August 15, 2009

The Internet

Filed under: Comics,Opinion — Tags: — Screenhog @ 11:40 am

In 1995 there was a short-lived Warner Bros. cartoon called Freakazoid!, in which the title character got his superhero powers by entering cyberspace and gaining all of the knowledge of the Internet. The cartoon itself became a zany piece of animation history that has to be seen to be believed, but the concept of gaining superhero powers through the Internet was very interesting.

You have to understand that this was 1995. There was no Facebook, no YouTube, no Google, and no Flash animations. Yahoo was only a year old, Netscape Navigator was the most popular web browser, and most people entered the Internet at speeds that would make the above comic take about 10 seconds to download.

And yet, none of this mattered to the early pioneers of the Internet, because they had accomplished their goal of allowing people from any part of the world to share information. Doctors could find cures for diseases from medical papers written in a different continent the day before, families could contact their relatives in a foreign land without paying expensive long distance charges, and artists could show millions of people lovable animations of hamsters dancing to a Disney song played at twice its speed.

Wait… what?
(click to read the rest of this post…)

July 31, 2009

Teenagers

Filed under: Comics,Sketch — Tags: , , — Screenhog @ 9:03 pm

Finally… sketch #50 out of 50. It’s taken awhile, but I really wanted to see this through to the end. Artists – myself especially – are notorious for starting big art projects that don’t get finished, and I didn’t want this to be one of them.

When I started the challenge, I asked myself what I should do for the final drawing. I decided that I should go back to my past, back to a time before anyone knew me as Screenhog. On the day that I turned 13, I started working on a comic strip called “Teenagers”. I tried to get one comic strip done per day, and while I didn’t quite fulfill that, by the time I was 16 I had created over 700 comic strips in that series.

Of course, the older I got, the more I devoted myself to other projects. Teenagers just wasn’t as important to me anymore, and the characters I had created were hardly seen by anyone. Until now.

I present to you the cast of Teenagers. Allow me to introduce you to them.

First off, on the top left, is Ilsoap. The original Ilsoap. I draw him differently now, of course, but he was the main character in the comic strip. When I first drew him, everyone asked me if I was trying to make him look like Bart Simpson. Honestly, I wasn’t, but I can see the resemblance.
(click to read the rest of this post…)

June 13, 2009

Got any bright ideas?

Filed under: Digital Painting,Sketch — Tags: , , — Screenhog @ 11:51 am

Ok, so here’s the deal. I haven’t been drawing enough lately, and one of the reasons is because I haven’t come up with enough creative ideas of something to draw. So, I’ve decided to do this:

Here’s how it works:

  1. You e-mail me a great idea of something for me to draw.
  2. I’ll read your great idea, and check if it fits the following rules:
    • No Disney stuff. (I’m not sure if it’s a conflict of interest, but just to be safe.)
    • No obscene stuff. Basically, if you visit my site often, you should have an idea of the types of things I would and would not draw.
    • No boring stuff. I’d rather fill screenhog.com with interesting things.
  3. I draw it.
  4. If I choose your idea, I’ll e-mail you back, telling you when you can expect to see it on the site.

That’s basically it. Of course, I have no idea how big of a response there will be to this little contest, and if I’m flooded with ideas, I certainly won’t draw everything that comes my way. At the very least, though, this should be a fun little experiment.

Ready to send me your most brilliant idea ever? E-mail away!

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