"I'm All Right! I'm Aaaaaaaall Right!"

It's the craziest thing! There just isn't that much fan art for "It's a Wonderful Life!" Go figure.

This holiday classic is, I have to say, my favorite movie of all time! If you haven't seen it, then OMG, as the kids say, Netflix that badboy ASAP! Hopefully you'll love it as much as I do.

Since it is my favorite movie, and since the Christmas season is my favorite time of year, I thought I'd spend this month drawing some of my favorite characters from Mr. Capra's masterpiece.

First up is Uncle Billy. Played by the great Thomas Mitchell, Billy Bailey is the uncle of main character George, and although he's pretty scatterbrained, he's lovable and loyal to a fault. He also has a couple of strange pets that he lets live in his office. I thought it would be fun to have them in here as well, including Jimmy the Raven, which was actually a good luck charm for director Frank Capra, having appeared in several of his films.

I'm starting to sound like Robert Osborne now, so I guess I'll give it a rest. Come back next week for the next in the lineup.

Chamber of Secrets - Dobby

I guess most major franchises have their "Jar Jar Binks." You know what I'm talking about, that one annoying character that's just sort of there and could easily be left out. The Lord of the Rings has Pippin. Thundercats has Snarf. Star Wars has... well... Jar Jar Binks. For Harry Potter, in my opinion, it's Dobby. I'm sure some could argue that Dobby served a purpose of some kind, but I just seemed to wince every time he showed up.

Aunt Petunia's Pudding, on the other hand, I feel is the very core of the entire Harry Potter series. Don't ask me why.

Don't.

This is going to do it with the Harry Potter stuff for a while. I wanted to do something different for the holidays, but worry not! I'll have the rest of the Book Two gang after the New Year!

Chamber of Secrets - Hermione Granger

Ah... Miss Granger. I had a lot of fun drawing this one. Hermione's hair, in general, is fun to draw! Hermione as a cat... that's fun! Plus, since she's supposed to be disguising herself as Millicent Bulstrode, I got to color her robes with that cool Slytherin green. Again... Fun!

Chamber of Secrets - Ron Weasley

Continuing with the brilliant characters from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," we have the one and only, Ronald Bilius Weasley!

This was a real fun one to draw, even though I had to have gone through about a million rough drafts. Albeit entertaining, drawing a person vomiting can be a little difficult. 

This is from the scene where Ron is hit with an aptly named Slug-Vomiting Charm, which (in my version at least) causes him to hork up very muppety looking slugs.

Hork... That's a fun word.

Hork.

H is for Halloween

I'll get back to the Harry Potter stuff next week.

This being the week of All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween to all you sellouts, I thought I'd share this piece I made for a friend of mine.

He's a school teacher collecting alphabet art for his classroom (A is for Aquaman etc.) and requested I make him one for Halloween. Here's what I came up with.

For the little trick-or-treaters, I decided to use some original characters that have been bouncing around in my head for a couple of years but never really made their way to paper. I'll introduce you to them as I develop them more later on.

Hopefully my friend liked this, as I hope you do too. Happy Halloween!

Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter

At one point, I thought it would be fun to draw a bunch of characters from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The idea was to draw these, and then, after a year, I would draw characters from the next book in the Harry Potter series. Over time, I could look back at all of the Harry Potter characters and see how my drawings (hopefully) improved from year to year with the same characters.

I started this little "project" back in 2010, and here we are nearing the end of 2012... so I didn't exactly stay on target with the once a year idea. Surprise. But it's still something I think would be fun.

So finally, here's my take on the characters from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!" Heading up the lineup is, of course, the titular boy who lived, Harry.

I plan on doing 8 of these and then, like with Sorcerer's Stone, design disc labels for the audio book.

Stay tuned. More to come.

...Boober

Yep. :P

The Olympian Ideal

I am by NO MEANS a sports fan... and yet, I absolutely love the Olympics. I think it's mainly because each event (that I enjoy) only lasts a couple of minutes. Unlike mainstream sports, I am able to emotionally vest myself in an athlete's story, take a couple of minutes to watch them succeed or fail, and then say "Yay Olympics!" After about two weeks of this, I'm good... and will be for another four years.

Here's my boy, George... (not my Boy George) depicting the embodiment of the Olympic dream.

And Dooooooooon't You For-GET It!

I thought I'd do some more Hanna-Barbera characters in the same style as before. Here's the great Quick Draw McGraw with his faithful sidekick Baba Looey. Hanna-Barbera seemed to have some sort of thing for short and smart sidekicks.

Baba Looey & Quick Draw McGraw

The textures I used are all from cgtextures.com. They're completely free so check them out if that's your sort of thing.