Roadfrogs website is live!

The main news I have to share this month is that I've set up a wordpress site for my comic strip Roadfrogs. So far, I've only put a splash page on the site, but I hope to start posting strips weekly beginning sometime next month. Roadfrogs is an anthropomorphic (otherwise known as "funny animal") strip featuring two rival motorcycle gangs, the Roadfrogs (Froggie, Sword and Pistol) and the Toad Warrriors (Toad and Wart). My wife Peggy and I came up with the concept over twenty years ago. At that time I penciled and inked three comic book pages for the first story in the series, entitled "Froggie Went A'Courtin'". Somehow, although I've managed to hold onto virtually every other piece of artwork I've done over the thirty-five to forty years, those three pages are missing.

Therefore, I've decided to rewrite, expand and redraw the entire story, this time in a comic strip format. Roadfrogs can be seen at roadfrogs.wordpress.com. In the meantime, here are a couple of pen and ink drawings I've done this year. Just to show that I can do something other than science fiction and fantasy art.

This panda above is based on a photo I found in an issue of National Geographic Kids. Children's magazines are a great resource for photo reference. The photo reference for the batter pictured below came from the back cover of an old Richmond Braves program magazine.

I'm still waiting to hear results for the 3rd quarter of this year's Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future contests. I think that both the writing and art that I have submitted have been stronger each quarter thus far. The more I write and draw (and 3d model), the better my work seems to get. I guess the old axiom of "practice makes proficient" is true.

Animation, finally

I still haven't gotten an animation worth showing to anyone using DAZ3D, but I've also been exploring the animation features in Bryce. The following is my first animation effort in Bryce. As a test, I rendered it at 15fps, so the motion is pretty jerky, but otherwise I'm basically pleased with the results. Unfortunately, I'm running into an error uploading the file, so it may have to wait until next time.

I hope to buy a new computer next week, so my productivity should increase dramatically as soon as I have the new PC set up to my satisfaction.

Finally, I was notified last week that I was a semifinalist in the Illustrators of the Future contest for the second quarter of this year. The pictures I entered for that quarter were some Bryce renders I had done very shortly after starting to work with the program earlier this year. I believe that the work I entered for both the 3rd and 4th quarters is stronger, so I'm hopeful that I'll do better for those quarters. Here are the pictures I submitted for Quarter 2.

Finally, as soon as I have the new computer set up, I plan to start posting to this blog weekly. My intent is to start uploading some of the comics strips I've written and drawn over the last few years, as well as new work. The three strips I plan to feature here are "Roadfrogs", "Ivy League" and "Pawns". And I may even put "G.I.Jeff - A Really Average Hero" on here too.