The Phantom Force 5

Specege Parade

2011-12-16T23:15:00.001-08:00

I’ve been doing a lot of these guys. If you’ve been following my tumblr or my dA you’ve probably seen a couple. I just decided to do one big super post where I put all of ‘em in and talk about them briefly. VERY BRIEFLY.

First the coloured digital ones:

Shine – Protagonist/Adventurer/Professional boxer/Dude with a dark past

Anima – Romantic interest… I know it’s a bit obvious with the friggin heart on her chest. I’ll redesign her son enough. I’m prolly gonna give her a paw print instead.

Yo – Rival/Ex-Professional boxer

Dory – Teacher/Swimming aficionado

Floss – Thief/Parkourist

Foresite – Friend of Shine/Dude with equally dark past

Kiss – Gang leader

Smith – Grunt/Engineer

Spore – Nerd/Biological warfare expert/ Fungus aficionado

Ought-Head – Violent dick/Arsonist/Generally disagreeable fellow

Powerhaus – Experiment gone wrong/Juggernaut/Heavy

Now the traditional stuff:

First digitally colored stuff

Autoplasm – Phantom of mechanics and also the opera when he feels like it

DroyD – Generic robot grunt

Hot Staph – Colleague of Spore/Rash aficionado

Infa – Information and communication officer/General grumpy badger

An now uncoloured stuff… Though these are my favourites and I will tell you nothing about them.

Belloon

Party Fay

Eyelead

Short Stick

Varcity

Wipp

And my mind is done vomiting on to this poor unsuspecting blog. In case you haven’t noticed I made this one long on purpose. Makes it look like I got lotsa content

…Also I tried to keep them in scale with one another. Bare in mind that they are a Lilliputian species, so this is also probably their life-size too.

Ugh I’m such a horrible father! D:

2011-11-04T13:43:00.001-07:00

Yeah it’s been an entire summer since I’ve been here last hasn’t it?

Well I’ll have you know that I’ve been spending it in an extremely busy and work-addled state – alternatively undercut with spectacular bouts of procrastination.

I'm now in second year at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and the work load is fairly stressful. In light of this I’m going to revamp my timetable as of tonight – hopefully – to accommodate a better online presence.

Prepare for incoming blogroll!

I can be found at:

deviantArt: jonozoom on dA and MandelaSix on dA

YouTube: jonozoom’s channel

Tumblr: The Jonotoans Invade! and LipsLipsLips

Twitter: @Mandela808 and @jonozoom

and saving the best for last:

My work site and online portfolio, Jonathan Nelson Designs.com

And of course the Phantom Force 5 itself.

Stay tuned for new content!

The Fulord

2011-04-03T20:35:00.001-07:00

Hey all, it’s been awhile… Are you mad at me?

I’ve got some s’plaining to do, I know. Don’t worry my faithful subjects, you will find the tales of my absence and more on my tumblrrrrr.

Today I decided that I wanna talk about one of the alien races I’ve been developing called the Fulord.

The Fulord are a gelatinous species of alien from the far-away Planet Fulaag (pictured right). An asexual species, they are born as secretions from the mineral Fulophite, that can be found all over their planet. Fulords are generally impossibly ancient, and share a collective consciousness and intelligence with all other Fulord there and across the universe.

Besides their telepathic abilities, as a result of their biological composition the Fulord can fuse with the physiology of all other alien species. They form a mutually symbiotic relationship with a host creature, and are able to use their bodies as a means of locomotion as well as for other purposes. Otherwise – much like a plant – the Fulord are constantly rooted.

Fulaag is inhabited with few other species, all of them spineless. For eons the Fulord used the other creatures on the planet as limbs, such as with the Champions of Gurble (pictured left). This Fulord society is known for using a worm called the S’Buxit as makeshift arms, and using a Scyphozoid creature called a Plue as a locomotive appendage.

As of 10 years ago a colossal meteor strayed into the orbit of Fulaag, eventually colliding with the planet and sending chunks of Fulophite careening across the galaxy at incredible speeds. These minerals crash-landed on alien worlds, resulting in young Fulord being born and fusing with creatures from all over the star-system.

These include (but are not limited to):

The Gawen

A race of pseudo-humanoid beings that have yet to achieve space flight themselves, but still get lots of intergalactic traffic. Well known for their artisan and trading culture they have two arms for heavy lifting, and two arms for delicate work. This Gawen (pictured right) in particular gained intergalactic enlightenment from her amalgamation with the Fulord collective, eventually becoming a space-traveller. I have a lot of sketches of these guys, so they’ll probably get their own post.

The Som Nom

I’ve spoken about the Som Nom briefly in this post. Basically they’re SPACE ZOMBIES. This guy in particular had already achieved an advanced state of mutation, when he stumbled… shambled upon the crash-site of a chunk of Fulophite. As we all know, a mutated Som Nom’s brain is in the giant eyeball. Suddenly he finds himself with two brains – one of which has an incalculably large mental capacity. Boy he must be really confused now.

Terrans

Ya’ll were waiting for this one (I know, don’t lie). A car-tire sized fragment of Fulophite landed in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and was quickly found by a college student named Chloe Olivier. From it was born five young Fulord, who for her curiosity, tried to possess her body. Unlike many other alien species who can only fuse with one Fulord at a time, Terran human physiology allows us to combine with many of them at once.

The Fulord can diffuse into her body at will, but since they still retain their mass, this ends up with – as she would call them – unfortunate side effects.

Luckily for her, she eventually figures out how to turn the Fulord into any shape she needs. This means that they can even become articles of clothing, or weapons. With her newfound companions and abilities she becomes the super-heroine The Jade Bug!

In conclusion, I love the concept of the Fulord. The only problem is that I recently looked at their standard design and realized that… well… it’s boring. So I made a line-up sheet for some new designs. Rather than them all looking the same, I wanted to give their designs some more character.

Phew! That’s enough for this post everyone. Ciao!

New junk

2010-08-07T21:44:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately for me, I seem to have misplaced my faithful jump drive Amber. I just found this out as I sat down to write this post, and though it seems like a bearable concept to most this is an especially dreadful set of circumstances.

I will continue my search tomorrow, but if she just happens to be where I think she is, she’s probably already dead.

Sigh.

On a lighter note.

Just a few new sketches just to show I’m always doing something.

This is a female warrior from the planet Karparu (Pictured Left). The Karparu are one of the five alien races that joined together to form the invading force of the Periphera from my tentative series, Big Ego.

This person in particular is a war-pilot named SeLe, and is one of the best on Karparu. This isn’t a finished design, just a sketch.

Each member of the Periphera has one of the five senses as their theme. For the Karparu it’s touch of course, hence the large hands, extra pair of hands on her shoulders, and five bent horns on her head signifying the five fingers on the hand.

Originally the five horns were open, but now I’m considering leaving them closed for some and open for others. Maybe a way to distinguish between different ethnicities in Karparu culture.

Next is a mini-study of one of my favourite characters from Paranormal (I have a lot of favourites from this series) Alphabet K formerly known as Kick Gato. I won’t go into her story too much in this post, that’s for a future Character Bio.

I will tell you that she runs a gym/bar & grill called Knock-Outs. In the mornings it’s a gym, and she holds self-defence classes for whoever is interested. When evening turns, the tv’s turn on, the drinks come out, the food start’s-a-cookin’ and the people come runnin’. During the series, this will be one of the settings of leisure for this blog’s titular characters, The Phantom Force 5.

Otherwise, quite a bit of the recurring female protagonists will show up in the mornings to train, spar and be taught by K. Even Turnip (seen in this post) , when finally coaxed to come out of her house by Marshmallow – now affectionately dubbed MaMa - takes up classes at Knock-Outs to try and build back her confidence.

These two are the aunt and mother of the main female protagonist in Paranormal, Ribbon Knot. I will get into her story in a later post, maybe.

At any rate, this is Butterfly Flutter, and her little sister Moth. Moth is the mother of Ribbon and her brother Bow, whereas Butterfly has no children and is quite satisfied with that fact.

It’s a classic tale of ugly-duckling I suppose? Throughout their youth, Butterfly was exalted for her natural elegance, while plain old moth was generally ignored.

Everyone who saw the fantastic patterns on butterfly’s wings (She wraps around her body to use as a type of natural dress; this was originally Moth’s ideas) would immediately fall in love with her staggering beauty. Inspired by this idea, Moth decided to make outfits that could capture and harness that same beauty. She wanted to be as adored as her sister, but unfortunately she couldn’t change the wings she was born with.

Eventually she realized she had a passion for designing and making clothes – outside of the need to look like her sister – and decided it was her calling. Currently she is one of the greatest and richest designers in the world, has a wonderful husband named Tie and two gorgeous and talented children, while her sister makes a living as a professional goldigger. Go figure.

I just noticed that this post is pretty much completely composed of females. Not that I’m complaining.

I’ve been thinking about doing one post a week on this blog, and at least one a day on my tumblr. This artblog is more like my personal website, and not really a up-to-date recap of recent events, especially not with the directions I want to take. I need to type up things ahead of time though, and thanks to the publish-date-setting-thingie I can type up a post today, and set it to come out on Saturday if I want it to. Until then.

Ciao.

I have a tumblr

2010-07-16T01:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah I have a tumblr account now, just in case anyone is interested in following me there.

The Jonatoans Invade!

Enjoy!

Ciao.

When Emoticons attack!

2010-07-09T21:42:00.001-07:00

This is one of a set of new headers that I made for use on the site. There are also headers for my concept art, as well as some other secret content that I was planning on releasing soon. Sorry for the crappy quality, the pictures were heinously blurry. Unfortunately, until I can get a scanner, the rest of the headers are gonna pretty much have this same quality.

But I digress.

This is Broken Smiley, a psychopath from my most developed series so far: Paranormal. His real name is Sphere Bearing, and he is a homeless murderer.

Wielding a completely totaled, yet once sophisticated suit of attribute-enhancing armor, he stalks the pitch-black back-alleys of the city of Feldspar.

He spends the daytime pick-pocketing as his means of income. His nights, however are a different story. Waiting in a dark corner of a parking lot, or behind the dumpster at the back of a restaurant, he delights in meeting any unsuspecting individuals who were unlucky enough to bump into him. Completely insane, he loves nothing more than killing. It is now his hobby… though it used to be his job.

Meet Smiley. He is notorious as being the greatest assassin on the planet. Whoever he’s been hired to kill, has met their end, one way or another. Smiley actually got his name from his employers, who at the time mocked him for his appearance. He quickly proved his legitimacy by slicing one of his client’s drinking glass in half from across the room, without any indication as to how he had done so. Needless to say, his employers were impressed, and it all started from there.

