Halloween Minded.

As is the tradition now, it's mid-summer and yet I'm already planning and working on stuff for Halloween later in the year. Hopefully making sure there'll be new and spooky Babayka-Lives and SLASH-UPS related work to go out.

I'm a little worried people might not be in the mood so much this year for Halloween, what with everything that's happening, but I guess we'll find out in October.

A Bad Time To Be A Thief.

I'm pretty sure at one point today while out shopping I turned and caught a guy trying to open a pocket on my bag behind my back...

The problem is because of Corona and the fact that nobody is bothering to social distances anymore and are just coming right up to you now, I'm always very aware of anyone within a two metre radius. It's impossible to be casual or relaxed around strangers now.

Later as I was paying and leaving I heard the cashier debating whether they thought he stole something or not in the shop.

Bloodshot Eye.

I can very much relate to this image right now. My eyes feel like two dry burning balls of dust after so many hours on my computer colouring this image. I think I might have been projecting a little bit while doing these eyes.

Sky Disks.

I honestly can't remember if I've been called upon to draw a UFO before. If I have, then I don't think it's been for a while. They're a little bit trickier to depict than you'd think.

I went for a very generic looking kind of Flying Saucer (I've seen a couple of UFOs in my time and they never look like this). You can also see my attempt to do a night sky in the background of this screenshot.

It's been nice to draw some Sci-Fi for a change. No spoilers for the future, but you should be seeing a little bit more Sci-Fi out of me before the end of 2020.

The Dark Judge Rises: Redux.

Just to put this 'redux' into context... back when I first coloured this Judge Death pin-up at the start of the year (before everything got crazy), the computer I was using was in pretty bad shape. It was super old and worn-out, prone to over heating and would often corrupt and ruin any memory-stick you'd put in it (at one scary point it almost wiped all my Babayka digital files).

It was a really bad time for my trusty computer to be suddenly playing up, and colouring this first time around felt like getting into an important fist-fight with one hand tied behind my back.

With that said, at the time I was happy enough with the colour job I had got done in the end. While it had been a very stressful and slow process, I felt I had put down a solid enough effort. However, as the months have gone on, it bothered me more and more that I maybe didn't lean more into the horror aspects of the image itself with the colouring. The 'creep-factor' was maybe a bit too subtle.

So when I needed an image to practices working on while I figured out Clip, recolouring this Judge Death pin-up felt like a chance at a do-over and an excuse to inject more frights into it.

I do think this second try in Clip has a nice Cel painted look going on in places. It took me ages and many goes to get the right 'rusty burnt orange' vibe I was after. I also think I upped my slime game in this new Redux (and that's saying something, as I was pretty happy with the slime look first time around). I also tried to make Death himself\itself a bit more crusty and moldy looking.

If you would like to compare this new Redux to the original, you can find my first go at colouring this image HERE.

I would be very interested in hearing which version people prefer and why? To be fair to the first Photoshop colour job, I maybe had to hold back a bit because of the faulty computer. But to be fair to this new attempt, this is my first go at using Clip.

Lockdown Life Hacks.

Remember... if you have a friend who's having a birthday and you don't have any Wrapping Paper because of Lockdown for doing their present.

Take away Pizza Menu leaflets can be just as good for wrapping gifts.

Yum, yum.

Bring Back Skeleton Horror.

So I've recently uploaded some new Babayka pages over on Deviantart. The scene in question is my little nod to the very underrated 'Skeleton Horror Genre' (although my skeletons turn out not to be alive in the end).

While Skeletons have never really took off in movies and so on (probably because before CGI, it was too hard to do a decent onscreen Skeleton without using Stop Motion Animation), there was a time in the 1950's when they were some of the coolest monsters around.

I've got a lot of love for classic style evil skeletons. They're not mindless like Zombies and can often be incredibly ruthless and spiteful. Something about being dead and the wrong side of the grave has really brought out the masochist in them. I also like that they're team-players and would often go after lovers ('Couples Peril' being something else that was also big in the 50's but has gone out of fashion now.)

I will one day soon do a proper Skeleton Horror pin-up in the coming future. Hopefully as part of SLASH-UPS: Volume 2, if I can fit it in. I'm currently just trying to think up a good creepy skeleton themed idea to draw at the moment that will do them justices.

Anyway... I hope there's a few other Skeleton horror fans out there who might also like to see more of them about in horror. I really do think they're due a comeback.

P.S. I also think I deserve extra points for finding an old skeleton horror cover as an example where the skeleton is actually called Andrew. I wonder if Skeleton Andrew is in the public domain yet as I'd love to do a comic starring him.