And now, for something completely different...

... A tech review. Of my brand new Lenovo Z470.



What?



...Yes, I understand this is an art blog, and that you want to see art in here. But aren't words an art on their own? Specially ASCII art, some of that is crazy. I remember I knew a guy that had a bunch of ASCII porn in a  floppy disk and flipped out when I saved something on top of that (It was the 90's, you should have been there).

Ah, er, where was I? Oh, yes, the tech review!

Well, today my faithful Compaq laptop died after a long 4 years battle against destiny (I suppose). So after a minute of silence, I got a new computer: A Lenovo Z470. And it makes a world of difference.

You know, computers are insane. They age really, really fast, like that guy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You just take them out of the box, and BAM, they devaluate ASAP. New models keep coming out at blinding speed, and that smart shopping decision that you once were proud of becomes an almost inmediatelly regretful stupid moment.

Above: Computers, apparently.

So with that in mind this time I tried to buy something that wouldn't break on it's own, that had reasonable specs and that would give the less amount of regrets possible. A daunting task, mainly because I had to buy it on a physical store and my city is pretty small.
And alas, the Lenovo Z470 does it fairly well. Intel Core i5! Nvidia Geforce! Windows 7! A sturdy case! Runs Graphic Design Software at a very good pace! This thing only needs to dispense ice cream to become my favourite electronic device.

What? Oh, wow, cry me a bloody river. At least I can play Skyward Sword on you.

It's leaps and bounds ahead of my old Compaq. Tech changes a lot in just 4 years! Besides, huh, I was a little careless with my old laptop. It almost got run over by a car once (true story). But hey, this Lenovo thing is awesome. It's not the best laptop in the world by far, but it's not bad at all either, and it suits my needs. Now I'm in that beautiful stage were I'm installing stuff like a madman, including my scanner and tablet drivers...! I'm gonna art the hell out of this thing. You heard it here first, folks!

So that's it for today's post. Sorry about the lack of proper drawings (I still doodled quite a bit on my notebook), but I'll make up for it! Does anybody have a specific request to make? Drop it, I'll see what I can do...

See ya around!

Pokemon Placeholder

So I wanted to do the next page of my Missingno. Pokemon comic, but I ran out of time. Enjoy a quick Manly Ash Ketchum doodle.

Paper Mario and me

Ok, so, if you were the person that came out with the idea of a virtual console for the Wii, I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW.
I couldn't stop playing. I felt powerless. Stupid epic Nintendo 64 games...

Pokemon- Page 13

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS



Missingno.'s totally groovy comic-palozaa* is back!

*working title

Anyway, sort as it is, hope you enjoy it. Feels a bit weird to draw stuff like this again, hehehe. It was really fun, though! And hopefully we see more of the regular characters soon... expect a big battle in the not-distant-at-all future!

Still thinking about what can I draw after this is done...

OH YES MY INTERNET IS BACK

FINALLY
THIS MISTERYOUS CONTRAMPTION THAT CONSTANTLY FEEDS US WITH CAT PICTURES AND VIDEOS OF FAT PEOPLE ACTING CLUMSILY IS BACK.

A-hem. Excuse the all-caps exabrupt. But I'm insanely happy. I can FINALLY get back to work uploading daily junk for your viewing pleasure!
Here's a lil' doodle celebrating the event. Tomorrow... wow! I'll just say that it begins with P and ends with okémon page...

Also, yes, this means I'm probably starting to comment BACK on your blog! Yeehaw! I love the internet.
Oh, and I'm thinking about getting a .com domain. Any good name ideas? Throw them in my direction! Skecthes and Other Stuff is too long...

SANYO TV ad

SANYO is a Japanese electronics brand. My girlfriend had to do a presentation about it for her marketing class. She asked me for help, since she needed some sort of TV ad mock-up.

Ta-da! This is why I didn't upload anything yesterday--this thing took forever!

It has 4 seconds of pure hand drawn animation, wich in this case meant roughly 97 drawings. Simple as they are, 97 drawings is a pain to do. I respect animators so much after this... and thankfully I know how to work in Flash, if I hadn't it would have taken so much longer!

