Show and Tell: Sam and Max

I recently bought and watched "Sam and Max: Freelance Police", the animated series on DVD. I always loved Steve Purcell's comic by that name, and was intrigued with how they might translate some of his zanyness to the small screen. TO my pleasure, they did an okay job. Watching it with my ten year old daughter, it was cool to see that the occasional gag/story/personality trait that they left in from Purcell's comics were the very things she laughed at the hardest. WHY some of the backgrounds are done in a completely different style than the characters, I will never understand. And even though I'm sure they added the little girl computer whiz for kids to relate to, I found her a needless addition. I mean, come on, you've got a dog and a bunny-thing... kids love animals, so why do you need the girl? Those criticisms aside, I think the show is a pretty decent intro for kids into the world of these great characters.
But if you want REAL Sam and Max, then track down the comics!

Tyranasaurus Rex arms

Trapped at a Burger King the other day, I capture this lady in my sketchbook. I liked her "tyranosauraus rex" arms. Heh heh.

Abstraction Distraction: Part 1

Recently, I had a long time client order 23 abstract illustrations from me for a project. It's all pix of their execs. Thing is, they always want vector illos, so they can blow them up really big and hold the resolution. I've done several of these over the years for them, but never this many at a time. In the past, I've tripped, stumbled, and fell my way through the "vectorization" part. Orginally, it was so long ago on the first job, I drew and scanned in my drawings and ran them through an old defunct prgram called Adobe Streamline to vectorize them. Then, I colored htem in Illustrator.



Now, with the later editions of Illustrator, CS2 is the one I have, I have learned to LiveTrace and Live Paint a bit. That's how I did last time's batch. THIS time, though, I decided to bite the bullet and start learning to actually draw in Illustrator. These are a few from the job. Eventually, in the vector illos, I was even able to do several different styles.
For obvious reasons, I call this one more of my "Picasso" style.

And this one I like a lot...I managed a twist you wouldn't necessarily expect, but still retained a pretty strong likeness, I think.

When I get caught up on some more deadlines, I'll try to post some more.