Floatation

In this one, I was explicitly trying to mimic the style of old men's magazine cartoons, such as those found in Playboy. I think I pulled it off. Both in the look and feel of the art and in the gag itself.

Purple Girl

Another in a series of pinup style art. Here I question the term "pinup" only to the extent that there's nothing parciuarly salacious here. I'm not making a Playboy Magazine joke. It's just a drawing of a woman in a dress (I called her "Purple Girl" for some reason... is that a purple dress? Not really.). Sure, there's cleavage. And she's hot. But y'know...

So here's the thing about this one (and this one). I want to draw more like this. And I'm not just talking about "fat chicks"*. I'm talking about drawing people that aren't constrained by social expectations of beauty. Which is, in my opinion, about 99% of everyone you have ever met in your life. Seriously, when was the last time you knew someone personally who looked like the average person on a TV show? Television and movies skew our perceptions, they lie to us about what people are really like. Sure, there are nods to diversity of appearance beyond the diversity of race and sex and gender. There are the token fat chicks, for example, who almost always play the role of best friend or helper. But where are the cool as fuck fantasy action movies wherein the actual protagonist is a fat chick, fat man, someone with a huge nose, a person with an overbite, or just someone who looks like they came from someplace other than a Hollywood casting call?

People are beautiful. I mean, people are bastards, but they are also beautiful. Flaws are not ugly, fat is not ugly, moles are not ugly. I actually have a hard time just sitting and watching any TV shows because if feels like the equivalent of listening to an over-produced metal album with all the rough edges smoothed out. I hate that shit. Give me something real, even in my fantasy.

The root of all this is pretty simple, though. Men (I can't speak to the experience of women) love to look. And when we look, we judge. We are either attracted to a woman or we are not or it is somewhere in between. Then two important things happen that causes the whole god damn problem. First, we assume that the job of the object we look upon is to please our senses. When a woman is in a role that isn't inherently meant to be sexy, such as the frumpy fry cook or busybody, then we don't have much to say about her appearance. But in other roles, especially love interests, we have a LOT to say. And that brings us to the second problem: social expectations. Advertising, TV (which is advertising), Movies (which is advertising), etc, all inform what we collectively learn about beauty. We are told that Gwyneth Paltrow is one of the most beautiful women in the world. OK. She's a pretty lady, but not my cup of tea. So I don't crush on her. Go back a few years and maybe I'm younger and the woman is Cindy Crawford. I have no problem with Cindy, but I don't find her attractive at all. But if I said that in front of a bunch of guy buds I'd get flack for it. I'd be the odd man out. I'd be the butt of the joke. EVERYONE loves Cindy because she's the ideal form.

Fuck the ideal form. Fuck the commercials. Give me real or fuck off.

So... ranting aside... I want to try to keep this in mind much more explicitly when I'm drawing. I want to draw what I want and I want to be fearless about it. It's hard, though. That judgmental eye feels like it's always upon me. If it's not the eye of the twat who thinks fat = ugly, then it's the eye of the prude who thinks the boobs are too big. Fuck 'em.

I wanna be more like Dave Cooper. I don't know the guy at all, I have no idea if he's a total dickhead or a saint. But he god damn well draws what he wants.

*I use the term "fat" often when describing the characters I draw who are not skinny. I don't see a problem with that because I don't stigmatize the word. "Fat" isn't code for "ugly" in my world and it makes me sick to my stomach when I hear people use it that way. For example, I get physically uncomfortable when watching movies in which fat = ugly. It pisses me off. It's the dumbest shit in the world and it reduces human beings to nothing... including the men who weaponize the word. So stop fucking doing it, asshole.

Space Ranger

Here's one I did recently. I have posted it on FB and Insta but I keep forgetting to mention that it's actually a finished version of a very old sketch, posted below. Not that it matters to anyone but me. But there it is.

This is sort of in the wheelhouse of old school "men's magazine" style pinup cartoons wherein you draw a sexy lady and have some kind of pithy, funny gag written at the bottom. Just for giggles.

This was OK. I like the image fine, but it isn't thrilling me. Might just be that the composition is static. I have a bad habit of doing static figures when I really kinda want to do more dynamic scenes. And I don't mean action scenes, necessarily. You know how Frank Frazetta or Mike Ploog can have a figure just standing around and the image have movement and action? Like that. Things in motion, even when the figure isn't leaping or fighting or running. I feel stiff.

Another thing I was conscious of when drawing this was faces. A lot of artists have developed such a style that their faces are immediately recognizable. In some cases its because they seem to draw literally the same face on every figure (maybe Dan DeDcarlo comes to mind)*, or it's because their line quality and general style just shines through even though they draw a wild variety of figures (maybe Dave Cooper). So what are my faces like? I went through a phase between 2008 and 2012 where I was drawing a lot of huge eyes and cartoony faces. Which is good... I like cartoony. But I was being influenced by art that I didn't necessarily love and I backed away from that just a little bit. And it just strikes me now that I don't have "a face" that I draw. For example, I draw different noses all the time and I don't know if that's a problem or not.

Various JV West eyes and noses over the years. Trends?

