The Drawings of Aaga the Hue

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New Blog

It’s been a wonderful couple of years. I appreciate each and everyone who’s stood by and enjoyed my work. I’m moving to a new blog to hopefully get more serious about producing art. The future looks uncertain, and I’m not sure if things are going to be alright, but I know that I’ve still got it in me to make art.

https://arniesartblog.tumblr.com/

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An old comission long due posting for my friend mozai. Uncertain future, better than a dark past.

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This is from an unfinished it hurts fan animation from a few years back that I animated.

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Some finished and unfinished animations

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Status Quo

Status Quo as an unfinished comic I made around 2015. It was a comic I wanted to make for many years about many personal subjects. I wanted to make a comic about child psychology and educational systems, and many esoteric philosophies. Sadly, at the time of making it, I wasn’t prepared as a technical artist to really pull it off in a timely fashion, I was too encumbered with real life stuff that left me without much time for art for a long time, and I wasn’t in an emotionally well place. I tried to restart the comic but due to a tragic accident, the work I made was ruined in the rain, which sent me on a long spiral of unproductive behavior.

You may have noticed that little trick with the second page. I spent a lot of effort timing it. Here are the frames:

I always felt bad about not progressing far enough in the story to introduce this character. She was going to be a little girl version of Charles Manson, and the protagonist was going to be like a little girl version of Napoleon.

Before I made the comic I had messed around with another itteration that was much more comedy based. 

Here’s a couple of last few drawings that I posted on this blog about the comic. I will revisit it someday.

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Miscellaneous fanart and comissions

Here’s a collection of fanarts and miscellaneous stuff not inherently related to any adventures or comics I’ve made over the years.

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FANTASEA

Fantasea was a little side project I made inbetween 88 and 77. I made it during a time when the situation in Venezuela was kind of deteriorating and I had to change to another school with a longer commute and, to put it kindly, a non existent curriculum with lots of absent teachers, which led to quite a lot of empty free time that I couldn’t put into digital art. So I gave myself a goal of making daily comics in as high quality as I could, which was a little difficult given I drew these in tiny broken desks, but I learned a lot about traditional inking with these pages.

At the time I had watched the documentary Jodorowsky’s dune and fallen in love with the art of Chris Foss. I wanted to make a scifi comic with technological designs as far out as that. The story was going to be a kind of parodic retelling of the epic of Gilgamesh. I was also going to attempt a little experiment where the paneling would be heavily directed by the inclusion of giant letters into the pages that, would in time, spell out several diverging messages to the reader relating to the themes of the story. I may return to that someday.

Due to real life developments, I was unable to keep it going. However, around that time I was contacted by an anonymous friend to help work on a very similar scifi animated project that I’ve been working on and off since then. Hopefully I can share that sooner than later.

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Gather 'round, kids

Oh boy do I have a story to tell you guys. I dont usually do this but god damn this shit writes itself.

Okay so as most of you know, I live in Venezuela, where recently, the president (dictator), Hugo Chavez, recently died. Now, say what you will about him, personally I’ve seen him done fucking nothing but harm to this country, but he has a frightening cult following that I guess kept him in power. Every day, from my apartment, I can hear them in the barrio blasting out songs from rap to church music about how Chavez is the eternal comrade of the peoples and he’ll live in our hearts forever. Now, I dont really keep up with the politics here since I’m hoping to get out of here next year, but with re elections coming up, the current president, Nicolas Maduro, is running up against Capriles Radonski, a relatively younger candidate that my uncle went to school with apparently, and as far as I know he’s a pretty cool guy, he wants to bring up the arts to take venezuela out of the creative rut it’s in. Now, the big thing here is that Chavez’s party is represented with red, and Capriles’s party with blue.

Now, here’s where our tale begins. Today me and my gramma wanted to go see a movie, she wanted to see life of pi, I wanted to see the new oz movie. So we dressed in blue and got outside to catch a bus. However, we’d forgotten that today, the red party had set up a campaign protest to convince people to vote for Maduro… by blocking off most roads in the city and hijacking buses? Still, me and my gramma did catch a bus. What followed was a fucking misadventure if I ever had one.

