Tales from the old country

Hangin' on the wagon :)

2012-01-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

Not much this time around, just this evening's Frazetta practice.

This man keeps to amaze me, with every piece of his I look at.

He was an amazing human being and i wish him all the best wherever he is now :)

I have not done anything like this in over six months and even though it was fun exercise, it was a bit of struggle as well.

Do not judge it too harshly it is stiff and rough around the edges as I found it really hard to maintain attention as I was going through.

Hopefully, I will pick it up again and do some better stuff soon.

That's it for this time,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Picking Up the pieces

2012-01-20T03:48:00.000-08:00

Eh.

it has been so long, I do not even know what to say.

Before I start blabbing about this and that, I would like to pass my thanks to everyone stopping by.

You are better people than me, as I did not even click on my own blog link for months.

Also thank you very much to everyone who sent e-mails and left comments, I apologize for not replying, I just felt so bad about disappearing, I did not know what to say, nor did I want to promise anything because I was not sure when will I be able to come back and start posting again.

And now, here I am ,and promise to try and keep the blog alive from now on.

What a ride I had over the past months :)

Being an indie developer is both blessing and a curse, you are putting your money where your mouth is, but at the same time all the responsibility lies with you to get the job done.

I learned so much about myself and about the process itself in the course of this project.

Being a 4 man game dev band is cool (Plus Kieran and Leonnard) but at the same time, we bit so much that there was a lot of chewing to be done to get it all decent.

Game is finally looking as it should and plays nicely, even though I lost every possible perspective of whether it is looking or playing any good or not. I often had those moments when everything looked like shit, and where I was asking myself if I was digging my own professional grave by putting my name on it and letting other people see my shame.

It is a mixture of art and tech, (first serving the other) so it is a little rough around the edges visually, and it is weird because it is first game I know of that uses physics and simulation to this extent to construct the gameplay, so sometimes unexpected results ensue. Sometimes they are funny, other times awkward. But still they are amazingly rare, considering the amount of chance it relies on.

It will be out on steam March the first for PC, so if you want to see what I am babbling about, check it out.

During the course of development, I often remembered words of my friend-

"I am so busy, I Can't even spare time to fart!"

However, I have to point here that I was just making the video-game while he, at the time, was making his riches by working as a man-whore in a German gay Bordello.

But Now I understand how he felt :)

Another thing that happened about 4 months ago was that I had a massive health scare, which got me pretty depressed, scared and unmotivated.

Let's not go into details, but 3 months, 3 x-rays one CAT scan and 2 visits to the specialist later I finally found out I will get better and live :)

I also turned 42 a couple of weeks ago, and since I did I have been thinking about all these weird things.

Like so far:

- I have spent about 15 years of my life sleeping.

- I ate about 15 tonnes of food (at least)

- I smoked about 200 000 cigarettes (which adds up to continuously inhaling and exhaling smoke for about 2 years)

- I have earned and then spent over a million dollars and yet spent those years at the bottom of the middle class pile...

Etc,

There is no statistic to this so it could be off by a bit, but pretty close to being accurate.

Anyhow, this is plenty for the first post in ages, so here are a few images and I seriously promise that more are coming real soon :)

Thank you all very very much for hanging around,

Kind regards,

Milenko

PS, just a little add on:

I do not want to come across as some kind of pervo trolling the facebook and looking for images of girls taking pictures of themselves, ( I barely visit my own profile once in a couple of months)- I did notice the trend though, and that page of sketches (and a few others) are actually research for a line of T-shirt designs which I intend to call "facelook".

I still did not come up with a style or simplicity of design I am after though, and am too busy with other stuff to see it through, but one day...

Lame, hey?

What a bunch of pigs!

2011-09-29T06:06:00.001-07:00

And it has nothing to do with politics or the recession, or any other current happening.
It is just that, another day I saw someone's silly doodle on a whiteboard that made me giggle.
Whoever drew it is awesome, and I have seen silly sketches there before and enjoyed them.
So, inspired by what I saw I did some sketches of my own and that is how this post have come to be.
On other fronts, I am still working big time and apparently will be busy for another couple of months to come.
In regards to the world, I have been isolated for so long now, I have nothing to rage about.
So here are the sketches, and until the next time,
Regards,

Milenko

AaandThe trailer is up:

2011-08-25T02:56:00.001-07:00

Well, this is the first time the world has been shown the game in motion.

I hope someone likes it.

15 months of work, and still counting, but not much longer to wrap it up now :)

And then, noodie chicks and crazy creatures will flow like never before.

Cheers,

Milenko

And the vessel has been announced :)

2011-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Off to a great start:

EA veterans launch StrangeLoopGames

Except that title is mainly wrong because, back in the day, we only got under EA flag briefly, when they purchased "Pandemic Studios" and then culled it, and Australian studio never published a single title under the EA label.

So veterans we may be, but not the veterans of the EA army.

Anyhow, there is a couple of screen shots here:

Vessel

And a random piece of the early, obsolete character dev art.

Well, that is it for now.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

How long has it been...

2011-07-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

Well, ages apparently.

Unfortunately, I got myself so busy with other work that I had no time to draw anything for myself.

But soon, September will be here, and I will have enough time to give some care to this here place and even more important, to start doing stupid and silly personal work I miss so much.

On professional side, "Vessel" should be announced soon, I believe it will make it's first

appearance at some expo called PAX or something which is happening some time in August somewhere in good old US of A.

Then I will share some work from that as well as talk about the whole "dressing up the game" experience.

In my personal world, nothing much happened, and I was so busy, I did not even have the time to rant and rage about anything and I seem to have entered this mellow stage where I do not care about the world any more.

here are 2 street fighter sketches I managed to put together about a week ago.

Not the greatest stuff, I know.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

WTF, end of May already?!

2011-05-31T05:13:00.000-07:00

Seriously?
End of fucking may?
man what a month.
And what a pathetic excuse for a post.
Basically, I spent the whole month buried into other work, literally had no time to do ANYTHING for myself.
And the work I did I can not share yet. But soon.
So all I have this time is one afternoon of fun I had in this whole month.

Some more sketches for my battle of the Keep scene.

They were never intended to be seen by anyone at this stage, but hey I just discovered that my bottom line for level of finish of work I usually share has dropped a notch.
If it was a testicle, it would be something to brag about. But as it is, it is not a good sign.
Well, 3 months from now the "Vessel" wil be finished (fingers crossed) and I will be jobless (well pretty much work-less, as I am kind of jobless already) And then I will pick my blog and my personal work where I left it.
However, stuff always seems to happen that stops me from doing that.
Usually in a form of someone with money willing to give it to me in return for my silly drawings.
He-he, what a bunch of suckers!
Or really nice people who value my work more than I do. Whatever the definition, they do show up from time to time.
And then I feed. On food. And I share some of it with the rest of my family.
Thankfully, my guys are self sufficient now, everyone earns their own pocket money, so I do not have much to take care of. And they leave me alone, which is often great.
Having kids in my early twenties turned out to be the best thing that happened to me.
Now that I am middle aged and jaded, they ask for nothing and mind their own business, sharing occasional joke, sometimes even a funny one.
Bah, this crap talk is going nowhere, so here is whatever I managed to scrape and share.
Do not be harsh on it all, it was never meant to be seen by other's eyes until it is neat and presentable, but I have to keep this place alive, it still feeds me a sense of freedom and independence.

Blah,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

April Last

2011-04-30T05:49:00.001-07:00

Previous post was on April first. And this one is on April last.
Hence the title.
I have been busy like crazy over the past month, but I am proud to announce, I have finished firs pass on design and placement of the art in the entire "Vessel" Game.
Last few levels have actually reached level of finish, visual appeal and complexity we are aiming for so all that needs to be done now is to bring the rest of the game up there.
But that's why there's second art pass.
Stuff that remains is the hub world, game interface and animation of the main character and all the little critters.
I started working on animations and it is looking very promising.
Bottom line is I like the game, and that is something I always wanted.
We are still months from wrapping up so it should all look spiffy and sweet by the end.
Anyhow.
I do not have much time as I have to get back to it.
There's some images below so I will talk about them a little.
From top down, first is Rosie Rocket, and that character design is a funny story.
Another day I was drinking some grape juice and I unwittingly spilled some on the tiled floor of my studio.
I forgot all about it and I stepped into it a couple of times as well as rolled my chair over it.
At some point late that evening, I looked at the stain and it looked to me like a woman with rockets flying out of her hair.
I thought it was really cool, but since I have tendency to forget a lot of stuff, and my wife has a tendency to clean my studio early in the morning, I decided to do a quick sketch to remind me of the whole thing.
next day I cleaned up that sketch a little, and threw in a bit of color at it, and the end result is Rosie.
She could be whatever, I don't know.
I also like my initial sketch muuch more than this quick clean pass, but stuff it, I might try to do something with it later.
But most likely, I will never come back to it.
Second sketch is just a bit of morning warm up I decided to share. Some Cowboys or whatnot.
And the final sketch is first pass on more detail art for my big "puzzle" piece- Attack on the Keep.
That one will probably take a while to finish, as I keep on sketching these squirmish situations and stuff.
So that it is for this time,

See you in May,

Cheers,

Milenko

About Princesses and Unicorns

2011-04-01T03:04:00.000-07:00

Eh, many days have passed.
It is Fool's day today, and what a fool's day it is :)
First thing someone may have noticed is that I did not do a Frazetta tribute last month.
I will try to do one in april, but truth to be told, I could not find many more frazetta paintings featuring women I would like to draw.
Well, there's still a few but they are not as iconic as would be sufficient to tickle my inspiration.
Don't get me wrong, I love frazetta, I am just not too much into muscly barbarians and stuff.
Anyhow.Another thing that happened lately is that I have unwittingly depleted my savings by purchasing a fine automobile I could not afford.
I think that mid life crisis has gotten the better of me.
Vehicle in mention is a Holden Monaro, known over in the states as Pontiac GTO or something.
It was too pretty to resist, and is younger than my children, so I count it as the newest car I ever had.Much like a beautiful woman, it has cost too much to acquire and it is incredibly high on maintenance as well as in it's daily spending.
It is really unnerving to see a counter telling you how much petrol you have spent so far in your trip, and it is always muuch more than you would want to.
Now I know that a run to the local store to purchase some tobacco based products in itself costs me about 3 bucks.
But then again, much like a beautiful woman ( which my wife truly is- just for the record) joys it provides make you easily forget the rest of your trouble, and you realize that the only way to deal with it is to work harder and make enough dough to keep it happy.
Which brings me to the image in this post.
Little bits and bobs of freelance work I was getting over the last few months to compliment my income have seriously dried up and it seems no one wants Milenko any more :)
So, I decided to try and crack into the field of educational/ instructional illustration.
The image I am displaying here was created to demonstrate my skill and to illustrate dangers that little girls might face if they are in possession of a unicorn.
Now, it was not intended to scare them away from the purchase, just to draw their attention to the pointy extremities such animal would posses.

I know it is a stupid joke, but I never claimed to be the brightest of the lights.
Well, that's it for now,

Cheers to all,
Milenko

Sleep Deprived

2011-03-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

I do not have much time these days.
I did a crap ten minute sketch sketch and then looking at the characters in my brain-dead state, thought of a caption that made me giggle.
Why did it make me giggle? Probably because I am so burnt out I am going insane.
Why do I giggle instead of laughing in that deep, manly way? That's because I have no laugh left in me.
I used it all up.
Well I thought I did until the other night when I found some time and had nothing else to watch but "Dinner for Schmucks". It was tedious movie, only reason I've put up with it was because I had nothing else to watch and it had that guy from the flight of the Conchords whom I like, so I watched to see his little gems.
Well that's until the blind Russian swordsman turned off the light.
Something snapped in me and I laughed like crazy, scaring my neighbour's dog, as I was watching the movie at 2 AM..
That part of the movie was fucking funny.
And I used up all the laugh I had left in me.
Since then, I giggle.
Anyhow, As I giggled at my caption, it occurred to me it would be even funnier if they were saying it in French.
Somehow seemed fit for the purpose.
Then, because I do not speak French, I turned to my friend AltaVista Babelfish online translator.
he was kind to me and here's our baby. I do not even know if it makes any sense at all, even on english it sounded kind of stupid.
All in all, not much.

Anyhow,

Cheers to all

Milenko

Sunday Night that shouldn't :)

2011-03-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

I was about to go to bed, but I started doodling and could not give up.
Then I scanned doodle in the computer, and started coloring.
And before I knew it, it was 2AM and I realized I am screwed, as I have a very busy day tomorrow.

So I decided to call this finished and to chuck it here.
I also decided a while ago I do not want to do these sketch-paints any more, but it seems I can not stop.

Anyhow,
it is hard to make sense of stuff at 2.30 AM.

And when I look at the sketch in the morning, I will most likely regret posting it, because it might look like crap, I just can't see it right now.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Unwinding

2011-03-02T02:11:00.000-08:00

Eh, not much this time.
'Vessel' milestone was intense, a lot needed to be done.
And we did it :)
So today, I was taking it easy, looking at the next bunch of work for this month, taking notes and doing sketches so I squeezed an unrelated doodle or 2 in the mix.
I also decided to clean my desk, as I had trouble finding my Wacom pen, my mouse and keyboard and went through piles of scribbles I did while thinking about something else.
I would not even call those decent sketches, as they were done while talking on the phone or thinking about other crap.
I scanned some of them as I had nothing else to share, and I also started working on my next "big" puzzle piece, this one would be Fantasy themed and I am throwing a couple of preliminary sketches for that one in the mix.
I was too busy working on the milestone, so nothing silly happened in a while, and I have no time for rants even though everything is pissing me off.
Ah yes, one thig did happen.I started doing Hapkido.
I did one class, annoyed everyone and lost orientation while trying to do a forward roll, something I did not do since my childhood.
I just hope it does not end up like my dance lessons back in the time of my youth, when I failed so horribly that, after my second class, my dance instructor begged me to take refund and never show up again.My first Hapkido class was very useful as I now know five ways to free my hand should anyone grab my wrist ( on condition that they are very patient and work with me while I am attempting the move), and also, should anyone attempt to head butt me, I know how to stop them* but once again only if they are very patient and wait for me to find that special place on their neck where I am supposed to jab my finger.
Anyhow, that is it for this time, I hope at least someone enjoys my scratches,
Cheers to all,
Milenko

February Frazetta Practice

2011-02-11T20:41:00.001-08:00

Just grabbed a random one.
Again, this was a Saturday "morning" practice that took a couple of hours longer.
Over all about 4-5 hours, but it shows.
My sketch lines are still in, and the colors are rough and off.
Much like most else about it.
I like it at the moment, but I will probably hate it by tomorrow.
On another note, I realized I look fucking hideous.
I was shaving in the bathroom yesterday and I caught glimpse of back view of myself in the opposing mirror.
I never thought about people's backs (shoulder to waist) much nor did I ever notice anyone's back looking ugly, but seeing mine was a very depressing experience.
It is long and flabby and it looks like a pile of sandbags on top of each other.
And it's been haunting me ever since.
It is weird that it can take you 40 years to see the back view of yourself and realise it looks horrible. I never thought I was good looking or even ruggedly handsome, but rather believed that "pretty" gene has been avoiding my family for many generations, but I thought I was doing good and getting in shape.
but this throws everything off.
How can someone's back look so bad.
Anyway, it will take a lot of alcohol to wash the image out of my mind.

Well, that's it,here's sketch,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

What the hell did I do...

2011-01-22T23:25:00.000-08:00

Well, you see, it all started innocently.
I was on the phone, waiting to get through to the Salvation Army donation line, in order to donate some furniture I am not using any more for those flood victims that are all around me.
Finally, I got through to their customer service officer, only to find out they do not want my furniture or my big screen CRT TV (apparently they only accept donations of flat screen HD TV's and spiffy stuff they then sell in their stores) but, rather, want to put me through to another officer who can take my credit card details so they can get some of my money.But when I told them I am only sporadically employed nowadays and am only making enough to pay bills and feed my family's ever hungry mouths, they seemed to have lost any interest in my call.
They did arrange to send someone around towards the end of February to take a look at my furniture and decide if it is worthy of their collection, but stressed that, if there's anything wrong with it, they will not pick it up.
However, that's not the point to this story, merely a little rant for no particular reason other than thinking how these days beggars CAN be choosers.Back in the day when I arrived to Australia, I had paid 300 bucks for a fridge that was held together by rust, and 150 bucks for a VCR that ate half of my tapes. Eventually I had to keep the lid on top of it open and a screwdriver next to it so I can operate it.
Anyhow, point of the story is, that, while waiting, I did this little chicken scratch of a floating pirate ship and a bunch of circles and stick people, representing the crew:
I often do that and I have a bunch of A4 papers lying around loaded with crap sketches and ideas I never do anything about, but this particular one for some reason bugged me, so I ended up scanning it.
Then I went to do some other, more important stuff.
At some point I looked at it again and not being able to resist, I did another sketch pass on top of it, somewhat more detailed and meaningful:
Aaand, that was the beginning of my doom.
Because then, I thought, it will not take me long to clean this up, and it will make me happy.
And those were my last words.
For the next 3 days, any opportunity I got- I would get back to it, clean it up a little add another character or two, then start feeling guilty and go back to my other, proper work.
Finally yesterday and today, I could do nothing else.Unfortunately, the more I finished it, the worse it looked, composition was (and ended up being) non existent, my ADD would not let me color it properly so it ended up looking the way it does.
But I must admit, even though I feel like I failed, I still like it, because I enjoyed my time while doing it.
I would definitely not call it finished, but I am pretty sure it is as finished as I will ever get it.
Now, the final image is pretty big, over 10K pixel high (even the one I am trying to post here is pretty large).
Anyhow, I am not saying never again, but next time I will think twice about cleanin' sketches.