To any animators that stumble in this post by mistake chance, is there any particular software you reccomend? I should start working on drawing basics first... I also have no idea how to keep lines even when tracing my drawings from frame to frame. They go all jiggly, like in Home Movies, so I went along with it this time, but there has to be another way, right?

What do you think? The cheesy phrase and the dreadful audio are ours, the rest is copyright of SANYO electronics.

Not dead! Also, Skyward Sword joke

Nope, not dead! Internet was, so I didn't even bother updating yesterday.
It's pretty annoying. Even now, as I write this post, I feel like a castaway writing a letter, putting it in a bottle and throwing it off to the sea hoping someone reads it. Everytime I click on "publish" or "post" I cross my fingers, fearing the"website is not available" page. Some crazy stuff.

Oh, hey, a new Zelda came out! And if you're a Zelda fan, or visit any Zelda fansite, you know what that means!

Lame joke, but we all know that's happening already. I've also been tempted to download the game* (it costs a considerable amount of cash were I live) but I'll much rather wait for Christmas and treat myself. Besides, how can I mantain a blog and finish a new Zelda at the same time?

---

I haven't forgotten about my Pokémon comic but that takes longer to finish! These little interludes allow me to practice on photoshop and give me time to sort out my ideas (scripts are for little girls, manly artists use a plot summary on their heads and work from it!)


*"You wouldn't download a car" TO HELL WITH IT I WOULD IF I COULD

A Final Fantasy IV drawing

My internet is still flickering and it's kinda annoying. Each time I open a new tab or click on a link I have to cross my fingers to get it to open... most of the time it doesn't, and I've got to F5 a few times before the page shows up. Which is incredibly annoying, and sometimes it flat out doesn't work. So I've also neglected my twitter and tumblr and deviantart and... you get the idea.
Now, without a constant influx of internet, I remembered that I used to play games on the computer. Crazy, I know! I did a quick search on my CDs and usb drives, and found a bunch of old Super Nintendo roms. One of them caught my eye.
Now all you young whippersnappers have your fancy Final Fantasy XVIIII for the X-Playstation 64 or whatever, but back then, the first one I played, and so far the only one I've completed with no guides whatsoever but with a lot of quicksaving was this baby: Final Fantasy IV (also known as "II" in America and Europe).

Long story short, your best friend (Kain, the guy in green armor) likes your girlfriend a lot but doesn't act on it because he's kinda shy and a true bro. He tries to kill you later in the game but he's brainwashed so it doesn't count!

Sorry for the bad drawing, kinda tried to do something a bit more "freely" than the usual way I work but the result came all funky...

(Also congrats to England for beating Spain! We've been avenged!)

Gold's Pokemon Team

Pokemon Trainer Gold was recently introduced in my comic. Since I don't have the time to do a new page today (college, why), here's a few sketches of his team. Forgive the crudeness of the artwork, this was originally meant as a refernce guide for myself...!
This is actually based on my own team in Pokémon Gold! Even the Smeargle as an HM slave! Man, I felt smart for coming out with that one. I was 10, remember...

I also used to have a Sansdshrew as well (fave poké alongside Quilava) but it wouldn't make sense in the context of the comic. Gold should take powerful pokémon into Mt. Silver, an unevolved Sansdshrew could be in danger if a wild Pokémon ganged up on him. So now his party consists of only 5 Pokémon, and it's fine--he's trying to find Red, not battling him...

Right..?

(Wow, I'm actually trying to make sense of Pokémon of all things.)

I just saw Inception for the first time!

Yes! A big case of the slowpokes here: Inception was all the rage in 2010, and I just saw it today for the first time. And it was incredible! I loved all the visual eyecandy, all the layers of the film, I loved the acting and the script, the concept and the execution.
See? This is why I can't be a good movie critic--I can't find anything wrong on movies that I like, so I end up gushing about them.
Here's a little quick comic honoring the film. I'm pretty sure this has happened to other people besides me! Why do we feel like falling?

