Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Ten

The RIB telling you to reset: the epitome of irony.



I think I can milk this arc for two more comics. But this'll be the last comic where I'm (more) crazy and disheveled.

When I started doing this arc, I originally planned to give myself a beard in the later strips, but then the 20 minute joke wouldn't have made sense. So it became a five o'clock shadow instead.

I guess it doesn't make sense either way since you can't grow facial hair in the game.

Maverick Deke

Why's everybody gotta smack my laptop?



Deke McClelland is a graphics and image guru who, amongst other things, is one of the awesome teachers at lynda.com. Since college, I've been going there to improve my Photoshop and Illustrator skills, and the main series' of tutorials I've been focusing on are the One-on-One's, in which Deke is the instructor. Him and the website in general have been a tremendous help in my growth as an artist, so I can't thank them enough. But I'll try anyway.

Thank you, lynda.com and Deke!

*UPDATE*

Edit by John:

Coming Together

They sure do wave a lot.



I've been wanting to post this for a while, but iMovie 08 proved to be too sucky to easily add the credits I wanted at the end. Dad suggested reinstalling the older iMovie HD, which worked much better. Before I posted it on the interwebs, I wanted to make it quite clear that the music IS NOT MINE AND I DON'T CLAIM IT AS MINE. It's from Samurai Champloo. Anyway, those credits were added, and after going back in forth with John, I eventually got it to a format I like. It's still low quality, but the pictures I originally took when making it were low quality to begin with so I could fit most of them in a single SD card.

I used Red and Yellow and other similar... whatever they are in lots of projects in college, starting with my first design assignment. I wanted to show their animated debut first, as it's easier to figure out what the heck they're supposed to be if you see them in motion first.

Anyway, now that this is posted, I can finally start showing more of these guys. I'm quite proud of them. I'd call them my children, but that sounds creepy.

Here it is on Youtube, if you'd prefer that.

Super Senior Returns

To be in a ho-hum movie, no doubt.



Another project where I messed around in Illustrator. The paintbrush and paintbrush blob tools are great if your like me and prefer to work more with illustrations rather than design. I might have to start doing my inking in Illustrator, as the paintbrush tool's good at adjusting for human error in wobbly curves.

As for the Super Senior thing, that was a one shot thing I did for a comic, back when I was in college and still hanged out with that talking squirrel. I still stay in contact with him though. His oldest son still has one more year at UD left, apparently. And his wife sent me a very nice Christmas card last year! Good people... or rodents, or whatever.

Warhol's Mario

Perhaps screen prints of E Tanks with varying palettes would of been more appropriate.



Here's an Advance Painting project that I did really quick during the Thanksgiving break of that semester when I felt that I should be doing something rather than sleeping off my Itis. It's was done on a rather small canvas and I didn't have much paint on hand, so I had to apply carefully and thinly. It worked out okay in the end, and my teachers and classmates thought it was interesting. Some thought it was some sort of commentary on different races, but really the different colors of the Marios are based on the palettes he flashes through when you get a Starman in the original Super Mario Bros. (They aren't exact, so please waste your time telling me im doin it wrong.)

As for the idea, I just thought it'd be cool to see what Andy Warhol might make had he still been alive to do work on current icons of pop culture.

Here's some shots of the individual Marios:

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Nine

RESETTI PUNCH!!



He actually went easy on me. He coulda used his pick axe.

Nice of Rover to keep me company while I waited for the Resettis to show up. He could of left, but that's just how nice of a guy he is.

I've always thought of Sonny and Don Resetti as stereo typical Italian Americans in the way they speak and act. Based on their temperament, Don is Tom Hagen and Sonny is Silvio Dante.

Tow Trucks: Trucks that Tow

Or so I'm told.




No comic this week, as my dad asked me to make a tow truck to put on the website he made for Drumheller's Towing and Recovery. I guess artistic ability is genetic. The truck may or may not be on the site by the time you hit that link.

I gotta feeling he was just humoring me and he'll just throw the image somewhere in there, but it still gives me a reason to try stuff in Illustrator. I made the car cartoony, as I'm not good at drawing realistic mechanical stuff. ...Actually, I'm not that great at drawing anything realistically. I see plenty of realistic stuff every day. I wanna draw stuff you won't see.

Keep in mind he made that site in Canvas. Canvas! Someone already shot that horse. He needs to move on.