Cheers to all,
Milenko

IMAGE LINK

PS.
If you want to play a little game or two, here they go:

1 -Tell me which of the characters is the captain.
Hint 1- these particular pirates are also called Chi's crew, and the captain is often overlooked or not taken seriously .
There's other, visual hint to the captain's identity in the image.

2 - Can you tell El Phante's story of revenge ? :)

3- can you tell me which brush size I used for the entire image.

All the clues are in the image itself :)

First person to answer all three, will get a signed A1 print of the image*

*If I ever print any :)

Cheap Knock-Off

2011-01-07T08:22:00.001-08:00

Hehe.
Another day, I was sniffing around Frank Cho's message board.
That is something I often do, because guys hanging around there are quite my kind of people.
And there are massive threads loaded with hand picked hot chicks from all around the web, with something for everyone's taste, and with me being omnivorous when it comes to that kind of consumption, pretty much everything I find is to my taste :)
However, I was bored so I started checking other sections of the board, and I came across the info about some gallery in Chicago putting up a Frazetta tribute exhibition.
I quickly rushed to submit my crappy, long ago drawn, death dealer tribute, but unfortunately I was more than two weeks late so I got bumped.
Which is fair enough, particularly since a lot of work already submitted was pooping on every pixel of my piece, so by rejecting my late submission, people over there did me a huge favor.
However, it got me looking at late Frank's gorgeous work again, and I decided to do a Frazetta tribute once a month from now on.
I wanted it to be Frazetta piece, but drawn by Milenko with all of my deformations, quirks and stupid jokes that no one cares about.
So this is a January piece of Frazetta, done by Milenko.
I started sketching it at about 11 PM tonight, and am posting it here now at 2.30 the same night, which means it took me about 3. 5 hours to do, but if I cut out all the time I've spent smoking, and about 45 minutes I've spent dancing to the ridiculous but addictive turbo folk songs from Sejo Kalac, an old country's king of glass breaking pub culture, it probably took me a bit over 2 hours to do it full steam.
Not that time matters at all.
I always find it silly how some people brag about drawing cool stuff fast.It does not matter in the end, as long as you drew something really cool, I do not give a shit if it took you five minutes or five days to get it done.
I am only pointing at the time I've spent on it so it does not get judged too harshly.

Anyhow,
Back to King Sejo,
apparently, he is coming to Australia to entertain the masses in diaspora, and I would not miss his performance for anything.
There will be drinking, dancing, broken glass everywhere as well as the opportunity to exchange kind words, kicks and punches with my fellow country men.
How could you miss such event?!
For your amusement, here's the link to one of the songs I am looking forward to hearing.
Who the belly dancing chick is, I have no idea, but watch to around 0:29 seconds of the video, that is when Sejo himself makes an appearance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYmGlBcxCmk&feature=related

I love that shit.

And here's the art :)

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Maxie And her Monster

2011-01-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

Wow, this is fast :)
Old post has not cooled off yet, and here I am already spamming with new work.
Well this one is about girl as well, but much different from the old ones.
I had this idea ( not that it has not been done before, and many many times) about a tomboy-ish rebellious little girl and a monster who, due to circumstances, ended up stuck with her.
The whole thing popped in my mind some weeks ago when I discovered that you can publish e-books without having to print anything on paper.
And one of the things I thought about was a short kids book- something I always wanted to do for my kids but somehow they managed to grow up before I managed to deliver :)
I did a few sketches, and since I had some time yesterday I did some more, then picked one and tried to clean it up and throw some colors at it.
The way colours turned up does not impress me but since it was just a sketch to kind of try and see if I can put any attitude/ personality into the characters I guess i can live with them.
So do not judge it too harshley, I am sure that if I continue fleshing it out, characters will get better defined and everything will come through a bit better altogether.
Anyhow, that's about it, Not much happening on the life side, just grinding through the full time projects that fill up my days now.
Cheers to all, and hope to post soon again,

Regards,

Milenko

Happy new one :)

2011-01-02T07:16:00.001-08:00

So here we are.
A new year.And today I turned 41.
What a fucking joy.

Well, at least I woke up, did not cough any suspiciously coloured stuff and amazingly, the whole day, nothing hurt!My kids genuinely surprised me with gifts I actually wanted, a bunch of people I like appeared some time later, wished me a happy birthday and presented me with a gifts of alcohol and perfume which I appreciated but was a little surprised about perfume since i do not use any of that stuff, but that might be a reason I got it.
We drank, ate some cakes laughed and eventually they left.
new years eve was fun as well, we went to some Swedish club, where a bunch of people from the old country organized a proper new years eve celebration.
it was everything you could ask for- we had out of tune band, a bunch of people wearing latest old season clothes from those factory discount stores and the keyboard player was stopping the music every five minutes asking people to close fucking balcony door as it was killing the air conditioner.
We sang, danced, consumed alcoholic beverages and at an appropriate time exchanged some punches and swore at each other.Ahh, good times.
I hit the booze early so the evening was incredibly fun. A good Samaritan sitting next to me managed to smuggle in a cooler box loaded with all kinds of goodies. So after some vodka someone bought for me early, he pulled out a bottle of good old maker's mark and made first of his two mistakes for that evening.
First mistake was that he offered me some, and second one, he put his cooler box next to my feet.After we polished a bottle of bourbon, I kept on stealing anything I could find in his box, and ended up drinking beer, wine and whatever else I could find.
My only regret is that I left the last bottle of mixer vodka in- it was his wife's and I was sane enough to know not to take it.New years is the time for the old country women to get into those one size-too-small dresses and high heels which are little bit too high for their comfort, and even though they dance and party all night like there's no tomorrow, they are sufficiently irritated by discomfort their clothes supply that they are prepared to bite anyone's head off for littlest of reasons, and missing vodka cruiser is more than enough reason to rip someone a new one.Anyhow, it was awesome, I was too drunk to participate in a half decent punch out that happened some time after new years, but I did not care.
I was wasted.
When we got home, I barfed, first time in 22 years.Anyhow, alcohol and dinner expulsion was not as much fun as was consuming it, but I could not complain, I had my fun.
Hangover was bearable, so all in all, I had a great couple of days.
Except that I am now officially 41.
But fuck it, at least the end is a little bit closer now :)
Well, today, after everyone left, I decided to spend my evening sketching some chicks, and I managed to do a few with various levels of success.
But At the end of it all, this was the first time in a long time I drew something for myself. And I enjoyed it.
I hope they are decent enough too.
Well, that's it,
Happy new year and the best wishes to everyone,

Until next time,
Cheers,

Milenko

Running late...

2010-12-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

Well, not much of a Christmas card person I am.
As for the Christmas itself, well, why not :)
Holidays are always good.
Well, a few people went through this here blog over the last year and I hope I shared at least a few half decent pieces with you all.
Some of it is a bit more testosterone driven that the rest, but such am I.
I can't help it, I just hope I did not send the wrong picture about myself and stuff.

Wish everyone the best of holidays and plenty of health and happiness in the new year.

This time around I came across a piece of gift art I did in the days gone for a while now, so that will be my post dressing this time.It is rough around the edges, color wrong ( to my defense, I am fucking color-blind), but it reminds me of some good old days so I share it here :)

Best wishes and

Cheers to all,

Milenko

December

2010-12-05T23:51:00.000-08:00

Well,
Really short post this time, just throwing in some really, really fast sketches I did while trying to clear my head for big tasks ahead :)
Mostly filth.
There's also another 2 character redesigns for Antonio and his Toonfighters and that is about it this time around.
Cheers to all,
Milenko

Fucking time

2010-11-16T04:41:00.000-08:00

It flies by too fast.

Working on a project from home is an entirely new experience and I am constantly amazed at how different life can be and how much joy one might find in such adventure.
My working day has shifted and now I start about 10-11 am and work through until midnight and then spend hour or 2 in front of TV winding down and relaxing.
It is awesome.
However it is not without its dangers.
Another night I was lying on the couch in front of the TV trying to simultaneously watch a Sex shop infomercial and a documentary on another channel.
Sex Shop infomercial was trying to sell some sort of vaginal balls and remote operated dildos.
Vaginal balls are apparently great for a bladder control, a fact reinforced by a number of women all claiming that since they have been inserting three string connected balls into their thingies, they stopped wetting their pants- a fact not missed by me as I have made a mental note that, if I ever start wetting my pants I will give those balls a go. Still beats adult diapers.
In regards to the remote operated dildo, it was too prancy and festive, with shiny lights going off and doing some sort of a hula dance on a counter top as they were displaying its capabilities to the potential customers. In regards to its size I felt comfortable and reassured, but I am not convinced my penis can do all those moves, like swirl around, buzz and light itself from the inside.Eh. Well, second program I was watching at the same time was a documentary about this private agency in Rio De Janeiro and a bunch of girl detectives who were hired to prove that some businessman's son and heir was a coke addict.
That did not take them fucking long. As soon as one of the girls hit on him, he took her in his penthouse and did like five lines of coke in one go right in front of her camera. I lost interest after that, but the girls kept on getting together with him, because, I presume, they needed more evidence- just because someone pulls half a kilo bag of cocaine from their pocket and snorts half of it in one go, does not necessarily mean he's an addict.
But that is not the point to my story.While watching those shows, with the rest of my family deep asleep, I felt an itch in my left ear.
It was not that bad, but I was bored and I decided to get me some cotton swabs and take care of it.
However, my wife has this horrible habit of hiding stuff around the house from me, including my underwear and socks.
I looked at all the usual spaces but I could not find the fucking swabs, I would not dare to wake up my wife to ask, so I decided to improvise.
Much like MacGyver, I got me some paper and some cotton balls I have found on my swab hunt.
I rolled paper into a toothpick shape and rolled a piece of cotton on its end. Satisfied with my improvisation skills, I proceeded to pick my ear scratching the itch in the process.However, things got wrong.
When I pulled the paper pick out of my ear (which by the way lacked structural strength necessary to perform the intended job) little cotton ball was nowhere to be seen.
Long story short, many unsuccessful attempts to get it out of my ear later, I got enough balls to wake up my wife and asked her to get the little bastard out of my ear. In her half awake state, she decided that the best tool for the job would be a pair of tweezers she uses to pluck her eyebrows or whatever else.
Well, five minutes later little fuckers proved what they are good for. She managed to pluck all the fucking hair out of my ear, but the cotton ball remained elusive.
Then she used a "H" word. She said I should go to the Hospital to get it removed, as it could be dangerous to wait until the morning.That is when I started to freak out. Thought of hospital made me break at least three sweats, as it brought the memories of my last time there ( also with an ear problem, but not related to a cotton swab).
Anyhow, Shortening story again, I went to the bathroom, found one of those little brush toothpicks made to brush between your teeth, shoved it in my ear and managed to hook and pull the little cotton ball out.
Fuck, that was a relief!
Well, this story went for too long, moral here being that if you have a bladder leakage, you can fix it with a set of vaginal balls.I guess.
And now the drawing for this time.
It is a birthday card commission, for the time invested, it turned out OK I guess.
Well, cheers to all until the next time,

Regards,

Milenko

Tying up loose ends

2010-10-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

Lots of scrap work I found lying around.
Just dumping it all here so I can move on.
Not much else.
Have a good one,

Cheers,

MIlenko

Ah yes, first two are from the Guardians of Ga hoole game, one was a practice warmup and another was a color sketch which was eventually polished and used as a loading screen, I think.
I am not sure, because I left before the game was published.

Village of the Fairies

2010-10-25T03:43:00.001-07:00

And other creatures, big and small :)These are cutouts from a rough version of a big poster done as a pitch for the facebook game.
Colors are a bit off and everything is rough, but I still kind of like it.
Rant wise,
I have a few but one in particular is about this letter I have received today from a phone company.
Well, they have sent me a letter informing me they are going to increase fees and charges to my fucking phone line which I never use since everyone in the family (and everyone else I know) have mobile phones and they are much more convenient and, as it turns out, much cheaper to use than the crappy land-line these fuckers are renting me.
Only reason I still keep My home phone is because my internet is delivered through the line.
Yet somehow they manage to dig out over 300 land line phone calls allegedly made from my phone every month and neatly invoice me for it all.
To make me even more pissed off second part of their letter is a sales pitch flogging their other crappy services delivered through their stupid wires such as movies (the ones that no one gives shit about any more but you can watch them on demand!) and some other useless crap like browsing internet on your TV or whatever the fuck else that some douchebag cooked up in his office where he gets paid to come up with crap no one needs and sell it to poor for 1.99 per day or week or whatever.So, point of the exercise, they want more money for already existing crap service and also want to sell me more crap services to the point where my wallet becomes their bitch.
Not that my wallet would make a good bitch to anyone as it is worn out, ugly and the only cash it holds is a single US dollar I stole from a stripper over in LA back in '08...
Anyhow,
That's all for this time,
Cheers,

Milenko

Another one of those ones

2010-10-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

I did have fun painting this, but it did not turn out half as good as I thought it would.
But hey, I have something to post and that's a good thing. Well, I guess it is.
Next time I will try something a bit different and to put more effort in it as well.

Nothing much happening otherwise, I still like my work situation with relaxed office atmosphere where clothes, grooming and showers are optional .
I can even have a picture of a naked lady as my wallpaper with next to no complaint from HR department (my wife).
This is the best time of my life!
Anyhow,

Cheers to all,
Milenko

One of those nights...

2010-10-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

...When you're drunk and think that taking a sexy photo is a good idea.
Or when you are moderatly drunk and think that using one of those photos as a reference is even better idea... :)
Well, I've been doing a lot of nit-picky asset placement, so I felt like taking a short break, and I found a fuzzy photo and decided to do a quick speedwhatever. It only took an hour, but that is never legitimate excuse.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Watch me go !

2010-10-17T07:23:00.001-07:00

Well, I'll be darned!
I wrote this cool post about what I am posting here, and then went on bragging about my new shoes and east European love for Adidas track outfits, and then windows decides to crash my Firefox, I save nothing and I loose all of my wisdom!
So fuck it, it was stupid anyhow.
Here's some fan art parody stuff ( some might call it Flinstones Uncut :) hehe), some more character design for a friend, and bits and bobs of a pitch for a project I did some time ago for this bunch of cool guys, and they allowed me to share some of it.
So there you go.
Cheers to all,Milenko

Aw, crap!

2010-10-12T04:28:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I am sure guaranteed to get fucking far, keeping my updates coming like this.
It has been over a month, and I have no excuse for not posting sooner.
I parted with all the freelance work I was doing and the "Vessel" is a single focus of my attention.
It is coming along nicely, and I am really happy with the progress, also hoping to be in a position to show some of the work so far, but it is not yet to happen.
Other projects are done, one of them being a facebook game called Galactic Trader, now in soft beta, which means you can play it. And I can comfortably recommend it to anyone keen to give it a go. you can also check some of the work I did for it on 3 blokes official website:
GALACTIC TRADER
I am credited with the art direction, but I would describe my role more like Visual designer. I designed visual look of ships, planet surfaces and characters. I also did most of the textures, some of the models and renders for that one, but the real art direction, management, touching up and looking after the assets was done by Nick Frawley, an excellent guy all around, with incredible attention to detail and capacity to hold all the threads and look after every bit and bob of art at any particular time.
People who also contributed great deal were Toby Hewit, all around great young artist, Chris Vera, master 3D modeler, as well as my long time acquaintances Darren Roach and Pete Mullins :)
Also, the last game I worked on for the big studio, "Legend of the Guardians" (according to the Metacritic) is scoring better than the movie itself :)
I know that score of 66 is not putting it in the top of the charts, but it is far better than what studio did with their other projects recently. Anyhow, enough about work :)
My life is now as I always wanted it to be, I am much more mellow and am doing exactly what I always wanted. I just hope it all ends in a nice looking product I can be happy with.
When I am not working on the vessel, I am resting, exercising and helping my other poor friends who can not afford to get any paid work done.
One of those is a guy called Antonio, who is single handedly building a DS and an Iphone game called ToonfighterZ. Every month or so, I spare a couple of hours to do what I call the "fanart" of one of the characters from the game and then send it through for him to use and enjoy.
On my family front, I got this wobbly gym from a friend , it is a bit of a death trap (most likely because I assembled it poorly), but hey it was free, so I am using it.
So far it has not killed me, mostly due to my wife insisting to be near by when I exercise- to catch the flying, loose weight discs, odd popping screws and bits that came with it which I do not know how to use so I attached them to other bits that seemed to be the right fit. Most of the exercises I am doing I have invented myself- probably a reason why I have more muscles on one side of my body than the other (by more I mean three) but I have always been a rebel and I refuse to seek any advice from the people who actually know how to use that stuff.
My man-boobs are less soft on touch now, and even though the right one seems bigger than the left, I am still proud of my achievements.
Also, My abs, commonly referred to as the six pack ( more like five-pack in my case as the top left one refused to respond to the exercise) are now gently peeking through my soft belly cushion created by ten years worth of midnight 3 stacker sandwiches and other crap I used to load myself with.
Anyhow, I look better and feel better (in my world, asymmetrical chest and five abs is still better than nothing), but I am cautious as I know that some shit is always sneaking up on me from around the corner. Now to the art.
I am taking rest from the girly paintings, and the ones I do, I am saving for the book, which I will have to print this time around.
So here's a bunch of sketches and other stuff. It is all different but some of the ideas in there I would love to pursue further, if i get the time or the energy.
Wish you all the best, and hope my next post will be sooner than a month from now.

