Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Bear Nuts

I just had to do this sooner or later, in fact I’ve been craving to rant about how much I love this comic. I stumbled upon it on and off over the years, always forgetting the name of it, or loosing the link to the comic due to computer troubles I’ve had in the past. Found it again a bit ago and finally played catch up looking through all they have so far. If you know this comic then yay you. It’s called Bear Nuts. It’s a comic about a bunch of bears living in zoo, and they are designed kind of like carebears (kind of like that spoof I showed last time of the Cabbage Patch Kids). The artists that make this comic are Alison Acton and Jim Charalampidis, a married couple that are freelance artists. I’m not fully sure if Jim also illustrates with Alison, but their deviantart accounts make me think yes. They are both wonderful illustrators and their normal artwork is very nice, but the style they use in Bear nuts is something I’ve always loved, cause it's close to a style I wish my work leaned more to. Their bears are just so cute with big eyes, and expressions that range from cute to hilarious. Each with a interesting personality that are just wonderful in every way (hehe). I’ve tried in the past to make comics myself, but my style is very unstable that I can always see the difference of a character one box to the next, which makes me lean away from ever being a comic artist, well one of the many reasons. The way that these bears are illustrated are perfectly consistent a skill I really envy. Overall style is just so enjoyable to me. And the story itself puts me in giggle fits time to time. Above, I’m showing one of the wallpapers they have on their site, this is kind of the whole cast, but there have been others.

2 comments:

  1. I read a few comic-making blogs, and there's a couple things that can help your consistency- Develop a disturbing obsession with your characters and draw them everywhere all the time. Eventually, with enough practice, they start to take on their own life and you won't be able to screw them up. Draw their front, back, and side views in full-body, and also an expressions sheet for their face, and use those as references when you draw them. It helps. Don't give up!

    I suppose my comment is supposed to be about the actual illustration, so um. The bears are pretty cute, I like the screwed-up Care Bear idea. They all have basically the same body, but the variations in expression and body language give them different personalities, so they don't need to rely solely on their coloration and the symbols on their stomachs as indicators of personality. In other words, you could probably make the image black and white and erase the symbols and you could probably still tell they're all separate characters.

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