Thursday, October 31, 2013

Jack-O-Lantern Designs: IRL 2013

Alright, as Halloween settles down, it's time to post this year's edition of Jack-O-Lantern Designs In-Real-Life.

I only got one this year, from the ever-popular Nicole Altmann of Sunny Philadelphia PA:



For those of you who don't have them memorized, this is a design from the very first group back in 2010:


Thanks for playing Nicole, I think it turned out pretty great! Even the shape of the base-pumpkin matches pretty well. Extra points for that! For the rest of you, hopefully we'll see some more next year :)

Happy Halloween Everyone!

-Evan

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Jack-O-Lantern Designs 2013

It's ok everyone! The wait is finally over! It's time for my yearly jack-o-lantern designs!! (Click to Enlarge)


The same deal goes as every year: if anybody actually decides to attempt to carve any of these, please send me pictures at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com and I'll post them up here! That goes for previous years' pumpkin designs as well.

Previous designs are here:

2010
2011
2012

Now go have some fun with these! I know I did.

-Evan

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Gull

Not really much to say about this guy. I wanted to sketch out a seagull and it just sort of turned into this:


I've always been a huge fan of seabirds in general, but have largely ignored gulls a lot of the time. Perhaps my subconscious was telling me it's time to start giving them due respect?

-Evan

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Halloween Warmup

Did some playing in Zbrush today. Fall being my favorite season, I decided to rough out a pumpkin:



And then naturally had to give him a face:



But don't worry, this won't take the place of my yearly Jack-O-Lantern Designs! I'll get to those a bit closer to Halloween. I just wanted to test one out in 3D, since it's been years since I've carved a physical pumpkin.

*Random Thought while Sculpting Today: Although you have more flexibility with the actual face creation, virtual pumpkin carving takes way longer than regular pumpkin carving, because you have to, well...build the pumpkin first. Also you can't put a candle in the virtual one and place the whole thing on your stoop. So major downside there...

Stay Tuned for more Pumpkins leading up to Halloween!

-Evan

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Saturday Drawing in the Park

Just some misc sketches from today:

I started by drawing actual things that were in front of me....


...but of course ended up just drawing cartoon animals from my head. Here's a walrus being photo-bombed by a cat.


And here's a goof of an elephant seal. The snake does not approve of his goofiness...


That's enough pinnipeds for now.

-Evan





Saturday, August 24, 2013

Cattle Studies

Doing some rough exploring/brainstorming:





After first relying heavily on reference imagery, and exploring the essence of what makes a bull a bull, I did a little playing around with stylization/proportion exaggeration:




That's all for now. Will probably be doing more of these, exploring some other bovines...

-Evan




Monday, July 8, 2013

Invasion of the Tetra Pod-Cats

So this is just a silly little thing I whipped up this weekend. It's inspired by some of the zaniness that comes up in the Tetrapod Zoology Podcast. While listening one episode, I got an image in my head of a stylized cat flying around in a little space pod, and after some rough doodles I decided I liked the idea enough to flesh it out more. So that's how I got to this:

(click to enlarge)

Clearly the drawing required not one, but four Pod-cats to make my pun, and it just so happens that there are four species of Lynx (which also happened to be a topic covered recently on the podcast podcats).

So left to right they are: bobcat (Lynx rufus)Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx)*, and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis). You can see their species names embossed on the hulls of their ships if you ever get confused.

So there you have it, the Invasion of the Tetra Pod-Cats.

-Evan
* I imagine him to be the leader of this bunch - he looks the most serious about the invasion

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Longisquama

Howdy Folks,

  Contributed this guy to the header for our 90 minute comics site you might have heard me talk about. I definitely spent too much time on him for the resolution of that header, but It's not everyday one draws Triassic Reptiles (unless, that's like, your thing - then I guess you do....but I certainly don't on a regular basis).


Anyway, thought I'd post a larger res version here (click for higher res). Oh, and the big beautiful Zero he's climbing on was drawn by Nate Shaw, just so we're all clear.


