HiHo's Home on the Internet

HiHo's Complete Art.
(It's pretty much all the colour stuff)

Hey!

Here's all the stuff I've completed to date. They'll be presented in little clumps with my commentary (such as it is) in between. It's in chronological order so the newest stuff's at the top, oldest at the bottom..

If you'd like to negotiate a comission I can be reached via email at hiho_roo@geocities.com. Other contact details can be found on the contact page. Feel free! On to the pictures:

Barflies

AltarSkunk

AltarSkunk was requested as a surprise for Altarskunk. Originally he wanted a pic of Altar "spraying" Tarq (apparently it's done to mark members of his flock) but that didn't quite feel right. I'm sure the sun dosen't shine from Altars arse - but this interpretation is a lot less "icky". The lovelly "rippled" effect in the glass was achieved by scanning a slightly wrinkled piece of aluminium foil for a texture - which was then used to "colour dodge" the base image. Radially blurred copies of the colour layer were screened over the final image to produce the rays of light (and make the whole picture lighter).

Barflies is just a pair of guys in a bar somewhere. I drew this to practise with textures and things. It's really just a quick sketch that got photoshopped to death... Nifty enough pic though.

TheWolf (I kinda hope he's brown... :) He's moving! (hence the suitcase) He's sitting on the wall while spraying out behind him is a lovely sky (sunshine after the rain - every cloud has a silver lining - that sort of thing). There's a bit of a metaphor here in that he's sitting on the "wall of civilization" while all around him ranges natures glory. Nifty stuff (hey, I like it!)

A Boxing Kangaroo was my own little contribution to a stream of boxing anthro characters that were posted to the groups. He's supposed to be an anthro kangaroo but, well, I feel there's a lot of donkey in that head. This pic is quite a departure from "my" usual style in two ways. First of all: apologies to both Bob Drake & Spike.COM - Bob does sublimely fuzzy art, something I've tried to imitate here & Spike.COM has done some wonderfully soft fur, a technique I've "borrowed" in an attempt to rescue the pic. Secondly - This pic is all digital - from the first wobbly line to the last it's never seen paper, except to be printed and admired. Linewise it's a bloody mess - but a cute one! Oh! He's meant to be sitting on a stool or something that I never really got around to drawing. He's wearing grey sweatpants as the boxing trunks I tried looked entirely unconvincing (there's something wrong with furs wearing clothes at all... )

Smilee and Rey is a pic of Smilee the happy tiger and Rey the happy fox. Done as a Christmas gift on Smilee's behalf. The thing around Smilee's neck is a Bosuns pipe. Why is it there? Smilee wears one IRL!

Over Shoulder is another experimental type pic. I used a more "anaolg" method here. I sketched it out, as per usual with my trusty mechanical pencil, then printed a nice very high contrast copy of the sketch. This "dark sketch" was stuck to a big piece of glass (just a convenient flat surface). An ordinary piece of acid free paper was stuck over that and this picture was drawn onto that with those watercolour pencils. I would lay down a layer of colour, go over it with the brush, wait for it to dry, then lay down another layer.... The green and grey background was added later in photoshop. I'm really quite pleased with the way his shoulder's come out. It's meant to be a little heart shaped shaved patch, exposing his tattoo. Attempting this sort of this just gives you that much more admiration for those who've mastered these techniques.

Paf, thanks for all the support. :^) I'd been feeling uninspired the last few days so I decided to do some colouring. I finally coloured that pic of Paf - a marvelous artist and all round nice guy. A quick note about the colour of this pic - I just noticed that when I look at it in anything but photoshop it seems really dark - if I drop it into another program and up the gamma correction to 1.33 or so the pic looks similar to what I'd intended (more variation in the orange - fur textures and things...) - I'll upload a more consistent pic after I calibrate my monitor properly. I just went to grab a nice cup of coffee - on my return I noticed that colour Pafs eyes follow you around the room - try it, it's spooky!

