tylersdrawings.com Blog of infrequent updates, videogames, and sci-fi novels...

Ms. Fortune smiles upon you

2011-10-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

Over the past year I've been following the production progress of an indie 2D fighting game by the name of Skullgirls. It looks to be awfully good, quite rad, in fact, and relevant to my interests for certain. Yesterday someone on a fighting game forum requested a smiley head of one of the characters in said game for use on a forum. I obliged. I made two. Here:

There ya go. Please note that this not my character, nor am I responsible for the posing. Just a retune and redo for usage as small forum sized smileys. Ms. Fortune and Skullgirls are copyright Reverge Labs, LLC.

Set for release 2012. Yay!

What happened?

2011-07-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

Okay. So I burned out. Really bad. This past year was tough. I had been slowly losing motivation for about a year or two prior, then a moving related snafu and a bad apartment experience pushed me right off the rails. I stopped drawing for about 4 months. Now, I'm feeling a little better and am trying to get the mojo back again. Will do so in slow manageable steps. Fortunately this may actually translate into more frequent updates as I've decided on a change of pace away from the comic book for now.

I've started writing short stories. For those, I've made a brand new blog. It will feature bi monthly (that's the plan) story + one supplementary drawing for each. It's called Bitter Notes. here:

New Blog

and here's a rough sketchy for the new title banner of the new blog.

This old blog will be repurposed as a portfolio archive in the future. My Tyler's Drawings website will act as a hub for the two blogs and will no longer be used as a portfolio site.

snag

2011-07-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

update. I'm sorry. Hit a snag. Things happened. Took a break. Nasty writer's block. Depression. I'm trying. here is some music:

Mclarty Party People

:(

Wooooo! (Super Meat Boy content)

2011-01-24T18:40:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to beat this glorious SOB of a game last night. I'm totally counting this amongst my lifes greatest achievements. For realsies.

Also, you need to buy Super Meat Boy. You also need to buy the soundtrack on account of it being filled with wall to wall bangers. Bangers I say.

You buy this now. Go.

http://supermeatboy.com/
http://www.meatboymusic.com/

Listen. At first it's all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dta4f6Nj2KM

And then THIS happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hjyuQFhAsI

Project Rophelcopter pages 1-18

2011-01-05T03:02:00.000-08:00

As promised.

images are very much work-in-progress subject to change. some background detail for a few pages is missing right now as well. Click on each image to see a larger version.

edit--- changed some stuff.

At least I'm not as bad as George R. R. Martin

2010-12-06T01:37:00.000-08:00

Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Dance With Dragons, is estimated to release December 2012. That's a potential seven years in the works.

My book is only going to take three years and change. So yeah. Take that, Martin. Tsk.

A big 18 page preview of Project: Rophelcopter will be up next week [edit: minor delay on that, maybe I *am* as bad as Martin]. The whole book will be finished early 2011, probably. Available for purchase: ???. Depends on publishing. Will shop it around to agents/publishers when it's finished. If no dice, will self publish.

--------------------------

Onwards with my sci-fi novel reading binge, I started this one yesterday

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, 1992

30 pages in so far. Early impression: Whoa. Holy crap. Seriously.

Now Playing - Super Meat Boy

2010-10-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Crazy game. Similar to N+ but, like, more, and better, and funnier too. Also excruciatingly difficult in parts. Game of the Year so far, easily. Check out this soundtrack:

World 2

World 1 (dark)

-Also playing Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian, please patch your game. It is teh brokenz. :(

Reality Dysfunction

2010-07-05T11:45:00.001-07:00

I just recently finished reading this one. It is part 1 of a trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Large scale sci fi space opera w/some fantasy type elements to it. It's a good story approaching great in certain spots. I say good because, without giving away any spoilers here, Hamilton utilizes real world tie-ins in the story that I'm not particularly thrilled about. That's mostly because I think usage of real world historical figures in sci fi is kinda lazy, especially when your story takes place very far into the future (2600 CE). It is a little irksome that almost all of Hamilton's real world tie-ins are from ~1900 give or take 100 years. :/