Cheers,

Milenko

Something in-between

2010-09-03T03:12:00.000-07:00

I am busy with work, and I still do my little sketches, but i did not have the time to scan any of them.
On home front, wife is coming back in about a week, and I started my final countdown.
There is a lot to do before she comes back, from cleaning the house to finding the kids and making sure their nails are clipped and they are in a presentable condition all around.
And I love my wife and am incredibly happy to see her come back.
And now about this post.
So this time around, here is some concepts I did at a workshop back in times when I was still an employee.The task was to design a futuristic soldier with special and unique strengths and/ or superpowers coming from a particular nation, Kind of like some other country's version of Captain America. I did not know any better and did not want to go with Captain Czechoslovakia or Major Italy so I decided to simply go wit a Zulu Warrior.
It is not a finished design, but a sketch taken as far as possible within the given time.
I did not mind this design, but after the exercise I kind of forgot about it.
So here it is.
Cheers to all,

Milenko

Well, now it seems to be rolling...

2010-08-24T19:13:00.001-07:00

Over the last couple of days, I have decided to take little breaks from the serious work I am doing and every hour or so stop and do a few little sketches, just a couple of minutes each, to break creative blocks and to get myself cheered up and motivated.
I will be posting them on and off, but do not expect much from them, they are no more than doodles, and depending on my stiffness, obviously some will be better than the others.
They may or may not relate to the other work I am doing, who cares.
On the home front, I think i got this single mother thing figured out to some extent, and my wifeless life is much easier now.
There's about three weeks left until my better half comes home. Time moves faster now and soon, my wait will be over.I am definitely looking forward to that.
I think I have memorized my kids' names and we started working as a team.
Well, not one of those top notch teams that go around winning stuff, more like one of those loosing ones that put up the fight before they give up.
I have learned a few things about my kids as well.Apparently, my older son has a girlfriend which kind of explains his permanent absence from the house, strange wristbands, silly figurines dangling off his mobile phone and his sudden interest in keeping fish tank in his room.It turns out that now he likes fish, because his girlfriend does and she told him he should like them too.I find it really amusing.
Except that the dribbling water pump from his room makes me wake up and go to pee a couple of times every night.
He also started reading books, which is amazing!If I was to compare him to the vampire, books used to be his equivalent of crosses and sunlight.
Last one I remember him reading before this "book spree" was "Ten Loopy Caterpillars" back in the primary school and he liked it so much, it took him 2 years to read.
I also discovered that my other kid is the clumsiest child I ever knew, with no interest in any sort of physical activity whatsoever.I have spent half an hour another day teaching him how to jump over the fence and had to introduce him to the childrens' playground at the age of 13.He is yet to master the monkey bars and do a single chin up, but I am optimistic and hopeful.
It is ironic that I have to spend as much time to teach him how to do all that mischievous stuff as my dad has spent trying to stop me from doing it.These are certainly different times from the ones I grew up in.
Anyhow, this is all for today, I have to go back to my work,Cheers to all,

Milenko

CPR

2010-08-16T06:12:00.001-07:00

Well. apparently it has been over a month.
But time sure flies by.
Well, at first it did, but then it kind of stopped.
You see, my wife went to the old country to visit her family.
I may have mentioned it in my previous post, but who knows, I do not read my own crap once i put it here, and my memory is so poor, I can not remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone what I wrote a month ago.
It is three weeks today since she flew off, and there's four more to go.
I miss her very much. And since she left I feel kind of lost.
Much like Robinson Crusoe on his deserted island.
I know there's some kids roaming the house but I do not see them much, they live in their own rooms, facebooking and whatnot, and every now and then one of them ( I think it is the younger one, whatever his name) comes to the living room, bushy and unkept, sticks his nose in the fridge or in the kitchen drawer, picks whatever food resembling article is still left around and scatters back to his cave. I think I saw another one too, digging through a laundry basket and assessing the state of discarded cloting, looking for something still wearable.
Through this hardship I came to realize that I am a horrible housewife and even worse mother.
And it hurts.
I cooked twice since my wife left, once it was some eggs and sausages, another time I tried to cook some steak. Eggs are best not to be mentioned, and kids' feedback on the steak was that it was the worst they ever had, which I kind of agree with, but they still had to eat it.
I think they went through half a bottle of barbecue sauce each, just to disguise it's original taste.
I work from home most of the time now, so I do not have to pay too much attention to my personal hygiene which is a good thing, because I don't.
I did some laundry about a week ago, spent about five minutes fiddling with the washing machine until it somehow realized that I am an idiot and thankfully turned itself on.
I forgot to empty it though, so clothes pickled inside for about 2 days, and then i remembered and took them out and onto the clothing line, but just now I have remembered that I never took them back into the house.
Well, I better cut this one short then, as I have some clothes to pick off the line.
So as a token of my apology for not posting this long, here's some random girl sketches and speedpaints I did here and there.
Some are nice, others not that much, but hey I still like them because they keep me sane.
As of now I will try to post every couple of days, as I have no excuse not to.
I will chuck in whatever is on the random papers I doodle on around the house, so it is not going to be much, but should be better than than nothing. At least I will feel more alive.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

C'mon Officer...

2010-06-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

Hah, and I am CPR-ing the blog again :)
This freelance thing is awesome, but my ass is starting to feel the burn. Literally.
I love it so much, I do not know when to stop working.
Also, gigs are coming through, so I am always busy doing paid work and I have very little time to do my own stuff- exactly the opposite of what I thought would happen.
However, soon, it should be calm waters, with "Vessel" being the main focus of my attention.
At the moment, at 3 Blokes Studios (an awesome little start-up establishment which reminds me of the good old days in the industry around here, when people made great games simply because they did not know any better :), we are wrapping a pretty damn fine looking (and playing) facebook game, and the guys are already shifting gears on to the the next one.
So if you like engaging into a bit of casual facebook entertainment check it out, and I will let you know what it is once it goes live :)
On a personal side of things, My wife is hitting the old country in a few weeks and I am already crapping my pants. She will be away for 7 weeks, and I know it is going to be tough without her.
I am trying to put on a brave face and not show her how much she will be missed, while at the same time stocking on the plastic bags and other disposable useful items which me and kids can use as clothes once we run out of the clean ones.
My wife keeps on explaining to me how to use the dishwasher and washing machine, but for some reason, each time she points at the darn things, my brain goes blank, and I go someplace else.
Also, she is trying to pass on simple cooking recepies as if I am going to cook while she is not here. I am good at making sandwiches, and a strong believer that everyone should stick to what they are good at.
In my life, I had a stab at cooking 3 times, and they resulted in: eating half of a melted plastic container together with my french toast without realizing until it was a hospital time, burning half of the kitchen and leaving it in that condition for 3 months in an attempt to fry half the chicken, and last but not least, burning my left hand in an attempt to prevent another kitchen fire by carrying a pot full of burning oil from the kitchen to the balcony (to the point where I still have massive scar all across it and where everyone thinks i have psoriasis because all the pigment got burnt from the skin).
I also already started wearing different socks on each feet to get used to it, and had crisis talks with my kids about best ways to survive the experience. But I wish safe trip and heaps of fun to my wife and I confess here and now that she is a glue holding this family together in a reasonably presentable and socially acceptable level.
I just hope we make it through while she is gone, and not get chased by the neighbors with pitchforks from the village and not end up on one of those current affair shows who make their mint out of showing people like us on TV.
Anyhow, all I had to spare were two hours this evening, and I did one of those really fast and fudgy speedpaints.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Announcement :)

2010-06-17T03:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it is official.
Strange Loop Games, a guerrilla indie game studio spanning across (at least) three continents, has signed a publishing deal for the "Vessel".
I have been helping John and Martin (together with a bunch of other great guys) for a while now, and have (as of now) taken on the role of visually designing (some, more brave, might even say art directing) the world and the characters for their great adventure :)
Even though my legs are shaking, I am incredibly excited about taking part in this adventure.
I did my first (of hopefully many) blog post over at the strange loop site
, so feel free to stop and have a look.

http://www.strangeloopgames.com/

I will be doing updates about the art progress and process over at their blog in the weeks and months to come, so see you there and may the lady luck be with all of us :)

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Unfortunate encounter :)

2010-05-20T05:04:00.000-07:00

:)
Not too many words this time.
A quick sketch as I had some time to spare.
I would really like to do more Fantasy stuff, this one came out a bit stiff and clonky.
I will play with a few more in the future, if the time permits.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Some time, finally!

2010-05-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

Note: This post is pretty long and boring, its all like me, me and me, so if you are just looking for some art to check, just scroll to the bottom of it and you will find my doodles :)

Cheers to you,

Milenko

And for those who decide to have a read,

Oh boy :)

This is awesome.
Freelancing life is buckets of fun, and I can not remember last time I enjoyed working this much.
It is a busy fare though, and I barely have any time to spare, that's why I did not post here in 3 weeks (yeah, sure!).
I did not expect it to be this much, but I should not complain.
Surely slim times will come but with the work and pennies I am saving, I should be ready for them.
My current, fully contracted money earning gig is with a small casual game company loaded with some cool people and sweet ideas.
Getting back into using flash after many years was a refreshing experience, I love that little piece of crap software so much.
It screws up and crashes, and is fiddly and moody, but for a period of time while it works as it should, it supplies chunky amounts of fun and satisfaction that I can not get enough of.
Art for casual games is honest and rewarding in different ways than the intricate designs that sometimes needed to be done for bigwig next gen stuff. They are not as detailed, but they are cool and force you to think about the limits and scale of stuff and heaps of other things that tickle your brain all day.
And when you get it right and zoom to an actual size of your asset, look at it, when you can read it well and it looks as it should, you get happy in your pants :)
And within 3 weeks there, I already designed all sorts of cool stuff :)
I single-handedly designed and produced final art for 3 (mini) games in less than a week :)
Instant gratification of seeing your art in the game as you are doing it is there.
I also became some sort of a satellite orbiting around a few groups of cool, colorful people with their little plans and projects, and am seriously looking forward to start working with them on their sweet dreams.
Another cool role I will be taking on is establishing a look and designing and creating assets for a seriously cool indie game coming out from a little studio that connects and collects talented individuals from various places world wide.
Most of us have worked together at various studios and on various projects in the past and now we have a chance to create something of our own, and make it as cool and as beautiful as we can.
It is getting bits of attention already and it is weird and wonderful, loaded with awesome tech and fresh ideas and I will be dressing it up with lots of help from a few other, very talented individuals.
Fingers crossed it all comes together great.I won't mention more about it, as I want to let the guys who started it all to make announcement themselves, and then I will point you towards it all :)
And possibly share some of the prelim concepts and other art I have created for them so far, either here or in the art section of their site, where I hope to start and keep an art developer blog together with other artists taking part in the project.
Another thing that happened to me, not necessarily deserving, is an interview for the BabeLab, run and operated by an awesome artist I knew nothing about until that time.
It was quite amazing but at the same time ridiculous experience all together :)
So there's a funny story about that:
He got in touch with me, I was too busy to check who he is, but since I rarely get contacted by anyone I felt a bit ego stroked so I decided to do him this "favor" of supplying my answers to his questions.
I was sitting on the questions for a while as I had all this other stuff going on, slowly dropping an answer or 2 in every now and then.
Eventually I finished it all, and sent it through and he got it up and running.
The next day, a friend of mine was on msn, like "Dude WTF, you're on the BabeLab. I on the other hand was like "how do you know about the BabeLab?", and he was like "I visit there all the time, do you even know who the guy running it is?" and I was like "yeah he's some dude who draws cute chicks, so what" and he was like "he's the guy who did concept work on "Darksiders"!
And he sent me the link. Then I checked the link and crapped my pants a little.
And then my friend was like "I have this bruise on my left leg I can not remember how I got it" and I was like, "yeah, it happens to me all the time, I am taking a fucking shower and I look at my thigh and there's a bruise there, and I have no idea how it got there. And sometimes I brush my teeth and one just falls out, or my little toe just starts feeling sore and i do not know why it is", and my he was like 'yeah, life sucks, doesn't it? " and I was like, "listen dude it is late I have to go to sleep, have a good one..." and he was like "ok, bye"........
Aaanyhow,
The artist who approached me was Paul Richards :)
And he is great and awesome, and so much more than I am.
Actually, instead of reading the rest of this crap, you should be checking his stuff right now.

Another aanyhow now,
After the interview, I felt like I should not post any more crap on my blog, as it is not good enough.
But then, I realized that most of the stuff I do is crap, so if I regulate myself that much, I will not have anything to post.
So in conclusion, I decided to continue posting crap.
And that is it for this time.
As I did not have much time to do anything decent, here's a few reference- less sketches of Smurfette I doodled today. I gave up on her many months ago, but today i found my old failed attempts and had some sketching fun on top of them :)

I will try to do better stuff soon.
Cheers to all,
Milenko

This is it.

2010-04-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

Hi there.
Big news, I guess is that I have quit my job.
It felt right, so I did it.
Original plan was to do it at the beginning of the year, but I kept on pushing it away and it took this long to happen.
First reason for not doing it sooner is that the project I was working on (which I can mention now since it has been announced) was not finished yet and it is my professional policy never to leave the project until it is done (I do not think people around me care if I do, nor do I think I am irreplaceable, it just sounds cool and professional when I say it like that).
The project was "Legend of the Guardians, Owls of Ga-Hoole" video game, which should follow the similarly named movie coming out in September.
Second reason for not doing it sooner was because I was desperately trying to grow me some balls so I can have enough courage to do it.
But fiddly things those guys are :)
Every often you check and they seem to grow a bit, but as soon as you start thinking about a life changing decision, they shrink to the size of peanuts and run as fast and as far up your abdomen as they can.
However, the day has come where there was nothing else to do but to write my resignation and hand it in.I turned forty and apart from the money that was making my life reasonably comfortable, there was nothing else. I have not been happy with the industry (and where I was in it) for a long time, in Brisbane in particular. When it comes to the big studios here, there's no original IP and even the licensed stuff seems to thin out.
What happened with the games? There's no dragons and aliens, spaceships, monsters, strong characters and epic quests. Cartooney stuff died on its arse as well. It is all about generic, contemporary worlds and generic characters with the shit Z-brushed out of them for the sake of doing it.(Do not get me wrong, I am aware there's still Blizzard and other guys doing cool games I would love to work on, but my chances of getting there are non existent). All that seemed to be left for me is designing some crates and oil barrels with occasional incidental character and a piece of UI thrown in the mix. It is no one's fault, that's what needs to be done and they paid me money to do it.
15 years ago I was designing cool stuff. I did not even know how to hold my pencil right and yet I was entrusted and trained well (thank you Mr Fil Barlow) and I designed away- Godzilla monsters and Starship trooper bugs, aliens and spaceships, and I had all the fun in the world.
And it has been down the drain ever since.
And I got bitter and old really fast.So instead of eating well and feeling miserable every day I decided to try And push myself back into it.
Being an employee is harder as you get older, particularly when you have no aspirations to climb the hierarchy but just want to draw and get better at it.
So, I decided to try and pay my bills with freelance work and use the time in between to work on my own stuff, do whatever- books, posters, t-shirts and see how I go.
My gut is telling me it is going to be a stormy sea, particularly since I have lost all my contacts from years ago. I was so worried about the IP clause in my game company contracts that I steered away from any freelance alltogether loosing touch with my old clients in the process. Another reason I gave up on it is that, by the time I came back from work, I would be so exhausted, I could not stomach doing more work.
Anyhow, long story short- I finish my employment this Friday and that is it.
I have some freelance lined up so I should be fine for the next couple of months, but beyond that I do not know what is going to happen, but fuck it- I am looking forward to finding out.
I did this sketch with my freedom in mind and it was a fun experience, but I know it is over colored and poorly laid out. I am working on a second one and a few more. I have a pile of rough sketches done on a train and some on a restaurant napkins which I intend to clean and touch up in the days to come.
So, I will try to update more often and keep you up to date with my adventures from the world of deadbeats.