Inside the bus was basically pairlament, on one side of the bus were chavists, on the other, radonski supporters and people who just wanted to go out. me and my gramma sat there, and while I didnt really say anything, my gramma went to town. The roads were blocked off by protestors. The thing is, I always thought Chavez had most of his support from old rednecks, since he did show support to that social class the most.. However, there was an alarming amount of young people, even people who looked my age. You could hear that crazy Chavez Church music in the distance, and my gramma got fresh at one of the protestors by sticking her head out and saying “CHAVEZ IS DEAD AND HE’S IN HELL, DEAL WITH IT”.

We promptly left the vehicle before half of the bus could fucking incinerate her with anger and butthurt. At that point we decided to head back home, but there was the problem.

We were in the middle of a strange part of town known to be rampant with crime, in the full heat of a chavist protest, with no sense of direction, AND WE WERE WEARING BLUE, THE COLOR GUARANTEED TO HAVE US BE SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE CALLING US COUNTRY HATING AMERICAN LOVING SPIES. So what did we do? Well, we took off our shirts, went around topless for a moment, and then grabbed the nearby pro chavist shirts to cammouflage with the enemy… and oh, what sights we did behold.

Remember how they hijacked a few buses? well, they’d repurposed them into full on battletanks. google an ork wartrukk, that’s a pretty accurate description. on the side was graffiti telling capriles that he’s a dead man, on the front, just an undescribeable hunk of metal. it had been painted with pictures of chavez and “el pueblo” (the people). inside, countless chavists, some with guns, others with party favors. hooked to the back were wagons with fucking rock bands blasting that Chavez Church music to the point where you could not hear anyone say anything, not even the huge crowd screaming. they were flanked by legions of motorcyclists. In Venezuela, Motorcyclists and Motorcyclist gangs are a big problem, bikers have been known to just attack people on highways if you so much as scratch them by accident, and it’s a generally very popular method of transportation since it’s discrete enough to get by the mazelike barrios. they had ladies in red bootypants shaking their butts all over the place, which I wont complain about. However, I felt bad when I saw this one petite asian lady who was foreign, I think, not wearing any colors, getting nudged into one of those buses. I think it’s safe to say some berserk shit happened inside. It reminded me of the time I was on a bus and this big greasy looking guy sat next to a little girl and I overheard him whisper “remember, a deal is a deal, you owe me gurl”, and I got off the bus with a really awful feeling.

Now, while this is happening, the barrio itself was FILTHY, there were rivers of much and garbage and shit everywhere. I was wearing sandals so I had to do some frogger shit to get by, while helping my gramma cross the street  with a bunch of mad bikers everywhere. she was basically telling me how she was acting high and mighty in the safety of that bus and now she was shitting herself. The protest reached a point where it could not be contained, and we were just being swept along this fucking sea of chavists, going through the motions, eating the complimentary doritos and soda in absolute terror of this fucking horde. I’m not gonna lie, on one hand, I was scared shitless and thought I wasnt gonna make it home tonight, on the other, I was fucking ready to go home and tell this and embelish the fuck out of it.

We’d been asking for directions from several people, this skinny mechanic with a missing arm (missing limbs and the homeless are really common here) this big fat pimp guy that looked like he should be in mad world, and eventually we found where we needed to go. 

Now, in venezuela we have several rivers within the city of caracas, rivers that mix in with the sewers. They’re essentially a flood of shit, piss, garbage, blood, and who knows what else. The largest, the rio guaire, is the one I live closest to. I gotta tell you, it’s a sight to behold, a sad one, since Venezuela can be an absolutely beautiful place, the fauna, the lovely diverse architecture, it’s not all bad. There’s a reason the place I live in is called paradise, I guess.

But the area we were in was called “puente hierro”, iron bridge. I’ve known this for the longest time, but I never knew WHY. until today. now, I’m just embelishing for the sake of telling a neat story, but there it was, a fucking huge rickety metal bridge hanging precariously over the river of shit, piss, blood, and who knows what else. buses were a ridin, the wind was a blowin, and the crowds were a shovin, and the entire time, my gramma kept me close and yelled to me, that THIS is Venezuela, and that the sooner I get out, the better, she told me to never EVER return to this forsaken land. at this point thunder and lightning should have been roaring in the skies, and they might as well have, for all I knew I was basically escaping mordor: warhammer 40k edition.

