May 2025 Sketchbook - MastaFran ComicsMastaFran Comics

Drenched in the May showers, it’s time to showcases my gallery of doodles and draws for this past month of May!

Pen and ink sketch of an tend shop run by an anthropomorphic raccoon with plenty of weird junk. In front of him is an anthropomorphic male dog holding a pair of calipers to measure skull from a box lf "Cursed Skulls for 2000 gold pieces. No refunds."

Much of what I’ve draw is old art I’ve reposed on Bluesky but never posed on my own website to my surprise.

Pixel Art Commissions and More

In the past few weeks, I completed this icon animation commission for a mutual. It’s short notice, but I pushed myself to work effective to finish with in a week. Next month I’m opening new slots for commissions so, I’ll be tackling that for June.

I made some basic human looking pixel animations to have examples for Game boy commissions and I got carried away making more characters.

Green monochrome pixel animation of an human vampire man with hair locs, grey t-shirt, black pants, chain necklace, wrist jewelry and gym shoes. Image is over a green background.

Green monochrome pixel animation of an elf woman with long hair, long jacket with a belt, and heels. She holds a single edged sword in her hand.

Green monochrome pixel animation of an bald bearded leprechaun man wearing a bowler hat, white shirt, stripped trouser held with overalls. He stands in a ready boxing stance.

This started with the single elf character, then spun off into the other characters.

Green monochrome pixel animated portrait of an elf woman with long hair, buttoned windbreaker, and wiggling ears. She speaks and blinks to the camera.

After collecting three together I mocked up a character select screen for them for another fictional game idea. I don’t know what kind of game this proposed character select will be, perhaps I’ll explore this another time.

Green monochrome pixel animations three characters for a fictional video game character selection screen

Left character is, Omar, a human vampire man with hair locs, grey t-shirt, black pants, chain necklace, wrist jewelry and gym shoes. Image is over a green background.

Center character is, Phillis, an dark elf woman with long hair, long jacket with a belt, and heels. She holds a single edged sword in her hand.

Right character is, Killian, a bald bearded leprechaun man wearing a bowler hat, white shirt, stripped trouser held with overalls. He stands in a ready boxing stance.

From some comments and feedback I got on these, a beat em up would be a cool idea for a game genre that might be doable. Perhaps an Urban Fantasy take on Golden Axe, The Capcom Dungeons and Dragons games, or Lightbringer by Taito.

Blackmask Development Stuff

As I’m relook at my old writing materials for Blackmask, I realized that not only are there no birds or flying enemies to test in the game. On this island I touted as being a former home of Owlbears, have bears characters, yet no owls,so I wanted to remedy that with some new enemy sprites to work on during my Weekly Twitch streams.

Owls were in my plans but it’s recent that I’m making new sprites. Right now, I’m trying a new thing where I’m sending my programmer less polished sprites to test enemy mechanics, such as flight path finding, grabbing and carrying Cole. I hear it’s difficult to do collisions with so I’m sending my programmer stuff to chew to not wait too long for my perfectionism with polishing the sprites and animations.

I dug up old sketches I made for owl designs and explored them in a worldbuilding sense. Initial sketches leaned toward an assassin type character for an owl. Owls are not as intelligent as they’re lead to believe, unlike ravens and crows who can memorize things and use tools. But Owls are cunning, top of the line hunters, as a sort of sky cat, so giving them a ninja bend to them was my start.

I also dug into my archives of art to find older designs I’m sketched. Getting past the cringe, there still interesting ideas that I can push with more work.

I made more design ideas for some owls while researching. I looked up long eared owls, and my brain went to rabbits, then Playboy Bunnies. Owl Waitresses? I dunno. They’d be better npcs perhaps.

Pencil sketch of two anthropomorphic female long-eared owls wearing black leotard reminiscent of Playboy Bunnies. Embarrassed left owl holds a try of drinking glasses and a bottle of alcohol. Bored right owl carries a bottle of alcohol in her claw.

When all else fails and I don’t have real ideas in my head, I go into a research hole and look up owl pictures and facts for inspiration. I look up owls as animals, owl’s physiology, cultural, symbolic, or pop culture relevance and anything else that’s can spark a cool angle to take a design.

Miscelanous study pencil sketches of varuious owls species, including, the Barred Owl, Blakiston's Fish Owl, Burrowing Owl, Boreal Owl, Elf Owl, Crested Owl, Long Eared Owl, Great Horned Owl, and Northern Saw-whet Owl.

There still work to do for many of these. I made many of my hang ups are that I don’t have more written ideas for their lore on the context of Cole’s world. Most days I want to dumpster character designs because I can’t elaborate them with any interesting backstory to them.

Crocodile Enemy Concept Sketches

Concept of Crocodile enemy and it’s game mechanic.The croc and it’s tail are huge so it won’t feel someone as small as Cole standing on it. It patrols an area of hazards like spikes, while Cole sneaks a ride without it’s notice. If Cole stays too long, Croc will see something on it’s tail!