Cheers to all,
Milenko

PPs. added another bit,
A quick sketch about a little boy who likes reading in the dark and a curious monster who likes looking at the pictures in the books.

Well, Happy Easter, everyone!

2010-04-03T04:04:00.001-07:00

And what a better way to commemorate Easter than with a vintage spoof of a Robin Hood!
Someone sent an original image around the office, as an official reference for something else we were supposed to do, but I could not stop myself from doing a quick paint.
My kitchen is finally finished too, all I have to do now is re-paint the walls and window frames, and I can finally go back to living my hermit life to the fullest!
Nothing else is new.
I hope everyone visiting has a happy Easter and stuff.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Introducing: Maxima Bombshell...

2010-03-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

From the Mind of Brad Daniels, former colleague and a comic enthusiast who would not quit.

It is one page teaser for the comic series which is probably never to be :)

It will be featured in his comic book thingy called "Groovy Gravy" which will be available for purchase at Supanova comic con here in Brisbane in a few weeks time.

Not much else to report,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

hah, I made it - a post in March!

2010-03-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yep.
Another speedy one. I am loosing patience faster and faster these days.
This one is based off a model I came across on Deviant Art I will get her name and give her a credit.
Deviant art is awesome, because there are a lot of talented photographers there and you can actually ask them to let you draw from their images.
So I am not sure if I did any justice to the girl, but at least I had fun and smoked about 25 percent less than usual while doing this.
On the kitchen front, the cogs are moving, I finally got the doors on all the cabinets, and, hopefully the rest will be finished in a matter of months!I do not think I ever posted a photo on the blog, but once this is finished, i will have to share it here :)
Anyhow,

Cheers to all,
Milenko

Sorry guys, I could not look at it any longer.
Had to fix and replace.
That's what happens when your reference material gets the better of you, and you end up hating yourself.
I know I can live with this one, so here it is:

The Race Against Time!

2010-02-27T04:23:00.000-08:00

Holy crap, I just realized that February is almost over and I have not posted for the whole month!
But I have a perfect excuse!
You see, last year, my wife has informed me how I decided it is the time to renovate our kitchen.
I can not recall ever deciding such thing and I am quite sure that, since getting all of the 52 inches of my Sony Bravia, I was very happy with the state of decay my house was in, as I had heaps of shiny pixels to distract me from a horrible, horrible reality.

But, my wife has much better memory than I and she seemed quite sure about my decision so I could do nothing else but follow it up.

As every hot blooded, macho culture raised man, I'd put my foot down and sternly informed my wife that we are going to do it on a fixed budget and that we do not need any bilngy stuff.
Just some plain, cheap kitchen.
I also set a budget and wowed to keep to it to a cent!
However, it is 2 months since I ripped the first cabinet from my old kitchen now, and my house still looks like a fucking construction site, contains half a ton of marble or some other fucking stone (which I hate by the way, but my wife assured me that I wanted it real bad at the time) and the guy making the kitchen is nowhere to be found.
Well, it is not entirely correct because, sometimes, he magically appears at my place just to add a piece of wood or 2 to the already existing, half finished contraption and then disappears again. He comes up to the house with his working truck, spends half an hour taking his tools out of the truck and into the house, screws a few panels at random places, removes some hinges or some other crap he previously installed, packs them in his tool box, takes another half an hour to load his gear back on the truck, informs us that he will be back in a "couple of days" and disappears to an unknown secretive location, most likely some sort of fortress of solitude.
Personally, I have not seen him since 14th of February but my wife informs me of some unexplained random sightings .
I tend to think that he is one of those mysterious creatures, like a yeti or a loch ness monster.
Only proof I have that he is still around is the fact that he sometimes answers his phone and promises a speedy return.
Apparently our kitchen doors have been painted at some painting place for the past month and he is also waiting to hear back from a supplier about some nails or screws or something.
That stuff apparently comes from China where they make it from some magical steel and can not be obtained anywhere else in the world.
Also I tend to believe that, at any give time there's only ten or less of those in existence anywhere on earth.
Another thing is that the kitchen project budget tripled in the meantime and I am eating cheap, home brand, tuna cans and free ketchup packs I steal from MacDonald's for lunch.

But all this was not the point of this story, nor excuse itself, I just got carried away.
Real reason is here:

In order to free the space for the new kitchen, I had to remove the fridge from it usual place and since I had to put it somewhere, I decided that the best place for it would be next to my computer workspace so I can have a bit of a break from work and drawing and grab a healthy snack or a slab of bacon, or whatever else I find inside.
Well, that decision was the beginning of my fall.
I plugged the fridge in the same extension cord that my computer and the rest of my equipment is plugged in and, down the line, it turned out to be a bit of a mistake.
What can go wrong, I thought- computer uses electricity, fridge uses electricity, t is like two puppies feeding off it's bitch mother's tit.
But apparently, each time the fridge compressor turns on, it sucks a lot of electricity in, shocking my PC in the process.
Soo eventually, one morning, 4 weeks ago, I woke up to a dead PC. Power supply was blown up and capacitors on my motherboard looked like the bloated buffalo carcasses massacred by the crazy Bil on the plains of America some centuries ago...
Ive spent first week in denial, each evening going back to the PC and pushing the on button hoping it will magically turn the computer on and I will browse the internet like I've never browsed it before.
But it was not to be. Damn thing was dead for good.
Next week was realization.
All my work and software was on that son of a bitch so I was crapping my pants trying to figure out how much work I have lost.
Finally I decided to get a new machine.
Thanks to my Kitchen Project blowout I have no money, but thanks to the lord, mankind nowadays has these so called credit cards, with their low, low interest rate of 19.99 percent per annum (whatever that means).
So I went and forked out 13 hundred bucks I do not have, and now, I am proudly typing this on my spiffy, brand new computor machine full of giga-bytes multi threads I5's and video rams. Finally, I have more usb ports than I have shit to plug into them!
Anyhow, Long story short, I have learned my lesson and will never repeat the same mistake again. Fridge is now safely plugged where it can not hurt- next to my Sony Bravia, so I can get some snacks'n'drinks while I am watching my favorite TV shows:)
I also finally got some time to draw a few bits, and here they are.
Ah yes, I also thought I had a testicular cancer, but it turns out I did not. I will tell all about that embarrassing adventure some other time.

Cheers to all,
Milenko

Frosty :)

2010-01-24T21:05:00.000-08:00

No talking this time, just another post. Not too happy with it, but at least it was fun.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Another day, another post::)

2010-01-19T03:25:00.000-08:00

Hehe, two days in a row. First time in a loong time.
Nothing to say today, just quick sketches to keep myself going.
They are not that good, but I need to get back to it. Will try to post more often from now :)

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Finally, a Fench Maid!

2010-01-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

I always wanted to do one of them but somehow never did.
Well I kind of did, in the days long gone, but those sketches are not good enough to share now.
And they are too filthy too, so they are guaranteed to taint my professional image and ruin my stellar career.
This one was surprisingly quick to do.
I was bored and the only thing on TV was that man who verses wild, and as entertaining as that show generally is I decided to fiddle with some sketches.
This one took just over an hour and it is a bit rough, but in my heart, it felt finished.
Actually, I was too uninspired to try and polish it more.
Well anyhow, maid it is!
On another note, a few days ago, I managed to stab myself in the eye with screwdriver. Funny thing that. The eye is fine as I managed to blink right on time but I had a big swelling on my eyelid.
Swelling is gone now.
Important life lession to all you kids trying to renovate your kitchens: bent nail can not be pulled out of a plank of wood with a screwdriver. You are supposed to use that forked side of the hammer, or the pliers. And when using the screwdriver, remember to point that flat metally side of it AWAY from the face!
Also, I am back to work. Today was my first day after five weeks of vacation and boy did it feel good?
Anyhow, enough blabber for the day,
here comes the maid.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Merry Everything!!

2010-01-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

And here I am.
Much like with every other appointment in my life, I am fashionably late with all the holiday's bling and stuff.
A lot is new.
I turned forty, entered the fifth decade of my life, and am still tap-dancing at the bottom of the imaginary staircase representing both my career and my skill level.
I took five weeks off work, half of it unpaid, hoping to recharge my batteries and somehow silence the voices blowing through my head telling me to do stuff I know I will regret soon after.
First week was meant to be a week vacation at a beach resort and it started off really well. First day was all the fun- pool, spa, gym fun and games. And Zelda! And then the weirdest thing happened. I woke up the next morning, and there was this huge, chicken egg sized lump on my left elbow. Dude, I almost shat my pants. I went to the doctor all freaked out, it was soft and hot and looked angry at me and at the world it had to appear in. And the doctor was not much help. He gave me some hard ass antibiotic and told me it is most likely Gout, whatever the fuck that is.
I went back to hotel, my vacation ruined, looked up Gout on the net and contemplated shitting my pants some more. Apparently it is a condition when your body pretty much gives up on you and the uric acid starts building up in your joints or something. Well, I went to see doctor 2 more times, was popping antibiotics and anti inflamatories like crazy and all in all, my vacation was a thousand dollar write off I do not want to talk about ever again! I came back to Brizzie went through my will once again, checked options for a shotgun purchase and went to see my local doctor. I showed him the lump, expressed my concerns about imminent death and had to sit through about 2 minutes of his uncontrollable laughter. Once he managed to stop giggling, he explained to me that it is just an irritated tissue, apparently between the elbow bone and the skin there is this thin layer of spongy tissue placed there by your body to protect your sharp elbow bone from impact and stuff. Well, it turns out I was playing Zelda all evening, unwittingly leaning on my elbow all that time and my elbow sponge decided it had enough and decided to go angry on me. Anyhow, long story short- three weeks later and my elbow almost looks normal again.
Then, there was my 19th wedding anniversary, Christmas, new year and my birthday one after the other, but the less I talk about it the better.
Lesson learnt here: never have expectations. That is the best way to get disappointed.

Well, that is all.
There's much bigger news in the pipes, but let's leave it for some other time. All in all, it is all good.

I hope everyone had great holidays and wish you all all the best in the new year!

Kind regards,

Milenko

PS- the art is lame. I kindof did this quick sketch of this retro girl and then decided to turn it into a bit of holiday theme, so I added some snow in BG and stuff. it sucks, but I will do better next time, I hope.

Another one

2009-11-26T04:04:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to say.
This is quick sketch I did tonight, no particular reason, and pretty generic.
I am amazed at the fact that I actually do bits almost every day, and regardless of the quality, I think it is a positive sign.
I hope I pick up, because this is fun.

Cheers to all,

Milenko
PS, It just felt as this is not enough art to justify a post, so I am adding a quick Captain America Parody sketch I did at lunchtime today

Time waster

2009-11-23T06:32:00.000-08:00

No rant this time.
Just a quick paint.
It is one of those that start enthusiastically, but end up quite bad.
It was inspired by that old story about simple little rose opening woman's heart.
Rose, off course, being a metaphor for diamonds, cars expensive jewelry, cash gifts, hours of begging, making a tool of oneself etc

Eh, the memories...

Well,
I hope the art is not too disappointing and some of you will still come back for more, once my skill returns in any shape or form.

Cheers,

Milenko

Coming of Age

2009-11-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

Hehe.
Reading my previous rumbling, I have realized that to some people it could be somewhat offensive.
Since some of those people might be people I respect and like very much I would like to apologize if I may have offended them. If I only could, I would remove every word but it is not to be.
I also realized that some people might take seriously what I say, even though it is said with that east European, Borat-esque accent everyone loves and laughs at. Even people at my work often mock my way of words. And we all laugh, and I keep on swallowing the rage and making black lists at home for that special moment which may never come.
Ah, if you could only hear me in person.
Anyhow, please, NevER take me seriously on this here forum, or even in life.
*Excluded is the situation when I may start clutching my chest and, through my -quickly turning blue- lips, using the last ounces of my strength, start whispering those very important words:" Please.. someone call the ambulance..."
Then, please, do not laugh and do not repeat my words with that thick accent, just call the fucking Ambulance as I might be having a heart attack!
And now to the title of my post.
My son had his 18th birthday about a month ago (fuck, I am old!), got his provisional driver's license, and tomorrow it is his graduation, all night party.
it would be all sweet, and not much to do with me, if he did not come to me tonight at 11 pm and ask me to give him a haircut.
Many years ago I have purchased some cheap clippers and in a mix of unfulfilled childhood dreams of becoming a village barber and my tight ass penny pinching personality, started giving my children haircuts.
Many years and many failed attempts later, I am still as bad at cutting hair as I was that first time when I sat my child on a chair in the bathroom.
Anyway.
Long story short- he is not talking to me right now, and a wise advice to you all: bald patch can not be fixed by trying to disguise it as a cool, star shaped head ornament nor can it be offset by trying to do a similar, poorly judged and a few centimeters offset bald patch on the other side of the head.
But, the hair will grow, harsh words will be forgotten and all will be as it was before :)

And now the art. I did these 2 tonight, even though I was supposed to do something else (sorry Antonio, My friend).
One of them I like, the other I hate. Guess which is which.

Cheers to you all,

Milenko

First post in November

2009-11-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

And they Call it "Mo-vember" A month in which men grow mustache to raise awareness of prostate cancer.
"Raising awareness" is this awesome thing people do when they feel there's problem they can not do anything about. They prance arround and look silly for a period of time and then they say to themselves: I did a great job, everyone is aware now!
Nothing is fixed, nothing is better, but everyone is aware!
And it is the first fucking thing that comes to my mind when I see upper lip facial hair on some dude: fuck, there's this part of your body you can get cancer in. Much like most other parts of your body you can get cancer in.
And most guys choose to go with that handle bar mustache, unfortunately also commonly known as "cocksucker" mustache.
There's usually only 3 reasons for someone to grow such facial hair:
1- you are retired porn industry star
2-you like to suck on penis
3-you are really, really tough guy, so tough that no one dares to relate you to reason number 2

But come November, confusion ensues. Normal people start growing infamous facial hairdos.
You do not know what to think any more. You think there's either vintage porn convention in town, a gay festival is about to start, or the whole city got conquered by some biker gang.

I think it is just that people like to get silly, but are a bit shy about it. And then someone comes up with some awareness cause and everyone starts using it as an excuse to do what they always dreamed about but never dared to try (I mean growing mustache, not sucking on stuff).
The one awareness initiative I could consider joining is the one where people cut a hole in the crotch area of their pants and walk around with their left testicle exposed. It could be to raise awareness of boldness, or some sort of small, near extinct reptiles or female body hair, I do not care what awareness it is raising, as long as it involves testicle exposure, I am in.

Anyhow, I think I have overloaded on sugar. You see, We have this water cooler in the house, and it has a 15 liter bottle on top and we re-fill it every week. But no one remembered to do it today. I can not drink tap water, plumbing in our house is 25 years old and tap water smells like something crawled in the pipe and died.
And it is really hot today. So I found this old 2 liter bottle of Fanta in the fridge, with most of the bubbles long gone, and have drunk most of it, with the intention to finish the rest once I am done with this post. And it is making me feel weird.
Anyhow, before I offend someone, I am chucking in some lame rough and quick sketches, done mostly on the train and in breef breaks at work. I am working on some nicer stuff I hope to share soon.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

What's that? Another post!

2009-10-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

Rarely nowdays I get keen or inspired to sketch on my work breaks or on the train. Over the last few months, I found that train ride presents awesome opportunity to catch another hour of sleep in the morning and to inform myself about latest disasters, economic gloom and celebrity twat tweets from a free newspaper distributed to all on the evening ride. And I usually spend my lunch breaks drinking cheap cranberry juice and desperately scratching lottery tickets in a vain hope to get myself out of a financial hole I somehow got myself in. So far to no avail, but the sleeping hour does work.
Anyhow, today was different. I went over to the CG Hub as I often do, to get my daily feed of sweet art, and I saw an invitation to the drawing jam.
Now, I am aware of existance of drawing jams at various boards for over a decade now, but I never felt like taking a part in one of them. Not because I think they are beneath me but simply because I am lazy and can not commit to taking part in anything that has a deadline, as I always fail to meet it and end up in despair and depression.
But this time I read the title and I laughed and remembered the days when i used to draw this stuff to amuse myself.
I think that the topic was suggested by my distant friend ( I hope I can call him that) and the guy who inspired me to start drawing when I was a kid- Goran Delic.
Topic was "Noah's ark rejects", and it is related to all the possible species to whom Noah rejected place on his ark at the time of the flood.
When I read it, some door in my head opened and I picked a ballpoint pen and started doodling.
Results are rough and not fit for the jam, but I sure had more fun than in a loong time.
Anyhow, below are the sketches, the longest took about 15 minutes, not that it matters.
Tinted and shaded just a bit in PS.

