Archive for the 'Pucker and Bloat' Category

Toonsday: Pucker and Bloat #4, Squidmas Pickle

Published
by
Jason
on December 9, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 1 Comment
Pucker and Bloat web comic by Jason Robertshaw [500x324, 136K]
Pucker and Bloat #4, Squidmas Pickle. © Jason Robertshaw


Hi ho, the Pucker and the Bloat return with Seasons Greetings. But as you can see, the War on Squidmas continues even into the briny deeps. But Pucker has done his ecumenical best to cheer his pal Bloat and so too, whether you are a Pastafarian or Spewish, celebrate Squidmass, Cephalopodmass or Fishmess, here’s hoping for good things for you and yours in the coming years. May all your growth rings be bright. Happy Holothuridays!

Cephalopod Evacuation Route

Published
by
Jason
on August 19, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 1 Comment
Blue road signed with a stylized octopus and the words CEPHALOPOD ROUTE and a downward pointing arrow [284x521, 44K]
Cephalopod Evacuation Route, © Jason Robertshaw


Another Illustrator exercise inspired by this sign. Because cephalopods need to know where to go when it rains too.
 

Bloated

Published
by
Jason
on August 12, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 0 Comments
green, cartoon sea cucumber [500x165, 68K]
Bloated, © Jason Robertshaw


My original working files for Pucker and Bloat are stuck on a dead hard drive. So, I am recreating the characters. This is Bloat, the sea cucumber. That’s not a curly tail coming out of his butt either.
 

Doodlebug #1

Published
by
Jason
on August 6, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 0 Comments
Seven 7-sided orange stars will purple drops forming a circle [450x450, 44K]
Doodlebug #1, © Jason Robertshaw


Just messing around in Illustrator, working with a seven-sided figure.
 

Toonsday: Super Happy Funtopus

Published
by
Jason
on July 29, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 0 Comments
[400x400, 24K]
Super Happy Funtopus


I came across a short Illustrator tutorial at Vectortuts.com that shows the steps for making a Super Happy Octopus Character. Some of the steps were missing, but it was a fun tutorial and I finally learned how to make one of those ubiquitous starburst effects. Expect me to abuse that technique liberally in the future. :D

The original vector file I made is more vivid than the the image reproduced here. I still need to figure out why the gamma changes when moving from Illustrator to Photoshop to the Web. I expect there are difference between Mac and PC displays too.

Pucker and Bloat

This marks the return of my Pucker and Bloat feature where I will share some of my Illustrator and Photoshop doodlings. The feature derives its name from one of the distortion filters in these programs. Pucker and Bloat are also the names of two sea creatures appearing in a Web comic I am starting.

Unfortunately, the external hard drive that housed my original art work for those characters decided to die. :( I don’t mind recreating them, but having those files would have made it easier to turn out some new panels sooner.
 

Toonsday: Pucker & Bloat #3, Nerviscerate

Published
by
Jason
on April 1, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 0 Comments
Pucker and Bloat web comic by Jason Robertshaw [450x152, 32K]
Pucker and Bloat #3, Nerviscerate. © Jason Robertshaw


Whatever side you take in the Invertebrate Wars, both contenders have some interesting defense strategies. On the one side, many octopus and other cephalopods have the ability to eject an ink cloud to confuse their would-be predators (this should technically be coming out of Pucker’s funnel). I’ve also heard some researchers suggest that the volume and shape of the ink cloud is meant to mimic the departing cephalopod. Maybe it smells like the cephalopod too, thereby overwhelming two senses.

Sea cucumbers take a much different strategy. When they are disturbed, they can extrude sticky filaments called cuvierian tubules. It’s a rather extreme defense mechanism that requires the sea cucumber to tear a hole in its gut and expel the filaments through the new opening. You can see a short video of the process here. I am somewhat ambivalent about linking to it, since it demonstrates some rather poor behavior on the part of the divers. In fact, in the tradition of coining new Internet eponyms, I want to propose a new one for this occasion. When someone harasses marine life and it turns around to bite them in the arse (or hand, or nose or foot), that person has been MacPhersoned (with apologies to Rick, but he has a knack for pointing out these occurrences). It’s just too bad this sea cucumber can’t MacPherson these divers severely. And if the sea cucumber gets really stressed, it may even eject some of its internal organs as well. I’ve never seen that happen myself, but here’s a picture of what it looks like. Fortunately, the little bloaters are resilient and can rapidly regenerate this lost tissue. Indeed, I’ve read that they might do this intentionally as a way of clearing their system of parasites.

