The Other. Years ago I had a dream. I saw a man, walking in the desert. He walked into an abandoned supermarket, and he found a baby left in what looked like an abandoned refugee camp. He took the baby and left. Then there was a time jump, and now I was in it, this world I saw was post apocalyptic. I remember traveling with the man and the boy, and saving people and towns. This dream was the inspiration for these characters. On the second page at the bottom I included my initial drawing I made years ago, with the man standing outside of the abandoned grocery store in the middle of the desert. I don’t remember what happened to cause the apocalypse, so I created a monster, called “Other”. I gave the man the name Luke, the boy the name Aries, and the girl, who I was in the dream, the name Ophelia. I chose names I thought best represented the way they were in my dream. 

The Aquarium Employees. The concept behind this is, there are two employees, they work at an aquarium together. Kevin is a kid in his late teens that works in the gift shop. It’s usually quiet, until Albert shows up. Albert is an old man that works as a janitor in the aquarium, and during his navy days he swears he saw the Kraken. Nobody believes him, and so he tries to forget the whole thing, until one night when he was mopping in the outdoor habitats when he sees it again. He freaks out and tells Kevin everything. Kevin, being a pushover teenager, doesn’t believe him, but doesn’t tell Albert this. So Albert, under the impression that Kevin now believes that the Kraken is real, decides to take Kevin under his wing as his Kraken catching protégé.

Kevin Speckles. Kevin Speckles is a jumpy frog that lives in an all red and green universe. He’s a fun, outgoing frog, that loves to play pretend and explore. I created him with a children’s book in mind, a cute vibrant character that kids would like to look at.

Tamarin Tom. This was for an assignment, to create a character based on a randomly assigned animal. I was given the Tamarin, and after googling what that animal was, I came up with this design. Tamarin Tom lives in a Western. He’s a banker, and he has a wife, a cowgirl outlaw, and a son, the voice of reason, quiet kid.

The raccoons. The concept behind these raccoons was kind of an inside joke. My friends and I drive around at night a lot, and because of that we’ve seen many animals. Coyotes, Opossums, and Raccoons. We thought it would be funny if one night we saw some raccoons pushing the crosswalk button, and us having to watch them and wait for the light to turn green. So, this is what I drew. A couple of raccoons pushing the crosswalk button. I don’t often work in perspective, and haven’t in many years. However, I felt that for this piece that it works with the style I was going for. 

The creature in 3 art styles. This was an assignment, where I designed a monster in my own style, and then recreated that monster in two other styles, Aaron Alexovich’s and Mary Blair’s. For my original monster, I loved the idea of a misshapen body, the horns, but still looking strong. So, when it came to recreating this in two different styles, I started with Aaron Alexovich. His work is very much known for the line weight variation and straight edges. Secondly, I went with Mary Blair. Her art is the exact opposite, having lots of color, with little to no line work. She mainly works with paint, and he mainly works with ink. Having mine be done in pencil felt like it made the whole project go full circle.