The George Costanza of the Wizard Set (Metaphorically, Anyway)

So I think I may have finally figured out what I want my fantasy characters to look like. I was trained to draw realistically, but I’ve always loved cartooning and animation. More than not, I wish I had taken a couple of animation classes in college. This project is going to be populated with imagery of loose, humorous people, places and things, with just a smidge of realism, instead of how rpg’s are usually done, in my opinion, with a more serious and realistic style. If I do this humor thing, theoretically that should allow for my project to stand out among its copious peers. At least I hope that’s what will happen. This tabletop rpg is going to be something of a satire anyway, so it only stands to reason that the imagery should match the writing! Right? Right! Humorous writing and humorous characters. Sounds fun. Sounds entertaining. *Gulp* I hope.

Anyway, this guy is a sketch for one of the villains in one of my dungeons I’m working on, he’s a grubby, grouchy, weasel, pot-bellied slob of a necromancer whose creations are both hilarious (hopefully) and terrifying (also hopefully). My bungling, ill-tempered sorcerer is like George Costanza from Seinfeld, but with Coke bottle spectacles like Professor Frink (The Simpsons) or Professor Farnsworth (Futurama).

He has a scar on the end of his bulbous beak, bushy black eyebrows, a massive brush on his lip, and a scraggly ebon beard. The pot-bellied wizard’s hat looks like an Alchemist’s tent, and is adorned with what are supposed to be vulgar symbols and the gilded claws of dragons, the largest of which, resting on the top of the hat, is broken. When I’ve drawn the rest of him, his ensemble will be covered stains, crumbs, patches and stitch jobs.

I had a blast sketching this guy! Hope you got a kick out of him as well, because that’s all for this week! Thank you for reading, and be sure to follow us on social media: Cre8v Knuckledraggr on Pinterest, #cre8vknuckledraggr on Instagram and The Creative Knuckledragger on Facebook, as well as here on Blogger. Thanks again! In future we plan to broaden out social media horizons. Bye for now.

SLiM  

All images (below) Copyright © Stephen L. Morris 2020  All Rights Reserved 

A Virtually Politics Free Zone. Pretty Close, Anyway

Are you sick and tired of all the politics, everywhere you go? Do you feel there is no escape from it? If this sounds anything at all like you, then look no further, for you’ve definitely come to the right place. Here at The Creative Knuckledragger, its Facebook page, Instagram and Pinterest accounts (so far), I am happy to tell you that, with very minimal exceptions, there will be no political posts. 

I say ‘minimal exceptions,’ because on the Facebook page (May 3rd), I made the decision to comment about the benefits of wearing a mask and gloves in public. I was prompted to do so, given the amount of people I’d seen without them. I won’t get into the propaganda and anti-propaganda surrounding the US.’s current crisis. What you choose to believe is up to you and you alone.

I am, and perhaps to some extent always will be a walking contradiction. I can’t help it. Sometimes I feel I just have to hop on that bandwagon. Sigh. That being said, I’m making the decision right here and now to post about this topic in order to let my followers know my intentions. I honestly believe this blog will be most interesting sans the political input.

...not much else to say on that subject, so this will be a shorter post than typical. Thanks for reading this blog. Look forward to the weekly post on Friday or Saturday.

😀

SLiM

Post Apocalyptic Cartoon Days Revisited

Once upon a time (around 2006 to be specific), I had this idea for a project I was going to work on outside of college. It was going to be a graphic novel; a post-apocalyptic, cartoony, Urban Vinyl thing in which a composite Romeo and a composite Juliet were a Mad Max-esque survivalist couple trapped in the all-too-cliche setting of demolished urban landscape and terrorized by cartoon bunnies and teddy bears.

Not Romeo was going to be this cocksure, persnickety, foolhardy tough guy character the likes of which an actor like Bruce Campbell might play, while Not Juliet was going to be his cool, collected agile equal, the likes of which Sandahl Bergman could play, much in the way she played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian (1982).

Again, it was that marriage of dead serious and yahoo (sometimes I'm Yahoo, other times I’m Serious) that really appealed to me, especially the thought of combining both a graphic novel and a product such as a toy line together. But sadly, after toiling away on it for a decade, I abandoned it in favor of other projects I had on the backburner.

After going through previous projects yesterday, I came across several of the renderings for the composite Romeo character and remembered thinking at the time how they were all horrible. I’ve always been far too hard on myself and far to critical of my work. Anyway, I fell in love all over again with this character, so I cleaned him up in Adobe Photoshop. Go on. Act surprised. I’ll wait.

I kept the idea that the couple would have this polar opposite Yin Yang thing going on, Not Romeo in white and Not Juliet in Black, etc. I also made him a little thinner, since I model myself for most of my male characters. I dig it!! Hope you do too.

The rifle is supposed to look like a cartoon. I was thinking in terms of simplifying and embellishing objects, like the Flintstones. I’m sorry I don’t have the original photo here for comparison. And I always liked that semi...almost goth quality he has, with the exaggerated Billy Idol spikes and the black junk under his eyes. The only other change I felt it needed was a new belt buckle, as the original didn’t seem to quite belong, so I gave him this sort of cartoon bullet for a belt buckle. (Images below).

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll continue to have more frequent posts for my readers in the future. Your contributions matter a great deal to me, after all. They really do!!!! Bye for now.


SLiM All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.

All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.

All images copyright © Stephen L. Morris All rights reserved.