Fan Art on Parade!

Hello, again!

In today's post, I'm going to showcase some of the fan arts I've done over the years. All of these you can find on my deviantART page.


Above is my very first drawing of Craig McCracken's popular characters, the Powerpuff Girls! I drew this on August 4, 2000. Colored in Photoshop.

This is an illustration of Ultraman, the famous Japanese superhero, that I did in Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash. Intended to be pop-art type. Dated November 17, 2005.

This is my interpretation of the characters from my friend Mike Dent's awesome podcast, R5 Central. Done at Mike's encouragement, I did this as an experimental Stephen Silver-style piece. Mike Dent himself is on the right, with android girls Ai (blue, middle) and Ami (red, right). Colored with Photoshop, and dated January 27, 2007.


Here is one of two illustrations I've done for my favorite superhero, Ultra Seven, for his 40th Anniversary. This one was inked chiefly with ink & brush, and colored with gouache and colored pencils. Dated April 17, 2007.

Ultra Seven, produced by Tsuburaya Productions, premiered on Tokyo Broadcast System in Japan on October 1, 1967, and ended on September 8, 1968, with a total of 49 episode (only 48 are available, as Episode 12, "From Another Planet with Love," was banned since 1970). Actually created as an alternate version of Ultraman (Tsuburaya; 1966), both shows were officially linked when the respective characters appeared in Return of Ultraman (Tsuburaya; 1971), and was also supposed to be the final Ultra Series (but was the last produced by creator Eiji Tsuburaya). Seven has perhaps the best design of any of the Ultra-beings, IMHO, and has even more personality than his predecessor in many respects. Some may remember the character and his series from its 1975 English-dubbed broadcast in Hawaii (the first series to be dubbed there), and others from a second version dubbed in Canada in 1985 by Cinar; this would be broadcast in early February of 1994 on Turner Network Television (TNT), until around 1999.

The second illustration can be seen after a few others here...

Above is Fanny Robinson from Disney's Meet the Robinsons (Disney; 2007), which I haven't seen fully, but I am extremely impressed with the character designs! I used a Meet the Robinsons storybook for reference while I drew this at Borders, dated May 18, 2007. Colored in Photoshop.
Above is Tack the Cobbler, one of the two titular protagonists from Richard Williams' ill-fated masterpiece, The Thief and the Cobbler. Using Williams' model sheets for reference, I drew with Micron pens, and colored it in Photoshop. This was dated June 4, 2007.

Since the mid 60s, Williams spent 26 years working on this film, which was threatened by the impending release of Aladdin (Disney; 1992), which was closely inspired by this film. The resulting films, The Princess and the Cobbler, was somewhat closer to the Richard Williams cut, despite the devastatingly awful songs and mostly bad new animation added, while Miramax's Arabian Knight (known as The Thief and the Cobbler in its video release) is absolutely unwatchable. Understandably, Williams apparently disowns the film after its debacle. Regardless, I recommend watching either the original Williams workprint, or Garret Gilchrist's excellent fan-made "Recobbled Cut" DVD.

Tack was completely silent (he and the titular Thief were essentially silent movie characters in a movie full of sound), until the very end (when he says the film's final line), where he would've been voiced by Sean Connery!

Below is the "suntanned" variation of Tack, from later in the film (after traveling in the desert).

Here is the adorable Abby Archer, the heroine from the Canadian cartoon series, Grossology (Nelvana; 2006), loosely based on Sylvia Branzei's children's books of the same name. This series was done by the same animation/design team as Nelvana's earlier hit, 6teen, and done with the same animation software (ToonBoom Harmony/Digital Pro). Not surprisingly, this piece is currently also my most popular work on deviantART, probably because I used reference material (wallpapers) to remain as faithful to the show's look as possible. Painstakingly illustrated in Flash, and dated July 23, 2007.

My second Abby piece, a portrait drawn with colored pencils (traced over a pencil drawing), done on August 11, 2007.
This is the aforementioned second drawing of Ultra Seven, which was done in time for his 40th Anniversary on October 1, 2007. Done with colored pencils over a pencil drawing. Impressive, if a little uneven (the chest is flat, for example). I had used my old Bandai figure of Ultra Seven as a reference for this illustration.

This is my fan art of Jill Thompson's acclaimed character, Scary Godmother. Created in 1997 as a children's storybook/comic hybrid, she and her companions have had several storybook sequels, a comic-book series, and two awesome TV specials (animated in Canada by Mainframe, now Rainmaker). Thompson has said she wants to do more stories soon, and I look forward to it! I did this with colored pencils over a pencil sketch on Halloween of 2007.

This is a fanart I did of Grover from Sesame Street while I was on vacation in the Outer Banks in North Carolina, dated January 4, 2008. I'm a huge fan of classic Sesame Street, as you can already tell. I attempted to draw in the same style as Michael Smollin's illustrations for the excellent 1971 Sesame Street storybook, The Monster at the End of This Book.

This is an illustration I did of Lucy Lamb, from the Dream Pets collection, dated January 3, 2009, while I was on vacation in the Outer Banks. Having picked up this first Dream Pet for my collection the previous day, I did this life drawing first in a pencil sketch, and then tracing over it with colored pencils. This was a very beautiful result. I had become a big fan of Dakin's Dream Pets (which originated in Japan in the late 50s!) the previous year, for their appealing vintage designs, and would love to do more fan art of them.

