Cavegirl Combat, week 41

Oko attacks Mika between the legs as the underwater struggle continues!

Happy New Year!

Cavegirl Combat, week 40

In this week's installment, the battle goes beneath the lake's surface.

Season's greetings!

Cavegirl Combat, week 39

This week's installment...

Health update

I haven't written anything about my health lately, I guess.

The short version is that I'm feeling better, but not necessarily doing better.

The tumors are all still present. I had hoped the most recent CT scan would show the smallest ones gone, but that didn't happen.

In addition, the chemo they were giving me has caused numbness in both my hands and feet. This has somewhat impaired my ability to draw, as well as do a lot of other simple tasks. This is a common side effect, and one that may be permanent. In addition to numbness, I've lost a certain amount of motor control over my hands. There are times when it is is difficult to eat, type and do other things because my hands are shaking badly.

They've switched chemo to avoid causing further damage.

But I'm not as fatigued as I once was, nor is my nausea as severe.

And that's about all I have to report.

Cage fight

A roughly-finished piece that was part of the cage fight I gave to Debi Chan several years ago.

But I don't think this particular panel was part of what I sent.

It's part of what I cleaned up for my dA page.

Cavegirl Combat, week 38

Oko retaliates!

Some random art

Some random thing from 2006.

Cavegirl Combat, week 37

Has Mika finally finished Oko with a solid kick to the chest?

Cavegirl Combat, week 36

Oko and Mika slam each other breast-to-breast in this week's art.

3D and hand-drawn

This is another experiment in combining hand-drawn characters with a background generated in a 3D program.

I am still not satisfied with the results, but perhaps they will get better as I continue to work with it.

Renee Lands Hard

Here's another leftover from 2003.

I started to post this on dA, then decided it was probably too graphic.

So this is the only place it will appear.

Cavegirl Combat, week 35

Oko and Mika go chest-to-chest in this week's installment!

Super squeeze

A superheroine works over her rival's boobs in this unfinished art from about six or seven years ago.

Another piece of my dA gallery.

Two-fisted punch

A fighter slams both fists into her pinned rival's tits. From 2000-2001.

More dA art

Trapped in her opponent's corner, she gets worked over both by her opponent and her manager.

Another piece posted to dA. Completed in the late 90s.

Cavegirl Combat, week 34

The battling cavegirls splash into the lake, leaving their friends on shore wondering what to do.

Random art

With her sweatshirt up over her face, she can't even see her rival's fists slamming into her boobs.

But she feels it!

Apropos of nothing...

Here's a render of part of the dressing room I designed for the 'catfight warehouse'.

Everything here I built myself – I didn't use any purchased models or wireframes.

Found in the archive

I may have mentioned that I use a digital asset management product to keep track of my art.

Sometimes, it renders thumbnails – especially of Photoshop files – as blank white rectangles.

I have to open those filed in Pshop or Painter to see what they are.

This one turned up today. Too graphic for dA, so it stays here.

Created in 2003.

More dA art

My files are so disorganized that I have trouble remembering what's been posted and what hasn't.

If you've already seen this one, my apologies.

It's part of the collection I posted to dA.

The best get-well card I've gotten

Okay, I am going to try not to have a complete fanboy meltdown here.

This photo, along with two similar ones, arrived in my email this week.

I mentioned last year that I have a certain affinity for Julie Winchester that is based on our similar regional backgrounds and the fact that we both come from essentially the same grew-up-in-the-sixties generation.

I don't know Ms. Winchester, and have never met her, so of course I'm projecting a lot of my own stuff here. But while there are any number of fetish actresses/models out there that I love to watch on video, Julie's the only one that I think I wouldn't mind running into at the local coffee shop once in awhile.

So, Ms. Winchester, thank you for your kind note. And thanks to sceej56 for taking the picture.

And thanks to Slid for acting as email intermediary.

(sceej, I did send you my email addy, but I guess it's not going through.)

And for everyone else, my email address is cameroon_w@yahoo.com.

Cavegirl Combat, week 33

Oko pounds away at Mika’s tits, not realizing she’s left herself vulnerable!

