What I Drewed This Weekend

Monkeys Versus Robots
tight pencil sketch, carmine red pencil on Bristol Board
11.00 in.  x  17.00 in.

 

The Cartoon Network is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. One way it’s doing so is an ambitious corralling of seventy-five world-class artists commissioned to unleash their creativity inspired by the forty-plus original cartoons from the Network’s short history. Included amongst this impressive group are most of the Network’s Atlanta designers and illustrator are too contributing to the effort, I being the illustrator.

You can catch a glimpse of many if not most of these pieces in a special exhibit to mount at this year’s San Diego Comic Con International (July 12-15, 2012).

Cartoon Network is working with curator and art promoter Mark Murphy to put the whole thing together. Check out Mark’s blog “Scribble 08” for updates and artists’ close-ups:
http://murphydesign1.blogspot.com/

[featured artists]

Mark’s web site:
http://www.murphydesign.com/


“Monkeys Versus Robots”
Cartoonists love monkeys and robots.

Yeah, you go ahead shoot holes in that axiom. I’ll start you off - Charles Schulz never put either in his long-running Peanuts strip.

However, in my survey of 43 original Cartoon Network series, only four (if they lasted past their 50th episode) lacked neither a featured monkey no featured robot. The reason is probably because both are easy to attribute human behaviors and actions while having your audience accept it and not question it as they might, say, a talking dog. It is interesting how the two might represent two opposite states, the primitive and the futuristic.

After few weeks research of my subjects, and one unimpressive, not presentable, 5-minute sketch, I paired up the best bouts, and plowed through pencils, inks and initial digital color this past weekend. This here is not quite the final layout, since I will be replacing one of the characters - mostly to include another character that didn’t fit, but also because in doing so the whole will make more sense (if you’re a stickler about the subject absolutely aligning with the title).