WebDesign Israel

I've finally got a steady job in my field!!
I was just hired part-time by local company WebDesign Israel, and the first thing I had to do was revamp their logo:

Nice, innit?
Can be seen on their website here.

Drawn using:
Adobe Illustrator CS3

The All-Villain Baseball Team

I created this photo manipulation last April to accompany a humor article written for the-iss.com, consisting of the play-by-play announcement of a game being played by the All-Villain baseball team. I was fortunate enough to find a team with nice big "H"s on their uniforms to use as a base. Article here.
The team members shown are as follows: (Back row, l-r:) Attila the Hun (center field); Adolf Hitler (shortstop); Ivan the Terrible (pitcher); Pope Alexander VI, a.k.a. Rodrigo Borgia (manager); Josef Stalin (right field); Caligula (first base); (Front row, l-r:) Benito Mussolini (second base); Pol Pot (catcher); Saddam Hussein (third base); and Vlad the Impaler (left field).
Not shown: Genghis Khan and Admiral Tojo (coaches); Ted Bundy, Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Harold Shipman, Jeffrey Dahmer and Jack the Ripper (bench); Cesare Borgia (batboy); John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald and Rameses II (bullpen); Ayatollah Khomeini (closer); Mao Zedong and Idi Amin (owners); and Solobodan Milosevic (umpire).

Drawn using:
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

An extra helping of Rister & Rob cartoons

Drawn using:
Blue ballpoint pen
Red ballpoint pen

SONIC: Legacy

I'll be quite honest, I have no idea why I drew this. I mean, I've seen the posters for TRON: Legacy and I've read a few scans from the Sonic comics, but really, there's no earthly reason why I would connect them in my mind. Maybe it's the ring/disc similarity.
Anyway, poster! The characters turned out to be trickier than I'd originally envisioned; this was my first time drawing either of them, and as it turned out, Sonic and Sally are basically the same height, whereas on the poster this is based on, Olivia Wilde is about a full head shorter than Garrett Hedlund. This made it impossible to place them in the exact same positions as the original (chest to chest, or rather head to chest). I had drawn and scanned in both character separately, so I had to do some digital manipulation to get Sally in a position where she could be standing next to Sonic with her hand on his chest, while keeping their overlarge heads at a reasonable distance from each other.
In another first for me, I combined hand-drawn characters with a computer-created background. The grass was fun to paint (experimenting with brushes and so on), as were the smoke and clouds. Instead of directly replicating the original poster's background landscape--dark and detailed--I just placed them in a representation of a game level. Blue sky, green grass, random earth tower, glimpses of the palm tree and yellow flower (please don't hurt me if this sounds ridiculous; I've never played the games and my knowledge is based off a two-minute Google Images crawl), as well as a random green Chao.
Well, I had fun making this, and I hope you have fun looking at it!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Adobe Photoshop CS3

Today's jpost.com cartoon

Boy howdy, did I go to town on this one. Let's see: the ghost of Adolf Hitler as Emperor Palpatine, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his uranium rod-toting apprentice, the Samuel L. Jackson character (Mace Windu) referencing a line from a Samuel L. Jackson movie (Snakes on a Plane), Bashar Assad showing off his height, Saudi Yoda, and Ban Ki-Moon (note UN symbol on stomach) as the haplessly inept robot. Oh, and a punny title.
Yup, I'm good.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Parshat Shavua comic

This sample comic was made for a friend who was pitching a new Parshat Shavua (weekly Torah portion) sheet for kids, which sadly didn't make it off the ground.
The joke here is based on the line in Genesis 19:25 (and not 18:26, as noted at the bottom presumably due to a brain fart), dealing with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which reads, "And He overthrew (literally, "turned over") these towns..."

