The Originals (Part 2)

Sorry for not posting this sooner. I've had some things going on with school. Exams and things like that. Anyway, this is the second part of my original drawings that I found. There's not a lot left to see.

He he. This is an old comic I made. The idea came from my brother and I drew it. If you can't tell what's happening, the two police cars drive towards the monster, and come back all busted and broken. That's it.

I had developed an Idea of a robot with a multitask weapon, a bit before I made a similar gun on the spider-robot-boss in part 1. It could retract the sword, rotate to show the gun part of the weapon, and then start shooting. I named this robot something like the "Iron heart guard" or "Iron Juggernaut" or something like that.

That robot head at the top doesn't have any back story. The five characters at the bottom of the page are the important part. I made up these guys when I was about nine to eleven years old. The skull face guy is the leader of the group. The ghost and the cyborg are his members. The thought bubble was born when the skull guy made an evil plan so diabolical, that the thought bubble turned alive! Oh, these characters are supposed to be part of a group called E.V.I.L. (Evil Villain's International Lair). The, um, green guy with the six arms is and isn't a member. He just pops up randomly in the strangest and least expected places, flailing his arms about and saying "HRMINAMRMNIMRRRRR." There used to be a Frankenstein character in the group, but I took him out for a reason that I can't remember.

I had made up another character called Henry in the comic series "Henry and Others." Henry is the guy on tied to the post in the comic. I don't know how he ends up in situations like these, I just know that he never talks (except occasionally for his "Boogily" scream), and that he always manages to escape the danger.

I did a lot of stuff like this when I had a six-color mechanical pen. Before some random kid took it when I dropped it and smashed it on the ground. But anyway, I had these spaceships set into groups: Aliens (Red), Space Marines (Blue), Stealth (Black and Invisible White), and Bounty Hunters (Green). Aliens beat Stealth, Stealth beats Space Marines, and Space Marines beat Aliens. Bounty Hunters can be good against any type, depending on the ship.

The Originals

While shuffling through some of my stuff, I found one of my art folders that was filled with tons of my ancient shaded robot drawings, the ones that I made before I got pro markers. Let's have a look.

This was the very first drawing I ever had where I put detail into the gun, instead of coloring it all black. The dead alien next to the concrete wall was part of an idea I had of a really gross alien race that corrupted everything it touched.

My inspiration for this giant robot was GLaDOS from the video game "Portal." This super-computer has the ability to hang on the ceiling and walk with eight spider-like legs. The right side of the machine has a built in machine gun and rocket launcher. The video game also inspired me to make up a little video game too. I called it "Dimension." Instead of being a human, you're a robot that's being trained to use super science weapons. But when you realize that the super-computer wants to use you for evil, you decide to try and stop her evil schemes. I know I have more drawings of this spider thing, I just need to look for them.

This is one of the few aliens that I drew before Christmas. This drawing is special because of the extra perspective, e.g. the leg in the back being smaller than the other, representing him walking into battle.

The title of this drawing was actually going to be for a book that I was going to write, but never got to writing it and later found out that Second Life is actually the title of a video game. The story was about a man who was a very well trained soldier in World War 2, and died from a grenade. About a hundred years later his brain (Which had been kept and preserved) was put in a machine, and he lived again to fight in another war, this time with a whole new list of weapons and battle strategies. however, being in this machine isn't as great as it sounds. The brains, with their new body, can only hear, speak, and see. Touch taste and smell are removed because it would be too expensive to make the robots have special touch pad fingers or special aroma sensors. Another thing is that the brain feels no pain, because there are no nerves in the machine. In the story, the revived character gets blasted by a grenade, and notices that his metal arm has been torn off with sparks flying everywhere, but he didn't feel anything. He can't eat either. For food they just inject a special chemical into a tube in the back of their body to nourish the brain. At the end of the story he dies, but he's actually happy that way because of the things that he couldn't do as a robot, such as eat or taste food.

