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!

you terrestrial gastropod molluscs and your guns

August 21, 2015August 21, 20151 Comment

This is another of my son’s toys. It is called a Slug-Terra Blaster, or something like that. It is what they use in the TV show “Slug-Terra”, which he really likes. It’s actually not a bad cartoon, but the premise of it is that they are in some sort of underground world where slugs are not only intrinsic to the society somehow but are used as weapons. Well, they fight on behalf of their owners, a bit like Pokemon I suppose, I don’t know. All the slugs have different abilities, some get really close to their owners, and then they get blasted out of these things, and then it’s all zap, pow and ka-blam. Oh there are evil slugs too. Now these slugs are all different colours and have names, but this isn’t a society of slugs, the people are all either humans (I think), trolls (maybe), or weird mole-folk (I really have no idea). One of those has a comedy Mediterranean accent. Or are the evil slugs zombies? Or wraiths? I don’t actually pay much attention. So you can imagine my son’s excitement when we spotted these at Toys R Us (I always wonder how that store got its name, did they got through a lot of other stupid combinations before settling on that one, “Toys Am We” “Us Is Toys”, “Toys Er America”, “Help”) (I used to call it “Toys Ya Us” because that backwards R looks like a Russian “Ya” (я). This was during the Cold War as well so I’m surprised people didn’t think it was some sort of Russian spy agency, I mean it all fits in the name…Cold War conspiracy theory at slightly higher prices than other stores, I like it!). So, this doesn’t works like a toy gun with a trigger (we’re not really into the toy gun thing, all the Nerf rubbish. Fingers and saying “pew! pew! pew! is fine though). Instead, it has a spring mechanism inside, you pull back the handle, let go and the little slug comes out. He has another blue one which looks cooler than this but I didn’t draw it, so you’ll have to imagine how cool it is (or watch the show! If you watch the show maybe you can help explain it to me).

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.

infinitely fun

June 3, 20155 Comments

“I’ve not been drawing as much lately” is my oft-repeated excuse for laziness in posting, and while I do have a small backlog of recent sketches yet to scan, it is kinda true, and you can blame THESE GUYS. Well, that and other things (like football coaching, and all the art projects that go with it), but yes, an unusual amount of time has been spent making these little characters fly, blast, pow, and zap. And build, they do lots of building. These are figures for the Disney Infinity video game, the 2.0 Marvel Super Heroes version. These are my son’s (except for the Captain America, he’s mine!), and last week I lined some of them up to sketch in his “book of things” as I have imaginatively called the Stillman and Birn Alpha book where I record his toys and other bits as a memory for when he is older. There’s Hulk, Thor, Cap, Falcon, Nova, Loki, Black Widow and Iron Man. I’m a particular fan of Nova (but I also love the comic, the newer ones with Sam Alexander, who this version is based upon – or rather the one in the Ultimate Spider-man cartoon series). Infinity 2.0 is a fun game, which has various playsets such as Avengers of Spider-man in which you can do missions, strategies, skill challenges and beat up bad guys while playing as whichever super-hero – even Loki – you have on the little base. You build up each character’s skill set over time so that they can fly faster, hit harder, do special moves, and it’s generally a lot of fantasy fun. This isn’t one of those “Call of Duty Death Zombie Stabby-Stabby Car Thief Gang” games, thankfully (though you can be the Hulk and get a medal for smashing up cars). The real fun though is in the “Toy-Box”. There, players have the ability to create whole worlds, or complicated games, using their imagination and the various tools and toys on offer. My son has been busy building worlds he calls things like “Tree Tunnel Doom” and “Danger World”, and I have been building intricate yet huge castles brick by single brick, full of secret passageways and monsters. With Secret Wars going on in the comics right now I’m inspired to make Battleworlds, making me feel a bit like the Beyonder – “To infinity and The Beyonder” I would say, yeah you had to be there (and, like, care). We have more fun building our worlds than playing them, but we’re novices. Going online to the community toy-boxes, you can see and play in worlds built by others using the same tools, many the results of challenges set by the Disney Infinity team. One of my favourites is where someone built a copy of the Disneyland park. So if you ever wonder where all the sketches are, rest assured I am still creating, I’m just making huge space canyons filled with lava and frost giants and towers up to the sky. It’s incredible fun.

And at the end of the year, they’re bringing out Infinity 3.0, Star Wars? I have a bad feeling about this…

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…

wii u

May 11, 2015Leave a comment

Another one from my book of my son’s stuff, this is the Wii U gamepad. He got a Wii U for his birthday a few months ago as a present from his grandad in London (cheers dad!), and he absolutely loves it. Yeah, I kinda like it too! We have a number of games already, but the one he spends most of his time perfecting is Super Mario 3D World. I always loved the Super Mario games as a kid, but don’t remember getting through it all with such ease as he does (and I was in my teens; he is 7). When I was his age, I got my first console, a Philips Videopac game system, which was a bit like Atari, but wasn’t an Atari. It was cool though and had some great games, like Asteroids (I think it was called), Othello, um, loads of games. It was a long time ago. But I still remember the poster which had all the games listed on it, they were all so exciting, like Asteroids, and Othello, and you know, all the other ones. MUNCHKIN! That was the one I liked. It was a bit like Pac-Man, but wasn’t Pac-Man. No, Munchkin was way better than Pac-Man. There was one where you were a cowboy, and another where you played Ice Hocket, and thinking about it I might be mistaken about Asteroids, that was on a little hand-held thing I had (which was almost more sophisticated). The one I’m thinking of had red and yellow space-ships and ocasionally a crazy alien ship you had to destroy; Space Invaders it was not, but it was great. And actually Othello was called something else, Samurai or something, but it was pretty much the same as Othello, I think. Oh it was all brilliant, simple thick pixels, primary colours and black backgrounds. The games were impossible to find, however, except at the odd car-boot sale.