Until the Next Time!


  Evan

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Of Comics and Dino-Evans

Hey Folks,

   Just wanted to plug a side blog I'm contributing to, along with a bunch of my cool friends. Every week we gather to draw a comic in 90 minutes, which is based on two random nouns. Head on over there to check out the first few posts. I didn't make it the first week due to a schedule conflict.

Also, I've been doing mine with pencil/paper lately, since my home computer is apparently too slow to run both a many-person google-hangout and a drawing program at the same time. I keep trying out different ones though, so maybe one of these days I'll get something working.

I also thought I'd post the drawing below, which I did to contribute to my silly bio page on the site. So in case you ever wondered what a Dino-Evan would look like, well here you go:


So be sure to subscribe/follow/whatever to 90 Minute Comics for a variety of weekly rough and silly comics!

See You There!

  Evan

Friday, April 12, 2013

I Scream

I drew this guy for a friend of mine, since he gestated in her mind. He also happens to be the next character in the series of creepy re-imaginings of child entertainers. Hardly a series at the moment...considering how long it's been since I've posted the last one. Although I like the idea of having a couple of different series going on, just so I have some things to continually go back to. Anyway. Enough blabbering. Meet the I-Scream Man:



I'm not sure what else to say about him...I think the image says it all. There are two or three other characters I have in mind for this series. But if anyone happens to be enjoying these guys, and has ideas for more, feel free to suggest some. Maybe it'll put pressure on me to post more often...

Best,

  Evan

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Saturday Dinosaur Sketch

Hey Folks,

 It's been a while since I've posted (what else is new...) so I decided to do a dino sketch for today. I went with something I don't draw very often. So here's a sketch of Citipati (click for larger view) :




I tried to accomplish a few different things with this guy. Mostly getting away from things that seem to commonly appear in depictions of oviraptors.

I've seen a lot of artwork of oviraptors, and they always seem like a challenge. I will preface this discussion with the fact that I have seen a number of really good pieces of oviraptor art, so what follows doesn't apply to everyone. But I will say, that quite often depictions of these animals bother me for a couple of reasons.

Many times renditions of these guys end up looking like half-molted monsters. Granted, they're really freaky animals, but I feel like they could look a lot closer to an actual animal, and less like an abomination. I've also noticed a lot of people like to restore them to look like Cassowaries. And i'm not saying this because of the similarity with the crest.  I've seen renditions where color schemes are taken directly from cassowaries and applied to oviraptors; and I've seen it many times...by multitudes of different artists. The first time I saw this I thought it was clever and worked really well, but it seems to pop up again and again and has already turned into a paleoart meme of sorts.

So keeping that in mind, with this guy I tried to make him look fairly bird-like without completely overdoing it. I also wanted to get somewhere in between drab colors and extra flashy colors. It's become fashionable to get more interesting patterns and colors onto dinos these days, in thinking about sexual selection/display. I'm completely all about this, as it makes things visually interesting, but for this guy I wanted to include some features that could be used for display without going super saturated or over the top with the colors and patterns (after all, not all animals are peacocks). I went more with a colorful casque around the nostrils, and an iridescent head and neck (the idea being this would be more pronounced in the UV spectrum and would look more spectacular to an avian (or possibly dinosaurian?) eye).  I also think that a simple black and white striped pattern on the primary and tail feathers would make excellent display markings, especially in contrast to the rest of the more "drab" body integument.

So that's my thinking on this guy. I'm not entirely sure if I've ever drawn an oviraptor before. I'm by-no-means an expert on these bizarre theropods, so I'm sure there are plenty of mistakes in there. Just thought I'd take a crack at it on this Saturday night, as it seemed like an interesting problem to tackle :)

Best,

  Evan

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Meep!





...need I say more?

-Evan

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Another Edition of Sketchbook Backlogs - Part 3

And now for the last post of this little series. Monday we looked at misc. cartoons. Yesterday we looked at lots of creatures. And today we have various animals (ahem...mostly dinosaurs). Enough dilly-dallying...Here we go!

