Moana

conceptual poster design

Black India Ink and watercolor on watercolor paper. 

17.8 cm x 12.7 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)

2016

Here’s my poster to serve as the illustration for my review of the movie on my “bookmark” blog That’s Good Spam, as I’ve begun this summer. Despite the fact that monotonae is a nine year old blog and That’s Good Spam is a seven year old blog, it’s taken an Instagram feed with its hunger for daily postings for me to make real my idea to create original illustrations to pair with my ramblings and reviews.

In this image I use the cropping to help hide the weird fish-eye-lens perspective I’ve attempted to draw. Having drawn Moana character art for Disney’s licensed consumer products, I know too well the challenge of drawing Maui’s intricate tattoos. Moana’s sailing outrigger canoe offers its challenges as most vehicles do with their comparative sizes in compositions highlighting characters.

Then there’s Pua the pig. His inclusion in this marketing-aligned mix of characters is not accurate to the film’s final story.

Regarding my Consumer Products work, I’ve yet to see any of it used on actual product. As with the launches of nearly all CGI family films and modern digital printing, most non sculpted products try to make use of the CGI images. The accompanying cel-animation style “drawn” character art may be used for things like “color me” place mats and the basis for enamel cloisonné pins and embroidery. The stylized Mona paintings sported by Disney Store items was created by Disney artist Ricky de Los Angeles.

[link to That’s Good Spam]

[link to my review of Moana]

[link to Ricky de Los Angeles’ Instagram]

It Doesn’t Have To Be a Snowman

Here’s a bunch of Frozen themed convention commissions and sketches.

Wonder Con, Anaheim, CA
2014

Wonder Con, Anaheim, CA
2014

Wonder Con, Anaheim, CA
2014

Wonder Con, Anaheim, CA
2014

Wonder Con, Anaheim, CA
2014

Heroes Convention, Charlotte, NC
2014

Heroes Convention, Charlotte, NC
2014

Long Beach Comic Con, CA
2014

Long Beach Comic Con, CA
2014

Trading Card
2014

Heroes Convention, Charlotte, NC
2014

Trading Card
2014

Trading Card
2014

Trading Card
2015

Disney’s animated feature, Frozen, premiered November 2013. At my first comic convention of 2014, Wonder Con, the Frozen characters proved to be popular commission requests. Sure a large part of that can be attributed to the fact that the city of Anaheim is home to Disneyland Resort and is packed with Disneyphiles. Still, Anna, Elsa and Olaf continued to pop up on my commission request lists for the year.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Turns 25

Water color on water color paper.
21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.50 in. x 11.00 in.)

Tuesday, November 22, 2016, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast celebrated the 25th anniversary of its premiere theatrical release.

Gotham Dis-sylum

Disney Gotham
Color pencil and black ink on Bristol Board.
17.8 cm x 12.7 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)

In this “What Shall I Draw Today?” suggested mash-up of Disney villains and DC Comic’s Gotham tv series, I based the layout on the series’ second season marketing imagery. You’ll note that they’re all bad guys and gals, with no spot for a Jim Gordon or a Bruce Wayne mash-up.

Here’s how I matched the mashes:

Penguin (a.k.a. Oswald Cobblepot) / Ratigan (The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective) – Both suit wearing heads of criminal organizations who spent a lot of time in bars.

Clayface / King Candy (Wreck It Ralph) – Where Clayface had impersonated Jim Gordon, King Candy was a faced-changed Turbo.

Ivy (a.k.a. Poison Ivy) / The Queen of Hearts (Alice in Wonderland) – While this Ivy had been a chaos figure and not so much of a villain, she at least had an affinity for plants. The Queen has her prized rose garden.

Joker / Judge Doom (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) – While no character to date has technically been named “Joker” on Gotham, Jerome filled the role of an insane anarchist for a while. Judge Doom proved to be a crazy “Toon.” At least some of Joker’s colors could be incorporated on Doom’s costume.

Hugo Strange / Yzma (The Emperor’s New Groove) – Both enjoyed cutting-edge experimentation.

Fish Mooney / The Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) – Both are strong females who mechanized their rise to positions of power and underwent respective transformation. A tough match with the very subtle detail of two different iris colors.

Azreal / Yokai (Big Hero 6) – Here’s a match based on the basic premise that both wore masks.

