott has voiced. Now I have to scan them and lay them out in some way to make it work as a design. Then when approved as a rough, I'll do the final character art.

4) A radio station mascot character, which I created and I'll share soon, cover sketch for a promotional coloring book.

5) A logo/letterhead/envelope graphic design for an appliance/home center in Delaware, which I have to go see on Wednesday to take some photos which may be incorporated into the final design.

6) A new Alfie comic strip and the layout of editorial for the new issue of DCM which is going to press on Sunday at 5pm!

Yikes! That's a lot! But always better to have more than a little! Back to the drawing board!

Jimmy Neutron!

Here's a sketch of Jimmy Neutron I did a ways back for a sample to pitch in terms of maybe getting work drawing Jimmy. Sketched in purple colored pencil on art pad paper.

BLUE'S CLUES!

Here's some pieces from my original Blue's Clues audition for Nick I did years ago. These were done after the first guy who starred with Blue left the show and they had his replacement come on to take over. I think his name was Joe, but I can't remember now. The show did take a hit ratings wise with the new guy since everyone loved the original more. At any rate these sketches were pencilled out in purple colored pencil on cheap art pad paper and then approved by Nick after one round of changes I had to do for them. They then get scanned into the computer and started in Adobe Illustrator where everything is built and then it gets pasted into Adobe Photoshop where the individual textures are then dropped into the characters.

It's hard work but if you know the software it can be done rather quickly. I built up great speed working in Adobe Illustrator when I was deep into work for Strawberry Shortcake. The main reason that a lot of work has gone digital is that you lose the individual characteristics of an artist when he inks or creates a piece by hand. Corporations who have brands like Disney, Nick, and the WB need all the art to look like one person did it, when in reality 30 artists may have worked on it. The computer end of it all keeps the consistency which is very important in maintaining the style of a licensed property.

Working on the Blue's Clues stuff, I still have my "How To" book, which teaches the artist how to label their layers and generally how to create the characters in the computer. It makes it easier to change things when every artist labels his files and has all his layers set up like everyone else.

I got my eye on you...

Here's an eyeball for fun where I created the black spikey part of the Iris in Adobe Illustrator and then pasted the paths into Adobe Photoshop and did the rest with gradients.

American Dental Association art job ...Remember to floss!

In honor of myself finally going back to the dentist after a long stretch without going, I'm posting some art I did mid-last year for the American Dental Association, which was used for a brochure or two about proper brushing and flossing of your teeth. These were drawn in pencil, then scanned, and then painted in Photoshop over the pencil art. Came out looking really good. It was a quick, fast money gig I get from Odyssey Design Group whom I do work for on the side when they need it. Fun to do and different from the normal stuff. I'll draw anything. It was a paint by number though once I settled on the color palette. I'd did all the toothbrushes first, then the lips, then the teeth, and so on till they were all done and then added some highlights to the lips and tongues. These were done big and they would get reduced down to about 2" or smaller. I did them big since I figured that they may use them for other stuff so I wanted the quality to be there in case they needed them bigger.

I bet some of you are surprised to see this kind of art come from me, some know I do all kinds of stuff, so you haven't seen anything yet...keep checking in! And for those who care, I didn't have any cavities...just a little tartar build up from the years of not going. I will be going every six months from now on just to stay on track with their care! Booyah!

RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY!

Here are some Raggedy Ann and Andy sketches! I drew them for my mother as a gift for Mother's Day. She's a big collector of Raggedy Ann and Andy and has easily over a thousand dolls in her collection from some of the smallest ones ever made to the biggest. Not counting the storybooks and other merchandise they have made over the years that she has as well. These are timeless characters created by Johnny Gruelle, which are still popular today! They get new fans every year and every little girls remembers when she received her first doll. There's a big girls market out there for artists to tap as well.