A Look Back

Remembering when I started this blogspot. I used to do a daily scribble in my sketchbook and post it here. I should do this again. 

New Year, New Plans, New Posts...

Hope you all arrived well and healthy into the New Year of 2016. Long overdue and with the fabulous help of my wife, we cleaned and updated my storyboard website.

Still a few quirks to iron out (please give me a shout in case you notice any or have any suggestions).
Also, we finally put a selection of the crockidz comic strips into print. Originally we had planned to surprise our kids with them for christmas, but the printing got delayed a bit and we just got them yesterday. Some of you might remember them from my posts a couple of years ago. I used to do daily comicstrips about our family life while we were still living in Vancouver, Canada. Then inked and colored a number of them, especially the ones with our kids (you can read the english version online here) (ihr könnt die deutsche Version hier online lesen).

About 4 years ago we organized an exhibition at the local artists community and had started to prepare a small volume for print, but never got around to actually follow through with it.  My wish has always been to have a printed version for my family to own, since the stories were about them and captured for them. Also for my parents, both artists in their own right.

Yesterday evening my wife and me gave the books to my kids (now a bit older, then in the stories). It was a great evening. I had to promise to start doing comic strips again. This week, a book will go into the mail to my parents and I hope they will like it. 

coming up soon....

we are getting very close to the upcoming exhibition. very exciting and I´d better get started on thinking of some clever words to say for my introduction. Its the first time the city of Uelzen is exhibiting works of sequential art. Thanks a million to my beautiful wife for designing the invitations and preparing the exhibition!

Summer Vacation

Not much vacation time this summer, not much of a summer either. We are preparing some of the sketches and strips for a small exhibition this coming august (I will keep you posted).  On this occasion I wanted to finally close that gap in my comic strips. I inked them some years ago. We were on a long weekend on Vancouver Island.  I am not entirely certain how or if I will continue the crockidz strips. I had not much time to finish any new strips lately, not for the lack of stories and I am working on a longer story about one crazy time in my life.

In the meantime I am drawing some more knights, dragons  and princesses for the animated feature I am involved in.

Currently

...busy times. As I cannot share any of my latest work I got my kids to draw some of the characters i am working on at the moment. There is a metal knight, a dragon, a maid....you get the idea...

the postman

 

If I remember correctly I was meeting with some friends to draw in a cafe downtown vancouver. we were all between jobs and were wondering (once again) about our choice of careers. Becoming a postman seems to come up during these times for some reason. I was wondering how my dogs would change their behaviour towards me once I would be a postman....

Off to another gig in the morning. Hopefully with some time to fill my sketchbook in the coming weeks...

Inks

...this has taken way toooo  long. eventually it will be in color.

November

...did I say every monday? October has been unexpectedly busy and the upcoming weeks appear to be no different. There is another old strip finally colored (german version on www.crockidz.de) and another sketch for a new one...

Popcorn

once more, an older tobitoon is on the toonpool homepage as the daily toon.
...as well as another crockidz strip on www.crockidz.com

have a great start into the week!

Late For Work

...good morning everyone. You can read he german version on www.crockidz.com.

Stumbling

As being mainly australian cattle dog, Lucy used to follow us everywhere. Somebody told me they also call this breed "velcro" dog in Arizona. I cannot recall how many times I fell down, because she was right behind me.

read the german version on www.crockidz.de

I noticed quite a few returning visitors to the crockidz site, so I thought I will try to do my crockidz updates on mondays. I am still in the progress to built a more streamlined, faster loading webpresence, also include a newsletter of some sorts.
Lets first try the monday shedule ;)

Socks

I am getting back into a more regular posting cycle for the crockidz. I am still catching up with
coloring older ones though and only have a few more to go before I wil get around publishing new ones (read the german version at www.crockidz.de) .

Here is the original scribble from some time ago.





I have added a few more animation based links on the side. Two of them I just discovered via Florian Satzingers blog Paperwalker. The hand-drawn-animation.blogspot and its sister site characterdesignnotes.blogspot. Very interesting reads!

There is a long post entry from Cameron Fielding on flip about his experiences with moving (you are going to hollywood), relocating, visas and so on. For animation artists relocating with the job is such a huge part of life, but very few colleagues write about their experiences in any great lengths.

Lucy s Fat

Another older strip, finally colored (read the German version on www.crockidz.de) . This happened right after we moved to Vancouver. The dogs had to stay in a kennel together for a week or so, until we could find a place to stay with them. Lucy ate all the dog food. Tarzan was pretty slim afterwards.

Have I Grown Too?

...the last part of the growing wall. I uploaded the previous one once more because I noticed that the lettering was hard to read. You can read the german (as well as the english) version on www.crockidz.de

Cheyenne Is Shrinking...

...finished updating this one in color. What I remember vividly from our place we were living in then is the red carpet. The red and very old carpet. We were waiting for 3 months for our moving container to arrive. The house was pretty much empty, but this red carpet.
The second day we moved in, the kids played on the carpet. Cheyenne had a rash all over her face minutes after. We rushed out to steam clean the carpet for a day.

Superman Cant Fly

...this is another superman episode that continues last years strips
superman is superstrong and
superman has no kids

(it has just taken me that long to bring it to paper, sorry. read the german version on http://crockidz.de )

Lucy _ RIP

WIP_You Cant Fly

...finally the inks are done on this one. Hopefully I can find some time to do the colors a bit faster.

Union Der Helden

Arne at Union der Helden put up a crockidz cartoon for the day, as part of featuring all 10 contestants of the web-sondermann competition. thanks Arne!

Voting is still going on for another week here, so ....vote for crockidz :)

Where Is The Vacation?

...I can only wish that I was at the beach right now. This happened almost like this a couple of years ago in Canada, even though the beach scene is a memory from a sunny day at the beach in Australia.

you can read the German version (even though I think it works somehow better in the english version) of this strip here