Stay tuned for more daily art! And I'm sorry for my lack of activity--internet is acting all wonky on my city lately, I'll explain it in more detail on a future post. See ya!

Pokemon- Page 12

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS


I'm really sorry for the lack of updates yesterday! My internet went down... I feel terrible about it. Taking requests as a form of showing my regret!

Ahem, here's page 12 of the yet unnamed Missingno. saga! In which we introduce both a new character, the current situation, and an artstyle.

From the beggining, this comic was meant to prove myself that I could draw faster if I did it the traditional way, pen on paper. It wasn't easy, and in the end I decided to try doing it straight in the computer this time around. It doesn't "look" as neatly as I would want, though... perhaps I should draw traditionally and ink digitally? That seems the way to go, and I'll try it next time.
But this time around it wasn't that important to keep a consistant style, since it's just two simple panels. Hum...

Also, I wanted to do a comic about today's Chile-Uruguay match, but my keyboard is still soaked with tears. Sorry!

Alexis Sánchez cartoon

If you have both an interest in south american football and an internet connection (and judging by my blog's statistics, you're likely to have both), You probably found out already about 5 players from the chilean national team that showed up drunk to the training center and were layed off from the games against Uruguay and Paraguay.
This made me really sad, and worried as well. Beausejour is a beast, Vidal is a world-class midfielder, Valdivia is arguably one of the greatest natural talents of south america--and now they're off. They can't play and they risk a 50 match suspension! Crazy stuff. They were asking for it, and the worst part is that it's the football fans that lose on the whole.
So in protest against this situation (and due to my internet working whenever it feels like) here's a small cartoon about one of the most well-know chilean players currently in europe: Alexis Sánchez.

I feel really happy about him. He went through poverty and a harsh life, but thanks to his dedication, hard work and love for his family he managed to leave all that behind and reach Barcelona, the current best team in the world.
Yesterday night, instead of showing up late and drunk to the team's headquarters, Alexis showed up two hours early. That's the mark of a true professional and a great footballer. He'll do great things in Europe, and hopefully he can help us a lot against Uruguay!

Sorry for the rant and the quick drawing--tomorrow, a comic, at last! Pinky swear.

Interlude- The Zelda "Iron boots" problem

I ended up chickening out. I couldn't finish a pokemon page today... but hey, on the bright side, my final thesis is coming out great! Hopefully it ends up that way, haha.

So, Zelda! I recently started playing the one for SNES. Why did Link have pink hair? Seriously.

I also love the flippers to death! They should return in a 3D title, it would be awesome to swim instead of clumsily walking underwater under heavy weight.

Hope you like it! Let's see what the future holds for my artwork...

Pokemon- Page 11

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS

Well, page 11 arrives! You know, just now I realized that Red's party has 6 pokémon already, so Missingno. couldn't be a part of the team. So let's assume he's just tagging along, haha.

I doubt Red cares about rules when one of his friends is in trouble, though. Swell kid.

Also, next week Chile faces Uruguay and Paraguay in the Qualifiers for the 2014 FIFA World Cup! So excited. Expect more football art coming your way, hahaha.
But also, Pokécomics!

My favourite players

Sports related rant ahead! You have been warned!

I like sports. I'm not very good at any of them, sadly (passable at football, at best!) but that doesn't stop me from enjoying them! I love watching sportsmen giving their best, no matter the discipline.
Here are two of my favourite players from two sports: Football and Basketball. From football we have Andrés Iniesta, a midfielder playing for the very well known Barcelona, and from basketball we have LeBron James, perhaps the best active player in the NBA (still has lots to do to be compared to MJ, but hey, the guy's trying).

Iniesta is really quiet, humble, and plays beautiful football: always effective, he keeps the ball flowing around, assisting his companions as needed and scoring critical goals. If it weren't for Xavi, I would say that he's the best midfielder in the world with no doubt (although I have a soft spot for Riquelme, Lampard and Jorge Valdivia--well, you can't really have one favourite, right?)

