don't be stuffed with leftover dreams in the terrible days to come

Junk Drawer

This is a collection of random bits and pieces: designs from Impromanga submissions, characters and mecha from manga that never were and probably never will be, comic pages that were never used, stories that died before their time, and anything else that happened to be lying around but that I couldn't bear to throw away. A good portion of it is either low-quality pencil scans or incomprehensible divorced from its context, so don't say you weren't warned.

New Old Stuff! (03/26/2002)

So recently I was looking for an old character design I wanted to re-use. I never actually found it, but while digging through my old artwork folders I found a lot of other stuff that actually wasn't so bad. On a whim I scanned it in, cleaned it up and now here it all is. Most of these pictures are at least a couple of years old, which means I'm sort of dismayed to discover that my art style really hasn't changed much in the last few years -- and neither has the sort of things I draw.

Here's my initial character design for Alecto from The Unseen Hand.
Jacob from Binary Star: your standard angstful, slightly ragged gun-toting stranger in a postapocalyptic blah blah etc.
From Malarkey (or more accurately its failed continuation): new character designs for Christian Mega and Galla Penrose, Galla in civilian gear instead of her Navy duds, and fearsome church policewoman Fatima Gray out of uniform (that one is chiefly notable for being the only time I've ever drawn cloth that actually looked convincing.) I so wish this story had succeeded, but I whiffed the plot too badly for it to survive.
From Steam Wayfarer Gaia: the first character design for heroine Samantha (isn't she a cutie?), the heroes' airship Tempest, a rather fabulous character design for the villainous Lady Cobalt, and finally another pic of Lady Cobalt looking rather saturnine. It should not be hard to guess where the character design for Marigold of They All Laughed evolved from.
A typical day for a NESU officer on rescue duty (as seen in Star Rescue.)
The original character designs for They All Laughed. Yes, the plot of the story has changed somewhat since then.
The two other characters from unofficial No Headroom sequel Hey, Yamamoto!: Alicia Van Zandt and Agent Agent. Well, if you can call them characters...
So I was toying with the idea of an impromanga submission based on System Shock, the greatest computer game ever made. This is a new character design I created for psychotic master computer Shodan.
Some sort of angel with a sword. I'm not quite sure what he was supposed to be, but doesn't he look cool?
I would still defend my decision not to waste my time actually drawing Goddess in the Shell, but I won't deny some of the designs are kind of neat. Here's a Masamune Shirow-style cover treatment of Belldandy, Urd as the Perfect Bureaucrat, and a Kosuke Fujishima-style title page.
Drawn in a vaguely Otakon-related context, it's a big, big truck.
A sort of a flying... Rasta-head... guy created for a commission a while back. I wonder whatever happened to that.
And finally: recently I toyed with the idea of redesigning my site in pencil-sketch style. I sensibly rejected the idea because it would a) look terrible (only Alan Tew can pull that off, really) and b) be work, but not before creating this sketchy poster for No Headroom.

Fan Art

Remy. I got Phantasy Star Online a little while back, and this is the character I created. (I must admit that the character creation system is seven-tenths of why I bought that game despite its lackluster single player mode.) The details of her outfit aren't perfect, but on the other hand, dig those full, pouty lips. I amaze myself sometimes. 06/06/01
Lucca and Fei. I originally did this for a now-defunct art tutorial section of this site. It's actually really old now, but I still like it. It's a scene that takes place real early in Squaresoft's Xenogears. 2/27/00
System Shock 2: The Navy Guy. A fan art I did for System Shock 2, one of the best games to come along since... since... well, since System Shock 1, I guess. The UNN Navy technician/hacker is one of the three character classes available in the game and my personal favorite 'cos he's, like, a geek. Just like me, y'know? And yes, in the game's cutscenes he's a buffed up cybernetic type with computer implants, a black bodysuit and funky wraparound shades, but this is how I pictured my character, so there! I'd originally planned to polish this up and send it in to Through the Looking Glass's Fan Works section, but I'm not really satisfied with how it came out. 8/29/99
True Love '99. Commissioned for Otakon's Mystery Anime Theater, which featured Battle Arena Toshinden the previous year. See, Sofia's robotic acting, combined with Crow actually being a robot, make(s) them the perfect couple. Sofia's hair looks really weird in this picture.
Unreal Girl. From the PC game Unreal. Yeah, I'll admit the scale's wrong on the Flak Cannon she's holding -- it's bigger in the actual game...

Original/Impromanga

Steam Wayfarer Gaia. My (surprisingly, still) good friend Jon Kilgannon and I were collaborating on this fantasy-adventure comic. Unfortunately it, um, basically just didn't work out. This directory contains the crumpled remains, if you'd like to stare out of your car window at them as you pass by. 04/13/01
Otakon Sketch 1, Otakon Sketch 2. Kickin' it Alan Tew style with these two sketches I did at an Otakon meeting a few days ago. The first includes a character from the strangely compelling Penny Arcade, and a handsome soldier. The second is an idea for transporting Otakon attendees around the sprawling Baltimore Convention Center. Can you guess what Dreamcast game I've been playing lately? 03/18/00
Kevin Yamamoto, the lead character of Hey, Yamamoto! which you can find over in the Text Only section. Don't take the presence of this character sketch to imply anything, by the way. 03/07/00
Illusion of Jata. I did a bit part for the ending of Rosarius, due sometime this year, or maybe next year; you can read it in the Impromanga section. This is a sketch of the character Jata in her cute new outfit. Yes, there are many dopey Final Fantasy 8 jokes in my part. Embarrassingly, this sketch looks better than the actual part does.10/12/99
Bot Bonus Page. When I did my part for the impromanga Bot a little while ago, I was originally going to do something entirely different: an ep which, at its core, focused on the story's underappreciated hero, Ryouga78, and who he was in real life. I couldn't get the plot to come together without doing violence to the existing storyline, though, so I unhappily had to scrap it. This is the first and only finished page of my chapter that never was. 7/18/99
Eve Van Burace, your stereotypical leather-clad hard-bitten space mercenary. I'd tell you more, but trust me, you don't care.
Ito character designs. This came out really well. Min and Ai are previously existing characters in that Impromanga, but Milly Nakajima is my own invention, and I'm proud to have drawn someone so pretty. As an addendum, I'm entirely dissatisfied with Milly's part (or lack thereof) later in the story, and I intend to rescue her for another project pretty soon.
Byron, a thief. If there's ever another Impro contest, he'll probably be in my submission.
An older character named Galla Penrose, a terrorist. She's from an unused idea for the previous Impro contest, involving an anti-terrorist team on board a giant Iain M. Banks-esque starship traveling between the galaxies. I've been told this character design is a perfect example of my own personal style, but I'm still not convinced I have a style at all.
Guardian, the presumable mascot of my web site.
Mech Slayer Minor Characters. Designed with the express intent that they'd appear once, and never be seen again. For once, I was spectacularily successful in my objectives. Fun fact: these characters, especially the girl, are ~~ripped off from~~ inspired by one of the Slayers OAVs.
Yuri from Veron-Chan: The Double X Android. I abruptly introduced three new characters right at the end of my chapter. Originally I was gonna develop them over the course of a couple more pages, see, but that never happened... Their names were (going to be) Yuri, Brandon, and Osamu, and this is Yuri's character design.

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