However, through wit and will, we escaped the dark lands of Iron Bridge. We came to the familiar site of the plaza we live next to, and went to buy groceries. It was a surreal feeling. there, sitting with a dog, a husky, was this beat up dude wearing blue. he had blood coming down his eye and was applying ice to a wound on his arm. He was just there, philosophising about the state of the country, of how fanaticism shouldnt run rampant, how both sides need to be equally judged without “el pueblo” turning their livelihoods into a riot. and there, right next to him, was the cashier, and I kid you not, the guy looked like hussie, dead on, the sweet succulent lips, the shady facial hair, the deep hazy eyes. It was as if I’d entered some sort of dream.

And then we went home and left the whole thing behind us. I’m sitting here drinking a carton of ice tea, typing this out. All I can say is this:

Kids, stay the hell out of Venezuela this shit is cray cray

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I’m reblogging this instead of deleting like most text posts on this blog because I think it’s a story about my home country I’d like to preserve.

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77

77 was a very very short lived fan adventure I did after 88. It was going to be an attempt to delve into the political and economical, but I think I quickly realized I was so utterly uninformed on both fronts that I quickly lost interest. It was also a small experiment in color for me, insofar as using simplicity instead of overly complex black line work. I was mainly inspired by the album cover art for Evil Nine, and was generally trying to attempt a style reminiscent of very simple but graphically striking early 2000′s art. It had a visually clean but somewhat dreary and urban look that I miss quite a bit. Here’s the album cover for example:

I’ll probably never come back to this story, as there really was none to tell, but I do think I’ll use these characters  and aesthetic again someday.

Here are all of the posts containing the adventure:

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/45579667171/77

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/46314785868/77

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/47571040891/77

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/50158537797/77

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/54225692302/77

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88 Bonus - Capn Smokey

This is an unfinished spinoff comic about Smokey the Snake, the little companion character in 88. It was going to be a filthy little story about how he met Edd. Honestly, I just forgot I even made it. It was going to involve jungle spirits tormenting some pirates for brutalizing some natives.

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88 - part 3

These are just miscellaneous 88 related drawings, both old and recent.

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88 - Part 2

So after I stopped making 88, I tried to revisit it a couple of times as a more traditional comic. In my mind it slowly went from a comic with horror elements to more of a full blown horror story.

Here’s an early attempt where I tried to set up Edd Ebb’s character right from the start. It was I think the first time I’d attempted to just make a normal comic, and I tried to make some of the paneling as unhinged as the character arc.

Unfortunately, multiple attempts at inking in this style of comic digitally were unsuccessful, as at the time I couldn’t really grasp coloring and inking composition.

Later on I attempted it again, this time with the idea of eventually making it into an interactive comic similar to the team fortress 2 comics, where each panel would appear one after another. This would lead to much more freedom in terms of panel composition, but in the end I was too busy with real life things as well as too unprepared for the added programming aspect.

At this point the intended layout of clicking and revealing one panel after the other becomes more apparent, and also more confusing without that context and an outright counterintuitive way of laying out panels in a normal comic, but I still have faith in the idea.

Developing this kind of artstyle took years to really grasp and begin to execute in a meaningful way, and a lot of that process includes idle doodling...

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88 - Part 1

So 88 was a mspaint fan adventure I made back in 2012, that’s five years ago as of writing this. I made it during a time in my life where I didn't know what I was going to do. I was living in Venezuela and was something like, 15. At the time the country was going steadily down into economic bad times and the educational system was a joke. I felt very entrapped there and knew that any kind of advancement would be a waste, since I’d have to take a GED in the states anyway. During that time I discovered Homestuck and it really inspired me to give art a shot. I wasn’t aware of any kind of formal training so I just decided to go for it.

