The Trade Off

This week we're fulfilling two member's requests with a Mafia interrogation scenario, and an illustration of a security guard overpowered by two masked robbers.

Sloth and I decided to try a little experiment. We each began an illustration and sketched in the basic drawing. Then, we swapped drawings and finished the other's piece.



It was interesting to see how our styles meshed, and I think both pieces came out successfully. To see the differences between the initial sketch and the final work, we posted the drawings with special rollovers. Roll your mouse over the colored drawing, and the sketch will appear. To download the final color art, you'll have to use the text link at the bottom of the window.

This week's drawings both feature sock tickling, since those were some of the first requests we received when the site launched. Recently, a member warned us against becoming too "footy" and to make sure that we balanced it out with more body tickling.

I will do my best to see that the coming weeks include pieces that focus on other sexy, sensitive regions of the body. ;)

Have fun!

Achilles

The Tickler With A Soul

In some of the e-mails I've received through the site and the MySpace page, I've been asked to show what I look like. I will admit to being a bit shy, and as far as I'm concerned the focus of AchillesHeelArt should be on my work, not me. I am adding a self portrait sketch to my member's gallery soon, but this week presents me with a unique opportunity to give you a glimpse of what I look like.

As you will no doubt learn via some of the subject matter of my drawings, I'm a huge nerd. I'm a fan of comic books, sci-fi, toys, videogames, the whole nine yards. Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of just about anything Joss Whedon puts out.

A good friend of mine recently returned from a special effects college where she learned everything from fashion makeup to building and attaching prosthetics. She needed some practice and I needed a Halloween costume. We both decided it would be fun to make me up as Angel, the vampire with a soul from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.



She went all out: she created a plaster cast of my forehead and eyes so she could sculpt a perfect fitting vampire brow, she took a dental mold of my teeth to fashion me custom fangs, and I bought some scary yellow contact lenses.



I couldn't have been more thrilled with the results. The reactions from people at the party I attended were priceless. I actually had people backing away from me in fear.



Of course, now this has me thinking of a piece involving Angel and Spike...or maybe Lindsey and Angel...

See you soon!

Achilles

Happy Early Halloween!

Today is the first in a planned series of quarterly updates to the home page. The main image will change with the seasons, and we'll keep an archive of those in the free section after they get taken down.

I hope everyone enjoys todays spooky update. I realize the piece has a tickling machine theme similar to the last one, but let's face it: the classic Frankenstein scenario is just perfect for a tickling scene. A huge, hulking brute tied to a table, being experimented on. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I remember getting a charge (no pun intended) from the brief glimpse you got of Peter Boyle's feet in Young Frankenstein when he first appears in the film. He's covered by a sheet except for his huge, bare feet sticking out over the end of the table he's strapped down to.



The bolts of electricity tickling poor Frank were only possible because I attended a Photoshop seminar for my day job, and the speaker taught us a bunch of nifty tricks. Generating amazingly realistic lightning was one of them. If only my bosses knew how I was putting those skills to work!

Sloth's piece this week was not a request, but one he pulled out of his own imagination. It's the classic nerd vs. jock scenario, with a scrawny guy taking advantage of a burly jock who used to torment him. For anyone with a cast fetish, this one's for you!

Next week we'll be back to posting requested images. Here's a short list of some interesting ones we've received in the last few weeks:

-A State Trooper, overpowered by a scruffy thug, handcuffed in his own cruiser with his boots pulled off...

-A certain HGTV star, constructing some homemade wooden stocks and tickling a buddy in them.

-Prince William, ganged up on by some of his mates.

-Some bearish men, imprisoned and tickled in the wild by man-tickling plants and snakes.

Have fun with this week's update!

Achilles

1 Member, 2 Requests

When we first opened a few months ago, we immediately got a couple of requests from one of our first members to join the site. Not only did they arrive quickly, but they were some of the most elaborately described scenarios we've received.

