every. thing. awesome.

August 28, 2015August 30, 20154 Comments

If you’ve been following any of my posts lately you may have seen that we like a bit of Lego, chez Scully. Last weekend we wet to Legoland, where everything actually is awesome. It was our second trip to Legoland California (and we went to Legoland Windsor last year too), and you might think that, well Pete loves sketching, he loves Lego, he loves sketching Lego, perfect yes? Well this was the only sketch I did, I was having too much Lego fun! It’s a great place for a seven year old (I’m not seven by the way, I’m pushing forty). We stayed a night at the Legoland Hotel, in a knight-themed room, and spent a lot of money in the Big Shop. What was nice about this trip was we spent the afternoons either at the hotel pool or at the really fun Chima water-park. Legoland is small enough that you can fit a lot in all in the morning, and it wasn’t particularly crowded, which was a surprise for the summertime. Last year at Windsor we waited almost an hour and a half just to get in! Here in Carlsbad there were very few long lines for rides (unlike at Disneyland), and we could just go back to the hotel for a rest if we wanted. The Star Wars section is better this year, with a huge Death Star and a bit where my son and I built little spaceships. Yes, everything was awesome. We will be back.

those magnificent lego men and their flying machines

August 28, 20157 Comments

I hope you like Lego, because you’re just going to keep seeing more of it on this sketchblog. Denmark’s Greatest Invention. Occasional bane of my bare feet on the carpet. I’ve been busy Lego-sketching, especially mini-figures, so many mini-figures. You’ll get to see those once I’ve coloured them in. That won’t take too long. In the past week I have also been to Legoland, where you might imagine I did a lot of sketching. You might imagine it would be the perfect sketch-paradise for someone like me. Well in fact I only managed one sketch because Legoland is so much fun! More on that another time. This was done before the trip, and is one of my son’s newer Lego sets, the Ninjago Season 5 ‘Ronin REX’. You have no idea the anxious wait for the season 5 Ninjago stuff to come out (my son’s anxious wait, not mine, but yes mine too). It was agonizing, and all the more so because when I had been in England in June I had seen all of these and didn’t buy any to bring home, figuring they would probably be out in the US already (same reason I am still new-Tottenham-shirt-less). Two months he waited, saving his money (I say his money, I gave it to him). In the meantime the show came out, and then finally the toys were in the shops. He really wanted this particular set, which has one of those Airjitzu things actually built into it, and he even entered a competition to win it, just in case (I told him that if he does win, we’ll keep the second one in its box and sell it in a few years time for three times the original price). This is the flying vehicle of the Han-Solo-esque scoundrel character Ronin, introduced in season 5, and I must say that the shape of the ship (and the colour scheme of Ronin) really reminds me of Slave 1, Boba Fett’s ship. I drew this in the book of my son’s things, which is becoming ever more Lego-heavy. As it should!

enter the bladecopter

August 14, 2015August 14, 20152 Comments

More Lego, drawn in the book of my son’s stuff. This is the Ninjago Blade-Copter (the what, i hear you ask?), a recent addition from the season before the most recent season of Ninjago. You have to live in this world. So, in season 4 of Ninjago, the ninjas travel to an island to take part in a martial arts tournament organized by the mysterious Chen (who normally runs a noodle shop), where the other participants are all masters of their own various elements (such as the element of ‘sound’). The tournament however turns out to be a cover for a more nefarious scheme (stealing the elemental powers of each ninja). It’s a solid season with lots of characters and makes a lot of fun references. As I drew this last night, ironically, probably the biggest influence of all came on the TV: Bruce Lee’s classic Enter the Dragon. I am a big fan of this movie, and can probably quote all the words if I have to. And do the facial expressions of the hapless guards. If you ever see, I will prove it. Just don’t ask me to do any of the kung fu moves, I’m a tad out of shape. In Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee fights in a tournament on an island organized by the mysterious ‘Han’, but the tournament turns out to be a cover for a more nefarious scheme (recruiting fighters to his drug and crime empire). There are a few more parallels (one of the Lego sets is called ‘Enter the Serpent’; the scene where Chen punishes everyone because certain people have been sneaking around the palace at night; the scene where Chen tries recruiting Jay while showing him his collection of weaponry from the past, just like when Han tries recruiting Mr Roper), and in a previous season the ninjas learn the style of ‘fighting without fighting’, a direct reference to Bruce Lee’s chat with the bully Parsons on the boat. Look, you have to live in this world, ok. Master Chen is a pretty silly and whimsical villain though, but Mr Han is a classic supervillain of the highest order. He has a classic supervillain face; he lives in a palace surrounded by utterly useless guards; he is missing a hand (he keeps the skeletal remains in a glass case) but has a series of dangerous attachments such as the one with four-knives (for added “snikt”). Truly, as Mr Williams says, he comes right out of a comic book.