As of the time of writing this I believe the original forums on which I posted this are dead, and Homestuck itself is pretty much done now. I did post it on this blog a long ways before eventually running out of steam and ceasing updates on it due to a combination of real life fatigues and an amateurish sense of having gotten too deep into something I couldn't commit to.

I wanted 88 to be something a little different and a lot of real life stuff influenced it, including influence from time in my dad’s tattoo shop, the kind of afro Caribbean kind of art that was very prevalent in Venezuela, and my personal love of the baroque and horror elements. It wasn’t a very good piece of work, it delved into some immersion breaking bits of internet humor, and ultimately went nowhere, but it was the kind of work I needed to make at the time to kind of spread my legs and experiment as well as learn some basics through trial and error. 

The story was very absurdist and I had too much planned for it. From the ashes, I did eventually settle on what I want what was known as 88 to be. In time, I’d like to revisit it and give the play it deserves.

Here are links to all of the updates I made, as re uploading with all the text would be a little too time consuming:

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/15506104303/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/16394634248/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/17602577335/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/19311025490/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/21937798090/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/22762816818/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/23630783238/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/24579892043/88

http://arnold-gutierrez.tumblr.com/post/28939440661/88

After this, I never updated again. However, I did make some unused art for an update that I’ll post now:

At this point I went on an indefinite hiatus and never finished the comic. The stars did not align for this iteration of 88 to take off. However, that’s not to say there weren’t OTHER attempts and itterations...

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Alright, so gonna be reposting some old stuff with a bit of commentary cause I’m basically turning this blog into an archive site for my old work and starting a new blog, so bare with me while I blast through the past

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Limbo Reapers and Cosmic Conga Lines

I said I was gonna post something by this weekend but I'm a butt and played civ all day. Instead of that, though, I'll post a teeny tiny bit of 88 lore that'll probably take a while for me to fit in anyway.Tell me if you want more posts stuff like this or not, I don't know if you guys want me to be self masturbatory idea guy or just want to see some damn comics, but otherwise this is a one time thing cause I just thought of it. Anyway, sit down children, let Brother Arnold tell you a tale of skeletons:

You didn't pay your respects and didn't pay people money, and now you're dead in a gutter. You look up, sides of two buildings block your vision, and all you see is that dang ole moon in the sky. All you see's that light, and soon that's your whole world. It's just you, the tunnel, and the light. You head towards it, you know you're gonna get to that cloudy city... but you hear something, a... a beat that just don't quit. You look to the side, and there's another light, in the distance! Maybe it's a sign for a second chance! So you ditch one light for another, floating in that ethereal void, when in the dark, you bump into something solid. You're dazed, then you aint, then you look ahead and there's a bare back blocking the light. You find your hands are stuck, as if glued, to a pair of hips shaking left and right, much as your own. The head on the top of that back turns, as surprised as you. Questions come out, but not before you feel some clammy ass hands attatch to your own hips.

Congratulations, brudda, you're on the space time conga line, led by the necromancer dancer, traveling through the void between here and now and when and where, shaking it to the beat of limbo. What the fuck's going on, you ask? Well here's the actual, factual answer:

The economy of souls is fair game to anyone, a thing a rare few people realize. Wether it be God's Wizards, who turn all civilized human souls from civilized human cults into raw energy, Devils, who trick and lie man and animal alike from their freedoms into debts, or any number of arcane indie scene losers. One of those losers are The Necromantic Guild. This group, formed from the lost knowledge of Atlantis after conquistador sackings, is a relatively recent phenomenon, as all other necromantic practices beforehand had not included actual souls, only imitations of the soul or corporeal puppeteering. With newly found knowledge from that lost aquatic city, an anonymous founder of the guild designed a machine which would travel through time to discretely harvest souls from heathens to be brought back and used. However, it wasn't until the invention of perpetual energy that this machine could be built. During that time, the Necromantic Guild was mostly known to be a publisher of horror and science fiction novels. Some of them, like "The Condor" and "The Plopping Horror", are noted to be amongst the objectively worst works of fiction ever made. Their author, Celso Lamarr, responded to his many critics by going "man fuck you guys, I'm going back to Cuba". He was also recorded to have cried like a little salty bitchhhhhh.