Smiley’s suit increases his strength, speed and senses tenfold. This makes him a perfect-shot every time – he could clip the legs off of a Sneaker* from 2000 yards away – with the suit accounting for wind disturbance, air pressure, humidity, etc, etc. He can make calls and perform research on targets with the suit as well, using a holographic HUD interface in the helmet and a constant connection to the Network**. It comes with a series of retractable short range and long range weapons, as well as the pièce de résistance: three different sniper rifles of increasing range stored as data in the suit’s memory banks.

In his time Smiley became a legend. Other assassins saw him as an example of perfection. He left no trace of himself after his task was completed, and the only people who new of his existence were those willing to hire him.

One day he was hired by a mysterious benefactor to kill the main hero of Paranormal, Ghost. The idea was that to cut diamond, you use a diamond – to kill a ghost you use a ghost. Unfortunately for Smiley’s client (and eventually Smiley himself) this philosophy works both ways.

What began as a simple assassination attempt, exploded into a prolonged battle, fueled by Ghost’s inability to stay down and Smiley’s refusal to let dead men walk away. It ended with Ghost being almost fatally wounded and Smiley’s armour being essentially broken in half.

All the hype surrounding him had gotten to his head. He thought he was untouchable. He thought once Smiley was on the job you were a dead-man. He thought no one would ever see his true face again, not even himself. He was wrong.

Driven mad by this realization he fled from Newstate, some say he even fled the country, and was never seen again. After a while he was pretty much presumed dead, the legend dying with him.

But what’s this? Inexplicable murder’s are turning up in Feldspar? People afraid to leave their homes at night? The perpetrator is completely untraceable?… As if he was a ghost?

Just keep smiling kids!

Ciao.

*A Sneaker is essentially the Planetarian equivalent of a Terran chicken. Like chicken’s they are flightless and delicious, but unlike chickens they are especially fast and very silent, hence the name.

**The Network is the Planetarian equivalent of our internet. It pretty much functions in the same way.

THE “DEATH STAR” SAGA… DUNDUNDUUUNNN!!

2010-06-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

These days I’m mostly doing concepts and designs as practice for big projects, or if my eventual job involves conceptualizing. If I keep coming up with new ideas my imagination will stay healthy, because it gets regular exercise… This being the reason why I should start reading again.

Back to the topic.

I’ve been writing down concepts and making up series since I was in prep school – for the sake of foreigners in my audience: basically elementary school. Now, I would be all happy and boasting about this fact if it weren’t for the realization that most if not all of my series were largely unoriginal.

The few I can remember off the top of my head that were actually completely original are:

Jono Zoom – which I speak about in this post.
Ninja Cats – Though this is only a half-qualifier since it showed a lot of influence from Thundercats which had been running on the Cartoon Network at the time. I’ll probably go more into the Ninja Cats in a later post.

One of the least favorite of my old ideas was the Death Star series, a vague story about a motley crew of individuals from a bunch of different alien worlds being dubbed Death Stars and getting together to save their solar system from… Something. Destruction? I don’t friggin know.

I’m not entirely sure about the new story either. I believe there’s some kind of interstellar despot involved?… And maybe a tournament? Each planet chooses their best and brightest to represent them in a contest for their lives? Notice how I’m asking questions here? I’m just not sure.

I like these designs too. I’m not going to do anything with them most likely, but I still think they at least deserve a proper back-story. I will continue to work on it. Also I think I’m gonna change the name to Star Savers. Not only is “Death Star” an unoriginal name, it’s a misleading one too. The name Death Stars make them sound like villains.

It consists of 9 heroes from 9 different worlds; each one vastly different from the other.

The monk Kar Dio from the chilly Planet Mente, the war hero Grizzlion from the scarred Planet Ross, the mechanical marvel Ducois from the divided Planet Servol 20 (drawn but not pictured), the king of the skies – all skies – Tein Bova of the windy Planet So Ar, etc, etc.

I probably gonna bring them all up race by race once I finish them all, cuz to tell you the truth: I’m having a lot of fun with these guys.

My favorite so far is the Rossians because of the relationship that they’ve built with some of the planet’s fauna. There’s – what can best be described as – a type of mollusk on Ross called a Baquelez. For centuries the Rossians have used the Baquelez as containment devices or as holsters, while the Baquelez have become domesticated, and are fed by their owners. The pictures I have of them so far are too small so I couldn’t get a good one, but the swirly things on Grizzlion that look like an alien utility belt are actually Baquelez curled up around various items of his. They produce a sticky fluid that helps keep them things fastened to them when they’re being used as holsters. For example in the image above Grizzlion is drawing some kind of gun from a Baquelez that had curled its body around it, keeping it in place.

Here are two Rossian women chatting about the day's happenings while letting their Baquelez roam (right). If used in a casual setting, Baquelez are usually worn as living bracelets.

Species mutualism is an interesting concept, and it helps distinguish this planet from the others.

I should be doing more of these in the future.

But until then

Ciao

This post has nothing to do with Timmy Turner’s maternal grandparents.

2010-06-28T17:58:00.001-07:00

I’m trying to throw as many of my daily sketches as possible on to this blog, in an effort to produce regular content. Hopefully I am succeeding.

This is Turnip Tuber, one of the supporting characters in my tentative and most developed series entitled Paranormal. She has one of the more unfortunate back stories of the series, and it may not even be shown in the series it self. Many characters I develop, I only do it for the sake of character development, and they may never be in the show – for example, the laidback lawman named Taste (pictured right).

Back to the character in question. Ms. Tuber is a botanist and geneticist from a Planetarian, equatorial nation known as Cloratia. She migrated to the city of Newstate, Capita when she was offered a teaching job in the natural sciences division of the Newton/Phillips Knowledge Institute.

Before I continue the rest of her story, I have to mention a problem that I’m currently having with it. When developing a character, if I drew them before I wrote their story it can sometimes lead to inconsistencies among cases. For example Turnip here, was first drawn in a comic where she worked at a prison as – what I assume is – a member of the surveillance staff. In fact you can see her wearing her uniform in her image above. This put her in the right setting for the most traumatic confrontation in her life to occur; and an important aspect of the character as she is now.

If this were to stay in play, then one would question why a botanist would be working in a jail, as some kind of technician? How did she get there? Did she give up her teaching job? Was she fired? And if the answer to the last two questions is yes, then why would someone with her qualifications work in a prison?

The comic depicts the homicidal psychopath Tile (pictured left) and his successful escape from the maximum-security prison where Turnip and her boyfriend Gain Max work. Gain was the warden, and she was some kind of technician or clerk or secretary or I really have no clue.

All I know is Gain tried to lock Tile in the compound by activating its temporary lockdown sequence. This would effectively seal him, Tile and anyone else in the building and completely lock it from the outside, preventing the now super-powered murderer from escaping into society. Before issuing the command he had Turnip leave the premises to keep her safe.

Little did Gain know, that Tile had been training in secret, trying to extend his power past his extremities. Finally, over years of incarceration he was able to perfect his techniques.

Tile originally had the power to cover objects in a hard almost diamond like substance – a process referred to as Tilelisation –, as well as molding this substance around his limbs in the shape of blades and other sharp edges to maim his victims with. I won’t get into his backstory, not in this bio.

After his long stay in prison slowly honing his skills in secret, he had eventually developed a way to make the substance grow across a room and tilelise far-away objects, even people. This he used to escape, slaughtering any security personnel who got in his way.

Ironically enough he met up with Turnip outside of the prison, and to her dismay recognized her as the Warden’s main-squeeze, though they attempted to keep their relationship secret. Seizing the opportunity to get revenge on the Warden he took his time beating her to a pulp and then finally attempting to gut her with one of his tile-blades. At that time the authorities arrived and he skedaddled, leaving her half dead and bleeding on the ground.

As a result of this traumatic experience, Turnip who was once a strong, smart and confident scientist is now a nervous wreck who fears the outside world and all the people in it. She works out of her home doing research on new types and uses for plants, though she can’t do any field research so she gets her samples delivered to her from the Institute.

Maybe just got the first job opening she could see, and that happened to be the surveillance job at the prison. I dunno. I still can’t find a nice way to connect the two… Oh well. It’ll sort itself out eventually.

What I like best about her design is the use of her leaf/hair… things. Before the attack her hair is long enough for her to have to tie off the end of it like a bun, but after the attack stress and anxiety has caused her to lose considerable amounts of it, really showing the physical side-effects of the event.

I think I’ll be doing more bios. Really as long as I have a sketch I can take a photo of I have a post.

Ciao.

“Hey, big-headed child…”

2010-06-27T18:46:00.001-07:00

“…Are you the terran humanoid known as Jonathan Nelson?”

By the way, she’s holding a device called a Stellar Scanner, using it to display the details of who she’s looking for.

A sketch I literally did a few minutes ago. This nice lady (above) is a scout/retriever representative of the war-planet Jonato Omega Prime. The Jonatoans are one of the various humanoid races that I drew on this page (right).

I don’t know what her name is yet – if I’m even going to give her one – and I also haven’t gotten down the phonics of the Jonatoan language so I don’t know what her name would even sound like.

Usually when I’m thinking up alien languages, I have to compare them to the sounds of earth languages. For example the characters from the beginning of this post are from the Planet M. Their language along with most of the languages of the other planets in their solar system seems to be a fusion of Japanese and whatever language Egyptians spoke.

If not that then I compare them to the various calls of animals, made into more significant codes and patterns.

I think the Jonatoans have very deep speaking voices, and use roars, breaths and growls. This results in them sounding like they’ve been swallowing razors when they speak English or any other Earth languages.

I like the Jonatoan design for their clothes because despite those on the big sketch page above wearing what’s considered as “casual wear”, their outfits are very battle-ready. One recurring theme is the front of their suits remaining open when dressing casually. They believe everything that really matters for the body is in the torso, therefore it is coveted and must remain uncovered when out of the battlefield.

I apologize for the lack of colour that you may be seeing for the next few days. As you can more than likely see, I do not get much if any colouring practice, on or off of the computer.

I intend to get more practice in, and also see if I can practice drawing realism digitally.

Ciao.

Cute girl

2010-06-26T19:19:00.001-07:00

Random sketch of a girl that I drew about a month back. Many of those who have viewed my sketchbooks frequently complain about the figures of the women I draw, suggesting that they all have large breasts, and all have hourglass figures.

Personally I don’t agree with this assessment completely. Not all of the women I draw are ridiculously well endowed… but truthfully, most of them are. This problem only refers to random sketches, and not so much characters which I am happy about.

So with that I decided to practice more drawing women with more conventional shapes and curves, or even none at all. I have to admit I really like this pic, so much so that I attempted to colour it. She has such a pretty face, and she still has fairly thick legs which I will always enjoy on a female figure.

More to come.

Ciao.

I give up

2010-06-24T19:41:00.001-07:00

Hey people. Don’t worry about the title, I’m still going to be using this blog, i just give up on the even number thing.

