Tag: sketches

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Charlie, The Fashion Icon

This here is Charlie, from my three-part comic series The Charlie & Clow adventures.

Recently I flipped though a LOT of old sketchbooks (the oldest one dated back to 2011 during my junior year of college). And I saw Charlie pop up quite a bit in those old books.

Her story changed, but one thing stayed constant: her goth-punk aesthetic.

I originally created her to be one of the starring members of a punk rock band. Over time, she became more of an interesting main character than the one I originally wrote. So I rewrote the story to make her be the focus.

Through the rewrites, though, she always stayed a punk/goth girl.

Part of it is because of her personality.

But also I really like drawing punk and goth fashion.

So who knows? You may see more of Charlie being a fashion model on Instagram.

In the meantime, this original sketch IS available as a hi-resolution download for Ko-Fi backers and Patreon patrons. The sketch itself will be listed for sale on Storenvy soon. If you want to know when it drops, get on that email newsletter. It’s the best place to find new shop listings.

ALSO! I will be at the New Dimension Comics in Saint Clairsville, OH on March 7. It’s Free Graphic Novel Day! To celebrate, I will have free grab bags, as well as some original sketches marked down for sale.

(All proceeds from the sale of the original art pieces will go towards helping with the cost of moving. Because I will be moving to a new apartment May 1 this year).

Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

P.S. I’m not joking – watch my Instagram for future pics of Charlie being a fashionista.

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The Witch and the Demon: A Sketch

The Witch and the Demon has been sitting in the sketchbook, the short story file, and my brain parts for the better part of two years now.

The above sketch came first…I think.

Then I wrote the short story. And…ok, to be blunt, it’s pornographic.

There’s a part of me that would love to adapt this into a wordless comic one-shot. But there’s also the logical part of me that says that 99% of printers out there would not print porn comics.

The paradox of America: American comic printers will happily run a comic with a dude getting his dick ripped off by possessed animals, but they WON’T run a comic with someone getting head.

There are oversea printers – even one or two in Canada that could do this – but I want to be positive before I move forward with it.

The other issue with doing an x-rated comic is: there are a LOT – and I mean A LOT – of readers who think my work is all kid-friendly because of the art style I draw in.

On the one hand, I get it. It’s cutesy.

On the other hand, the subject matter is not child-friendly most of the time.

Case in point: Thoughtful Dinosaur.

Anytime this book is spotted on my table at shows, parents think it’s a book aimed at kids.

It’s not – it’s the story of a college student learning how to adult. While there’s no sex or cursing in it, it does tackle ideas that kids won’t understand, like existential dread and the meaning of life.

And I have to explain this more often than you’d think.

So because of all of those factors, The Witch and the Demon have been sitting in the rafters. And odds are high they will continue to sit there indefinitely.

We’ll see what the future holds for these two though. Auxaton as a story concept sat on the sidelines and was briefly abandoned… until I revived it for NaNoWriMo two years ago.

Who knows what will happen for the witch and her demon?

Thank you for reading.

You. Are. Awesome.

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Ollie the Half-Orc Druid

ollie the half orc druid dungeons and dragons 5th edition character sketch

Ollie (short for Olive) is a half-orc druid I’m currently playing in my D&D 5E group.

And BOY is she a lot of fun to play as.

(Everything she says in the sketches above are things I’ve said in character as her. Like I said, she’s fun).

The thing about Ollie is: she’s wise…but she’s not smart. Her wisdom HAS to be high to be effective as a druid, and it IS high. Currently her wisdom score is at a 16.

Her intelligence is 8.

For the uninitiated, if your skill score is below 10, that means that when you roll a dice to determine how successful you are, you have to subtract a number from what you rolled. If your skill score is ABOVE 10, you add a number to what you rolled.

So any intelligence-based check Ollie makes, I have to subtract 1 from what I roll. Any wisdom-based checks I make, I get to add 3 to what I roll.

This not only makes the mechanics of the game more interesting… this also means more fun in my roleplay.

Imagine this scenario: you’re in the woods, and you see a pack of wild dogs running off a cliff. Only, there’s something magical happening: the dogs are floating down, their paws still kicking in the air, and then they touch the ground below, unharmed.

