jklind

Catch-Up Cuties

I may have a lot more free time over the next month or so, so I think it's time I finally caught up on some things!  Just with pinups, where should I start?

What's another side project or three?

A couple of days ago, I started modeling Daisy's bedroom. It's something I've had in mind for a while, and it could be a simpler, more casual environment than the diner to pose her in.  To speed things up, I may just buy whatever furnishings I can from a 3D asset store - her bed, dresser, computer desk & chair, etc...  a pile of stuffed animals may need to be done on my own, though.

Daisy's room and other side projects will either need to be pushed aside again, soon, or I'...

Game on!

Hey

Clickety Clack

I suppose I could have made an April Fools image today, but instead my brain wasted that energy on a dumb idea of Daisy typing away on a keyboard. Maybe next year...

Update: Now I'm tempted to just leave this one in 3D, even if I have to buy decent models for the keyboard & chair...

Daisy's Diner - Pandemic Edition

Early on in the pandemic, right around the time everything had shut down, I had this idea of Mary being one of the last people to find out. She goes to the diner like normal, only to find the doors locked and a public health notice on the glass.  Catching up with Daisy, it'd be an excuse to show how my characters were handling the whole mess.

Work and burn-out had kept me from drawing the comic, so now it seems oddly appropriate that I'm revisiting the idea when I already have anot...

Alexa, #@!$ off

Panels 1, 2, and 4 of page 1!

Update - one more so Daisy's a bit more active at the end of the page.  I haven't decided yet if it'll be better to have it as its own panel, or superimposed over her lying down, to imply she went back to sleep in a hurry.

Girl needs some caffeine

I was hoping I'd have this sequence inked & colored by now, but it's morphed a bit beyond a simple sequence.  With a few more panels to pad it out, this sequence could turn into 2-3 proper comic pages.  Then there's the 4 or so pages I've already thumbnailed, where Daisy wakes up to find that her aunt Mercy has taken charge at the diner.  From there, there are a couple of directions I'm tempted to go in...  mainly introducing a new character as Daisy's assistant manage...

Always room in the pile

Go figure - with a month to catch up on my backlog of ideas, my brain gives me a new comic to add to the pile, and now a gag involving shirts with everyone's favorite blue-footed bird printed on them...

"5 more minutes", all week long

I'm really dragging my feet lately, and that may not change for a few more days. I started the week knowing it was time for me to quit caffeine again, but didn't actually start until yesterday.  Since I'm only on my second day, I can't tell if it's harder to focus now, or before.  But at least two more of the "sleepy Daisy" pics are roughed out!

Update - Finally some progress! Rose trying to get Daisy out of bed took me a while to figure out the posing, as the...

Five More Minutes (muttered incoherently)

Daisy needs to get up and go to work...  but sometimes sleeping for 5 more minutes all day is much more rewarding.

Update - looks like this one could be the first of a series!

Update #2 - it's becoming a whole thing!

Proto-Zeke

Would you believe that Zeke actually predates Daisy & Mary?  Or rather, "Tanice" does. I'm not sure about the sketches, but the color piece is easily 20 years old!

Tanice was from a sci-fi story I'd worked on for several years, starting in high school, that never really went anywhere.  Still, I liked her design, so why let it go to waste?

What the masses REALLY want - boring tool demos!

A couple of years ago, I'd written a script for setting up eyelids in Maya.  One tiny problem - I've since forgotten how to use it, because I didn't bother to document any of it.  So over the past few days, I wrote a UI for it to eliminate the guess-work.  Now maybe I can finish rigging the character in the video!

Zeke 'sheet

Aaaannd done!

More Zeke

Zeke's character sheet is almost ready to be assembled!

The past few days is a weird example of how it can be difficult for me to make short-term plans - as fun as the flood of Zeke ideas were, a week wouldn't be enough time to draw all of them. Plus unless I treat her encounter with Monique as a "what if", first I'd want to properly introduce Mo to the comics. Then there's all of the other ideas bouncing around in my skull, that a week wouldn't be enough time for...

Well now it l...

And then they did the thing

Had to add Mary, explaining the obvious.  And some other nonsense.

More alien fun

Some things I'm toying with with this girl - she can shapeshift to some degree, so she can more easily fit in for a limited amount of time.  She can change her skin & eye color, and morph a nose & ears, but still has 4 digits on each hand.