(If you live in the U.S., don't forget to vote tomorrow! If you don't live in the U.S., please pray for us — we could go completely apeshit at any moment... )

A shower

Several years ago, I had the idea for a whole series based on a catfight organization that staged battles in an old warehouse.

I knew I would want consistency in the backgrounds, so I set about to build a 3D model of the entire warehouse: the ring, the lighting, the dressing rooms, everything.

Knowing my propensity for beginning large projects and never finishing them, I decided I would not plunk down $6K for a copy of Maya. Instead, I bought a copy of Shade, a relatively low-cost 3D product from Japan. I am led to understand that in Japan, this is the most popular professional 3D app.

You've already seen some art using that 3D model, although it was not in its final form when I did the renders.

And I never did get a mix of my hand-drawn art and the CG background that satisfied me.

The art in this post is a shower I built as part of that project.

I learned a lot about 3D design during this process, all through trial and error. Although I never got the project done, it was a great learning experience.

Random Cavedude

I drew this guy for a page of Cavegirl Combat that I ended up not using. So this is his only chance at glory.

He's also on my dA page.

dA update

83 people have added me to their dA watch list since I started posting four days ago. The number of 'favourites' I've received is in the hundreds. I can't count them all.

It's nice to be loved.

But remember, this blog is priority one. Anything that turns up over there either had already been posted here, or will be soon.

Another dA submission

B-BAPP! A two-fisted breast punch that went on my dA page. Probably from 2005 or 06.

More deviantART

Another piece I cleaned up for my deviantART page. I guess I did this about eight years ago. I had to finish it out some to make it publishable.

Cavegirl Combat, week 32

With fingers still sunk deep into Mika’s perfect boobs, Oko slams her into the water in this week’s episode!

deviantART submissions

I've had a deviantART account for years, but only for the purpose of surfing though other artists' work.

I decided this weekend to post some of my own work there, and since I've already cleaned it up and watermarked it, I might as well post it here, too.

So look for some previously unseen stuff over the next few days.

DONE!

I finished Cavegirl Combat just now.

I'm not going to tell you how long it is, or when it will conclude. But it's longer than I anticipated.

Frankly, I am glad to be done with it.

But I guarantee you that, barring some interruption from Google, Blogger, the authorities or whomever, you will see this entire story.

Cavegirl Combat, week 31

Oko keeps up the painful attack on Mika this week, but Mika refuses to submit!

 I like the unfinished qualities in some versions of specific drawings. Like the detail in the cameras. Wouldn't this make a great camera commercial?

 Just to show off Cam's loose but controlled sketching technique. Nice touch in that hand of his.

Again, some 'partial' goodness

Slid

Cavegirl Combat, week 30

Possibly the most cruel attack yet in this week's installment!

This may be something, or it may not

A figure sheet for something I may or may not pursue. As with cavegirls, I've always had a thing for space girls, mostly of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers variety, with maybe a bit of Firefly thrown in.

I spent some time with this last night. I don't know if I'll do more.

I've got a few other notions in mind as well.

Cavegirl Combat Update

I drew the end of the fight between Mika and Oko today. It's not the end of the story, but it is the end of the fight. So you can be sure you'll have a conclusion, no matter what happens to me medically.

It will be awhile before you see it, though. Be patient.

Cavegirl Combat, week 29

The battle resumes!

Cavegirl Combat, week 28

The girls back off, brutalized and hurt, to catch a breath. But they're not finished yet! They'll be at it again next week!

Cavegirl Combat, week 27

 Mika’s friends can't contain their glee at Oko’s misfortune, but Oko finds a way to turn the tide!

A Note About Fonts

Another note. No one has ever asked about this, but I want to establish a record on it.

I occasionally use shareware or free fonts for sound effects and the like, but every single commercial font in my art was purchased and paid for.

I don't use pirated fonts.

Updates

I guess a health update is in order. I've done a dozen chemo treatments, and the doctor wants me to do more.

The stuff is working, although the toll it takes on the rest of my body increases with each treatment. They had to delay my most recent treatment because my immune system was so damaged I couldn't handle it. But I bounced back in a couple of weeks and went forward.