As of leaving my previous school I suddenly stopped being faux obsessive compulsive. Don’t know why, but hey, I’m not complaining.

On a dimmer note, I am excruciatingly bored. This is – I gather – as a result of my recent lack of mobility despite summer having officially started. Being a spry young man, the obvious choice is that I just walk to my preferred destinations. Which I would do, but the weather has began to conspire against me.

Oh well. I took some pics recently of stuff I’ve been working on during my period of inactivity so like a certain previous post, i’ll just show some images and explain them.

This is a villain concept I’ve been designing from a long developed series (I have literally been working on this series since prep school. For the foreigners out there: since elementary school basically.)

The series was originally called Megaboy, but unfortunately as I have come to realize it, if I intend to actually produce this as an animated series or even a comic I can’t keep that name. My character has no connection to the mightiest mechanoid of the maverick-verse, and I don’t want any viewers drawing parallels between them.

(Left: The protagonist Maku, in various modes of operation that he can harness using his powerful suit named the MagentaArmour. This series takes place on an alien world named M, so I’m trying to keep the names as weird as possible… Why are you laughing?)

This is the superhuman businessman known as Deux Doublemind (shown below).

He was actually once two people (left) named Nad Tyuu and Temen Set. They were both lab technicians in a project involving exposing organic material to specific doses of cosmic energy, to deduce the effects of deep-space travel on the Emian (Residents of M) humanoid’s body, and hence how much shielding was required for their spacecrafts.

Soon they discovered that if more than one object was irradiated at a time, they would emerge cosmically fused, creating new substances and organisms. Considered a breakthrough, they agreed to keep working through the night, despite the warnings of a violent electrical storm on the horizon.

Surely enough a bolt of electricity hits the lab, causing the device that regulates radiation exposure to short circuit and explode, flooding the laboratory with cosmic energy and knocking them both unconscious.

When they awoke they were shocked to find that they now shared one body and one consciousness. The new being named himself Deux Doublemind, a man twice as big, strong, fast and smart as a regular Emian. He was also fused with plant and animal samples from the lab equipping him with heightened senses and the ability to feed of the energy of others. He even wields 20% of his brain-capacity, granting him minor telepathic abilities.

I was about to say more but this can’t completely be about Deux, and i wrote a lot more about him.

I’ve been interested in luchadores lately, mostly because of how much I love the superheroes from El Tigre on Nickelodeon.

These two are the luchadora sisters La Manzana Grande and La Manzana Rojo, two latina women from New York. They both had a passion for wrestling, but as they got older circumstances pushed it farther and farther a way from them. Soon the little sister ( haven’t given them real names yet) moved to like Wisconsin or something, following a business opportunity. Regardless, the heart of a luchadora continued to beat within them, to the point where when an international tournament was announced, without a second thought they donned their costumes once more and took to the ring, becoming one of the most notorious tag-teams on the circuit. Grande is strong, tough, hard to topple and specializes in grappling and take-downs, whereas Rojo is fast, agile, and is an expert at disorientating her opponent and using their weight against them. They need more research and building of course, but I like the designs at least, especially the big city motif on Manzana Grande… Get it?

Um… uh… one more.

In my currently most developed series entitled Paranormal (You can find out more about characters from this series in this, this, and this post), the protagonist – named Ghost – is actually one of the products of a genetic engineering project performed by the insane Dr. Phobia. Commissioned by the government, the engineered beings – known as the Phobias – were a brilliant fusion of biological and mental warfare, possessing the ability to induce fear and hallucinations in their victims.

The most powerful of the Phobias being Pantophobia the Lord of Fear. Every Phobia has their own theme, be it fire for Pyrophobia, heights for Acrophobia or even ghosts – as is was the theme for our protagonist when he was the creature known as Spectrephobia.

Pantophobia harnesses all of the facets and permutations of fear. As a result of all of this power that he wields, he can use it rarely, and in fact has to enable what’s called a Dormant form to survive. Ghost is the Dormant form of Spectrephobia; Pantophobia’s Dormant form is called King Omni. Literally a king, he rules over a small country called Hollow.

Okay, that’s it now. You know my problem is I like publishing this stuff online, but I don’t know what the net is doing with it. I think eventually I may have to delete some of these posts after a while.

Until then.

Ciao.

Summer start?

2010-06-18T16:38:00.001-07:00

Hey all.

I’m happy to say that all of my exams – including entrance exams – have now been completed. I am attempting to acquire a job for the summer, but otherwise I should have some free time to start back some computer drawings and such.

It has come to my attention that I have a lot of ideas, and I would like to be able to show them to you. The only problem is that I still suck at using the computer, but am getting exponentially better at my skill in real life. This is mostly due to a lack of practice, but really because of how horrible my tablet, pen and computer are I am genuinely de-motivated from even making an attempt at working digitally.

Whenever I start a new page of sketches or try and finish and colour a piece of work, I am met with a strange lethargy that leaves me dissatisfied with the end result of an image and not particularly interested in doing any more.

Gone are the days when I could open a huge, new canvas in Photoshop and go to town on it with a brush size: 3p, colour: sky blue, opacity: 40%; Covering pages bigger than my computer-screen with sketches as tall as my thumb.

Now I can’t bring my self to start a page, let alone fill it.

I’m still creating though, still building my universe, and I’m certainly still drawing irl, be it large pieces on cartridge paper or small doodles on erasers.

But yeah. In light of this epiphany I decided that for the time being, I need to fuse my digital and traditional art together creating a freakish art hybrid. Basically I’m gonna try scanning my stuff and colouring it digitally. See how that works out.

Ciao.

Hey all.

2010-06-08T15:58:00.001-07:00

Summer has almost arrived. I am currently in the process of completing my A Level examinations, and then I have a series of entrance exams to complete as well.

It is my hope that I can return to posting when it is all said and done.

I do not have anything to present at the moment, and I apologize for those who were genuinely looking forward to seeing a new post if such people exist. Right now I am slightly traumatized by how little energy I have at the moment.

Oh well… Back to studying…

Also, this post is made thanks to my mother’s laptop… and viewers like you! Thank you!

Ciao

Wacky Names

2010-04-01T09:28:00.001-07:00

Okay, felt like doing another post. Just makin it up as I go.

In terms of comic book allegiances I am a DC man. I’ve been trying to figure out why exactly and still have yet to come up with a definite reason. At first I assumed it was because DC has more iconic characters, except does it really? I doubt it.

You could argue “Are you kidding? The trinity: Superman, Batman and Wonderwoman are like the most iconic comic book characters.” but alternatively one could assert “Wolverine.” putting yourself into a circle of oh-yeah-that’s-true-ism that can and will leave you baffled. At least under this argument.

I did realize something close to the most plausible reason, that being the fact that there are more detectives in DC (appropriate) and I love a good detective story. I don’t know who my favorite superhero is, but it’ll help his chances if he’s a sleuth.

Another is a weird but simple fact, I can find more DC characters with really, really stupid-sounding names.

Bare with me here.

These names are so stupid that they sound awesome. Perfect example, the Legion of Superheroes.

Now if you ask me, these guys have the lamest names in all of DC superteams except for one other that I will get to don’t fret. It’s just that, there’s something about their names being so dumb and corny sounding, that makes it so cool. I think the idea is that, superheroism is weird already. Throwing on a costume, taking up a secret identity, running off and fighting crime. Therefore I believe there needs to be some lenience on how serious comic book heroes can possibly be portrayed. Even the coolest member of the trinity – of course Batman – is guilty of having a kinda funny-sounding name. I mean think about it… Batman?

In this regard the LoS takes the cake still. I mean… Lightning Lad… Lighting Lad? Eventually it gets changed to Lighting Man, but you know what? I think it should have been left alone. The fact that his name is goofy kind of makes him more iconic as a character. Weirder names are easier to remember.

To mention the rest of the Legion Trinity, Cosmic Boy can pass. Despite the fact that after a while he is no longer a boy, yet he keeps them name, that’s when the goofiness of his name sets in and he starts to become more memorable. Saturn Girl is a stupid and cool name, only because it sounds really odd, and at the same time if you didn’t know anything about the Legion you’d find yourself hard-pressed attempting to determine what her powers are from her name. “She shoots rings or something?”

Short post today. I just felt like typing so I did. I got the doing what I want part down, now I just gotta figure out how to make money off of it. Interbutts, give me munnies.

I hope to get a bio up, I’m just not sure when it’ll happen. Later all.

HOLOJAMZ

2010-03-15T18:43:00.001-07:00

Hey all. I felt like talking about holograms today. Not sure why, just bare with me.

There was this particular series of videos on youtube – if I can find them I’ll put them here – where they were showing some concept devices of the future, and how medicine and commerce and stuff, would be affected by introducing holographic or touch-screen interfaces to more devices.

I have already mentioned in a previous post the HoloPress Newspaper Subscription Device. Basically just an iPad if it wasn’t just an expensive paper-weight. It runs the press programs, as well as a web-browser with flash player standard. And yes. It can multitask.

Besides that, the main point of mentioning it is that it uses a form of holographic projection that doesn’t place it in free space, but refracts it through a substance. Like how fiber-optic cables refract pulses of data carrying light over long distances, this projects it into the surface. It includes touch-sensitivity as the main design point, and flaw. Since it is touch-based, it’s very fun, sleek and intuitive to use but at the same time if this breaks…like, once… you get sheg.

This was not the first concept I had thought of when inspired by the idea of touch-sensitivity. In fact the first one I came up with was a lot closer to home.

In one of the aforementioned videos, there was a patient lying in his hospital room and watching television. Next to his bed is a night-side table with a phone and lamp on it I think, as well as his medicine. When taking prescription pills you generally have to follow a specific schedule for consumption, to prevent over or under-dosing. Luckily, the table itself comes with a touch-sensitive surface that encircles the base of the patient’s pill-bottle with a green ring. I think it beeps, and the dude taps the ring. A drop down menu opens up, with some illegible options, more than likely pertaining to dosage instructions or documenting consumption time. After he selects something from the menu by tapping it with his finger he took up the bottle, ate two or so pills, put it back down and the ring turns red.

And this was me:

“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!”

Yeah.

I have this series in the making based around my friends and school and country called Our Turf. In the series my character has a prosthetic right eye, left arm, and right foot. Along with being a working replacement for my arm, its also designed with a communication hub, grappling hook, USB slot, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I was like, “Hey, what if I had a holographic/touch-screen interface on the surface of my ‘skin’? That would be awesome but confusing.” so I went with it.

Basically the entirety of the skin of the arm is touch-screen interactive in accordance with the GUI for the communicator and computer and all that. Also yes. My arm can multitask too. When they say that the iPad is worth an arm and a leg… yeah, NOT THIS ARM.

