He Groks Spock

I've arrived!

I have completed the long drive up to Seattle with 2 cats in tow. The cats held up well and I'm very glad to be together with my family again after 2 weeks being apart. I'll post more drawings when I get the chance.

The Train! The Train!

The original sketch is over at the TAG blog (see the links on the sidebar).

Short Elvis

I think the title says it all.

A Face

Look familiar?

Wow, that was a long time in-between posts!

It's been so long since I've posted that I got a new job and now I'm moving on to another! Yeesh!

I'm going to be working at PopCap Games as Art Director in Seattle! I may have some time over the next couple of weeks to get a few drawings posted, then I will be busy with a new job, new house, etc. Hopefully I will still find some time to get back here and post more Creeple or Tux stories.

Here's to wishing!

Strange dude

I have no idea who this guy is... he just came out of my pencil and on to the paper.

The Herculoids: An Appreciation

So over on the TAG blog there has been some discussion about old Saturday morning cartoons that are available for watching on YouTube. I have a personal favorite... the Herculoids. It was a Hanna Barbara cartoon set on a far-flung planet with a small nuclear family and monstrous friends/pets with super powers. They would fight of invaders to the planet as well as the hostile locals.

These cartoons were pretty short on story and long on action. Chuck Jones had once called TV cartoons "illustrated radio" because the characters would always say what they were doing rather than use complicated and costly animation to tell the story. However, by this point HB had gotten pretty good at making due with very limited resources. The quality of the drawing varies wildly from shot to shot, but they have fairly complex action “gags” that are easy to follow and fun to watch.

The Herculoids also benefit from having Alex Toth for a character designer and veterans like Homer Jonas working on the backgrounds. The inventive sound FX, voice acting and music round out the package.

Watching these as I did last night I noticed a few things. One is that this is a super team, just like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Because most of the characters are “animals” of a sort, they writers can by-pass all of the time consuming character development (such as it was and is in the TV cartoon world) and focus on the action. The human characters filled their stereotypes: Mother, Father, and Son. This also streamlined the story telling. There may be some sort of back story as to why these folks are on this planet living the way they do, but it doesn’t matter… it’s all about the action.

The other thing I noticed upon reflection is that my story Tux is clearly influenced by these cartoons that I watched during my formative years. As with the Herculoids, Tux is about a super team of a sort, with animal-ish characters fighting exotic enemies. I never made the connection until last night.

Guest Artist

So my son Tommy has done a drawing for us... He says it's "to Mommy!"

If you can't stand the heat...

With the asteroid shield gone, the Toad starts to superheat... but Tux's crew is prepared. The are already suited up and escape the ship as it heads toward the planet surface and it's final landing. Tux looks back and sheds a tear for the little ship that that was her home.

Readers Digest

Because of overwhelming demand (both of the people who look at this site asked for it!), I am going to give little bits of the Tux story in a format that I can sort of keep up with. This won't be a daily thing, but just something that I will do as I have time and the inclination.

So, when we last saw our heroes, they had made a hole in an asteroid for a mysterious purpose. That purpose was to make an ablative shield for the Toad so that they could safely enter the planet's atmosphere. But as they enter the atmosphere, cracks form in the asteroid and it breaks apart!

Stay tuned for what happens next!

Terasaur?

I'm not sure what this is, but it's kinda fun.

A Head

Nothin' special... just a sketch.

I'm back!

Crunch is done, the holidays are done and I'm back here to post things... I just don't know what I'm going to post. I do know that I have no hope of posting on a daily basis, and that I don't think I have the energy reserves to produce an on-going strip.

Instead, I'm going to just post drawings that come to mind... at least for the time being. Today's post is the invitation I made for my Daughter's sleep over party.

No posts in a really long time

And it's not likely to get any better any time soon. We are in the homestretch at work, so I don't expect to have a lot of time to make posts on here any time soon. However, I would like to point out that LOTRO will be out soon, so go buy it! That's Lord of the Rings Online!

I'm back from vacation! I have some more strips that are nearly ready to go, but they aren't quite ready, so I've loaded this space suit guy in the meantime. It's taken me a lot of time to catch up at work, so this has been my first opportunity to post.

At any rate, more to come very soon! Yeeeah!

Crazy Week

It's been a pretty nutty week both at home and at the office, so I've had no time for update. I'm right in the middle of the next set of strips (I work on a 5 strip page and I don't scan it until the whole page is done), so I'm hoping to have new strips soon. Thanks for stopping by and see you soon!

Away for a couple of days

There won't be any new strips until Thursday, at the earliest. My computer will be down for a couple of days doing demos in my daughters' classrooms.

I have a few more strips that are just about ready to go, but I don't want to rush them. Please come back soon and have a look... I have lot's of ideas on what this merry little band will be up to.

Thanks for being here and having a look!

Alas, no strip today!

No new strip today... I've been too busy making some cosmetic changes to my website...

http://rickschmitz.com/

Check it out! It looks the best it ever has, and I've added a new section to my portfolio for the work I'm doing on Lord of the Rings Online.

Page 19. This is the last page in this storyline. Things are picking up at the office and I will probably have less time to devote to the blog in the coming month. I will post when I can.

I'm not sure where I'll be going with the blog at this point. I like Creeple, but I have some other ideas that might make for interesting comic strips... perhaps a straight adventure story or even a horror story. I even have a Giant Monster story I'd like to do, but I don't want to look like I'm copying Skribl's giant robot story, so I'll put that one off for a while.

I suppose that's why this blog is called "rickart" rather than "Creeple". I have promised myself that at the very least I will be doing more drawings, so if nothing else, I'll have sketches to post... both here and on the TAG blog.

Oh, and all this Creeple stuff and anything else I post here is Copyright 2006 Rick Schmitz. Thanks for showing up! I hope I continue to show you cool things and that you continue to come see them!