And that is it for today,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Back again

2009-10-05T04:54:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am.
I was holding on these, in hope I ill do something better and won't have to share them, but due to the lack of motivation, this is all I have to offer.
Life is slowly sliding forward, I am still tired and so on.
I am getting old and I feel it big time. Decades of sleep deprivation are slowly catching up and I started going to bed before 1AM and spending most of my time watching tv series.
"Hung" was fun to watch, Curb your enthusiasm season 7 started, "Big Bang Theory" is always fun as was "Better off Ted" and so on. I recently discovered "War at Home" as well and that series was fun because it was true. Shame it was killed after 2 seasons.
And I am off to check that "Bored to death" this evening. Hope it is fun.
Another phenomenon for me is that whole UFC crap, it totally replaced wrestling but compared to WWe or whatever, it lacks characters. It is painful to watch two thugs trying to demolish each other by attempting to flip each others facial features inside out. I always feel sorry for the guy getting the pommeling, and can not stop myself from thinking about Roman empire and arena fights.
Another fun show is that "Man versus food" thing and I seriously think they should shoot some of the episodes in one of them looser countries where Adam Richman has to survive entire month on a roasted rat and two handfuls of semi-digested peanuts collected from elephant's dung, while being made to watch previous seasons of his show. That would be fun.
I wander if they tried to syndicate that show in Ethiopia I bet it would be a smashing hit.
Over there, one of those meals he eats per episode could feed entire village for weeks.
That show puts many things in perspective, and makes me feel better about myself, that's why I like it.
Anyhow, enough mumble,
here's some art:

Cheers to all who still visit,

Regards,

Milenk0

Back from wherever te fuck I was...

2009-09-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well here I am.
And it's been a loong time.
I blame lack of posts to chronic fatigue, being burnt out at work, my ability to catch every fucking flu floating around and a vivid family life happening to me lately.
So, there's no huge update, loaded with stuff I did while away from blogland but at least I am back and I hope to be more productive in the future.
Book wise I am screwed. I do not know where to start but I will try to get it worked out. One problem is the fact that Some of the stuff I wanted to print was done using photos as a reference, and I do not know what the copyright issues might arise from printing my sketches based on those.
I will try to find some way to work around it all and I am still digging through fucking hard drives and old unlabeled CDs to see what is there looking half decent and print worthy.
I also talked with Dr Alberto R :), who was ridiculously kind to offer his help. It was the most amazing option I could think of until we realized that we live on different continents and that having him get it done would be financially disastrous and could not work. And I apologize to you, Mr Ruiz, for not replying to your last e-mail, fucking life is moving too fast for me and, unless I reply to my e-mails instantly, I totally forget they ever happened. Hell I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I should try to get some help from one of those memory experts, but they do not come cheap.
Which opens another bag of trouble and worry.
I think something is wrong with me.
Today, we went for lunch with some friends. I woke up feeling pretty good and after much yelling and jumping around in a fit of rage, apparently offering much delightful entertainment to my wife and kids in the process, I managed to get the whole family in the car and head off to the restaurant being only 15minutes late in the end. (nowadays, my manly, "alpha male displays of anger" involving roaring on top of my lungs, jumping around and bulging my eyes at the members of the family while ripping my shirt in the process do not yield desired effect- all they do is entertain my family members who do not even try to hide their shit eating grins while I am flipping out)
My older son is getting his driver's license soon as well, so he tries to grab the driver's seat any chance he gets. So another fit of rage later, induced by his lack of ability to listen to my instructions, we finally arrived to the restaurant.
When we met with the friends first thing I was told is how I have massive black rings around my eyes. That freaked me out and I spent the rest of the day trying to determine whether they look any "blacker" than usual.
The answer is- I do not know. I should get it checked I guess.
For a long time now I had those, and all I was told so far that is that I run on adrenalin or something.
I really do not care at this point, but I still get concerned on occasion.
And this is a wrap-up to this post.
I should do more soon.
Here's Some token art now.
Thanks all for visiting once again,

Kind regards,

Milenko

How about a "Book of Milenko" ?

2009-07-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

Well, this post is all about that
.
The idea at the moment, is to go through the last 10 years of my work, sort it out somehow and then fork out some money and self publish a big fat book.
Ah yes, I intend to get at least about 30 percent of fresh, original content.
Mostly rough paintings and sketches.
Probably about 80 - 100 pages altogether and probably about 500 copies in total.
I intend to sell it over the net somehow.

Sooo,
I would like to do a little poll and see if any people visiting here would be interested in purchasing such item.
All I need is enough interest to cover at least a decent portion of my printing cost so I can do the book, so it is out and crossed off my list of things to do in life.

Personally, I would think twice about purchasing it myself, so I totally understand if there's no interest :)
I am serious.
Bah, I feel lame now, so I will leave it all here.
Also, I will keep this post on top for the next month or so, and any updates to the blog will be only art and added to this post.
And here now is some quickies of some old school sex symbols I did this evening, not much to look at but once again, at least I had no struggle painting them.

UPDATE:
Just added some ridiculously quick sketches, one in brushpen, another digital and an old abandoned drawing of that guy who wears underwear on top of his pants holding some girl who likes to dress like joker and the whole drawing is a joke.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Getting old sucks!

2009-06-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

At leas I hope it is "getting old" thing and not some fucked up disease.
I went to bed last night, tired and grateful that the time of rest has arrived, only to be woken up around 2 AM by weird strong pain in my left shoulder.
Long story short, I had to take a sick day at work, and my shoulder is still quite sore, but manageable.
All I could relate it to is moving some boxes in a garage on Sunday.
What the fuck happened to the days when I was unloading a truckload of cement bags all day long at my uncle's place for 50 bucks, smoking and drinking beer while doing it, partying whole night afterward and waking up the next morning cheerful and ready for new adventures.
Fuck, getting old sucks. And the office work does not do me any favors.
I am unfit as an unfit can be.
But anyhow, such is life.
This evening, I started feeling like shit so I sat down and did some art.
This time it's a vintage schoolgirl :)
I am still stiff and need to loosen up, so sorry if it is not much.

Anyhow, cheers to you all,
Regards,

Milenko

It keeps rolling...

2009-06-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

Short post, just some quick, 5-10 minute girly sketches :)

Will talk more next time,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

June, it's fucking freezing!

2009-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

It is funny how, back in the old country, I was able to cope with temperatures well below zero, but here I shake like a leaf at 7 degrees above.
I have a theory about it:
Growing up n the northern hemisphere, my body clock got tuned in a way that it expects low temperatures during northern winter (November-March) and hot days during summer (May-September).
So now, that I live down- under, it refuses to accept that it is the other way around, and since it expects it to be hot at this time of the year, it's making me freeze at ridiculously high 7 degrees Celsius .

Bah.

Here's bunch of sketches. I do not have much to say about them, but one of them I like more than the rest, feel free to guess which one :)

Cheers to all who still visit,

Regards,

Milenko

Second post in one month, again.

2009-05-31T03:48:00.000-07:00

Eh yes, wasn't that fast!
Weird month this one was. Days were dragging themselves and weeks would never end.
And when they do, weekends would just fly by and before you know it, it's fucking Monday again.
I am getting used to my new work place, mostly due to the guys I happened to be on the team with. They are funny bunch and for the first time in my career, I am not the weirdest person in the room. At least that's what I managed to convince myself.
I also ended up getting the flu, not sure if it is the oinky one, but it sure fucked me up.
Sounds I make when I cough do not resemble anything I have ever heard in my 39 summers on earth, and last night I woke up around 3 AM and heard myself wheeze, and it sounded like a bunch of bagpipes tied together and beaten with a shovel. there was almost some sort of weird melody to it.
I thought I will wake up sick as a dog but surprisingly, in the morning I was OK.
Anyhow, I hope I am getting better soon.
After many days of it sitting idle, today I powered up my Cintiq and did some sketching. I need to pick up my act as this is horrible and hard and I seem to have lost a bit of my skill.
But here's some sketches I did on the train and a few I did today.
Cheers to all who are still visiting,

Until the next time,
best wishes,

Milenko

How about that flu.

2009-05-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

Swine fly they called it, why not pig flu?
After all, people use the word "swine" more to describe someone's character flaw rather than to refer to the animal itself.
In my opinion, media went for it, so people would not instantly become pork produce haters.
And "swine" sounds ugly, fit for a germ causing pandemic. Media pandemic that is.
I remember reading somewhere that more people died from lighting strikes in one year than from both bird flu and swine flu combined.
But it sure makes billions for people selling hygiene products, flu vaccines and snake oil.
And freaked out people burning their money on these sure boost the economy.
So it is all good.
But fuck it, who cares.
On the other front, I am still tired as a dog, and in an artistic slump to boot.
Trying to draw something nice has become a chore.
I blame it to the large amounts of dead braincells finally reaching a critical mass after 15 years of sleep deprivation.
I can finally enjoy starring at one spot for 15 minutes and drooling with joy.
And here's some art.
Not much and not very good.
Let's all hope it gets better.

Cheers to you all,

Milenko

Heh

2009-04-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

Well here I am again, with a bunch of random sketches, all doodled on a rocking train.
They are done with different thoughts in my mind, and some were quickly colored to make them more digestible.
Or less digestible, I never know.
I have been doing some "more better" stuff, but I want to keep it under the wraps until I am happy with it and have it all done.
Also, I have a new friend. He can write good.
Name is James H.
He took my idea about the Orc Detective, and wrote a really nice script that I got excited about so I think I will be drawing me some comics soon :)
We decided to do short (5-10 panels) episodes as my poor attention span and other commitments would prevent me to do longer pieces, at least at the moment. I will let you know how it all went in the months to come.
On another note, that cake I have mentioned in my previous post was a success!
Except it was a painful struggle, heavily supervised by my lovely wife who kept on pointing out all the stuff I would do wrong, before I even got the chance to do it.
Apparently, you are supposed to beat egg-whites before you add the rest of ingredients to it. Also, you are supposed to beat egg yolks with a wooden spoon in a non metalic vessel over a pot with steaming water.
I kept on reading the recipe and screaming "What the hell!?" each time I would pick a spoon to add the next thing to the mix. The cooking scale was a lying bitch and I never knew that you can fit that much coconut into a 100 grams measure.
I've burnt myself three times while manhandling the oven and had several nervous breakdowns where I would flip out, scream at and try to pick fight with a particular kitchen utensil refusing to do my bidding at the time.
First act, separating egg whites from the yolks- a seemingly simple task caused me much grief. Yolks would break as I was trying to apply recently observed expertise from some cooking show: you knock the egg on the edge of the table, then as you gently pull it apart, it cracks across the middle and then you pour it from one half of the eggshell into the other over a pot, separating egg white from the yolk. Easy as you would think!
Well little fuckers refused to crack across the middle, exploding in my hand, and getting the egg everywhere.
Whole exercise ended up with me pouring all the egg insides into the pot, and then trying to scoop as much yolk out of it with the spoon as possible.
Also, I felt that I, as a cake eater, would know better than hundreds of women from the old country who perfected the recipe before me as to what amounts of ingredients should be combined into this product.
Lets just say that the only reason people eating it did not get instant diabetes is because their blood vessels got blocked with excessive amount of cholesterol (also delivered by the cake) thus preventing their blood stream to distribute sugary goodness to their cells and cause disease.
Let us never talk about it all again.
And lets not even mention the lamb roast that I tried to cook in order to fix the situation with.
Anyhow, this is enough whinging for one post,
Until the next time,

Kind regards to all,

Milenko

Here we go!

2009-04-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter everyone!
My Easter holidays started well, but then I got some cold and this morning I woke up with blocked nose and sore lungs.
It kind of sucked, but it went away so at least I am sort of OK for the time being. I am pretty sure it will come back soon but 'till then I will enjoy what I got.
I decided and vowed to make a cake following a recipe that my friend's wife has given me.
We went for a visit yesterday, and they offered us this awesome cake with coconut and walnuts and butter cream in between. And they only saved a little piece for each one of us, so I could not have any extra.
I always wanted to learn how to make a cake but never had the motivation nor the opportunity.
I took the recipe from them and decided that being close to forty, I should be able to maintain enough attention span to mix some stuff, bake it and fill it with some more stuff.
i will keep you up to date with that one.
And as is custom for Easter, here's an Easter image:

You might scratch your head and ask what does a thundercat named cheetara or something like that has to do with a son of god being betrayed by his pupil, crucified for our sins and then resurrecting himself three days later, raising up to heaven and sitting to the right of his heavenly father, with very little information being available about his wherabouts since.
(My guess is that he is still sitting there, possibly making lists of people currently breaking the comandments, practicing his sword fighting skills and working out war strategies for the time when armageddon comes and he has to lead heavenly armies and slay the evil).
I do not understand when or how he turned from a peacemaker who loved each and every being into a heavenly warlord getting ready to fight the hordes, but I understand that it is not for me to know or understand. My faith is enough.
I beleive that he has a perfectly god reasons and that all will be reveiled when the time comes, so I will beleive, sit and wait.
Well, going back to Cheetarah, it has to do as much with Easter as does a bunny distributing eggs to children.
So there you go.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Feeling better

2009-04-06T04:39:00.000-07:00

Just so you know.
And yes, even when I felt like shit around the time of the previous post, it was just my professional persona with whatever little artist is attached to it. But I was tired enough to write it like I did :)
In the meantime, I picked up a bit, spent time with my family and got to enjoy life a bit more.
I feel better now, but it does not show yet.
If this continue, I might be able to do something nice for a change.
I also started playing "Warhammer Age of Reckoning" with my kids, and boy is it fun!
I am squdgie herder and I am level 17 after like 40 hours of playing. I have no fucking idea what the hell am I doing in game at the best of times, but I just follow my kids and my friend Tomo around like some sort of fifth wheel and shoot whatever they attack with my mighty arrows.
My Squig fights better than I do.
I suck, yet it is still fun. I like the world and I like the gameplay and I hate those fucking forces of order, every time we go into something caller RVR scenario, I am just something they kill over and over again. My fighting technique consists of punching the TAB key like a madman, and then randomly hitting 1,2,3,4,5... each one of those keys does something, but sometimes it takes time.
But see, if I accidentally hit 6 (which I do often), it turns me into a giant squig, and then all my skills are gone and all I can do is headbutt stuff. But I can only headbutt if someone is close by, and those fucking order people keep on moving, so I can't do jack shit. I then desperatly grab for my mouse and try to click the icon to turn myself back into that little archer dude. And then some fucking dwarf comes from somewhere and chops me to bits like the fat chef chops some exotic vegetable in one of those cooking shows. Sometimes it is not even dwarf, it is chick in her underwear holding a sabre. Well that sucks, but I can kill giant spiders no worries, especially if they are few levels lower than me, and far enough so I kick their arse before they get to me.
Still, the whole experience ( regardless of how dislexic I am) is fun, for some weird reason.

Anyhow, I will talk more next time, I am off to watch "One Piece" with my kids and that should be fun.
Some more crap train sketches this time, and I hope to have something better next time.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Whatever little skill I had...

2009-03-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

Has left me.
I feel like shit still.
I have no energy to do anything. Just go to work, feel worthless, then crawl back home and do nothing.
I can't even force myself to do stuff.
Actually, I feel so low, I do not even care any more.
Only time I draw anything is on train, and those look like shit.
Here's few examples, please don't laugh.
Anyhow, I hope it all gets better,
Cheers,

Milenko

March is for new beginning :)

2009-03-09T05:09:00.000-07:00

Well what do you know, I have a job again.
I started last week, and even though it is different than what I was used to at the previous one, it is cosy and kind of feels more like one of those large European families than a corporate entity, and most importantly, I like it. Wheather they like me, I will find out soon I guess.
I am getting used to traveling by train again, so I got me a sketch book and have been trying to sketch on an hour long train trip. With not much success, as you will see it in the appendix to this rant.
Why I decided to go that way as opposed to freelancing at the moment?
Family needs.
Economic crisis.
And the fact that in first 3 weeks of my unemployment I managed to spend 5000.00 bucks on bills and other crap.
Seeing that money disappear from my account was a true wake up call. With my savings as they are at the moment, i would be flat broke in less than 3 months.
And my new employers have treated me really nice so far. All the way from the interview.
Anyhow, enough about that.
Fucking gland in my jaw is still pissing me off and I guess I will find out tomorrow what is the fucking deal with that, as I am seeing a doctor in the morning.
And yes, I got me one of those cintiq tablets at home.
That was a decent chunk of money too.
First impressions- I am pissed off with it, but I hope it passs.
if fucking Wacom people ever get to read this, I have a few questions for them:
-What the fuck is the point in calibrating that motherfucker, when it just does what it wants, calibrated or not. When you get close to the edge(top left corner) and any corner at all, tip just decides to take a walk away from your pen, so instead of getting to file-save, it opens the menu above, and once I even almost closed PS instead of saving.
- What's the fucking deal with the lag too? I hated tablet PC's because of it, and the Cintiq i used at work did not seem to have any of those issues, so why this one?
-And why did they replace nice glass surface which I enjoyed on my old one, with this stupid cheep feeling plastic.
But actually, it is not that bad. I still enjoy using it.

other than this, nothing else to report.
So here's some cheap scrap.
First peace is done with afore mentioned cintiq, and the ret is the train sketches.