Okay enough ragging on the iPad, I promise. Basically, like the fiber-optic cable or like the HoloPress, the material of my “skin” has a layer that allows light to be refracted through it via small and inconspicuous projectors.

Liking the idea. Let me push it one step further.

My right eye is a holographic projector as well, only it projects 3D images into free-floating space. It’s mostly used in tandem with a GUI rather than just for generating pictures or symbols alone. In Our Turf, every-time I perform an experiment, and require additional documentation I use my eye. In fact the interface for my eye can sometimes be used in the implementation of the experiment (as seen left).

I’m not sure what I’m working on in this image, but there are three main things going on here.

The first is that the table I am working on is like the table from the video. Holographic, touch-sensitive and circumscribing the object with a ring displaying a drop-menu with various options.

The second is that I’m adjusting the objects internal pressure using a holographic slider, displaying a representative depiction of the object in study as well as pressure measured in Psi.

The third is that I’m speaking to a personality I created named Kel. She’s basically my secretary, helps me remember appointments, aids me during experiments. The reason I don’t call her an artificial intelligence is because she exists both digitally and psychologically, and she’s generally omnipresent. Whenever I call on her she’ll answer.

This presents a great segue into the next example of hologram concepts, Kel: the Operator.

In another one of my tentative series, entitled Big Ego – of which I have spoken of in previous posts –Kel: the Operator is the intelligence of the BE mecha, and yes. It is the same Kel. I transplanted her from my mind to the hardware of BE in the SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS…

Oh. I guess my body doesn’t want me to continue. Oh well.

She has the ability to project a holographic form, that she can either use to provide a hovering council – for the Driver Chris Smith – or to take over the controls for BE in wake of the Driver’s absence or incapacity (as shown above). I like this pic, but I will admit that the pose is a little Joe Quesada-ish with the possibly impossible bend to the spine But hey, she’s a hologram; just for the sake of it, lets say she’s a practicing contortionist.

Those were holograms: in different shapes, forms and uses. I have many others such as the hologram made of free floating jelly, affectionately named the Holojam, but I don’t have available images so I won’t get into that.

Also you can all thank Yannick “The Therapist” Reid – his blog TP-UNCUT – for introducing me to Windows Live Writer. These new posts wouldn’t be possible without it.

Have a good one.

Different Stylessssss

2010-03-14T18:14:00.001-07:00

Decided to make a post when I was going through some of my old pics. I noticed that back when I was unaware of exactly how much i had to learn in PS, back when I was blissfully ignorant... I was actually pretty good.

I was the kind of newbie who didn't shade or paint digitally per se, I just used the dodge and burn tools for shading. This would be good and lame except now that I look back, it actually worked for me. Take this for example:

This is an excerpt from a comic I had in the works but never finished from a series of strips originally called 6 Panel Soul –A blatant rip-off of Three Panel Soul, a webcomic by Ian McConville - and eventually changed to Six for Six. From like 4 years ago too. It stars me and my imaginings on God and our ancestor's experiences as they "Watch us from above". Only in a bit of irony on the part of anime such as Bleach or Super Sentai like Shinkenger, rather than the afterlife being like feudal Japan, it is instead modern and sleek like an iPod.

God takes a new form whenever he wants to, making himself more relate-able and less overwhelming for his children. He even feigns imperfection for our sake, having a girlfriend named Nes and a whole heap of other nonsense.

Imagine that this whole rigmarole that I invented was inspired just from our high school’s dean of discipline uttering the words…I really love this panel. In fact this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Look at the use of blue. Look at the adequate lighting. The brown thing, If you didn’t realize is a crowd basically, and I shade it according to its distance from the viewer and the light source coming from the right, and I must say… This looks fantastic. I wish I could colour this well now, but I try way too hard and end up with inexplicable messes that leave me asking “Why God, why?”. Heh. Appropriate.

Next I had learnt an easier style of colouring from this girl on dA. Unfortunately I can’t remember who. Otherwise I would link her page here. At any rate.

It basically involves using the polygonal lasso tool and selecting a specific area to colour, then using the gradient tool to give you a nice clean transition from highlights to mid-tones to shadows.

This works nicely as well, making colouring quicker, cleaner looking and subsequently brighter. With no jarring discontinuity in colouration the tones in this pic get a chance to shine, and I like that.

It’s from another 646 comic that I did just so I can use the new style at a larger scale. Here’s another excerpt for your perusal.The only weird thing about this style is that I made a gradient for each thing to colour, so now I have a bunch of gradients with names like “Tongue” and “Yannick’s Shirt” and so on and so forth.

This comic still turned out fantastic, and I was proud of how much work I put into it here’s a link to the full thing on dA: 646 on Megatron.

The third and my most recent fact, was formed as a result of me realizing that my skills had much to offer, and that there was no easy way out. If I wanted to learn how to paint digitally, actually finish pieces, I had to learn it the old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, I can’t wait until I can properly paint to present art; I have to keep up appearances. That’s why I decided that cell shading is my best bet.

Of course, those of you who frequent the PF5 have seen my pic of Black Ghost, a recurring villain from my tentative series Paranormal.

This is my first attempt at a finished – as long as you don’t count backgrounds – digitally produced image using the cell shading method. I absolutely adore this picture. It has some lighting flaws, and now that I look at it I probably could of added some shadow definition to his face, but despite whatever qualms I have with it, I still think It looks magnificent. Here’s the link to this dude’s original post if you want to know more about him.

This is the style I am currently trying to improve on, since I do enjoy the results. My colouring tends to make up for the lackluster or insufficiencies in my inking skills, which believe me is a BIG help.

Another example, but just a small one. Another Paranormal character named SOLID. I have no idea what he does, but I believe he’s like some sort of Planetarian wrestler.

And here’s a pic of Broken. A criminal and all-around lame person, but his persistence is admirable.

The only problem is that, even if I want to start practicing more and all that, my graphics pen is out of batteries. So until I can pick up some AAAs I’m stuck.

Take care all.

This is my evil playlist

2010-03-12T17:45:00.001-08:00

Hopefully it works.

KAMEN RIDO: PENTO KINGU

2010-03-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

Some examples of my now lost l337-skill in paint.

Ms. Cosmos August 07, MS Paint and Photoshop for finishing

http://jonozoom.deviantart.com/art/Ms-Cosmos-61308114

Five Numeri August 07, old character sketch I really like, MS Paint

http://jonozoom.deviantart.com/art/Five-Numeri-62316989

Adventures in Space Comic February 07, MS Paint. Really I'm only showing you the space scenery panels but still. EPIC.

http://jonozoom.deviantart.com/art/Adventures-in-Space-49480267

Now don't get me wrong, these all pretty much look horrible (except for the pic of Five, which in my opinion looks the best out of all of these.) But at least I knew what I was doing. Now since I've relied on fancy-shmancy layers and brushes and filters and the like, I can't even harness the novelty of MS Paint anymore. I don't have the skill or the resources to re-enable the usage of Paint, while still making it look good. Hopefully I can make up for either with creativity.

EtCetera - Soulah Serepem

2010-02-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, here's a slight character bio people. Just keep you entertained until I can summon the energy to produce something.

This post is about one of my favorite characters from a tentative animated series that I began designing at near the beginning of high school.

This is EtCetera, a very V-esque tale of the members of an alien race known as the EtCeterans arriving on Earth in the mid-eighties.

Blessed with a telepathic method of communication, they were able to open up talks with the leaders of Earth's nations in an effort to explain themselves.

Their mother-planet is small, and life does not proliferate in as many numbers as it does on Earth. In the midst of a technological and academic explosion - like that of the Renaissance in medieval times but only taking place a lot more recently - they were faced with the dilemma of lack of resources. They were slowly running out of liquid water and other forms of necessary nourishment of adequate number to feed the increasing population of EtCetera.

EtCeteran scientists had designed and built what can best be described as a warp gate, in an effort to provide interstellar travel for their citizens. They would transport whole societies to other appropriately composed worlds until the number of people left would be proportionate to the available resources. After their teams of astronomers observed our planet the Earth as having similar living conditions to those on EtCetera, they decided to send a group of their people here. Those who were chosen to migrate were called the "Ekusttras" which literally means "Leave it behind".

The Ekusttras EtCeterans have been living on Earth ever since, opening up our planet to a galactic society, and causing a sentient cultural plurality. The EtCeterans - or EtC - have a longer lifespan than ours, and their year is five times as long as ours due to their planet's distance from their Sun, Grahndu. Each EtC is gifted with a personal ability, and for about a decade, a great deal of them - in league with the humans - have made an effort to use these abilities for the betterment and protection of their new home.

This is about a particular EtCeteran named Soulah Serepem.
This is a comic-book cover for the non-existent "EtCetera Issue 18 - The Sun Mother" in which Soulah is introduced.

Soulah was an EtC rescue-worker back home, responsible for the safe retrieval of the victims of natural disasters , such as fire storms or sodium floods. When she discovered that we on Earth had a similar problem she decided to resume her job here.

A hurricane hit her Earthen hometown in Florida in 1992, and in its wake she rescued a toddler named Sally, orphaned by the storm. Unable to ignore her insatiable motherly instincts she adopted Sally officially changing her name to Sally Serepem (The one in the moon on the left of the cover).

Over the years she has faced a lot of flack for her decision, as there still remain Human-

supremacists who believe that the human race should have nothing to do with the EtC. At any rate, whatever the world threw at her, it couldn't douse the blazing love that she had for her daughter, as strong as if she had given birth to Sally herself.

Soulah migrated with her best friend Oarbet Crae (Seen sitting on that space rock thing to the right on the cover). She is so close to him that many assume that he is the father when they see the three of them together. And rightfully so, since they treat him like a father and he treats Sally like his child.

Soulah's ability is that she can generate white light from any part or all of her body. She doesn't get into much if any fights, so this ability is mostly used to find disaster victims when in dark areas, or when losing light. If ever in an altercation she can quickly blind her opponent with a quick flash of light. This is both painful and disorienting, usually making quick work of any enemy. Oarbet has a pair of insectile wings growing out of his back that enable flight. He is capable of space flight, and can break the sound barrier at his fastest. He mostly uses this ability at his job where he is responsible for running errands all over the Fort Lauderdale area, and possibly all of Florida if necessary.

Um okay. I guess that's it for now. I really want to be able to even do some simple digital concept art, but my inking and colouring is so horrible. Sigh. Shape up kid.

I'm so way out

2010-02-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

Hey people. I'm not feeling too well. I dunno what it is. I can't even say its an art block cuz it's not just art. It's kind of everything. Depression? Only not as severe. Maybe I'm just tired. But am I ever not tired?

At any rate, I have been drawing a lot IRL but for some reason have been unable to finish and sometimes even start works of art that have academic importance. I have a portfolio of 12 or so pieces that I have to make in order to be eligible for acceptance into the Edna Manley School of the Visual and Performing arts.

