Tag Archive for 'comics'

CephaLOLpod: Elder Ones

Published
by
Jason
on November 12, 2008
in Life Oddquatic
. 5 Comments


The Interwebs are brimming with reports from The Census of Marine Life about cephalopod ancestors mucking about around Antarctica. They believe that the shallow-water cephalopod, Megaleledone setebos, is an evolutionary link to many of the world’s other deep-sea octopuses. The CoML press release was just released, but judging from the pub date of the Shrapnel cartoon above (February 21, 2008), Peter Barbyshire must have had an inkling of what was to come.

The census continues through 2010, and the CoML Web site is a evolving wealth of information. But as Sarah notes, while they are deep in the midst of discovery, it make take some time to make it all classroom friendly.

Of course, cephalopods have a lineage that goes much farther back than Megaleledone setebos. Christopher Taylor recently posted a couple of nice entries on cephalopod early evolution:

Toonsday: CephaLOLpod at Odd-fish.net

Published
by
Jason
on October 28, 2008
in 6 CephaLOLpod
. 3 Comments
Cartoon of a blowfish and an octopus sitting at a bar [273x285, 36K]
Panel 1 from the Barfly,© Phillip Blackman, odd-fish.net

You remember that Web comic I tried to start a couple of times? Well, if I had talent and more perseverance it would still not be half as good as Odd-fish, a comic by Phillip Blackman starring an octopus named Lovecraft and a pufferfish named Howard.

The funny thing is, when I thought about starting Pucker & Bloat, I originally considered using an octopus and a blowfish as the main characters. Guess that’s just proof that odd minds sink alike.

Below are a few of my favorite Odd-Fish so far. Start printing them out to add to you cubicle.

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.
 

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.