The most minor of incremental progress

     So in my last update I just posted my horrible video and complained about how tired I was.  I kind of want to do that again but that would be a cop-out, so let's RAP about that one for a minute.
     That was my first experiment with Adobe Flash, and it was only the most bare-bones example of the kind of functionality it has.  There was no real movement, just single frame changes using what's called keyframes.  I made the catastrophic mistake of making it five minutes long, which, in animation time, is more or less eternity.  As I was making it I was learning from my many, many mistakes, but didn't want to have to scrap the whole thing and start over every time I figured something out (something I'm sure a chimp would consider pretty obvious), and decided to make one project at a time showcasing a certain ability of Flash.  With what I learned from the first video, I started on a second one aiming to make it better.  I...succeeded? I stepped up from simply using keyframes and made use of what flash calls "tweening".  It's a trick for the lazy animator, where you essentially set certain criteria and waypoints and let the program figure it out for you.  There's a huge trade-off to be made here over traditional frame-by-frame animation, it takes less time and is very smooth but looks robotic and doesn't offer much flexibility.
     The quality of the drawing still isn't very good, as I'm still learning how the brushes work in flash.  I'm awash in a sea of settings that don't make much sense to me yet, and I'm thrashing around desperately trying to cling to anything that looks as though it may float.  For my next project I plan on using Photoshop for the actual asset creation, since Photoshop is a drawing powerhouse and even I can make decent stuff in it. 
     So, if you can forgive my horrible drawing, voice acting/editing/mixing, and general awful sense of humour, please attempt to enjoy my latest offering.

Where once there was just bad art, there is now terrible animation.

     I'm not going to bore your ass off this time, I'm too wiped out.  I finally started screwing around n flash and learning how it works.  For the sake of getting it done faster, the drawing in this took a massive hit.  I wanted to get a feel for what's going on in flash and the next thing I do will probably be a lot better.  For now, though, you get to suffer through what might be the worst video on youtube.  Go ahead and maximize this, for the full effect.

     You can kind of see me learn a little more as the video progresses; it starts off childishly bad, and slowly upgrades to just really bad.  Luckily though, every time I made a mistake that ended up causing way more work than there had to be, I learned something.  This took an embarrassingly long time to make.  I really need to sleep.

Bad things come in threes

     Today you're going to learn about a guy I like to call "Genndy Tartakovsky".  Son of a Soviet defector to the United States, Tartakovsky is western animation's Hayao Miyazaki.  The guy is unstoppably good.  Which, of course, explains why so many things he does get cancelled before their time.  Most of this work isn't terribly obscure, but you might not have known he was involved.  He didn't create all of these shows, but was heavily involved and god damn does it show.

Dexter's Laboratory - Right off the bat I have to admit this show isn't as good from an adult point of view as a something like Flapjack or Adventure Time, but it was still really excellent for a kid's show(Who am I trying to kid here, I was already fifteen when this show premiered).  A much more sanitized version of the Ren and Stimpy style of humour, but it was good enough that it never had to go so far with it anyway.  Visually it didn't make the transition to widescreen and hi-def very well, since being from the nineties means it might as well have been from the neolithic. Overall it's a thumbs up for me, doubly so because of the character Val Hallen: Viking god of ROCK.

The PowerPuff Girls - Yeah, I love this show, fuck you.  I'm a big sucker for MoJo JoJo.  This show came about shortly after Dexter's Lab, I guess because the American cartoon network decided it was time to start really kicking some ass.  This is where you start getting your first clues that Tartakovsky really enjoys fight scenes, especially fight scenes with giant robots and monsters.  If you know me, you know that I also really enjoy fights with giant robots and monsters.   Somewhere, deep inside, I will always be an eleven year old.

Samurai Jack - I'm prepared to call this my all-time favourite animated show.  Tartakovsky can do more with fifty seconds of silent intensity than Seth Macfarlane could do with all the fart jokes in the world.  Just look at the clip.  That's the end of an episode where Jack himself has literally less than two minutes of screen time.  Up until that point, the episode was about all those bounty hunters carefully formulating a foolproof plan that they were absolutely sure would succeed.  They accounted for every contingency, and still had their shit totally ruined in less than forty seconds.  This show epitomizes "show, don't tell" in the best way.  Think of the end scene of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" where the sweaty, tension filled three-way standoff comes to an abrupt end.  Rather than just blather the plot out to you with poorly written dialogue George Lucas style, it lets you put everything together, and does it with beautiful backgrounds, use of music and sound, and animation.  I'm just going to link to some badassery from this show, check it out.
     Watch him kill the shit out of that fucking ninja!