Next week: More carap about sea cucumbers

Toonsday: Pucker & Bloat #2, Outvertebrates

Published
by
Jason
on March 25, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 1 Comment
Pucker and Blat web comic by Jason Robertshaw [425x291, 64K]
Pucker and Bloat #2, Outvertebrates. © Jason Robertshaw


Well, with any luck, I’ll be able to bring you a regular toon each Tuesday. At least, as long as the ideas keep surfacing. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

This one goes out to Kevin Z. and his unremitting quest against the use of paraphyletic nomenclature. Of course, what folks refer to when they say jellyfish are really cnidarians and starfish are echinoderms. There is really nothing fishy about them. A more proper term would be sea jellies and sea stars.

Next week: Evisceration!

Pucker & Bloat #1: Smart Blast vs. Mouth Hole

Published
by
Jason
on March 21, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 4 Comments
Pucker and Blat web comic by Jason Robertshaw [325x250, 40K]
Pucker and Bloat #1A, PG version. Click here for profanity. © Jason Robertshaw


When we last left Pucker, we were missing the other star on the marquee of my nascent Web comic. But given the recent kerfuffle over on the Science Blogs over the merits of molluscs versus echinoderms, it seemed natural to settle on a sea cucumber as the best choice to play the sparring role. So there you have it folks, it’s decided: Pucker is an octopus and Bloat will be a sea cucumber.

But what’s the real separation in this spineless schism? What pulls these two poles apart? Why can’t we all swim along? As it turns out, the differences are primordial and profound.

In the very beginning, all animal embryos look very much the same, whether they are snails or sea stars. But once they get around a hundred cells thick, the hollow blob starts to split, forming a hole at one end. This opening, called a blastopore, is important and will ultimately form part of the digestive system of the animal. In a group called the protostomes, this opening forms the mouth. Molluscs and many other invertebrates start life out this way, mouth first. However, in a group called the deuterostomes, this first opening forms the anus. Sea stars, sea cucumbers and sea urchins do it this way, as well as vertebrates, including humans. We start life out butt first.

So it should now be obvious which end these two spatting sides are speaking out of. And my first comic is a tribute to these fundamental differences. It’s a little rough and rude (there are two versions, PG and PG-13). But now that I have these two characters to play with, I need something more for them to say. So if you have a bio joke or aquatic anecdote that lends itself to illustration, let me know. I need ideas. Feed me.

Team Sticky, for the Echinoderms

Team Mucky, for the Molluscs

Pucker and Bloat

Published
by
Jason
on March 19, 2008
in Pucker and Bloat
. 4 Comments
Pucker, the Cephalopodcas mascot [png, 200x225, 104K]
I’d like to introduce you to the Cephalopodcast mascot. His name is Pucker. He’s got suckers.

I am starting a new series on this blog called Pucker and Bloat. It’s named after one of the distortion filters available in Adobe Illustrator and I think it sounds pretty funny. It will feature postings based on my dawdling doodles made with this new tool. And since Illustrator is vector-based*, it should be possible for me to later animate the images in another program I want to work with, namely Flash.

Pucker and Bloat also sounds like a good name for a cartoon, don’t you think? So I am going to use that as a springboard to guide my studies. And with that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to the first character, Pucker. He might look familiar. In fact, it’s sketched from the Cephalopodcast mascot, who now officially has a name. This is not the final version. I am going to keep working on it. But in the meantime, I have to come up with a second character called Bloat. That sure sounds like the name of a blowfish to me. But what do you think? What marine creature would be friends with Pucker and have a name like Bloat?

Besides making learning fun for me and amusing for you (I hope), my other goal is to end up with a series of marine life clipart images. If this works, I’ll make them available under a Creative Commons license for use by educators.

So are any of you illustrators? Any one using Illustrator? What resources are your favorites? I am looking for tutorials and sources of inspiration. Here’s some of my favorites:

*Graphics programs basically come in two varieties, raster- or vector-based. Raster programs like Photoshop represent an image pixel by pixel. Because of this, they can produce painterly effects but the images are difficult to scale. Vector programs create images as a series of lines and polygons that can easily be scaled because they are fundamentally just mathematical expressions. It’s always reminded me of the wave/particle duality of physics.