This version of the Ghost Pirates was inked and toned all in Photoshop. If I remember correctly the reason Epilogue.net rejected it was because it was too blurry. Since the point of the image was to approximate the pirates walking out of the fog my first reaction was, “Duh! It’s supposed to be blurry!” It’s years later now. My reaction to getting rejected at Epilogue these days is usually just to shrug.
Category Archives: sketchbook
The Ghost Pirates – Before
This sketch was inspired by William Hope Hodgson‘s The Ghost Pirates. Hodgson is one of those frustrating authors who has great ideas but is hard to recommend to anyone because he’s not a lot of fun to read. His best work is in short stories. The longer the story the more needlessly dense and repetitive the prose. If you’ve seen Attack of the Mushroom People you’ve seen an adaptation of one of Hodgson’s best short stories The Voice in the Night.
I finished a version of this in Photoshop that was then rejected by Epilogue.net. I’ll post that tomorrow.
Ghost Pirates – Even More Before
I found this earlier version of the Ghost Pirates while I was looking for the completed version. I don’t see any reason to hang onto it so I’m posting it today.
Crinoids
We resume our journey through the 2002 section of the sketchbook.
In the Sentient 39 “universe”, there are 71 sentients. This is according to the Blair, a species of space faring invertebrate that also claims to one of the oldest of said sentients. I haven’t actually figured out who all those sentients are. (A sentient, at least in Blairish terms, designates the life that has evolved on a specific planet. If that life then went into space and seeded 49 other planets and an intelligent lifeform evolved on all those planets the Blair would still say it was one sentient. No one has been able to get a good explanation from them as to why that is.)
I’ve adopted H.P. Lovecraft’s alien races as sentients. They are public domain creatures. But really, I find them fascinating. Lovecraft invented aliens that were weird and strange and not human. No bumpy foreheaded humans for him. This unfinished sketch is my attempt at showing what an active crinoid culture would look like.
Weirdsmith After
It took me longer to find this image than I expected. Turns out I’d burned it to CD way back before I got an external backup drive. This version of the image appeared in my 2003 Calendar. It’s also probably the only color version I’ve got of this image. I seem to remember that I flattened, saved and then closed the original Photoshop image. Normally I save two versions of an image – one as a layered Photoshop document that I can make changes to if needed in the future, one as a flattened tif that can be easily moved around.
I should be back posting on a daily basis. I’m now using the “new” version of Blogger. It shouldn’t make much difference to your experience.
Weirdsmith – Before
There isn’t a finished version of this anywhere on the net. I submitted the finished version to Epilogue.net and it was rejected. I don’t remember the reason now. I’ll locate the final, color version and post it tomorrow.
King Roach Himself
So here’s the big guy himself. If there ever is a King Roach series, this is pretty much what he’ll look like. What kid wouldn’t want to be able to transform into him?
King Roach Monsters
A trio of monsters sketched for the 2000 possible King Roach series. The only significant character here is the happy robot face. I had a thought that King Roach would acquire a robot sidekick for awhile.
Misc King Roach
The only drawing on this page (circa 2000 AD) unrelated to King Roach is the sasquatch in the middle. No doubt he’s wondering how he got in the middle of a giant monster saga.
You’re Right, It Does Look Like A Giant Penis. So?
Sigh.
I was just drawing a giant monster. I was thinking along the lines of a Gigeresque creature, biomechanical and alien. Is it any wonder that the result was a giant phallic horror with knives for arms?
That’s King Roach in the foreground. He can’t believe it either.
