Today was laundry day, and after I ran out of quarters on the Marvel vs. Capcom at the mat I do my wash, I did some sketching. And of course I hated everything I drew. But I guess that’s part of this project. . . I’m doing it because I suck, and I need to get better. Here’s a page I doodled once I got home and put on the final episode of Generation Kill. I’m happier with it than the bad Sagat poses I did, even though the left sketch has a serious case of tiny face.
Keeping in line with my promise, here are some Final Fantasy inspired sprites I did this morning of the Ronin Dojo boys, in magi attire.
I’m just starting to mess around with pixel art, and it’s requiring a lot more thought that I anticipated, especially at this small scale. Figuring out how to handle diagonal lines is an art unto itself. . . there is a surprising range of style you can impose on just a few square pixels of canvas. A Ronin Dojo video game is something we’ve always joked about doing as part of our meta campaign to build up a fanbase, but I dunno, I think we’ve taken a renewed interest in it. SCUMM engine graphical adventure to the mall to find the Red Dwarf boxset, anyone?
I did some doodles tonight, but nothing worth posting, since I did them idly while recording with our fantastic voice acting team of Tim Martin and Emily Tarver for the next Ronin Dojo episode (due out Monday). Seriously, those two rock. Emily especially, because she helped come up with my next new favorite line. Tune in after the weekend to guess which one it is. And if you’re in NYC and troll the improv comedy scene, keep your eyes peeled for them. They’re always popping up and being hilarious.
Ok, the fatigue of talking about time travel for two hours is setting in. END OF ENTRY.
I suppose resolutions are to be made and stuck to from day one of the new year, but the first days of 2009 weren’t inspiring enough for me make a change in my life, which I’ll admit has been stagnating in light of unemployment and my own laziness. But as each day of these first 19 ticked by, I started to find my inspiration. These guys, laid off from 1Up and EGM, hit the ground running. I haven’t even been speed walking in the last couple of months. And I need to change that.
So, on this day of change in America, I’m announcing my candidacy for productivity. Allow me to outline my very simple platform.
- Monday through Friday, at least one blog post a day. Posting on weekends when possible.
- Monday through Friday, one piece of artwork, even just a sketch page, will be posted daily. Hopefully this will turn into a means to an end, getting more on the ball with For Tax Reasons work, but at the very least I need to be drawing, daily.
That’s it. I hope that publicly putting that out there and on the line places the gun to my head that desperately needs to be there to beat my natural procrastination and start progressing as an animator, a writer and whatever other role I need to take on to make it big in this town. . . this town we call the Internet. Because no one in Hollywood will ever care about a good Final Fantasy joke as much as the Internet does.
I maked pixel arts. First try. Ben did text.
Second experiment. Copying helps me learn!
So this is my post for today. . . my inaugural post in this experiment. I’ll let it stand alone for today, and then tomorrow, the real work begins.
I’m on Twitter now. If you look fast, you can watch a three post meltdown regarding today’s NFC Championship game. So come follow me and watch me. . . is it tweet? That’s the verb, right? I’m not trying to be facetious. . . I don’t know what the verb is.
Significant post coming on Tuesday.
This particular photo reminds me of a picture of the author you’d find in the back of a true crime book about some weird murder in the 70s.
Last week on Thursday I caught what I think was the first official time Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s Chris Gethard performed his one-man show Chris Gethard’s Magic Box of Stories. If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Gethard’s skill set, here are some bullet points from his resume:
- contributor to Weird New Jersey and author of the book Weird New York
- member of New York improv comedy team The Stepfathers and regular player in UCB’s Sunday night show ASSSSCAT 3000
- the world’s foremost Darryl Strawberry impersonator
- appreciator of fan-fiction
Suffice to say, Magic Box of Stories was fantastic. Gethard always has insane true stories to tell, and he tells them in a hilarious fashion. Magic Box compiles all of those stories into a literal box, from which audience members will pull cards, dictating what tales of adventure will make up the night’s roster of stories. And if that wasn’t enough, each story has a video clip to accompany it. . . Gethard video taped his mom’s thoughts on each and every story he tells.
So friendly!
I’ve been going to UCB for several years now, and while some of the faces on stage have changed, I’m happy that Chris Gethard is still there and still amazing every time I see him. I know that, at one point, we (Ben and I) thought about trying to get Gethard to do a voice for a cartoon, but I think we got shy about it or something. If you live in New York, see his show this Saturday, December 27th at 8 PM. I’d like to say I’d be there, but I’m going to be playing the role of the good boyfriend that night at a Broadway show. But I am confident this show will have other performances, and I’ll be at those, since the titular box promises a somewhat different show every time.
I got this picture when I Google Image Searched “Magic Box.” I was honestly hoping for pictures of vaginas.
And as always, available for download at the main For Tax Reasons site. You will be rewarded for freeze framing on a few insert shots towards the end of this episode.
It’s kinda crazy that the original IM IN UR MANGER short is over a year old at this point, and over two years old from when we first started writing it. Thanks for watching, and link the shit out of this new short. I think it’s fair to say Part Three will move through the pipeline significantly faster. . . Ben might kill me for saying this, but expect it come the end of January.
Much love, Internet! I’m so glad we finished this thing.
Spoilers: It’s a new episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX, and it’s gonna be delivered to you this Monday, December 22nd. It’s all coming together. The FBI plays for keeps.
This episode is going to blow your mind. Probably because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. . . YET. Don’t worry, it will soon. After Episode 4. I hope.
Pucker up, buttercup.
Banged out for the sake of having something new to coincide with the Otaku Generation interview, here is a new mini-short, showing what happened to Jerry after the end of the first Digital Pirates of Dark Water episode. The second episode is going up in mid-December, but chew on this until then.
The fine, fine fellows of the Otaku Generation podcast, having contacted us long ago about an interview, finally got Ben and me to guest on their show. Ben and I sat huddled around one mic on Monday night for two hours, getting interviewed, made to feel special and just having a good time. I pretty sure we never actually explained what the hell we actually do or what are cartoons are about, but I did get to talk about Degrassi, Exo-Squad, and the skateboarding cartoon we’d like to see Japan make. Thanks so much to Alan, Bryce and Jefferson for having us, for being awesome hosts and for letting us ramble down conversational paths to nowhere.
So give it a listen to hear my real voice, not my voice actor-ing one, and judge if I’m funny without the benefit of rewrites. And maybe you’ll like what you hear and tune back in, and you’ll have another podcast to listen to on the subway.
