Uncle Floyd and Oogie!

One of my memories from living in New Jersey was watching The Uncle Floyd Show. It's kinda hard to explain but I'll try: One half hour filled with local talent, like The Ramones, with music, bad jokes, equally bad skits, and Uncle Floyd trying to play a song on his piano while being interrupted by Looney Skip Rooney, Oogie, or Bones Boy.
(Snap it, Pal!) At the end of the show, while Uncle Floyd supplied the music, they would do weird stuff...like using the puppet, Hugo, the Man of 1,000 Faces, to dance and get up in the camera, extremely close-up, and stare.

That always made me laugh.

Game in the works

These are some designs for a game that is in production. I really like the way these
characters came out.

Bad, bad pumpkin

Here's another character I created over the weekend. This pumpkin was a whole lot scarier, but the client asked me to reel it in.
Hopefully this won't inspire the kids to wet their beds too much.

What has this cow done?

Got a couple of really neat projects I am working on now. This cow
was part of a series of illustrations I did over the weekend, between the other jobs.

First day at DRAGON*CON

My head was about to explode. What can I say?
Click on the picture to get the full view of two legends!

More D&D cartoons

Here are some more cartoons that had either appeared in Dragon magazine, " Mirth of Yore " , or " It's a Gamer's Life".
Click on the cartoons to see the full version.

I used a special paper caller Duoshade for this cartoon. Duoshade is a paper printed
with two different shading patterns, fine dot and heavy dot, with invisible ink. By painting on it with one of the two chemical developers, you can bring out those patterns.
As you can see, as time goes by, the main pattern is mud.
Back to the cartoon. I always think it's funny when a dog urinates on an unsuspecting...(fill in the blank).
Now that I look at it, the creature looks less like an Ent,( a living Tree character from the Lord of the Rings), and more like a piece of broccoli.

I liked this cartoon because there was always someone accusing someone else
of cheating. Usually this happened after a number of adult beverages
had been consumed.

Oh the "war stories" I heard about the fantastic characters that had been rolled.


Gus first started as the creature that you see above. There was something I liked about him, so I kept working and working him.
He developed into this:

I had used this incarnation as a mascot for my website. But before he got to this,
I had created this strip, using an early version of Gus, years back when Dragon
was looking for a new adventure comic.
Some of the editors liked it, but not enough of them to get it in the book.
Gus is one of those characters that I draw every now and then, getting closer and
closer to what I want.
But his smart-ass talking sword, Moe, is right on the money!

More D&D cartoons

Back with more cartoons from the archives.In the late 80's and early 90's, I had my cartoons appearing in Dragon magazine. I also used to go to conventions to do sketches, etc.
At one of the conventions I was approached by an independent publisher who liked my cartoons, and asked me if I would like to do some cartoons for his books. Of course I jumped at the chance.
So here is a mixture of cartoons from Dragon, and from those two trade paperbacks,
" Mirth of Yore ", and " It's a Gamer' s Life ".
Click on the cartoons to see the full version.

I liked this cartoon because it was a play on the medium. How do you know what the color is in a black and white cartoon?

I like the dog's expression. There is no way he's giving that back.

I liked the idea of the 7 Dwarfs acting like the ones you would find in the " Lord of the Rings".

I thought it would be funny to have the role-playing characters aware that their real world counter-parts were lousy players, and that they were about to get mauled by this creature.

This cartoon is based on a true story. Sometimes the DM,( Dungeon Master = person who is in charge of the game), wants to wrap things up. It's not a good idea to keep saying.." just one more roll"...when the DM has to go to work the next day.



This cartoon was one of those stream of consciousness moments. I roughed out this cartoon where a party had been decimated by this monster, and the last guy still breathing is looking in the monster's face, and then his line popped into my head.
This is one of my favorite cartoons.
One more thing. If anyone has one of these books, look for
me at Dragon*Con this weekend, and I'll sign them for you!

Relax, it's all good

Going through my files, and came across a batch of cartoons I did for a humor book:
" Nursery Rhymes for Corporate Crimes ".
I can't remember what rhyme this cartoon went with, but it reminds me of Madoff.
Here's the link to buy the book:
http://www.newcanaanpublishing.com/html/humor.html

DRAGON magazine

I'm very excited about this weekend. My animated short is part of Dragon*Con's Independent Film Festival, and I have even had someone contact me about distribution.
I thought that I would post a few of my cartoons that appeared in Dragon magazine.
I would play D&D a few times a week, but I didn't take it as seriously as some of my friends.
Here is the first cartoon that I had published in Dragon.

I will explain this cartoon to those readers not familiar with the monsters of Dungeons and Dragons.
The joke is that the "pudding" is a vile character that hides in the shadows of the dungeon, and is almost impossible to detect in those dark hallways. It attacks swiftly and is hard to kill.
The following cartoons are just goofy.




I was playing around with the idea of using these two guys as recurring characters.




I loved inking these cartoons, and then applying the zippatone.
I just don't get that feeling with Photoshop.
More cartoons tomorrow.