I have been trying to push myself to do it for the longest while, but... well who am I kidding. I barely remember most times. And when I do remember I just procrastinate.

I have to work on it eventually, and whatever this period is I should get over it soon. Subsequently I believe a quote from Rodolfo Rivera of El Tigre fame will suffice in this situation.

"I hope, I hope, I hope!"

I think I may update with a character bio of some kind next. I don't have many images on hand though, so I'm not sure.

Hey all

2010-02-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

I feel like doing some fotoshop thingies today. I hope its working.

At any rate, for any artists tuned into this blog, here's a tutorial by a dude that I mentioned earlier but I think I neglected to mention his name... or maybe I did... Whatever. His name's Niklas Jansson. He is 31 and lives in Sweden.

An impeccable concept designer, he is responsible for such images as the Advanced Wars cover and game art. He's the one with that simple yet exceptional style that we find so interesting. He does fantastic concept art and seems to be constantly working on various projects for remakes of old eight bit and sixteen bit games off of consoles ya'll have probably never even heard of, or just don't remember.

His website is here at PSG7. It has links to all of the projects that he starts, stops, continues, discontinues and then probably starts again later cuz he liked the original idea. I swear there is beauty in the chaos.

His full profile is here.

The tutorial is here. The best I can explain it as is multipurpose. It goes into poses, anatomy, shading colouring, concept design... and goes in depth too. If you're an artist and a book-lover. You will thoroughly enjoy this.

EDIT Dude. I just read in his profile that he doesn't even like doing the art. It's too laboursome a process for him... ARE YOU SERIOUS. ARGH. This is why deviantART depresses me as well you know. Talent... RAW TALENT but they don't even want it. He only learnt it for the universe building process.

Tell you the truth, I find I can never do finished pieces by myself of my own volition. I hope its not a similar case to his. I really feel that animation is my vocation.

Haven't done one of these in a while

2010-01-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

Hey all. How has the new year been treating you? Good I hope. At any rate I was bored so I decided to post something.

Recently I have been trying to get more into the graphic design practice. I sketch constantly, but I never seem to find time to hone my other skills, I'm not sure why... At any rate. Graphic design - more than likely, like many other art-forms - is fun to do when you are idle and need to kill time. Why? Because you can make easy excuses for getting practice in, which is always good.

For example: recently I discovered the folder properties in windows XP, and was going crazy on my various My Pictures sub-folders, changing default icons to icons of cameras, picking specific pictures to represent specific folders, and also - and this is where the graphics comes in - designing covers for the different groups of images.

Here's my favorite one, for the image folder "Nature Calls - A gallery of the works of art in nature"

The next is what I consider the better piece but still not my favorite (If that makes sense at all) "The Strobelight Seduction Gallery" a piece inspired by the works of Progressive House musician Kaskade. Beautiful music this man(?)/woman(?) makes. It helps calm me down, power me up, and I am frequently inspired by it, as the percussion resonates with my mind and my soul. Unfortunately blogger is going awol (as is the formula) so it won't upload the Strobelight Seduction pic. More than likely they're all going on MandelaSix, so if you want you can see them there.

Toodles

Your subscription to the Future Times

2010-01-03T08:34:00.000-08:00

Okay here's an example of stuff we should have right now seeing as this is the futuristic world of 2010:

Holographic "Newspapers"

Old me reading a HoloPress

This was an idea that I had thought of when I was writing a novel for my Space Impact fanstory. I would call it fanfiction, except there's no manipulation of previously existing character's in the Space Impact story. Only new characters based within and around the realm of the Space Impact mythos. The only mention to the old games I made was of its star Geneva, and even so it was at a passing glance.

At any rate, the Holographic Newspaper aka HoloPress is basically like an Amazon Kindle with the exception that rather than having to buy each book and then download it like the Kindle, the HoloPress only requires turning it on and getting a subscription. Then it will receive the signal sent out by whichever news agency it covers, and project the stories into the Projection Frame for viewing and manipulation.

The stories will still follow a news paper format, and the Projection Frame has touchscreen capabilities allowing you to "turn through the pages" with a flick of the thumb. Processors are getting smaller and smaller. Microchips doubly so. I saw a projector the other day that connects on to the bottom of your cell phone. And I know that hologram technology is in use by armies and scientists. We have WiFi signals that span entire states... AND ITS 2010? WHY DON'T WE HAVE THESE YET?

I am thoroughly disappointed in you futuristic world of 2010!

Happy New Year Ya'll

2010-01-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

I know late... AGAIN. christ.

Happy New Year everyone. Wow, a new decade. WHERE ARE MY FLYING CARS AND HOLOGRAM NEWSPAPERS? AS IN SERIOUSLY. I'm idle. I think I'm going to draw something and put it up here. brb.

No bios yet.

2009-12-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

I decided to show ya'll what i've been doing recently in my sketchbook. Just some photos, cuz I don't have a scanner.

The Som Nom of Som Nom

This was one of the sketches that I've been doing for a new idea I had for a zombie planet. Not sure if I'm going anywhere with it. I f anything I would do something for dA explaining the characters and setting.

Jono Zoom

The next is a redesign of one of my oldest characters, Jono Zoom. In fact, this character was made up in prep school, and he was so prominent in my late prep school life that I used him for my eventual email address, youtube account and deviantART account of course.

One of my first OCs, Jono Zoom was one of the many roles I used to play in prep school when my friends and I would make up imagination based games. We would make up a show, make up characters for each friend and then play out made up episodes every afternoon.

Jono was the last OC that I made in prep school. Originally devised off of these springy thingies that Olympic amputee runners used to continue running, he had the ability to turn his legs into such thingies. Eventually I wrote it off as stupid, and he became his classic appearance as Jono Zoom.

Jono is my nickname, so I played the lead role as I did with many of the "series" we came up with. Jono Zoom was the son of the world-renowned scientist Dr. Jeremiah Zoom.

Based in the not-so-close future, Dr. Zoom was the developer of a type of armor for military personnel that could change shape for different situations. Eventually he developed a new set of armor but these resembled clothing for some reason, and he inexplicably gave them to his son. This is obviously where the original story falls apart.

In this revamp, Jono is a young adult and a general troublemaker. In very Batman Beyond-esque fashion he discovers his father's project (Now a multipurpose suit again, just for the sake of better design) and steals it to cause trouble. Eventually both of them realize that this suit can be used for better things than just war, when Jono ends up saving a woman from... I dunno... something... Monster attack or some such nonsense. And both of them agree to let Jono keep it as long as he agrees to use it to fight crime and the forces of evil, instead of for mischief - which was his original intention.

This is the suit, the Rush Armour. The best way to describe it is that its like a thinner more latex looking version of the IronMan armour.

It enables enhanced strength, flight, speed, cloaking and the like. In some modes the armour equips his gloves with a laser that emerges from the finger tips. In others, he has flame-throwers that fold out from the disks on the side of his hips.

The Belief and the Non-Believer

This is a page of sketches I did of some of the characters from my most developed series to date, Paranormal.

I don't know if the blog is allowing viewers to click pics for bigger versions yet, so If you can't see them properly I apologize in advance.

I'm really liking this page though. I've been using lots of different coloured pencils to sketch with, and it shows how the variety really makes the art stand out. This page was sketched with a magenta Crayola.

Here are close-ups of the two biggest characters on the page.

The Immortal Pencil

He is infinitely ancient. Was the medium through which time and Space was created.

Leaf Brown: the Trick of the wind

A powerful plant-bender who randomly enough doesn't believe in the creation story of J and Pencil. She is part of a religion known as Taiwanism, and worships the god Taiwan, whom everyone and everything was made within.

Cell Life

I had made a kinds of Ozzy and Drix-esque show called "Cell Life" more that likely the name will be changed soon. It was like the aforementioned show, only a lot less anthropomorphic and everything was actually governed by biology and chemistry and the like.

Again unlike Ozzy and Drix the series mostly took place outside the body, covering most if not all of the elements, personifying them into societies for easch one.

This is a pic of a Melanoma (cell?).

Melanoma produces Melanin, the substance that gives your skin pigment.

I had made it so that although the other cells or molecules or atoms were basically orbs with arms and legs, and cells that were responsible for creating substances that served some other purpose that waste for the cell would have actual full bodies. This here is an example.

Some more stuff to come next.

Gah! That stupid dashboard counter!

2009-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

That counter is really getting on my nerves. I was under the impression that after I put up the last post I would be left with an even number but I was wrong.

What is wrong with it anyways? Is it a glitch? Is there a secret post that I don't know about? Does blogspot do an initial post explaining things or something? What?

At any rate happy New Years Eve everyone. I've been encountering a strange occurrence where people online are confused about the fact that New Years Day is the first day of the new year, January 1st. For some reason I have seen many users on different sites saying Happy New Year today when its NOT THE FRIGGIN NEW YEARS. WE'RE STILL IN THE "OLD" YEAR. HOW DOES NOBODY GET THAT THE YEAR HAS NOT ENDED YET. Sheesh.

I don't really have anything to look forward to in 2010. Neither do I have any New Years Resolutions other than JESUS JONO, DO SOME WORK YOU LAZY-ASS.

I actually managed to summon the strength to do that crappy Christmas pic so I guess that's a start. I want post stuff though. I guess I can do more character bios. Don't know who yet still.

Next post is another character.

Okay a little late for christmas but...

2009-12-30T11:52:00.001-08:00

HERE YA GO!

MERIIIII KURISUMASUUUUUUU

2009-12-24T22:03:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas all. Seasons greetings to you and yours...

You know what. I think I can give the internets a gift. Don't get your hopes up but my next post may have something extra in there.

Goodnight and godspeed.

Manapul Art

2009-12-22T08:03:00.001-08:00

A cover from his most recent run on The Flash: Secret Files

A page from his run on Adventure Comics

Renaissance

Artist Suggestions: Manapul

2009-12-22T07:39:00.000-08:00

I decided instead of having nothing to present I could instead promote some artist's that I'm fond of on dA. Today's artist is Francis Manapul aka manapul on deviantART.

Hailing from Toronto, Canada, he is a comic artist currently working for DC. He does art for the most recent run of Action Comics, Superman/Batman, and most recently he is working on a new run in the Flash series called "The Flash: Secret Files".

He has a nicely polished style that involves using a fine-tipped brush for inking rather than a pen, with some spectacular results.

I'm not really a comic person, but this guys art - along with many others that I have discovered recently, really make me want to get back into it. If not for the stories at least for the good art. His run on the Superboy stories in Action Comics seem the most interesting to me.

I'm sorry I can't get anymore images, but I still can't figure out this image uploading thing. Maybe I can just leave the pics to another post.

manapul on deviantart

Go check him out!

Seriously though... why?

