Trilobite Boy iPhone sketch

Trilobite Boy reading a tablet. He has better tech than I do. Sketch done on my iPhone using ArtRage.

Firing up the Trilobite Boy Tumblr once again

In preparation for new Trilobite Boy stories and art coming this summer, I've started posting on the Trilobite Boy Tumblr again. And watch for fresh merchy-merch!



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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow
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Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!

Trilobite Boy revisited

Another Instagram tweak for fun.  This one might make a nice print for the shop.  Can't wait until my schedule opens up a bit to work on new Trilobite Boy stuff.

Big plans!

One of the things I've been considering is changing his name from Trilobite Boy to something with a name: "Trilobite Elroy" or "Dave" or something.

So here's a handy poll!

If you have suggestions for an actual name or reasons to leave it as Trilobite Boy, please let me know in the comments! 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.

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--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Messing with Trilobite Boy Rocks Out on Instagram

I like making messed about versions of some of my paintings. The variations are interesting.

Here's Trilobite Boy Rocks Out in Instagram.

Teetering and Tottering Toward Epic Awesomeness

Busy, busy, crash.

2012 started off with a computer suffering from so many problems I'm exhausted enough to skip completely over what exactly happened, except to say a hearty thank you to my good friend Rudi for getting things humming again.

Means I'm in catch-up mode, teetering and tottering between equally important projects with looming deadlines and images I can't show you until I'm done, thus the repeat of our man Trilobite Boy up there.

So what am I working on?

-Mainly, being a stay-at home dad, for realz. Our son just turned 1 shortly after Krismas.  He's practicing walking, talking is ever more specific and complicated, and he's really really adept at saying, "No, Dada" in a world-weary way that lets others know how much he puts up with.  He's amazing every single day, and my wife is the main reason.

-I do so freelance social media promotion for a big Canadian retailer when he naps.  Was doing some from my iPhone during the crashed computer days.

-For Symbiartic, the art+science blog on Scientific American, there are a ton of half-complete interviews and posts and feelers sent out. Lots to come there, some artists and discussions I've wanted to have since before launch. There's no shortage of material to cover, and I'm hoping to get some more, shorter, "gee whiz looks at this image" posts up to go along with the usual discussions that get started. I'm lucky to be writing alongside my co-blogger Kalliopi Monoyios, mainly because her posts continue to surprise me. The whole network at Scientific American is pretty amazing, and I have a ton of new-favourite bloggers now, not least of which is Alex Wild's Compound Eye.

-ScienceOnline2012 is coming up fast, and I'll be involved in 2 discussions and I'm co-curating the science-art show. More on that over the next few days in some new posts. (Yes we've decided what we be in the show! Everyone should receive emails by Monday morning.)

-In addition, I'm plugging away having a merry time working on my first actual scientific illustration (not surreal, no arthropod-human hybrids or winged sealife).  Can't wait to share.

So what's on the launchpad for The Flying Trilobite?

-March 2012 will be The Flying Trilobite's 5th blogiversary online, and I plan to mark it with a Bold! New! Direction! for Trilobite Boy and some regularity to the artwork that fizzled out with my short-lived webcomic last year.  I made some progress over the non-computer days on that front, and I'm excited about where's it's going to go. Should I reveal it?

Spoiler-->  The plan is one comic book cover a month, painted, showing Trilobite Boy's  adventures.  Or at least teasing at them. And there will be some *ahem* hidden things. Can't say any more than that.

-Hopefully I'll be able to do another contest for the 5th Blogiversary celebrations as well.

-I'm also planning on more tutorials using oil paint and ArtRage in the coming months, to share how I do what I do.

-Sales in my online store were up a bit in 2011 from 2010, and I'm hoping to get them up higher with some of the projects I have planned this year. Calendars collections still available, and you can choose the start month!

Thanks to everyone who visited and commented on The Flying Trilobite last year - I'm hoping 2012 will be full of epic awesomeness and world trilobite domination.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Science-Art Geek iPhone 4 cases!

Available now, in my print shop at RedBubble.

Here's some specs from RedBubble themselves:

Uncommon spent months in the desert inventing a revolutionary and top secret printing process called TATT™, which embeds the design into the case—so no fading or peeling, ever. It all sounds a bit space age really, which we quite like.

Our cases were made specifically for the iPhone 4S & 4, ensuring that all of your bits, pieces and functions line up where they should. Plus, Uncommon cases are chosen by Apple for sale in Apple Stores. Seal of approval right there.

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In addition to selling these designs on an ongoing basis, I'm also looking for someone to finance a few as prizes for ScienceOnline12 ! Please email me at theflyingtrilobite at gmail dot com if interested. 
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
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I hope everyone enjoys my cheesy mirror effect above.

--> Find me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the new Scientific American Blog Network!

Trilobite Boy Mail!

Back in June a number of Flying Trilobite readers really helped me out with donations to keep my portfolio site at glendonmellow.com going. For a minimum $10 donation, I made each of them an original drawing. All of those drawings should be arriving in everyone's snail-mailboxes over the next several days.  

