otisframpton.com

Digital Commission: Harry

This is a standard sized digital commission featuring a boy who lived and a guy you can't name.

Drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

Digital Commissions: Butch & Sundance

These are two standard sized digital commissions featuring two guys who ran away hen things got tough.

Drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

FallCon 2011

Once again I'll be at FallCon, the one day comic convention at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds!

I'll have copies of all of the comics and prints from my online store and all items will be $5.00 each.

See you at the show!

-Otis

Digital Commission: First

This is a digital commission featuring a gunslinger who never gets outgunned. Ever. Excpt every few years when a new home video version is released and his markmanship gets a little more bizarre. Whatever.

Drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

Digital Commission: Aku Loves Verona

This is a digital commission featuring a Jack- um, er, a Verona-attack (Verona is the commision buyer's custom character).

Drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

Digital Commission: The Empire Strikes Back

This is a digital commission featuring a poster for my second favorite movie.

This piece was drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring (some of) this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

Digital Commission: Raiders of the Lost Ark

This is a digital commission featuring a poster for my favorite movie.

This piece was drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring (some of) this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis

How It Should Have Ended: God of War

My second How It Should Have Ended short was recently completed and posted to YouTube!

Go HERE to watch the short on Machnima's YouTube account.

Thanks again to Daniel for doing an amazing job on bringing my stick figures to life with his crazy animation skills.

I've been gieven advance notice of what my next short might be and if it all works out, I'm really looking forward to this one. Stay tuned.

-Otis

Plain Jane, Warts And All

(Note: this post gets a bit uncharacteristaclly crude near the end, so if you read this and are offended by the images I create in your mind, you have only yourself to blame because you've been given ample warning.)

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For the past month, since news of the most recent changes to the Star Wars Trilogy broke in the media,  I've been trying to come up with the best way to explain how I've felt about Star Wars in general since the release of Revenge of the Sith.  I have, in the intervening years, gone from a lifelong, hardcore fan of the series to someone who has not watched any of the films in five years (I watched the series for the last time in 2006, and even then I couldn't bring myself to sit through Episode III).

Today, I came up with an analogy that I think best represents how I feel these days about Unca G's work-in-progress Frankenstein monster.

Let me tell you the story of "Jane" . . .

****

Over 30 years ago, I fell in love with a girl named Jane.  She was a plain girl, a little soft in the middle, with three or four warts on her nose.  But to me, she was perfect.  To me, she was beautiful.  Her blue eyes sparkled with life and she was, hands down, the kindest and most loving human being I had ever met.

We married soon after meeting, it was a whirlwind romance.  Our marriage was wonderful and for twenty years or so, we enjoyed wedded bliss, the kind that other couples envy.

And then one day, she came to me in tears and told me that she was unhappy with the way she looked.  She wanted to have surgery to remove her warts, she wanted to straighten her naturally curly hair and she wanted to get liposuction.  I was shocked, because I had never heard her express negative feelings about the way she looked, and I certainly had no problems with her features.  I loved her dearly, warts and all.  But if she needed these modifications to enhance her inner peace, I would support her completely.

So she had the warts removed, straightened her hair and had the liposuction.  She looked beautiful.  But then, I had always found her to be so.  She assured me that this would be the last time she made any changes.

And she was happy.

For a while.

A few years later, she decided that to truly achieve the vision she had of herself, she needed to start working out every day at a gym, shave her head and start wearing designer clothes. And she also wanted to change her name from Jane to "Janelle Hope".

I found these alterations to be unecessary, but once again I did not attempt to stop her from making them. I supported her completely.  Her inner peace was paramount, her vision of her true self was what mattered, and if these changes helped her in finding true happiness, who was I to say otherwise?  I loved her with all my heart and after all, the changes she was making were superficial, right?  She was still the same person I fell in love with on the inside, of course.  And she assured me that this would be the last time she made any changes.

She also informed me that she had taken all of the existing photos of her past self and buried them somewhere in the back yard.  I begged her to let me keep them, but she insisted "that person doesn't exist anymore".  She found it necessary to hide all evidence of her past self, and while it hurt me to never again be able to gaze upon those photos, I accepted her demands and never pressured her to tell me where she had buried them.

And for a few years, Janelle Hope, the bald, designer clothes wearing, six-pack sporting dynamo was perfectly happy.  And so was I.  Our marriage was built on love and understanding.  She was the same person inside.  It took a litle effort on my part to see that, but it was essentially true.

And then one day she came home after a weekend away and told me that she had undergone surgery.  This came as a shock to me, because she had said nothing about any more alterations.  But she assured me that this would be the last time she made any changes.  I asked her what she had done and she informed me that she had undergone sex-reassignment surgery. 

Was she still the same sweet, loving human being on the inside?  Yes, of course she was.  But after so many minor tweaks here and there, so many additions and subtractions, she had become something that I no longer found attractive.  She had turned herself into something unrecognizable and I could no longer find it in me to see her as the girl I'd fallen in love with all those years ago.  Maybe that was shallow of me, maybe it meant that my love was ultimately not true.  But I could not deny how I felt any more than Jane could have denied her true self and the manner in which she chose to express it.

Plain Jane was perfect to me, warts and all.  But Plain Jane didn't exist anymore, so I had to move on.

****

I still love Star Wars.  I just don't love what it has become.

-Otis

Digital Commission: Meet The Dark X-Men

This is a digital commission featuring the Dark X-Men having the pleasure of meeting their rabid fans.

Drawn and colored in Photoshop CS4 using a Wacom Cintiq 21UX.

You can watch a recording of me coloring (most of) this piece on my Ustream channel HERE.

Go HERE to learn more about commissioning original or digital artwork from me!

-Otis