Mini book review completed, on to the real reason for this post: Organic telepathic spaceships and why they make me giggle/smile in parts of the story where that is not at all an appropriate response to the goings on. In the story, there is a type of new technology called Bitek. Bitek is sort of genetically engineered life forms that function in place of standard metal and wires technology. So: a living, thinking, telepathic space station, for example. Or a spaceship. The funny part of all this is that these Bitek creations all have very cute personalities. So cute that I cannot help put picture them with smiley faces, flying around shouting, "Yay! :D" and making verbal "vroooo0mm! whoosh! pew pew pew!" noises when they are fighting other spaceships. It's hard to take the super grim life and death battles seriously when all I can picture is a bunch of these guys zipping around in the scene. Like this (sorta close to as described, flattish asymmetrical with a "crew toroid" for people to ride in):

Or better yet, ramp the cuteness up even further with my interpretation like this:

pew pew pew ratta tatta zoooooooommm! xD

------------- Next week:
Post E3 rundown: Specifically two-ish upcoming vidya games that I am all gosh darn golly gee omg yes excited about playing.

Whale

2010-04-07T23:39:00.001-07:00

Scanning... scanning... scanning

Would you believe this sort of pencil work is about 3x faster to do than inking? Next book: no ink. Takes too damn long to do. Pencil straight to colours is the way to go.

Makoto in SSFIV, yes?

2010-01-07T18:19:00.001-08:00

SSFIV - which is to say, Super Street Fighter IV. Makoto is a character from SF3: Third Strike. She is rumoured to be included in the roster of the upcoming SSFIV. If that is the case, i will be most pleased. Few months away from release and Capcom still hasn't announced the full roster, very irritating.

Snippet

2009-12-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

Here the elusive update gingerly pokes its head out from the bushes. Cautious, tentative, yet eager to leap full force into the daylight when the time is right. And the time is right! Right now!

Here's a partial piece of what my inked pages look like right before I scan them in for colouring. This is the bottom half of page 23 of 'Project: Roffelcopter' aka 'B-Universe' aka Untitled Long Term Comic Book Project. Another flashback scene like the green coloured ones I posted some time ago.

Intro colour test revised

2009-09-10T10:09:00.001-07:00

Works better like this.

Inking and colouring of all pages is underway. Storyboarding complete as of July, 09.
total pages in storyboards: 103
total pages estimated for final version after editing: ~75

Happy 60th Birthday Mom!

2009-07-02T22:11:00.001-07:00

Something involving music was the request here.

Happy birthday mom. :)

Cross generational schoolgirl action

2009-04-14T02:03:00.001-07:00

Quick contribution to a DrawingBoard.org thread.

You know, I'm really starting to dislike that intro to my book posted below. It needs more tweaking. There's no sense of speed and the lead up to the helipcopter crash on page three doesn't work. The rest of the book is coming together really smoothly, just this intro that doesn't want to cooperate for some reason.

Intro sequence colour test

2009-03-18T07:13:00.001-07:00

Howard goes out with a bang. Or a "KA-BOOM" as the case may be. :p

This is pages 1-4 of the book. Same as the other colour tests, i'm leaving out most of the dialogue for now.

What I might do moving forward here is to release the story in chapters on my website as I finish them, rather than wait until the whole thing goes to print. Say, 4 chapters, 20-25 pages each, something like that.

Make sure to click on the images to see the full size versions.

Colour test pages

2009-02-17T01:27:00.001-08:00

Plugging right along. These two pages are part of a flashback sequence that occurs about a third of the way through the story. The fellow in the glasses is my protagonist. His name is Howard H. Reynolds.

I'm working on the intro sequence right now. It was initially a 10 page car chase, then it was a 6 page car chase, and, as of RIGHT NOW, it is a totally redrawn four page car chase. I had to hack that thing to pieces and rebuild from scratch to get it to work. It works much better as a short flash of gun toting craziness, rather than the extended action movie thing I had going before. Fun times. Just fiddling with the colour on that part now.