Although I didn't have pro markers yet, I did have some crude pens and markers to work with. Although the robot doesn't have any gun, it does have a weapon. It's left hand is a built in science weapon I call the adapt0r. It can copy a certain amount of matter, and it has to be able to fit in the device when duplicating. Here's an example: If he sees a sword, and wants to have two of that same sword, he can hold the sword in his right hand, then scan and duplicate the sword with the adapt0r. His left hand disappears and a sword replaces it, giving the robot two swords for battle! The caveman doesn't have a back story. Someone just wanted me to draw a caveman.

I had also found some shaded drawings that I had made on my trip in Rome, Italy, somewhere in November. I had gone to the Colosseum, and was inspired by it to draw some Gladiator bots.

I can't remember the names of the actual gladiators, but these robo-warriors are drawn the same way that the gladiators would equip their armor and weapons. This robot has a battle scar and a scary looking mouth, for oil-thirsty behavior. I put the robots into clans, based on the look of their shield. This robot is in the Thunder Fist Clan.

This robot is based on a gladiator that has to put on a helmet that prevents him from seeing. These gladiators are supposed to bring chaos into the arena. This robot has taken that to the next level by using three deadly weapons: the battle ax, the spike ball on the chain and the spike ball on the tail. The spike ball weapons are very useful for spinning in circles, creating an impenetrable shield. Because it's blinded and is mostly used to bring chaos, this robot isn't in a clan.

This one is based off a gladiator with a trident and net. The net is placed in his left arm, which propels the net at a very far distance. This robo-warrior is probably the only one who can break through the blind robot gladiator's circle of spiky death. Oh, and it's in the Iron Skull Clan.

This one is from a gladiator called a sequitor, a horseback gladiator with a spear. These lizards work well for horseback, because of their sharp claws and ability to swim very well in water. In this Colosseum brochure, it says that sequitors can only attack other sequitors.

I don't remember if this was based off an actual gladiator or not, I just know that it's an archer bot. 

Another alien of mine. This is a very important one because it's one of the very few drawings I have with backgrounds, and it gave me the chance to draw different textures, such as the straw-like texture on his skirt thingy.

Here are some of my favorites. Some of these were also drawn in Rome.

This wasn't drawn in Rome. I actually drew this while walking during my school's 5km walk. This has the corruption aliens that I talked about in the first drawing. 

I don't know when or where I drew this. This is another robot from my "Second Life" story, totally rockin' it with his new mini-gun.

I did draw this in Rome. It's simply a forest robot, patrolling through the tall grass. Man, I really should have put some dates on these things.

I really like this one because of the cool wiry unfinished parts of the robot. This was part of another make-up video game I thought of called "PR0T0TYPE," where an unfinished robot must escape out of an abandoned factory, where much of the hazardous machinery still works.

He he. Me and my brother also make up little logos as well. We made up one called "Crazy Studios," where an astronaut with a long rose runs across the screen while singing "Ra-da-daaaaa." If you look closely, there's another version of this astronaut just below him. This was the drunk astronaut, wearing nothing but some underwear, holding an empty glass bottle and singing "Re-de-deeeee."

There's much more of the originals to see! Stay tuned next week for "The Originals part 2!" 

Alien Storyline

A few months ago I had created this story about aliens, a bit after Christmas Break. It started out when I made my first drawing with my new pro markers. With a few minutes of sketching and about an hour of fleshing it out and coloring it I made this:

I loved this drawing. Normally I draw robots, and even if I do draw an alien, I usually don't like it. But the fact that this was colored, an assassin, AND had a cool name, I felt really proud about it. In fact, I wanted to draw MORE of these things, which I had never done before. I usually draw what I wish to draw, look at it, then make something else. The second one was very successful.

My brother drew the scar (Which is why it's still his favorite drawing I've made), but everything else was done by me. But I wasn't done yet. I wanted to make even more of these aliens. And as the more I drew them, the more I built up some information about them and their cultures. The eye on Xen's shoulder pad, for example, is "The eye that sees all." It's sort of like their religion, as they believe that one of the stars in the universe is a magical eye, the only remaining piece of a majestic god who created the universe. The next alien I drew had to be drawn twice, as I had made a mistake the first time.

