Year in Review 2021: It's a Good Life

2021 Year in Review
"It's a Good Life"

It seems that every year gets a bad review by me, making me seem like a negative kind of guy (I'm not, really!) but, well, the past bunch of years have been pretty crappy, generally.  So, there's that.  Anyhoo, about this time of year I'm always trying to wrack my meager brains to figure out some mildly amusing/clever take on the previous year.  And, as usual, I was drawing a blank and running out of time.  I used Bizarro for the past two years... I guess I'll use him again and beat that joke into the ground, why not?

So, while trying to think of some Bizarro-esque comment on the year, I happened to have MeTV on in the background and saw Bill Mumy on an old, black-and-white episode of "Lost in Space" as the young Will Robinson.  Seeing him in black-and-white, I immediately flashed on his famous episode of "The Twilight Zone", "It's a Good Life" (a remarkably faithful adaptation of the short story of the same name by Jerome Bixby), and immediately knew I had my Year in Review for 2021.

Good on you, 2021, for giving me an idea just when I needed it.  You still suck, though, and I'm wishing you to the Cornfield...

Here's to hoping for a better 2022 for everyone!

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STEP ONE:  Here is the original idea, scribbled on a scrap piece of paper with a ballpoint pen.  Rather than do a few panels as a comic with "2021" slowly fading out, I thought it would be funnier to do it up as yet another animated .GIF.

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STEP TWO:  Here's the first pass in Clip Studio Paint, done on an 2,700px x 3,600px canvas @ 300dpi.  While the face is almost recognizable as a generic, tow-headed kid that might have been in that one episode of "The Twilight Zone", it's really quite a ways from Bill Mumy.  The eyes are too small, and the nose/mouth are just a bit off.  It took a bit of back-and-forth to even get that close to a semi-adequate likeness.  I was also gonna include the lamps in the background, and part of the phonograph, but it was just visually confusing and simplified everything by leaving them out.

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STEP THREE:  Here's the finished digital painting, with 2021 partially fading out.  It took an inordinate amount of drawing and re-drawing to try and get it to a relatively OK likeness of young Bill Mumy (while mostly there, I think there are still a few little spots that aren't quite right--but I also realized that's about as close as I'm gonna get).  As I've said many times before, I am always amazed at what a difference an 1/8" here and a 1/16" there can do to make-or-break a likeness.   I also slid the top image over a little to the left to make better room for the word balloon(s) and make a marginally improved composition.

I used had the "2021" on a separate layer, and changed the opacity to 65%, then 30%, and lastly 0%, to make it seem like it is fading to the cornfield; then imported the images into Photoshop to make an animated .GIF.

Also, here's something probably only myself and a half-dozen other people will notice, but there is a coincidence of edge on the spring and the top line of the shelf--the edge of the spring visually touches the top edge of the shelf.  Of course, I didn't realize it until I already did all of the work with the .GIF and uploaded all the images.  I'll let it go, but it still bugs me...

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Don't digitally in Clip Studio Paint with an assist from Photoshop.

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Merry Sithmas - Darth Bane

 MERRY SITHMAS
Darth Bane

Hey, I got another Merry Sithmas card done for the holidays, this time it's Darth Bane, founder of the Rule of Two for Sith.  I was gonna have the shading of his eye be either a Christmas bulb (it just looked like a couple black eyes) or a Christmas Tree (I've already used Christmas Trees too much recently).  So, I went with a star shape, instead.  

I even added some Rankin-Bass type primitive snowflakes this time around.  Marginal improvements to the animated .GIF.

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STEP ONE:  Here are the digital pencils, done in Clip Studio Paint.  It is a 2,00px x 2,791px document at 300dpi.  I used the Symmetry Tool to keep everything, well, symmetrical between the two sides, then turned it off for the hat and a couple other random bits.

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STEP TWO:  And here are the digital inks.  They were mostly done with a 15pt digital brush.

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STEP THREE:  Here are the colors, done in a variety of layers under the inked layer before the animation lights were applied.  For the animation, two images were imported into Photoshop in the Timeline, and exported as an animated .GIF.

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint (with the animated .GIF produced in Photoshop).

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Merry Sithmas - Darth Talon

MERRY SITHMAS
Darth Talon

Key, Kids, do you have your stocking hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that Darth Talon will soon be there for Sithmas?  That's right, it's Sithmas-time again, this time with Darth Talon, the red, tattooed Twi'lek who worked with Darth Krayt and Darth Nihl.

I always thought she looked pretty cool, so I had her on the list (hmmm, on my naughty list?) for Sithmas.  Last year, I had the Darth Talon card about 98% finished, when my iPad ate my homework--every artist's worst fear.  Of course, it didn't delete the whole thing, it just took it back to the pencil stage, which I found even more infuriating, as it was just mocking me at that point.  I mean, totally destroying it, I can understand that; just leaving enough for me to realize I have to redo most of it was just sadism on the part of my iPad.

I have some more Sith from the Expanded Universe I hope to do in the future.  Not sure if I want to do another Sithmas card this year (one is tempted to say "always two there are..." but that is not always accurate for my Sithmas posts).  I have another Christmas-based post I am hoping to get in under the wire.  I guess we'll see which one (if any) gets to the finish line!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the digital pencils, done in Clip Studio Paint.  It is a 2,00px x 2,791px document at 300dpi.  I used the Symmetry Tool to keep everything, well, symmetrical between the two sides.

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STEP TWO:  And here are the digital inks.  They were mostly done with a 15pt digital brush.

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STEP THREE:  Here are the colors, done in a variety of layers under the inked layer before the animation lights were applied.  For the animation, two images were imported into Photoshop in the Timeline, and exported as an animated .GIF.

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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint (with the animated .GIF produced in Photoshop).

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