Aberrate Designs

Loving the superheroes.  The Mormon Twins and the Barista are complete. And, they are fantastic. I thought that I was going to be able to get away with weekly blogs, but I think I’m going to have to change it to every two or three days just to keep up with the art that Nick is doing. I almost completely forgot about Disgruntled Penguin, The Putti & the Imp, and the latest and greatest Zombie Unicorn.

For our three year anniversary (yay! three years), Nick got me the putti and imp on a bag.

Ultimate Battle (Good vs Evil) by AberrateDesigns
They’re pretty adorable. And, he also got me The Barista on a shirt. I have a personal closeness with that one since I was working as a Barista at the Sun Shoppe & Cafe where we met. I’ll post a pic of that one in a couple of days. I’ll be wearing my shirt out when we celebrate!

I’m really not sure what to say about the Mormon Twins. Nick thought it was funny… so he made them. (And, there’s an entire history for them too.) I just like that he decided to use the famous blessing fingers that John the Baptist uses in da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks” and that Christ is depicted giving in so many other famous paintings. A little historical humor just for me.

The Mormon Twins (Unlikely Superheroes) by AberrateDesigns
 
Disgruntled penguin was based on a stuffed penguin that belongs to one of Nick’s very close friends. He recently made a watercolor of it, and we all liked it so much that we thought it would look awesome on… everything. If I could have a pillow with Disgruntled Penguin on it, I would. I guess I could take up cross-stitching again, but that means buying new materials figuring out what color each x will be nah nevermind. I WANT IT ON A SKATEBOARD!

Disgruntled Penguin TRAVEL MUG by AberrateDesigns

A few days ago, The Barista was my all time favorite. And then today, Nick came home with this…

The Zombie Unicorn by AberrateDesigns
I don’t know if it can get any better than that. And honestly, I don’t even have words to describe how much I love this image. It just is.

We’ve been enjoying the amazing weather here for the past few days, and well… I haven’t been doing much.  Nick’s been working on some more fun super heroes and even some dancers. Unfortunately, he inked the sketches before I was able to photograph them.  I knew that was going to become a problem.  I’m going to have to set little reminders in his phone that go off on a daily basis to photograph any sketches he has done.  (No matter the stage,  at exactly 3:00pm.  Just start taking pictures).

In the meantime, some of the images Nick has finished have been put up on items in our Zazzle Store.  Now it’s time for me to find where he has all these images filed on the mac (thankfully he’s awesome about saving everything with actual titles)  and post them to the blog.

Almost three years ago, Nick and a few of his very close friends took a trip to New York to see Evil Dead… The Musical.  While they were their they reverted back to the age of 13, and came up with some crazy ideas.  They were to include Steaming Manhole.  So the story goes that while they were walking down the street in the bitter cold they noticed, well… a steaming manhole.  And, they took this ordinary street visual and decided that if a particular friend of theirs was a superhero, he would have steamy manhole powers (ew, that came out even grosser when I said it out loud).  Not exactly flattering, but if you have superpowers, would you really worry too much about what they were?  Yeah, I would too.  Nick thought he’d gotten rid of the original sketch, but he thought wrong.  So, here you’ll find sketched, inked & colored… The Steaming Manhole (so intimidating).

Steaming Manhole is the first in the Unlikely Superheroes line. Since we’re going to be creating unlikely superheroes, I thought it would be just as much fun to start a super-villains line. But, not any super-villains. Likely Super-villains. With times being the way the are, it just seemed right to introduce The Mortgage Lender (that bastard).

Nick has been working like crazy doing sketches, inking and coloring.  He even got the first set of images done. I think he’s actually drawing faster than I can write.  I’m already trying to figure out a better way to file all of the drawings.  I had to remind him not to throw out the “bad” sketches about five times already.  He insists on getting rid of them though.  To me, getting to see the original sketches to the final drawing is the most interesting thing about creating art.  I may have to start digging them out of his office trash can (ew) if he can’t remember.  Two works are in total completion so far and another two are well on their way.  1001 Fun Things to do during Nuclear Fallout will be the first in a series, and we were joking about actually doing 1001 things (or maybe not joking).  Here are the inked and colored versions.

Immediately after finishing the first 1001 fun things, the Portraits of a Broken Heart series was begun with our Sad Brokenhearted Robot. And, while a follow up image won’t be added to this one. If this were a web comic, I like to think of what the next panel might be. Perhaps a little revenge for that lame excuse of a breakup line.

These images are available on products now. Yay! If you want to get one of them on a t-shirt or something, go to our Zazzle store. It’s interesting that it’s the guy that actually did go through the most changes. While I wasn’t able to save all of the sketches, he went from goofy to slightly sinister to a little sad. The evolution of a drawing right before your eyes. Look forward to the next post when we unveil… “Unlikely Superheroes & The Usual Villains”.

The idea for this piece came from a story that Nick was creating.  Actually… the idea for most of his pieces are from stories he creates.  The very fun thing is, this is just a tiny snippet of the story.  We thought it was fitting to be the first one posted because it also comes from the name of our blog. So enjoy the first stage of 1001 fun things to do during nuclear fallout.