Rebooting Ruxpin - L.B. and the Bounders

     L.B. was the horrible little sidekick of Jack W. Tweeg. My version is a little more adorable than horrible. I think L.B. originally stood for Lead Bounder. I'd like this version to be a little more creative than that, but I can't decide. It could stand for something random... like Leonard Bernstein. Or maybe its a little more ambiguous, always standing for something different... like 'Let's Boogie' or 'Lazy Basta'...

Let's go with Leonard Bernstein!

     L.B. is part of a species known as bounders, which are basically little heads with legs. I went through several versions of L.B. before finally settling on the one you see above. I liked all my other tries so much that I decided to use them as the rest of the little guy's gang. I realize they all look pretty different from one another for being part of the same species, but there's no rule that says bounders can't be diverse in appearance.

The more I look at these guys, the more I'd rather see the little spinoff adventures of their own.

Rebooting Ruxpin - Jack W. Tweeg

     My "reboot" of Teddy Ruxpin continues with a little St. Patty's Day bloggin' of the green! Next in the lineup is the land of Grundo's resident green meanie, and my personal favorite, Jacqueline Willimena Tweeg!

     Jacqueline Willimena is, of course, my small change. Guys with girl names crack me up, I guess. Other than that, I can't really think of ways to change Tweeg much. I kind of like him the way he is... or was. 

     Tweeg is a sort of wannabe sorcerer who believes he can magically turn buttermilk into gold. His attempts to do so always fail, however, producing instead... buttermilk donuts. Hilarious, right?!? I thought Tweeg, or maybe his henchman L.B., could capitalize off of this misfortune and sell the donuts to help finance further experiments. Magic has to cost money, after all! You can't just get something from nothing! Equivalent exchange and all that jazz!

Rebooting Ruxpin - The Patchwork

     Reboots seem to be all the rage right now! Sometimes I think this is good, other times... not so much. Disney recently announced that they're officially rebooting DuckTales for the 30th anniversary of the series! This, to me, is an example of the good! 

     But anyways, a while back, just for fun, I started a little reboot of my own with the characters from the late Ken Forsse's The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin! I thought I'd keep it going, but FIRST... a recap of the ones I've done so far.

     Of course, there's Teddy, a spunky young illiop who travels to the land of Grundo in search of adventure. An illiop being sort of like a bear... only with clothes, I guess.

     Grubby is an octopede, and the clumsy yet loyal companion to our hero, Teddy. Grubby doesn't share Teddy's enthusiasm for adventure, but follows him to Grundo anyway, partly because he can pretty much be talked into anything and also because he just didn't have anything else to do.

     Next up is Newton Gimmick, a burly old inventor that used to serve as engineer on a royal airship before retiring. Gimmick now runs a junk yard in the small town of Bounder Pass, where he hires Teddy and Grubby as garbage... men.

     Leota the Woodsprite is a guardian, of sorts, of the forest. She's about two inches tall and doesn't have much in the way of magic, but what she does have IN SPADES is smarts! Leota can outwit the brightest of the bright and makes a pretty formidable foe for anyone daring to bring her forest any harm.

     Princess Erin is the headstrong heir to the throne of Grundo. She meets up with the rest of the gang on her quest to rescue her younger sister Eruzia from treacherous kidnappers. Epic stuff.

     The newest character I have to introduce isn't technically a character at all, but it is still a vital part of Teddy and his friends' adventure. It's the rickety but reliable airship that I'm dubbing, the A.S. Patchwork!

     It's like the old saying goes, you can take the grizzled old engineer out of the airship, but you can't stop him from just building another one out of spare parts found in a junkyard! ...okay. That's not a saying... It's not even that catchy... but it is what happened.

     Gimmick's ship, as you can see, is made from all sorts of different objects and was a ton of fun to draw! Who knows how Gimmick is able to get this heap of junk off the ground with just a big balloon, but in a world of talking teddy bears and 5 foot insects, a little suspension of disbelief is required, to say the least!

You Failed Art School! BOOM! Roasted.

     Here's another batch of characters from The Office. Drawing... I guess you could call them caricatures(?)... isn't something I've done much of and I feel like it's pretty hit and miss when it comes to capturing the likenesses of these characters. For some, like Stanley, I feel like I nailed it on the first try. But with others, I must have trashed half a thing of post-its trying to get it right. My depiction of Pam resembled everything from Jake the Dog to Audrey Hepburn, but never really looked like Jenna Fischer. I finally settled with the one below. 

     Really, my goal was to capture the general feel of the character for something like an animated version rather than do an accurately detailed depiction. 

That's a pretty flimsy excuse, but I'm sticking with it.