August 2025 Sketchbook - MastaFran ComicsMastaFran Comics

Nearing the end of summer but not the end of my sketching! I’m fiddling about with new coloring techniques and progress on pixel animation!

Illustration of a lean and muscular anthropomorphic male lion wearing skimpy green barbarian underpants, a small red bag, and a short sword on his person. " Whoa! Hold On!" He stammers, "Just because I'm dressed like this, does NOT make me a warrior!"

Cowardly Lion Warrior I scanned and colored from my sketchbooks. I’ve been tweaking my Copic Marker Digital Brushes to push into more trad-looking artwork. I still use modern convinces like, Clipping Layers and Lasso tools, but I’m pushing myself to hate drawing on the computer less as I go.

Dragon Knight Sinai Pixel Art

pixel animation of an yellow and brown striped anthropomorphic male dragon with brown spots in his wings and a scorpion-like stinger at the end of his tail. He wears full steel armor, a green scarf, an indigo rope belt at his waist, and yellow thorns wrapped around the horns of his helmet. The dragon stands at the ready with his long spear in hand.

In the past four weeks, I created this large fighting game sprite commission! It was a huge undertaking doing some more experimental pixel art. Here’s the process creating it all from the start.

GBstudio

Fumbling about in GB Studio trying to get some of my older sprites in a Gameboy ROM. This has nothing to do with Blackmask, seeing how my pixel art looks on real hardware. I also used this pre-made tileset for the backgrounds.

Monochrome green pixel illusion of three anthropomorphic animal characters. Left is a anthropomorphic female sheep carrying a travel sack on his back and a mini sword. Middle is an anthropomorphic pig in overalls tipping his hat to the camera. Right is an an anthropomorphic female goat with a silly beard.

Much of the pixel art vanishes away in the hardware so I’m might need to replan in alternate ways.

Mastodon Page

I have a new social page that I dabble with on Mastodon. I told myself I wouldn’t add more social pages but it never hurts to spread myself out. This post is to verify my page, so if you do have an instance, feel free to follow me here!

Software Acquisition Syndrome

https://youtu.be/yVPPH3LICvw

When asked about trying out new art programs, it’s with the intend that I can learn it to improve my workflow. But, I worry that jumping around learning so many different art programs, I end up slowing down and not focusing on establishing a workflow on my current ones.

Rabbit Warrior

Digital illustration of a anthropomorphic rabbit wearing grey armor over a yellow and orange stripped gambeson, a winged helmet for ears. The rabbit readies a kick to the camera with their bladed spurs on the back of their heels.

Idea illustration of a Rabbit Warrior. Instead of swords, they wield bladed spurs to supplement their kick combat. Tried to figure out a direction away from the sci-fi look of my initial rabbit night design.

Digital illustration of an anthropomorphic rabbit wearing shiny armor and helmet over a black under suit. They wear large bladed spurs at their heels for possible combat.

Two pencil sketch sequence of an anthropomorphic rabbit flip kicking in the air.

I had two sketches in my sketchbooks, but then I thought, why don’t I try animating this?

Pencil sketch animation of an anthropomorphic rabbit leaping in the air flipping and vertical kicking twice in the air before landing on the ground.

Captain Pygskin

Digital color and traditional ink drawings of a front and back view drawing of anthropomorphic male pig character rended with scars, stitches, and skin grafts. He wears a large red coat, a bandoleer of knives and powder bombs, and wields a large cleaver with a keyring of a shrunken monkey head on the end. Written notes read: "Captain Pygskin Jim"

Captain Pygskin, a ruthless pirate said to graft pieces of the skin of his victims from his raids to continue his immortality and immunity to harm.

A variety of pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic female pig character in various poses. The common design features are her having a round apple-like body shape, wearing a black leotard with black boots, and a small pony tail reminiscent of a lit bomb wick. The pig also carries round black bombs to indicate her motif of an explosives expert.

Pig Bomber. A pile of sketches of a possible Blackmask enemy that would reuse Nad’s round body sprite. Much of this is also figuring out a new gang of pirates for Cole to contend with.

Pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic female pig character wearing a black leotard, thigh high boots, elbow length gloves and a long pony tail. The pig holds a blunderbuss in her left hand. Written name ideas list text reads: Captain Gunpowder, Gunsow, Cherrybomb"

A variety of pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic female pig character in various poses. The pig wears a full body black bodysuit. She holds small bomb as her ball gag as she's gets ready to light it.

More elaborations on the Pig Bomber design. This started getting main character-like so I pondered the idea of making her a captain of them. She also had a bit of a dominatrix look to her so I made a gimp sidekick with a cherry bomb ball gag.

Pig Villagers

Collection of various sketches of anthropomorphic male and female pigs exploring different character designs. Left side of the sketches are of various portraits with the top being a watercolor sketch of a female pig with blonde pigtail hair. Right side of the sketches depict six full body thumbnails of various male and female pig designs exploring body shapes and clothing options.

Pig villager designs for the world of Blackmask. I wanted to design them in a way to represent their backgrounds and classes in their life.

More Pig NPC Sketch Ideas from the last pigs. Servants at the beck and call of those high on the hog.

Collection of various sketches of anthropomorphic male and female pigs wearing butler or maid outfits. The sketches explore different character designs, with close up portraits of the details of the butler's glasses and the maid's headdress.

Exploring pig houses styles as visual development for the pig towns people indicating the art direction districts and locations. Making something themed to the Three Little Pigs is a good start. Despite not being as happy about the designs, at least I drew something besides a character design in a white void.

Pencil sketches of three different house designs for pig characters. Left design is a straw house with a small cobble stone chimney. Middle design is a wood cabin with a metal pipe chimney. Right design is a two story brick mansion with a large bricked pipe stack chimney

In the habit of sketches more pigs as possible talk portraits. Sometimes I wish I was making a visual novel over a platformer.

Two pencil sketches of a male and female anthropomorphic pig characters. Male pig at the top wears a large straw hat, overalls, and a piece of straw in his mouth. Female pig at the bottom wears large braided pigtails and a bow tied kerchief on her neck.

Petra the Truffle Seller

Petra DeTruffle researches and sells rare mushrooms. She collects more than she appraises, so her knowledge of the mushrooms she collects is behind. Take care when buying mushrooms from her as one doesn’t want to go on a trip…

pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female pig wearing round glasses, a dress, black corset and a hairstyle with double bun pigtails. She sits in a patch of of mushrooms to pick them and place in her basket of more mushrooms.

pencil sketches of shop environment featuring a variety of different mushrooms of all shapes and sizes. An anthropomorphic female pig wearing round glasses sits at a counter to the right of the shop.

A variety of pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic female pig character. Top sketch is a general portrait showing her round glasses and double bun pigtail hair style. Bottom sketches are the pig in various poses where she wears a long dress and holds a basket.

A loose pencil sketches depicting a rudimentary shop environment with an anthropomorphic female pig at the counter and an empty shelf display. More sketches explore a mushroom shaped doorway with mushroom like lamps at each side of the door.

Sketches detailing the mushroom shop of Petra DeTruffle, showcasing the different shapes and sizes of the mushrooms she sells.

Posie the Pig Mercenary

Out of engine art and animation test for the game Blackmask. This is a monochrome green scene reminiscent of classic profitable video game systems. The cave scene depicts, the anthropomorphic male raccoon player on the left, Cole Blackmask, speaking with an anthropomorphic female mercenary pig wearing a battle leotard eating an apple.

Posie Blade is a cartographer who crawls in the underground to create new maps and update older historical layouts left by the ruins below for the merchants seeking new trade routes to move their products.

This character is mostly here as additional npc characters. something along the lines of the mystery travelers you’d find in random caves you can talk to.

Goat Bikers

Pen and ink sketch of a front view and back-view sketch of anthropomorphic female goat warriors. left is a top heavy female goat with large breasts in a white tank top, braided hair bands, a tied beard. She also wears a black headband and a black leather top, pants, and knee-high boots.

