Remembering the Macho Man

Macho Man Randy Savage by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

No music cue for this entry. I just thought I would reminisce a little about one of my favorite wrestlers of all time; The Macho Man Randy Savage aka Randy Poffo. He passed away from a heart attack last Friday & thinking back on it all this week I can definitely say I lost a big part of my childhood. I just wanted to draw something that would give an adequate homage to one of my favorites. I did the color as just his famous pink that he'd wear to the ring. Almost did the whites in the yellow he wore with it but decided against it.

For as long as I can remember I've loved wrestling. I've had my years of drifting in and out of it but I always remember Savage's era fondly as watching it with my Dad and brother. Then getting worked up and wrestling with Dad in the living room or on the bed. Much to Mom's chagrin. I was 6 years old when the first Wrestlemania happened and the same age when Randy debuted in the WWF. I'm trying to pick out all the stuff I concretely remember because I also have a lot of nerdy stuff like GI Joe, Transformers and Voltron clogging up those memories.

It's funny, with my Dad we always watched WWF. And when I went down to visit my uncles in Lubbock we always watched NWA. I got more figure four leg locks there than I care to remember!

But getting back to Randy I just really remember him standing out sooooo well. Throughout his entire career the man stood out. But especially in the 80s. That insane voice. How he opened so many promos with his back to the camera. The weird color choices that no other wrestler would run with (well aside from Flair and maybe Valentine. Oh and Rick Martell... maybe). Plus I just remember Savage being quick! In the era of the big, lumbering slow men Randy brought the speed. And of course Ms. Elizabeth. Oh manzies... it was so insane that he had a female manager. I loved that they built up to her with all the male managers courting Randy. That was just an awesome angle! Just the intensity... so amazing, slightly making no sense but amazing intensity. Time distortion anyone?

What I think really made me actually bummed out & sad about all of this is the fact that Savage was so engrained in my childhood. I mean, these days you just get numb to the fact that wrestlers die way too often. I don't even want to think about how many of these guys have died due to substance abuse - mainly from issues stemming from back pain. Falling on your back often most days of the year no matter if there is a mat or not is going to make your back hurt a lot. I know, I've seen it - especially when we used to run Fusion here in Colorado. You'd see how guys would walk after that adrenaline wears off. So sadly you kind of get used to it. But with Randy it's different... I was just reading how his brother was saying that he was happy, newly remarried and how he'd never return to the ring again. But man was I ever hoping to see him one last time at a Hall of Fame induction or something along those lines. So hearing that he's happy and living his own life after this amazing career... it's kinda just nice to hear about something finally ending nicely for a wrestler.

But no one really walks off into the sunset, and life is tough like that. But what I can say is that I was always entertained by Randy and will continue to. The day I heard he died I came home and watched hours of videos of his on YouTube and his WWE dvd. It was great then, and it's still great today. He's had amazing runs with virtually all of my favorite wrestlers and I can faithfully say that I was entertained by every one of those feuds. Especially the big Flair feud. And the amazing Michaels match that followed after the Wrestlemania finish. I could go on and on, but I think I'll let what I've said above be the extent of it.

Heartbreaking.

R.I.P. Macho Man Randy Savage and thank you. Check out the WWE video below if you haven't seen it and you'll know what I mean.

We're Gonna Burn This City!

I thought a little Franz Ferdinand was only appropriate for this post. I come to you this week with a four page short story I did for my boy Dave Hendrick for an anthology comic he'll have printed up for your lovely consumption at Heroes Con weekend after this one! I was really super stoked and flattered that he asked me to put my work in on one of his stories. And I'm especially excited that it involved carnage in the form of SPACE BUGS! Man, I love drawing two things... shit from space and robots from the future.

Also The Macho Man Randy Savage (R.I.P. Macho!)

SO without any more rambling here are my four pages. Get ready for carnage! Glorious glorious carnage!!


The Look PG 1 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

1st page... The only page I took a more subtle tone to. I wanted it to stand a part from the other three.


The Look PG 2 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


The Look PG 3 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


The Look PG 4 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


Mmmmm... love those blood splatters! I found some pretty amazing zipatone splatter brushes and I was pretty stoked for that. I think using that with my toned down colors really made the reds pop! And therefore making the carnage oh so much more awesome! What can I say? I love the gore... I like that a lot of people don't expect it when they see a style like mine and I find that super awesome. When Dave first saw the alien taking out one guy's jaw he said "WOW! You weren't kidding when you said you were going all out with the gore!" hahaha nope! Rock n' roll baby!!

What can I say? This was a lot of fun & I really hope to do more in the future. But for now I'm finally going to be able to focus on my webcomic, Tokens Only. You'll be seeing a lot more of that in the next couple of months!

Hope all is well & God Bless!
Zak

Get yourself to bed, blow out that cherry bomb!

I could listen to Spoon's You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb all night tonight.

Music always makes my mind swim. I love drawing to it, and I thought I'd do more sketchbook crap to post. Kept this to the entirety of the above song, and I love being scribbly. I loves the motion, you see.

Anyways, I got nothing else. Just wanted to say I love Spoon and drawing way too much.
God bless
zak

I Wonder If She Fancies Me, Yeah.

At The Indie Disco! That's my song lyric/ blog title of the night for ya... nothing wrong with a little brit pop from one of my favorites; The Divine Comedy. Always love Neil's songs, oh yes.