Nezdril was the alien with the most back story. Nezdril was the ancient leader of these green aliens, and had died a few hundred years ago from a volcanic explosion. His body was preserved until they had the technology to revive him with bionic upgrades, including some tubes on his neck to allow more blood to reach his head. If you haven't noticed, the pose of the creatures slowly seem more and more like a human stance. I didn't notice this until I had finished drawing all six of the aliens, and when my Mom pointed it out to me. I didn't want this to happen, but it's hard to make it look a bit non-human after drawing human-like robots for so long.

This next one is done in colored pencil and crayon. Yej (pronounced "yesh") is the oracle of the eye that sees all. He's wearing a skull of the primitive version of these creatures, who once had horns. The crystal ball of foreseeing, of course, sees the future, and the staff of history sees the past. That bone leg he has is supposed to be a peg leg, but it looks more like part of his flesh was burnt off. 

Krawn was one of my favorites, not just because of his super cool mega ion blaster, but because he has some shading and lighting added to his head and armor. The vials attached to his left leg are chemical bombs that are triggered when the liquid is put in contact with oxygen. The grenades on his right leg and chest are special bacteria radiation grenades, that spill radiation. This radiation, however, has a special bacteria put with it, so that the radiation is slowly consumed by bacteria until it disappears. 

 Skrall doesn't really have any story behind it, or much to show. It's just an alien with an electric spear. I did try to draw the head in a different perspective, but it looks a lot cooler the way the other aliens had their heads positioned.

This picture actually has several mistakes with the alien body. The waist is a bit too much to the left and his legs aren't placed on the ground correctly, but overall it looked cool. This picture represents the destruction of the aliens. However, I didn't stop the alien story here. This picture gave me some questions about the robot, such as where it came from, who made it, and why it went on this planet. I decided to draw more of these robots and answer these questions as I drew.

Although I hadn't quite answered any of my own questions yet, I did make a bit of sense out of some of the parts of Databix. On his right shoulder is a square chip I called "Kill-ware," that gives Databix a more murderous behavior. His left shoulder has a dome with little spikes on it. I didn't give it a name yet, but I did give it two purposes. One is to make a small invisible force shield around the exposed wires on his body. The second purpose is much more complicated. If Databix was to record something on its side camera, it wouldn't be seen on a different planet for about 10 or 20 minutes, as it takes a while for the information to reach its destination. This dome device, however, solves this long delay by creating a complex split in time within it's core, allowing the side camera to see things 10 to 20 minutes before they actually happen! The last things to mention is the waist with the little discs and the left arm. Those blue discs are actually ammo for the mini gun arm. The disc is placed in a cylinder which can be barely seen at the top of the right arm, next to the shoulder. The left arm has this little antennae device. That's simply a tazer to neutralize hard-to-defeat-enemies.  

Photaz doesn't look nearly as intimidating as Databix, but it's just as deadly. Again, it has the spiky dome thing, but the Kill-ware is slightly different. Instead, it's Hunt-ware, a more sharp-eyed technology to give the robot more accuracy when firing its heat-detecting laser sniper. Its feet have a soft bottom to soften the sound of it walking when it sneaks through enemy lines. It also has radar sensors to detect anything behind it and anything in the dark or the water. 

As I was making Photaz, I began to create an Idea of who made these machines and where. These creatures were super intelligent, very strange-looking. . . and have been watching us humans for a very long time. I call them stecs.

If you look at the bottom of this sketch page, you will notice that they don't have arms, have spiky backs and have backwards-jointed legs. I first wanted them to be creatures that lived on the planet of Jupiter. This was before I did my planet research and found out that Jupiter had huge amounts of radiation and poisonous gases everywhere. Anyway, these aliens lived thousands of years before humans, and therefore have developed better technology than humans. That hole where their stomach would be is where their eggs come out when they give birth. Speaking of birth, stecs reproduce asexually, which means that all the offspring is identical. Their tentacles on their mouths can be used as a kind of sign language, as well as filtering the dangerous fumes in the air to only breathe pure oxygen. Their eyes have the same chemicals as fireflies, which allow them to glow different colors. The tentacles on its forehead are like fingers, and the tentacles near the egg-hole give milk for the newborn babies. 