Let's start with some Mammals -


1. A Big Cat Study



2. A Capybara



3. A Hippo Squiggle



Now for the Dinos -


4-6. Brachiosaurs!





6. A Hadrosaur



 7. Ceratopsians



8. A Puffin Squiggle



9. A Parakeet Skull



10. A Maniraptoran



11-12. Tyrannosaurs




13. A Sketch Page with various Birds
(A Gator snuck in...and that Creature on the bottom-right - not dinosaurs, I'm well aware. My most sincere apologies...)



14. And one of the most amazing dinosaurs of all, the Raven




And that's all the doodles I have for you as of now! Thanks for tuning in.

Best,

  Evan

Monday, February 4, 2013

Another Edition of Sketchbook Backlogs - Part 2

Today I'm continuing on with digitizing miscellaneous things from various sketchbooks. Yesterday was an assortment of random cartoony things. Today is all creatures that just came off the top of my head during the drawing process.

Speaking of which, I guess I'll briefly describe my typical doodling approach, as it's probably not the way others go about drawing things. 7 times out of 10, when drawing I don't have any idea what I'm drawing. I just start scribbling down shapes and forms and see what I can turn them into. It's a very free form improvised approach, and I find it's a great way to experiment with different styles. Often I try to surprise myself. If I figure out early on roughly what the sketch will turn out to be, I'll often times try to steer in another direction just to force myself to think of other possibilities. Sometimes this turns out terribly, and other times it creates some very interesting results. Sometimes I'll even be halfway through a character and then suddenly see a way to change it around into something different.

Enough blabbing. Here are 12 creature drawings for you:


1. Some sort of Reptilian Apex Predator with Insect-like Mouthparts



2. This little Lizard-Thing:



3. This Unexpected Duo



4. A Knuckle-Walking Camel Beast



5. A Terror-Bird-Like Creature 



6. This (Yeah, I have no clue what it is either...)



7. An Oviraptor-Like Creature among other doodles



8. A Heavily-Armored Knuckle-Walker



9. A Griffin Bust



10. This Marsupial-like Critter



11. An Ant-Eating-Something-or-Other



12. A Mythical Feline



Tomorrow will be the last in this current series of sketchbook backlogs. The topic will be real animals (albeit some stylized ones. Oh, yeah...and a large majority of them are dinosaurs. So you've been warned).

Until the next time,

Evan

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Another Edition of Sketchbook Backlogs - Part 1

I haven't digitized any of my doodles in a long time. Not having easy access to a scanner anymore makes this sort of thing happen less often. But I figured too much time has passed, and so I spent a good amount of time today photographing various sketches from 3 or 4 different sketchbooks and notepads. Some of these sketches are a few months old but some of them are from a year ago or longer. Just never got around to putting them up.

Enough prefacing, here are 25 random little things for you! They are in no particular order.


1. A Feisty Lobster



2. A Zombie Simian 



3. Whatever this guy is:



 4. A Creepy Cat and an Insect-in-a-Coat



5. A Crazy Dude



6. A Sloth in a Hat being attacked by a Robot



7. Earl the Walrus



8. Some sort of Raccoon-like Critter



9. THE LOBSTER-MAN



10. Another Sloth



11. Little Dudes having a Blast on a Cliff



12. Some Cartoony Muscular Dudes



13. This Guy:



14. A Boy and his Hadrosaur



15. This Alien Guy:



16. Curious Bignosington



17. A Happy Dino



18. A Gremlin Dude



19. A Scared Pooch



20. A Cocky Budgie



21. A Penguin



22. A Page from a notebook featuring an old dude, a mudskipper, and others



23. An Angry Critter



24. A Pigeon and a Salamander



25. A Horrendous Eight-Armed Cat Thing




That was just the first wave. The next wave is going to be all creatures. Stay Tuned!

Best,

  Evan