Riddler (a.k.a. Edward Nygma) / Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland) – Remember that I based all of this on character featured in either season one or two of Gotham, so the “Mad Hatter” introduced in the current, third season did not preclude using Disney’s Hatter in a mash-up. Both are slightly off-normal with penchants for riddles. The Hatter’s coat and hat became good canvases for the Riddler’s greens and question mark motifs.

What matches would you have mashed?
Who would have been a good Jim Gordon? Detective Basil?
Who would have been a good young Bruce Wayne? Christopher Robin?

monstergram7 - September & October 2016

Postings on my my Instagram feed, monstergram7, in the months of September and October were bolstered respectively by the year’s last “What Shall I Draw Today?” session and then by Inktober themed posts doubled by final color versions.

November and December ought to normalize to my 6 post per week pace, hopefully featuring more peeks of the in-production issue #3 of Unstoppable Tuff-Girl.

You can check out monstergram7 here:
https://www.instagram.com/monstergram7/

Doctor Strange

Conceptual poster design.

Black ink and water color on watercolor paper. 

12.7 cm x 17.8 cm (5.00 in. x 7.00 in.)

monstergram7 Hits 2,000 Followers

Pass around the ice cream!

I’m celebrating surpassing 2,000 followers on my Instagram feed, @monstergram7!

And I'm doing it with this time lapse video of this drawing, as I’ve done with other milestones.

The above piece colored with color pencils, was my second attempt at making the video. Things didn’t proceed perfectly and on my first attempt, as the video recorded in portrait mode, meaning it was turned 90˚. I’m not sure why you can’t edit the orientation in camera.

At any rate, I only colored it tonally in scarlet red pencil.

Thanks for following!

monstergram7 Hits 250 Followers

monstergram7 Hits 1,000 Followers

The Magnificent Seven

conceptual poster.
Black India Ink and water color on water color paper.
17.8 cm x 12.7 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)
2016

[What I thought about the film]

Storks

conceptual poster design

Black India Ink and water color on watercolor paper. 

17.8 cm x 12.7 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)

Insta-Friends

Batgirl, Supergirl, Krypto & Ace
Color pencil and black ink on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Let’s talk about this Batgirl, Supergirl, & super-pets piece which in a few days, arguably, garnered over 600 Instagram “likes” on my feed, a.k.a. monstergram7. I say “arguably”  because this specimen highlights the mysteries of Instagram.

What’s To Like
The photo of the finished color version of the Batgirl, Supergirl & pets piece above had received over 100 Instagram likes in the first few days. However, this contrasts to the over 600 likes the teaser detail shot of Batgirl had received a few days prior. The “likes” count isn’t an accurate reflection of the number of views granted. Is the difference an indication of the app experience when at the time Instagram did not natively support zooming in on posts on one’s smart phone? Did the detail shot just the right hashtags drawing in all the Batgirl fans, or was there some other favorable mix of things to make the detail particularly discoverable? Was there an at-the-time post convention bump? I may never know.

Also for context, monstergram7 had less than 1500 followers and regularly any given post received something over 100 “likes” and over 200 for the more popular posts. Over 600 “likes” was and continues to be a record-breaking level or a weird anomaly or both.

Detail photo of Batgirl
as posted in monstergram7

Con-siderations
I had begun work on the composition at this June’s Heroes Convention as a spec (speculative) piece. This means that it was not a ordered commission, but done to be sold like any other pieces of original art I have at my comic book convention showings. You can also consider it a bit of busy-work to do inbetween actual commissions and talking to folks. This detail shot is from its unfinished state at the end of the con. At the top left corner can be seen the pencilled, not yet inked paw of Krypto.

Other spec pieces done at Heroes was a portrait of Harley Quinn (sold) and the mash-up of Snow White in a Star Trek red officer uniform (not sold). Anything Supergirl or Harley Quinn tend to be the default speculative topics I’ll do at comic cons. In “World’s Finest” fashion, I wanted to team up Supergirl with Batgirl and then I wanted to add the respective super-pets. Of course, in that line of thinking, I should have drawn Streaky the supercat, but having 2 dog had a certain instinctual balance. I’m sure that a future Batgirl & Supergirl team-up will have Streaky and Ace. I also default to 1970s costumes. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if Ace the Bat-hound is part of current continuity were I to draw the lot in their modern costumes.