*Now, I'm not suggesting that artists who draw the same girl over and over in different clothes is bad. It isn't bad. It's fine. Dan DeCarlo drew amazing girls who all looked alike. I have zero complaints about that. Hell, lots of cartoonists draw exactly the same face on almost every character for decades. Whatever works.

State of the Random Address

Hola! What have I been up to during the global pandemic?

Y'know. This and that. I have been consistently working from home for my job, which both a blessing and a curse. I dislike having the realities of the day job invade my creative physical space. But alas, these are strange times and I'm just thankful to be employed.

On the creative side, I spent a few weeks working on GOZR, which I'll talk about more at a later time. It's a fairly time-intensive project because each page of the game is art, fully lettered by hand, illustrated, etc. Plus the creation and writing of the game's mechanics all wrapped into that makes it a slow, slow process with a lot of revising and tweaking after the fact. When I'm done, I'll have something like a 24-32 page game book in comic book physical format (it's not a comic... it's just that I'm planning to print it in the physical form normally reserved for comics).

I took a step away from GOZR a little while back and started drawing a lot of more detailed pinup art. I went on a kind of pinup art spree actually, both in terms of drawing and collecting it. I have been obsessively gathering images from the web and organizing them into folders by artist. It's been a fun distraction, almost a passion.

Hell, it is a passion. Always has been, though. Thinking back, I remember my first real D&D character. Her name was Catina Catrid. She was a black-haired warrior-thief who wore a tiger-skin bikini and had magical claws as weapons. I drew her a lot. Fast forward to my early 20s and I was collecting and drawing adult comics. I have been into sexy fantasy art pretty much since the moment I laid eyes on the back cover of X1: The Isle of Dread. Damn you, Willingham.

Here's a REALLY OLD drawing from the 90s.

But of course friends of this blog will already know that I frequently go off on rants and tangents about this topic.

I have been gaming quite a bit. In addition to gaming every Monday night as I have for over 5 years (!), I have been running DCC RPG once or twice a week and playing in a Call of Cthulhu game once a week or so. And I've been running Psi World, which I don't think I could have seen coming. It's been a blast.

Moving forward, more of the same, I suspect. I'm in a mood to improve my craft. So I've been spending a lot of time studying and appreciating other artists' work and practicing my own craft. I've been thinking about what it means to be an artist and what I want to leave behind. Perhaps I'm more aware of my age and mortality these days. I dunno.

I haven't been in an OSR mood for quite some time. I wrapped up Black Pudding #6 and haven't touched anything related to OSR or D&D in general since, other than playing it every Monday. I don't think this means anything important. It's just part of the natural flow of my  mind. I go through long phases, and I often repeat them. The things I love the most repeat the most often. I have been a lover of D&D and RPGs since 1984 very consistently so I don't see myself "quitting" it, just stepping back a little from time to time. When I think about RPGs right now I am thinking about original systems, not OSR games.

That's it for now.

A Study in Spring

A Study in Spring. Started out a doodle, like most drawings. Here I wanted to draw a figure that was different than what I normally do, kind of embracing elements I (we, speaking for typical artists of my peer groups) tend to ignore or gloss over. Like bellies. People have bellies.

Musical Musings: Testament: Titans of Creation

Testament: Titans of Creation

Speaking of great music. I randomly clicked on the new Testament album Titans of Creation and lemme tell ya this motherfucker rocks. It grabbed me from track one with a nice powerhouse riff and I was shocked to discover that track two was another powerhouse riff and the damn thing just kept going. After hearing the entire album I can't think of a track I would call weak. And I can name several I would call badass.

If you like thrash, this is the shit right here. And from one of the all-time great thrash bands! This is so god damn good to see.

Thematically... there are tracks about cults, nuclear annihilation (a staple of the thrash scene), and witches. I'd say this is gameable as all fuck.

DCC: Chainbound

During the old 'Rona, I started running a new DCC RPG campaign for a few family and friends via Skype. This is maybe the fourth DCC campaign I've ran (?). Anyway... this game always brings out the "let's just roll with it" in me. I don't do a lot of planning. I allow myself to grab any ole thing that looks like fun and toss it into the mix. I have never written a DCC-based book, so I never think about it as a playtest.

This time I started with one of the dungeons from Black Pudding #1, replacing the stinking nobberlochs with hideous mutant spiders. The tomb was hidden in the sand until the zero-levels dug it up, acting against their will as slaves to the tyrannical Mad King of Zyrrum. I grabbed an old, unused map I drew years ago and plopped it down as the known world for the campaign. Zyrrum is the southernmost city, on the edge of a great desert. The PCs, slaves, won their freedom in the funnel.

Next up they set spent a year apart and came back together as level one PCs in order to rid themselves of the Mad King's slave mark. This mark, magical in nature, is very hard to remove. The PCs have discovered that they must embark on a quest to find the Lost Treasure Vaults of Zadabad in order to find the phylacteries of the Mad King and destroy him, giving them their final freedom.

So far they have spent most of their time in Zyrrum hitting up the local sages and sorcerers to learn all this information. It has been fun. Some heads have been busted.