Pen and Ink sketches of an anthropomorphic crocodile character. The first written text reads "Tail is flat like Platform. Croc wont notice Cole stand on top." Bottom sketch is of crocodile walking on top of a pit of spikes, unaware of the anthropomorphic male raccoon standing on its tail. Third sketch of an anthropomorphic crocodile character. The crocodile begins to walk in the opposite direction as it's tail drags behind. Written text reads, "Tail drags when turning." Fourth sketch Crocodile points in alert at the small panicking anthropomorphic raccoon standing on its tail. Written text reads,"If croc finishes patrol and turns around, tail takes time to follow. Croc will see Cole if he's still on top!"

This is another mechanic where I wanted to push the enemy interactions for a stealth game. I’m sure this is a collision nightmare like the owl, and I don’t want to stuff so much just on to my programmer’s plate. I already use these sketches to procrastination on writing my narrative.

Older Blackmask Concepts

Here’s older art of polearm weapons for Cole. In addition to these regular metal weapons, there also a silly idea of a ferret party member as a weapon. My programmer vetoed this idea so I’ll shelve it for something else.

I wanted to push the animal stuff to be more than a fantasy series that could just be elves doing this and not animals utilizing their animal skills to fight and navigate the world.

When Cole acquires a proper bow, he’ll be able to fire arrows at further ranges than he can throwing knives. With arcane ingenuity, Cole will also be able to fire his own Trick Arrows with new effects.

This isn’t the entire catalogue of arrow head designs, but exploring arrow ideas for this. I’ll let this go for the time being.

Cole’s jacket is colored green as an experiment to match his Game Boy pixel sprite and make him look different from other raccoons in blue like Sly Cooper and Rocket Raccoon.

Pixel Animation showcase of a green anthropomorphic male raccoon firing a bow and arrow in 5 directions at a side plane: horizontal forward, vertical up, vertical down, angle up, and angle down.

Cole has so many knives that he can’t sell, that he throws them away! Sometimes, a bad person is in front of the path too!

Six Key illustration of an anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a blue coat. The first illustration has the raccoon throwing a small hatchet to the camera to demonstrate his axe throwing skills. The second illustration has the raccoon throwing a three distinct knives in a horizontal spread pattern to the camera to demonstrate his knife throwing skills. The fifth illustration has the raccoon holding a massive amount of small knives in his hands, belt, and teeth. The sixth illustration has the raccoon wearing his blue coat with a hood over his headand a large backpack full of his items, including a larger sword, a sleep roll, and a pack of dynamite. He holds a knife in his fingers to balance it's weight as he furrows his brow assessing the knife's value.

Simpler than Cole’s Shadow magic, Cole can find the magic words to allow him to cast Fireballs as explosive projectiles. With more experimentation, Cole can alter the nature of this fireball spell to stick to walls and detonate later at his command.

A series of Concept illustrations of an anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a green jacket and using a spell book to cast fireball magic. Top illustration demonstrates a basic fire spell. The next three step illustrations demonstrates how the Sticky Fireball Spell works: The raccoon casts a round fireball at an intact wall, the flame sticks in place to the wall, and on second command the flame will detonate the wall and make an opening.

In the buried depths of a forgotten island, tribe of Owlbears resided within. It’s said the Owlbears excelled at high jumping and preferred to live in dark caves and holes in cliff faces. Rumors of treasure that remain within drawing hunters from all over the world to brave it’s dark caverns!

Illustration of an lone anthropomorphic male raccoon in a blue jacket hanging on a brick wall, overlooking an underground cavern with walls, pillars and stone statues embedded in the rocks of the cave. The statues resemble large owls with large ears and bear paws, over looking an altar over staircase.

Cole’s merchant life consists of globetrotting around the world, collecting rare, mystical artifacts to sell in his merchant shop.With that, comes hidden dungeons that may contain certain death!

Illustration of an lone anthropomorphic male raccoon in a blue jacket standing at the mouth of a carved cliffside entrance of an embedded stone building. The statues lining each side of the open door resemble large owls with large ears and bear paws.

Blackmask Comic Stuff

Pencil sketch panel of an anthropomorphic male raccoon being mugged at knife point by an anthropomorphic male coyote.

I’m pushing to return to traditional comic art with this side comic project. It was going to be my weekly stream thing, but I shelved it for focusing more time on the completing the demo for the game.

The comic uses many knive from Cole so I did knife studies for my Blackmask stream comic. Many are studies from books and others are me messing about with alternate hilt designs.Many historical knifes can be wrought with questionable hilt designs that make me laugh.

Sketches of knife designs and various angles with hilts and scabbards encrusted with gem stones. Notable sketches are on the top right pair of sketches are of a decorative knife design that is phallic in nature as well as an anthropomorphic female lynx in a revealing landsknecht top, holding the knife withe the blade out of the scabbard to show to the camera.

