Sun Domingo 1

So I bought a moleskine sketchbook based on some very good things I heard from the BLOGOSPHERE, and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it. This week, instead of taking post-its to work I decided to bring this sketchbook, which is officially known here, around the Ides of Merch offices as "Sun Domingo"

There is some questionable quality here, but simply because I am posting EVERYTHING that is not monster related (as that is for later)
There's a drawing on page 18 in particular that I'm not very fond of.
Lots of people at my drawing post wear glasses or have mustaches I've noticed. I mean, when I design a character I usually do at least one pass of them with glasses, because I think they're neat, but that's just coincidence.
I think the bottom left drawing on 24 might be my favorite of the bunch. That guy just had a permanent pissed-off look on his face. It was fantastic!
Old Hispanic guys are one of my favorite kinds of people to draw. Their faces have so much personality.
I thought one of the Hispanic fellows looked like Burt Reynolds, so that's why "Fume y el bandito" is written there. I don't think "Fume" is spanish for Smokey. I think Fumcito or Fumito would be. I just checked Babelfish and it's telling me that it's "Ahumado"
Totopos, if you're wondering, is related to MONSTERS

Lord Furgeson Petticoat is also from MONSTERS
nWo Spider Man is a blog post that I'll be making in the next couple of days, based around a story about compromise in High School.
And that's it! These were all done in the last 7 days. I got this sketchbook 6 days and 12 hours ago as of this writing and I'm almost halfway through it. I haven't worked in a sketchbook for almost a year and I just find myself tearing through it like it was nothing. It's a good feeling!

Yellow Adhesive Pad Post

Another week, another batch of post-it notes. I learned an important lesson this week: if there's a chance of your pocket getting wet - don't put paper with ink in it! I decided to cram all my post its into my wallet and it seemed to work alright, even if it sort of wore the sticky stuff out.

Also I learned not to do a drawing in pencil. I actually liked the picture of the heavy set fellow on the bottom until the pencil got smudged to hell.
I get a lot of profiles in the commissary because of the way it's set up. Also I think that one fellow I drew (the one in the bottom left corner) sort of looks like a character from DRAGON'S LAIR.
An interesting thing about this set is that the man in the top right literally started as a drawing of someone else. A woman I think, but I realized that my break was almost up so it was pretty much a dead drawing at that point. I put the post-its into my pocket and went home. THEN the next day, someone completely different was sitting across from me, in the same position, the same distance away, and I realized that with a few lines here and there I could save the drawing, turning it into someone else completely. I am aware that the woman on the bottom right's hand is too small. I need someone to keep yelling at me to make my hands bigger.
The top left was the reason I started putting my post-its in my wallet, as opposed to my pocket. I am really enjoying this marker that I've been drawing with. First and foremost, it's done a good seventy post-its. I draw really fast, so it can take wear and tear like most markers can't. I don't know if it's a specific brand or just the type of pen. Also I like how sometimes caricatures that are WAY off tend to be able to be fashioned into characters. People moving around forces you to use your imagination to finish off a picture sometimes, which is a great skill to have. I'm just learning how to implement it now, sadly.
What looks like a cartoon face is actually what my plate looked like by chance. Also trying to draw hands without people modeling for you is a real pain. The lady in the middle bottom switched her hand around mid drawing and I ended up drawing a hand signal no one ever does. Oh well!



You're never as good as you want to be, and if you are, then you've set your sights too low.

Ian M.

Post-It Party!

Here are some post-its I drew at my day job. The hope is to eventually start animating more regularly again, but I'm tight on cash and nothing ever seems to come up in Chicago. Sometimes I wish I'd have kept at CG, but then I open up Maya and reconsider.



Work is work, I suppose, but I'd rather have a career. These are all from a restaurant. Lots of different kinds of people come in, and you get a lot of interesting pictures. Lots of people who chew with their mouth open.

Monsters soon, other drawings sooner still!

You must obey the dance charmander

It's literally been one month since I posted, and I really honestly have been meaning too! I've even done some good stuff in the last month, but for some reason or another I just didn't upload any of it. I'm not uploading any of it right now, but let me instead tell you a story.

I remember seeing a clip of a cartoon that had induced seizures on children in Japan. They played a segment of it on the David Letterman show, and afterwards Dave, in his mock confusion, looked at the camera and said "What the hell was THAT?!" No one was properly prepared for what THAT was

When I was in seventh grade the Pokemon phenomenon hit the united states, and I was intrigued by the idea. The only two RPGs I had played that that point were Earthbound and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, and I had played both games to DEATH at this point. I had literally only found out what an RPG was because it was in the title of said Mario game. So I was excited. I convinced my little brother Isaac to give it a shot, but since he was 5 at the time, my mom asked me to go through it to see if it was OK for him to play it.

I devoured the game the same way that people who played Final Fantasy 7 did, which had come out just a year earlier (almost to the day). The only problem, even among gamer nerds I couldn't talk about my love for this weird little game and it's bizarre super animals. It was clearly marketed towards children, with it's insane media blitz, anime, and general fervor.

But it wasn't REALLY for kids. It was THE super tedious stat building game, long before WoW and Disgaea hit the states. It's for kids the same way Ratatouille and The Incredilbes and Aladdin are for kids. For some reason some people have a hard time differentiating between "for kids" and "for a general audience." Pokemon was too overwhelmingly complicated for a child. I'm still convinced of this even today.

Now what I've been trying to do, and I'm not sure how successful it's been, is basically pre-defend myself for liking Pokemon, which I still play to this day. I have a college education, have a full time job (not in my field, sadly) have a wonderful, loving relationship, and can benchpress 375 pounds (not really, though). But I still like making little cuddly toyetic monsters shoot lightning bolts and GHOST FISTS at eachother.

However, as an example of how this game is GENERAL AUDIENCE instead of FOR KIDS I have made a series of post cards
This blog was made as a precursor to a series that I attempted years ago on Deviant Art and gave up on. That series is 30 Monters in 30 Days. I don't know when I'll start it, but there's a chance that I will after I've done all 30 monsters. It might be more. I might have to make a whole other blog JUST for monsters. But yeah, I like monsters, is basically what I'm getting at.