Yetis

Here's a little morning warm-up. Had to do something to shake the cobwebs off this place.

Sand Sling

 Sand Sling was a mini-game developed for McGraw Hill's FLEX Literacy program. The idea here is to teach contractions through a fun, carnival-like attraction where the player selects an answer printed on a sandbag. The player then tosses their chosen sandbag at the robotic dinosaur, who will gladly gobble up correct answers, but he gets very angry and won't even open his mouth for incorrect choices.

Clearly not the right choice

He LOVES it!

This is an image for the end screen when your score gets tallied

Professor Jasper P. Lillyfoot

Years ago I had a conversation with a buddy of mine about the type of books we would write if we were authors. I decided that I would write Sherlock Holmes novels with monsters and robots that would be ridiculous and probably awful. I did a quick sketch of the main character of the novels while we were talking, and it sat in my sketchbook for a few years.

 Eventually I decided to dig it out and do a full blown cover illustration for a book in the imaginary series. So this is the cover to Professor Jasper P. Lillyfoot in The Inexplicable Return of Cthulhu Jr.

Rebranding and Relaunching

As you may have noticed, the blog is looking a little different these days. This is all part of a big refresh to my branding and website. All of this was made possible thanks to a lot of hard work and encouragement on the part of the lovely Rachel Dangerfield.

So bop on over to Davearmstrongart.com and let me know what you think of the new digs!

Rumors

The topic of this week's Weekly Design Challenge was "Rumors."

I've been living in apartments for the past 7 or so years of my life, and I'm pretty confident this is what every single complex is like. I know I'm guilty to eavesdropping on my older, Romanian neighbors when they used to argue for hours about whether or not the husband would wear a coat when it was cold outside.
I wonder if he ever wound up putting that coat on...

Dionysus

This week's Weekly Design Challenge topic was God/Gods/Religion, so I chose to do an image of Dionysus, the greek god of wine.
My research shows that he was typically shown as a thin, feminine man-child, and not a purple, obese jackass. Clearly, I made the right choice.

Gallery of Mo

This is a piece I did for Movember's Gallery of Mo. It's a very cool group who ask for people to donate money and a photo of themselves, and in return, an artist of their choosing volunteers to use the photo as reference and create a custom portrait featuring the addition of a handsome mustache. So the donator gets a nice piece of art, and their money goes toward fighting prostate cancer. It's a great group of people, working for a great cause and keeping a really fun, upbeat attitude about it.

I did this piece for their 2012 gallery. I just recently found it in my files and decided to touch it up. You can check out the organization and other portraits here: http://www.galleryofmo.co.uk/

Bizzaro

Our weekly design challenge this week was "Movies currently in theaters." I decided to go with Man of Steel but slowly started drawing Bizzaro instead. Bizzaro is a character I know next to nothing about other than he's a gray, zombie looking version of Superman who talks like an idiot and there was a Seinfeld episode based on the concept of Bizzaro World. So I hope comic fans will forgive me if there are glaring inaccuracies with the character.
Anyway, it was a fun excuse to play around with the polygonal lasso tool in photoshop.

I guess it's also fair to note that I don't think Bizzaro has anything to do with the Man of Steel film... so... sorry about that?

iPhone Monster Game

About a year ago, I did some concept work for a group of guys who were developing an iPhone game that had the players battling lil monsters against their friends. The project didn't wind up going very far, but here's some of the concept art I did based on two of their character descriptions. One was a cute mummy character name Rabba that would use his bandages as weapons, and the other was a flying fire turtle named Zarok.

Rabba

Zarok

Early game screen concept

This was really fun work, and I'm sorry that it didn't wind up going anywhere.

Wolvie Sketch

I did a quick sketch of this guy's head a while ago and decided to fill out his body. I personally like my Wolverines a little squatty and broad. In my mind, the guy should look like a hard drinkin' brawler (fulla meat n' grit) and a little less thin and agile. Quick, powerful arm swipes? Sure. But I don't imagine a guy with metal bones sprinting or doing backflips or anything like that.

Fire-Eater Sketch

How do you eat fire without singeing your mustache?

I barely blog at all anymore. Which I would love to say is because I've been busy firing brilliance onto canvases but I'm afraid it's the opposite. This year I haven't been posting much because I haven't been doing many finished pieces in my free-time. The most frustrating thing about it is I'm not really sure why.
I've started a lot of them. Trust me, there are probably 20 projects that are started but a fairly busy schedule has kept me from going back and finishing them up. Also, posting finished pieces online is somehow strangely difficult for me to do. Which is, of course, ridiculous. It's just a few clicks and writing a hilarious fart joke under the image. I'm sure there are a lot of excuses for what I've been doing instead of focusing on/posting artwork, but excuses are just excuses and they are UNACCEPTABLE!

Anyway, this lil sketch is hopefully a step in the right direction. Cracking my knuckles, knocking the cobwebs from my stylus and producing (and maybe actually posting) some new artwork. I'm making a genuine effort to get back in the game. I hope to see you all back here soon. I promise to bring fresh goodies and hopefully some less self-consumed ramblings.
You feel free to bring some oreos.

Some Dude

This is just the result of messing around with some new pens.

This guy is sitting across the bar from you and has been drinking bottom shelf bourbon since 2:30pm. He wants you to know that your butt is "bitchin'."

Animation Styles

Here's a couple of style concepts for a series of science animations we did at work. These two never wound up materializing into anything but I still think they're pretty fun considering the tight time-frame we had to produce them. I might wind up doing something with the boy in the second picture simply because I named his scout troop "the mustard scouts" and I like that name too much to let it go unused.

Spaceman

I was looking through an old sketchbook and found a doodle of a spaceman from a few years back. I touched him up and now he's here, being really, really bad at his job.

Quail of Queensberry

This week's design challenge at work was the word "flight." Some birds fly with their wings, but this quail thinks that's sooo uncivilized.

Macho Man!

This week's design challenge was the word "Macho."

Girl Sketch

I almost never draw women. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I don't think they're typically as goofy looking as guys? Is that sexist? Anyway, I'm going to start making an effort to draw them more. Maybe years from now I'll actually get good at it. Until then, there's this lady drinking some coffee.

Also [insert post about a new year's resolution to post on the blog more].