Wolfboy and the Mummy

Closing out halloween week lunches with this last set of little monsters. My daughter 's got her wondering: "Why do mummies always wrap themselves up in all that toilet paper?"

Wolfboy and the Mummy

Drac and Gilly

Little monsters, round two.

I'm very happy with the character design for Gilly. I've probably made over a dozen of random doodles  the last couple weeks, trying to figure out how to make a noseless, hairless swamp creature into an infectiously cute little girl. I think I nailed it.

And sadly, the young Count fell victim to a poorly closed thermos half full of soup. He did not make it home from the lunchroom. He may be only the second bag this year that I have been unable to save.

Frank'n'bride

In honor of Halloween and inspired by Yale Stewart's re-imagining of the Justice League as 8-year-olds, this weeks bags will feature junior versions of the Universal Studio's monsters from films of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's a little something I've been doodling with, considering rolling into a web-comic series (Don't get your hopes up. These plans almost  never transpire).

Universal is pretty vigilant when it comes to protecting copyright of Frankenstein's monster. Which is why our little romantic hopeful has no facial scars, no neck bolts (though his ears are kinda bolt-ish) and the flat-topishness of his head is debatable. Not that they care about my kids lunch bags, but in the event that I ever do spin these characters into a web-comic, I'm not totally unprepared.

It's time for Animaniacs!

...they're zany to the max, there's boloney in their slacks...

Which means that in the intro sequence of every episode of Animaniacs, the creative team was making a joke about "hiding the sausage" in full view of their mostly elementary school audience. If you think that's absurd, do a google search, you'll find they did much worse.

The Warner Brothers and the Warner sister, Dot

Draken and Shego

This raps up the Kim Possible week of lunch bags. Draken may be incompetent and filled with malintent, but I think even he would have made better decisions regarding the production of the Kim Possible franchise.

Draken and Shego

Naked Mole Rat

My kids both really enjoy Rufus, Ron Stoppable's pet naked mole rat on Kim Possible. I would enjoy it if we could see him on on a DVD of seasons three and four. But sadly, Disney is negligent that way.

Rufus, the naked mole rat

Kim Possible

So here's the stitch: Kim Possible was a rarity. An action/adventure comedy with a strong, capable female lead, produced with enough sophistication, charm and wit to be enjoyable by kids of any age and their parents. And Kim wasn't just capable. She was a relatable, positive role model - confident, independent, kind, smart, and made good decisions (insofar as one can as a teenage super-spy), or at least learned from the bad ones. In a media world where 'tween girls are encouraged to grow up in all the wrong ways, way to fast, that bare-belly short shirt was relatively tame.

It was The Disney Channel's most watched, highest rated show. For good reason.

So of course, they stopped production on it after three seasons.

Apparently, Disney had an attitude that once you had enough episodes in the can to survive syndication, you hung it up and moved on to the next franchise. Perhaps the feeling was that you're audience grew up too quick to bother putting in the cash to stay with them too long. Or maybe their was no substantive audience gain between three season's worth of content or five, kids will just happily watch the same thing over and over, ad infinitum, right? If it weren't a standing policy at the time, I'd have guessed they just couldn't figure out how to effectively leverage the lucrative toy merch--how do you sell action figures to girls, or action toys with a girl protagonist to boys, etc.?

Whatever the case, I'd say the powers-that-be had their heads shoved someplace unpleasant.

The powers that be did make one concession. A grass roots fan campaign convinced them to go ahead with one more season. They gave Kim a senior year, let her and Ron deal with all the high-school fun of a teen romance and prom and graduation. At least I think that's how it turned out. I'd go check, but the third and forth season have never been released on DVD.

Because the powers-that-be have yet to fully relocated their heads

Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable (and Rufus)

Hello Kitty

I did a Hello Kitty bag because I wasn't feeling the least bit ambitious and wanted something simple and quick. The level of my effort was directly disproportional to my daughters delight.

Hello Kitty

Patrick the Wolf Boy

Once again, I have to thank Art Baltazar for clean, simple character designs that my kids recognize and enjoy and I can swipe when I don't have much bag-time.