What does Ollie do?

She runs to the top of the cliff and runs off the edge to see if this is an area-of-effect spell.

(I learned the hard way: no. It is NOT an area spell. The dogs were just magical).

But this is the kind of personality Ollie is: she learns from experience, not from books. In fact, if anything, classes put her to sleep.

She is also charismatic as heck. Her Charisma score is at a 16. So that means she’s REALLY good at making friends with people. Her typical greeting anytime she enters a room is, “MY DUDE!”

She calls bullshit when she sees it (hence the “passive aggressive” quote above). And she’s handy to have around to diffuse a tense situation.

More often than not, though, if something gets too tense, and she thinks people are going to make a fatal, terrible decision, she will physically pick them up and carry them out of the room.

(Hey, she’s still a half-orc. Half-orcs are strong, yo).

I hope you enjoyed Ollie as much as I enjoyed sharing her with you. I hope to draw more of her soon!

Thank you for reading.

You. Are. Awesome.

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Oops, It’s Mer-May

I don’t have a lot of updates for you – aside from “Hey, I’ll be at 3 Rivers Comicon this weekend, May 11 and 12 in Homestead, PA.”

So here’s a sketch of an eel girl because I forgot it was Mer-May.

(Yeah, this was sketched before Mer-May, so ssshhhh).

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Xemnas (A Sketch)

Yes, I finally got a copy of Kingdom Hearts 3 and started playing it recently. (Don’t spoil anything! I’m still only one world into the game).

Kingdom Hearts is a game series I have a lot of fondness for in my heart, despite all of its issues. It was the series that convinced my teenage self that video games could be an art form because it prompted SO MANY FEELINGS (instead of just rage and frustration at the mechanics of whatever game I was playing).

This was the series that helped me get through high school. Not just because of its cool game-play or its silly character moments, but also because of the fandom.

Yes, I was one of those fans who giggled at the idea of rearranging Xemnas’ name into “Mansex.” Who loved all the crack comics comparing Saix to a puppy and having Demyx and Roxas use a laser pointer to torture him. I even devoured so many hours of a video series called “The Stupid Files” where a fan with a LOT of time on their hands spliced comedic audio samples over Kingdom Hearts cutscene footage. It was like a precursor to all the abridged anime series’ out now.

But.

Kingdom Hearts as a game series has a LOT of issues. I am not a fan of the fact that the spin-off titles, or “interquels,” change the core mechanics of the gameplay. I did not like the card system of Chain of Memories, but I ESPECIALLY hated the Tetris-inventory mechanics of 358/2 Days. I could not finish either of those games because of those gameplay mechanics.

As a fan of the series, I feel like a lot of those in-between games could have just been made into movies and be JUST as effective. Most fans of Kingdom Hearts I know only ever watch the cutscenes of the side games and play just the anchor games (the anchors being games 1, 2, and now 3).

That’s the thing that being a fan of Kingdom Hearts has taught me: that you don’t have to consume EVERY FACET of a property to be a big dork for the thing.

I will never play the interquel games. At most, I will watch the cutscenes. Heck, you can watch videos on YouTube summarizing the lore of Kingdom Hearts so far and – ta-da – you’re now caught up to the series without having to touch any of the crap side games.

(358/2 Days, why did you have to SUCK?)

That said, I’ve been playing Kingdom Hearts 3 so far – on Proud mode! I haven’t touched a new video game in 13 years and I can play Kingdom Hearts 3 on Proud Mode without dying. That…actually might be more a statement on the game’s difficulty than on my expertise. But that aside…

Playing Kingdom Hearts 3 reminded me why I love this game series in the first place. It’s fun to play (at least the anchor games are). The characters are stilted but they’re still fun. The dialogue is cheesy but it works. And GOOD GOLLY JEEZ, the fact that you can play as a character interacting in Disney worlds is great. I’m looking forward to the Toy Story world the most because those were some of my favorite movies as a kid.

It’s a game series made for people who are young at heart, who need a little light to combat all the cynicism and self-awareness that the video game industry is saturated in. And thank goodness for that.

That’s all I’m going to write for now. I could talk for days about this series.

Thank you for reading.

You. Are. Awesome.