This is my illustration of the titular heroine of Coraline (Focus/Laika; 2009), based upon Neil Gaiman's acclaimed book. This was conveniently finished on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2009, about a week after I saw the film in theaters. I had first done a pencil sketch of Coraline and the Cat (done the previous night), which I later traced over in Photoshop... with a mouse! I had wanted a painterly look for this drawing (experimenting with some of Photoshop's paint features), and it was only a few months before I got my current tablet, so you can tell this drawing took quite a bit of effort to do with a mouse, especially the background. Coraline's house, the Pink Palace Apartments, took several hours to draw, upon using a photo for reference (making this one of the more complex illustrations done with a mouse)!

Here is my first-ever fan art of another top favorite superhero of mine, Underdog! Yes, I've been an Underdog fan my whole life, and I had not drawn him until this try, dated November 19, 2009, drawn with a Micron brush pen (using a video cover for reference). This was done in celebration of Underdog's 45th Anniversary. (The Underdog Show premiered on October 3, 1964.) As some have noted, it looks a little bit off (Underdog looks slightly taller than he should), but I'm proud to have finally done an Underdog drawing, and would love to try doing more in the future! Colored in Photoshop.

Lastly, one of my latest published pieces, a fan art of Vanya Hargreeves, AKA: The White Violin, the tragic villainess/antiheroine of Gerard Way's comic-book, The Umbrella Academy (published by Dark Horse). She is my favorite character from the comic by far, especially for her simple yet beautiful design, and her heartbreaking backstory. The box/figurine set for the first volume, The Apocalypse Suite (which I eventually got) was exactly what got me interested in the series. I eagerly anticipate to see how Vanya develops in future volumes! This was inked with with Micron pens (brush, .05, and .005), and colored in Photoshop.

In my next post, the first in a series of fan arts from one of my biggest favorite cartoon shows, The Mighty B!

Godzilla Fanart - Old and New

Godzilla is my all-time favorite character ever (along with Snoopy), and one of my greatest inspirations. More than the avatar of atomic destruction he started as, children became connected to the monster for his iconic, dinosaurian likeness, great strength, and towering size. Some adults even liked him for his personality. So Godzilla eventually became a Bettelheimian (even Nietzschean) antihero throughout the 60s, and an anthropomorphic superhero in the 70s. This was the Godzilla I grew up with; the Godzilla that evolved into a hero, and was more developed than even the memorable human characters he shared the spotlight with.

An yet ironically, until now, I had a very difficult time drawing him the way I wanted!

You'll have seen some of my Godzilla fanart early in this blog, whereas you also saw them on my deviantART site. Nevertheless, I'll share them on this blog.

Some of these date back as far as 10 years ago.

This undated piece from 2000 was my earliest attempt at drawing the Mire-Goji (the incarnation from Godzilla 2000: Millennium), which I got the Bandai figure for (along with Orga) on Christmas Day of 1999. I drew this using the Godzilla figure as a model.

This one was, I believe, my first drawing of 2002, while at the Outer Banks. I like this one a little better.

Drawn May 8th, 2002, I had heard of a new Mechagodzilla film in the works! That film, ultimately, was Godzilla X Mechagodzilla. Before any of us saw any pictures, I did my own concept art of the monster, called Mechagodzilla Omega. This would be a more "organic" version of Mechagodzilla (and would be a HAL-9000-like AI computer that would rebuild itself until it became more "real" and very much like Godzilla himself, as seen above). I showed this drawing to some friends at Asian Fantasy Film Expo 2002 (my personal favorite convention ever), and they were impressed.

This pic, drawn on January 3rd, 2003 (again, while in the Outer Banks), was my own variation of the Red Ronin, the Super Robot-style giant robot seen in Marvel's Godzilla comics, as a substitute for the Shogun Warriors, like Great Mazinger (Mazinga), Getter Robo G (Dragun), and Raideen (Raydeen). This version combines the look of Mazinger Z and ComBattler V (called Combattra in Shogun Warriors), with any giant robot from older Super Sentai shows, like Battle Fever Robo from Battle Fever J. I'd like to do this design again, in a more refined way!

Looking back at this drawing, it looks really strange. But I had to include it. Know why? I drew this while at Borders on November 3rd, 2004 (Godzilla's 50th Anniversary)! This drawing looked rather rushed, compared to the others above. I emulated the "50th Anniversary" emblem, made for Godzilla Final Wars (the 50th Anniversary film).

I did another Godzilla drawing, which I'll share for another post (because it involves something I want to share later). Right now, I want to share my most recent one...

I drew the following on New Year's Eve of last year (not the last drawing of 2009, though)...
Although what few Godzilla art I did had improved up to this point, this drawing is where I really schooled myself. The above drawing is a personalized basic study of the head of the Shodai-Goji (from the original 1954 Godzilla). This is the first case where I did a how-to-draw lesson on someone else's character! I'll get to doing the rest of the body at some point. Otherwise, I'm much more satisfied with the way I drew Godzilla's head/face in this study!

More fanart of other characters in the next post.