#graphicnovels

2023 Year in Review
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2023 Year in Review

2023 Year in Review

Alright, I’m notoriously bad at grasping the passage of time, but instead of being bewildered that 2023 just ended, I’m a tad surprised that I almost titled this post “2024 Year in Review”. I think that’s the first time I’ve thought more time had passed, rather than less.

Either way, growing up in the 80s and 90s, thinking ahead to anything past the year 2000 always seemed like the future. I mean, yes, literally it was, but I mean some kind of sci-fi, flying cars, robots, teleportation, and computer brain implants utopia kind of future. I suppose there are plenty of things I take

PMD Xmas Card Envelopes and 2022 Year in Review…and how the heck is it 2023?!?

Another year, another…something? As cliched as it is to say, I’m baffled that another year has slipped by. On the one hand, it’s great we all made it through to be reading (or writing in my case) this here blog post. On the other hand…where did the time go? I don’t often think about how old I am, and the fact that I keep getting older (though I do think about other people getting older, strangely), but more and more these days I am aware of my age and just how many things I still haven’t managed to accomplish. It’s very

What Time Is It?

It’s Plunger Monkey Dynamo Time!

(That’s the answer to the question/title of this post…in case you didn’t read the title)

Did you happen to notice? I posted a new IPMDT strip for the first time in, like, a year. Literally. I had said a week or so ago that I was aiming to start working on the strip again this past Monday (which happened to be June 1. Now, I view dates as random in general, but sometimes certain things happen on certain dates and the coincidence makes my Brain happy. First IPMDT panel in a year on the first day of

Inktober 2019: Now With 100% More Plungers!
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Inktober 2019: Now With 100% More Plungers!

Inktober 2019: Now With 100% More Plungers!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do Inktober at all this year. I’ve had too many other things on my mind, too many other projects and outside “real life” stuff vying for my attention. I figured I had to at least give it a shot, though, and if I was going to bother, I needed to come up with something to make it even more interesting for myself. That’s when I decided to incorporate PMD. I fell way behind right out of the gate, but the first several prompts inspired some pretty clear images for

Tags: #art, #comicbooks, #comics, #drawings, #galleryupdate, #graphicnovels, #illustration, #ink, #inktober, #inktober2019, #penandink, #plungermonkey, #plungermonkeydynamo, #PMD, #sketchbook|

NEW SHIRT ALERT: The Steampunk Fish has arrived!
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NEW SHIRT ALERT: The Steampunk Fish has arrived!

NEW SHIRT ALERT: The Steampunk Fish has arrived!

Check it out!

Everyone’s favorite flying steampunk fish!

I crafted this image in Clip Studio Paint, which, as I’ve said many times, I love using on my iPad. It worked great for designing this shirt, and when I sent it over to Photoshop to do some final tweaks (the logo, metadata, converting it for upload, mockups…) it held up perfectly (I was a little worried about how the process would work, but it was PSD to PSD, so I shouldn’t have worried. Then again, this is me and this IS technology…). I noodled away

Tags: #art, #clipstudio, #clipstudiopaint, #comicbooks, #comics, #digitalart, #digitalillustration, #drawings, #fantasy, #fish, #flyingfish, #graphicnovels, #illustration, #plungermonkey, #plungermonkeydynamo, #PMD, #steampunk, #steampunkfish, #tshirts|

Gallery Update: My Face x100!!!!
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Gallery Update: My Face x100!!!!

Gallery Update: My Face x100!!!!

With all the ups and downs in studio time I experience, I’m pretty happy to have pumped out the 100th cartoon self portrait. I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable drawing myself without picture reference and I’m much more willing to push expressions to their extremes without crossing that undefined “realism” line. Now that I have 100 under my belt, I’ll be looking to change things up a little. I haven’t figured out how, yet, but I think this milestone is a good point for it, whatever it will be. I’ll still continue doing the daily self-portraits, they have become a

Tags: #art, #cartoonselfportrait, #comicbooks, #comics, #copicmarkers, #copicmultiliners, #drawings, #galleryupdate, #graphicnovels, #illustration, #manga, #mangaselfportrait, #observationaldrawing, #penandink, #portrait, #revery, #selfportrait, #sketchbook, #sketches|

Gallery Update: 80 Shades of (Toby) Gray…
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Gallery Update: 80 Shades of (Toby) Gray…

Gallery Update: 80 Shades of (Toby) Gray…

If you’ve been following me on the Book of Faces, then you know I’m still chugging away on the whole manga self-portrait thing. My style has been developing, and I’m quite pleased with several of the drawings, but I don’t think I’m producing consistent enough images yet. I’m getting a little too caught up in the abstraction of the linemaking (something I’ve always loved) and often forgetting to pay attention to the underlying anatomy. I’ll get there, though. Here are the next 32 portraits, collage-style.

#56 is NOT supposed to

A Recent Read: The Metabarons

Inktober is all wrapped up for this year. I managed 31 self portraits in 31 days. I’ll put together a big post showcasing and comparing all of the images later, but if you want to check some of them out now, go to the TOBY’SBRAIN FB page (if you love me, you’re already following it. If you’re not following it, you don’t know you love me yet.).

Anywho, in the meantime, I thought I’d share an epic graphic novel I recently read: The Metabarons.

Bonjour! I come from France!

This 536 page,

Experiment…

Well, it’s the first full week of school, and with all the after school stuff going on, the start up of Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts looming, family events, and other obligations and projects, I haven’t settled into a studio schedule yet. However, I do try to take advantage of whatever un-busy moments I have to read about and learn new things, like this:

Testing, testing…is this thing on?

I watched a great Phlearn YouTube tutorial recently on how to make GIFs and videos in Photoshop. I decided I’d “quickly” try

Tags: #art, #conceptart, #conceptdrawings, #conceptillustration, #digitalart, #drawings, #fantasy, #gifs, #graphicnovels, #illustration, #photoshop, #processgifs, #revery, #reveryconceptart, #willymceyeballs|

Sketchbook: I Hate the Way I Draw Heads…
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Sketchbook: I Hate the Way I Draw Heads…

Sketchbook: I Hate the Way I Draw Heads…

It’s been a jam-packed, busy week, so I don’t have much of an update, unfortunately. I did a little sketching last week, still trying to work on the composition for that piece of concept art in my last entry.

A bit of a combination of the previous two layouts. I’m going to have to gather some visual references to help me define the plateau these characters are standing on so it looks like they are way up in the mountains and not standing in a field with mountains in the distance.

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