2009-12-22T07:03:00.000-08:00

As in, now quite a bit of the time when I get a drawing craving it's digital these days, but no. I can't feed my craving.

You know with the hand problem, it wasn't actually constant. The hand would disappear and reappear whenever it wanted to, thus allowing me brief and few periods where Ps could be used. But no. That was too convenient. The computer has to completely shut down... Sigh.

At any rate. I can only do traditional sketches, at least until the comp is fixed. Which I suppose is not that bad since that's what i'm usually doing but... gaw! Even worse i think the only reason I want to draw digitally so much is because its not available to me. I only want what I suddenly and miraculously can't have.

RANTRANTRANTRAEGRAEGRAEG.

I uploaded two new vids on my youtube account jonoZOOM, making claims of putting effort into making videos. I don't believe it myself but you never know. I'm looking forward to my supposed epiphany.

If I can't even work for the things that I love then how can I work for the things that I don't love but I need. Sigh.

Emooooooooo.

Wh-wh-what do you want?!

2009-12-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

KILLING SPR- sorry, sorry! I don't know what came over me.

Um I don't have anything better to do so I decided I might as well talk about another character. Writing the different stories and mythos is fun for me.

At any rate this post is for one of the more obscure individuals of my wannabe series "Paranormal", Spree Scale.

He is obscure only because he and his team and adventures are the farthest away from the stars of the show, both in plot and location.

Whereas the series takes place primarily in the city of Newcity, Spree's story unfolds on the complete opposite side of the planet, in a country called Dagger. Like Ghost and his team - the Phantom Force Five - Spree and his 4 best friends decided to come together as a licensed crime fighting team, naming themselves Great Justice.

Spree exhibits the peculiar ability to enhance the strength, range, accuracy and all around attributes of the abilities of others. He is rarely seen fighting enemies by himself only because with another comrade he can perform tandem-inspired attacks, and take down adversaries in half the time.

Subsequently, despite the fact that he frequently fights with a partner, he can still hold his own in a fight. He employs a fighting style that involves using your opponent's force and weight and aggression against them; a form of martial arts called Wave. With this, bigger and stronger assailants tend to fall harder and faster than others, making him a formidable force both by himself and with a friend.

His primary attack is called Killing Spree. It is generally used as a kind of boosting-ring for his friend's projectile attacks, increasing their power and accuracy.

I don't know what his job is. Unfortunately for people who are licensed heroes they need to have some kind of personal job so that their crime fighting doesn't interfere with their jobs. Uuuhhh... Maybe he sells fruits out of his house. Like the front of his home has been turned into a small shop, and his stock is located behind his house... Or maybe he owns one of those New-York-style food carts and he can roll around his stock as he travels through the suburbs to the city.

He can increase quality and quantity the bounty of his crops using another move known as Shopping Spree. This is why he can make enough money off of it to pay for his house. He kinda mass-produces it.

His girlfriend's name is Dove Peace, and she is a tutor.

[EDIT] Notice that he has no mouth. This was an image back from when the character designs from Paranormal - then called Ghost - were made without mouths for a reason that i'm sure was valid at the time.

Starstuff contemplating the stars

2009-12-21T18:08:00.000-08:00

Okay everyone, it is official. The universe hates me.

Not only is my Ps continuing to cease to function, but on top of that, now my computer has stopped working... completely and utterly.

I don't know what you want from me oh great cosmos. Constantly spinning above us like some kind of infinitely complex Big Ben, only those like you can fathom your reasons. Unfortunately for my sake, I am not one of those.

I am currently typing this on my mother's laptop (I love you mawm!) and am thoroughly displeased at the current situation. GAW. SO ANGREH.

Articles of Association

2009-12-20T06:18:00.000-08:00

Another aspect of the Big Ego mythos - My favorite and most developed - is the Articles. Around the fifth episode Chris is notified by Big Ego's on-board AI, Kel, that the Ardenne uniform based armor that BE wears is not permanently attached, and is instead can disengage and transform into a set of mecha known as the Articles.

The Articles are inspired off of the clothing in my closet. This means that not only does BE have a large collection of different armors he can choose from, but he also has a miniature army at his disposal.

In their robot forms, they are designed off of animals; existing, extinct or mythical. There are even a handful of humanoid articles as well. For example, one of the ones I am going to mention today.

BE initial armor is known as the Student Configuration. Chris can access many different armor configurations throughout the series. The Student Config is composed of 4 different articles; in descending order of awesomeness:

The Golden Scholar -

The first and most powerful humanoid article, it composes the bulk of the Student Config and is based off of a standard khaki uniform. In robot mode it is an extremely durable battle-ready robot, with golden blades that can retract into its wrists and concussion cannons that fold out of its shoulders. It has great speed, lacks flight capability but can make up for it with its powerful AI.

In Article mode he increases every aspect of BE, while disabling some of his design specifications. For example: outside of Student Config, BE has steam jets in his heels and his hands can form into guns. In the config, he can use neither but his speed and strength is heightened five-fold.

Come to think of it if I'm talking about the Articles, I should probably have talked about BE first... oh well! That's for another post.

Uh... right! Next is the Shining Navy Salamander.

It originally gave BE access to a laser array that folds out of its back, but I think I want to make it simpler. It represents the Ardenne tie, and its abilities in robot and article mode are pretty much the same.

It deals with light and flares and the like. Able to generate a beam of light so bright that, to quote Og of 'Mike, Lu and Og' fame "Point this baby at the dark side of the moon and there is no dark side!". It can also fire off flares to disrupt heat-seeking projectiles, call for help or disorient opponents during battle.

I think for a finisher, the tie can disengage and form a sword, that BE can use to slice his opponents into many pieces with the power of light. Where BE performs one slash the sword will produce 7 other equidistant slashes on the target.

Next is the Quick Brown Coyote , and it serves two purposes.

1) It represents a brown leather belt, and is the locking mechanism for keeping the now two halves of the Golden Scholar together while equipped to BE.

2) It gives BE access to two retractable rockets hidden in its thighs. These increase speed, jumping distance and can even induce temporary flight.

In robot mode it, like the others, can be used to attack with retractable claws and the like, but it is primarily used as a form of transportation for Chris. It has a third mode where it can transform into a hovercraft form just big enough for two, capable of reaching speeds of 200mph.

The last is the Rusty Rhino and it represents a pair of brown leather shoes.

Very durable in both modes, this article can topple the biggest adversaries using data supplied by an internal processor known as the MassCalc, on their size, weight, center of gravity and the force in moments required to turn them about their axis.

As shoes for BE it can produce braces from either side of each foot, that can lock into the ground ensuring stability when handling a weapon or grappling with an enemy. It is also equipped with a set of tractor treads, to give BE another manner in which to move about his terrain.

Next post I'm probably gonna talk about BE himself, but I don't want to give away too much on the web considering this information is only copyright protected through dA. I don't know how far that spreads.

Also to those who are thinking "Wow! It's a good thing you stopped yourself before 'giving away too much' and only stopped at the design specifications for the main robot.", I laugh at you. Why? Only because you may think this is a lot of info, but I'm just scratching the surface of how much I've put into this series. You haven't seen anything yet, and... your not gonna see much more. At least until I make this an actual series.

Also I need a scanner. I command the internets to buy me one immediately.

Big Ego I guess?

2009-12-19T19:27:00.000-08:00

I needed something to write a post about so I decided I would tell you all about another one of my series that I hope to develop along with "Paranormal".

It's called "Big Ego" and it's follows the standard mecha anime formula only with a twist: it's a cartoon!

It follows a fellow named Christopher Smith...uh lemme see if I have a picture of him somewhere...

This pic is actually kind of old, but its the only one I have on my pc right now. My problem with this series is that I have been drawing the mecha and its various accessories but I have done very few studies of the human characters.

At any rate Chris is a 17 year-old Jamaican who lived in the capital of Kingston until his father got a job in Montego Bay on the other side of the island forcing his family to move along with him. Just graduating from his high school Ardenne High, the move took place during the summer. So while he got accustomed to his new surroundings, rather than try and acquire a job he decided to just bum it out for as long as possible, enjoying the tourist spots until the holiday ends.

One day while snorkeling he discovers a giant humanoid robot buried in the sand. Sensing his presence it awakens and swallows him in one huge chomp. He opens his eyes to see the inside of the robot's cockpit and a message start to play on the forward view screen. It bears the image of a man shrouded in darkness. He refers to Chris by his full name, and tells him the story of the mecha.

That it's name is Big Ego, and that it was sent from the future to stop an evil alien organization called the Peripherans. In the future the people of Earth were warring with the Peripheran empire, until Big Ego was assembled. It turned the tide in the battle for the humans, utterly thrashing the enemy's forces.

Forseeing their defeat, the Peripherans in one last ditch move, used a device called the Breaking Pendulum to travel back to the past with the last of their energy, knowing that given time the Peripheran empire can rebuild itself.

The man told Chris that they would be arriving very soon, and that the whole reason his future ended with Earth's victory was because of his intervening in the past. Now Chris, armed with a mighty mecha

- that for some reason looks like he's wearing an Ardenne High uniform - must fight the Peripheran onslaught while at the same time learning how to use the power he's been given wisely. Unfortunately he's kind of a dick so it'll take a while.

Also there's a deep mystery about the whole time travel situation that Chris investigates throughout the series finding more and more about his past... and his future.

What's up with the counter?

2009-12-19T19:18:00.001-08:00

On the main blogger page it says that I have twenty-eight posts. Whereas on my page it say I have twenty-seven... heh.... It's a little disconcerting. I can never tell whether my next post will produce an even numbered tally. Getting a little distraught here.

Reason for absense

2009-12-19T18:47:00.000-08:00

Okay the problem now is that not only does my mind refuse to remember that I have to put something here at least twice a week (I mean at least), but also Photoshop is refusing to work.

I am currently faced with a problem where when I start Photoshop - I have probably complained about this before - no matter what tool I select, it always shows the hand icon for it. I've had this problem for a couple months, and I have been trying to find a remedy for the situation. Scouring many online forums I noticed that if this problem was mentioned at all, the overall consensus was that I should press Ctrl+Shift+Alt during Photoshop's startup sequence.Doing so would reset the user settings to default and hopefully solve the problem.

Say if I closed Ps with a specific colour or brush type applied. The user settings would be where this information is saved for when I come back to the program at a later date. With these deleted, even if there was some preference mistake that Photoshop generated or if this problem was a user error, going back to default should erase those changes.

After attempting this procedure the first time it seemed to have worked, so in a very unscientific manner I fell under the impression that it would work every time. It turns out that the hand literally goes away whenever it wants to, regardless of if I use Ctrl+Shift+Alt.

There will be times when I forget to do it when opening Ps but it works like a dream, and then there are other times when I pull it off perfectly and it tells me to talk to the hand. Piece of crap.