The most obvious differences from the tease are added blacks to Batgirl in the finished stage. In this case, as I some times will do, I inked according to animation cel practices and leave nearly all areas to be filled with color. This would have been fine. But before starting the coloring, I changed my mind in the manner of realizing that I had forgot to align her costume’s appearance to that of the comic book and added more black areas.

Detail photo of Krypto
as posted on monstergram7

The Krypto detail tease had only received about 100 “likes” in its first few days.

Lastly, this piece also reflects some of my interests that I put into my own comic adventures of Tuff-Girl. See how I made it about Tuff-Girl (wink)?

You can follow me on Instagram @monstergram7:
https://www.instagram.com/monstergram7/


[The Top 9 of 2016]

The Art of Minnie Mouse

 I am very pleased to have my contribution make it in the pages of this new art book, The Art of Minnie Mouse.

The Art of Minnie Mouse

Disney Editions

available of Amazon September 27, 2016

Minnie Mouse embodies a constant reminder to girls of all ages-including grown-ups!-to live confidently and express themselves. In The Art of Minnie Mouse, Disney artists, designers, illustrators, and animators from around the world reimagine their favorite Minnie styles and portray them in a variety of mediums. Minnie's earliest incarnation, her classic red polka-dot look, and trendy modern styles are all newly incarnated in water color, pastel, oil paint, colored pencil, mixed media, and computer graphics pieces that range from the traditional to the unconventional. The book also features a never-before-published comprehensive filmography of Minnie's animated appearances as well as a visual timeline of her career milestones.

My tall piece pays homage to the Hollywood portraits of George Hurrell (1904-1992) because Minnie (and Mickey) splashed on the silver screen in the early days of the motion pictures.

[a sampling of more found on Instagram]

Twistery, Inc.

Gotham Rogues/ Scooby-Doo mash-up
Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board.
21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.50 in. x 11.00 in.)
2016

Taking as a cue its singular achievement of receiving more than 1,000 “likes” on Instagram (@monstergram7) in two days, I’m discussing this mash-up drawing with a good scan of the piece.

Instagram follower alltookayleigh suggested the combination for the September 25th session of “What ShallI Draw Today?” Sharp-eyed followers will have long realized that some suggestions that do not get attention during WSIDT, may appear in the weeks following until the suggestions list is cleared for a new WSIDT. First, a pre-colored, inked version was posted Sunday morning for InkTober, followed a few hours later by this final version.

The characters match ups was left to my own devising. I don’t spend a lot of time on such decisions, so you may have better selections given more time to think about it. Any ways, here’s what I drew:

• To help stick the “Batman” half, I chose the slick, later Batman: The Animated Series character design style. What Batman fan doesn’t like that style? As applicable, the costume colors are inspired by those of the respective the villain characters.

• For the “Mystery, Inc.” a.k.a. “Scooby-Doo” half, the composition is based on the second group shot that came across in a Google image search. Also, most of the costume silhouettes are the same as the Mystery, Inc. crew.

• The Joker/ Freddie Jones - One leader as another leader. The only one not agape at whatever could be the off-screen threat. I figured that Joker would just laugh at it.

• Harley Quinn/ Daphne Blake - Harley is a must-have, and her Daphne is a pretty good match for a Joker/ Freddie. I added a flashlight not present in the inspiration art, just to give Harley something to do. She gets to keep her Harley cap. Being able to take checker-board color cues from Harley’s costume, her palette can be more like Daphne’s

• Poison Ivy/ Velma Dinkley - It was either Poison Ivy or Catwoman, Ivy wins out for not wearing a head and face covering mask. Did Pamela Isley wear glasses? Her costume departs from Velma’s with Ivy’s bare legs and styled boots.

• Two Face/ Shaggy Rogers - Two Face is a quick, shoot from the hip selection. If I could have thought of a better match five seconds later, then I would have drawn that. Being in the back, it’s difficult to make out at first glance the split color scheme on his shirt and pants.

• Clayface/ Scooby-Doo - What are the animal choices: 1) Killer Croc; 2) Man-Bat; 3) umm...? Neither of those look like dogs of any sort. Then consider that Clayface can actually transform into Scooby, and he’s brown!  That’s either clever or it’s a cheat.

