“I need to Breadwiggify this”, I thought to myself in quotation marks. So  I drew this one.

That looked better, but I wanted to push it further, so I tried making the legs just sort of hang off the frong of him. I also gave him burger bun lips.

I need to loosen up, I thought without quotation marks. So I tried drawing him quicker, looser, more slobbery.

That led to this drawing, where he’s getting nice and lumpy/foldy. Kind of like poorly mashed potatoes in your laundry.

And here’s the final drawing I did. I think he’s cute in a weird puggy kind of way.

First comes the sketch. I was going for a vile and ferocious beast, with just a hint of reptilian sophistication.

Next I started modeling him in 3d based on the aforementioned sketch. A simple sketch begets a simple model. Who’d have thunk it?

Now I am by no means a very good UV mapper. And I find the process tedious and frankly, repulsive. But I have to say, I do think the UV map for this guy turned out pretty good. UV mapping is the process where you basically peel the model apart like in taxidermy, so the 3d program knows where to put the textures. It is both gruesome and bothersome.

As you can see, I then can use it as a guide when painting in the textures.

And here’s the final dragon. I have decided to name him Turnip. There are more plans for this fellow, hopefully I’ll get to them sometime.

An initial drawing of Mother G. I really liked her face, but the rest wasn’t quite working for me.

Here’s the final drawing. Much more protein, just the way I like it. 

Here’s ten panels showing a bunch of the steps I used to color the illustration. I started with a yellow background just to set a color tone in my head. And we all know how painful that can be. Then I started coloring from the back and worked forward. After all the colors were in and the ink line was laid over the top, I added some dirt and paper texture to it, to make it a little less computeryishy. Finally I adjusted the colors back into a more yellowy space.

Here’s my dirt layers by themselves. I took some printer paper and stepped in some water, then stomped all over the paper with my dirty sneakers. Then I scanned that in and started masking it out using the different color layers for the selections. 

 And here’s the dirt layer composited with the paper texture layer.

 I layered the dirty paper into the color layers and wala! (Click for a bigger version.)

Finally, here’s some close up zoomitage.

Lots and lots of making of stuff if’n you click on the “more” link. Click the image for some super yeti-zoom action.

Here’s my original sketch for my Yeti. I was attempting to get a vacant, yet vaguely nauseated expression. It’s a good thing I have a mirror.

Then I started modeling his body, blocking it in. Simple forms for a simple yeti.

Upping the resolution of the model I started sculpting his lumpies. I highly advise avoiding that phrase in casual conversation.

Here’s the model shaded. Yeah buddy!

Modeling his comestibles came next. In his case a Santa leg with a bite taken out. They’re actually quite tasty, if a bit fatty.

Here’s the snowy hills for the background. Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

Here’s the first pass at rendering the character in the scene. “What?” you say. But, but.. this is in color. Yeah, I tried him in color. Don’t worry, all the color will be sucked out of him later.

Here’s the occlusion pass. What is an occlusion pass you ask? Well, it kind of puts little shady areas where objects are right next to each other.

Can you tell what’s different in this frame? Bingo! Yes, I started blurring the background as it gets farther way from the camera to give it some more depth.

And here I threw in some haze. I’m always slinging it around, you’d think it was free or something.

And to give it that festive vibe, I sprinkled some snowy bits here and there.

Now here’s where I converted it to a monochromatic-esque, sepia-ish image so it would look more at home in an old magazine. Click it for a zoomy version.

Finally, I started scanning in various parts of pages from old magazines so I could piece them together into a page that the Yeti could settle down into like a bag of old bones easing into a warm bath of epsom salts.

And here’s the final illustration once again. A bigger version is just a click away.