Birthday Card Illustration

Got asked to do some cartoony beefcake art for a birthday card. Besides having to google image search muscle men, it was a lot of fun to do.

I thought I'd also use the opportunity to show my step-by-step process for illustrations:

initial (bad) sketch

refined sketch

outlines

color outlines

colored in

shadows

highlights

tweaks/finishing touches based on client input ("his boob is too big")

If anyone else wants custom art for a birthday card, sexy or non-sexy, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Hurricane Irene

(click to enlarge)

Hurricane Irene is over. Some thought the storm was way over-hyped, but others are still dealing with death, destruction and loss of power, so who's to say? I do want to comment on hurricane coverage though:

It's funny.

The highlights:

Reporter with perfect hair, outside in Boston: "I'm out here and -- oh wow. It just started raining. WOW!"

A reporter in Southern MA trying desperately to cling to her NBC hat in the high winds.

About a half hour later, that same reporter wearing a BU hat, reporting "I lost my hat."

But the best line was during a female news anchor showing footage from a beach, where teenagers were daring to wade into the tumultuous surf. About half way through some dry reporting she broke into an extremely motherly tone and shouted "WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS?!"

I will also say that WBZ's Joe Joyce, who recently hired me to draw the below adorable hurricane, is awesome and wins the "Most Enthusiastic to be Outside in Harsh Weather" award.

Window Painting

Yesterday I did a window painting for Clean Homes, LLC, a Somerville, MA home maintenance company. It was a lot of fun painting on a window (I used tempera paint so it would come off in a month for a new painting) and it was fun working for another Boston-area company. Especially because the owner of the company told me in all seriousness that the painting looked "pissah."

Their office is on the corner of School St. and Medford St. Go check it out!

Is There a Doctor on the Plane?

This Week's PGS comic

On our flight home from Alaska we were woken up by not one but two medical emergencies.  Everyone ended up being perfectly okay, thanks to two unlikely heroes...

 

 Sleepy Doctor and Enthusiastic Nurse! Also known as Enthusiastic Lady-Who-Was-Hopefully-A-Nurse-Because-She-Implemented-An-IV!

Back From Alaska

I'm back!

I wasn't able to post anything from Alaska, which was okay, because I didn't get a chance to do much drawing there anyway.

But the people I stayed with in Homer, AK get their water delivered, which did lead to the need for this cartoon sign:

Alaska

I'm off to Alaska for a week. I'll try and update with some drawings while I'm there, we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here's a recent Alaska-themed comic I did:

(click to enlarge)

Happy birthday to my Mothah

The birthdaypocalypse continues...today it is my mom's birthday!

You can once again call me biased, but my mothah is the best mothah that a nice Jewish boy from Bawston could ever have. She never tried to make me be a doctor instead of a cartoonist. In fact, she's done quite the opposite; she has always encouraged me to follow my dream and never misses a moment to promote my work. She even loved the "Mike's Mothah" cartoons, despite the fact that friends and family are convinced that the main character is based on her.

In honor of her birthday, I'd like to take this moment to clarify the differences between Mike's mothah and my own...

My mothah is not shaped like a gumdrop
My mothah does not wear drab orange and brown clothes (she dresses in nice colors)
My mothah does not watch all those reality shows (only ones about decorating)
My mothah does not sound like a man
My mothah lets my dad watch football and even watches with him sometimes

But there are some similarities:

My mothah does have a Boston accent, and is known to say "Oh my gawd!"
My mothah does provide safety-based commentary on my dad's driving, and does get distracted by nicely-painted homes
I am not, and have never been, allowed to say "shut up" to my mothah

But most importantly:
My mothah does care infinitely about the well-being of her children, and would absolutely climb a burning ferris wheel to save one of us, if it came to that. And that's why she's the best mothah ever.

So what are you waiting for! Go to her website and look at her art!

Happy birthday, Mom!

Caving

Good friend and PokeGravy voice regular Harley Harrison (featured in last week's post) stars in the online short "Caving" by the fratty sketch comedy group Lambda House Productions. LH asked me to provide some illicit cartoon cave paintings for the episode, which were fun to draw despite making me feel dirty.

You can watch the short, and see why that dinosaur is so upset, by clicking the link below. Be warned: this is not appropriate for work, children or your mothah (or mine). But if you can handle it, it might be worth it...Harley has a very funny scene with a wheel.

Lamba House - Caving

Happy Birthday Dad!

August is the Birthdaypocalypse. Somewhere between 8 and 100 of my friends and relatives were born in this wonderful, albeit toasty, month.

I'm probably biased, but my Dad is the best dad ever. He's always been there to give advice, talk politics, talk about Harry Potter, or talk about the politics within Harry Potter. He's also done his fatherly duty by taking me to countless Patriots games.

I honored his love of the Patriots by giving the dad in the "Mike's Mothah" cartoons the same passion. My real dad makes a cameo in the cartoon, to the right of the dad character in the Patriots game scene:

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday Ellery!

Ellery was my neighbor for 16 years, and is still a great friend. He's coded every single iteration of the PGS Website since before we realized animated gifs weren't cool. He's a computer genius and I like that he always pretends not to be annoyed when I constantly ask him for tech support.

I have no idea why, or when it started, but for as long as I can remember the above "Poke & Gravy" comic I drew when I was ten has been known to us as "Ellery's favorite comic."

Happy Birthday, Ellery!

Voices

One of my favorite parts of the animation process has always been recording and editing the voice track. Tonight I recorded two awesome PGS regulars, and friends of mine, for the client piece I'm working on. Harley Harrison and Ben Sloane are both working actors in New York who spend their summers in Boston running Harley's theater workshop. They're ridiculously funny and have taken so many PGS productions to the next level. I can't thank them enough for taking time out of their busy schedule to work on my projects. Here are some highlights of the session: