Abandoned Projects

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Slinky Kitty | A "What Was I Thinking?" Desk Drawer Project

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Fact: animals adapt.

That was the inspiration for “Floyd”, the cat that swallowed a slinky toy — general character development that went from artboard to being placed into the desk drawer for years.

At the time, my goal was to branch out into self-authored illustration/story books. Or, by some miracle, get hired as a go-to illustrator for a top-tier publishing house (or any tier).

A lacked time, money, motivation, and a myriad of reasons benched the whole thing.

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Curious Little Shadows | From The Abandoned Projects Drawer

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Curious Little Shadows was an attempt (c.2011) to go darker than my usual goofy “trying to be funny” illustrations. And was hoping, naively, I’d evolve these gloomy situations into 30 second animated shorts. Or a illustrated story book… sooooo, no concrete objective. What’s new, right?

Essentially, these “Shadows” are little bean-sized creatures with no discernable features, except for eyes and whatever ambient light hits their fleecy bodies. They wander the forest floor clustered together, for the most part, avoiding predators of all sorts (for which there are many)… I never fleshed out WHY they were constantly on the move - I guess I figured nothing in nature has a personal goal to aim for, except for survival.

With almost every dire encounter they face, one of the Shadows will perish. The Shadows, after the initial shock, do not mourn - they have to keep moving, keep hiding, keep surviving.

Looking back almost a decade later, this whole abandoned project (#abandonedproject) was an experiment in self-taught backlighting. More accurately, lots of happy little accidents just happened to formulate some purposeful motive - i.e. hmmm, that whoopsie-doodle slip-of-the-wrist brushstroke looks out of place… wait a minute… what if I add another brushstroke next to it? Wow, that… that works! Wasn’t the plan. Well, dummy, quit arguing with yourself and keep doing it!

I planned to make one of these illos into a 10 second test animation - the toothy red-eyed encounter pic - but never got past converting the pic to 16:9 aspect ratio (below).

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Kitty Caricature | From The Abandoned Projects Drawer

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As part of my mid-to-late-2009 personal deliberation, months after returning from a memorable 10-day expedition to the US (Nutley, NJ, to be exact) and brainstorming ways to make big wads of cash on the side in order to fly back there! I had nothing to sell, no savings, and let’s not forget the 2008/09 financial collapse (and keeping my job was up-in-the-air)… no chance of a sudden lottery win, I’m sure (although, I’d hoped. Boy, did I hope!). So, what am I to do?

Here’s just one loony idea I seriously thought I could master: iPhones were a new thing at that time - why not learn about app development, create an app, make money selling that app, and live high on the hog? Easy, I’m sure. Turns out… NO! IT’S NOT! YOU IDIOT!

I then turned to finding ways to monopolise skills I’d honed over the years… Starlog Magazine had folded (so, cash for my cartoons was out)… somehow, the idea of drawing people’s pets was floated by my fan/friend in NJ (to whom was a veterinary technician).

Long story short, the below painting was THE first Kitty Kature (yes, THAT was I called them)(patent [not]pending).

And here are a couple more. I signed these with my alternate pseudonym “furbawl”.

There are a few more, I’m sure, lurking away in a dusty hard drive somewhere in the closet. I remember drawing up dogs… anyways, I find ‘em, I’ll add them to this post