I need to reinstall it or something, like seriously. Unfortunately it was installed under most peculiar circumstances and I require assistance to do so. At any rate I am completely Ps-less indefinitely.

I do have other programs though. I mean, I have Corel DRAW which is handy but a little confusing. Also many moons ago I was introduced to an amazing program that resembles the love child between my two image-rendering-program-loves - Photoshop and MS Paint - known simply as Paint.NET. If you like the low-resolution of Paint or do a lot of Oekaki, but would love more flexibility in terms of layers and brushes and the like, then I would recommend Paint.NET.

Unfortunately I have not used Paint.NET in a while and have lost that spark. Alternatively Corel DRAW is so convoluted, whereas Ps is very pick-up-and-use. I can't go back to Paint either only because I'm too used to the freedom in brushes and layers that Ps provides. I used to be the Paint king though. I should show you some of my stuff sometime. But that's for another post.

In the mean time I may have to betray this blog's original purpose of being only for digital stuff, just so I have some content to submit. Well hey we all have to make sacrifices... some less sacrificial than others but still.

"I dive beneath a cluster of dead skin cells for shade"

2009-11-18T18:02:00.000-08:00

Yeah. I've been practicing my um... cell shading lately. Getting better, but I still need to like do more still life pieces and stuff, so I can get used how light behaves with different objects and stuff.

I've been doing a butt-load of sketches on a big page in Photoshop, and along with those sketches I ink and colour about a handful of them. Approximately ONE handful... maybe less.

One of them is of the uh... Does anyone remember the comic book cover for "Ghost" a couple posts back? And how I was being all melodramatic in explaining the whole Ghost/Black Ghost thing? Well yeah, more fleshing out for Black Ghost is in order.

Now I keep on remembering this little fact about living creatures, especially sentient ones: THEY NEED FOOD AND SHELTER. and to get those things - and this is especially for sentient beings - they need money i.e. a source of income.

I need to give my characters jobs. And legitimate ones too. Meaning that their schedules need to be able to work with their crime fighting schedule. since they have superhero licenses now. Ghost and his best friend Stone are private investigators...uh... Ghost's girlfriend Ribbon is... you know what is she? She used to be a bodyguard... Uh...How about a curator? Of a military museum? She does love weapons.

[EDIT] Finished!

Black Ghost has two passions. The first is performing morally ambiguous experiments and creating a menagerie of beings and creatures that spit in the eye of god, and further his quest for greatness. His second is the visual arts. Primarily drawing and painting.

It is his means of expressing his hatred of the world he was suddenly thrown into. The only downside is that he needs to save some of that hatred for motivation during his longest and most monotonous experimental procedures.

He makes money to fund his scientific agenda two ways:

1)Illegally through theft.

2)Legally through commissions and the like.

Since the criminal and the artist cannot mix, he dons a disguise and momentarily becomes the graphic artist named BackGround Noise. He's pretty famous on their version of the interwebz known as the Network. And that's where he gets the majority of his clients.

Here he is seen coming out of costume i suppose, his trusty inking pen at the ready. Because of the material his body is composed of, he can make parts of his body hard or soft whenever he wants to, allowing him to keep his horns down with the cloth that he wears wrapped around his head when he's BackGround.

No one cares? THANK GOD.

2009-11-18T17:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, again, i've missed a great number of days without updating. I am currently going through what i hope is a transitional period. There is actually some evidence that it is just that but not enough to come to a conclusion yet. I'd like it to be a phase but nature doesn't do what i want just what i need, otherwise it wouldn't be natural.

Um what else. I have actually started back with the digital sketches. What's actually happening IRL is that I am constructing what can best be referred to as a portfolio for my concept art of the tentatively named series "Ghost". The actual book was provided by my brother and colleague Yannick (check his dA page: thunderkidx); my job was only to fill its pages with, character designs and profiles and concept art and stories and doodles and jottings.

I'm currently doing it character by character. If I can get my hands on a scanner (which I just might if I could only remember past two seconds from now)

Also if I can remember, I may have some stuff up by tomorrow. Hopefully. Don't wait up basically.

23?

2009-11-07T14:14:00.000-08:00

Um i dunno how this happened but apparently i have 23 posts? and that cannot do. this si just to straighten them out.

i really... i have not been doing anything lately art-wise. i've been sketching as usual in my books, but digitally i have nothing new. I shud probably try colouring some of these sketches that i have here, and i have a couple.

Pocket full of Poses

2009-10-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for some pose references on dA. currently have the same set of like eight poses i use over and over again, and that ain't too good for composition purposes.

meet laro-laro on dA, an awesome awesome artist, and who I am currently getting poses from.

Missed a day

2009-10-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

I literally have nothing new to report.

Um new irl sketches? I'm trying to practice drawing bigger.

Double

2009-10-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't been watching it lately no.

I'm about to do a ton-load of sketches. Subsequently, I'm trying to learn how to DRAW BIGGER. I DRAW TINY AS HELL. and i'm getting there, i'm getting there.

Self Portrait

2009-10-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished a sketch for a self portrait due for school tomorrow. I notice I get a lot of sketch practice in... but only to a specific extent.

I mean I'm constantly doing character sketches. really freakin tiny character sketches, yet I very rarely do like still-life or anatomy sketches. I wonder how I expect to magically get better? I'm sure it'll be spectacularly far-fetched. I'm always preaching about the character designing process, yet I can just barely draw. You know what I do? Cartoons. And that's it.

Not saying cartooning is not significant. It's just I don't really branch out and that's where a lumberjack comes and cuts me down for paper. I can draw anime though. And I can kind of draw like Danny Antonucci. but I actually haven't tried to do it in a long time.

I need to remember to do more sketches of things & people. I need a better grasp of light.

I mean look at this...

This is some watercolour painting practice by a dude named NAN0jam on dA. This guy is one of those examples of people I want to draw like. He is incredible at inking, his stylization is exceptional, everything's sharp and clean, yet soft things still retain softness. AND HE CAN PAINT TOO...

sigh. day-by-day man.

School stuff

2009-10-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

Just telling ya'll if I forget to update plz don't hunt me down. School is getting hectic so I have to prioritize.

Artistically Inactive at the moment

2009-10-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Um. I haven't really been working on the sketch page lately. I think I'll probably start back on the weekend.

Due to me actually doing work, it may be possible that I may only be able to do big pieces on the weekend. If so, it is my responsibility to you the reader that I produce enough content on the weekends to last through the following week.

Since I did a style revamp of one of my old OCs entitled "Ghost" which I'm considering renaming as "Paranormal" not sure... But yeah, since then I have been redesigning characters previously considered complete and perfect. The main drastic difference in design is the inclusion of mouths, creating a semi-complete face.

What had actually happened was that I reached a point in my art where I realized that I need to be able to convey the emotions of my characters better. In what they do and how they speak yes, but also how they look. They all originally had only eyes, and with only eyes and eyebrows it was difficult to display a character's emotions.

So for sake of expression, and to add to the versatility in designing characters, I gave them mouths. Now whereas with before where one could say that this person and that person look alike cuz they have the same eyes, now you have NO EXCUSE.

Space Impact Genesis

2009-10-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Some may remember old Nokia brand phones, and that they held a side-scrolling shooting game called Space Impact. Starring a pilot named Geneva, she plotted the cosmos in her spaceship fighting evil wherever she roamed. What a life, huh? An existence comprised of constant battle and conflict. There's never a nice cut-scene during the game, letting us know what she's like, if she actually enjoys herself, or if her endeavour seems like a futile battle. As if she has no choice.

Anyways, I was and quite frankly continue to be obsessed with that game. There was a time where my time was spent designing new versions of the one original Space Impact game.

Currently, I am considering doing so again, only with the actual intention to produce my own rendition of the series entitled Space Impact Genesis... or maybe Space Impact Exodus. This is more of a movement than a beginning.

Woah I missed a day didn't I?

2009-10-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

No excuse for that people I just forgot.

I probably missed more than one day though.

On saturday I and two fine honeys had to go to the National Gallery of Jamaica supposedly for some information on the Taino religious ceremony of Cohoba. Turns out the library at the gallery does not have that kind of info. The National Library and the Institute of Jamaica probably did, but those were both suspiciously closed.

Luckily the interbutts actually came through for me and the assignment is finished to be submitted.

And sunday I was just a lazy-ass so I didn't remember. I have been watching some Richard Feynman interviews. Ah sigh... Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Steven Hawking... I'm really getting into the physics again. Hopefully it'll help rekindle my interest in mathematics.

The sketch page is coming along nicely. It's going to be extremely memory-heavy once I am finished with it. I think it's because of all the groups and layers in groups and stuff like that. I'll have some more crap to put up in a while.

Late Post and MandelaSix SUPERDUMP

2009-10-24T05:07:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. Sorry for updating a day late, but I have an excuse. I passed out on the ground from exhaustion, woke up at 3:00 this morning, had to clean up a mess (that I won't go into details about), and then went back to sleep only to be awoken by an alarm at 7:00.

At any rate, here's the post.

I will be updating my photography account, MandelaSix with as much photo's as I can. Since I have little to nothing on it, the whole even-number thing doesn't apply to the Mandela Six Experiment. I just need to get as much stuff on it as I can, even if it's... *GULP!* an odd number.

OCD

2009-10-22T18:02:00.000-07:00

Yannick is just going to make fun of me for this.

Um, if you follow me on dA, on youtube at jonozoom, or even on twitter at Mandela808, you would notice that I am very fond of even numbers and such.

This is just so I don't always have to see the 13 posts every time I sign in to PF5.

JELLEH? I AM NO LONGAH JELLEH!!

2009-10-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is actually a new villain I just made up for my wannabe animated series Ghost. Technically he is a revamping of an existing character, but whereas with characters such as Black Ghost or Tile or Flip, they were all expounded upon at a point. Jelly here was not.

His name is actually Jelly Phish. At this point in the story he has reached a point where he is a established practitioner of fringe or mad science.

As a boy, he was constantly bullied by the larger, brutish children of his school. Being of a gelatinous consistency, he wasn't much of a fighter - if at all - and would continuously be in some state of disarray in response to these occurrences.

He would constantly complain to his father about these horrible children, and their mean dispositions. His dad would always tell him that though these simpletons waste their time on their muscles and how amazing they are, they have little to no brains to speak of. Wisdom and intelligence will always prevail over strength, simply because strength is nothing without knowing what to do with it.

Inspired by his father's words, Jelly sought to train his brain to the point where he could outsmart any oaf or obstacle in his path. Unfortunately along the way to where he is now, he continued to be bullied and ridiculed, to the point where one day during his tertiary education he was almost beaten to death by a group of hooligans looking for some credits and some laughs.