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Cartoon businesswoman

Initial character design for a project bid. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE

Today's J. Post cartoon, with predecessor

It's been particularly windy around here lately (as well as rainy), so I decided to toss in a neat little commentary about the state of the "peace talks".
This cartoon actually has a bit of a backstory to it, as those two blokes you see walking along actually first appeared in another (unpublished) "winter weather" cartoon I drew back in February, although then they were in the US:

Please note how the characters are identical down to the color of their clothes. Also, I think I went overboard with the wind effects in today's cartoon; the older one was much more restarined and better-looking.
UPDATE: Second cartoon reposted by conservative blog The E-Blast.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Black marker
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Sunny Roo

Kangaroo design drawn for merchandising project. Cancelled.
The legs are all sorts of messed up. Next time I draw a cartoon kangaroo, I'm doing it right.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

LynxBytes

Proposed logo for a computer-related website. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Today's J. Post cartoon

You may have heard about the Carmel Fire, Israel's worst forest fire ever. They finally extinguished it after four days, leaving over 12,000 acres of land totally burned.
This is my declaration of hope in the aftermath.
Note how everything but the plant (a vibrant green) is colored in shades of gray. As you may have guessed, this is deliberate. Symbolism, don'cherknow.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen

Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

SolarMan

Proposed character design for a company mascot. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE

A window cleaner

Figure of a man using a window cleaning pole, drawn for the logo of a water-fed pole window cleaning company. Project cancelled.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Adobe Photoshop CS3

Random character design

Someone wanted some kind of game mascot character thingamajig, with the Vault Boy from Fallout as a reference. This was an initial character design I came up with. The project was eventually cancelled.
You may or may not see more of this character in the future.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Helen Rhodeside Humor Section bookplate

I got commissioned to do this for a new section of humorous books in the library where I volunteer, dedicated to the memory of the head English librarian's mother, who died earlier this year.
I didn't do all of it, actually--the grayed-out parts were done by the librarian, who then asked me to add some humorous artwork around it. So I did.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Today's jpost.com cartoon

An old saw, set on the backdrop of Israel's "strategic" unilateral withdrawal from the northern part of the border town of Ghajar. Not pictured: UNIFIL peacekeepers. And yes, that's symbolic.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

CM adaptation - redesign

Last time, I told you about how I tried to showcase the CM members' traits in their initial designs, which were rejected; following that, I discovered that a couple of video adaptations had been made from their adventures. I decided to try and follow that as a guideline.
This was the result.

Seldom have I drawn something that depressed me so terribly. There was so little variation in how the boys looked, it absolutely killed me. Identical clothing. Monochromatic color scheme. Largely average heights and complexions. Every variation (hair color, footwear, etc.) was greeted with the relief usually reserved for police officers interrupting a mugging. About as much personality, in short, as a socket wrench.
I submitted this design--and they liked it... But that's not the final twist in the tale. I discovered that I would actually have to pay out of my own pocket to adapt the stories and publish, instead of the "parent" company chipping in. It didn't take much cogitation to decide the effort simply wouldn't be worth it; the whole shebang is now history, except for what you see before you now.
Roll credits!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

CM adaptation - initial design

This was my initial design for the protagonists in a popular Israeli audiocassette series about religious kid detectives, which for purposes of nondisclosure I shall refer to as "CM". I had decided to get a bit more proactive in my attempts to gain meaningful employment and approached the copyright holders with an offer to adapt the team's adventures into comic book format.
In this design I attempted to give expression to each team member's individual character traits, such as there were; it was rejected out of hand. Come back next time to see how the redesign turned out...

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen

Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Today's J. Post cartoon

Yet another "in the style of" cartoon, this one mimicking Denace the Menace (the American one, that is, not the British one). Although it was unconfirmed as of the time of drawing, Bibi Netanyahu has indeed crumbled in the face of international pressure (represented here by Barry Obama, Hillary Clinton and British FM Billy Hague) and agreed to renew the building freeze in the settlements, "this time" for "just" three months.
G-d I hate politicians.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blu 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Baby, it's cold inside!

I do not actually have an enormous, talking, artistically-inclined beaver for a roommate. If I did have one, though, this is the kind of conversation that would have transpired today:

Listen, folks, just because you all have chosen to wear extra layers--in black, no less!--in Israel in the summertime is no concern of mine, but could you at least try to think of other, dissimilarly attired worshippers when you set to the shul's AC to 10 degrees below freezing??

