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Date Completed: February 25, 2004
It's Captain Cybertron! It's concept art. More to come on this guy. Original Size: 3" x 3" Materials Used: Pencils, pen and ink |
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Date Completed: February 23-24, 2004
Not everyone seemed happy with Zydeco and Gig (left, top) taking out their frustrations on piggies, so now it's giant slugs. I figure people won't mind with the slugs, so much. The recently-released game Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles inspired a re-working of an old concept of mine: A sentient crystal life form which uses a mechanical body to move around in. I know, not exacly original, but it's got a slightly different spin in a science/fantasy setting. Anyway, this little guy (bottom, left) is powered by a steam engine built into his backpack. The Lilty design aspects are pretty obvious, but I guess I can get away with it, since this shape of character isn't exactly foreign to my work. The other two pieces are sticky drawings of scenarios in dodge-ball games. For some reason, I just like drawing the little players whacking each others with the dodge ball. 
Original Size: 3" x 3" Materials Used: Pencils, pen and ink |
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Dates Completed: April, 2003 and May 31, 2003
Two conspicuously small drawings I've done. The one with the boy and the snowball was done on a piece of notepaper, while the picture of the boy in dragon armor was done on a paper napkin-ring from California Pizza Kitchen. I scanned these pictures next to a US quarter-dollar coin, to give an idea of their actual size. Original Size: (see full images for scale) Materials Used: Pen and ink |
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Date Completed: April 3 , 2003
Another triple-dose of Cyber Bee! This brand-new three-panel series is a sort of mini-adventure, showing Cyber Bee pursued by some evil-eyed bug bots, his triumphant appearance in the spotlight, and getting down to spinning the tunes. Special thanks to members of the Gaia online community in the art forum for goading me into doing some more pictures with this character! Original Size: (3" x 3") Materials Used: pens, pencil, highlighters |
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Date Completed: Early April, 2003
This piece was inspired by a work by a fellow member of the Gaia online community, named Mikagami. This character gave me an interesting idea to play with: A dragon-like symbiote living inside a human being who would ooze out of his skin and envelope him, in parts or inside a great big dragon body. I also used this as an excuse to play with coloring and smudging and shading with pencil. You can see the original picture by Mikagami here. Original Size: (3" x 3") Materials Used: pencil, pen and ink |
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Date Completed: March 26, 2003
This tryptich is based on the lyric "Break down with Chiu and me/Get bad with Cyber Bee". The song is called "Hot Limit", by John Desire. It is a song sung in English by someone who has only the faintest grasp of English pronounciation, and no concept of English inflection. This makes it nearly impossible to understand most of the lyrics. Thankfully, an amateur animator named Alex Chiu created a music video to this song. Thus, "Hot Limit" became famous as the song to "We Drink Ritalin!", which is what it sounds like Mr. Desire is actually saying. I had doodled a little sketch of Cyber Bee the DJ (now long lost), and was inspired to do a couple of better pictures of him, by a similar picture by an artist named Locke at the Gaia Online community. Original Size: (3" x 5") Materials Used: pens, pencil, highlighters |
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Date Completed: March 4, 2003
This is a sticky drawing of Zydeco and Gig in a pose made famous (at least in fantasy circles) by certain Dragonlance illustrations. I also did a version of this picture in color, with frame, which incorporates certain elements from the Frames designs I've done in the last couple months. Original Size: (1" x 2") Materials Used: pen and ink |
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Date Completed: January 31, 2003
A small concept sketch of one of Zydeco's small helper-bots. Original Size: (1" x 2") Materials Used: pen and ink |
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Date Completed: January 23, 2003
A sticky drawing of Zydeco, wearing a cape and dashing with his energy-bladed sword in hand. I want to include Zydeco and Gig (his dragon mount) together in situations as much as possible, since they share a bond much like dragons and their riders in Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. However, since I was working with two-inch sticky-notes, I couldn't quite fit them both in the same picture. However, I plan to merge these two into a single full-color drawing soon. Original Size: (1" x 2") Materials Used: pen and ink, highlighters |
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Date Completed: January 15, 2003
The fifteenth of January, 2003 was a very productive day for me. I simply call this group "the January 15 series." They are shown in the order I drew them. The Chocobo Sentinels are basically different ideas for costumes for the Chocobo Princess character (or other chocobo-themed heroines). The male fighter represents a couple ideas I wanted to try with armor and a sword design I thought up. The caped woman in red, shown with chains, is a character in a comic book hero style with the working name Riding Hood. Original Sizes: (2.5" x 1.5") Materials Used: pen and ink, highlighters |
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Date Completed: January 8, 2004
These two pieces feature characters from my the pre-Cyberpumpkin era; Scarlet Poppy Guy (top) and Fiff. For some reason, I felt compelled to place Scarlet Poppy Guy in a setting similar to my last piece featuring him (over a year ago, now), but in a more active stance and a more confined space, as if he's been unexpectedly cornered, as one might guess from the spots that look like bricked up openings. Also, I made his scarf even more flowing and trailing than usual; a little nod to the incredibly popular revival of Shinobi. The picture of Fiff is little more than a character sketch: He just stands there in front of a store with his sword, just . . . waiting, or something. Original Sizes: (3" x 3") Materials Used: pen and ink |
