I'm sure this joke has been done before, but I don't have the heart to go searching and prove to myself how unoriginal I am (and that's not an invitation for you to "help" by doing so for me).
But I did just read this fascinating, even to a non-sports fan like myself, series on traveling (via Kottke). And my alma mater made it through the first round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament today, so Go Boilers!
Armour, of course, not armor. I read way too much British fantasy when I was a kid.
In fact, it is the cartoonist who is sick as a dog and spent the whole day on the couch coughing and playing video games. So, no time for inking.
No relation.
Based ever so lightly on real life (the lightly, of course, being why they are Schmuzzy and Schmerica).
From some sort of back-to-basics impulse, I've been trying to get these cartoons right on paper with a minimum of post-production work. This one was the first one that I've had to totally assemble in Photoshop from two different pages of drawings.
(The large size.)
Watch out kids, Drinky McBottle wants you to think that he enhances your creativity, but really all he does is make you draw sloppy cartoons and then play Bioshock for 5 hours.
You'll probably need to see the large size to read my handwriting.
The pictures aren't cut out -- that's just clumsy Photoshop levels work to even out the contrast between the light blue pencil and the dark black ink. And I couldn't find a green pencil on short notice, so that's blue pencil hue-shifted on the right.
It's close to Anthropomorphic Cannibalism, but it's not, see?
Hey! Thirty-six cartoons is, with rounding error, 10% of the way through this crazy project.
Creating characters without borders to their faces seems smart, until you want to draw them in front of something. Also, Pig is not higher in the last two frames because he's jumping -- it's because I don't know how to draw him in the same place.
(View larger if you can't read my writing.)
I asked Erica, "What's funny tonight?" and her reply was, "Butts are always funny." So true.
(Here's the large size.)
We watched Sita Sings the Blues last night and I'm happy to report that it lived up to the hype*. It's the story of an Indian Princess and her complicated relationship with her husband. And it's also the story of a modern woman named Nina, the same as the writer/director/animator Nina Paley, and her complicated relationship with her husband. It's also told in about six different styles, one of which is a very busty cartoon Sita who sings the songs of Annette Hanshaw. One of the "recommended reading"s listed at the end of the movie (yes, a cartoon with a bibliography) is Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, gives a clue to the "the stories don't always add up and that's ok" approach that seems to be going on. And the music's great and the monkeys are cute.
Beyond the artistic experimentation of the film, Paley is exploring new financial realms. The Annette Hanshaw songs are still under copyright protection and Paley has determined that, even after clearing the songs, she can't afford to sell the film. So she's giving it away. She's spent $50,000 to 'decriminalize' the use of the songs and every copy of the film will be given away, to avoid triggering the 'per-sale' provisions of her agreements with the copyright holders. (She does, however, accept donations.) The movie is already available from Archive.org and in a torrent. I also have the 1.4 GB 480p version, if you're physically accessible to me and you'd like me to hand you a copy.
FuzzyCo grade: A
* For me. Erica was not quite as enthralled as I, but she has her own blog if she wants to weigh in.
This is comes out of my head while running box office for a midnight show. What is that little guy? Weird.
Oh, nevermind. She's not a vampire, it's just a left-over egg tooth.
If they guys look a little uncomfortable, it's because they're not sure about doing a cross-promotion with Push Butt. "What's next," Coyote asked, "Pepsi product placement?"
Actually, if Coyote looks a little uncomfortable, it's because he's got wiggly lines, because I still haven't mastered this trace-over-your-blue-pencil business. I think it works in the last panel, though.
(Here's the large size for legibility.)
Hey look! Coyote and Raven get word bubbles instead of just little lines pointing at their mouths. Until my lettering improves (or I give up and start using the computer to add dialogue) I should probably provide links to the large version of these cartoons so that you can actually read the (hopefully funny) words.
This is the first one where I was really just staring at a blank page and thinking 'oh crap, I can't go to bed until I draw something.' And really, knowing myself, I think 29 days into this sort of project is not that bad to hit that wall. And hopefully that's just tonight -- we were at a crazy Dada-esque concert tonight (and c'mon Fulcrum Point -- Flash? I'd like to be able to actually link your information about the concert, but nooooo) and then we gave everyone rides home and someone forgot their bag in our car so we had to drive back down to Montrose and wah wah am I still talking?
Also, Erica reminded me as I was scanning this in that I got "What's cool? Nothing. Nothing is cool." from her and Christopher and that they got it from Ron Cameron's classic skateboard design. So, this is very left-handed homage. Am I still up?
Update: Ron Cameron has a Zazzle store. You can get a "Nothing is Cool" coffee mug! A postage stamp!
Please know that I don't intend this as any sort of slam on the cuisine of Chef Puck -- he was just the funniest-named chef I could think of as I was drawing this.
During some crucial hanging out this evening, Noah handed me a piece of paper and said "draw something". So I did, and then Noah copied it. I mean, sure, his looks a hundred times better than mine, but how many people could eff-up their Y so it looks kind of like a K so you're not sure if it's DESTINY or DE-STINK? That's some genius-quality ambiguity there, folks.