I drew this using a black Pentel pen, which I swear didn’t used to run much with a wash, but actually runs all over the place. Back to Microns for black lines I think. I use the non-running brown uni-ball signo um-151 pen mostly these days (the black variety runs bad). It’s on the Stillman and Birn Alpha paper.

bustin’ makes me feel good

May 12, 20154 Comments

Avengers! Assemble! Literally! This is the Lego Hulkbuster, the latest Iron Man suit to be made into the plastic brick format, and the centrepiece of the epic “Avengers: Age of Ultron” movie that came out over a week ago. This was drawn in the sketchbook of my son’s toys and stuff, though this one is actually mine. Wow, that was a big film. It will need several viewings to get my head around it, so much was packed in. Eagerly anticipated in our household it was, but when the trailer first came and there was, of all things, Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armour. It was pretty much my favourite sequence of the movie as well. This is a great Lego set too.

I saw the film while I was in Santa Monica, and loved it. There is generally a lot going on withe the plot, and much of it sets up future films in the Marvel project (specifically the Thanos-centric Infinity War), but Ultron is a barking mad robotic villain. There are smash-smash-fight-fight bits (just like the comics), confusing bits (just like the comics), funny bits, crazy bits, even some sad bits. The best bit for me though was the Hulkbuster scene. If you’ve not seen the movie (or the trailer or anything to do with this film at all), then spoiler alerts, Hulk needed some taking down, and Tony Stark calls in the Hulkbuster armour. Smash smash smash fight fight smash, one-liner here, one-liner there, and don’t mention puny Banner; I mean it’s not Shakespeare in the Park but it’s enormous fun.

Next up in the Marvel movie train is Ant-Man, the one I am least sure about, and then we go deep into ‘Phase 3’ with Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel (oh yeah!) and the two Infinity War movies. Oh, and Spider-man will be in there too, now he’s back. Then the Inhumans. Plus a whole load of Marvel on TV/Netflix (did you see Daredevil? Maybe the best thing they’ve done yet.) In the meantime I’m reading hundreds of comics on Marvel Unlimited, and of course, playing Marvel Disney Infinity on the Wii U, and building great Lego sets with my son. It’s a great time to be a Marvel fan!

Except I was reading ‘Secret Wars #1’ last week and – spoiler alert – the whole Marvel Universe just ended…

behold! your guardians of the galaxy!

March 25, 20156 Comments

I can’t stop this feeling deep inside of me…

Remember that movie last summer, the big gamble Marvel took on a space-hero movie made up of a group of characters that doesn’t make sense in the comics, let alone in a movie – a barely heroic scoundrel, the most dangerous woman in the galaxy (who is also green), an extremely literal and violent maniac (also green), a talking raccoon who loves enormous weaponry (also violent), and a giant walking tree (kinda violent but loveable). Let those last two sink in for a minute. Rocket Raccoon (don’t call him a raccoon) and Groot (he’s definitely Groot). Theoretically that sound as bad an idea on film as Howard the Duck (um, spoiler alert…). It was brilliant, and loads of people went to see it, and the script was cool and the soundtrack kicked bottom, and space was fun and colourful and, well, not ‘Interstellar’. It even had Thanos, the mad Titan on his floating space throne. Yep, I loved it. I went to see it in Leicester Square in London with my friend Roshan on a massive screen, and we spent the entire time in the pub afterwards talking comics, which we never do, usually.

My son loved it too, and for Christmas he made sure to put on his list Guardians of the Galaxy Lego sets. So this is what I have drawn this time, in the sketchbook-of-his-things.

