Being Literal Isn't Always a Good Thing

It should have said shake THEN pour. I wouldn't be covered in lemonade then.

DRUGS

Food mascots are always on drugs if you think about it. Just watch the Trix rabbit as he pursues the color and fruit flavored laced cereal as if it his sole purpose for living. Sonny for Cocoa Puffs is just as bad if not worse. He doesn't have to fight to get his fix, but whenever he tries to stay away from his addiction he's reminded of it and goes mad from it. Toucan Sam is nearly as bad since he's always following his nose trying to seek out the fruity... oh, I'm sorry,  frooty cereal he desires. Tony doesn't do drugs, but I always envisioned him as being a juicer for some reason. And as for Chester, maaaaaaan, there's something in those cheese puffs that make them addictive. Anybody could get fat on those.

Suggestive Sales

I had this question on application I was filling out and I contorted the meaning of suggestive which resulted in this comic. The way all these companies make you fill out applications online is so impersonal anymore and then when you make it to an interview they ask the same questions instead of trying to figure out if you're capable of working. At the last interview I had they asked me to describe myself with three words. What am I supposed to say to that? Valiant, charming, and strong? Or perhaps sarcastic, cynical, and demeaning would be a good one. For those wondering, I said I was determined, polite, and focused. No, I didn't get the job.

Dumb Moments

So during my first conversation with a girl I know she told me she smelled something like her computer burning and asked me to wait for her to check what was wrong. She came back and told me she had a blonde moment even though she isn't blonde and the smell was actually a skunk outside her window. Ah, the wonders of living out in the country.

I've had a few stupid moments like this before. Granted they weren't smell related and I didn't get down close to a computer to sniff it, but they were rather dumb. Probably one of the funniest was when I couldn't figure out why my car wouldn't drive while I was in it until my little sister pointed out I hadn't even started it yet. Or worse yet when you end up running around all over in search of some item to find out you had been holding it the entire time - everyone seems guilty of that at least once.

DOODLE STUFF

I like to doodle out random stuff in my sketchbook when I want to try different coloring techniques or just try to get my creative groove on.

Props to those who can guess all the game characters in this.

Stickmen

Think back to when you were around three years old. What was the easiest thing for you to draw? Simple shapes, such as circles, squares, and lines. Now think about the easiest way to portray a person using nothing but those shapes. Of course, stickmen! Stickmen are by far one of the most expressive and easiest ways of portraying a human character. Even cavemen of the past drew them on the walls as a simple way to tell a story about their success with hunting or a family timeline. Nowadays the stickman is obviously used for humor, no doubt about that.

Take a look at LOL Comics for instance. It uses nothing but simple drawings and stickmen to achieve some of the most sidehurting humor I've ever read. Next to that you have XKCD which doesn't even show facial expressions yet you still understand exactly what emotion is being portrayed within the joke.

When I was little I made pictures using the same sort of simplified expression through body language with jots and tiddles. They were mostly of amusement parks as I had mentioned in an earlier post. I wanted to show what those pictures looked like, but I can't seem to find my old artwork anywhere at the moment, so here's a poor example of what it would look like.

Also around that time I made flipbooks with stickmen as well. There is nothing easier than animating a stickman, seriously. Unless you can't draw a stickman without a ruler there's no reason you can't make stickmen cartoons.

BREAKDANCE

It's so simple to draw them you could turn it into a stress reliever.

STRESS RELIEF

Heck, just go bonkers if you'd like.

BONKERS!

Just don't wear yourself out.

Ending notes: For those who want to try making these I use Easy Toon which you can acquire here.

Pixel Art

When I really young I thought I wanted to create videogames. Most guys probably thought they could do this when they were younger as well. Unfortunately for me I didn't grow up with computers at my disposal to grasp the understanding of how games were even made. I remember at one time my family had a Commodore 64 that had the big keyboard, a joystick, and even the printer. The only problem was that it had no manual since we bought it from somebody else and the only thing I really knew how to do on it was load games and make text documents to print out from the dot matrix printer that sounded like an industrial meat grinder. The closest I think I ever got to making a game was when I was at a friend's house and we found out he had the program ZZT for his DOS computer. The program didn't exactly teach me how to create a game, so to speak, but I learned how to make some rather awesome(or stupid) graphics for the rooms in our creation. That's when I realized I actually really enjoyed creating graphics a lot more than figuring out how to make the things move or work properly.

Years later when I was around fifteen years old, I believe, I borrowed a book out of the library on C++ programming. That was definitely not something you just handed in book form to a teenager and expected him to learn how to do it. I had barely even fully grasped how to use everything in Windows at that time so reading through a book explaining how to create class codes, placement of data, and compiling it all together boggled my mind. I stuck to drawing instead, but I still enjoyed how graphics in games were made.

When I first started out with pixel work most of it involved editing and combing already made sprites to make them funnier. I vividly remember one of the first ones I did involved Sonic the Hedgehog throwing a hadouken like Sakura from Street Fighter.

I thought it was pretty funny at the time. Then for kicks I took my favorite character from Waku Waku 7 and made him look like a disco star.

Yeaaaaah, take that Saturday Night Fever!

As time went on I found that I enjoyed animating a bit more than just working on pixel work. The first time I got a wacom tablet and found out about Easytoon I got carried away very quickly. One of the first pixel based animations I made using that program that I felt very accomplished with was for when I acquired a Dreamcast for the first time.

I think I'll make a post about nothing but animations I did with Easytoon later on as showing all the fun I've had with it in just this post would be a long and graphic intensive read. Back on subject though.

The more I worked on animations done with pixels the more I wanted to try making them in color and full detail. I spent a good six hours, yes, six HOURS, working on one animation in full detail.

Creating it was a lot of work, but the gratification of making something so large and detailed move was well worth it. I was so impressed with how well this turned out at the time that I wanted to try creating my own graphics for a fighting game using MUGEN. The first character I tried designing was this girl who was supposed to be like a SEGA mascot. She was known as Sega Gal, which the more I think about it sounds really lame.

I look at this now and now remember why I studied anatomy so much when learning to draw better. Aside from that though I never did finish this character to make her in a game. I finished her walk cycle and a punch attack, if I remember correctly. I eventually pushed the project to the side because I didn't enjoy how she was turning out. It was a long time before I picked up doing pixel work after I tried this project, but I'll save that for a later post.