No City Page 9 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

So there's that! It's a page from NO CITY that I was hired on to draw late last year. I got the ok to post one page since, ya know, it's yet to be published. I believe the book will be published by October of this year. Radical! There's no colors to this even though I did color it. I honestly hate putting out anything older than, well, a few minutes really but I wanted to put up some actual comic work. Man I love comics!

Um, so in other news I have decided to hook up with Hire an Illustrator! to help promote my work. And it's  been working pretty well so far! I don't think I have to tell a lot of you that self promotion on top of doing the work and a full time job is a relentless onslaught. I've been working myself to the bone so I decided to finally get a helping hand. So hopefully this will lead to more time drawing and drinking beer on patios. More so the latter if I have my way! Oh beer, I do love you. Uh... yeah so you can see My Page and if you'd be so kind as to click like I'd love you forever.

Trust!
God keep ya
Zak

When I live in the newer places I'll make sure I'm further from you.

As always, starting off with a song lyric for the title. Toro Y Moi - Minors I got to see them at the end of last year. Awesome band... fitting mood music for how I'm feeling these days. Give'em a listen.

So I don't often post sketches... I dunno, my sketchbook is kind of my own personal idiot mess. And no, it's not full of naked women and creepy things... Just a place for ten ideas that I like and a hundred thousand more that I don't. Plus I go there when I'm mad or sad and no one wants to see sad bastard art. Cause really, there's enough of that bullshit in galleries out there.

Anyways, personal sketchbook rant aside, when I went to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco I had a little change in heart about my sketchbook material being public. To me it's super cool to see people who I consider my betters to be throwing their unstructured work out there. The original sketches for Mickey Mouse and the Snow White movie are amazing to see up close. So maybe I can update this more, and when I don't feel like they suck - post some sketches. I said earlier this year that any good artist is full of self loathing, and my sketchbook is a lot of that. But what the hell, people have asked me before so here ya go. I didn't doctor or clean anything up so this is just raw crap from the book.

I've been watching the new Avenger cartoon, and I gotta say it's pretty cool. I may come back to this idea later, but you get the idea. It's the Bruce Banner / Hulk thing. I really like Edward Norton Banner so that's what he looks like. And hopefully not Hulk giving him an awkward poke... I really don't do a lot of superhero stuff because I've lost a lot of love for that genre. I just want to be able to do my own stories, but this show is great & it's brought back a little bit of that love. Plus the style is akin to my own so that's quite nice indeed. 

The next couple of sketches are redesigns of my Tokens Only characters. Still sorta messing around with his hair. 

I was trying something new with the main character while still trying to keep the John Cusack look to him. He kinda looks too smug for the style I've laid out for the character. But I kinda do like the hair. Mmmmmmm 80s Mullet. 

I'm definitely finishing this one up! I LOVE Akira... and I've always wanted to do an Akira piece. If you've never seen the movie or read the books you're an idiot. Just kidding, I love you, but do see the movie. It's, well, weird but still awesome. Our buddy Tetsuo here is one of the main characters. Not sure if I like how his big robo arm blob is coming along tho. 

The next couple of images are all Star Wars : The Clone Wars style. I'm a little obsessed with the show and I put my portfolio in with LucasArts recently cause I would kill to work on this show. 

LUKE. He looks a little like the Anakin from the Clone Wars... but I think they should totally do a post JEDI series about the continuing adventures of Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia. Because honestly Clone Wars is pretty damn good...  way better than the prequel movies IMO. His proportions are a little wonky... I was focusing more on the style. 

Another Luke Skywalker. I wanted to make him more individual and well I fell on my fat face doing it. He looks a little too femme here. But I like his pissed off Return of the Jedi look the best. 

And if I get my way there will be a Sam Elliot : Western Jedi. Yes that is the Great State of Texas on his Lightsaber, why do you ask? Tell me this wouldn't be badass!? "Draw yer saber, ya sumbitch!"

And now we get to my favorite part of what I need to work on. Women. I am pretty particular about the women I draw. I don't like fan service (dem big ol' titays) because honestly there's enough horned up dudes drawing crazy huge boobs for other horned up dudes. And I guess I'm just numb to it really. Gerhard and I were talking about this tonight... I just think -personally- women are more attractive how I manage to see them day to day, and I tend to take notice of more subtle things. I know that sounds arrogant as hell, but I'm alright with it. So with that in mind here are some of the lady sketches I've actually liked lately. 

I will admit I like the hair in the face thing a lot. The uneven look is not only fun to draw but literally makes my willpower go to 0% ... I've also been working more with the eyes... I'll admit it, eyes are what grab me. 

I was more so messing around with the hands on this one. She kinda has that Mary Jane from the Spider-Man books thing down. Lips when people smile drive me a little nuts. I dunno why... but for some reason I like to save that for special occasions. 

I caught this girl in a quick sketch at a cafe last week eyeing some dude. I like catching moments like that. And PROTIP: when you're out and about drawing people a) have another sketch ready to cover it up b/c some people do NOT like being drawn haha and b) because of that you get usually just one glance to get the sketch down. It's a fun challenge and keeps your work loose. 

And this is a sketch of a lifetime of one of my Tokens characters. I need to start drawing different noses too... I'm getting a little too similar in this sketchbook... anyhoo... I hate two out of the five sketches here.  But for weird little reasons. I hate her chin in the last one, and the second one has a way too typical 'hawk for a punker gal. I wanna make her a little more original. But I think I got the early 30s female look alright in the last one. 

So there's some sketches for you. I really can't believe you read all of it, so if you did I owe you a dum dum lollipop. Man, I love the mystery ones! 

Anyway, I need to go do that sleep thing. Hope you're all well!

God keep ya.

Zak