Planet of the Apemen

Having just watched the second episode of this show I could help but draw my favorite Neanderthal: Creb, a character from the fantastic book Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. Tis just a quick 5 min doodle and likely to stay that way, I haven't forgotten I've got a king to do ;)

Fly my Pretty!

Fly!

Because who doesn't love angels...and colours... 
...and clouds.


For my Myths and Legends module next semester I've decided to go with angels because, by feathery-goodness, I love 'em. The idea of somewhat poncy petty boys flying about telling people what to do makes me laugh, of course it is extremely helpful that most male birds are vain at heart and it wasn't much of a leap to go from a guy with wings to a guy with wings and bird-like colouring. 


More experiments to come as  try to find one I could animate, that doesn't sound too hard does it. 

Alfred

Here's the second King as promised - my favorite King Alfred the Great. I decided to skip right to him instead of doing the rest of Cerdic's heirs because while the monarchs between Cerdic and Alfred ruled Wessex Alfred was the one who started the idea of a united England even if he was never king of England himself. He did call himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, which was fair enough considering his was the only purely Saxon country left after the Danish invasion of Britain and his heirs were the first rulers of the country as a whole.

So here you have it, an often ill, scholarly, youngest son who kicked warrior-Viking behind, took back his kingdom and then laid the foundations for one that's lasted until the modern day. Not bad at all, Alfred, not bad at all.

Next, his son Edward the Elder.

Cerdic

And so starts what is probably gonna take a far while to finish. I've decided to have a go at giving myself a challenge-a-day type affair and as I love history and have a really handy book on the matter I've decided to do a King-or-Queen a Day. Not only because they're mostly fun to read about but also it'll hopefully give me a catalogue of different characters to think about.

To start off here's Cerdic, not the first king ever but the founder of Wessex, the kingdom that would one day be the last of the Saxon kingdoms and eventually give rise to the kings of all England, not just one petty kingdom. There aren't many descriptions of him and I resisted the temptation to make him look all cunning and evil the way I've often read historical-fiction to portray him. The dates are his reign, he landed in Britain earlier, sometime around 490A.D but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle only dates him as starting his reign as King from 519, he died in 534 and was succeeded by his son Cynric. 

Next up my favorite King from British history - Alfred the Great X]

A Blind Man Catches a Bird.....Again

Hi guys, a while back I posted a pic and a link to an African folk tale, for those who forgot here's the link again. Been doing more work on the project since and have come up with an updated character design for the blind man and his companion as well as a rough storyboard - because I find it easier to show how I think the film would be rather than write up a script for animation.

I like that the story is simple and rather short and subtle rather than filled with action, the moral at the end especially makes me smile. So for those vaguely interested, and those not at all, here's what I've got thus far, at some point I'd like to go in and do some character expressions for the blind man but haven't got that far yet.

Any thoughts welcome as well as title suggestions :P 'A Blind Man Catches a Bird' is a bit of a mouthful I admit.

New Deskptop

Decided like making myself a new desktop and also had the urge to draw some old characters of mine that were feeling unloved.... combine the two and voila! May add more of an explanation later when my brain starts working, for now enjoy the pretty, pretty, glow.