Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Wausau, Wisconsin is Where You Ought To Be

I'm visiting University of Wisconsin, Marathon County under the auspices of the lovely and talented, Diana Budde. She's been taking her drawing and painting students to local elementary schools to work on comics and storyboards, and I've been lucky enough to tag along and do some demos. The kids are way cool and inspiring. The highlight so far has been drawing Kyklopean Lincoln at. . . Lincoln School. Here's a recreation. . .
Here's a local news story on the visit. Warning: includes scary video of a bald man with a giant head animatedly prattling on.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Back to The Hole


New treatments for Happiness Hole Characters. Resemblances are obscure, but intentional.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

New Comic of Sorts


A new strip, but not in the 4-panel format which I've been working with the past few years. Looks like it'll go into a book at some point. I'll ruin the thrill of unveiling it in print by posting it here now. Bralgh. Click to jump out to a readable-sized image.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

Summer Drink and Draw T Shirt Preliminary Design

A first draft of the commemorative Drink and Draw t-shirt. Enigmatic drunken artwork by Ian Chachere. Fin de Siecle font-werk by Ezra Butt. Ezra, did you ever get a copy of EzraBolde? I can still appropriately accidentally alliterate with the best of 'em.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Daily Sexy 80's Lady

If you're not wearing a teal headband, what's the point really? I think this was inspired by Julie's sexy 80's high school tennis pic. Anyhow, this was done straight up in Photoshoppe, but who the hell cares??? I'll keep drawing until our new Xbox 360 arrives later this week. . . As per this recent run of figure drawings. . . Robert Conrad.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Summer Folk Daily

I did some little figure sketches whilst coffee and baglin' at Key of C the other day. I did the top drawing in 40-shoppe by working from the pencil thumbnail below. I don't know if Robert Conrad ever drew, but if he did, I like to think these are the drawings he would make. That guy carrying the flag just might be me. But is he surrendering. . . or leadin' the charge???? You can click 'pon the damn things to make them bigger. Computers is like that.
Le Thumbnail

Le Robert Conrad

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Daily Girls

 Working with femme faces and proportions. Baby steps.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Daily Head Studies

A couple of sketch book pages of heads and skulls. I've been looking at oldie but goodie Burne Hogarth's Drawing the Human Head. I've never really cared for BH's work aesthetically, but the guy could draw til the cows came home and lays out some extremely good stuff about simplified forms and conceptualizing the head from a variety of angles. I'm finding that my biggest problem with drawing seems to be not having a solid enough conception of the basic forms in space. . . and sad things like proportion. I's trying to git in shape.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Daily Dinosaur Heads

 Gods. If you have ever felt the heart-rending truth that you will never see a living dinosaur, if you have ever fantasized about chucking it all to live in a natural history museum reading and doing studies of skeletons, or just wandering the desert looking for fossils, track this DVD down now: Dinosaur Drawing: Anatomy and Sketching. It almost brought tears to my eyes. Part of the Gnomon Workshop series, taught by the epically awesome David Krentz. Lovely stuff.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A daily - an infestation

These things are all over my studio and in my office down at school. They're robust little suckers. I think they feed on squirrels and fungus. They're kind of nasty, but they're fun to snuggle up with at night when it's cold.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The Three D's

What are they? Dick Bennett's, "Defense, Determination, & Dilettante'ry?" Or Mike Watt's, "No height, length, or width." Here's a crow-dog man I did last night. Or was it late December, back in '63? What a very special time for me. Minas Tirith, what a night.

Olden days - a punk-ass, Lisa Loeb-style post

 Francisco Pulpo in the Studio by a younger Miles, damnit. 1994/5!!!!!
So what the hell am I doing? Here's a mid 90's era drawing that I was thinking about tonight. I think I need to rebuild some concentration/focus and bring something bigger to the party. I did some drawing today (2010, people!)  and found myself rusty as all get out. Muse, I invoke thee. Let's get it on. I don't want to kick off without having raised a bigger ruckus. Why am I adding up to less than the sum of my parts?

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Arms & Ether - Number 55 - Invasion of the Women!

It has begun. . . And the Arms and Ether-verse will never be the same. The women are coming. And hapless Blue Max experiences first contact! What the ramifications are for our adolescent testosterone-charged crew, we have no way of knowing. Get a harbinger and ring in the first days of summer with today's Arms and Ether!

p.s. yes a massive site redesign is still scheduled for the summer

p.p.s. yes, still going to be rolling in 3D as well. . . aieeee!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Polygon Girlfriend - Part Two


First stab at the head and did some more work on the arms. I need to do some refinement on the back and feet as well as more on the hands. If you compare yesterday's image, somehow her butt became Sponge Bob muscly. It's called the Smooth Brush, Miles. Look into it. Okay, I will. Tomorrow.
 Here's a close up of the face. The lips need smoothing and more form. Duh. I haven't worked much with super fine detail in ZBrush, so I'll do that tomorrow too. But first. . . the Drink and Draw!

Polygon Girlfriend - Part One


Here's girlfriend number one made today in ZBrush using BaseMeshBravo. I separated the head off, so that's why she looks like Maskatron1. I'll work something up for her Fem Bot2 face tomorrow. It'll be just great. I've been looking at some exaggerated female toys for inspiration hence the silly proportions. The arms and hands need some TLC.