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE

Today's jpost.com cartoon

UNESCO has recently released a report showing they've swallowed the ming-bogglingly blatant lie of Rachel's Tomb being an Islamic mosque hook, line and sinker (in addition to adding legitimency to the prevarication that the Cave of the Matriarchs is a mosque as well--there is indeed a mosque at the site, but it was built upon the preexisting Jewish tomb). To put this in context, the first time any Muslim claimed the site was a mosque was only about 15 years ago.
The above gang of idiots is comprised of Mr. Magoo, Thomson and Thompson of Tintin fame, and Inspector Clouseau. The seeing-eye dog is not meant to deliberately resemble anything in particular but was inspired by the character Dogmatix from Asterix. Please note how they are colored flat and have no shadows, to emphasize their antecedents' cartoonish nature.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Black marker
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Shirt Design: Non-Profit Organization

This is the back picture for a shirt for a non-profit organization called Ma'alim Chiyuch (Raising a Smile), who go around cheering up sick people in hospitals, a noble cause if I ever heard one.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Shirt design: Hesder Class

This is the picture I drew for the back of a shirt of a Hesder class (the 52nd of the Orot Ya'akov yeshivah) for their third shiur. Several of my friends are in it, including the one I designed the Golani shirt for--he's also the one who got me this gig.
As you can see, the illustration consists of various wild animals making some noise, with some cypress trees in the background. (This is based on a quote from Reb Nachman of Breslov, which includes a phrase whose initials in Hebrew are the gimatriya of 52.)

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black fiber tip pen

Today's jpost.com cartoon

As electoral disaster looms for the Democrats, the increasingly--and belatedly--uneasy Barack Obama is about to learn the same painful lesson as King Canute: just because you're in power doesn't mean everything falls under your control.
UPDATE: Chronologically now the seventh cartoon reblogged by Daniel Dagan, over a year after seeing the light of day, in a wave-cartoons-themed post.
UPDATE 2: I guess Mr. Dagan liked it so much he used it twice--this time in a wave-cartoons-themed post.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Cartoon dogs using computers

In the first of what will hopefully be a long and interesting series, I'm taking an interested search keyword (or, in this case, phrase--the one in the post title) that led a visitor to The Eighth Day and caught my eye.

This, of course, is a follow-up to a classic cartoon from The New Yorker ("On the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog"). And, rather indubitably, it also shows cartoon dogs using computers.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen
Black marker
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Things Made Simple, part 2: Final Design

The final verdict turned out to be the design in the bottom right corner of the previous post's proposals was the one chosen, and the above three pictures were done in specific poses and situations.
Well, that's all!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Illustrator CS3

Things Made Simple, part 1: Character Development

The above is a page of various different character styles designed for use by the Things Made Simple website in their site imagery and instructional videos. The top row includes Rister and Rob, as well as other characters drawn in the same style; overall, there are six full-body styles present, not to mention numerous head shots.
In the next post, you'll see what got picked!

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Today's jpost.com cartoon

The guy on the left is Yasser Abed Rabbo (not to be confused with the other Yasser, Arafat), who seriously came out with this "threat" this week. Much bitter LOLing commenced among Israelis who, having paid attention, knew that the Oslo Accords have never meant anything more than diddlysquat to the PA.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen

Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

GetAShipper

Concept mockup for online shipping company's logo. Project cancelled.

Drawn using:
Serif PhotoPlus SE

Random frog

Drawn using:
Blue 0.5 mm needle tip pen

Today's jpost.com cartoon

Hizbullah are nothing more than the puppets of Iran, whose insidious tentacles of influence are spread throughout the region. Due to space constraints, the countries' borders are not drawn to scale.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.7 mm pilot pen
Black marker
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Play to the Crowd Sports

Logo for Canadian sports-related website. Not chosen.

Drawn using:
Adobe Illustrator CS3

A referee getting punched in the face

Shirt design. Project cancelled.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Black 0.7 mm pilot pen

Today's J. Post cartoon

The rescue of the Chilean miners is the most heartwarming story of the decade. The Middle East Peace Process? Not so much...