Next up in the Marvel-movie-verse: Avengers Age of Ultron. Wake me up on May 1st!

ninja tech

March 4, 20155 Comments

“Jump up. Kick Back. Whip Around. And…Spin.” No, these aren’t lines from a popular book-turned-movie that is in cinemas these days (“Shifty Grades of Hay”, or whatever it’s called), but is in fact the theme tune to the rather more interesting and well written kids cartoon, “Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu”, based on the popular Lego toy line. Regular listeners will remember that I have drawn some of these toys before (my son has rather a big collection, and you need acrobatic Ninja skills to just get across the floor without stepping on one). Despite being an elaborate (and effective) toy commercial (hah, not like in my day! My favourite shows were Transformers and He-Man which, er never mind), it is actually remarkably good fun and a lot better than much of the nonsense on kids TV these days. At the end of the season three for example, when (spoiler alert) Zane (who is – spoiler alert if you don’t know this yet – a “nindroid”, ie a ninja who is also an android – hey it makes perfect sense, ok?) sacrifices himself to save his friends from the Overlord (who at the time was known as “The Golden Master” after retrieving the Golden Weapons from their hiding place on a comet and had rebuilt himself into a large robotic spider – look just go with it, alright), I was almost in tears. It was (spoiler alert) Ninjago’s “We are Groot” moment. It’s ok though because (spoiler alert) he’s not really dead because (spoiler alert) well, he is a robot after all, and becomes (spoiler alert) the Titanium Ninja. Look I promise you, this is a really good show. It’s not like that Kung Fu Panda show which was on every single bloody morning, where basically nothing happens at all, and they just talk about their feelings. Or the Amazing World of Gumball, or heaven forbid, Uncle Grandpa. God there is some annoying nonsense on kids TV these days. Not like in my day (my favourite shows were Wackaday and Grotbags which, er never mind). Anyway…these items which I have drawn here are tow of my son’s toys he got for Christmas, it’s actually all from one set, the “Thunder Raider” set. This is the name of the vehicle driven by Jay, the Blue Ninja, and is accompanied by the Earth Mech of Cole, the Black Ninja. A “Mech” is a kind of exoskeletal robotic suit. Come on look at it, you want one too. It can actually hook onto the back of Jay’s Thunder Raider. Of course as soon as I showed this to my son, he pointed out straight away that I have the wrong version of Cole riding on the Mech. A slight variation in the costume. Of course, always the perfectionist.

Drawn in a Stillman & Birn “Alpha” book in which I’m documenting a lot of my son’s stuff.

here be dragons

February 26, 2015February 26, 20158 Comments

ninjago four-headed dragon
It had been a while since I drew in my son’s toys-and-other-things book, so I decided to get back to it with more Lego. This is his four-headed Ninjago dragon, part of a big Lego set he got for Christmas. Really big and a little unwieldy to actually play with (all the other Ninjago stuff is semi-permanently all over the floor, it’s a boy’s favourite) but was immense fun to build (I did all the hard work). The wing span is impressive when flying but I needed to fit it all on the page so it is in standing mode. Imagine having four heads. Well I suppose we all have foreheads. Some people (my dad for example) pronounce forehead as “forrid”, whereas I pronounce it like fore-head, which may lead to fork handles style confusion. So, the four-headed dragon from the Ninjago series. I have drawn erroneously with the golden ninja as the rider, but it should in fact be ridden by the green ninja, though they are in fact the same person a.k.a. Lloyd Garmadon, son of Lord Garmadon who used to be the main bad guy (having in his youth been bitten by the Great Devourer, a giant snake creature who lives underground until he was resurrected by snake people and who devoured the ninja’s flying pirate ship, until being defeated by Lord Garmadon himself after a battle with the Ninja and the four-headed dragon) oh and who also had four arms (not fore-arms) so that he could use the four golden weapons, resurrect an ancient being called the Overlord to destroy and rebuild Ninjago City in his image, until that went awry and Lloyd became the Golden Ninja to defeat the Overlord (though he would later return first as a computer virus and then as head of an army of cyborg ninjas before turning himself into a giant spider) and turn his father back to the good side where he became Sensei Garmadon and went back to having two arms and no longer wearing a bone in his hat. Oh and the dragon’s four heads represent the four elements of earth, fire, um, lightning and, er, ice.