Something

2008-09-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

There ya go. This weeks Illustration Friday topic is "Island" so here's something island related to break the 8 month dry spell.

43 pages and counting....

Wizard of Oz... in space

2008-02-10T02:11:00.000-08:00

So the story behind this is I drew this up as a contribution to an Oz tribute thread over at the drawing board forum, but then promptly got distracted with starting a new comic project and never got around to finishing it. It'll get done properly eventually, until then here's the inks where I left off.

The aforementioned new comic project, -tentatively entitled "god", or maybe "destroyer of worlds" or something like that- is coming along nicely, thumbnailing is around 80% complete.

Tintin fan art

2007-12-24T00:30:00.000-08:00

Older brother asked for a Tintin styled t-shirt for Christmas and I obliged.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Womens Tennis is Awesome

2007-11-24T16:18:00.000-08:00

New artwork on the blog, 6 full pages of it, it's exciting times indeed. I hereby present, "Womens Tennis is Awesome".... because it is.

Shaky Handed Artist's Guide to Inking

2007-09-14T04:22:00.001-07:00

Did an inking tutorial on request. 'Bout time I updated with some artwork eh? The complete tutorial can be viewed here:

Shaky Handed Artist's Guide to Inking

Note- the image is likely larger than your screensize, meaning your web browser may automatically make it smaller to fit the entire thing on your screen. If so, click directly on the image and you will be given the option to view it as full size. Internet Explorer shows a little box you have to click on, Firefox/Mozilla will zoom in on it automatically when you click directly on it.

And #3...

2007-05-25T05:17:00.001-07:00

yeah.

Terrible blogger compression on this one. Click here for a nice non blurry fullsized version:

http://members.shaw.ca/tylerzd/images/BirdmanPlan.jpg

Project make portfolio better part 1 and 2

2007-05-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

Cartoon version of the whole CSI gang.

and another thing now up.

Robo t-shirt contest entry

2007-03-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

For publicity and money I'm entering a t-shirt design contest at Mojizu. There's another corresponding image that goes along with this that's not quite done yet. This is the t-shirt design here. They limited me to 4 colours, no gradients... tricky stuff.

EDIT- second image now up.

Nostranoculars

2007-03-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

For a small fee Nostranoculars will let you peer deep into his crystal binoculars, through which he will see into your past, present and future. For an additional fee he will give you hints about what he may or may not have seen. 5 dollars plus tax per hint . No refunds.

Bunny Matadoress

2007-03-22T04:47:00.000-07:00

Another Moji. Part 2 of the pretty girls and cute animals series. haha.

Mr. Ele Says Hello

2007-03-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Yet another Mojizu contribution. Come to think of it this is the first drawing of a human with semi regular proportions I've done in quite a while.

Mr. Ele's super power is "accidentally" bounding into rooms at just the right moment. haha.

Last of the Moji's for a little while

2007-02-21T10:32:00.000-08:00

Ok that's enough moji's for now. The minimal or no background rule is getting tiresome.

Moji's

2007-02-16T22:21:00.000-08:00

Just a couple entries for Mojizu (www.mojizu.com). A couple more to come tomorrow.

Monster thingy

2007-02-03T00:25:00.000-08:00

This is illustrator doodling run rampant. I did it sort of in between working on the chibi girl poster posted below.

It's a monster guy attacking some kind of village thing and there's a bunch of little people shooting spears and arrows at him and stuff. Err... yeah.

Chibi schoolgirls are serious business

2007-02-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

This one came out rather large. 19" x 25" is the final size. Big poster like. I posted a detail to give a better idea of the actual size of it. Be sure to click on the images above to see the larger, non blurry versions.

Stay tuned for a bunch more things similar to this, we'll make it a series of sorts. Yay!

Self Portrait

2007-01-27T19:09:00.000-08:00

Yes self portrait. I assure you the resemblance is uncanny.

T shirts continue

2007-01-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

Octopuss dealio

Ooh! Blogger compression makes this one look bad. Just click on the link above to see the image. T-shirts will be on sale probably first week of February if not a little earlier.