To date, a post surpassing 100 “likes” is pretty good on monstergram7. More than 200 “likes” is a record contender. More than 1,000 is an unexplained phenomenon. It was posted with a lot of hash tags: #Batman, #ScoobyDoo, #Joker, #HarleyQuinn, #BryanMon and #ScoobTober. I guess I should stop underestimating the popularity of Scooby-Doo.

InkTober is a challenge to post at least one new inked drawing for each of October’s 31 days. There are daily topic prompts, but I think most folks just freestyle there topics. This mash-up doesn’t align with any prompt list.

So you see what can come of a clever drawing suggestion during a WSIDT session?


[The Top 9 of 2016]

monstergram7 - July & August 2016

Well, I’ve maintained posting pretty regularly at a rate of no fewer than six times a week on Instagram during the summer months of July and August. The end-of-the-month “What Shall I Draw Today?” sessions are definitely helping me build up an original art stock to sell at my few comic book convention showings.

If it’s true that there’s an audience for everything, then the random WSIDT suggestions may meet those demands.

You can check out my Instagram feed, a.k.a. monstergram7, here:
https://www.instagram.com/monstergram7/

What I Drew Sunday - September 25th

Here are the top 3 “liked” drawings from last Sunday’s session of “What Shall I Draw Today?”

#1 - Disney Villains/ Gotham: suggested by Lynn O’Connell Brandow

#2 - The Flash: suggested by sammi_samson

#3 - Mary Poppins and Bert: suggested by imangelothomas

And here is the whole Sunday set of sketches:

All these are going into my stock of original art for sale available at my next show, which may be next year’s Wonder Con at the end of March in Anaheim*, CA, unless a Christmas craft fair opportunity pops up before then.

* And I’m able to get a table of course.

THANK YOU to everybody who submitted topic suggestions. I received many more suggestions than I could draw in the 24 hours. If I didn’t get to yours, I may yet draw it to appear as one of my regular Instagram posts.

THANKS to everybody who voted with their “likes” on Instagram and Facebook and for following me at those social outlets.

To view all 19 drawings and more, please check out my Instagram feed: @monstergram7

Facebook: @I'm a Fan of Bryan Mon #BryanMon
https://www.facebook.com/groups/41638736233/
The group page was recently renamed by the administrator.

This was the last scheduled WSIDT session for 2016. The 2017 schedule will be posted in November.

What Shall I Draw on September 25th?

This coming Sunday, September 25th, I’ll be conducting another “What Shall I Draw Today?” session. The virtual suggestion box has been emptied  of all previous suggestions to make way for new ones accepted from now until the end of that Sunday. As always, you may submit your suggestions through any of these social media feeds where you see the information card above:

Instagram @ monstergram7
Facebook @ bryan.l.mon
Facebook @ I'm a Fan of Bryan Mon #bryanmon
Here on monotonae in this post’s comments.

Be sure to check out the WSIDT page tab above for guidelines and FAQ’s.

This will be the last WSIDT session of the 2016, so let’s see how crazy things get.

Calvin and Hobbes
collector card

Snow White/ Rapunzel mash-up
collector card

Glinda the Good Witch
(The Wizard of Oz) collector card

Collector cards: color pencil and black ink on Bristol Board. 6.35 cm x 8.89 cm (2.50 inn. x 3.50 in.).

Long Beach Comic Con - Long Beach 2016 (final)

Monster Enterprises presents

Bryan Mon and Merrill Hagan

return to 

 Long Beach Comic Con 

Artist Alley:  P5

September 17 & 18, 2016

Long Beach Convention Center

300 E. Ocean Blvd.

Long Beach, CA 90802

The Daughters of Triton

Attina

Alanna

Adella

Aquata

Arista

Andrina

Ariel

In Disney’s telling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale of “The Little Mermaid” King Triton is the undersea ruler of the mer-people and father of seven daughters. The youngest of these seven is Ariel, the hero of the story.

At this time, I only felt like (and had time for) coloring Attina.

All inked sketches:  Carmine red pencil and black ink on paper. 21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.5 in. x 11.0 in.)
Color:  Digital over cleaned hand ink. 21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.5 in. x 11.0 in.) (5100 pix x 6600 pix @600 d.p.i.)

Allana wallpaper @monotonae.tumblr