Waddle, Waddle, Waddle

This is more what I was going for in that first drawing. Something that looked big and slow. Something that didn't care for what time it was. Of course, now I'm trying to make this sound more profound and artistic than perhaps it is. In truth, this came from shapes in the tile of my shower. Well, those shapes and My Neighbor Totoro, admittedly. My only regret is that I forgot the vegetables in his satchel. I have an image of the original in pencil, albeit a bad image, so maybe in the future I'll use that and make a digital copy.

But for now, that's that.

Here's some older drawings I did a few months ago, probably around June or July, for a home-brew D&D setting I was writing -- and am still writing here and there. There aren't that many all together, a random spear and riding beast, a sketch of an important landmark, a costume sketch, a map, and then these. These sketches are by far my favorite out of all of them.

Fun fact: The head on the bottom right was inspired by my pencil sharpener.

On the Drawing Board (get it?) for Dec. 2010

Not that long ago, aimlessly browsing Wikipedia -- as you do -- through the "Random Article" button, I came across... well I can't remember what the first article was, actually -- as you do. All I know is that I frantically wanted to remember the name of a bizarre variant of the Messershmitt Bf 109 that I found through IL-2 Sturmovik.

Bizarre how, you ask? It was a version built in the same vein as the American P-82 -- which was basically two P-51 Mustangs stuck together -- that was two Bf 109 airframes attached through one shared center wing. Naturally, this made me think of perhaps my favorite aircraft that came out of the 40s, the P-38 Lightning. While browsing the article for the P-38, having since abandoned the search for the Bf 109 variant, I came across an interesting designation that I'd never seen before: "Northrop P-61 Black Widow." Suffering from acute WikiADD, I of course followed the link and found a plane with an appearance that immediately gripped me, somehow.

I don't know what it is about it. The glass canopy in the aft, the twin booms not unlike those in the P-38, the double canopy in the fore, or the appearance of a remotely controlled turret on a plane so small, even just the shape of the main fuselage. Part of it must stem from my fascination with helicopters and that except for the elongated nose, the double canopy in the front reminds me of something you'd see in one (like in the Russian Hind).

Needless to say, I desperately want to emulate the plane's design, but in something not simply an aircraft. My first inclination is to morph it into something that would operate in space in some sci-fi setting. The challenge here comes from wanting to do it in such a way that it would appear to be a craft purpose-built for combat outside atmosphere -- meaning no airfoils, wings, or pointless control surfaces -- but without destroying it's original aesthetic. I'm not sure how I'll pull this off, but I'm looking forward to trying.

Rough snapshot of the most recent thing I’ve done (and the first full item to end up in these new notebooks!). It’s not quite what I wanted it to end up as, so I’m looking at it as a first draft or maybe just a first concept. It's inked mainly because I wanted to play with the pens I got for (early) Christmas.

Drawn and colored Dec 22, 2010.