Her natural hair is a mohawk, and might even be feathers.

Rather than being an alien, or an alien hybrid, she may be more of a drunken experiment.  As she might tell it, "when most people think of grey aliens, they think ass-pl...

A week to get weird

Last I'd heard, I've got at least a week before the next phase of my contract starts.  Now, I'd spend most of last week working on my rigging scripts for Maya, so maybe now's the time to switch gears and try to draw some things before the my schedule gets crazy again.  I could - and may - flesh out some of the Daisy ideas from a couple weeks back, but I'm also tempted to work on my alien girl as well.

Sunday Scribbles

Friday - waiting on client feedback. All day.

Today - same, it's looking like.

In between - "hey, look, Ah done did drawed somethin!"

The frustrating part is I'm fairly certain that as soon as I sit down to flesh out any of these ideas, THEN I'll get the feedback I've been waiting for...

That time again...

I'm officially back to work!  Yeah, I'd already been working on Python stuff for work for the past couple of weeks, but now I'm setting up scenes for animation, before doing some animation myself.

The good news is, at least with this first batch, my workload may be lighter than it was before. The bad news is the work could still be draining, and it's too early to say if I'll be able to commit any time to my own characters. For now, it's safer to pause my campaign again.

(side...

More or less back on the clock

While I'm still waiting for word on when my contract will resume, for the past couple of weeks I've been kept busy with something I've had on the back burner for years - a tool for mirroring poses in Maya.

Most of the guys on my team have used 3DSMax's Biped rig at one point or another.  The rig is fairly basic, but it has some great tools that are sorely missed in Maya, like its ability to copy the pose of a body part or an entire character, and flip it to the opposite side.  ...

Partial Character Lineup

I'd been thinking lately that I could use a height-chart for my characters, to try to keep track of how tall everyone is relative to Daisy.  At the same time, I wasn't really in the mood to draw it when I started, so half of it is cobbled together from existing images. And some characters I haven't drawn in a while, so their proportions may be a little off...  Rose & Mercy could end up being taller!

There's also a small update on my contract - last I'd heard, it could stil...

The year ahead

With each new year, I normally know exactly what I hope to accomplish. For too many years in a row, the top items on my list have been finishing Daisy's 3D rig, and then animating her. Since I didn't do either of those things in 2020, they can be easily be recycled once again. Whether either of them will finally happen this year is also questionable...

Despite everything else, last year was my busiest in some time. I don't know yet what this year will look like, apart from last year's c...

Nude Year 2021

2020 will soon be over, and I may be buried in contract work again not too long after that. What makes things just a little easier, is that I can just copy & paste my resolutions from last year. Maybe 2021 will be the year?

Have a merry one!

On a lighter note

I hope everyone's staying safe and responsible over the holidays. 

Saying 2020 was a dumpster-fire of a year would be putting it mildly, and it would be an insult to dumpster fires. I just want to thank everyone for sticking around, through it all.

Abandoned, or just held in reserve?

Before Daisy & Mary, I'd spent years developing a science fiction story that I've long since given up on. But every so often I'll think about some of the characters, and look for ways to bring them back.

One such character looked more or less like the first image above (only not nearly as pinup-y). I wouldn't so much be bringing her back, as applying the general design to a whole new character. Nothing's set in stone just yet, although there are some ideas that may be too fun to res...

Christmas Countdown

So far I'm getting a lot less done than I'd originally hoped, which may not be the worst thing. One problem with catching up on backlogged ideas, is they're old ideas. The best way to really hammer my way through art block is with new ideas, and with Christmas coming up...

I haven't quite landed on an idea for a Christmas pinup, but I have settled on the costume - an even worse-fitting (and thus unbuttoned) version of Daisy's uniform, with plenty of red, white, and green. And maybe a pe...

Handstand

Is it cheating if more than just her hands are touching the ground?

Stringing words together

One project I'd like to finish this month, is the follow-up to Toxic Candy, where Candice confronts her father. Apart from being busy all year, I've put this story off because I simply didn't want to draw it. I'd rather keep moving Daisy's story along, so taking time away from her to focus on Candice - even if it helps to flesh out the world - didn't sound too appealing.

Rather than doing this story as a comic, it'll instead be more of a novella, with some images sprinkled in to help se...