Patrick the Wolf Boy

Green Arrow

Mr. Oliver Queen here is probably the longest I've spent on any given bag. For whatever reason, I just didn't feel like doing the obvious follow up to the previous JLU Vixen bag (Green Lantern John Stewart). I decided I was in the mood for Vigilante. Drew up a sketch. Hated it. Started over. Still wasn't working. Went back to try a variation on the first one. Decided it was adequate. Then my wife pointed out that sending an illustration of a gun wielding man to school with our first grade son might result in complaints of inappropriateness, because: guns. Sadly, that has become the world we live in, has it not?

So I went with this. Because guns send a bad message of violence and whatnot, but exploding arrow projectiles are totally fine. Yes, this is the world we live in.

Green Arrow

Vixen

Just making the most of the newer, smaller lunch bag canvas.

Vixen

Along came a spider...

This bag comes by special request. My daughter wanted me to draw Little Miss Muffet. An atypical request, but it worked out, because I didn't have much time, and was still getting a feel for the new canvas size.

Magic School Bus

Unrelated to The Magic School Bus, I was at a different grocery store when I purchased replacement bags. They only had one variety. Turns out, that variety is smaller than what I'd been using. Wasn't hugely noticeable, until I sat down to draw something. I swear, it's like I lost a third of my canvas.

Magic School Bus

B'wanna Beast

The other day, while eating dinner, the family was discussing the relative merits of the powers various animal themed superheroes (we crank the geekometer up to eleven). When asked if they could think of any other super heroes with animal powers, my daughter offered enthusiastically "B'wanna Beast!" Because she rocks that hard.

For those that don't know (which I'd wager is most of you), Bwana Beast is one of the most obscure and even more absurd superheroes in DCs stable. His power, according to my daughter, is "he takes one animal and takes another animal and mixes them all up into a more powerfuller animal". Which, grammar aside, is pretty much spot on.

I think the indoctrination is complete. I fear there is nothing more I can teach her.

B'wanna Beast creating a "Dosh" and a "Cowl"

(Incidentally, according to the kids, Black Canary's canary cry trumps Vixen's menagerie of animal powers and Hawkgirl's flight and mace. We didn't get around to asking how B'wana Beasts animal jumbling would fare.)

The whole world.

My geography and conservation obsessed son discovered School House Rock. Making for an easy lunch bag art night for me.

Digimon

My daughter discovered Digimon on Netflix. So this is... some bird-thing. I'm not sure, because the Digimon she discovered is spoken in Japanese with English subtitles. My daughter does not read, but this does not seem to be interfering with her enjoyment. Perhaps she enjoys learning Chinese at school so much, she's decided to pick up Japanese at home in her spare time.

Stupid, stupid rat creatures!

We where reading more Bone the other night. And the kids absolutely cracked up at this panel. Repeatedly. I was prompted to read it several times. Even days later, they asked me to reread the sequence. Below is the page the panel appeared on -- the rat creatures had been bickering like an old married couple for the two pages prior. The rat creature's love of quiche (and its companion's frustration with that love) is a running joke in the Bone series.

Stupid, stupid rat creatures.

Commissions - What's your bag?

A friend recently brought up (a bit tongue in cheek) commissioning a bag for his own kids.

This is not at all out of the question. In fact, any such requests are welcomed.

I have been meaning to add a link offering the possibility. But I haven't been able to land on what I feel is a fair price. And more significantly, haven't made the time to work out creating and tacking on an HTML page to this blog (I know HTML like I know the bottom of my foot).

So, until I get around to formalizing it, feel free to send me a request. Make me an offer. What's the fair market value of disposable illustration?

Too cute.

The kids recently discovered "Too Cute" on Animal Planet the other night. It made the next mornings bags a no-brainer. I decided to go all pencil and forgo the markers. Just because.

No crayons were harmed in the making of these bags.

Planes

It was his sister's 5th birthday, but I snuck in a reminder for big brother as well.

5th birthday bag

My little girl turned 5.

Pinky Pie takes the cake