family game night

another case file for my permanent history of pictionary:

odd ends

a short distraction while i worked on my NFL tic-tac-toe game (still unfinished):


and a collaboration with my brother andrew at the kitchen counter:

pictionary

epic collaboration

part one by hays:


part two by matt!


part three by matt!


view the dead hays archive

happy holidays

yellowpad:

origin

stupid name comics #1, or:

(editor's note: wonder woman's origin involves being sculpted from clay by her mother.)

yellowpad:

redefined

thinking about updating the style of my self-portrait. getting a little bored with the rectangle face.

also: ben franklin.

friends in high places

rounding out the lunch crew:






my apologies if you consider these likenesses horribly offensive. i find them hilarious.

family portrait

B+ for following directions, A++ for innovation.

chivalrous

gonna be working on the actual invitations later this week or next.

upright.

upright matt, upright dragon, upright griffin.

safety.

today at lunch, laura and i doodled some layouts for the save-the-dates for our wedding next year:

NOW that's what i call doodling, volume 91

not many of my recent posts have been what i consider doodles, which is what i set out to make this blog about. i don't regret having more direction in what i draw lately, only that my mission statement has been outgrown.

here, then, is some true doodling. no pencils before pen, no planning or sequence, no sensible content. just drawing on a free notepad while i was supposed to be doing other things:

handsome devil

mrow.

there's an elusive element whenever i try to draw cats, whether it's freehand, from life or photo-referenced. these were all practice in case i ever want to use my cat, shell, in another comic. i think he'd be funny as an oblivious sidekick to me as a less-than-ideal crimefighter, as depicted underneath all the cats.

i also watched "the spirit" again last night. i'm probably the only person i know who thinks that frank miller made a good call choosing to make it so over the top - i thought it really worked.

warriors of virtue

the post it on top of this page represents my induction into the toughest gang of "sometime in the future," the warriors. apparently the official dress code for the warriors requires either shirtlessness or a skin-tight muscle shirt (for when it gets cold) beneath your red leather vest. also pictured are my role models among the gang, ajax and rembrandt. somehow i actually managed to DE-emphasize his afro with my charicature.

as i watched this movie for the first time the other night, i kept thinking it was a good candidate for a remake. that's not a thought i have often, but in this case i see an interesting setup with definable characters that happens to suffer from an execution riddled with cliches of its era and unfulfilling, out-of-date effects and fight scenes. i think i could really enjoy a better version.

two things i've been enjoying over the past week are the new venture bros. season 3 DVDs and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, for nintendo DS. i've been enjoying them so much, in fact, that i want to combine them. my epiphany: the perfect approach to a venture brothers video game would be a castlevania parody. enter a room, take out 2 monarch henchmen and a ghost pirate, rescue trianna, check the map and get a talisman from dr. orpheus. totally compatible.

i have a confession to make: i only doodled the venture bros. so i could indulge in my castlevania video game idea in this blog. i've entered self-conscious doodle territory.

free (notepad) association

a random sampling of some things i think about over the course of the day.

metroid mania

clearly during one of my nintendo DS spells. cameos by daxflame, dana snyder in a astronaut costume, an elf and an ogre. why? i just don't know anymore.

axe attack

this is from one our weekly friday meetings at work, where about a dozen of us get together to report on what we've spent the week doing. or in my case, to doodle while a bunch of backend programming talk goes way over my head.

the week i drew this, i was finishing up the lord of the rings trilogy (in book and film forms), so i was clearly preoccupied with fantasy imagery (and again, drawing myself).

this was also a study for using myself as a character in my acusor comic strips, although needlessly intricate, in retrospect.

i threw an elf woman in there so that if anybody noticed my doodles, it wouldn't be all shirtless men. i'm terrible at drawing females. there's an elusive balance between simple and feminine that i haven't figured out exactly how to translate yet. anyway, she ended up in the comic, too.

not sure why one of the matts came out bald.

self-portrait

i'd say somewhere around 75% of everything i draw is of myself. that either makes me self-centered or introspective, depending on how big a jerk you are.

i like to experiment with this style every once in a while. i consider it contour drawing even though i use a little shading. the idea is to just put pen to paper and draw continuously without planning. you end up with something more abstract, less conscious and often pretty interesting, like a kid's drawing.

it's also a great excuse for when you've screwed up the proportions.

the lettering works the same way: just keep scribbling the next letter without giving yourself a chance to make it neat or uniform. it can be helpful to learn how to just follow your instincts.