Sketches

Someone growled at me yesterday for not showing my sketches. Normally I would ignore such an incident but when she asks me to do something I tend to do it. SO here are some sketches from my nice new sketch book. I have a love/hate relationship with new sketch books. I feel like there is going to be so much greatness in the potential they hold but tend to crack under the pressure of having to make it all look awesome. The first page is the worst. So in the style of the original Battler Britton epics I made a beautiful cover page...

I have been formulating new ideas for the army and how they look, including a more military edge. Head wear is important for this so I sketched out a few ideas for Recon Unit. I think the simple version is best, it looks more hard arse and we all know how hard arsed Recon Unit is...

And everyone loves a bunny....

Commissioned Drawing: 'After the Battle'

It's been a long, drawn out, dark and difficult battle but in the aftermath of the morning after, the HiiRagi Army rest in the arms of victory. Except the Recon Unit, they work tirelessly to get the communications up and going. They need to report their triumph to the All Mighty HiiRagi, who never doubted them for a second...

This is a black and white reproduction of an original drawing I did for one of my favourite minions. The original is on hand stained paper to give it an antiquated look. I really like this one, the rendering took frickin' ages but was totally worth it.

Art Journals collection

One thing I like to look at are Art Journals. I have quite a collection of 'How to take over the World' Plan Books disguise as harmless Art Journals. I really like to draw and stick stuff in a book, now, this does not mean I like to Scrap Book. No. Keeping a journal is completely different, there's should be A LOT more scrawling for a start and they should look like this:

or this...

or this...

These images are taken from Rowena Murillo's pinterest board, which is just chockers with images like these. I haven't really taken to pinterest yet but this looks like the start of a beautiful friendship...

Awesome.

October Sketchbook

Better late then never I always say.... Current sketches are influenced by a vintage military book I found amongst my Nan and Pops stuff called Khaki and Green: Australian Troops at Home and overseas, which was written entirely by the Australian troops who were identified only with their military numbers. I will post some images of the war sketches soon as they are brilliant, meanwhile I have been sketching to try and capture some of the army candidly as with the Occupational Force map reading motorbike sketch. It's a start....

And Berserkers are always causing trouble....

Keep drawing

keep drawing from studio shelter on Vimeo.

September Sketchbook

I'm afraid there wasn't too much drawing happening in September. The focus has been on getting toys made (but more on that later) so I only have two drawings to share. It's hard to achieve a balanced lifestyle when plotting to take over the world but I will be making the Army step up over the next year and giving them more responsibility, which is difficult for a controlling meglomaniac like myself. But anyway, I digress....

August Sketchbook

Yes, I know that it is the middle of September and what a perfect time to finally pop up some sketches from my August Sketchbook. Enjoy!

Yes, that's right World Domination IS the HiiRagi Army way....

Spying, spying, spying.... They look made up but these binoculars are actually based on some WWII binoculars. Aren't they great?!

I'm going to pop these two together I think to make one whole image. I see t-shirts.....

July Sketchbook

This month the obsession has been with bunkers.  Not a lot of drawing but a lot of thinking about them.  Below is a brief sketch as I work out what I actually want to draw.  Apologies for the crapness of the scan but I was working in 2H.

I have also been re working images in pencil for some new products that will be coming over the next couple of weeks.  Yep, Occupational Force ready for action!

The Army and I also thought we would benefit from a little training camp away from HQ, so we packed up the tank and took off to Freycinet.  The weather was beautiful and the Army got back to basics.  Time to start working off that Winter coat, me thinks....

Hmmmm...no, I don't think this is the place to bust out the explosives....

I like where your head's at though....

June Sketchbook

There's been a lot of thinking and planning happening at HiiRagi HQ this month.  Nothing concrete as yet but we all know the value is in the thinking and the planning.  Now so as to not make the mistake that every other power hungry world domination expert does and reveal all my cards before I've even touched the switch to destruction, this months sketchbook is just a few little details of my greater plans.  Stay tuned little minions....

May Sketchbook

This month has been more of a planning time with some very rough sketching.  I'm thinking about setting up little scenarios to photograph my robots in, military inspired of course.  It got me thinking about military training camps and how I could create these scenes.  Some ideas are:

The old wire crawl idea.  I have actually been making miniature versions of barb wire but more on that later.

Tyre jump

And the chin up bar....I said give me 10!

So far I have made a few sand bags and have been experimenting with photographs, seeing how well it could fit together.

Not bad for a mornings work.  I need to make more sandbags now though and have a closer look at the set of Hogan's Heroes I think.  I had a little play in Photoshop too with bits and pieces.

Yep, black and white with a bit of vignetting for good luck.  I'm actually going to use my Diana F+ camera when I set it all up properly as nothing can truly recreate the look of grainy film like the real thing.  Hopefully it will all be great!  What do you think?

April Sketchbook

I've been playing around with my pencils this month.  While I love the clean linework of  HiiRagi, I've been itching to do some messier pencil drawings that may be used on some cards and paper products I have planned.  I've also had plenty of inspiration for the military books I've been finding around the place, especially the transport vehicles.

 Helicopter action

 Recon Unit in the Snow Mobile

The infinately useful amphibious vehicle

I'm finding it hard to pick just one, which one is your favourite?

March Sketchbook

I've been trying to spend more time drawing and developing ideas these days so here are a few images from my Sketchbook over March, yes, beginning with a dirigible....Being obsessive is a key criteria to ruling the world....

This is just a littel sketch of Recon drawing on a wall, yeah, he's so street...

This is a draft of a maze puzzle that may be included in an Activity and Colouring In book I am currently working on.  I'm trying to make it look like pipes.  And don't ruin it by trying to solve it now! Bad Minions!

This is a ideas draft of what I'm thinking of sending to Seattle for the exhibition later in the year.  I like this, maybe I should move into toy accessories next?