Warm up Bears

Warm up sketches of polar bears. The bears here range in age from a week to six months. Instead of my standard mechanical pencil, I decided to try a new technique: sketching with blue line pencil, and finishing with Tombow Mono100 pencils. Feels good, and produces a cleaner drawing. I don’t know if I want to start drawing comic pages this way, but I’ll stick with it for sketching.

Speaking of the comic, in case you missed the announcement the first time… I’m currently working on storyboarding The Last of the Polar Bears in its entirety. There will be a big relaunch for LOTPB early 2012, and regular weekly updates. Really exciting stuff planned. I intend to devote the whole next year to my bears! Thanks again to everyone for being so patient with me.

Honey Bear

Honey is a bear-butterfly-lion (a Bearflyon?). My favorite part is her heart-shaped nose. :)
Pencil + coloring in Photoshop CS3.

Percy the Vogue Ferret

 Here's a new ferret character I designed, done in my Peach Fuzz-style. It took a minute to return to the cute bubbly style of my Peach Fuzz series, but after some warm up sketching, it came back to me, and so fun to do! Cel style coloring is also a joy.

He's based on The Vogue Ferret's real life ferret, Percy, seen here napping in a hammock.

 A sable like Peach, she would probably like this charming fellow (look out, Edwin, there's competition)!

Here's the conceptual sketches for Percy's look and pose:

Mothra

Found a crazy looking moth outside. Kinda looks like a monster out of a fantasy RPG.

Here's another angle. Any moth experts able to ID him?

Prehistoric Surprise

While prepping my Boy with Gator illustration series for publication in a book, I found a hidden layer with surprise dinos!

(Original version can be seen here.)

Track Meet

New pic! Puppy love on the track

Down in Fraggle Rock

The Fraggle Rock: Tails and Tales graphic novel is now in bookstores! The anthology includes a comic and back cover illustration drawn and colored by me. Hardcover, 128 full color pages. For readers of all ages. Photos below courtesy of my cousin, Chandra Free, whose own Fraggle Rock comic appears right beside mine in the book! :)

Weird Paw Prints

 Nanook discovers paw prints in the snow not belonging to him or his sister.

An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 31. See the full page here.

Snow Slide

Stella turns the arctic landscape into her playground. Wheee!

An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 30. See the full page here.

Foxes in Motion

Studies of Arctic foxes and red foxes. It’s a lot easier to find video reference of red foxes than it is arctic foxes, probably because they’re more abundant and much likelier to occur in areas inhabited by people, so most of these sketches are of the red variety.

While there are numerous differences between the red fox and the arctic fox, they serve as a decent substitute for studying fox motion. Plus, having much less fur, it’s easier to make out the body structure on red foxes. Arctic foxes look like white puffballs in their winter coats.

More studies of red foxes and arctic foxes. The first page looks at motion and posture, while the second page focuses on muzzles.