I’m on a much needed vacation right now at Granny’s beach house on Long Island.  The location and weather are idealic, and my white mayonaisey body is actually getting some vitamin D. 

Anyway, I did this sketch a couple days ago.  My response to Indy 4.  I enjoyed the movie and actually liked the whole alien factor.  My problem with it was I don’t remember Indy movies being so complicated.  I could barely keep up in this one.  I really liked the Mutt character and wouldn’t mind seeing a spin off with him.  But another Indy movie?  Hmmm, maybe it’s time to let sleeping dogs lie.

Happy Friday.  I just got back from Wall-E.  Wow…cool movie.  It was a little more preachy and cautionary than I was expecting, but I’ll give ‘em that.   The Wall-E/Eve relationship is too adorable.  And after seeing all those robots it’s makin me want to get back to doing my roboready bots.  Anyway, here’s a couple more digest sketches.  You’ll see the original design of the speeder ball.  After I drew that I had to put Missile Mouse on one.  And I was most pleased with the little skull logo on the one-eyed-alien’s onesie.

A Galactic Security Agent is trained to be expertly proficient in handling all kinds of vehicles. From sophisticated fighter ships to your average commuter speeder there’s nothing they can’t turn into an efficient pursuit vehicle. However, if given the choice, I don’t think Missile Mouse would have picked the Speeder Ball SB5 as a get away vehicle. It’s handling is poor, acceleration rivals that of a Gorgonian sand slug, and it’s noisy. But when you’re in a pinch some things have to suffice.

A couple months ago I was walking down the beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance I could see a boy going back and forth between the surf’s edge and and the beach. Back and forth this child went. As I approached I could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

I was stuck by the the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As I approached the boy continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.

As I came up to him I said, “You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can’t possibly make a difference.” The boy looked at me. He then stooped down and pick up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the me and said, “go check out www.bigcartel.com.”

I went straight home and did just as the boy said, and it changed my life for ever. One of the biggest pains in website building (for me at least) is managing and maintaining and designing my online shop. Consequently it gets neglected and people lose interest and there goes my lunch money. But bigcartel changes all that. If you have a paypal account it’s super easy to set up a shop. It took me like 2 minutes to post my first product. Try it, you’ll like it. Here’s my new store.

Also, I thought I’d try something out. Not sure if people will like this, but here’s my idea: You remember those gumball toy machines they had at the grocery store when you were a kid? You didn’t know what you were getting until you got it, right? Well, I was thinking that here at my shop instead of a muscleman key chain or a bouncy ball what you get is a random original Missile Mouse drawing like the ones pictured above. Each drawing is unique and has Missile Mouse in a cool pose with either a monster, interesting gadget, or cool vehicle. I also am doing it with the alien drawings. Anyway, I figured I’d try it out, see if there was interest or not. Am I charging too much?

And lastly, I put up a new print. It’s a 13 x 19 print of the cover I did for Flight Explorer. I really looks nice in person. And if you interior design has a ketchup and mustard pallet going for it, then it’ll look great on your wall.

That’s all, have a great week.

Thanks again to all of you who ordered the sketchbooks.  You should have received them by now.  They were fun to sketch in and I hope you like the sketch you got.

I did this drawing tonight to wind down.  I was so tired I didn’t want to draw it.  But once my hand started sketching I couldn’t stop and it gave me a little art boost of energy.  I love it when I get those.