Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Eleven

Out of the frying pan...



Okay, I lied in the last post. It'll take me another two comics to finish this arc. Change your schedule accordingly.

And now for something completely the same.

To keep in the theme of the last panel of this comic, I probably shoulda put this drawing of Resetti in there somewhere:

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.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Eight

Just so ya know, some of the animal neighbors in Animal Crossing are invertebrates.



Resetti seems to know plenty about the inner workings of Animal Crossing like I imagine Rover does, so he could probably fix this. I'm sure the procedure will involve lots of yelling and high blood pressure.

One of the best things about the latest Animal Crossing is seeing the Resetti brothers' headquarters, which I crudely drew a portion of in the last two panels. I wish you could see that kinda stuff with the other non-neighbor animals. I remember hearing that you could find Tom Nook's house in the original, Japan-only Animal Crossing on the N64. But that might of been a rumor.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Seven

Place it next to the first one, only slightly higher so they get the two-level effect with a little patch running down the middle.



HA! He's oblivious. And I'm an idiot.

Good Grief, MORE Girl Sketches?!

Yes, more. And more to come.



I believe the date on this sketch is 2006. I remember this one in particular cuz I finished it in one of the restaurants in Disney World's Animal Kingdom while waiting for our order to come up. Yes, I know the subject matter has nothing to do with Disney, but still...

So what. She's cute. Shut up.

Galactic Bowling

aka BOWLING IN SPAAAAAACE.



Finally, my hobby and my job have come together in a big colorful mess. On Saturday nights, the bowling alley I work at does that thing where you put on black lights and play party music. Pretty much every alley has their version of this. Ours is called "Galactic Bowling." For the image, I took the patterns on the carpet and the panels above the pin deck as a reference.

The real reason I did this was to do a more in depth Illustrator ...uh ...illustration. I usually don't do these unless I'm getting a grade for it, as I prefer Photoshop, but I've been getting a lot better at it thanks to the lynda.com lessons. Now that I'm more familiar with it, I figure I'll start doing Illustrator stuff more often.

The rainbow lane is kinda wonky, as I had to constantly adjust the curves to make it fit in the letterbox frame and make the blend of the colors look okay. I love the way the ball and pins came out though. In fact, I loved them so much, I saved them on their own:

Conan and Leno: The Oldest Story Ever Told

Jimmy Fallon is somewhere off panel.



More stuff from John, which is usually the case if the comic is based on current events. We threw a few other betrayal ideas that didn't make it in, such as Lincoln's assassination, Cypher and Neo, and when Mario jumps off of Yoshi over a bottomless pit to reach the next platform.

As for my personal take on the whole Leno and Conan thing... idano. I watch Letterman.

Makes for a funny-a$s comic, though.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Six

You must bring him... A SHRUBBERY!



Good ol' Rover! He'll fix this problem! Maybe.

I've always thought of Rover as a somewhat omniscient being in Animal Crossing. He's the first animal a player talks to when they start the game and asks you questions about you're upcoming town (thus arguably creating it), and he greets every player every time they boot up the game afterward. So I imagine him not knowing about everything everywhere that has and will happen in the Animal Crossing universe, but rather knowing 1) that it's a game created by Nintendo, and 2) of every town and every human resident, even if he can't remember their names. And since you can find him in the coffee shop on occasion in the DS version, I also imagine him regularly visiting every town in the world ever created on a regular basis just for the sake of visiting and seeing if there's any problems.

So he's kinda the watchful protector of Animal Crossing. ...Hm... Maybe I should do a comic where he becomes Batman, or Batcat, or whatever.

Rusty Cheese

Mice not affiliated with WALL•E or Disney.



This was my last Beginning Sculpture project, wherein we had to some amount of metal welding and cutting. That class was pretty fun, even though I don't have too much interest in sculpture in general. What ever the outcome was, it was enjoyable just messing with the torch and arc welder.

In this one, I got some sheets of metal, cut em', and welded them together to make a big piece of steel cheese. The mice were an after thought, after I found some super old Mac computer mice that my Dad was holding onto for no apparent reason.

See?! They're mice! In both senses of the word! You see what I did thar?

Here's some other shots:

Lens Flare: The Movie

It's continuing mission: to make aware improper set lighting.



Even though he didn't give me a script like he usually does, this was pretty much John's idea. I'm sure everyone who's seen it noticed this, but there is a ridiculous amount of lens flares in the latest Star Trek movie, so much that it's comedic. There's almost more lens flares than there are scenes of Kirk being choked.

I woulda made this sooner, but my dad got the Star Trek DVD, not I. And I'm not gonna break open his DVD to pick out scenes to reference, so I had to wait until he opened it himself to watch it. And when I say he opened it, I mean Mom did.

Here's a version without the flares in case you're dying to see all the art and dialogue, but that kinda defeats the purpose:


I've never done Star Trek drawings before, so I sketched them out before hand. Since I ain't that good a caricatures, I normally go back and forth with John when I draw actors or other celebrities to get them right. But I didn't do it this time, only cuz of laziness. If you can't tell who's who, Spock has the pointy ears and Bones has the cringed face, cuz Bones is at his best when he has that kinda face.




Now, on to make "Kirk gets Chocked: The Movie."

DAAAAAAW!

Shoulda got Space Filler to sit at the bottom of the page.



Another somewhat old sketch, this time a girl who's been chibi-ified, or whatever the term is for making something especially simple and cutesy.

I think this is one of the first sketches where I started to draw really thick outlines. Just in case you wanted to know.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Five

I totally gapped Hopper's house and didn't even biff.



This makes me wish Animal Crossing had sports other than fishing and bug catching contests. Snow boarding probably won't work cuz the hills are pretty beat, but somethin' like soccer or anything that involves a ball might be fun. I guess you could kick the snow balls around. Just don't kick them against a tree. Or a river. Or another snowball. Or off a cliff.

Birthday Gift Glitch, Part Four

Whose responsible this?!



Elise is one of those diva characters. There doesn't seem to be any that I like, so my town has cycled through quite a few of them. Right now, there's this duck that wears fake eyelashes. I think. She may have moved by now.

I've seen in the player's guide that there's a ninja bunny. His name is Snake. I haven't met him, but I already know he's awesome.

Time Teddy

These paintings were for my Intermediate Painting I class, specifically a project where time had to be some noticeable factor. I decided to to a teddy bear going through it's paces for some reason. You know me, I usually don't do stuff that has some sort of deep meaning to me, just whatever may seem fun or interesting.


This first one just shows it normally. Maybe belongs to a boy due to all the blue.


Here it is years later, ragged and whatnot. In the attic, maybe.


And here it is another few years later, patched up again. Maybe belongs to a girl cuz of the pink. Could be previous owner's daughter. ...Maybe.

In the last one, it's left eye is supposed to be a bit bluer than the other to imply a new one was sewn in to replace the one that was hanging off in the previous painting. Didn't come out to well in these photos. Painting fail.

Also, perspective cropping in Photoshop is awesome.