Not long afterwards, my dad got me a Coleco-Vision. Now the Coleco-Vision was a massive step up in terms of graphics and game-play. It also had this weird ‘joy-pad’ – not quite a joystick, it also had some buttons in case the need for typing ever came up. The Coleco-Vision was a huge hit though, even though we didn’t have many games. We had ‘Turbo’, which with the steering wheel and pedal was one of the best arcade racing games of its day; there was Smurf, which, well the less said about that one the better; Donkey Kong, which was the first real classic game we had, and finally Donkey Kong Jr. The last two got a significant amount of game-play in my bedroom, despite being really quite simple and not exactly full of variation in screens. You just jump over things and get to the top, get all the bananas or whatever, make it to the next screen, and keep going over and over again. And over and over and over again. And over and over and over and over again. Now it’s worth pointing out that all of this gameplay over and over again didn’t actually mean I was playing it, rather my older brother was. He was ten years older than me (he still is, to this day) and used to play it for hours and hours and hours, often with his mate or my uncle, usually sat at the end of my bed. Waking up at 2am on a schoolnight with my brother sat there playing ‘Donk’ as he called it. He also spent many hours in the chip shop in Burnt Oak playing Space Invaders, so he had more form than me. Despite the limited number of screens in Donkey Kong it never seemed to get boring; the idea was to ‘clock’ the game, that is score as many points as possible until the points counter was reset, without losing all your lives. I must admit I am glad the games nowadays are that bit more sophisticated.

Fast forward past my sister’s NES (original Nintendo) and my SNES (Super Nintendo, with many years of original Mario Kart), plus the odd GameBoy and Ps1, with a little bit of Championship Manager thrown in, and here we are in the modern age and I still feel decades behind. I’m not a ‘gamer’ and there are whole universes of online games and platforms I do not even wish to understand. So with this Wii U, with these amazing games like Disney Infinity (I’m becoming a little bit obsessed with building in the Toy Box), I am sure my son feels the same way I did when playing Munchkin back in the early 1980s.

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!

gotta catch ’em all

March 15, 20153 Comments

Pokemon cards. I thought that this was something from a long time ago, from the time of my nephews. When the odd card came into my son’s possession (thanks, McDonald’s Happy Meals), I thought it would be just another ‘thing’ that gets looked at, popped into the toybox, forgotten. Pokemon’s it seemed were a complicated mess and that was that. Wrong! It happened quickly. A few cards, then a few more, then the floodgates opened. All the kids were into them, all the kids were playing them. My son’s after-school daycare, it transpired, had organized a Pokemon club, and the kids loved it. Suddently the conversations were peppered with ‘Froakies’ and ‘Charizards’ and ‘Megas’ and ‘Mega-EXes’ and ‘this does fifty damage’ and all sorts of other nonsensical terms that were way over my head. And my son LOVES it. I’m not entirely sure he knows how to play the game itself, but thanks to spending his own pocket money and getting a whole bunch for Christmas and birthdays, he has a pretty big collection. This collection often covers our entire living room floor. He was delighted to receive a ring binder to organize them all, but for some reason they seem to have multiplied like rabbits. Water types, fire types, and they all have utterly bonkers names. It’s the first thing he is into that I’m not really part of at all, I have no knowledge or understanding of them, it is a different world. “How is it different from your Panini football stickers?” my wife asked. Completely different! Different also from my Marvel comics, my Legos, my craft beers and my massive collection of pens. Some parents become experts. My son spoke over Christmas with my older sister, who unlike her nonplussed little brother was enthusiastically going on about “Jigglypuff” and all her other favourites. Recently we went to a birthday party of one of his friend’s which was a Pokemon card-swapping party. Other parents talked about how this Pokemon craze had actually been helping the kids to learn how to trade fairly and other useful positive social skills. Additionally, my son’s reading skills just exploded as he tried to understand all the cards, as did his love of big-number maths. He even occasionally creates his own cards: we would build Lego monsters, give them Pokemon style names (such as “Dragaflow”) and he would draw the whole card, so it’s exciting his creativity as well, which was a surprise. Not that this craze was just some cynical marketing scheme to create big-spending pint-sized hungry robo-consumers, “Gotta catch ’em all”. This is a popular sport, and sets of Pokemon cards ain’t cheap (they also have a very different returns policy at Target than other goods). So I had to draw them. This is another page of the Stillman and Birn ‘Alpha’ book where I draw his toys and stuff, and I completed it over a couple of evenings. I still don’t know my Lucario from my Makahita, but my son absolutely loves them, and that’s all that matters.

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.