The Wall is a strange pic. It took hold of me on Friday & I couldn't stop till I'd finished it on Sunday. Putting in the shadows turned out to be really easy - they also ad heaps of depth to a picture - try it! I've got no idea where the inspiration for this pic came from - I've never written graffiti on anything - maybe it's symbolic of something? Who knows. BTW - the KLF on his T-shirt officially stands for Kopyright Liberation Front (though it could just as easily be Kangaroo Liberation Front!) Doh! I just realized the bricks that make up the hollow eyed demon-roo-thing's shoulder should be distorted downwards, not upwards.

Meet K4. What's K 4? Kangaroo! It's one of those pun things - read it as: "What's K for?" & it makes more sense. He's just a roo guy. Don't know where the pose came from. I didn't know you could have roo style digi-legs in jeans before I attempted this - turns out they just need to be really baggy. Still suffering from an evil, poorly calibrated monitor here - If this pic looks a little too colourful to you load it into some sort of image editing program and up the gamma a little bit (I find about 1.3 works well). After receiving much advice I've recently modified my colouring technique - Now I'm using about four layers - Background, Colours, Outlines & Highlights. It's easy enough to do. Copy the original drawing into the Outlines layer - set this to multiply mode. If the lines look a little too thick in places they can dodged to make the thinner, or erased altogether. Colour/Dodge/Burn/Whatever in the colour layer. The highlights layer sits on top of all of these, holding the little white reflection dots for the eyes, light reflecting off claws, etc.

Masks is a kinda self portrait, in the sense that the cutout head is fairly close to my RL head - the (appropriate enough) inside head is HiHo's. The transition from one to the other is painful. Coming out of the closet IRL is the "inspiration" for this. - Drawing this has been something to stop me going insane with the wait.

Sadness is my first tablet coloured pic! I like this pic - his "fur" looks kinda luminous. His halo is a picture of the sun "acquired" from the NASA web site - many pictures of things there - great for backgrounds.

Sly. Here's yet another of my, so called, kangaroos. This one's a kinda sly looking roo with extra fuzzy fur. The circle he's in was created by tracing around a CD. Now in colour! I'm really quite pleased with the way he came out, the tablet really helps a lot, though I'm angry with myself for flattening the layers of this pic then saving :( - If I turned off the colour layer I got a beaut image that looked like a ghost!

Bomb finally got coloured! This is that old bomb riding pic - now with a lovely background (provided by Sagitta - thanks for taking the time!). Apparently the featured city is Philadelphia. Currently I'm in a bit of an apocalyptic mood - just saw Dr Strangelove and couldn't resist! It's a picture of a rather wolfy looking HiHo riding multi-megatonne nuclear bomb.

Karaoke Dog in Glorious Technicolor. Colour scheme courtesy Smilee (the dog, not the evil clouds!) The monstrously colourful clouds were generated in photoshop, using clouds then fade difference clouds, try it - making something this ugly turns out to be really easy!

HiHo Falls - the first furry pic I've ever done that (In my opinion) doesn't suck too hard. Armed with a handful of electric crayons and a load of advice from Nakira's site, I coloured HiHo! You just don't realize the enormous amount of effort that goes into a Nakira pic until you try it yourself. This is the first furry pic I've ever coloured! Big thanks to Nakira, most especially his colouring page. Another quick note - After I coloured this I discovered the hue/saturation controls - It was using these (making HiHo a little redder) that destroyed the fine graduations of colour I'd spent ages putting in! That's why the shading in this pic so angular.

Some roo reclining on a couch after a hard days whatever. This pic popped fully formed into my head one night as I was kicking back enjoying a quiet beer and watching the evening news! The colouring on this pic (a long and torturous process!) was performed by Wyte Lyon. Wonderful piercing blue eyes! Thanks Wyte!

This portrait was to be used as HiHo's @image on furryMUCK. Even though it's still in development it looks quite complete. This pic was superceeded by Sly above. Though Sly isn't HiHo (the eyes are the wrong colour!) It's quite near enough.

This one's for you Wyte! I wanted to colour this pic digitally but my mouse wouldn't do it justice (this is in the pre-tablet days!)- this looks ok though IMHO.

Last modification to this page: 14 May 1999
If there's any problems with this page please e-mail me at hiho_roo@geocities.com
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