When these creatures managed to build spacecrafts (called UFO's by humans), and successfully break through the thick atmosphere, they discovered our world. They now often observe us and watch our behaviors and technology. They are so inspired by us humans and our weapons that they created killing machines in our image. Their empire is so large that they need to conquer other planets to build more cities and other things. 

Even in their primitive age they conquered most of the planet. They would use the sharp points of their mouth tentacles to pierce their prey until they fainted from the loss of blood. They would then pull and rend flesh out of the prey and pull it into their mouths. Like humans, stecs did not just eat meat. They would dine on a few plants that survived on Jupiter. 

This shows the inside of a stec egg and what a baby and teenager would look like. The baby on the left begins with arms to help it move around and the almost disappear in the teenage years. Their tentacles also start out very small and grow through their lives.

Here are some extra sketches that I've added to the story.

The robot's name is SCAMP, and is designed to have the ability to control your mind and make you think that you're suffering pain or in a different place. It just needs to look in your eyes. This robot was also made by the stecs, but its neural features were so complicated that it would be extremely expensive to give it realistic human movement. So they just gave it some wheels and arms to take planet samples. 

Ignore the fire breathing head.

I doodle a lot.

I also had an idea that another human species had lived on Jupiter, but had left to another world because of the large amount of deadly fumes and radiation that came to the planet. These humans have lived even before stecs, so they have very high-tech stuff. They plan to come back to Jupiter one day, once they feel like they should stop the stecs from controlling the Solar System. But for now they're hiding somewhere deep in space. . .

Art

I started trying to draw well somewhere when I was about 5 or 6. It began when I was a constant reader of the Calvin and Hobbes comics, and I loved them so much that I wanted to draw the characters too. So with practice and constant determination I managed to make some rather crude images of Calvin and his friend Hobbes. However, I thought they were awesome. I continued to draw from looking at the comics, until I decided to draw the characters without any help. 

In school, my Art teachers said my work was very good. I was so proud that I decided I could draw more than just a kid and his little tiger friend. So I began to draw all sorts of crazy, young-minded doodles. Back then in school I couldn't help myself and eventually I had drawings on my folders, binders, homework pages, and sometimes even textbooks. The teachers were a bit annoyed. Even my Art teachers said I should slow down a bit. But I had already caught on tut o the bad habit and by 5th grade I was still drawing everywhere I could.

Meanwhile, my drawing skills had improved ridiculously fast. I didn't know how fast it improved until I looked at an older drawing of mine and saw the vast difference. Around 6th and 7th grade I slowly made a few of my own characters, some story lines, and a hand full of unfinished comics, all being very different from each other. But there was one thing I still hadn't done that would change the way I drew for the rest of my life. . . sketching.

I decided to try sketching when we moved from South Carolina in America to Dublin in Ireland, as my Dad got a job opportunity there. I didn't think sketching would be a big change in my art technique, but when I first tried it, I thought it was the best thing ever, and now I rarely draw things without sketching them first. This was the very first drawing I ever made in Ireland and the first that I tried to make by sketching first. I was 12 when I made it. It was done in pencil.

I then inked it, which was something else I had never done. Later, in Art class we talked about shading things to give them "Weight." And when she said that, I wanted to try it out. So, using some imagination, I made some sketched robots with shaded bodies.

I thought that these drawings looked like they had real weight to them and gave them real metal features. I loved shading so much not only because of this, but because I didn't really have any coloring tools yet, and shading in my opinion was just as good. As you can see from the drawings, my skills improved very quickly. There are many more of these shaded drawings, but I'll show them later.
My Mom noticed my skills in drawing and she gave me some very crucial tips in making the human shape look human. These few pointers gave my robots more and more lifelike looks, and I became more and more proud of my skills.
Then came Christmas. We had all the presents under the tree, and my family was eagerly taking out presents. My brothers got legos and cars and my sisters got barbies and makeup. I got a huge bagful of art supplies, which included a graphite set, erasers, pencils, pens, mechanical pens, five notebooks, pro markers, and pencil sharpeners (and also the 4 six piece Twirl bar bags which I guiltily ate before the end of the Christmas break).
With these new art items (the pro markers especially), my art quality improved drastically. I will try to constantly post these drawings and try to keep a steady pattern of one post every week. Enjoy!