So I have a blog and a new batch of designs to end the year with, woo!
Honestly, this year has been pretty rough for me. I think It was my birthday that did it, i've not felt the same since. I've hit a pretty old age and yea it hit me square in the face. I'm still dealing with that but on the bright side I have come to enjoy drawing again recently for the first time in several years. Its been nice to get over that slump and end the year on a good note and I look forward to the next.
Anyway, rewind back to the start of the year and I played through the 'remastered' 32 bit Tomb raider games. 1 and 2 anyway. I'm playing through them again at the moment so I might give 3 a go when I get to it. They are not games I am overly familiar with, so, quite challenging. (easier on my second play through though).
I never had a PS1 back in the day. I only had an n64 (which might be obvious from all my mario/zelda/banjo drawings). However everyone else had one, so I spent quite a bit of time either playing Tomb raider or watching others play it. I never knew how to play it though, and it terrified me. Those old graphics and sound effects just do a brilliant job of making things feel creepy and atmospheric. So i played through the whole thing on classic graphics mode, although its not 100% authentic, i remember things looking more wobbly and glitchy on actual PS1s. But its acceptable. Honestly, I love the old early 3D graphical style. So this is a tribute to it. Hopefully I can get the old printer sorted out soon as this would be great as a print.
Playing through these really unlocked some memories. I remember one Christmas day (1997 judging by the tomb raider 2 release date) my uncle and my cousin came round to our house, at night I went to their house and we played TR2 until 4 am in the morning. Which is pretty late when you are 13 years old. We played through the deck level, and then started the Tibet skidoo one, constantly checking the game guide, which they referred to as the bible. 27 years (i hadn't played it since) later I picked back up where we left off that night. It was pretty deep.
Continuing my 'original' series. Which started with this 'Original duck' This time i tried my hand at drawing a capybara. Although after drawing it I realized the market might already be oversaturated, i started noticing capybaras every bloody where. At least here in Taiwan anyway. Can't move for little capybara toys hanging off peoples bags, on their scooter helmets, everywhere.
The sketch for this turned out amazingly close to the final drawing. I wish that would happen every time.
Next, another original and attempt at something popular. I just went to Thailand in November. Didn't visit the zoo with moo deng but i did see a guy selling moo deng cakes at a Bangkok night market. Moo deng but with tits. True story. Weird guy. I like how the sketch came out, even though i changed it quite a bit. I also included something about hippos being dangerous, then googled it and discovered that pygmy hippos are in fact not dangerous to humans so I had to change that. But it turns out hippopotamus is such a long word it takes up a lot of t-shirt space already so its all good.
This was something I drew back in the pandemic to take the piss out of how brutal nasal swabs seemed to be.. yes i actually had to take one after drawing this and i felt nothing lol.. slight exaggeration with the drawing.
I thought it was worth re-jigging into something else as i still really like the drawing. I think it works as just a standard send up to Total recall, and is funnier this way too.
This one took me so long to do. I had an idea in mind of a style i wanted to go for, but it ended up completely different. I still like the result though.
The text says 'stinky tofu ice cream is tasty'. Stinky tofu is the pride of Taiwan, so it makes sense that it would be an family mart ice cream flavour. So i made a faux famiice (family marts ice cream branding) advert. Mostly because i want to start doing more designs incorporating Chinese. Didn't come out as good as I'd like but still, if somebody wants to take my idea and make a stinky tofu ice cream then please be my guest!
This was something I originally drew for Peanut butter gamer. The difference was the main mask was one of his face, and every character including the fairy's, tree etc had to have a little goatee drawn on. I saw it recently and thought it was a rather good drawing and would be a shame if I didn't have a goatee less version of it. So here it is. I did a lighter colour version too, which I think looks a little nicer.
Last up is this corporate overlord sci fi nightmare vision of the future where my least favorite people on earth team up to dominate and destroy the human race with their space tech. and somewhere along the way they also train a monkey to ally with them and use a grenade launcher. I also wanted to stick some kind of AI tesla mecha in there but the drawing was already busy enough, so i didn't.
I am aware that its a little out of date at this point as musk has pally'd up to trump, but that just means its still an accurate prediction as he is just further along than the other 2 in his plans of human enslavement..
This picture actually did me the world of good. It was a pain in the ass to begin with. But I stuck at it and eventually it just got done. Which is my new philosophy for drawing. Just keep hammering away and things will eventually get done.
And with that, merry christmas and happy new year to everyone!