TAGS, January 01, 1994

“Ski Trip”

Digital color over clean scan of ink on paper.

I created this piece of art for one of the covers of “monotony.” I’m very certain that I colored it with water colors and of which a black and white copy was reproduced for that cover. As of this writing, I could not find that original water color. Here in its stead is my digital color pass of it.  Being digital, I could then make the accompanying legend is quick order.

Guy’s “87” jersey refers to the first year I worked a summer at Disneyland.  The paper lunch sack supposedly contained charcoal briquets for the snow-critters, which is an odd and otherwise unexplained detail to include.

At one point I was very concerned about which characters would wear boots. Biologically, I don’t think I got all of that detail correct. Also, I now wonder if  Bingo and Bill would really enjoy the winter fun?

Marketable Skills

“The French Market Restaurant Cast Poster, Summer 1989”

Black Xerographic reproduction on white paper

91.4 cm x 61.0 cm (36 inches x 24 inches)

1989

Here is one of the biggest self-started projects on which I worked relating to my days as a Cast-Member (i.e. employee) bussing tables at the buffeteria restaurant “The French Market” in New Orleans Square, Disneyland.  Each of the 107 Cast-Members is depicted as her/his critter-caricature or as I coined, “critticature” (or crittature), which were originally developed for my fledgling comic strip series, “Back Stage,” of which I have discussed previously.

I don’t know if almost 22 years later I need to apologize for any of my critticature selections, but I can say that none of them were out of meanness. On the opposite extreme, none of my critticature selections very much gained me anything. I didn't even have much in the way of rules of going about it, save for trying to never use the same species or breed twice. Some were actually because they reminded me of an animal or cartoon of an animal. Some were merely alliterative with either their first or last name. The worst were because I had never used a particular animal before.

The poster was as big as Kinko’s copiers, at the time, could reproduce. I drew the original at 100% scale on illustration board as a single, sprawling piece of art and pasted on the names in the legend at the bottom. To my chagrin, the large copier’s rollers would not accept the large board, and I had to peel off the top layer. I ran off 200 copies for sale I guess. I would later frame the original and give it to the department supervisor to put on display in the office, where unfortunately it got water damaged when some pipes burst (or something). In all, I sum it up as some thing I did. I didn’t even seek official permission from the park to do it. I never followed up the poster with updated or expanded versions

Disneyland being a place of seasonal employ, for some on the poster, this was their first and last season at the Market, so I think I remember about half of these people, with a few more in the “oh, yeah” edges of memory.

Merry Christmas

This season’s Christmas greeting for Monster Enterprises in three flavors.

Click each to play the animate GIF.

Saving Screens

“Unstoppable Tuff-Girl: Los Angeles”

computer screen desktop

1920 x 1200 pixels

Back in August, I shared a desktop image featuring a photo-composited image of Tuff-Girl in front of old Las Vegas.  Well, Tuff-Girl appears all over the American South-West.  The re-used Tuff-Girl image over-laid with warmer tones stands in front of Los Angeles’ skyline in twilight, although not an old Los Angeles.

A Little Like Christmas

“Tree” squibbill Christmas greeting

Carmine red pencil on paper.

“Bear” squibbill Christmas greeting

Carmine red pencil on paper.

“Sing” squibbill Christmas greeting

Carmine red pencil on paper.

Here’s a teaser on what is my current project. After a few years of putting Tuff-Girl on my Christmas cards, this year I’m using my TAGS characters again: Monster, Rodney (lion) and Polly (penguin). 

I am also returning to the idea that I would do it as a series of multiple designs, a thing I started when I worked at Disneyland and was giving out upwards of fifty cards. The variations seemed to be intriguing to my friends and co-workers.

Ready and Wilson

Little Tuffy and Wilson
sketches
Color pencil and ball-point pen ink on paper with Digital color over cleaned scan.
21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.5 inch x 11.0 inches)
2010.


Surfer girl Little Tuffy has a pet Shar-Pei, Wilson.

Why a Shar-Pei? Because when I thought about it, I couldn’t think of any other cartoon or comic strip that ever had a Shar-Pei. Think about it.

Done?

Right, so L.T. would have the first cartoon Shar-Pei. I started in earnest designing Wilson one month ago, with little success. One month later, attacking the challenge only twice more in between, here above is pretty close to what he’ll look like.

