No Halloween Art 2024

Important announcement from Mandy and Sally

No Halloween art this year unfortunately, but you can always go back and re-read the Halloween comic which is available to read and download on the blog! Just mosey on over to the "Neat Links" section in the top right sidebar and you'll find it!

The updated download now includes four additional bonus pages that were exclusive to the physical version of the comic! These pages have behind-the-scenes sketches and a look into how most of the pages were drawn up from roughs to final line art!

As Mandy said, I've been working on a new comic lately at a snail's pace, which means I didn't have time to get around to making some sort of Halloween art as I usually do every year.

In the meantime, go re-read that comic and hope you all have a Happy Halloween!

Happy New Year 2024!

Phew, glad that year is over. Now it's time to ring in 2024!

I think this is the first time we see the main cast of "Mr. Ridiculous" all drawn up together and colored in a real illustration! That's so ridiculous! Hope we see more of this crazy cast later this year, along with characters from a new story I've been doodling behind the scenes.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Merry Christmas 2023!

The year's almost over! But first, we must have our Christmas before the year ends!

I realized that the last time Mandy and Sally were exclusively featured for the Christmas artwork was back in 2017, and since the two headlined their own comic book earlier this year, I figured that it's best for the two to be the main leads for this Christmas's art!

Oh look! The demon Saccharo also wanted to join in on the holiday festivities!

Speaking of the comic book, I'll be offering "The Summoning on All Hallows' Eve" comic book as a free download again as my gift tom you guys for the holiday season! It'll be available for a limited time until January 1, 2024!

Head on over to dojipocket.com and click on the "Propinquity" page to find the link!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Happy Halloween 2023!

The big spooky day is back!

On top of doing a full 20 page Halloween comic, I had to squeeze in a simple Halloween illustration which, of course, ties into the comic.

For a limited time from October 31st through November 3rd, I'll be offering a full PDF download of my comic for free over on dojipocket.com! You can find the link to the page right about here!

After November 3rd, the comic will have its own dedicated page here on the blog site.

It will also still be viewable on my Instagram and Twitter pages at @animatedslacker as well.

I'll make another post here when the comic gets its own subpage page here on the blog, but for now, get on out there and get your spook on! Happy All Hallows' Eve!

New Comic Book Announcement

I got exciting news to share!

I usually create a simple illustration for Halloween every year featuring some of my characters from the different story projects I got going on.

HOWEVER! This time, for this year, I decided to go with creating a comic! A whole 20 pages of comic starring Mandy and Sally up to spooky Halloween shenanigans!

And (I think) it came out amazing!

I pushed myself to create this comic from script to panels in about under a month to get it completed on time for it to be posted for the Halloween weekend. I am really happy to create something that looks like a very real comic book once everything was all put together!

The whole comic will be posted on my Instagram and Twitter account (@animatedslacker) in sections starting on October 27 through October 31st, with four pages being posted daily during that time interval.

Currently, I'll be posting small sneak peaks leading up to October 27 on both my @animatedslacker and @dojipocket accounts. Links to my socials are on the "Page of Links."

Of course, when the whole comic is fully posted, I'll post the whole comic here on the blog for everyone to read, all free!

Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @animatedslacker to follow the lead up to the comic!

Happy New Year 2023!

Can you believe it? Another year is here! 2023!

I figured that Autumn would be a great choice to ring in the new year this time!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas 2022!

It's here! The jolliest time of the year! Christmas has arrived!

No matter how many years go by, you're never too old to take a photo with Santa!

This year's Christmas art marks the end of "The Year of Class of 2422." I always find myself being obsessed over my own characters and story ideas over lengths of time, and seeing that the year 2022 makes us exactly 400 years away from the year 2422, it justified me to marinate my thoughts over Robert, Marilyn, and their friends over this past year.

Of course, this won't be the last time we'll see our friends from the future, but I've got to make room to showcase characters from other story ideas I've been working on. Lately I've been developing a new story project and designing out a new set of characters that I can't wait to post about here very soon.

But enough reading about my silly stuff. Go on and enjoy the holidays with family!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 3

You already know the deal. The future celebrates Halloween over a period of three days!

And since this year is all about "Class of 2422," we're gonna celebrate Halloween like the future: over a period of three days with three illustrations!

For the final day of Halloweens, Marilyn had to do a lot of convincing to Robert for the two to go trick-or-treating together. Robert used the excuse of not having a costume, which Mary was more than prepared for.

Needless to say, Robert ended up having a lot of fun with Mary this Halloweens night!

Originally, the idea of this drawing was supposed to be the sole art for this year's Halloween drawing, but about a month ago, I was thinking about world-building elements I could implement for the culture/society of the year 2422, and a three-day Halloween celebration was one of those elements.

And plus, Halloween is my favorite holiday so there might be a tiny hint of bias in there somewhere. Maybe.

