Introducing: Mr. Zikkon!

Hey everyone!

We're proud to announce the debut of a new artist here on AchillesHeelArt! His name is Mr. Zikkon, and he hails from the UK. As you can see from his first piece posted today, he has a wonderful comic book style and a love of superheroes.

His piece this week is a single image of a poor hero in the clutches of an evil villian, but in the future, Zikkon will be providing us with a continuing sequential comic book story! He has already come up with a cast of characters that are going to be getting into some very ticklish situations...

My piece this week is a request I received from someone who wanted to see a certain HGTV host tickle torturing a buddy's feet with his fingers in "HGTT"



I hope everyone enjoys this week's update! 2008 is shaping up to be a great year for male tickling art fans, as I've got two more artists that I've been courting to come aboard.

Achilles

For You Tattoo Fans

This week, Sloth and I both inadvertently created two pieces that feature tattoos.

In my piece, an evil wizard tests out a new spell on a helpless assistant. It covers him in dozens of "Ticklish Tattoos" that torment the poor young man wherever they appear over his upper body.

In Sloth's piece, a rowdy biker gang has a little fun with one of their members' helpless bare feet as they go "Hog Wild".



This week marks our 20th update since we began back in August, and we have 35 pieces in the member's section. I'm trying to think of some cool way to mark the occasion when we get 50 pieces in there in the next few months.

Also, if any of you are familiar with a site called "Deviant Art", I just thought I'd let you know that I put up a profile there. There's nothing on my page that you can't find in my main site, but they have an excellent keyword searching system for you to look for other tickling artwork. Here's the link to my page:

http://achillesheelart.deviantart.com/

Check out the "Browse Favorites" link on my page there to see some of the foot and tickling related artwork I've already linked to.

Have fun!

Achilles

Pencil Sketches

This week we've posted the 11 remaining pencil versions of the pieces in my gallery. From now on (or at least for as long as I'm working in pencil) we'll be uploading two versions of my drawings, colored and uncolored. We won't be doing the same thing in Sloth's gallery. His work is 100% digital most of the time, so he doesn't wind up with original sketches. We both use Wacom tablets to color our work in Photoshop, but he actually does his line work directly onscreen too.

Here is a collage of most of the pieces that were posted this week:



Sloth provides a new image this week which was a request from a member to show a "casting couch" scenario in which a kinky casting director is trying to find the perfect ticklish actor for a torture scene in his film.

See you next Monday!

Achilles

A New Year, A New Price

With the arrival of 2008, I've decided to alter the pricing structure of the site. I realize now that it was a mistake not having an option to join with a non-recurring fee. Many people have expressed in e-mails and on message boards that they don't like websites with recurring monthly charges.

You can still sign up for a recurring membership starting at $12.99 for the first month, and $8.99 for each month afterwards. Those of you with pre-existing memberships, your fee will not increase. You will still only be charged $7.99 per month unless you cancel the account or it fails to rebill because of a credit card issue on your end.

In addition, I'm now offering non-recurring memberships in increments of:

1 month - $14.99
3 months - $39.99
6 months - $59.99

If you are currently a member with a recurring membership and you'd like to cancel it and replace it with one of the non-recurring options, it's very easy to do. Go to www.ccbill.com and right on their homepage they have an link to cancel a subscription. Simply cancel, wait for your membership to expire, then rejoin with one of the non-recurring payments.

I hope that by offering these options, some of you who have held out might at least sign up for a month to check things out. We've currently got 32 full-color illustrations in the member's section and that amount grows every week.

See you in the Member's Galleries!

Achilles

Black and White

I recently put a poll up on the TKLFrat messageboard about whether or not you would want to see the original pencils of my work, minus the Photoshop coloring. The last time I checked, the answer was 88% "Yes".

The raw pencil work definitely feels different from the final pieces. Some of them have more definition in the pencils than others. If you compare them side by side, you can really see how the color changes the mood of some of the drawings.

This week I'm adding the black and white versions of the original 5 pieces in my gallery, starting with "First Wish". We'll get the rest of the pieces in my gallery updated next week. It's simple to download either or both. When you click on the image it opens in a new window. At the bottom of the window are two links, one to download the color piece, the other to download the pencil version.



This week's update is called "Smooth vs. Hairy", which is a requested image from a member who wanted to see a very hairy chested man tied to a bed and foot tickled by a musclebound smooth man.

What's interesting about this piece to me is that when I was nearly finished with it I realized it was a lot like "Foot of the Bed", which is a piece in the remastered section of the site. If you put the two side by side, you can see what a difference 10 years of practice makes!

Achilles