Notably, one of the players is new to RPGs. This is his first game. So imagine my surprise when, in the first combat as a level one warrior, he fucking died. Like, instantly. Brutally. I rolled two natural 20s against him as the PCs were ambushed in an alley by men trying to capture and return escaped slaves. I gave him a Luck check to survive, which he failed.

But hey... death is not the only way to have a good time. It's DCC. The PCs were whispered to by an old witch in a nearby hovel (this was the sage and seer district). They were instructed to bring in their dead friend, which they decided to do.

The witch used wicked magic to bring him back to life. I gave him another Luck check, which he failed again. This meant the witch had complete control over his soul. She could end his life at her will. She controlled him. So she set him and his allies on a task. "Go and slay the master of the Red Brick Tower... so that my soul can be freed!"

Needless to say they hiked it on over the two day foot journey to the Red Brick Tower, killed a couple of man-bats, and defeated a mad, crazy old wizard who kept shards of his soul in various statues... one of which was an old witch.

Now the PCs have boarded the Soulcatcher on the river and are headed out to sea to find the location of the Rod of the Crescent Moon and, ultimately, the key to freeing themselves of their slaver marks.

Good times indeed.

I used a Dyson Logos map for the Red Brick Tower and for the life of me I cannot find the original link. So go to Dyson's blog and check out about a zillion awesome maps.

Dyson Logos draws a lot of towers.

Monster Attack!

Monster Attack!

Yeah, that's a pretty generic name. But this one was all about drawing and not about thinking. I don't know who she is or what they are. I don't know the setting. The entire story can be read from the visual clues:

A cute adventurer in inappropriate garb ends up in a tunnel/dungeon wherein things have died and monsters lurk. She is perhaps being chased by a green-skinned meanie who is stuck behind a pesky gate in the background. Did she slam the gate on it? Meanwhile, its partner, who I named Greenboy the Grinning Grabber (like, just this instant), has found an alternate route to the delicious meal-on-two-legs and is about to chomp down. Unless she's just a badass with that knife. Is it a magic knife? Dunno.

I've been in a pin-up art mood lately. Chainmail chicks, bikini armor, scantily clad damsels doing daring deeds, etc. Perhaps it's the corona getting to me. I just wanted something fun and light and rompy.

Why didn't I wear my Batgirl suit??

Sketch of Greenboy.

EDIT: I wanted to say something more about this drawing. A self-critique.

I like the figures just fine. I love how the girl turned out and I'm kind of stoked about the monster in the ceiling. I also love the hinted at monster in the background. I added the little detritus on the ground as an afterthought and I'm glad I did.

I don't love the purple hallway. The floor looks pretty good, I think. But the walls are kind of boring, aren't they? Maybe I should have went with a slightly different color for the walls or the floor, to contrast them.

Also, I think it needs more stuff going on. Like... more holes in the wall with green arms sticking out. Or a chest/barrel with something climbing out of it. Or perhaps our hero needs one or two companions. I'm not sure. I might do a revision of this and see what happens. Overall, I dig it. I'm moderately happy. But I could be very happy.

Pig in Space

Not sure how it came about, but I think it was Ed Heil on FB who said I should do a Miss Piggy pin up. So here she is in all her sexy glory.

Psi World Slam

I ran session three of Psi World tonight. The PCs are all Psis (but no precogs!) who have been drawn to the small town of Enclave after a teenager with psionic abilities allegedly blew up the heads of seven people in a hospital. Gerry Muntrell, the teen, is said to have "went crazy" and killed several of his friends and a few doctors during a perfectly safe and routine medical study.

But there's more to this story. The players decided Gerry was innocent and needed to be freed from his prison in the basement of the Enclave Memorial Hospital. Upon discovering a sub-basement level reminiscent of a James Bond villain's lair, their suspicions may be proven correct.

Tonight they busted Gerry out and nobody got killed. It was a stealth mission and was successful, with the alarms going off just as they made their getaway with the young man.

I am off-book a little bit with the setting. I set my game early in the timeline so that the PCs are basically among the first generation of Psis to come out. Corporations run the world through a quasi-government known as IPEG (International Protectorate of Economic Growth). Many corporations are at the heart of IPEG and one of them, the Ranseur Pharmaceutical Company, is somehow associated with the hospital. Is it possible that the "special services" wing of the hospital is conducting illegal experiments on people with psionic abilities?

We're going to find out.

So far the system isn't getting in the way. Many people said this game's mechanics were a nightmare. I agree they are obtuse, but they aren't impenetrable. I have yet to run into a situation where I need to make a ruling and I don't have the tools to do it. The Attribute Saving Throws alone pretty much ensure that won't happen. But, to be fair, the game has been mostly about investigation and dialog and lots and lots of analysis paralysis (my Monday night friends are really good at going over ideas and plans for what might be called a minute or two). We have had at least one real combat and a few uses of psi powers. But I think we've had more skill checks and ASTs that anything.

Enjoying this old game quite a bit. It was a sudden move to run it and I'm glad I made that move. Especially since the group is really into it and Dyson Logos is even working on some super secret sauce related to the game as a result. Hmmmmm.