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

2,000TH VISIT

Almost half a year after The Eighth Day's one thousandth visitor, some dude/dudette from the United Kingdom kicked the hits total up to two thousand at 7:00:19 AM EST!!!
In celebration of this newest milestone, here's another compilation of TED's most popular entries during the intervening span:

There are plenty of repeat performers here. The two posts concerning the Tortoise and the Hare combined to finish way ahead of everything else; the Linkara Corps led all single comers with nearly 100 hits (and carved out a niche on or near the first page of Google Images search results for "linkara"). Also teaming up were my fanart depictions of an alt-future Young Justice team, thanks to news of an impending cartoon adaptation of the franchise sparking a renewed interest in the subject--good enough for third. My second batch of anthropomorphized Kung Fu Panda characters also held strong.
Newer material also made it in. The running book logo and rattlesnake mascot proved to be hits, as did the Dom DeLuise memorial cartoon, mostly via Bing.
Older posts mounted comebacks as well, as the inclusion of the duck from the Pratchett-inspired Larson tribute shows; and my alt-future Teen Titans post was also snapped up, bizarrely enough, by a stretching fetish messagegroup. ...Yeah, I'll just let that one sink in for a bit.
Plus, can't forget my ongoing political cartooning! The Obamacare booth and Demjanjuk accusation remained top dog, but in the interest of variety, I'm replacing them with Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud "Abu Mazen" Abbas.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Colored pencils
Red marker
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Black 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Happy Catfish

Logo design for graphics studio. Project cancelled.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus SE

Today's J. Post cartoon

With all of his troubles at home, Obama thinks the political morass of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, as yet unsolved by six presidents, is what he needs to boost his rating. Yyyeah.
UPDATE: Fourth cartoon reposted by Daniel Dagan.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Early random Rister & Rob doodles

At this stage I was still working out how they should be drawn consistently, so the torsos are rather shorter than you've seen elsewhere on the blog.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil

Tefillin Man & GOLEMM

As Jewish Superhero Week draws to a close, I present to you the final entries!

Tefillin Man - Can shoot prehensile tefillin straps from his wrists, this is unclear if it's an actual superpower or some form of gadgetry. Identity unknown even to his fellow heroes; is secretly a Noahide.
GOLEMM (Gyro-Operated Laser-Enhanced Mitzvah Machine) - The latest in a line of robotic Golems designed by Doc Holiday.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Godspeed & Valor

Jewish Superhero Week continues!

Godspeed - Blessed with the power of superhuman speed--so long as he thinks good thoughts. Is engaged to
Valor - A religious feminist who patterns her costume and weapons after those of the ancient Israelites.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Doc Holiday & the Rabbi

It's Sukkot now, so I guess it's as good a time as any to declare it to be Jewish Superhero Week and unveil some OCs I've been working on!

Doc Holiday - So called because his theme is the Jewish Holidays. Matzah throwing disks, etrog gas canisters, hamentashen grenades, a lulav sword--and the Luchot HaBrit as his emblem. His alter ego is a mild-mannered (but still oversized) rabbinical student, under the tutelage of
The Rabbi - A elderly kabbalistic warrior who eschews hand-to-hand combat in favor of mystical incantations and astral projections.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen

Bat logo/mascot

Project cancelled.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 needle tip pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Ripped From the Archives: April 2008

Condoleezza Rice and the US administration still treated Abbas as all the Palestinians' leader even though he and his party had been driven out the Gaza Strip by Hamas--the ones actually shooting off the rockets.
Unpublished ones from the month:

The more things change...

The metaphorical interpretation of what Olmert was doing to keep his coalition intact was just too good to pass up. Particularly apt since he was going about it so very blatantly that it was no secret to anybody except, of course, to Shas.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black ballpoint pen

Today's jpost.com cartoon

In honor of both the upcoming Sukkot holiday and the end of the 10 month settlement freeze, I merged the two together. Chag Same'ach!
UPDATE: Lightly modified and reposted by turning-into-big-fan Daniel Dagan.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Blue 0.5 mm pilot pen
Blue 0.7 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

Stuff inside your body (but not really)

The above are a bunch of dudes I doodled in my biology notebook several years back. They're supposed to represent several body functions.
Today, I refurbished them all nice and neat!

Internal security?... Ears... Brain... Nose... Digestion... Allergies?... Security... Eyes... Nerves

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (both)
Colored pencils (2)
0.5 mm pilot pen (2)