Before I go on, here's the roughs for this drawing

Once I decided on the three day Halloween theme, I originally thought of doing a three panel comic (one panel for each day) of Marilyn convincing Robert to go out trick-or-treating with her with this drawing serving the final panel.

The first two panels didn't really stick to me as very interesting since I couldn't figure out how to make that story fit into just three panels, so instead I went with using other characters to create like a multi-day progression (the 29th-31st) of different characters in different scenarios played out in the course of a single day, as evident of the progressing shift into the night as seen in the backgrounds of these drawings.

I didn't want to just make three different drawings with all of them taking place in the same time of night, so the progression of sunset to night over three drawings was more interesting to create.

I guess in a way, there kind of is a story that's played out in these three drawings, like an A-plot, B-plot, and C-plot going on at the same time.

Either way, this was a fun challenge to do three different Halloween illustrations instead of the usual one. Hope you enjoyed them!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 2

In case you forgot, in the far off future, Halloween is celebrated over a span of three days! From the 29th to the 31st! It's a lot of fun, I assure you.

And since I themed the year to "Class of 2422," I've created three illustrations to observe how to celebrate the future's Halloweens!

October 30th sets us up with a little debate between Aika and Ted about whether or not a scary costume is a necessity for Halloweens.

I do all my drawing at night, so you can imagine that when I had to pull up image references for Aika's costume, which is Kayako from the Ju-On movies (The Grudge), it was uhhhhhh kinda spooky for me to say the least; I'm not much of a horror movie kind of guy.

Not sure if I said anything about this, but I went back in and redesigned Ted's hoverchair. I was absolutely not satisfied with the design I put out before, but I think I figured out a design that's sleek, futuristic, and easy to draw.

It's funny that his pirate ship costume covers up the newer design completely. Good thing I'm here with early roughs for this drawing where it's visible!

Aika's kind of harsh with her words in general, but I felt it was a bit too harsh for Ted, especially since I hardly picture these two interacting with each other much anyways.

See you tomorrow for the third and final drawing!

Happy Halloweens 2022! - Day 1

Did you know that Halloween is a three-day long holiday in the far-off future? For those living in the year 2422, it's a very true fact!

Of course, since this year is "The Year of Class of 2422," we must observe how Halloween will be celebrated in the future: not with one, but with THREE illustrations for Halloweens!

Starting off the first day of Halloweens, October 29th brings us a curious scene of farm girl Nelly teaching our Earth-visiting alien Nevadri a thing or two about carving pumpkins for the spooky season.

Something about that organic pumpkin really spooks out Nevadri. Let's hope we don't bring the extinction of pumpkins into our timeline.

The background art was originally a bit more elaborate, but I felt the need to tone down certain details in order to match the simpler backgrounds for Day 2 and 3's artwork. You'll see what I mean during the next two days.

Here's the process for the art:

The concept was pretty much nailed from the get-go, so it was a matter of refining the drawing. You'll soon see this is the case for the next two drawings.

National Cinnamon Roll Day 2022

Normally, I don't make any drawings or illustrations for any of these silly non-holidays like "Talk Like A Pirate Day" or "National HVAC Tech Day," but a few days ago I caught wind that October 4th is "National Cinnamon Roll Day."

Considering that 2022 is basically the year of "Class of 2422" for me AND that I have a certain musically talented blonde in that story that has a weakness for cinnamon rolls, I figured that it'd only be appropriate that I come up with something to mark today's occasion!

How could I not celebrate "National Cinnamon Roll Day" with Marilyn? It's her all-time favorite dessert in the Solar System! Yum yum!

Where did I get the idea that Marilyn's favorite dessert should be a cinnamon roll? I created my characters as Mii characters on my 3DS so I can import them into my Tomodachi Island game, and the game made the cinnamon roll as Marilyn Mii's all-time favorite dish. I felt like that fact is really fitting for her character and it made sense to me so I ran with that as fact for her character ever since.

I still haven't renewed my expired Adobe subscription so this drawing is the first time ever I used Clip Studio Paint to create a finished drawing!

Of course, I'll be back later this month with this year's Halloween drawing. Or drawings, with an "s?" Stay tuned!

A Happy Birthday from the Future!

Oh hey! It's my birthday! Again! On this day during this month! How predictable!

I mentioned earlier this year that since it's the year 2022, I've basically unofficially made this year the year of "Class of 2422." Themed drawings for this year will exclusively feature characters from this story project, and this year's birthday art is no exception!

Another year to add to my year count. Did we do good with shaping ourselves in the shape of the number 26? Judge for yourself!

I know that the yellow background color is too bright and loud, but I couldn't find any other good color to use. I hope it isn't too annoying to the eye.

It'd be super cool if I could see how our world advances in 400 years. Now THAT would be a killer birthday wish to be fulfilled.

Happy New Year 2022!

Smell ya later 2021! Wouldn't wanna be ya!