I've started work on a large poster size thing involving school girls and ninjas. Stayed tuned for that. :D

And we're back

2007-01-12T03:55:00.000-08:00

A little one to ease myself back into the groove after my 2 week layoff. It's a snail/robot/cyborg/moji sort of... thing. I don't know. Don't ask me these questions!

Last one before Christmas

2006-12-21T04:05:00.000-08:00

Yes I'm aware the subject matter of these is becoming increasingly weird. Wait till you see the next one! Ha!

Edit- different colour treatment. I bumped up the dreamyness an extra few notches. This one fought me every step of the way during the colouring process. I'm still not entirely happy with it.

Plugging right along...

2006-12-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Boy these are fun to do.

Surfing #3 Seahorse thing

2006-12-08T16:25:00.000-08:00

3 updates in under a week. That's gotta be some kind of record here. This is the closest I get to doing logos.

Surfing t-shirt numero 2

2006-12-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

Yup.

Surfing related t shirt illo #1

2006-12-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

The first of a ton of these sorts of deals to come. They'll eventually be printed on clothing and on sale as I mentioned in the last post.

Oh one more thing, I hereby solemnly swear to update this here blog at least once a week from now on, lest my stomach become bloated and my head be plucked of all but three hairs. None of this one post per month business I promise. :)

Merry Month Before Christmas!

2006-11-27T02:21:00.000-08:00

In other news I'm working on some surfing related t-shirt designs right now. Waves and warm weather and sand and warm and damnation it's freezing here right now I don't wanna participate in Canadian winters anymore! Bwah!

Righto! Surfing shirts it is. :) I'm going to be selling them through www.cafepress.com. Warm weather inspired t-shirts to be had by all. Maybe some warm weather related underwear as well. Ho ho!

The Reptilian Conspiracy Progress

2006-11-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

My new project is coming along nicely. Apologies if the text is hard to read even on the larger images. Blogger decreases the quality of the images automatically for some reason and the text gets blurry. I'll have nice high res and perfectly legible images up on my website within the week (including pages 1-3). Anyways, here are pages 4-8.

Also much thanks to those who purchased a copy of Oscar n' Floyd!

Oscar n' Floyd is now on sale

2006-10-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

After all this time it's finally done, published, and on sale. Also included is a 5 page preview of my new comic in progress, "Reptilians" OR "The Reptilian Conspiracy" or something along those lines. All lovingly presented in a full colour, large format comic available now from Lulu Press. Check it out!

http://www.lulu.com/content/452066

It's done! ...ish

2006-09-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Done! The complete story and cover is all finished. Yay! There is now an end in sight to my neverending project. Not quite ready for print yet though, thus the "ish". The story is 22 pages total, and I was thinking that's still kinda small to be publishing in book form. So to pad out the page count and, err... to add "bonus material" and content rather, I've decided to put in a 4 page preview of my new comic.

The new comic is currently under the working title, "Reptilians". I'll describe it as a cute, funny, ultraviolent space adventure. Emphasis on the cute and ultraviolent. :) More information on that later.

Another month rolls by with no updates....

2006-08-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

I've had my hands full with commissions and editorial stuff the last few weeks. On top of that Oscar n' Floyd is just about finished and I'm started work on a brand new comic as well. Busy times. I'll post up some of the character designs for the new comic shortly. Stay tuned.

Black Bolt

2006-07-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

More drawing jam related stuff. A super hero by the name of black bolt. His powers have something to do with the tuning fork on his head and he apparently causes explosions by yelling or something. Hurray for superheros!

Alizee in cartoon form

2006-07-06T02:20:00.000-07:00

God bless the french for providing the world with Alizee. :D

"Sticky" Illustration Friday

2006-07-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

Man meets really big spider web. Fun ensues.

Comments are always welcome and appreciated.

www.tylerdrawings.com

Oscar n' Floyd update

2006-07-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

The pencils for my never ending project are within mere days of being complete. It's exciting times indeed.