Revisited this muscle goat character sketch from memory. The previous drawings of her was to match a top-heavy male counterpart. I think this is the bustiest I’ve ever drawn a character in my life. I probably drawn bigger but I wouldn’t remember.

Two Traditional marker illustrations of anthropomorphic goat warriors. left is a top heavy female goat with a braided beard wearing a yellow headband and a blue leather top, pants, and thigh high boots, wielding a trident in her right hand and a unsheathed sword in her left. The right is a top heavy male goat with a straight beard, wearing a red bandana, and a brown leather, top, pants, and calf high boots. He also wields a trident in his right hand and a waved sword in his left.

This specific goat keeps coming up to my mind in various times in my months in incremental forms but I’m still listless about what I’m doing with her.

A collection of pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic female goat in various poses.

Building Studies

When I have free time from work, I draw in my mini sketchbooks to figure out how environments will look in some Blackmask illustration projects. Many of these are from photos or going from Google Maps Street View and sketching a corner.

Pencil sketch depicting a city corner on Michigan Ave in Chicago with various buildings and vehicles on the ground.

Loose Collection of pencil sketches depicting a tavern with tables, chairs, and a bar full of various bottles in different shapes and sizes. Other sketches include a map layout of where the table and chairs will be in space, and a sketch of how the floor tiles will be patterned.

I both lose interested in the monotony of drawing buildings or I have ten minutes of spare time, so my sketches aren’t elaborated on. Much of these sketches are to make ideas for single screen backgrounds I want for rooms in Blackmask.

A collection of pencil sketches depicting a various building environments including rooms with gable roof ceilings, a tent, and a blacksmith forge.

Other Blackmask Dev Stuff

I’m back to my regular day job so my time crunched again. After taking in that Dragon Knight commission to support myself over the summer I wasn’t at work, I wasn’t doing much artwork on Blackmask. Now the next task is working on storyboards and backgrounds adjustments. I plan to visit the Chicago Indie Games Showcase to see what’s there and how we can get a display next year.

Short Cole

Digital illustration of an upset anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a blue jacket, looking up to an anthropomorphic female deer wearing a red dress.

Doodled a funny meme with Cole. The original idea was that shw was in a more modern dress because it was in my refs, but theyn I realized this would be un recognizable so I went back the the deer’s original traditinal dress.

Digital illustration of an upset anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a blue jacket, looking up to an anthropomorphic female deer wearing a form fitting pink dress with shoulder flairs and pink choker necklace.

I don’t have cannon colors for this deer because sh’s supposed to be a more geric cae npc, so UI hopped about with alt colors, from her sprite-accurate green to other colors.

Digital illustration of an anthropomorphic female deer wearing dresses of variant colors: green, yellow, and red.

Other Artwork

In my sketches, I keep imagining ideas for modern day raccoon designs. I worry that I’m getting bored working on fantasy sketches and in a malaise about working on the game. I keep questioning how much video games are my real passion because the middle work of refining concepts is getting boring to me. I’m antsy to hop to something else because I need to outpace my anxiety of wasted time.

Pencil sketches of an anthropomorphic black cat wearing a pumpkin headpiece and a ghost sheet. The cat also carries a small pumpkin bucket with pieces of candy inside. The sketches show a front and back view as well as five head sketches of the cat without the pumpkin hat on.

Older Pumpkin Cat turnaround sketches. Still mad at myself for not knowing what kind of story to make with these stupid character designs. I have a draft of a Halloween comic in my files, yet I don’t feel confident to continue it as I struggle to figure out why bother?

A collection of pencil sketches of anthropomorphic female and male rabbits of two compositions of the same subject. Female rabbit wears a bra the support her sizable bust, while the male rabbit holds a harness on his chest holding their two baby bunnies.

A silly sketch about rabbit parents based on this sports bra commercial ad.

Round it Out

I wonder if I wasted this month. There’s pixel art done but no enough work on Blackmask. I don’t know if I’m burned out because I don’t feel like I work enough to burn out. I’m back to my regular day job, so I’m back feeling that pressure to be productive with my art and fight against losing it all to the responsibilities of adult life. Maybe I need to take a break from art stuff to take my mind off the self-loathing.

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