Comics are still my passion and in this hell world of technology not making me excited for the future, I yearn more and more to abandon my online presence to enjoy drawing on paper for myself.

Misc Sketch Art

Another bunch of junk sketches I doodled between pixel art projects and game development.

A silly Olivia comic about discreet packaging.

Three panel comic Panel One: An anthropomorphic female dragon gawks out her door in disbelief. Panel two: A giddy anthropomorphic male bear in a trucker hat that says "Fish Women Love Me" crushes his wheel to blare his presence to the incredulous dragoness. Panel Three: The dragoness stands over a small and loud semi truck carrying a massive phallic missile on the flatbed.

Captain Rhodes gets into a spat with the harbormaster about improper dock timing, forcing Dr. Delgado to drag her away before things boil over.

Two Pen and Ink Drawings. Left is of a screaming anthropomorphic female jackal gripping a defiant anthropomorphic male otter by the scruff of his neck. The jackal wears a scruffy overcoat, eye patch, wooden leg and cane. The otter is wearing a life vest with his badge on top, inter tube lined with rolled up documents, pens and ink pots. Second drawing is of an anthropomorphic female maned wolf carrying away a raging anthropomorphic female jackal from continuing an argument with an anthropomorphic sea otter handing the pair a citation.

Otter Harbormaster designs. Many of them are in charge of the bookkeeping of numerous ships and sailors who enter the docks of coastal cities. Through a miracle of engineering and super science, they also have rolled parchment and inks that are waterproof.

Four Pen and ink drawings of various designs of anthropomorphic otter characters. common design elements are a life vest with a badge on top, inter tube attached with with rolled up parchment, pens, quills, and small ink pots.

I forgot my markers for a convention I went to over the summer, but I made some doodles on postcards. Many of these explore the oddball aspects of species relationships in the world of Blackmask. One such thing is Dog breeds getting unreasonably into their bloodlines and how “pure” they deem themselves, while Cats aren’t as concerned.

Pen and ink sketch of two male canine characters in an argument. Left dog says, "I'm more purebred than you." Right dog replies "No! I am purebred! You are a mongrel son of a b-"

Pen and ink sketch of four anthropomorphic big cat characters. Three cat characters are pregnant female black panther, lion and cheetah. They scream at the male leopard on the right, "You owe us child support!" The leopard smokes a drag of his large cloud and replies, "The hell I do..."

Many of these are going off silly ass podcasts and YouTube videos on topics I find absurd. Much of what I wanted to do with Blackmask is explore and satirize those odd relations and disagreements as I observe life and the world.

The Sarumaru Clan are a centuries old family of monkey ninjas who engage in feats of espionage, burglary, and treasure hunting for hire. The few who’ve witnessed them notice their distinct ceramic masks that members refuse to remove even in causal settings to conceal their identities at all times. The masks of the Sarumaru have similar designs, with deviations to indicate their place in the clan and family.

Pen turnaround sketch of a anthropomorphic female Japanese macaque monkey wearing a distinct ceramic mask and a revealing kimono. She holds a steel ball in her right hand. Handwriting reads: "Sarumaru Ninja, 16th Century, Japanese Macaque, Distinct Mask, Rather remove underwear than mask, bob tail." Middle sketches Pen turnaround sketch of an anthropomorphic Japanese macaque monkey wearing a distinct ceramic mask and thick windbreaker jacket and single strap backpack. Left sketch show a ready fighting pose and right sketch show a casual stand with them juggling a single steel ball in their hand. Handwriting reads: "Sarumaru Member, 20th Century, Japanese Macaque, Distinct Mask, short tail, never removes mask." Bottom sketches Pen turnaround sketch of a anthropomorphic female Japanese macaque monkey wearing a distinct metalic mask and form fitting sneak suit. She holds a steel ball in her right hand. Handwriting reads: "Sarumaru Ninja, 30th Century, Tail is Cybernetic."

Despite being ninjas, they refuse assassination missions, but all are trained in martial arts for the purpose of self-defense. The ninjas a primary weaponry are metallic bolos and retractable steel balls and chain weapons.

I’m re-looking at my project list and realized that I’m losing the plot on my priority art projects. I noodle around with disjointed ideas and thumbnails for Blackmask and not delaying my damn gratification to give my art real time to create. I’m falling back into content brain again and posting WIPs. These day’s I’ve been trying to use my iPad to color more of my unfinished ink art, or at least flat the line art, but I still never feel satisfied with my results.

My Programmer and I plan on showcasing a playable build of Blackmask at a future indie games event. We have a real deadline to showcase this year, so we now have a direction to go. I still don’t feel ready or have everything together, but I’m probably just feeling like a mad imposter.

But, according to my Therapist and my mother,I go through a past cycle of worry until the event happens and it ends up fine with me having nothing to worry about. Overall, I need to take this all one step at a time and give myself credit for going the distance.