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Date Completed: January 4, 2003
A quick drawing of Cyberpumpkin directing the flow of energies through the Datasphere, and one of the first "sticky" drawings I've actually kept. Original Size: (3" x 3") Materials Used: pen and ink, highlighers |
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Date Completed: September 25, 2002
A couple of larger-size sticky drawings, playing around with different design ideas. The upper one is a female knight equipped with sword and shield that make use of "chaser" technology (i.e. the sword blade is not physically attached to the handle, but "chases" it through the air). The lower picture is an urban samurai, inspired in part by one of the lead characters in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, whose father and mother were of African and Japanese descent, respectively. Original Size: (3" x 5") Materials Used: pen and ink |
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Date Completed: May 19, 2002
A tousle-haired boy stands framed in a doorway, pistol in hand. Has he just survived a great ordeal? Has he been dispensing a little much-needed justice? Is he just looking to get some peace and quiet by whatever means necessary? This piece is open to interpretation. It is also very small. Click here to view the actual drawing alongside a quarter to to get an idea of the actual size. Try it, it's fun! Original Size: (2.5" x 1.5") Materials Used: pen and ink |
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Date Completed: 11/12/01 A quick little sketch inspired by the cathedralesque buildings on the campus of the University of Chicago. |
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Date Completed: 11/12/01 Last weekend, I was able to see a few episodes of Samurai Jack on Cartoon Network. I had expected something more like The TICK; a sort of action-hero spoof. Interestingly enough, although the art and animation style is very much a throwback to older kid-shows like Flintsones, it was mostly an action-adventure show, and any humor was low-key and tongue-in-cheek. Seeing Samurai Jack inspired me to do at least a little something with my old samurai character, Scarlet Poppy Guy, and here it is! I was forced to actually expand my workspace on this one, adding a little bit of paper to the bottom of the drawing. You can see the lighter area towards the bottom, where there is a break in the hatching. |
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Dates Completed: 11/05/01, 11/08/01, 11/08/01 Proving once again that I am a compulsive artist, I drew the first piece, which I simply called Want an Apple? over a sticky on the back of an entrance key to a building. The sticky was simply there to show that the card was mine, and if you look closely, you might actually be able to see "Benjamin" scribbled among the leaves... Okay, yeah, probably not. It's there, though. The little guy offering CyberPumkin an apple is based on the Bit Planters and Byte Harvesters; workers at CyberPumpkin's Farm! It's true that he looks something like Rad, but hey, lots of farm folks wear overalls! The next two were just something I was doing during a break. . . "Here, this is the biggest one!" . . . Crunch crunch crunch |
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Date Completed: 03/06/01 While working at a job assignment in a somewhat opressive environment, I bought a CD by a group called Union Underground. In a way, I enjoyed the harsh, gothy, angry death-rock tone of the group, in songs like "South Texas Deathride". It inspired me to do this drawing, Broken. Although the Union Underground inspired Broken, it is not meant to be an expression of how the music made me feel. Rather, I tried to capture my idea of the the kid with whom this music resonates, the kid who would say "Yes, this music is for me." Isolated, bewildered, angry, but ineffectual, defeated, confined though not physically restrained. As far as true humanity goes, broken. |
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Date Completed: 03/06/01 Trapped was not meant to be any kind of companion piece to Broken, honestly. If anything, both Broken and Trapped lead up to Nuisance, which I did over three months later. With Trapped, I was trying to get an even more confined, clostrophobic feel than Broken, without actually showing the subject being locked up (obviously not the case; the key is right there on the floor), rather by expressing the tension and anxiety within the subject. |
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Date Completed: 03/07/01 For this picture, I had little intent beyond creating a picture of a girl in a gothy anime style. The borders are fun. |
 
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Buster Completed 03/07/01,
Heart Completed 03/30/01 Buster (upper picture) was created to be an adventuring character, something like Link from Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series. While working with a group of youth at my church in Pasadena, CA, a scripture passage caused an odd creative reation in my brain. From the phrase to the effect of "the eyes of your heart" being "enlightened" (Ephesians 1:18, the actual wording varies among versions). In my head, I had a vision of a giant, levitating disembodied heart, with a big glowing eye at the end of each of the four major blood vessels (lower picture). It seemed like something that might be featured in the deep dungeons of a Zelda game. Well, when I told the kids about my idea, they immediately loved it, and (a little to my dismay), wanted the idea on a t-shirt. I promised them that I would at least try to come up with a character and a good representation of the heart-monster. |
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Date Completed: February '01 A sort of abstract self-portrait, this is a picture of myself, floating in clouds of pure data, where I collect and focus it into a useful stream. Call me crazy, but I enjoy tedious data-entry work. |
