This was done for the TRDL R3 jam, the subject being the theme ‘older women’…

I wanted to keep on keepin’ on with my pin-up bombergirl series, so I chose the pinnacle of ‘sexy older women’ to me, Lisa Hayes from the Robotech cartoon. To be fair, she’s originally Misa Hayase from Macross, but I grew to know and get warm fuzzies over the American syndication version. Granted, the animation in the beautiful Macross OAV would later trump this view, but at the time, man oh man. I saw that we were SUPPOSED to be into Minmei, but all that girly, giggly, popular, celebrity business grated on me. I mean, sure, she was a cute brunette, which I liked in concept, but outside of the red chinese dress, there wasn’t much THERE there. But Lisa Hayes? In command, quietly in love, and most importantly, in an executive skirted uniform. I think some synapse burned out when I saw it the first time, because I thought women in officewear and uniforms were hot ever since (and frankly, women in charge as well!) so I felt this would be a good time to salute her. So to speak. Hope you like the squadron details as well…

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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1. TRDL Tribute: Minmei [Macross]

This was a custom character design for a longtime commission client, for whom I have done previous superhero characters based on his concepts, including Aero, Zoe and Luna…this time around, another group of three: Safety Girl, Arcangel and a Crucible Soldier.

Arcangel was my favorite design challenge for this client yet. An armored hero, female design cues, yet not traditional in form and proportion, with spindly legs and arms, high torso, alien head, lots of optics, a power battery in the back, and all these vanes for flight control. I had a blast coming up with designs for this. I must have drawn 10 of them before showing him the best stuff from that exercise. We played around with the colors quite a bit, messed with the vanes, and I think he picked from 6 head designs… you KNOW I love morphologies…

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for the TRDL R3 jam, the subject ‘space girls’.

OK, this jam was officially the launch party for my new series of pin-up girls. Some will be genre, some modern, and some old timey. Some bomber girls, like this one, some poster girls…

This is Auris, from the old German space comic Perry. This is a loooooong-running and beloved space adventure series from Germany, which has been through several iterations over the years. I was inspired to do this character after seeing the design work of a new artist, who appears to be working on an update to the series, Simone Kesterton. You can see her official Perry site page here, translated in drunken butcher fashion, by Google. The image she did that inspired me is below:

You can find her on DeviantArt here!

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for the TRDL R3 jam, the subject being Star Trek.

Well, you all know how much I enjoy redesigns. I’ll be building some more proper galleries on the main site soon to collect some of them, in fact. But anyway, I decided to redesign a Star Trek uniform this time around. It’s something, in fact, probably the BIGGEST interest, I always have on each film or project: what will they do to the designs… For example, I enjoyed the ST:TMP redesigns from the late 70s quite a bit, even as a younger bot. The white, creamy look to everything had a positive, pure vibe reflecting a hopefulness for the future (much like Abrams used that lens flare effect to give the bridge a similar tone in the new film)… I enjoyed the ST:TNG uniforms as well, especially the color shoulder splash over a black body suit… and especially the militant mirror-universe versions. I was less enthused with the various film costumes over the years, though I liked how the new film resolved a lot of the design cues for the legacy of the look (less the weave of the top tunic, but more the use of a black under-tunic, which gave a tunic-less Kirl a chance to run around in black and have it be feasible in plot)…

Anyway, my redesign plays with some classic moves (the skirt for a female officer, the use of a collar badge to denote rank) but makes some changes too (piping on the tunic and skirt, a skirt slit for function, banding behind the rank badges as slits in the tunic, and matte black boots and cuffs and shoulder pieces over a largely monochromatic look)… the hardest aspects to pull the trigger on were the hair (I wanted to do the … Read on for more awesome…

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This was done for the TRDL R3 jam, the subject ‘golden-age characters’.

