As I’ve noted, I got sick this month, (did I mention twice? Just checking.), so it has put a pause in my latest GUARDZ! comic. I have a new one queued up, which will be completed in February. In the meantime, I have been working on this piece, which was inspired by the Wipeout games that are on the Playstation consoles. This one should also be done soon, but here it is, as a work in progress. Enjoy!

After a 3-year+ hiatus, GUARDZ! The Comic will be returning on it’s regular, not-quite-monthly schedule. After some consideration, I decided to stick to my old webcomic instead of coming up with a new one, and I have a ton of old and new material to work with so I should be able to stick to some sort of regular schedule. No school means more free time to work on my comics!

You can see all the old stuff at guarzthecomic.com

I’m still working on a few pieces, and I’ve been itching to get back into the tools I know and love. In the meantime, you can see more of my effects work at http://www.youtube.com/user/roqueb

This is a “painted” version of my original Kendra Keel sketch, using Painter IX. I started this color version of my sketch with a Wacom Intuos3, and I finished it with an Intuos4 S (a gift for my birthday).

Ninja Woman

Here’s my one of my first efforts using the suite. I’ll have to admit, there’s more life in this picture after processing it through CorelDRAW. I can’t wait to try this on some of my comics.

Tap DC: Mother Earth

Would you pay for a glass of tap water at a local restaurant? How about a dollar?

The Tap Project was started on this simple premise: for one week patrons of any participating restaurant of a sponsoring city would donate one dollar for a glass of water. This donated money would be used by UNICEF to provide clean, accessible drinking water to children around the world.

This year, Tap DC sponsored a contest to raise awareness of this event, happening during World Water Week, the week of March 22-28. This is my entry: Mother Earth, freely giving water the world. Her generosity is free; ours should be just as giving and just as selfless.

This entry, and many more like it, will be on display at Pepco’s Edison Place Gallery (located at 702 8th St., NW in Washington DC) on Tuesday, March 24 between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m.

I urge that during the World Water Week, you donate at tapproject.org or tapdc.org, or you can dine out and donate at restaurants all over Washington DC.

Your dollar can give a child clean drinking water for 40 days. Now would you pay a dollar?

Just a quick drawing off the top of my head, inspired by Marvel Comic’s Black Widow.

Pencil, pen and ink, colored in PSP.

“What a piece of work is man”, the cyborg contemplates its humanity. Does stripping away our humanity, distilling it down to its barest essence, make us more human, or take something away from us? What is it to be human?

I’ve always had a fascination with the man-machine hybrid, there’s something about “making up” musculature and underlying bone structure of human beings that makes it enjoyable to draw. It’s breaking the rules while staying within the rules, and making things up as you go along.

Pencil, pen and ink. Colored in Paint Shop Pro. Title from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

Often, I see gamers turning up their nose at this game. “Pure” gamers consider the game boring, infantile, and asinine (these same gamers who hurl racial epithets at me or invite online female avatars to their virtual bedroom to “make it stink”. I kid you not.) They say “what’s the point?”

They interesting thing about this game is my girlfriend actually loves it. It’s a free-form expression of mayhem, a game that challenges you to see “what you can do next”. The game is the closest thing I can think of to gaming as art. Sure, it’s no da Vinci, perhaps not even Picasso (maybe more like Pollock), but how can you argue with a game that virtually argues back at you, challenges you: what can you do next?

My guess is that many of the gamers that complain about the game lack one component that the game encourages: creativity. While the people enjoy the game’s “what can you do next?” component, “pure gamers” desire to be lead by the hand in order accomplish their goals. Even in open world games, there are still goals to be accomplished. When a game presents no goal, just play and have fun, “pure gamers” miss the point. It’s sad that they won’t even give this game a chance.

So can games be art? I believe that Pain’s free form antics are as close to the “video games as art” argument as you are going to get. When a person is constantly vying for your attention for what you have accomplished, and you are constantly amazed, then you can’t get closer to art than this. PAIN as art, PAIN is art.

Anyways, how can you argue with a game that allows you to do THIS?

Santa and Reindeer

Happy Holidays everyone! Just got done wrapping a set of gifts for my various nieces and nephews. Thought I’d pass the holiday cheer and came up with this picture.