This week, Sloth and I each tackled one of these. My piece is called "Pinned" and here's the original request:

"There was drawing in an old karate magazine in the 70’s that I found incrediblely erotic as a child. I would appreciate it if you would consider recreating it for your site. It was called THE PIN. The victim was a large man with dark hair. He was wearing the traditional white karate outfit called a GI. He was laying on his stomach and the drawing showed nails or pin heads driven through his karate outfit into the wood floor at strategic places. These "pins" held his muscular body firmly in place on the floor. In the drawing, his face was covered with forced laughter and his large fists were furiously beating the floor in futility as he laughed helplessly. The drawing showed his one leg was extended straight out with pins or nails driven in to the karate outfit at strategic places. His large bare foot extended beyond the edge of the karate outfit. A much smaller man sat on his other thigh facing the bigger man's bare feet. One of the smaller man’s hands was tightly grasping the bigger man by his ankle so the big man’s other leg was bent back at the knee. (similar to a hogtie position) . The smaller man had reddish blonde hair. His ears were imp-like (think Dr. Spock) and he had a cruel smile on his face as stroked a large feather back and forth across the bottom of his victim’ huge bare foot."

The particular member who requested this scenario also has a fondness for the work of Etienne, so I attempted to draw the victim in his style.

Sloth's piece is an illustration of an aging jock who picked on the wrong three punks in a bar, and wound up tickle tortured in his own tent. I'd post that original request too, but it was about three pages long. ;)



The "PIN" request was just about perfect: it wasn't too difficult of a scenario to illustrate and it had plenty of descriptive details. That's a great standard to follow when requesting art from us.

I hope you enjoy both pieces this week! I know at least one member who will be happy.

Achilles

The Process

By now, everyone who visits this blog and my website is intimately familiar with the image that I'm breaking down in this post. It's one of the first pieces of new erotic artwork I produced when I made the decision to get back into fetish art.

I thought I'd use it as an example to illustrate how a typical drawing that I produce for the site is made, from the earliest sketch to the finished piece.



Every piece begins with a few very rough sketches to map out the basic idea of what's going on in the piece. I knew I wanted some sort of 'tickle machine' to be featured in this image, since it's such a popular fantasy.



My idea was to make the homepage look like a magazine cover, in the style of the old men's adventure magazines from the 40s and 50s. At first, I was going to have the poor victim at the mercy of some Nazi-like soldiers, but I eventually decided that I'd stick to scientists, since this was going to be the first image everyone saw when they visited the site.



The soldier was replaced by another scientist, and the background details were added to the piece. I do a lot of the shading in this stage of the drawing, as I don't ink over the pencils. Instead, I scan it in and clean up and sharpen the linework in Photoshop.



Once the drawing has been digitized, the basic colors are blocked in. This step is a lot like filling in a digital coloring book.



The final step involves shading and detailing all of the colors, adding little details such as the computer read-out screen on the control panel, and adding any captions or text. Another effect that was added was a layer of distressed paper texture to give it even more of an old magazine feeling.

And that's what it takes each week to bring you a new drawing!

Achilles

Our First Requested Piece!

Technically, this wasn't the first request we received but it is the first one we've delivered. Someone asked us to show a certain newscasting silver fox getting foot tickled by a disgruntled intern, and this week we're proud to present that piece.



Also, Sloth provides a less action/more anticipation piece this week with his "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". I'm sure there's going to be a sequel to this one...

One thing I learned this week: I've always known that capturing a likeness in a drawing is tricky, but now I know that capturing a likeness that is laughing is next to impossible. Thank god for Google image search. You can find just about anything on there, including laughing and smiling celebrities. In fact, I've started a little collection of male laughing faces for use as reference material for future drawings.

I've got some especially good ones of one of my favorites, David Boreanaz. There might just be an Angel piece in the near future...

I hope everyone enjoys this week's update!

Achilles

Pick on someone your own size!

The two pieces in this week's update unintentionally follow the same theme: a tiny man menaced by groups of larger ticklers. Those of you into giants will love my piece this week, as several giants hold a captive still while others apply feathers to his defenseless, sensitive regions.

Sloth's piece features the return of the character from his very first piece, who he has decided to name "Buck Nova". In this week's adventure, poor Buck is at the mercy of some giant robots equipped with some very large feathers.



This week officially marks the end of the 'buffer' that we gave ourselves before opening the site. Coming up next will be some of the very first requests we received after we launched. We'll still be coming up with our own ideas from time to time, but we've got a healthy lists of requests to get through first.

Take care,

Achilles