Anyhow, have a good one all of you,

Cheers,

Milenko

Wow, second post in less than a week!

2009-02-26T00:49:00.000-08:00

Hah.
What a champ I am.
Well, on Tuesday the tooth came out. And with it, another tooth.
So now I have no more teeth on the upper left side. And the hole is so big that i could plant medium sized tree in it.
And my face is sore and I've lost 3 kilos in 3 days. So if it works that way, all I have to do is loose 3 more teeth and would reach my ideal weight which I never gave shit about.
But seriously. Left half of my face is sore, and a gland somewhere around my jaw got really pissed off at me. So swallowing now is a real pain in the ass. But funny thing is that, when you freak out, you start swallowing your own saliva like crazy.
And that does not help.
And I feel miserable.
To make me feel better, my wife went out and bought the best, tastiest peaches the world has ever seen. Only problem is I fear chewing, so I can only sit and watch her and the kids treat themselves to some tasty goodness. Even watching them munch on stuff makes me cringe in my current state.
First day, I was in a lot of pain and I did a bunch of crap sketches. First 2 images in the row.
Then, yesterday and today, I was digging through my pc and I found 2 images I really liked and wanted to do my silly paintings of them, so the following imge is that. Black and white. Unfortunately, i did not have much patience and could not keep my attention span, so I gave up on them pretty quickly. And they are doomed to remain like that- rough and unfinished, as I never go back and try to fix things.
The rest is some old crap from the days long gone, not much good I guess.
Anyhow, until the next time,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Unemployed and loving it!

2009-02-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

Well I thought it will be very productive period, but doing nothing is so cool, I had no time to do anything else.
I've worked for so long I forgot how it feels. Staying up 'till 3 AM, waking up at noon, dragging my arse around the house, hitting shopping malls and buying nothing, watching Dr Phil, it all rocks.
Another day I finally fulfilled my years long dream of neglecting my personal hygiene for several days, waking up at 11 AM on Tuesday morning, dragging my ass to the movies and watching one half price, then wandering mall corridors for the rest of the day.
But, as the life would have it, at least for Milenko, not all is good.
You see, a couple of years ago, I went for a visit to the old country and in the spur of the moment decided to get me some new teeth. Awesome idea, right?
Dental work over there is of a good quality and the price is a joke. So it sounded like a perfect time to get that smile I never dreamed of.
Back in the old country, in the days of long forgotten War of the 90's, somehow and somewhere, I lost my teeth. Well, most of them. It had something to do with poor diet and stress, my teeth would just decide it is time for us to part our ways and I would wake up in the morning, pull my toothbrush out and try to give them a rub, and they would just snap and fall out. Worst one was my number 3 in the top left side because when I went to the dentist at the time to take the root of it out he had run out of any anesthetic so he tried to pull it out cold turkey. Bastard tooth would not give so he had to put his foot next to my head and rip it out like a rusty nail. My head hurt for a moth afterward. So, ever since, people have told me that my smile had reminded them of a poor people's graveyard with my remaining teeth looking like worn down tombstones at various angles and stages of decay.
So it was obvious that I would go for some new ones once the opportunity presented itself. Well, problem was that I got them fitted 2 days before my flight back to Australia and never had any adjustments done.
Long story short, now my whole left side of the face is pissed off and I am nervous as hell.
Tomorrow, I will go and get me some good old tooth ripping, and hopefully the pain and irritation will be removed with the tooth itself.
Bah.
Anyhow, here's some sketches I did while doing nothing. They have been done in half asleep stage while laying on my recliner and some of them may or may not have been inspired by the famous characters of some videogames I was watchng my kids play.

On another note, I swear that my next post is only days away, as I seem to have started picking up on this sketching thingy.

Cheers to all who visit,

Regards,

Milenko

Going silly

2009-02-08T02:36:00.000-08:00

I have spent last few days, preparing myself for a life somewhat different from the one I grew used to over the past 12 years or so.
It will be interesting times, and I will see how I go.
Good thing is I am kind of prepared this time.
I want to start something of my own. Freelance, contract work, something less safe but more fun.
I am not sure I know where to start, but I will worry about that once I get me some rest.
Last few moths were no fun at all and I could not wish such time on anyone, not even on my enemy, if I had one.
Soo, one thing it might mean is that I will update this here blog more often, and with stuff more varied, as I will be spending more time idle at home, and probably doodle and sketch much more to compensate those 8-9 hours I've spent every day drawing for the man.
over the last few days, i have been amusing myself by trying to envision the world of Tolken's middle earth as it evolved into the equivalent of the 1950's here on earth, but with all the races still hanging around.
What follows is some rough sketches I did initially while thinking about it.
I suck at writing but I have some friends with the skill of the pen, and I might try to get some little scenario written and a little comic done. I hope I am not too clumsy to see it through and that I will have enough time to do it.
Anyhow, cheers to all,

Regards,

Milenko

Well, what have I learned here...

2009-01-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

A few things:
I should always admire the old masters, from a safe distance, and not try to emulate or imitate their stuff for a purpose of a cheap joke which, btw, did not even work.
I should not try to do a sketch of a masterpiece in less than 2 hours.
If I want to do a cartoon of something really cool, I should plan ahead, and not "do as I go" which is what I told myself before i started.
I should stay away from something as good as the original death dealer piece, which btw, hangs right in front of me as I type this, laughing at my impotence.

Anyhow,
Sorry MR Frank. You are the king and I bow to you.

And I am putting this here like a farmer who hangs a dead crow to warn and scare the other crows away.
And I will wander away asking myself why...

Cheers,

Milenko

2009 :(

2009-01-20T04:38:00.000-08:00

Remember, in my previous post, I've mentioned something about how 2008 sucked and how I hope 2009 will be better?
Well, fat chance.
Or, as I would sometimes say when stuck in traffic- cock and balls!
2009 has beaten all the crap from 2008 in just 20 days.
How about that.
Or maybe it did not, and I am just looking at it from the wrong perspective.
But when you are stuck in one spot, neck deep in crap, there's only perspective you can view it all from.
My only chance is that, in some miraculous way, crap turns into sugar or some other sort of valuable substance.
Anyhow.
Only one word I can say to all that (obviously followed bu an exclamation point):

Tits!

And cheers to you all,

kind regards,

Milenko

2009

2009-01-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

Man, am I glad 2008 is over.
What a crap year it was.
Anyhow, new one is here now, and I hope it gets better than the old one.
On another note, you may have noticed that my blog now has a cool pre-entry page telling you that I post pornography and filth of all kinds on this here place (and possibly eat baby whales for breakfast too).
First time I saw it myself, I felt hurt, and I felt misunderstood but then I thought about it a bit more and came to conclusion that it is better this way.
Because I am a bad boy now!
Considering that before I became a bad boy, I was a disgruntled lunatic, angry with the world around me and the way the life treats me, who was using his pathetic ESL literary skills to share his pains and misfortunes with the world, this new development must be a change for the better.
Due to this "maturity upgrade" my status goes from a spit dribbling mad-man who draws penises and semi naked girls (and possibly wets his own pants a couple times a day) to a hardcore, cool bad boy of the internet art world, right?
No, seriously, am I cool now or what?
I am OK with my blog being tagged as I now can say or draw whatever I want here.
But then, now that I got my label I intend to do and share nothing but illustrations for children and cartoons for tweens.
Anyway, let's move on.
I had 2 weeks worth of holidays which I wisely spent on sleeping and wiewing content I may or may not have downloaded off the internet and/or purchased in a DVD format (content may or may not have included various pornographic footages of various kinds of lewd acts depicting debaucheries and graphic portrayal of all kinds of intercourse between multiple consenting adults), but seriously, I was mostly re-watching the good old Larry sanders Shows.
I also purchased and watched a blue ray disc of Mad Max 2- Road Warrior.
Man did that movie aged poorly.
I had my birthday a few days ago and realized that, fuck, I am 39 years old.
And fuck, that's old!
I used to laugh at all those 39 years old douches, and was thinking how they looked like old farts and how I will never look like that.
So guess who's feeling really stupid right now.
Fortunately there are always those sixty year olds to poke fun at. Boy do they look ridiculous.
What a bunch of losers.
Well to move on, here's some art.
First is a Magazine cover I had to do really quickly for a friend in the old country, I did not ask why, but it should be a bit self explanatory. Posters say stuff like "you scum" "thieves" etc.
Second piece is an unfinished version of an event poster for a Brisbane comedy trio and their show "Youtube your own adventure".
Final version of the poster looks different.

Soo, that's all for this time,

Happy 2009 everyone,

Cheers,

Milenko

:(

2008-12-15T05:24:00.001-08:00

Tales from the old Country_partX

2008-11-21T03:14:00.000-08:00

A little sketch I did for a friend journalist, who's still in the old country.
Another ugly one.
It comments on a regional politicians' decision to cancel a social security payment amounting to $33 per month for children whose both parents are unemployed and who have no other income to support themselves.
What makes it disgusting is the fact that those same politicians receive ten times that amount every month as their "meal allowance" on top of all the wages, perks and benefits they have granted to their own little clique.
What an infuriating bunch of cock-heads and ass-hats*
But then, those have always been in a plentiful supply throughout the world.
Anyhow, The sketch found it's way to the old country, got printed on leaflets and got unleashed on an unsuspecting street wandering citizenship.
I hope that it at least annoys above mentioned ass-hats disguised as politicians, because I know it has no chance to awake their sense of shame or decency, the absence of which is a number one requirement to become a politician.
And next post will be naked ladies again, I promise :)
Cheers,

Milenko

*(this last one I borrowed from the dictionary of my friend LFW and promised to use it wisely, but I can tell you, I am finding perfect uses for it on a daily basis).

When in doubt, ask yourself...

2008-11-13T04:06:00.000-08:00

What would Ron Jeremy do?
Well, he would probably whoop out his decently sized piece of man-meat and, you know, do his bit to help put Mr Kleenex's kids through the college, do the Heimlich on the colonel...
Or, if there's some Eurotrash wench at hand, he would just enlist her services to the same end.
Until the payday arrives.
I'm pretty sure that was his solution for everything.
And a pretty good one at that, no doubt.

Well...
I just felt stupid, so I did this post.
It stopped being fun half way through, and I think it shows.
Soo, I am done with pornographic depictions of tugjobs for now, and will move on to the much safer side, doing girly drawings and other sketchy stuff.
I hope I did not scare too many people away with these posts, and I swear they were nowhere near as much fun as I thought they should be.
If I did scare some people away, I deeply regret it and wholeheartedly promise to do better in the future, and to stay the path.
I admit, I was a porn addict once, but I got on the wagon and I got it straight, but then again, it is a rocky wagon ride and every now and then a foot slips off, and then crap like this happens.

Cheers to anyone visiting,

Regards,

MIlenko

Filth in the system biig NSFW

2008-11-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

Apologies to the more prudish visitors of this here place (just in case someone actually still visits, but they are prude).
If there are such visitors, I would recommend they stay away from here for the next month or so.
I have a lot of pent up filth in my system, so some harsh words could be said here, and some rude images posted below the words.

So the final warning, if you are giddy either politically or pornographically, close that browser window right now.

Bah.
Talking about the way to destroy reputation, hey.
But, in order to do that, one should have some reputation to start with.

Aanyhow.
Anyhow, revised my post for the first time since I started this blog.
I read it today, and I felt offended by my own words.
Election circus will be over by the time I wake up anyhow, and we will have a new dude leading the world of free.
Good on him.
Anyhow, tonight I realized how much good and free stuff can be found in a trash container behind local woolworths, so guess all where will Milenko be shopping if he loses his job.

Thanks for visiting, and whoever I did not piss off with this post, welcome back for the next one.

Regards,

Milenko

Epic...

2008-10-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

...Boob grab from "Star Wars".
I saw it on one of those motivational posters and I thought it was fit for me to draw as I always wanted to do a SW tribute.
I did it reel quick, about an hour of work with my Wacom from the days loong gone.
It is funny. I have changed four of five computers since I bought this thing, it connects through a serial port and has a burn stain on the top left corner, but still does wanders.
Cintiq would be nice, but at this stage not only can I not afford a 3 grand piece of fancy next gen electronics but I can not afford a ballpoint pen.
But who cares it's only money and this here old girl still serves me well.
Anyhow, on another note, I thought that the last week was my last days on this here earth.
I felt dizzy as hell, my neck was stiff and sore, muscles in my face started cramping and my heart was beating like crazy.
Also my left collar bone looked bent, and since I noticed it I started freaking out like crazy.
I took a day off work on Friday, tried to sleep it off (which did not work) and finally packed my shit and went to see a doctor fearing the worst.
However, It seems that the collar bones are not symmetrical on most people anyhow, and mine is twisted due to the years of my cramped shitty posture when I draw or use a PC, and I was dizzy and had crumped muscles due to the fucking Tyroxin pills I've been taking because of the stupid Tyroid problem I had.
I stopped taking the bastards yesterday, instantly fet much better and I have been ok today.
They sent me to do a blood test so I should find out soon if that was the cause of the fuckup.
Anyhow, I feel better so it is all good.
Bah, I do not even know why I share this shit here.

Anyhow,

That's it for today,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Finally something to share!

2008-10-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

And not much.
I've been sick with some weird flu for 3 weeks, and my teeth have been killing me.
I was also busy at work and so on.
And what the fuck is wrong with the us economy.
I checked the market and found out that all of my supposedly fucking retirement money is gone.
Damn.
Anyhow, here's some quick sketches, both digital and the old fashioned ones.
I am surprised anyone still visits, considering that I have not updated for a million years.
That is so awesome!
Anyhow,

Cheers to you all,

Regards,

Milenko

Thinking out loud

2008-08-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Eh.
Once again.
As I was getting this stuff ready, I had this huge rant coming up about all these things that have been piling up in my head for a while now, but now I feel quite depleted so the ranting will not be happening. :(
Some of the things I will now never write about involved that huge Hardon particle collider(heh, I know it's Hadron, I just said hardon because I think that there was this small penised dude, who in order to compensate for his diminutive genitalia, instead of using the grab and pull procedure or a vacuum pump as any other pencildick, studied hard to become physicist or something, then he proceeded to build some retarded monstruosity to compensate for his cock department insufficiency. And a bunch of retarded governments and military agencies threw money at him and his small schlonged buddies hoping that by accident, while they are accelerating their poop to the speed of light in an underground-multi kilometer-vacumised-absolute zero cooled tunnel, they may come up with some fucked up weapon that could be used to bomb or scare the shit out of those fanatical rugheads or other islamic commie terrorist assholes.)
(Anyhow, I realize that it is politically incorrect to call those poor people "rugheds", but it is OK to level their cities with bombs and run everyone over with tanks and stuff. I was just trying to be sarcastic.)

Wow, It's coming back, so I guess a bit of a rant won't hurt.
Anyhoo,
Fuck you nuclear physicists!
May Einstein come up from his grave and fuck you all up your stupid arses.
Instead of risking to doom us all how about you go and try to invent some pill that cures some disease, or create a cookie that will either bring the peace to the world or at least taste really, really nice.
Or maybe feed the hungry with that money you spent on the Hardon or something.
Don't build tunnels for billions of dollars and then set shit off without any fucking idea what's going to happen.
Funny thing is that in principle I do not care, but it still pisses me off.
The most possible thing is that it will not work, and end up being the longest, most expensive septic tank in Europe.
bah.
Another thing, today I had a nice meal and decided to pour myself a glass of coke.
It took me two sips to realize that I poured coke in an ashtray that was sitting next to the empty glass and in no way resembles the glass itself.
Boy was I pissed off.
Anyhow.
Rage is gone now, and I hope no men in black or angry small genitalised physicists knock on my door for my above comments.
But on the other hand, it would be a nice break, because ever since those Jehovas Witnesses stopped stopping by I have no one to converse with.
Last one of those religious people knocking on my door was this old dude who stopped by to discuss (and I guess get me to assist him to find a solution) for that whole "creation vs evolution" blunder.
I was trying really hard to help him but I guess I bored him so much that he, eventually, really politely asked me if he could leave as it was getting late and his wife was waiting for him outside.

And now to the post!
Most of the work I share here today could barely be called sketches.
They are some sort of image shorthand I use when I am thinking about stuff, and at the time I did these, I was thinking about a story I would like to draw or write one day.
Most likely I never will, but hey, I can still have my dreams.
Anyhow, they are couple of minutes doodles, done on an old A2 sketchpad while sitting on my couch late at night with whatever writting device was near by at the moment.(they were total pain in the arse to scan, as my scanner is shitty A4 canon)
Putting them together and polishing them just to make them somewhat readable was pain in the arse as well. But I feel good for doing it.
They are bad visually, but having them here might motivate me to do more, and maybe pick up on writing.
Story they are trying to tell is about this fantasy world, tyrants who took it over and a band of missfits and outlaws trying to destroy the evil for all the wrong reasons.
Well.
That sounded quite clishe and generic.
But do I care? - No.
Last few are more like sketches, still really fast, computer coloured. And the last one is a paintover of an old sketch I found while shuffling some old stuff around. I think it was originally meant to be Heather Graham, but in the end, it loks like some chick on a bike.
Eh, so what. It's still good I guess.