Oscar n' Floyd will be published and on sale mid to late August. Stay tuned for updates. You can see the ongoing progress on my website in the comics section.

Dance (Illustration Friday)

2006-06-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

After a looong hiatus, I've got back to doing illustration fridays. Nothing says "dance" quite like the big bundle of unpleasant nervousness that is the elementary school dance.

www.tylersdrawings.com

Happy Father's Day

2006-06-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

Aeroplanerevisionage

2006-05-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Added more "pop".

Aeroplanage

2006-05-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

One of my older brothers is a flight instructor. Did this one for his website in progress.

Kung fu ninja burqa wearing arabic styled girly

2006-05-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

Another one for a drawing jam type thing over at www.drawingboard.org

Stuff...

2006-04-28T00:21:00.000-07:00

Last couple days worth of sketches. My nephew's recent magic show at his school was inspiration for the wee little magician fellow.

Oldie but a goodie

2006-04-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

This is Nigel. He used to greet the visitors to my website back when I first started it up. I eventually removed him as he is rendered in a style that isn't really consistent with what my website is about. He indicative of the fine arts trained side of me that the internet doesn't see very often. The story behind this one is during my second year of art school I was getting frustrated that I wasn't being challenged enough. So I drew this. Partially because I was bored and partially because I wanted to see if I could do it (draw semi photo realistically that is).

Sketches... lots of them

2006-04-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm giving my website an overhaul this month and along the way I'll be completely eliminating to the sketches section of it. Reason being, I do so many sketches that the ones on the website become outdated within weeks. The blog will be the new home all of things skethy from here on out.

To start off, here's one I just did for the Drawing Jam over at the Drawing Board.

I'm not dead... yet

2006-04-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the rediculous drop in updates around here. This semester was crazy with the workload. Oscar N' Floyd is getting near completion. Four or five pages left and it'll be finished. I'll have the first 13 pages up on my website sometime next week.

One of these days I'll get going with the illo fridays again. Maybe this summer. :)

The Fantastic Adventures Of Oscar and Floyd... or something

2006-02-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

This thing is the reason for my lack of updates recently. Oscar is the rounder one and Floyd is the skinnier. This is page number one of a book that should turn out to be around 15 or so pages in length.

And yes, I'm going to give it a better title eventually. heh.
www.tylersdrawings.com

Lack of updates...

2006-01-07T01:53:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody, sorry about the lack of Illustration Friday entries. I'm much too busy lately. Might just have to change the title of this blog to "Tyler's recent drawings that may or may not be related to illustration friday". heh.

It ain't Christmas without Santa

2005-12-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

I guess I did two cards this year. Just couldn't let a card go out without Santa on it. :)

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. My mother enlisted my services this week to make a Christmas card to her specifications. No time for the Illustration Friday I'm afraid. I'll be back next week.

"Blue"

2005-12-06T01:24:00.000-08:00

I was originally planning something depressing, like blue as in depressed state of mind or some such. Then I thought, water is more fun so i did water... and sharks. :)

"Small"

2005-11-30T22:32:00.000-08:00

I *may* have drifted a little far afield from the theme this week. I suppose the mouse is little in relation to everything else, so there's the smallness. This week was more about making some slight modifications to my style than anything else.

Also thanks for all the comments you guys have been leaving for the last few weeks. They're much appreciated. :)

"Free"

2005-11-22T17:58:00.000-08:00

What if Captain Haddock from Tintin got married and retired? I figured he wouldn't enjoy it much...
www.tylersdrawings.com

"Strength"

2005-11-17T00:54:00.000-08:00

Had quite a lot of fun doing this one. It's a bit of a tribute to all the fighting games i've played over the years.
Head on over to my website if the mood strikes you.

"Night"

2005-11-09T22:50:00.000-08:00

Ahh the incompetent cat burglar, always a treasure trove of comedic possibilities.
And here's the usual website plug: *ahem* http://www.tylersdrawings.com

"Broken"

2005-11-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

Hello there! Thanks for stopping by. If you would like to see more of my work, please visit my website: http://www.tylersdrawings.com