I looooove subjects like this, since I love drawing old costume designs in a modern style, even when there’s no redesign involved: just adding materiality to them, like seams and so on… although, when I chose to do Sandman, I was thinking in terms of images in my head from days past where he was a guy in a herringbone gangster suit with a gas mask and a chem gun. When I actually dug up the refs, I discovered to my horror (and I should have better known better) that he was in technicolor green and purple, and that his early mask and gun were pretty flash gordon. So, I did play a little loose with the design on this one: I tried to keep the basics the same (suit, coat, cloak, hat) but I tweaked the gun to be a little closer to his gas gun later on, and I redesigned the mask, using the same nose bridge and chevrons from the original, but making it more industrial otherwise. Of course, I modified the colors significantly.

Sandman meets Lovecraft!

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for the TRDL R3 jam, the subject being Elasti-Girl.

The jam this time around was for any interpretation of ElastiGirl, from the Doom Patrol version to the mom in Incredibles. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of naughty-bits drawings of the animated character, so I thought I’d go for the original Doom Patrol version, since it dovetails nicely with my pin-up series. This is another Bomber Girl piece… the squadron should be familiar, as should the sentiment. The costume is pretty much unmodified, though I added nude stockings to give it more of a pin-up vibe, adding the pencil stitch for effect.

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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A little here about Maleev’s fascinating and mysterious process… until now. He finally described how he gets those textures. I’ll let you read to find out. So awesome…

http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22488

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Incremental growth changes are a big deal for first time parents. Zoe here has recently developed the (hard-earned and frequently practiced) skill of holding her head up to stare at whateverthehell that is in her field of vision when on her stomach. This is a step towards crawling. First, they have to hold their head up for sustained periods of time while on their bellies, then they have to learn to clutch at what they want, then they learn to move forward to get within clutching distance.

I LOVE this photo. It’s one of the shots randomly sent to me from home while I’m at work. Clearly, she sees an Iron Man armor just out of frame to the left…

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I have hordes and hordes of not-ready-for-prime-time illustrations in files at the loft. Some, thanks to the forethought of my dear mhom, have survived my childhood and are fun to look at from an, I don’t know, anthropological sense. Others, from my pre-teen and early teen years, are awkward and puberty-fueled (but not in the way an experienced adult might draw girls, but the way a teen might draw girls processing the awesome existence of girls in the first place, and doing it wrong). Some yet, like these below, are merely drawing exercises on a whim.

In this first set of three, I was warming up to the idea of redrawing mainstream characters what I tend to call the ‘TRDL way’ these days. I wasn’t there yet. It started by me just drawing characters standing around. Any reader of the TRDL site or the sourcebooks knows I am a huge fan of the Marvel Handbooks and DC WHo’s Who and similar projects, so I actually quite LIKE drawing people standing around, vs. super punching. Anyway, at this point, I was not yet drawing them with my own design style. I was literally drawing the costumes as I saw them. Later, I would learn to either draw the literal costume from the comics, but do it in my WAY, such as detailing and texture of material, etc, or to redesign the costume altogether. But at this point, which was probably about 1991, I was just at the ‘draw the character’ stage.

Also, I should mention, I was choosing to draw characters and designs I didn’t like. This was an offshoot of something I had been doing with music, in high school and college thereafter: I’d identify a style I disliked, and then force myself to listen to it until I could … Read on for more awesome…

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Those with kids will probably relate, unless this is a unique wrongness limited to our household: we sing and comment to young Zoe in some strange ways. Then it becomes habitual. The internal references start (you see them all over the TRDL sites, so you know what I mean) and next thing you know, you sound like a mutant.

Anyway, Zoe has this noisy little wrist fetish that looks like lion’s head. It has a rattle in it. It’s supposed to entertain her. It really doesn’t yet. Mostly, she just moves her arm in periodically as if to check it. Somehow, around 3am most likely, I asked wifebot(tm) what time it was. She didn’t know. I replied: "It’s Lion Time." Because, you know, it looks like a watch what has a lion for a face. But it devolved from there. Somewhere, in the midst of near-hysterical sleep deprived laughter, the kind where you can’t breathe, your ribs ache and you’re crying… I determined the complete definition of Lion Time, and this is chanted pretty much any time we see her check the thing.

"Huntin’ mates.
Having sex with em.
Eatin’ meat.

It’s LION TIME."

Wifebot(tm) lost it that she was hunting ‘mates’ but just eating meat that’s laying around. I thought it made perfect sense.

Anyway, there you go.

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