Last year, I mentioned that I have a silly rule when it comes to making the Happy New Year artwork, which is that I avoid using characters from the Class of 2422 story since it would be silly for them to celebrate the New Years for a previous year because they live in the future. I broke this rule last year because I was on a time crunch.

However, this time I broke the rule on purpose since it makes sense. It was the perfect time to feature these characters for this year's New Year artwork. Why? Which set of characters were perfect for ushering in 2022? The ones from 2422 of course! Duh! Prime opportunity!

Speaking of which, any artwork for certain occasions during this year only (such as my birthday, Halloween, Christmas, etc.) are going to exclusively feature Class of 2422 characters; we are, after all, exactly 400 years away from 2422.

With all that out there, I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Let's hope this year's a better one than the last!

Merry Christmas 2021!

Hey! Christmas time is here! Again!

This time I wanted to go in a different direction, featuring Autumn in the winter. She's never heard of Christmas in her entire life and finds herself completely enthralled by it.

I've had some issues with this at the beginning, but after trying to overdo the composition, attempting some kind of rendering, and worrying that the storytelling element is lost on the viewers, I told myself to "keep it simple, stupid" and to trust that the viewers will get it, so I hope you do.

I also wanted to share the process of the artwork here:

Last minute additions to the art was the branch that the ornament hangs from and the snow.

I'm glad that she was able to be featured for the Christmas art! Using an autumn-based character for a winter piece is a pretty good combo. ("Nightmare Before Christmas" proves the mash-up works.)

Anyways! I wish you all a Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas!

Happy Halloween 2021!

Halloween is back, which means another round of Halloween art!

Something that I came to realize is that every time I use Sally and Mandy for the Halloween art, Sally is always on the left side and Mandy on the right. I don't know why that's been the case; it's just a coincidence.

And because Mandy is always on the right side of the drawing, we always see the left side of her face facing us, which is a side I hardly draw in general.

It's just a minor detail I wanted to point out.

Anyways, Happy Halloween!

Quarter of a Century Old

Hey ho! Today's that day again!

Can you believe it? I'm now a quarter of a century old!

Let's celebrate that with this pretty cool-looking quarter!

On an unrelated note, I'm launching a new cryptocurrency.

Have a Daisy

Hey! As I'm sure you noticed, the monthly animations have been put on hold.

I'll get back to them once I get things in order around here.

Oh boy, that's a ton of catching up to do.

In the meantime, I drew up a neat drawing of Daisy! I'll also throw in the process of the drawing from beginning to end.

I had a bit of a breakthrough some time ago when it came to developing the personalities of certain side characters and Daisy was caught in the cross fire.

I'll admit, I've given some characters more development and attention than others and Daisy was just one of those characters that was left out...until recently.

I've been having a ton of fun figuring who Daisy really is and I wanted to draw up a nice drawing of her casually coasting on her skateboard while listening to music and browsing social media. I'm sure we'll see more Daisy around here once I get more free time.

Happy New Year 2021!

Marilyn is usually a 1950s fan, but she's willing to party 1920s style!

Now, my silly rule when it comes to making the New Year art is that I do not feature any characters from Class of 2422. Why would they celebrate our current day New Years if they live in 2422? That would be like us celebrating the New Year of 1776 in 2021; It doesn't make much sense.

However, I broke the rule this one time for the 2021 New Year art because I was running out of time and ideas for the artwork.

You might be asking yourself "couldn't you feature another female character dressed in flapper attire for the artwork?"

And to that I say, shut up.

I couldn't think of any other characters at the time that would enjoy wearing a flapper costu-

oh wait I could have used Sally huh

Merry Christmas 2020!

Hey hey hey! We made it to Christmas! What an achievement!

The coronavirus can't cancel this holiday!

To ring in some holiday cheer, I drew up some colorful Christmas art, as per usual!

I was barely about to finish this artwork just in time to post this for Christmas. Just barely!

Hope you guys rest easy with family and friends today!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Happy Halloween 2020!

Halloween is back! You can't beat the chilly autumn weather, fun spoops, and free candy!

Well actually, is Halloween cancelled this year due to that darn coronavirus? I don't know, but it's not stopping me from making another Halloween-themed art piece this year!

So for these past few years, I would alternate between Marilyn in a witch costume and the Sally/Mandy duo for Halloween. This year calls for Mary, however the new witch character I created not too long ago seems like the perfect fit for the Halloween art this year (and her name is Autumn too! Very fitting for the season!)

I drew up two different Halloween drawings, one featuring Mary and the other with Autumn. After getting feedback for the two ideas, it appears that Autumn the witch is taking center stage for the Halloween art this year!

You gotta have some fun as a witch during Halloween night! You just gotta!

Regarding the Marilyn version of the Halloween 2020 art, I'll recycle that for a different occasion down the road. Maybe. Not sure yet. I've been told it can serve as a PSA kind of image since the idea with her relates to the virus thing happening currently. Anyways...

Happy Halloween everyone!