Btw, I hope my rants do not scare anyone off, and if they do, sorry :(
I blame hormonal disbalance, poor upbringing and social skills and the lack of good stuff im my diet.

Anyhow,
Cheers to all,

Milenko

Boops

2008-08-11T06:03:00.000-07:00

Started fiddling with the idea of drawing Betty Boop.
I would like to say "I don't know why" but actually, there was this nice guy who asked me to, and I was bored today so I decided to have a stab at it...
I did not have a proper reference to look at, just a random small image I got off the net (I could not be bothered to look for more) and a few childhood memories, so I know it's heaps off model.
Actually, I would still like to do another, more decent take on her, because now I have some ideas about where would I like to go with it now.
But this is all I have atm. As I do more, I will keep on adding to this post (becoming a bit of a lazy custom of mine), as I find it pain in the arse to start a new post each time I have a scrappy sketch to share.
I will keep my rants and whinges (which are piling up btw) for my next post or some other time.
Cheers to all of you guys still visiting,

Regards,

Milenko

Slim pickings, but fun none the less...

2008-07-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

No words this time, just images :)

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Actually, now I feel compelled to add some words :
Check those retarded Google ads I have unwittingly allowed on my blog :)
They are fucking hilarious, and just what I needed to spice up things around here.
They are turning the blog into a joke I've always wanted it to be.
Amuse yourself, but please do not click :) and I will throw in some ideas for those fuckwits, so they have something to run on.
Genital blisters
Cock burn
Unpleasant feminine smell
Otorhinolaryngology
Nuclear fusion
Cosmetic enhancements
Penis enlargement
penis reduction
Nipple extensions
Constipation

One of those weeks...

2008-07-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Eh you know...

Beware of the Loong rant!

First, on Friday, after rearranging some furniture in our rumpus room, I got attacked by a gang of dust-mites.
Being allergic to little fuckers, I've been scratching myself ever since and now I am covered in scabs and little bites and my skin itches like hell.
To make things better, on Saturday I had to go to pick up my son from his little casual job at local K-mart. It was raining, and as is a custom in fucking Brisbane, every time there's a few drops of rain, every man, his dog and his dog's fleas take their fucking car out for a ride.
Parking lot was full so I had to drive all the way up onto the third level rooftop car park.
On my way down to the shops, being busy with scratching myself like crazy and cursing my life, I stepped on a fucking escalator, rather clumsily, both of my feet slipped from underneath me, and I fell. Real bad!
I cracked my right elbow against the corner of the fucker, and as is my style totally lost sense of reality.
What the fuck!
I remained laying there holding my elbow, trying to figure out if my arm was broken, and in general, dealing with huge amount of pain by cursing loudly while at the same time trying to scratch my itchy neck.
I looked behind, and there was a couple standing on a conveyor a few meters behind me, pretending they do not see me.
I realized they did not see me fall, so from their perspective I was some crazy fuck who decided to take a nap on the fucking escalator for no particular reason whatsoever.
( At the time I was unshaven, covered in sores, wearing a cap, hoodie, old cargo pants and sandals with my socks on- a typical dumpster explorer look, so I understand how they did not want to get involved)
There was a bunch of Asian people in a restaurant at the bottom of the stairs who saw my fall, but they were too full of respect for my dignity to offer any help or concern whatsoever.
At that point, I remembered the words of Greg Giraldo: how you know you are old when you fall in a public place and no one laughs, everyone just looks concerned.
Well at that moment I felt fucking old.
It took me all the way to the bottom of the escalator to get up, my right arm the sea of pain with little fucking dust mites biting me all over my body like crazy fuckers they are.
As I thought that my arm was broken, I looked for the mall security, thinking I will have to get the ambulance happening. I found one of them guarding the entrance to some newly open Asian restaurant, manning the velvet rope, told him of my plight, and then he called some other dude with mustache who took my details.
By that time, I figured that my arm is not broken, only badly bruised and cut, and my son showed up, so I decided to let it be and piss off home.
Thing is, My niece's husband has been working at the mall as a security guard, so soon enough the whole fucking family knew of my shameful incompetency to preform a bipedal motion at a public place. And him and his buddies had a laugh in the afternoon looking at the footage.
I hope he gets it to me one day. And I hope it looked as good as it hurt.
Then I went home, told my wife about my misfortune, and she had a nice laugh too.
Badly bruising myself was a small price to pay to see her happy and cheery.
I licked my wounds and went and got myself a haircut from some Lebanese dude who cut my hair in a less than a minute and charged me 20 bucks for the pleasure. Then I went home and being itchy as i was, shaved my beard of many years, freaking the whole family with the end result, because I looked as if half of my face was missing.
It's funny how the beard becomes part of your personality after you have it for a loong time.
Anyhow, I spent the rest of the weekend scratching myself, crying from pain from my injured elbow, and trying to get some extra work done as we had to get some last minute presentation images done for the project I am working on at the company I am working for.
Monday I went to work, still sore and itchy, And tried to squeeze 2 days worth of work in one day, while at the same time fighting with fucking Cintiq drivers who kept on resetting my wacom pen and stuffing all of my work and tryng to scratch my back with my free hand.
At the end of day I did it, with a help from my new colleague Rob M (link on the right) and pissed off home.
And then today, still fighting off little mites who proved resilient to three showers a day, tube of Bactrin and half a tube of some fucking steroid cream, I went to work only to find out that the boss overlord over in the La La land, did not like any of the images I did, and decided to hide them from any possible focus group who might have to see them.
I sucked in the tear, bit on my arse once again and said I am ok with it.
Then a fellow employee who recently came from Canada and started working with us stopped by my desk, saw me looking at "cafe sale" site and proceeded to tell me how he knows all of the really cool concept artists- those Ubisoft Canada master painters: Barontieri, Lacoste, Sparth and the rest of the gang and how awesome they all are.
With all the shit that happened to me by that point, I felt retarded.
He was telling the truth, all these guys share the same job description as I do, they produce these awesome landscape, character and creature concepts in a blink of an eye, and here I was, itchy, sore and unable to do two pieces of art looking decent enough to be shown to anyone.
Also, the knowledge that I will never be as good as those guys did not help.
So I felt like shit.
I felt like quitting and going to do some lumberjacking for the rest of my life.
(originally I wanted to say driving a bus for the rest of my life, but I know I would fail that too so I opted for the lumberjacking- how hard could it be to swing an axe?)
Anyhow, that's my week so far.
Above images are some shitty sketches I did tonight trying to cheer myself up, but all they did is made me feel worse.
I hope this shitty week, this shitty mood, pain in my elbow and these fucking little fuckers who use my body as their fucking holiday destination finally go away, so I cheer up a bit and get myself out of the mental slum I am in at the moment.

Thanks to all three of you who still visit this shitty place,

Kind regards,

Milenko

Playboy Grannies :)

2008-07-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

I was shuffling some files around another day, and found a whole bunch of old vintage playboy pinups.
A few of them still looked awesome, so I had a stab at drawing them.
While doing it, I realized that the end result was not that important, as I got heaps of fun and satisfaction just from sketching them in my sloppy style.
I tried to spend as little time as possible doing them since I did not want to repeat struggle and tediousness of getting stuff right from my previous attempts.
The end result is (quite) a bit rough around the edges, anatomically incorrect even with my shitty distorted way of representing pretty ladies and as I said before- sloppy, but I like them.
Anyhow, while drawing them, I thought about these ladies and where they are nowdays, and my rough estimate is that they would be in they late fifties if not older, hence the silly title.
Anyhow, I am too tired to continue, so here's the sketch.

Cheers to all who visit,

Milenko

June

2008-06-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

Anyhow, just to get this blog here moving :)
A lot of stuff happened.
My brother went back to the old country.
I feel sad and I miss having him around, but we've spent awesome three months together.
Tomorrow is a week since he left, and the house feels kindof empty without him around.
I hope to see him again some time soon too.
My uncle Bozo (pronounced Bozho) has departed this world on the same day my brother arrived back to the old country.
Hi lived happy 85 years. He was not the brightest of the lights, and all of his life he was living with my family, my mom and dad looking after him.
May he now rest in peace.
At work, a dear friend left the company and I am going to miss seeing him around and having those nice "us old school people" chats with him.
And I am also going to miss the ping pong sessions we had, which gave me a perfect excuse to curse on top of my lungs in the middle of my workplace without getting bitchslapped by HR for it.
People currently running the show at the company must be on top of their game if they could afford to push someone like him off the cliff. But such is the nature of the industry.
And I am getting too old to even whinge.
Anyhow, I will keep on catching up with him and we will just have to move our socializing and table tennis games to the outside of work events.
Euh, what else?
Ah yes, the "Speed Racer".
I went to see it on Friday, all geared up to laugh at it, and to take the piss out of those Wachowski dudes (or a dude and a chick, I am not sure if one of them ever got that sex change), but it was not to be.
It is rare nowadays for a movie to flick any subliminal switches in my head, I saw quite a few half arsed attempts at cinematography in the past months, but the speed racer had an awesome aftertaste. I can not quite put my finger on what was so good about it.( I rarely attempted to watch the original cartoons , and even when I did, I would depart half way through the episode to get myself a biscuit or something, only to wander away and never return to watch the rest of it). All I know is it was a nice movie, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, so good on ya you Wachowsky dudes.
Aaanyhow,
Trying to limit my ranting nowadays, it's best to bottle your frustration and rage deep inside, and spend the rest of my life trying to squash it like a bug, or if not, then at least let it all out at the appropriate time.
Departing now with a few recent sketches, and a promise to visit this here blog myself more often :)

Cheers to all the people still stopping by,

Kind regards,

Milenko

MaaaY...

2008-05-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

Another Post.
Slim pickings once again. but hey, the show must go on.
And the news from my life...
My brother is sure fun to have around. He has a couple of weeks of his visit left, and I already know I am going to miss him quite a bit once he departs.
Last time we truly spent some time together was when he was 14, so meeting him again at the age of 28 sure was fun. I realized we have heaps in common and he is truly a resourceful person.
Two things I've learned from him so far:
1- All the electrical equipment runs on this thing called blue smoke.
Proof of that is the fact that once the electrical equipment releases blue smoke, it stops functioning.
2- Should you choose to test the depth of a bucket filled with sulfuric acid by putting your bare hand in it, you will discover that, no matter how deep you push your arm in the bucket, you can not reach the bottom.

:)

He's really cool.

Anyhow, in regards to other stuff, I saw that game called GTA 4 and I have discovered that the main protagonist of the violence fest that it is is a fellow countryman named Niko Billic.
Fucking awesome.
All that war and all those lives lost are finally paying off!
Who could hope.
Now all the geeky kids who dream about stealing cars then fucking some whores and shooting them in the head afterwards, or even better- running them over with their vehicles, can do that while playing in the shoes of some thug from the old country.
Yes geek kids, go ahead do it.
Fuck yeah!
I wanted to see more gameplay but apparently my fancy neighbor's kids with their fancy color TV have issues with people standing on their front lawn and peeking through their window at 11 PM, so long story short, now I have a brand new restraining order and a federal police record.
It sucks when it happens for the third time in one month.
Anyhow.
That's all for today.
Ah, yes, I also discovered this mexican dude called Bazaldua or something, who does illustrations for this Mexican pornographic magazine called Chambeadoras, and I loved his work, so for my next post I want to try some of that style.
Hope it happens soon.

Cheers to you all,

Milenko

Woo-hoo, two posts in one month!

2008-04-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

Now, how cool is that?
Ha?
I have a lot to talk about, but it's 2 AM now, so I will just upload this here sketches.
If you expect something cool and sweet, you could and will get disappointed...
Ah well, I will update the post with more stuff tomorrow.
Cheers to you all and thanks for visiting,

Regards,

Milenko

Holy crap!

2008-04-15T07:09:00.001-07:00

it sure was a loong time.
Well, what can i do?
I have a perfect excuse- I forgot how to draw and I had to learn it from scratch again.
And I am not joking.
On the other side, My brother has arrived from the old place and I want to spend as much of whatever little time I have left from work to be with him and catch up on 13 years of stuff.
Having him around has been fun so far :)
Also, stuff at work is draining all the juice I can gather, so it's been tough this last month or so.
I also have spent a week in LA , due to some company sponsored research, and what an experience that was!
Well, not really.
Hollywood is kind of smallish, so I ended up fairly disappointed.
And the rest of LA is ridiculously big.
Dude.
Anyhow, I will talk about this and other stuff much more next time.
And here's a bunch of digital sketches based arround sme of the collected reference images of Monica Bellucci, which I may or may not have stolen from the message boards of Frank Cho, very boards I may or may not have been trolling for some years now.
Anyhow, I am not sure about getting the likeness, for all I cared she could have been anybody, I just liked poses and colours.
And I had fun.
All done in 2 evenings, a couple of hours each time.

Anyway,

Will talk here again soon,

Thanks for visiting,

Milenko

Laame!

2008-03-06T05:07:00.000-08:00

Bunch of sketches.
My shame.
Nowadays, I sketch so little, I have to resort to posting half arsed jubble which I scraped off the lunch napkins telephone notepads and toilet paper...
I also finished "Hero in the Shadows" and it was awesome!
it was also the last Gemmell's book I had to re-read.
Aaawesome!
Also, a funny story, or just half of one: I have this habit of putting stuff behind my ears. Usually it's cigarettes, pens and pencils stationary and stuff, but another day, I lost my mind so much that i tried to put a sandwich behind my fucking ear. I got mayonnaise all over my hair, but I could not be fucked to wash my hair again, so I just put the cap on and went to work.
At work, I made myself a cup of coffee, and proceeded to smoke my fucking Staedtler brush pen, one of very few I still have left. After I realised what I have done, I replaced pen with the cigarette, and all was sweet.
But then, half an hour later, i went to the toilet and freaked out when I saw that my lips were totally black. I did not realize that the cap on the pen fell of brfore I've put it in my mouth, so I was walking around the office like an idiot with black painted lips and no one said anything, I guess because my misery was bringing them joy, or because I looked as if I got sand in my vagina, and no one wanted to upset me further...
Aanyhow, that's it.
Apologies and promises of better work next time,

Cheers,
Milenko

Quickie

2008-02-22T05:23:00.000-08:00

This is a quick PS sketch (by quick I men about an hour and a half) based on a photo of a girl who calls herself Lacey.
I believe she's a fellow artist who's young and likes to take photos of herself.
I liked this one, there was something about the atmosphere in it when I saw it so I decided to have a stab at making it worse :)
And I succeeded, bringing more misery to my anyhow screwed up life.
As for the rest of my life, let's see...

My funds are totally depleted, because I wanted my younger brother from the old country to come and visit me and the rest of my family here,and, unfortunately, Australian immigration office had decided they do not trust me, being the filthy Bosnian- Australian rat that I am, and demanded I deposit $8000.00 as a security bond, which they will keep to themselves, should my brother try to make a quick buck here by cleaning toilets or mixing concrete or should he miss his plane home.
At first, I was angry, being treated as a second class citizen, a liar and a cheat, and even the attempts from some of my Aussie friends who tried to explain to me how such measures were necessary since my kind can not be trusted, could not cheer me up.
And then I thought about it a bit more and said "fuck it all!"
And fuck you all you cockheads who find it necessary to fucking explain to me why it is as it is and why it is justified action for the government to fuck me in the ass.
Anyhow I took another personal loan to get the money I needed for the deposit, being forced to take $1300.00 bucks worth of the "loan protection insurance" which was put on top of the amount of my loan so I pay interest on that amount as well, and now all is sweet and mellow in the land of Milenko.
Also, since financial burden and fucked up life full of mortgages and shitheads selling you crap you do not need is not enough to beat an idiot such as myself in submission, healthwise I felt like shit for the past few months so I went and saw a doctor, did blood tests and found out that fucking Hashimoto autoimune malfunction is banging my thyroid real good, and now I have to take fucking tyroxin to bring it back to some sort of normal level.
To top it up my body good cholesterol levels are shit, I have fucking chest pains and joints on my fingers are sore as hell and all that pisses me off.
And yet I live another day.
God , if such a being exists, must be pissing himself laughing, and I am his joke.
Whatever.
Anyhow, it will all pass and get better, or it won't. I do not give a fuck.
On a positive note,
Me, LF Webber and Lachlan C are having some sort of intimate art exhibition somewhere here in Brissie called "three tenners", as there is three of us and we are submitting 10 pieces of art each. We will be trying to flog the art and squeeze some buck out of it. In my case, I will charge at least a hundred bucks a piece. I decided to donate the money to the "Milenko's self preservation fund" meaning that I will try to hide it from my wife and kids and use it to purchase some goods and services which should help my tortured and malnourished body to regain some of it's strength and flexibility.
Also, my wife nowdays looks better than ever (at least to me), still loves me, and my son has got himself a girlfriend.
Awesome.
Anyhow, this has been a long rant and I feel like sleeping now, so...