Lego is waaaay more complicated than it was in my day.

the mighty quinjet

March 3, 20143 Comments

The Lego is very far from being done with yet. Plenty more the draw…it’s addicting, to make, to draw, all of it. We’ve even decided to go to Legoland – the one in California, not the original one in Billund which I always wanted go to. I know there’s one outside London now at Windsor, where the old Windsor Safari Park used to be, presumably the Lego monkeys don’t climb all over your car and nick your windscreen wipers. This excquisite piece of action Lego is the Avengers Quinjet, which you’ll recognize if you’re a fan of Marvel comic book movies. This was a big set, and took a few hours to build. Highl;y enjoyable as well. That’s the deadly Black Widow flying the plane there, and to the right is the villainous trickster Loki, riding on an alien chariot driven by a ‘sorry Chitauri’ – you’ll understand that phrase if you, as we have done, have watched the Lego Marvel ‘Maximum Overload’ cartoon. The great thing about fathering a six year old boy is you get total justification to do and buy all of this stuff (“oh, it’s for my son…”). Who am I kidding, I was like it before, I’m just…more so now. And all this Lego is the best.

plastic people

February 21, 20141 Comment

Lego. Everything is awesome. We very much live in a Lego Universe right now. Kipling couldn’t have put it better. “If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs…” I’ve been spending a fair bit of time drawing much of my son’s Lego (and some of it is mine – see Boba Fett and Magneto, naturally) which is nearly as much fun as building the stuff. Here are a load of the figures, which as any parent knows are way more important than the vehicles or dragons or giant robots they come with (except for the giant robots). There is a mixture of super-heroes and super-villains (both Marvel and DC, though Superman and Wonder-Woman have since been added to this collection), plus several of the Ninjago ninjas, plus a few other characters including Emmet from the Lego Movie you may have seen recently (it’s awesome, yes, if a little visually crazy, and it looks like my living room floor). I’ve included some of the accessories in this picture, Ninja swords and so on, and you may notice a little Wolverine-claws piece near the bottom. Sadly Wolverine himself was lost, we don’t know where (you know how Logan likes to just skip town), but his claws were left behind. I hope we find him. Big robots don’t just rip themselves apart, you know. Incidentally, did you see the last Wolverine movie? I really enjoyed it, Logan’s adventures in Japan. My wife pointed out though that despite his famous catchphrase, he definitely isn’t the best there is at what he does, because he’s actually not all that as a fighter: always getting shot or stabbed or cut, relying on his mutant healing factor and his adamantium-coated skeleton to get him out of trouble. It’s like saying, yeah I’m brilliant at chess, as long as every time you take one of my pieces I can just go back and do that move again. No, that ain’t how you learn. Still, all said and done, you’d still want Wolverine on your side, bub.

“jump up, kick back, whip around and spin”

February 7, 20144 Comments

That confusing sounding title comes from the theme tune of Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu, a show that my six-year-old son absolutely loves. Which means of course I have to love as well, and I’m fine with that. Admittedly I couldn’t figure out those lyrics on my own; I had to actually google them, to get it right and not look the inevitable fool. That’s how it is when you’re a dad, you get to be immersed in the culture of being a six-year-old (as opposed to the rest of my time, spent reading comics, watching football and Star Wars and drawing pictures of Iron Man and Magneto). The best bit is all the Lego though, and this Christmas just gone (and his recent birthday) was very Legocentric. I have built a great many highly complicated Lego sets, many of which I have also been drawing pictures of afterwards in the sketchbook devoted to my son’s things; you’ll have seen some already.

The top one is the Golden Dragon, piloted by none other than the Gold Ninja. That was a satisfying one to build, and I built it really quickly on Christmas Day. The gold doesn’t stop there. Next up is the Gold Ninja Mech, which came with the Temple of Light set. I sketched this one because who doesn’t love drawing big robots, and I showed it to my son who, while he did like the robot, basically highlighted my ignorance of the Ninjago genre by having Sensei Wu (the bearded fellow with the stick, a kind of Lego Mr. Miyagi) piloting the thing. Oh no, it should have been the Gold Ninja, he said, Sensei Wu doesn’t have a Mech. But, but the Gold Ninja’s already flying the Golden Dragon, I protested. I’m not drawing it again.

So for the last one I drew the Red Ninja Kai-Fighter, and I left it pilotless. I do know the Red Ninja (known as Kai) flies this and I have even seen the cartoon, but knowing me I will probably get the version of his uniform wrong or something. Listen, if you think young kids don’t pick up on tiny tiny details you’re wrong. I still remember years ago when my son pointed out a slight difference between the Lightning McQueen on his diaper to the one on his night-light, a detail so small only a highly trained supreme intellect would notice. I was the same. At age four I was counting vertebrae on dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History Museum and pointing out errors to the scientist tour-guides, nowadays I can barely remember the dinosaur’s names. Diplocerataurus Rex, right? Tell you what though, I’m good at this Lego lark now though. More has been built since, and there’s more to draw.