Jonathan Traynor

My hourly comic for 2018.

It’s Secret Santa time in the office, so as part of my gift I created a small drawing of each member in our team! You can catch me in the top right. For everyone’s privacy, that’s as far as I’ll expand on that one!

Our second week challenge was to create a image based on the topic ‘A giant wolf and his pet snake’. I knew this one was going to be a little tricky for me. I’m not great at drawing animals! But I decided to jump head first into this. I knew from the onset that I wanted this design to invoke images of an ancient god of sorts. Something mythical and unreal. Additionally, I thought having a regular sized snake accompanying the giant wolf would make for some nice contrast. I sketched up the outline of my beast, and decided to incorporate some ancient looking stone/bone structures across his body. Something quite tribal looking. In the end, although I didn’t have time to create a BG, I was still quite happy with the end result!

In the last couple of weeks, a friend from work and I have been tasking ourselves with a weekly drawing challenge. Using a random word/topic generator, we pick one of three possible options and get busy creating an image based on what’s chosen. For the first week, the topic was ‘A bounty-hunter with a laser spear’. For this one, I wanted to steer away from the Boba Fett style sci-fi bounty hunter, so I had a think about what direction to go in. What would a bounty hunter hunt with a spear? What, in general, is hunted with a spear? Doing some digging, I settled on a spear fishing based hunter. To kick things up a notch, I wanted to give the character a way to fly just above the surface of the water, so that she’d be able to hunt across the entire ocean. With that in mind, I loosely based her design on a Fly Fish, with the shape of the wings/fins. Finally, although lasers are involved, I didn’t want to rely too much on traditional tech designs (they don’t mix well with water!). So for this one I wanted to go down amore ancient-tech route, much like Breath of the Wild. Overall, I quite like how this one turned out!

Super Mario Odyssey is a pretty big game, Chris Scullion wrote a pretty big review for it over on his site, Tired Old Hack. Therefore, I wanted to put a little extra effort into the header image to go along with it! Of course, with the way my illustrations have been going, it was a no brainer to make a “captured” Scullion the centrepiece. In the background around, I wanted to include some slice of life style snapshots from the various locales and characters from the game. Starting top right and going clockwise we have a captured TRex looming over a New Donk City resident on a bench (hey is that a Jurassic Park reference?), Bowser and Peach posing for a quick wedding photo (Peach doesn’t look like she needs much help here!), Mario taking a moment on the Odyssey, and finally Mario making some Goomba pals in Steam Gardens! You can read the entire review here! https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/10/26/super-mario-odyssey-switch-review/

Here’s some more of the header images I’ve been creating for Tired Old Hack! For Pokkén Tournament DX, I wanted focus on the fact that it was a fighting game with, well Pokémon in it. I decided to pay homage to Nintendo’s other great fighting franchise, Punch Out! So there’s Pikachu looking all Little Mac, and Charizard looking a bit King Hippo! https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/18/pokken-tournament-dx-switch-review/ Next up was Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions. Not much to say about this one, but it’s always fun to draw Mario and Luigi. I tried to ape the Mario and Luigi franchise style for this one too. I wanted to insert yer man Scullion again, so he’s here in the place of Fawful! https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/10/04/mario-luigi-superstar-saga-bowsers-minions-3ds-review/ In Layton’s Mystery Journey, Professor Layton has gone missing, and his daughter is tasked with solving the mystery of where he’s ran off to. I thought it’d be fun to put yer man Scullion in Layton’s clothes, with him bursting into the detective agency. Can you imagine if your dad went missing, and then one day a stranger burst in wearing his stuff? Ooft. https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/10/05/laytons-mystery-journey-3ds-review/

Here are some of the header illustrations I created for various game reviews over at Tired Old Hack. For Mario and Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, I wanted to play on the doppelgänger Rabbids throughout the game - so I created a Rabbid Chris! Yes, that’s a can of Irn Bru Xtra it’s gulping down (nectar of the gods, or so I hear!). https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/02/mario-rabbids-kingdom-battle-review/ With Namco Museum, I was really interested in the addition of PacMan VS. being added to the collection. With one player controlling Pac-Man and the others controlling the ghosts, I thought it’d be fun to show Chris playing against some of the heroes from the games included in the collection! https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/08/29/namco-museum-switch-review/ Finally, for Monster Hunter Stories, I though that taming and riding your very own monster was a funny image when juxtaposed with a regular pet owner. https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/08/monster-hunter-stories-3ds-review/

This set of three images were created to go alongside Chris Scullion’s review of the SNES Mini Classic console, which landed just last week! In the main header image, I wanted to invoke a sense of a group of pals getting back together to play some games, after a long time apart. There’s a bunch of Nintendo characters in there that I’ve either never drawn before, or drawn very little of! This image was used in Chris’ main review here - https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/27/snes-mini-review/ In the second image, I wanted to play on the concept of a high-school style yearbook, ‘Most likely to...’ feature. Some of these franchises have went to some amazing places in the 20 years since the SNES, so I thought it’d be funny to imagine what they were doing now! The final image was me testing a three panel comic layout. Back in the 90s, there was a pretty fierce rivalry between the SEGA Megadrive and the SNES - something Chris and I were all too aware of. Both these images were used in a tips and tricks article by Chris, which you can read (and chuckle) at here https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/09/30/snes-mini-tips-special-90s-style/

Hey! Over the last month and a bit, I’ve been honoured to collaborate with Chris Scullion, a freelance and enthusiastic games journalist. He runs his own website, www.tiredoldhack.com, where he writes unique and hilarious game reviews, articles and much more. Go check it out! As part of this collaboration, I’ve been creating illustrations to go alongside some of his bigger reviews and articles. It’s been really fun, and a great learning experience so far! My goal when reaching out to him was to push myself beyond my usual artistic habits. With this collaboration, I’m creating more artwork, quicker and with more varied subjects. With every piece, I aim to push myself just a little further! These particular images were created as samples when I reached out to Chris, and he’s included them in a post introducing me to his readers. You can catch that here - https://tiredoldhack.com/2017/08/21/draw-pardner-introducing-the-toh-illustrator/ I’ll post the illustrations I create on here, with links to be articles, shortly after they go live on his site!

After recently finishing off Metroid: Samus Returns, I decided to revisit this concept and update it with her new design from that game. I was never really happy with my first attempt, which you can see here - http://www.jonathantraynor.co.uk/post/157202351771/reasons-overwatch-should-come-to-the-nintendo I think this one looks way better, and the new design is amazing. Anyway! More to come :)

It's almost here!!! My childhood is coming back ;_;

Made of Stars.

Edit: 1000 Notes! Thank you!!

Zaandam. 2014. Right at the end of our year long stay in Amsterdam, we stayed in this hotel for my birthday! Made with Procreate on iPad!

Mill Hill. 2015. A strange year in our lives! But I discovered Steven Universe that year so it all balanced out. Created in Procreate on an iPad Pro :)

New PIKMIN game hypeeee

Reasons Overwatch should be on the Nintendo Switch; #2 - A JunkRat X Bowser Jr. skin.