Here's science-artist Katy Ann Chalmers with her Trilobite Boy Chibi! 

My grateful thanks to each person who donated or tweeted to get the word out.  It's been a tough time freelancing for me, and it really helped keep my presence alive online. I had fun with each image, and did things a little differently than the norm. I made a nice scan of each one, and will put them all up in a future post together.

As an artist, it can be really tough to earn a living wage from your work without years of royalties and a large committed fanbase.  It takes time. I'm lucky to be doing well for a guy who paints trilobites with wings. But we're also living in a time when the divide between how images are prized and what people will pay for them faces a huge divide.

Artists forge ahead and use the talents to delight and inspire, and the growing movement of science-artists have a doubly important mission, turning people on to the natural world through their skills and dedication.

There's another science-artist who needs financial help right now, and is willing to put their skills to the task:  Katy Ann Chalmers, pictured above, is offering an amazing deal on original artwork if people can chip in and help her afford to go back to school this year: check it out!  Cephalopods and space art for a great cause!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
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New!  Follow me on Symbiartic, the new art+science blog on Scientific American! 

Trilobite Boy chibi!

Follow the intermittent adventures of Trilobite Boy!

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.

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Butter Tarts - Trilobite Boy #6

New Trilobite Boy webcomic!

This was done in about 45 minutes using ArtRage Studio Pro.
You can follow the adventures of Trilobite Boy on his Tumblr.
And you can see in-process Trilobite Boy art by clickety-clicking here.
Trilobite Boy prints, shirts and stickers available in my shop. 
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.

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Style Question

As I wander aimlessly in the woods of a webcomic sketchy experiment thing in an attempt to both develop new skills and get the Trilobite Boy story down, I come to the question of style. Here are all the panels so far, in order, of the Trilobite Boy webcomic. Click to enlarge.

What's your favourite image so far?

Spoilers after the jump: 
More art after the jump!

Trilobite Boy #5: Arrival

The new page is up! 

This is a lower quality version than the one at the webcomic. Click to see it!

I did this one in ArtRage 3, mostly with the watercolours. The Royal Ontario Museum is one of my favourite places to go and draw, and I've loved it since I was a kid. The new design is something I wanted to highlight too. It's stunning.

You can also view the new page large, here, or below the fold.

More art after the jump!

Museum Robot Guard - wip

©  Glendon Mellow 2011

Say hello to Mr. G, the Museum Robot Guard.  Or at least his upper torso, it's a work-in-progress. Originally that thing in his chest didn't start out as an eye, but it's kind of gone that way.  Thinking about WWI biplanes when I painted this.

Working on the last panel of the next Trilobite Boy page in ArtRage 3.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy arrives at the ROM - wip

Here's what's on my desktop this morning. Trilobite Boy arriving at the Royal Ontario Museum.  It's a work-in-progress.  

Click to enlarge.

Getting used to ArtRage 3, loving some of the tools.  The rulers are helpful, and right after I took this screenshot I realized I can use the frosted palette knife on the lettering. I'm aiming to ink the outlines and use the watercolour brushes for the colour - I love adding random little drops of water and paint on the image. Hoping to give it a bit more of an animated/anime look in this panel. 

I love both the old and new R.O.M. and can't wait to paint the building in the next panel.

You can see the beginning of Trilobite Boy's adventure on my webcomic Tumblr, and some clothes & stickers in my merch store.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy tees and stickers!

They're ready: the first two Trilobite Boy t-shirt designs. 

Trilobite Boy on a skateboard. Probably late getting somewhere.

The Trilobite Boy fangirl shirt design, seen in the webcomic and highly requested on Twitter.
Pick you shirt colour, long sleeve, short sleeve or hoodie. 

Stickers!  Mystify your friends and neighbors and plaster these everywhere. 

All the apparel in my shop is sweatshop-free, and you can choose multiple styles and a whole whack of colours. Multiple currencies are accepted by RedBubble, secure through PayPal.

You can view the whole shop here, or go straight to the Trilobite Boy merch. 

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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ArtRage 3 - 1st steps

(Blogger had a a small problem and deleted the most recent post - this was originally posted on May 11 2011, two days ago.  Still love ya Blogger!  Best Blogging platform out there. ) - Received a very cool gift yesterday - ArtRage 3! Readers of this blog know I like to use a digital painting program called ArtRage.  The main feature that first attracted me to it was the interface. When I saw all the tool menus arrayed on the screen in ImagineFX's Fantasy Workshop book, in a tutorial by Francis Tsai, I was smitten.  Like most artists, I'm a visual person.  For almost two decades, I've painted in oils.  I'm used to a quick mix, grabbing and dabbing my colour onto my brush and painting.  I usually do it while listening to fast big beat or goth industrial music to keep up my speed. Back and forth to the palette. And as much as I love and appreciate Photoshop and Gimp, reading drop-down menus to find my tools interrupts the flow.  Enter ArtRage.  I bought version 2.5 a couple of years back, and you can see the interface below.

Example of the ArtRage 2.5 interface.  Image © Glendon Mellow 2010.

It's all right there: the colours, the lights and darks, the tool kit of digital oil brushes and markers. I bought it, and it was easy to use. My Trilobite Boy and gargoyles painting that headlined the io9 article about my work recently was done using ArtRage 2.5. I even used the glitter tool to create some tarry grit on the building rooftop. 

ArtRage is relatively inexpensive compared to some programs like Photoshop or Corel Painter. In Canadian $ (about on par at the moment with USA) it's $82 for the full ArtRage 3 Studio Pro. However, while my freelancing has been busy-and-low-income, it's beyond my means at the moment and for the foreseeable future. So this gift was amazing and timely. My jaw literally dropped. 

One of the tools I was most excited to try, is the new watercolour brush.  It turns out, there's not just one, there's many (and more oil settings too). Here's my first attempt at monkeying around with ArtRage 3 (click to enlarge):

Done with ArtRage 3.  ©  Glendon Mellow 2011

New interface in ArtRage 3.  Image ©  Glendon Mellow 2011

I'm ecstatic. I woke early to play with it again today. Our 9-year old nephew came over to try it too (he has 2.5 as well.) With 2.5 there were a couple of things I was always frustrated I couldn't do, and I had to import it into Photoshop to do (you can import back and forth to Photoshop without flattening layers). Those included the selection brush and text. ArtRage 3 has 'em.

Okay, I'll post more process stuff later.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Webcomic sketches moving along

#3

The Trilobite Boy comic sketches are moving along. Instead of one 30 minute sketch a day, I'm going to try for 2 or 3 panels a week in a bid to increase the quality. They're meant to be short, speedy exercises where I experiment with digital painting and lay out the Trilobite Boy story at the same time. I have hang-ups about the quality though.

You can find the series at my new Trilobite Boy Tumblr. Thanks to everyone on Tumblr, Twitter, deviantArt, Facebook, The Flying Trilobite and io9 who is encouraging this series!

wip #4

Completed (sorta) #4 - a number of people on Twitter asked about the girl on the left's shirt.
I hope to have some Trilobite Boy shirts done by the weekend!

wip #5, in ArtRage.

In other news, I had a couple of job interviews. I'm in some serious financial difficulties at the moment, and thanks to everyone who purchased prints or calendars or stickers recently in my Print Store.  It's been a tough few months after the baby arrived, and freelancing isn't going strong yet.

Great post up at Muddy Colors by Christopher Moeller "Life After Art School: Five Years to an Illustration Career". Well, this blog recently completed year 4; cause for hope?

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy and his fans - WIP

Here's a work-in-progress for the Trilobite Boy comic series.  Our hero signing autographs for his tweeny fans. 

I was hoping to do a daily 30 minute sketch to tell the Trilobite Boy story, and so far that hasn't happened. I've been under considerable stress while looking for a new regular source of income - so now I'm hoping to do at least three of these a week.

Originally the idea was to do each in 30 minutes and practice getting smarter and faster painting digitally. The one above is taking longer while I mess with gradations and the selection brush in Photoshop Elements 6, and I'm okay with that. The point is to keep challenging myself on a regular basis while making a backbone of story images for Trilobite Boy - I don't have to follow a slavish self-imposed schedule. Above was 30 minutes, not including the pencil drawing.

You can follow the adventures of Trilobite Boy at trilobiteboy.tumblr.com - currently, he's skateboarding to the Royal Ontario Museum, and passing by Toronto's famous Crinoid Tower.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy Tumblr

Trilobite Boy now has his own Tumblr. 

After a lot of discussion and suggestions from various peeps on Twitter and elsewhere, I thought Tumblr might be a good way to collect the new Trilobite Boy daily sketches.  I've made some of my feelings about Tumblr before, and the culture of non-credited artwork that seems to exist there: so this will be an experiment for me.

Do more eyeballs actually translate to greater popularity (and hopefully, as an artist who needs to eat, revenue)?

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Trilobite Boy Daily Sketch #2 - Waking

Trilobite Boy - Waking.
©  Glendon Mellow 2011, using ArtRage. Share under Creative Commons, see sidebar.

The second daily sketch that's part of my new regimen. I'm giving myself a 30 minute time limit for each sketch in the Trilobite Boy story in an attempt to loosen up and in some cases, sharpen my style. And quite frankly, to crank this story out. As a new dad with other items on the go, it's been pushed back far enough.

What do you think?

First Trilobite Boy Daily Sketch is here.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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Daily Regimen

Since our little scamp was born at the end of December, it's been difficult to maintain routines.  This week, I plan on going back to being an early-riser by getting up everyday at 5:30 to draw, paint or sketch for 30 minutes, even if I go back to bed afterward.

I'm not going to restrict myself to what little sketch I'll do, but then again: what better way to make some headway on the Trilobite Boy story than this in my time-crunched schedule?

At the moment, I'm envisioning Trilobite Boy less of a traditional comic book and more of a series of captioned illustrations, tied to a single narrative. Let's see how it goes.

Day 1, click to enlarge: 

Trilobite Boy - Late. 2011, ArtRage.
©  Glendon Mellow, share under Creative Commons, see sidebar.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow

under Creative Commons Licence.

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