LeBron is kind of a jerk. But he's entertaining and extremely talented. He's guaranteed to put up a great show, and it's something I appreciate. He left his old team, and I can't truly blame him (millionare key transfers are really common in other sports) but I have to agree on the fact that he should have been a lot more nice about it!

Thanks for all the visits and comments! Tomorrow: Pokécomics!

Pokemon- Page 10

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS


Page ten already of my Pokémon Red / Missingno. nostalgiafest, wow. Never thought I'll make it this far whitout getting bored!

BEWARE THE WALL OF TEXT

Hope you like it! That Missingno./Pidgey in flight is perhaps the hardest thing I've drawn in the whole series--I just couldn't make him "look right" so I ... kinda winged it and hoped the coloring would make him recognizable.

Thanks for all the nice comments! You guys are pretty cool!

Real madrid doodles

An intermission from my comic series!

I really like Real Madrid. In terms of individual talent, they're probably the best football club in the world. Barcelona shines when it comes to teamwork, though... anyway, when both teams clash it's always memorable! Chilean striker Iván Zamorano scored 4 goals against Barca in a single game in the early nineties, what a legend!

Now, a really good thing about football is that 90% of the players are just plain fun to draw. That includes managers and refs too! Besides most of these guys are really lean and athletic, ideal for anatomy drawing practice. In this case, I made a few doodles---I decided to save them all in just one big picture. I drew Özil bigger than anyone else because his VERY EYES PIERCE INTO YOUR SOUL so I thought it made a strong artistic statement...
Would you like me to draw other sport/teams? Say so on the comments!

Pokemon- Page 09

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS

So, it's not really a comic page in istelf, but I wanted to clarify some stuff and get some background on Red's actual situation from an outsoder's point of view. Pokémon comics are serious business!

Enter: Newspapers! I don't think I ever saw one in the games, but hey, it works!

I like how it turned out! First page made completely in Photoshop! I tried to do it manually but here was just so much text... I think I did the right choice.

I finished Zelda

Not an actual Zelda comic, of course not. Neither a regular videogame.

I just finished the FIRST Zelda, for NES. It was very good, and sometimes really hard. I got lost a lot, and how on earth were we supposed to know exactly where to use Candles to burn down specific bushes! That was he only way to find a dungeon.

Crazy or not, it was a brilliant game, so it warrants a mini tribute!

I can't draw octorocks (a type of zelda enemies). Picture those are octorocks. And that Link can talk. Huh.

I'm currently replaying A Link to the past! Another insanely fun game to play. I wish, again, that I had more hands to draw more comics.

See ya tomorrow for more Pokémon comics!

Pokemon- Page 08

FIRST 
NEXT
PREVIOUS



Another day, another Pokemon fancomic page!

I was a bit at odds with this page, I wasn't sure how to tackle the idea I had in mind... I think this'll sufice, after all this was meant as an "in-between" in the story, a little bit of calm before the storm, if you will.

And an excuse to draw Blastoise.

I think this look fits Missingno. a lot better, but I would like to hear your thoughts. And wow, did that last text block went on forever or what.

Also, remember I lent my tablet to my gf yesterday? Here's what she did. She paints a lot better than me...

Link's Awakening Ending comic

I lent my tablet to my girlfriend today, so I can't finish today's comic in a realistic timeframe. I'm so sorry! I'll ask her for permission to post some of her drawings later so you can see how she paints.

I could have uploaded the sketches and preliminar inks but hey, I think that at this point it's more important to pay attention to quality over quantity... besides, we're getting closer to the fun parts!

But hey, here is some art I've done in the past! In this case, a comic about Link's Awakening, a Zelda title for Gameboy. And yes, this is actually the ending of the game.

HEY I STILL DRAW CLOUDS SORT OF LIKE THAT

You know, I used to be very active at Deviantart. It's a fun community, and I still post there, but blogging feels so much more... free, or something. I don't know how to explain it, but it just feels nice, much more personal and welcoming.

Also some of my old art was horrible. This took me 55 minutes, for crying out loud!

I also want to do a small Zelda comic after I'm done with the Pokemon saga. But first, some football comics... Argh, wish I had more hands!