But this stuff is totally knocking me on my ass now. This last treatment was the worst one yet.

I have nausea almost all the time. They gave me a prescription med for it, and it helps a lot. I augment it with some, ahem, other treatment, and together they work very well.

I might mention that I have used more of that 'other treatment' since April than in my entire life up to that point – by a fairly wide margin. I'm on it just about all the time. It interferes with my creativity and my desire to draw, and I don't like that. But trust me, I wouldn't have made it this far in the chemo if I had not had the stuff.

Incidentally, my blood pressure is the lowest it's been in decades. The 'other treatment', plus the weight loss (about forty pounds) have probably contributed to that. Even with heavy medication, I've historically had trouble keeping my bp in a healthy range.

I think I've mentioned this before, but the five-year survival rate for what I have is only about ten percent, and beyond that, it drops to less than one percent. And yet, there is a chance I will be in that less than one percent.

Regarding Cavegirl Combat, I can tell you that Oko and Mika will be pounding each other through next spring, and barring some outside interference, you'll get to see it. That much is done, and I'm working to finally finish the whole story.

I have other ideas as well, and I hope I get to start some of them.

I promise you, though, I will never do another story as long as this one.

Cavegilr Combat, week 26

Mika just can't get enough of Oko's tits as she continues her cruel biting attack this week!

Plant life

One of the things that has bothered me about Cavegirl Combat is that it takes place in absolute desert. As you'll recall, Lake Havasu and Powell Lake in Arizona were sort of my inspirations for the setting.

But it seems unlikely to me that a primitive tribe would live in such harsh conditions. And one thing I've striven for in Cavegirl Combat, of course, is absolute paleontological accuracy.

But drawing vegetation is a pain in the ass — especially in the style I'm using now, which doesn't allow for much in the way of artistic shorthand to describe background elements. (Look at any jungle girl comic to see what I'm talking about in regard to shorthand: one or two ferns in the foreground, everything else in silhouette.)

So, I have created about 25 ‘leaf brushes’ in Painter to help me fill in vegetation quickly. The attached art is an example of what I can do with them. I also ran the art through a Topaz plugin filter to give it a little more ‘zip’.

So at some point, weeks down the road from now, expect to see a little more plant life in the episodes.

Cavegirl Combat, week 25

Mika sinks her teeth into Oko in this week's installment!

More From the C Zone!

Cavegirl Combat returns

The first Cavegirl Combat since March. We pick up right where we left off then, with Mika and Oko struggling to get the upper hand.

Thank you for your patience.

Happy birthday!

Today is, I believe, the one-year anniversary of the blog. Thanks again to Slid for taking up the slack and keeping new content coming.

The site has had 91,000 visits (not visitors, but visits) over the past year. About 57% of that is repeat traffic. But we still get a lot of new visitors — about 42% are here for the first time.

Most of our traffic continues to come from other sites, and not so much from search engines. The blog is hard to find via search, unless you type in very specific keywords, and I prefer it that way. It helps minimize the chance Junior is going to stumble across it and freak out his parents.

Traffic dropped off noticeably after I stopped updating Cavegirl Combat. But I hope to start posting new updates soon.

Thanks to everyone who has stuck with us to this point.

It's a small world, after all

I'm on my Facebook in my ‘real-life’ identity.

I was somewhat surprised the other day when a friend ‘shared’ a political post with me. Its original author, unknown to my friend, was a catfight artist who was fairly well-known several years back. 

I had to check his profile to be sure. No mentions of catfight art, or any art at all, really. But his profile pic was a self-portrait, and although the style had evolved, it was clearly the same guy.

What are the chances of that happening?

Life in crowds.

 Last week we were talking about how much attention Cam gives crowds, always rendering them with expressions and body language. Here's a great example. This is a frame in which the crowd is the real subject.

 Again with the crowds...

 This Betty drawing just has so much vibration I fell in love with it. I'm referring to the head nearest the center.

 Hey, it's the Buddha! I just dig it, OK?

 Still more crowd work!

And a process progression that Cam put together. From '96.