End Notes
1. Maskatron. A powerful robot capable of mimicking the appearance of Oscar Goldman and others.
I, Maskatron
2. Fembots. A series of powerful and deadly life-like androids, designed and created by Dr. Franklin.
uh oh.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Grumble grumble

Zallinger-inspired self-portrait. Now if I can just paint the damn thing. . .
detail of the Age of Reptiles Mural by Rudolph Zallinger

Thursday, June 3, 2010

More ZBrushing

I've been continuing to work in ZBrush, inspired by the excellent Gnomon tutorial by Scott Patton. I've refined my base mesh a bit and have been experimenting with how far I can push it into different forms quickly (10-20 minutes). I'm finding that having relatively expressive hands and feet that are easy to pose is a good thing in a base mesh, so I plan on going back and refining those later. I've also made the mesh less bulky than in the first pass (see last post -- ed.).

Here's the latest, Base Mesh Bravo:
And here are a few quick character sketches starting from the above base mesh.
self-portrait as bulb-headed carnivore. still working on this one. . .

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Miles Make Base Mesh

Me make base mesh in Maya for use in ZBrush. Me make characters, polygonal girlfriend next. Me not know for what deeper purpose me do this.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Making of Arms & Ether - Learning/Stealing From The Best - Dan Clowes

Shower Power: Arms & Ether (left) as cribbed from Dan Clowes' Ghost World (right).

In my first Arms and Ether comic I needed to draw a shower scene. To get a clue, I looked back at Dan Clowes' Ghost World. Ooh steamy. Here are a few of the many things I got from Clowes:

a. The tile pattern is not carried through the entire wall. If it did so, the tile would interfere with the shower curtain pattern.

b. That's a big expansive shower that they're in, and it's probably not a "realistic" depiction of what the shower in Enid's place would look like. The audience, however, won't notice this, and the bigger shower makes the shot easier to stage and "read." Clowes creates a shower that suits his visual narrative purpose without being distracting or cluttered.

c. The shower curtain reads very clearly as a shower curtain without being painstakingly rendered as a distracting, overly realistic shower curtain.

d. The water coming out of the shower head and onto the bodies is also very clearly and cleanly stylized.

e. If you look at the man's hands in Clowes' shot, they're surprisingly cartoony.  I've looked at this panel hundreds of times and only notice it when I'm analyzing his drawing method. I didn't notice the goofy hands when I was reading the book straight through. It's a great example of economy and method in drawing comics--staging and clarity first. No need to go all Albrecht Durer on us!


If you look closely (Highlights magazine!) you'll see I left out several Clowes details in my version -- the shower curtain rings, the shading on the shower head, the left hand wall, etc. I did this because my panel was smaller and was feeling cluttered. Since I have a looser, rougher style than Clowes, I scuffed my drawing up a bit to match my overall approach.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Couple of Interactive Items

I've been playing around with ideas for doing some "interactive" drawings. Here are a couple of small tests. I'm trying to beat some programming logic (Flash ActionScript 3.0) into my fuzzy brain. Ow. It hurts. I've been learning the code for this stuff from Foundation Game Design With Flash, by Rex van der Spuy.

Click on the image below and cruise around with Steak using the cursor keys.
Wow, it's parallax scrolling.

Steak appears courtesy of Sam D. Inada.


This is just an idiotic game where the computer guesses a number that you input. Hours of fun. See if you can fool the machine!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Har Har Tharsday (local edition) - Casey Pyke's Puppets


Was well amused by this short puppet video that SOU students Casey Pyke and Alex Britton put together for the ArtH 330 Art, Culture, and Technology class. Check it out! Starring freakishly gifted cartoonist Ezra Butt in the human role!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Get Big

A big person I started making in ZBrush. I done made me the base mesh in Maya.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 25 - The End Of The Trail (sure it is)

 
Look at Molo in the midst of all that green! He must be idly unwinding in the wide-open possibilities of March! Better go and see if that's the case in today's Arms and Ether. Thanks to all of you who read and suffered through the 25-day Arms and Ether Marathon plus one. Hopefully we don't all regret it.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 22 - The Cent-ur Cain't Holde None!

Look, you can eat a whole bag of Cool Ranch Doritos at midnight or go see today's Arms & Ether. It's really up to you. Either way, trust it'll be an insightful experience.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 21 - Historical Insignificance


No words, no colors, no calories, just 100% of the great taste and satisfaction you've come to expect from today's Arms & Ether. Like the Vollard Suite. Yeah. Just like it. So cool. So good.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 20 - Who Loves The Sun?

 
Anyone out there need gradients? Like, four solid panels full of 'em? Good, because we've gradients to spare in today's sunrise-oriented Arms & Ether.

Monday, February 22, 2010

ARmS & eThER - Day 19 - Complain, Complain, Me is a Grizzly Drama Queen

 
Apologies, but I'm sinking to self-referential 3D humor, and that's a sorry, sad thing. What can I say, I'm as misguided as THE MAKER in tonight's Arms & Ether.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 18 - Huff Puff, Huff Puff

 It's up, it's up. With a minute to spare. Today's Arms and Ether. Now, let's all get some sleep. Come on, people. It's good for you.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 17 - Wrath of The Lich King

 
What messages do the dead send us from beyond the grave??? More self-obsessed crap it turns out. Shoot. Listen in anyway at today's Arms N' Ether.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Arms & Ether - Day 16 - With All of its Attendant Sweetness

I need to get me a corncob pipe. Kind of like the guy in today's Arms & Ether. How y'all doin, tonight?