Despite their history of abysmal sales, the guild's secret ties to several smalltime governors, as well as their small but self sustaining cult allowed them to exist to the present. With new technologies available, the secretive guildmasters realized their long awaited ambition, and in the 2070's, built the first model of the Limbo Reaper. on it's first voyage, it captured 109 souls. These souls were used to create a small village of living skeletons that had previously belonged to ancient colonists and natives. However, these skeletons were autonomous, self aware of their previous lives as colonists or natives, their future lives as american citizens, and their current status as skeletons. 

Strangely enough, the reaction to seeing a small community of non violent skeletons was met with neither strong hate or support, but indifference by most of the public. By then,THE GREAT HAPPENING had transpired, and apathy had spread all across the earth. Being moody bitches as they were, the skeleton citizens set out on a short lived voyage to Atlantis, where they have set up a city state with their psychic dolphin friends. Most skeleton citizens reside in the necropolis, and non undead or dolphin creatures are cast out on sight. Some skeletons, however, are actual cool guys that aren't pussies. They can be seen traveling the night in radical attire and sunglasses, playing instruments, giving everyone boners, and going on wild rides that make the world a better place to live in. What heroes those skeletons are, what champions of bombastic life.

Since then, The Necromantic Guild has set out more Limbo Reaper expeditions, estimated to about one trip a month with varying results, from 100 to 140 souls. Reports indicate that some reapers do not return, though the guild is very hush hush about that fact. The guild has been criticised for increasing the overpopulated Atlantis for no good reason, as well as claims that the Limbo Reaper voyages have directly caused a decrease in soul intake for God's Wizards. In fact, the question remains as to why the guild has done this in the first place. Why do they "steal" from god? Why do they hate America? Why do their books STILL blow massive ass?

In summary, the next time you eat shit and die, remember: don't follow the light with music following it, or else you'll end up on a one way wild ride through space with a bunch of smelly losers, led by a manic, mechanical skeleton with strobe lights for eyes, bongos, maracas, and glowsticks to guide the way. You'll end up on that line and take the risk of either holding your waifu's love handles, or bubba "jiggle jangle"'s thick thighs for dear life. You'll end up on that line staring down on earth and up towards infinity, and you'll never know how long this ride will take. Will it end in an hour? a year? a hundred years? It may never end at all!

But lemme tell ya if you come out a skeleton and act rad as fuck and stay a coolguy forever, well good for you, buddy, you're living the dream.

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Clowns for Christ

Venezuela's a pretty fucking christian country, mainly catholic. I think because shit's so universally bad it doesn't really cause any harm, it just seeps into everything, like, oh yeah, everyone but me goes to church and actually gets hype about it. Gotta get to that sunday service, boy, gotta get that post service meal, brother. That said, this place is pretty accepting of other religions, don't see a lot of muslims, but plenty of buddhist groups and even a couple of native religious groups, and I aint gotta tell you about santeros and voodoo cults murking about. I mean they hung a fucking horse dick from a tree and nobody took it down for MONTHS.

So I'm sitting here in my room drawing. I live high up in an apartment, and have a window with a perfect view of this kind of run down little pueblo. I'm talking mountain village with unpainted brick houses that are just lil ole rectangles, and a single street connected to the city that acts almost as a stage. near that street there's also a club, and usually it just plays music really loud. But today, I look outside and there's this small crowd of people in clown makeup. I'm close enough to see that it's pretty half rate clown gettups, most people are wearing street clothes. I think to myself, "wait, last time I saw this was-"

and suddenly the club music drops dead, and you can hear this fucking seller voice, as if it was in a heap car commercial. And the voice said "BROTHERS, SISTERS, I'M A FOLLOWER OF JESUCRISTO, AND RIGHT NOW VENEZUELA IS FACING A CRISIS, AT THE BRINK OF REVOLUCION. WE NEED A SAVIOR, A SAVIOR FOR ALL THE KIDS, THE KIDS, PEOPLE! SO PLEASE, RAISE YOUR HANDS IN PRAYER, AND JOIN US"

Where once was the sounds mc bootyshorts, comes now the sound of some mysterious christian dance music. Looking through my window, I'm greeted with the sight of a crowd of clown youths dancing in the street for jesus, girls twerking and doing the stanky leg all over the god damn place, giving who knows how many kids a future boner for pennywise. THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I'VE WITNESSED THIS.

