I Drew Some Friends Because I Love Them Also I Wanted Their Money

I drew some friends. Now I'm going to show them to you, because you and I are also friends. Actually you're just a faceless section of the internet and I'm nothing to you, but we're both human so let's try to make a connection.

This is Johnny Chiodini. He's the cantankerous bearded wanker (his words) that used to present various shows for Gamespot, but he left to pursue a career in not-being-sworn-at-by-angry-gamers. Which is a shame because it would've provided me with a good name-drop. "I know someone on the internet." How many people can say that? Still, his name is so hard to pronounce I kind of drop it anyway. Apparently it helps if you do it phonetically: jon-ee. That's not so hard I suppose.

This is Wiggy. She's an artist too, so I can link you to her own art page like so. Please don't go anywhere just yet though, I've got lots of good stuff to say about MY drawing first. It's, uh, well as you can see there's, uh... hair. Red hair. Hand. Posing all like. Face? Eyes... Next.

Now when my third friend asked me to draw him, he wanted specific focus on his tattoo. But the problem is, the tattoo already exists as a drawing. I didn't think I could do any better than the thing that was already on his arm. So I decided to do something tattoos can't do, and make it 'come to life'.

Okay, now you can go.

Hugging Dudes

I drew this years ago. I coloured it last year. I wanted to share it but wanted to do it at a good time. This month, my country legalised same-sex marriage. So now seems like a good time.

Zelda Collab: Water Tektite

This is a Water Tektite! My second entry to Dan Jones' Zelda collaboration, multiple artists drawing every monster in the Zleda games. I wasn't planning on doing two, but there are 270 monsters on his list so he had some spare. "No one wants this little guy..." he tweeted, so I nobly stepped in. I nobly stepped in to draw something I knew he would retweet to his 1000+ followers, getting me some free publicity. 'cos I'm noble.

There really wasn't much to draw. I Googled 'water Tektite' and all the pictures were of of vicious looking one-eyed bug monsters. They all looked cool, but which one was the one I was meant to draw? 'cos apparently these were just normal Tektites, someone else was drawing that. Mine was specifically water.

Eventually, on a Zelda website, I found some images. Tiny, pixelated images. I couldn't figure them out, so I was starting to worry. I was collaborating with hundreds of other artists here, so I wanted to do a good job. Thankfully, the internet is full of nerds. So I was able to find a video on YouTube of someone playing the newer Zelda game 'Link Between Worlds' where the website said some water Tektites show up, and there they were. Cute, colourful little bugs! Not quite the bug monsters I found earlier. These ones didn't even have ONE eye.

Seeing as there weren't much to the design I decided to give the critter as much energy as I could, have him really lean in to his attack and throwing up water. Then I made the colours as bright as I could without burning my eyes. Maybe that's what happened to theirs.

Zelda Collab: Desbreko

This is Desbreko! My entry for the Zelda collab! Which is a collaboration put together by Dan Jones, to have every single enemy from The Legend of Zelda drawn by a different artist. I looked at the list of enemies that hadn't been drawn yet, Googled their names, and picked the coolest one. It was either this toothy skeleton fish or 'Dexivine', which is basically just a vine...

Pencil Drawing

To Russia With Love

I was originally going to draw Vladimir Putin getting bummed.

With the Russian president creating laws against homosexuals, the first temptation is obviously to draw sodomy with his face on it. But I hate his face. And sodomy is great. The other thing is, it felt provocative. You see, in my country same-sex marriage has been legalised. In Russia, homosexuals are beaten on the street. I'm safe from that violence in my country, so provoking facists with an illustrative 'fuck you', quite literally, seemed... well I thought I could do better.

So instead I decide to draw something patriotic. Something loving. 'cos that's really the point.

Infamous Comic #39

Here's the latest installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! The group finally find out why Ant is so insistent on them having a gang name, and what it means for them. Click here to read!

Mario Bothers 6

I thought I had drawn all the bad guys from the first Mario game. I relaxed, felt safe in victory, I grew plump and complacent. But I had missed one. The realisation struck  me like a hammer. I mean, it didn't really. I just needed a verbal link to the image.

I can't decide which of the bad guys in Mario made me more fearful as kid. Lakitu or the Hammer Bros. Lakitu rained enemies on the player but you could at least flee through the level. Hammer Bros would block your path. You had to wait for an opening in their attack or defeat them, which wasn't easy as their movements didn't seem to have a pattern. There were usually two of them, jumping between a pair of platforms, whilst throwing an erratic barrage of hammers, waiting for you to come forward.

And there was one moment I had forgotten. Or perhaps blocked from memory. If you hung around too long, waiting for the right moment to avoid or kill... they'd start moving towards you. I can't remember who was playing at the time when this first happened to me. A friend, a family member or myself. I just remember the screaming.