Cheers to you all,

Regards,

Milenko

Ah , man, it's been soo long

2008-02-03T06:14:00.001-08:00

eh

I am glad this thing is still here :)
First of all, apologies to anyone still stopping by for not posting anything in a month or so.
Reasons are many.
It was a break, I turned 38, got depressed, got the whole lot of David Gemmell's books as a birthday gift from my lovely wife, and I just could not put them down, so instead of drawing, I spent all my spare time reading.
It was a wonderful experience, almost like going on a vacation in a place and time that never was, and observing the lives of some awesome characters.
Druss the axeman aka Deathwalker.
Waylander the assasin.
Lion of Macedon.
Jerusalem man.
These are only a few of the shady heroes that can teach you about honor and heroism, supported by hundreds of others.
David Gemmell, it is truly a shame you went away so soon.
May you rest in peace, and may you know that your words still bring me joy.

Anyhow.

I will say more when my mood gets better and I hope to update from now on on a weekly basis.
As for the work I share here, it is pretty lame, but all I scraped for this occasion.
A bit of a lifedrawing, some sketches, and not too great digital painting.
Ahh well it's only the beginning of 2008, and I hope that my skill gets better and I pick up the pace :)

Cheers to you all,

Milenko

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2007-12-21T18:35:00.001-08:00

Cheers and everything.
Kind regads,

Milenko

Once Upon a Planet

2007-12-16T04:46:00.000-08:00

I am pulling out this old stuff, as this is the project I would like to develop further.
Once I'm done with it, it's going to be an epic Sci-Fi saga about aliens, clones, fucked up humanity spiced up with some hope for the universe.
But more than anything, it's an excuse to draw weird things and have a blastfest with shitloads of explosions and fancy effects.
If there's any rich Hollywood producer out there who would like to hear more, he can keep on visiting this post, as I intend to update it with new stuff over the holidays.
Anyhow, cheers to all,

Milenko

oh, yes, I hit a bus with my car, spent all my money, so I am broke for Christmas- which, btw, is fucking awesome, and I have some weird rash that won't go away.
Also, never shovel around your house, no matter how much your wife insists. Weird discoveries ensue.

digital girls :)

2007-11-23T05:15:00.000-08:00

Bunch of crazy girls taking photos of themselves.
Thank you Internet.
Each one was a quick sketch straight in PS. (by quick, I mean about an hour per sketch)
From reference.
I wanted to see if I can do it.
At the moment, I've been feeling pretty shitty and this cheered me up a little.
I hope it cheers you too.
Thanks for visiting and hope to post again soon.

Kind regards,

Milenko

Evolutionary defect :)

2007-11-20T04:50:00.000-08:00

As the song said.
Being fucking colorblind artist sucks.
But I still had fun.

Not much else to report.

Cheers,

Milenko

Meet the Cucks

2007-11-13T04:39:00.000-08:00

Harry Cuck, suburban patriarch And his cheery middle class family.
Harry is a good husband and really kind father.
His wife Penelope is a housewife who dedicates her whole days to the charity work and helping others.
She spends a lot of time volunteering for the
"Friendly Universal Charities Knighthood To Help Eliminate Worldwide Instances of Failed Education"
And she gives selflessly, sometimes even bringing her work home. Harry is a very supportive husband.
Harry's little daughter Ginger, his pride and joy, is the most favorite cheerleader on the team, very popular with the jocks and cool black guys who often take her out on a group parties, and her company is in a high demand. Harry sometimes hears her jock friends saying how she "puts out a lot" and his heart swells with pride. His little girl sure puts out a lot- her heart and her soul, and lots and lots of hard work! And when she shows up at home in the morning after a party, her hair a mess and her make-up smudged all over, Harry knows she must have done a lot of singing and dancing to encourage and motivate those boys to win the next game.
Harry's son Robert is another success story, a cheery boy with a lot of friends who visit often, and spend hours together in Robert's room, listening to the "Frankie" and practicing their first kisses, so they can impress girls when the dating time comes...
Aaanyhow, that's the Cucks...
Cheers,

Milenko

PS, I know it's been a long time since the last post, but I am tired as a dog so fuck it, but I will try to post more often.

Tribute to an internet cutie...

2007-10-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

And by cutie, I meant a pornstar.
There's many others, but she proves that the quality never goes out of style.
Apparently there's softcore and even hardcore moving pictures of her all over the place, but i never felt compelled to search and find.
And this sketch does her no justice, but I can not be bothered to work on it more, or to try again.
It took an hour as it is, and I like it enough to share.

That's all for now,

Cheers,

Milenko

Epic & sometimes erotic adventures of Knight Marco

2007-10-21T01:49:00.000-07:00

Finally starting to tell some tales from the old country.
Knight Marco was an epic hero from the old folk tales, standing up to turks and defending the conquered population during the times of the Turkish empire.
Historically, I do not know much about him, except that he was a Turkish vassal and that he died in some battle fighting FOR the Turkish Empire.
Funny I said that, because I know even less about his epic fame, I think he drank half the wine, and gave second half to his loyal steed...
And he was picking all kinds of fights.
Also, I did no research about his outfit or any costumes from those times, but I will.
I'll also try to check some stories about him, it might help I guess.
I was heavily inspired and entertained by a little page that Ivan S (BogatistriC over on the left side in my links) did, that I kept on sketching over the past few days and I had heaps of fun.
Anyhow, not much to show, other than a first few quick sketches that convey the mood and characters.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Ah well, life goes on...

2007-10-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

That Wieringo stuff sucks!
44 y.o., healthy lifestyle, and then BANG! heart goes off.
And Luke was tellin' me that Denis Bodart took his web blog down to pay respect. His blog address is an ad for porn websites and other web junk now.
Sad.
Ah well.
I am 37 and yet to get even to where Mike was (both artistically and life wise).

Aaanyhow, on with this blogging business.
I came back from holidays and I can tell you:
Being broke sucks. Bills keep on coming, more than ever and there's no money in the bank.
But fuck that. I will just cut a few bits out of the budget and I will be fine.
Electricity and running water are overrated so they are the first to go.
I took no shower for 4 days, and they say I smell no worse than when I did not take shower for 2 days. So it's all good. I read in a book once that when you reach 14 days worth of smell, you can smell no worse from there on. Well it seems to be 2 days worth of smell for Milenko.
Fortunate thing is that I do not have to impress anyone with my immaculate grooming anyhow.
It is also a perfect excuse to stop my wife from yelling at me for not washing my feet.
As for the rest of the family smelling bad around me and pushing their smelly shirts in my face, the joke is on them- chronic rhinitis fucked my nose to the point where I can not smell anything any more. So, you see, not having money for proper medical care of my nasal cavity in the past is paying off as we speak.
Electricity is tricky, but I will work around that one somehow. I still need some of it so I can power the internets and get me some porn off it.
I might siphon some power off my neighbors, they seem like nice people.
Next was petrol, but since it went over a dollar per liter, I've been wandering the streets late at night with a screwdriver, a piece of hose and a plastic container anyhow, so that one will not burden my budget in any case.
And finally, in regards to spending money on clothes, I checked at work, and swimming trunks and soiled "wifebeater" do classify as a casual attire, so I am all set there, as I own two pairs of each....
Soo, it's all good.
On another fronts,
Zelda "Phantom Hourglass" is hitting Aussie shores in a week, so I got me a piece of hard wire and started fishing some notes from my kids' piggy banks. Little shits now have more money than I.
I saw some people playing "heavenly sword" and it looked sweet, a bit better than I thought it would. I wish I could see more of the game play, but it was not meant to be, as they asked me to leave their front lawn and stop peaking through their window. Bastards!
Since the government outlawed "possuming" I have nothing to do on the evenings any more.
Naughty dog's "Uncharted" also looks somehow better than before.
Also, my sons' birthday was 3 days ago and I got him nothing. I told him I am getting him something special, so now I have to fix and wrap my tablet PC and pass it on to the next generation. I hated that piece of crap anyhow. Never get an Acer tablet, they suck.
On the TV side of things, "Curb your enthusiasm" started it's 6th season, so there's at least something to watch.
Aanyhow, this post is too long already and I will cut it here, to continue at some point in the future. I do not want my guests here to freak out and to think that I am some kind of a weirdo.
Here's some sketches I've done over the last week. It's a slim picking, but hey even if I did have more, they would suck just as much, so I am sparing your eyes from looking at some more hideous art.

Cheers to you all,

Regards,

Milenko

MIKE WIERINGO DIED!!? WHAT THE FUCK!??

2007-09-26T03:53:00.000-07:00

Oh Man!
Shit.
I said it before, on many occasions, but it can not be stressed enough: LIFE SUCKS.

$ 20.000 later

2007-09-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back.
Holiday was fun.
I did some sketches and took some photos.
Meeting the family and friends was awesome experience and I truly enjoyed it.
We visited families, walked the old streets and even managed to spend a wek on a holiday within the holiday. It was sweet.
I went to Zagreb and met with Goran S., and he sure was an awesome host for a few hours we spent together.
On our way back, I spent some time with Ivan S. aka Rich Uncle and Sasha Arsenic. They were awesome too.
All in all, I spent some quality time with some quality people over there.
My brother was cool too. Hope to have him for a visit over here soon.
Anyhow, Now I am back and trying to get used to this thing called work, get over the jet lag and back to drawing again.
I am sorting through my sketches and here's a first few offerings, done on the beach and on the plane on my way back.
I am still sorting my memories and thoughts, and there's also heaps of stuff here to catch on.
So I will start bringing those up as they come clear to me.
To whoever was visiting here while I was away,
Thanks guys.

Cheers,

Milenko

The time has come...

2007-08-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

Vacation begins in 2 days.
I hope it will be fun.
I am trying to compose myself, and be cheery and positive :)
I should be back in 5-6 weeks, however, if I get something sketched, and if I get the access to the scanner or PC I might update in the meantime.
Parting image is an interesting one.
This is the character that most people seem to dislike.
They say he looks shifty.
I like him and would like to tell a story with him as a protagonist.
But, as is the case with the rest of my stories and projects, he will have to go on that "to do one day" pile which I started many years ago, hoping that my skills will develop sufficiently at some point in my life and that I will be able to tell all these stories.
My skill development is kind of taking its fucking time and things are not being helped by the fact that I am not getting any younger...
Which actually gave me the idea:
Once I am back from my vacation, I will (for the sake of documenting) post all my "to be done" projects on this here blog thingy one after the other.
Anyhow,
I wish you all all the best and talk to you again in 5-6 weeks if not sooner.

Kind regards,

MIlenko

Stuff...

2007-07-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

Eh, where to start...
Not much happened on the surface, but the time is flying fast, and my vacation trip is getting closer.
I have an extra family living with us and I have been sick.
I hope it was some fucking flu and not something more serious, but whatever it was, it sure scared the shit out of me, as some weirdness started happening within my body. I still have the aftershocks (I hope that's what they are)
I do not even know what I was scared of. Death maybe, but I am not sure I fear death. If it is anything like sleeping, I should definitely have fun being dead, once that fucker comes around.
Actually, I have very fond memories of the time before I was born. By fond, I mean none whatsoever. And that is great.
I think that when I am sick and I fear, I fear the most not being around my kids as they grow up and helping them get there and grab firm hold on life.
I usually do it by discouraging them and ignoring their achievements.
All I want them to do is be healthy and happy and grow up and become decent human beings. The rest will come.
I hate parents who brag about and talk their kids up, because by doing that they raise MY expectations of their kids.
If they say their kid is a math wiz, don't give me that two plus seven is nine. If they say their kid is an awesome artist, put your fucking money where your mouth is and don't pull out that crayon stick man shit.
All kids can do that, so there's nothing special about it.
If you want to prove to me that your kids are special, make sure they can walk through a Chinese wall, perform quadruple bypass or bend spoons or something, otherwise you're wasting my time.
If they make statue of liberty disappear and then re-appear a few minutes later, I will be impressed.
Fucking David Copperfield ruined my childhood.
Also, I hate parents who have a favorite kid. What's the fucking deal with that?
Screwing your kids mentally like that is not cool.
Aaanyhow, got carried away... sorry.
Another thing I fear is that, if I die, my wife will re-marry, and some hairy fuck will take over my house, roll in my bed, and wipe his arse with my favorite books.
That would piss me off.
Talking about the things that piss me off, here's one:
Pink.
"Dear mr President"
What the fuck!
Each morning and evening on my drive to work and back I am tortured by that fucking song. And Shardlow and Brad (guys from work I drive with every day) are taking the piss out of me because I flip out and start cursing each time I hear it.
Don't get me wrong, I am no big fan of Dubya, but
If you want to write a song about a president you do not like, do a bit of a fucking research.
She should have Googled his name and had a read for a few minutes, she would get better material.
The way it is, bloody song is stupid, it sounds like something written by pathetic, overly emotional 12 year old girl who wants to solve world's hunger in 2 days.
"let's pretend ...you're no better than me" that implies that he actually IS better, which is fucking stupid.
"How can you sleep when the rest of us cry" who the fuck cries? I don't. I also know many people, they don't cry. One couple I know does have a small child who cries, but I am not convinced Dubya is responsible.
"You don't know nothin' 'bout the hard work" well, neither does Pink. Getting hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few hours of work is not exactly where the most people fit.
The rest of the lines about gay daughter and first lady and stuff are crap as well.
Soo, I hope this one goes away quickly, and Pink goes back to getting the party started.
Let John Stewart take the piss out of the president. And Dixie chicks. They do it better.
Euh...
Well it's 2 Am and I got carried away, so here's art and I will continue about Shardlow, Brad and another family living with us some other time.
This time:
I did some silly Judge Dredd spoof, not sure if it's any good, as I was really tired while I was doing it. Did not use any reference, I did look at some Dredd comics last week though.
There's also a bunch of life drawing I did 2 weeks ago, all on that page were quick 2 and 3 minute poses, all of it done in 45 minutes.
The rest below is old stuff I felt like posting. Don't know why.
Aaanyhow,

Cheers to all,

Milenko

Silliness

2007-07-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

And so goes another week.
I had to do some commission work that turned ugly, I might be able to show it soon, just to embarrass myself.
I also had to help my son with his school project, that did not turn too well either.
And I did this sketch.
it's not much but I like it a bit.
Cheers to all,

Milenko

Evils of PornographY...

2007-07-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

Being exposed to that stuff is definitely not healthy, so boys and girls make sure you stay away from it's evil claws.
Well known fact is that it causes mental illness, and many affected loose their eyesight, grow an extra finger or get covered in festering sores.
Even worse cases have been documented in the recent history, involving but not limited to kids poking their eyes out with their genitals, getting permanent burn scars from their contact with evil materials and in less common cases, growing little vaginas all over their bodies...

World is fuckin' crazy, that's all I have to say.
Anyhow, on Saturday eve I was bored and was flipping through old folders on my old PC and I happened to have sketchbook handy.
One shitty PS job later, and I have some stuff to grant me another post on this blog thingy.

Cheers to you all

Milenko

Long time no see... :)And some girlie sketches update

2007-07-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been a while.
I have no excuse for not posting something, other than "I did not feel like it"...
We have some things at work called "sprints", three week bursts of work, and they are great, except they squeeze all the juice out of ya, so when I get home, I do not feel like doing much more than photosynthesizing.
I saw another season of Reno 911 and a few dodgy movies, and that's about all.
On Saturday I saw "Transformers".
Child in me liked some of it, and the adult hated the lot.
I thought designs were too complicated, and I liked trailer much more than I did the movie.
I did not get the ending at all, maybe it was reeealy stupid, in which case I do not regret not getting it.
I did like the bit at the end where the boy and the chick were making out on top of a "Bumble Bee" transformer, and my filthy mind almost saw bumblebee transforming into a giant dildo. If a chick that hot was making out on top of me, I would definitely transform into a giant dildo.
Also, Optimus Prime and the gang were perving all that time standing but a few meters away from the coupling couple. That was cool.
Aaanyhow.
Point of the exercise being, I ate the whole bucket of popcorn, and my lips were numb for two days from all the salt.
Other than that, I am getting ready for my trip to the old country, it's about month and a half away. In the end it turned into a family adventure, another one of those which I can not afford, but fuck it. As long as the bank is willing to loan me some cash, I am willing to take it.
At the end of my European adventures, I should also have a shiny new golden tooth, which I plan on inserting into my jaw as a momentum of my trip.
Try to get that one, debit collectors, once I come back and declare bankruptcy.
And as the repo man is scouting remains of my home, desperately trying to find anything of value to recover my debit, I will laugh at him with my brand new set of mouth jewelry.
Fuck you, repo man.
Aaanyhow, since all this doesn't make any sense to any of you, here's all the art I managed to slap together in about hour or 2 tonight.
I am well aware it's shit and no one will like it, but hey, this is my blog, and I can post any crap I want.

Anyhow, cheers to you all, and next time I promise something nice.

Cheers to all,

Milenko

One of those things...::NSFW::

2007-06-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate when it Happens to you :)

Cheers,

Milenko