Grand Theft Mecha Suit

Two big releases this week.

Pooty - Final

Oh man. Too long without an update. The last Pooty for a while.

Pooty Pt. 5 & Sealife

Also:

Pooty Pt. 4

Here's an extra: There Will Be Blood/King De De De mash-up.

Pooty Pear Pts. 2 & 3

Two more for your pleasures.

Pooty Pear

Long, long ago I drew belligerent fruit. Pooty Pear was one of them. I brought him back recently. As usual, click for a larger (legible) version.

Excuse the big gray streak on the side. My scanner's a lame, old mule. I wish it was the robotic creepy one.

Hey gang. Here's where I post my goofy sketches, drawings, completed works, heck, whatever I want.

Saturday April 12 I went to the Lucky Cat Lounge in Brooklyn for Dr. Sketchy's live drawing session. Unbeknownst to me it was Japan-themed that day and that means one thing only: the stereotypical American view of Japanese culture! The emcees made dumb jokes, J-Pop played on the speakers, and the audience was mostly nerds, geeks and anime fans. I almost felt at home.

The model was black and busty - curves are so fun to draw - and had geisha make-up on. It didn't strike me until much later: that's whiteface, the black equivalent of blackface! But she was a real pro, getting in all sorts of uncomfortable poses for long stretches of time.

At first, to warm up, and to warm up our drawin' hands, she did a stretch of minute-long poses. Drawing fast is a great exercise to get those creative juices flowing and to get those forearm muscles warm. Here are some rough sketches (click for larger version):

I tried to focus on the poses rather than fine detail. Thus, faceless mannequins.

Once everyone was warmed up the emcees (one of whom, I had no idea was an accomplished illustrator - I just thought she was a babe) started doing little contests for silly little prizes. I think the first prize was pink lace panties. Or something. We were given 20 minutes or so to complete the task and then held up our sketchbooks/pads/canvases (it was insane, some people had inks and brushes) for the emcees to choose, then display for the audience and applause decided the winner.

The first challenge was to draw with your left hand. I failed miserably:

It's the top one there. Understandably, I wasn't chosen as a nominee. It's really light and barely-there but that was the best I could do. I figured I'd try drawing moving my powerful, manly elbow and keeping my useless left wrist stiff. Ah well.

Also, the text in the left corner reads top-down: FFVI (Final Fantasy VI), Mononoke, Mario 2, Kill Bill, Teen Titans. That's some of the music they played in the bar, which was fantastic. People were really receptive to the Mario stuff (including the Mario 64 theme and Super Mario World end credits), and some recognized Mononoke - Miyazaki was popular there. So yeah, to sum up: drawing, babes, drawing babes and my friggin' music collection playing over the loud speakers? This couldn't get any awesomer.

The next challenge was to incorporate the Japanese restaurant mainstay, the Lucky Cat, into the image. Here's my shot:

Now I was a nominee! That got some nice reactions - mostly "aww"s - and I won some Hello Kitty stickers. Joy!

Next some more poses:

That's Ness from Earthbound up there. I'm particularly proud of the bottom one here:

Now for the next challenge: to incorporate popular characters from Japanese culture (read: ANIMEZ) into the picture. This may sound really easy but I couldn't decide what to do. So many options! I doodled Spike from Cowboy Bebop in the meantime.

Or rather, an approximation of Spike. I settled on, as the emcee aptly put it "quantity over quality" (douche), and fit in as many robots as quickly as I could:

Evangelion Unit-01, Gundam, Astro Boy and Mega Man (that squiggle near him is his buster arm charging up). I was running out of time but felt the left corner looked silly without a robot there so I hesitated on Gigantor and ended up drawing a disgruntled owl.

I was a nominee again! The emcee guy was like "I'm just impressed you got Astro Boy and Mega Man here. What did you spend your childhood doing?" I said, "Listening to this music." I think Mega Man II music was playing, right before Kefka's Theme from FFVI. So nerdy. But everyone LOL'd at my snappy retort! I didn't win again but I think a drawing with No-Face from Spirited Away got the prize. There was also furry art, Ringu hair-girl creatures, Godzilla and tentacles. An impressive lot.

The next challenge was an ad-lib type thing. The guy asked for a noun, adverb etc. from the audience and we winded up with "scary bunny chopping quietly." My submission:

That's headphones the bunny's wearing. And Jet Set Radio music played as everyone DID ART.

The MC guy didn't even bother with a vote. The reaction was enough that he just gave me my award - the bar's mix CD! Yay!?

And finally, to incorporate tiny boxes into the drawing. I thought I'd do something clever:

Not a winner, and not exactly finished (I wanted to "pixelate" her bottom half) but I was pleased.

And that's it! As everyone gathered their art supplies and shuffled out Chrono Trigger music started playing over the speakers and I knew I had a fantastic time. And that I fuckin' missed drawing. Now I feel I can't stop.

So I'll keep this space updated as often as possible. Till then!