Mon to the Next

 

 Red pencil on card stock.
27.9 cm x 21.6 cm (11.0 inches x 8.5 inches).

 Digital color over scan of India Ink on card stock.
4200 x 4200 pixels.




Because a simple e-mail announcing a new e-mail address isn’t sufficient, I designed a couple of Rolodex style cards decorated with this self caricature.

Encircling me, are a number of my characters from past and present, chosen mostly because they would be reasonably shorter than I am.

(Clockwise from the 1 o’clock position) Un-named angel and devil conscience characters once doodled on my grade school notes. Their function are in the “good versus bad” tradition seen in cartoons.  Their design are about as simple as I could make them, decades prior to “The Powerpuff Girls”.

Un-named flying penguin developed for a fable I had in my head in college.

Monster as the corporate mascot for Monster Enterprises is a beast who acts as much as my cartoon alter ego as Mickey did for Walt. He is a mash of bear, gorilla, Hagar the Horrible and Muppet. This is the fourth distinct character design of Monster. The others were used in three different comic strip series: 1) “B.M.O.C.” strip written in college; 2) “Backstage” and “StageLights” satirical comics based on the goings on in Disneyland’s restaurant department; 3) “TAGS” the offshoot of “Backstage” written for a wider audience.

A shue, the pet of Lurna, Moon girl. Lurna was a throwaway invention done eight years ago when I was bored one afternoon. Part of the idea included naming things that sound like common yet unrelated English words.

Odysseus, Jupiter squirrel, pet to Homer. Andromeda was my one story idea most inspired by Anime sources. It involved girls in space, mistaken identities, war, capitalist lizards, pirates and a hapless reluctant explorer Homer and his pet, one of a population of squirrels transplanted on one of Jupiter’s terra-formed moons to evolve into domesticated fur balls the size of house cats.

Wichita, Tuff-Girl’s canine companion.

A bird-winged fairy is a minor conception that arose in high school as a result of thinking butterfly-winged fairies to be totally implausible and ridiculous. The tiny winged horse was added thinking it to be about as reasonable an idea as a tiny winged girl.

TAGS April 18 & 19, 1994

04/18: Heidi's choice.

04/19: Ach! Tsavbort!

April 18: Heidi (Gopher, 5th appearance) and Rudy (pig, 4) discuss one of modern life’s most important issues - ice cream flavors. The stork clerk is a nod to another crittericature I had done for one of my Disney restaurant co-worker. He not a re-occurring character.

Mmmm. Ice-cream.



April 19: On the flip side, Monster offers his take to Bingo (snake, 2) on the decision making process. Here the actual problem is inconsequential.

Some times non sequitur humor works, and some times like this it doesn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll try some thing different in the next strip. That’s one of the advantages of the daily strip.

Ever since writing this, I’ve considered developing a back story, at least, for the bald aliens with funny (Russian perhaps?) accents. Not getting much farther than that concept, it would have been called “Die, Monster, Die!” Ultimately, however, in whatever form, it’s existence would only be to justify this one strip and would be way, way beyond the core of TAGS.

Mmmm. Ice-Cream.

Tuff-Girl the Movie - 2009

“Allison Miller as Tuff-Girl”

Graphite on paper.

21.6 cm x 27.9 cm (8.50 inch x 11.00 inch), 2009.

With this drawing I cast actress Allison Miller (“Kings” (TV 2009), “Blood: The Last Vampire” (2009), “17 Again” (2009)) in the title role. It might not be the best bit of casting since she doesn’t have an uncanny resemblance to Janine Turner (the initial primary model for Tuff-Girl’s civilian identity, Debby Durrance), and she’s doesn’t at all appear to be half Asian. But she does appear to be tiny and someone the bad guys would underestimate.

Here I minimized the eye mask considerably to reveal more of her face which is drawn a bit too full to be more than a moderately good likeness. Already I’m making Hollywood concessions. In my conception she would answer the question “why do you wear a mask?” with “because a broken nose really hurts,” inferring that she’s built in some sort of guard in the bridge of the mask.

Matt’s Back

Co-worker Matt will be out due to a little back surgery on a “huge ruptured disk.”  He tried to describe his condition with bacon as an analog, but that really didn’t help me. Mmmm, bacon.

I wrote this up between answering the door for “Trick-or-Treaters,” following up with inking, and coloring later into the next morning. I think more things should rhyme.