HOW HAVE WE COME TO THIS

WHERE DID THIS PATH BEGIN

WHERE THE TEENAGE YOUTH OF APE THINGS DRESS LIKE CLOWNS AND PRAY TO THEIR GOD BY DANCING IN THE STREET to 80'S CHRISTIAN METAL

What a bizarre fucking planet we live on.

edit: Now they're playing some anime opening tier shit. This is actually fucking radical I don't know how to feel about this.

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77

> Call up someone who does know how to run a successful presidential campaign. Surely you can strike a deal with them, you are the king of the corps after all! > Hey you recall knowing someone who is good at the campaign stuff, but do you really want to call that guy? You recall him being sort of odd. > Hire a shady fast-talking campaign manager/used car salesman. > I imagine that a good deal of punching would be involved in a successful presidential campaign. Roy humors the idea. General Goodman IS very talented at selling a bad product to dumb people. His father makes a KILLING from selling guns, ammunition and scrap metal to the good people of The Congo. Who knew the defense against dinosaurs was such a lucrative business? Why, he and the old man are going on vacation there next year! Yet he'd be an absolute fool to let that violent black sheep of the family be in charge of running his presidential campaign. He'd just turn the whole operation into an anti gun control commercial, and god knows there's no place for THAT discussion in these United States of America. Still, he's a better choice than the other person familiar with presidential campaigns: Roy's vindictive, judgemental, vitriolic and MEAM excuse for a vice president. Sweet Jesus does he hate the vice president, the way she talks over him and corrects him and belittles him in front of his own board... ooooooh he'd love nothing more than to just... just grab her and... OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH THAT VICE PRESIDENT, THAT DOG EYED VICE PRESIDENT- The histerics are interrupted by Roy's order: a coffee cake topped with a cherry. Only he clearly asked for cheesecake topped with some berries, and what's more, this waitress simply SNATCHES his cigarette out of his hands and puts it out, reminding him that this is a no smoking area. Now, Roy politely and calmly asks her just what the Sam Hill does she think she's doing, this is not his order, she is not his mother, kindly throw this garbage outside, get him his cheesecake, and let him light one up to get comfortable with the gentle ape across the table... ... but NOOOOOOOOOOoooo, she ACCUSES him of being rude and BERATES him right then and there! She's had a long daaaaaaaay, she says, she might get fiiiiiiiiired, she says. This happens at every single restaurant Roy visits and it is ridiculous. He probably owns most of the small businesses in this city anyway, but every time he tells them "No guys it's cool I'll allow it" they nab it out of his hands and tell him to get out! What's wrong with these people!? > Order that neanderthal another Sandwich, Neanderthals love sandwiches. Nah, he's good. > That's fine, you'll appear honest in the eyes of the public, and win over their hearts. As certain as that van is skeevy, Roy knows he's taught that cheeky cunt the one two three four. > Ask Janette about the president What's there to ask? Who knows what Janette thinks, but Roy... Roy is a corporate man, it's his job to run the river of money through the sewage of congress. Obama is still an anti corporate commie dick, though there's one thing the man did right in Roy's book: The banishment of all undead skeletons after that embarrassing incident on the part of the Necropolitan Association of Mississipi. They STILL havent managed to weed out half of the backwater spookults mucking about that state, no wonder they game Obama an extra year just to handle the situation. The skeletons even kidnapped last year's Thanksgiving turkey and sent back the reanimated remains. It's just not right pardoning a turkey with no meat, it's not the same. On that note, Mr. Goodman would like to emote that skeletons are fucking awful and have no place in this country, people gave them a chance to be law abiding citizens, and what do they do? Squander it in lieu of an obnoxious "pain of living" culture. He's not sure about the logistics of it something about new souls entering an old body, but they're still mostly people, they should act like it! and now you have all these black folk with skulls painted on their faces yodelling death rattles, shit aint cool, he's not impressed. America is a strange and alien place.