This caused an epiphany. His father seemed even more right than before. He now had all the knowledge he could muster, but like muscle, without knowing what to do with it knowledge is useless. The difference is, now he had a direction to travel in with his mind as the propulsion. Using his knowledge of the earthly sciences he began to delve into the realms of Mad Science. A field of experimentation and practice that preserved moral ambiguity. The physical world he believed he could make better, by entirely reinventing it one obstacle at a time.

Finally he renamed himself Gelatinus. Now with his knowledge of nature-warping science, he terrorizes the citizens of his home city Newcity, and to an extent the entire world using his genetically-engineered beasts of destruction and nightmares.

In case ya'll were wondering, I was making that up as I went along. At any rate its a good enough background I suppose. He isn't really a recurring villain though, he probably appears all of 5 times in the entire tentative series which is supposed to tentatively run for 4 or so seasons.

BBBBEEEEEEEEEEEHEEEHEEE!!

2009-10-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hello all. This is Bee Rose. She is freaking adorable.

I am not exactly sure why I am under such a strong impression that this is one of the cutest things I have ever seen let alone drawn. As in seriously, I don't know why.

For those who watch my main account on dA - jonozoom - you would remember a piece of work involving a guy named Marksman Smith aka the superhero The Bandit. Bee is his loving girlfriend and confidante... or at least she would be a little more loving if she wasn't always so upset at Marx for bringing his work home with him, in many different ways.

Marx lives in what was originally Bee's 1-bedroom apartment, and often comes home from a night of crime-fighting with wounds or broken bones. They jointly pay for the apartment; she with her freelance graphic design, he with his gun-shop...

That being said... WHY IS SHE SO FREAKIN' CUTE TO ME?

Every time I look at this picture and see her cute little smiling face I giggle a very christmas-y giggle, as if I was playing with a baby or something.

Whether you have this reaction as well is probably inconsequential at this point, since it isn't the original image anymore. By the time It's been through all the compression and what-not, it's a completely different colour and all that.

This chick makes me so happy every time I see her man I swear.

I lived in a cake

2009-10-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah. To make up for yesterday, here's a second post, as well as some new art i've been working on.

I believe she is some type of bear... Teddy perhaps? I dunno. She's a retelling of one of a set of sketches I did a while back IRL based off of the Llama Llama song. Basically I was going to make a situation or a character for every line of the song. This cutie is from the first verse.

I was once A tree-house;
I lived in a cake.
But I never saw the way
The orange slay the rake.
I was only three-years-dead
but it told a tale.
So now listen little child
to the safety rail.

She is the one who lives in the cake. I don't know what her name is yet. I have a strange feeling in my bladder that her surname is Goldenrod. I dunno why, ask my bladder.

Oh yeah, this is a blog

2009-10-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

I just remembered this morning that PF5 is, in fact, a blog. So that means even if I don't have an image to present the viewing public with, I can still give a recap on current events.

Um... okay.

Life's pretty uneventful actually. I have been practicing a lot more with the digital art and stuff. I have a huge sketch page that I divided into grouped layers, each group serving a different purpose. In fact If I can move fast enough I can give you a glimpse of a completed image from the page.

My problem though is that there's this sporadic, but continuous problem of all of my tools turning into the hand tool, preventing me from doing ANYTHING.

I use CS2 right? (Yeah, kickin it old-school) But it serves me well so I see no need to upgrade... that is UNTIL NOW. I wonder if this is a problem for all Photoshops?

Even worse, the first time I saw this anomaly I pulled out my handy-dandy internet, and through a Photoshop forum I discovered a method of correction that entailed, pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift at the program's startup. This is supposed to delete your settings hence solving your problem. The first two times it worked like a charm, then apparently the problem pulled more strength and energy from the rays of the sun or some nonsense, because next thing you know it doesn't work at all anymore! It's ridiculous.

If I run Photoshop too much for the day, the hand thing appears. And if I close it and give it a while it fixes itself, so I guess my problem is kind of solved It's just a little inconvenient.

With enemies like these...MANDELA VERSION

2009-10-18T20:59:00.001-07:00

Um, basically what happened here is that I saw a pic that themadcatter did on furaffinity where he anthropomorphized some enemies from the Super Mario Bros games. So I decided to do the same only with monsters from The Legend of Zelda, primarily the Minish Cap - my favourite to date. There are only five here of course but in my sketchbook i have at least thirty different sketches. Unfortunately for those tuning into this blog, if you want to see those sketches I won't be showing them here.

PF 5 is for digital art and digital sketches. More for a show of practice and progression, and talk of usage of various techniques in art and such.

JonoZOOM is for both digital and traditional art, but from now on I hope to put up mostly finished pieces on that site. Unless they're traditional sketches, because I have A LOT of those.

MandelaSix is for photos and graphics, although I haven't really updated that site in ages, I probably should.

Anywho, these are five monsters from Minish Cap in clockwise order:

Takuri

Octorok

Acrobat

Ball and Chain

Anti-fairy

These were just the four I decided to draw on the computer at random, and I decided to share the sketches.

Okay, now I officially have no more sketches to put up here. For the time being of course. I will hopefully prepare some during the week but if your watching this blog, please don't hold your breath. I can only provide content when schedule permits.

Take care.

Totem-pole

2009-10-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

Uh yeah one a day. Today I actually need to prepare more sketches for the blog cuz i'm about to run out.

These are another set of transforming mecha I made up. They weren't originally in this style, but I recently switched to the animated style because:

A) It's easier to draw cool designs.

B) It is easier to draw transformers who's alternate-modes have the same basic shape, with different protoform molds for bodies. This adds to their individuality.

There would be a problem I noticed in say Generation 1 where transformers with the same mold like Bumblebee and Clffjumper would not only look exactly the same sans colour, but they barely had any differences in personality unless you read the comics.

Now with different body types its easier to differentiate between characters in the same team.

This was from a series that I actually made up from back in preparatory school entitled "Totem-pole Warriors". I may re-title this series as "The Zemi" but I'm not sure yet. Basically its kind of like Transformers Masterforce, where there are a set of ancient monuments spanning the globe, and each of them have a human being who is destined to be one with it or some nonsense. These relics are remnants of alien astronauts that aided in building many earthen civilizations back in society's infancy. The mecha would be divided into sets depending on their location on the earth i.e. Totem-pole of the Sky, Totem-pole of the Desert, Totem-pole of the Tundra etc. Each set of 3-4 mecha had a base form where they stacked on top of one-another in descending order of size that granted them the title of Totem-pole.

These four here are the Totem-pole or the Zemis of the Sea. They represent the power of the ocean, beasts of the sea and they're coexistence with humans.

In clockwise order:

Seagull

Blue Whale

Great White Shark

Orca

Remember that these are sketches so the look is not finalized.

[Edit] If you can't see crap that's cuz the original image was a really tiny sketch. I had to blow it up a little, and it didn't really come out the way I hoped. There may be a compression thing going on not sure.

Decal

2009-10-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Um I've been trying to incorporate the Transformers Animated and Teen Titans kind of art style, now known as the Animated style. I don't know who coined the phrase, the internet just tells me things.

So yeah here's a cute little transformer chick I decided to name Decal. She transforms from a generic car of no specific make or model. I like how she looks though. Her face reminds me of a panda.

2009-10-15T21:12:00.001-07:00

New template.

I really wanted a way to change the background, but I don't have any pics for the background currently so it can stay.

I notice that there is kind of a stark contrast between the crisp clean lines of my shiny new blog, and those of my art. I hope it'll subliminally influence me to ink better. I am also currently looking for tutorials on dA, so hopefully that goes well.

I had found a colouring and design tutorial on the net. Namely this one:

I don't remember his name but here's his site: PSG 7...

Nikklas Jansen, that's it.

[EDIT] I don't know why the tutorial is staying that size, and doesn't have a link. And currently I can't fix it so...

Alternatively, if you lurk around on PSG 7 you may be able to find it yourself, so have at it.

2009-10-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

This is a sketch for a comic book cover I hope to maybe kind of do one day ish. It stars the characters that I named this blog off of - The Phantom Force 5 - lead by the young and powerful Ghost Spectre. I won't give too much away, but it involves ones personal demons made physical. Epic battles are waged between you and your hateful self, until one day with the help of your friends, your demons become locked back inside. Supposedly gone forever.

The thing in the center is a building btw. A freakin spiral shaped machine/building.

Ghost and his aforementioned demons entitled Black Ghost, are the two in the fore-most-ground.

I'm really just testing out the format. There is a movie poster artist named Drew Struzan, and I'm trying to do something similar to his style.

Tell me how it looks plz.

Pessimist's Club

2009-10-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

As ya'll have no doubt noticed I need some practice with my inking on the computer.

My favorite artist, Andrew Dickman, has a very interesting and complex yet extremely simple inking style. I think it is really limited to the brush and how one uses it.

I watched a Ustream with Andy, observing attentively as he sketched and lined and inked and coloured a piece of work. Colouring digitally is not that hard if I am willing to stick with cell-shading for the time being, but the inking needs to be fixed. I loved the sketch for my last pic of Artemis, but the inks just weren't cutting it. Way too wobbly and uncertain. And to that regard I must say that frankly... badman no wobble.

Artemis the Hunter

2009-10-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Another flat-color piece I guess. This one of a character from a concept-in-development called "Ghost"... Come to think of it the name "Ghost" may be changed if possible.

I had to put this up before 12:00 otherwise my once-a-day claim would be moot, and I do not appreciate moot in any form whatsoever.

I also need to work on my signature. After a while I may just turn it into a brush or something. My main problem is that it is uncomfortable to write my sig, probably with the current brush settings but I digress. Something needs to change.

Artemis is a homunculus born from a fusion of genetic engineering, and the dark arts. Despite having one eye, she has perfect - to the point of telescopic - vision and is an experienced marksman. She bares superhuman strength and durability, and is a warrior and a hunter by nature.

The Artist in question

2009-10-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

I hope to God this works...

Ah it did I guess. I won't know 'til I post this.

I barely have any sketches to produce really, so here is the original art for my ID on deviantArt at jonozoom.deviantart.com. I left the sketch lines in there cuz they look cool.

Because I barely have any sketches, I'm going to upload a new one everyday. Luckily no one is following me here.

First blog

2009-10-13T19:38:00.001-07:00

I don't really know what my intentions are with owning my own blogspot. I suppose it's mostly so I can keep tabs on other blogs here, but there may be more to it you never know.

I'm on deviantArt at jonozoom.deviantart.com, MandelaSix.deviantart.com, and I also have a group that I'm pretending to run at OurTurfGroup.deviantart.com, so if you want to you can check out my stuff there. I'm going to try and put up more sketches here. Um. I have this huge page of sketches that I work on constantly in Photoshop, I could upload those one by one I guess.

I was actually going to try and put up a pic right now, but I'll leave that to the second post.