     Here he is popping Molly's and cruising rave babes

     Who doesn't like Smokey and the Bandit/Gator references?

Anyway, that's just a taste of Samurai Jack (it's incredibly difficult to find youtube clips of it that aren't some asshole imposing a linkin park song over it).  Of all the shows I'm mentioning in this update, this is the one you should check out the hardest.

Star Wars: Clone Wars - By far, the best thing to ever be related to Star Wars.  This isn't the 3d animated one, but the precursor to that.  It's pretty much Samurai Jack cosplaying Star Wars, and holy crap, it makes the prequel trilogy look like an even bigger pile of shit.  In this clip, Mace Windu knows that if you're badass enough to punch a spaceship to death, you don't need to bother saying anything while you're doing it. 

Sym-Bionic Titan - Samurai Jack with giant robots pounding on giant monsters? Oh my god, I'm gonna die.  This show came out of nowhere and was excellent.  Like, EXCELLENT.  Therefore, it was cancelled after one season.  Somewhere, some asshole in an expensive suit is bloviating about how he saved X amount of dollars by cancelling this show and deciding the world needed more Johnny Test.  Some day I'm going to find this man, and boy fucking howdy am I going to pummel him.  Just watch the clip, holy shit. 

Special pilot bonus! - Korgoth of Barbaria!  A spoof of Conan-style adventure, made by Tartakovsky and talent from Spongebob.  It's hilarious and well made, so of course it didn't get picked up.  I'm not the smartest man around, but I'm starting to notice a pattern here.  This is the full pilot, so you should watch it and be amazed at the fact that some asshole turned this down.

     Ok, so on to my awful drawing career.  I'm still not using more than about 0.1% of what photoshop is capable of.  Still, I'm trying to do it more so as to get more better, more fasterer.  I took a step back from drawing disgusting men and thought I should balance the scales by drawing some disgusting women.  The problem is, I don't know how to draw women disgusting enough that it's funny, so I just settled on trying to draw women.  For the most part, they turned out looking like slim dudes with boobs.  Judge for yourself.

     So I guess the body and pose aren't too bad.  Still not so great on the hands and face.  Also, the right forearm turned out to be a pretty silly length.  Still, I made up some of the lost ground from the short hiatus I took.  I'm still not using the vector drawing capability of photoshop, and I think once I get fully comfortable with it things will start looking a lot better.  Until then, it's scribbletown.

      This poor woman has no bra.  It's hard enough to fight crime in high heels, but to have floppage all over the place?  I couldn't imagine trying to chase down evil doers if my nads were flopping all over the place. 

     This is pretty much just a personal experience.  The fact that black licorice is considered candy should be classified as a war crime.  I do like this drawing though.  Still a little weak on the hands but the face is looking a lot better.

     Hopefully within the next few months I'll be good enough to start moving into coloured stuff, and maybe even terrible flash animations.  Whatever may come, rest assured I will subject you to it.  Toodles!

I'm so not even done talking about cartoons

     Yeah, I know, this is the third update in a row to feature me telling you about cartoons.  I'm not even sorry, really, you're better off knowing this.  I get very little traction with it in real life, so I might as well scream it into the winds of the internet.

     Getting back to Ren and Stimpy.  It must be frustrating to want to make a cartoon.  It's easy to tell when someone wanted to make something for a grown-up audience, only to have to re-tool it for kids.  The best of these can turn out to still be really entertaining for both kids and adults.  Ren and Stimpy (at least for a while) did this well.  Since then there have been lots more, and I've got time to kill.

SpongeBob Squarepants - Jesus, what can I even tell you about this show that you don't already know? It's been around forever and has long since gone the way of The Simpson(I ain't even gonna link it).  Well, there was a time when this show was complete tits.  I mean that it was good, it's a kid's show, right? So this show had two major things going for it: a - It has Dobber from Coach.  Also known as Broadway from Gargoyles (which, holy shit, good job Disney). b - Tom Kenney from Mr. Show.  Mr. Show is waaaaaay too good, and Kenney takes a lot of this humour to the cartoons he's in.  Keep him in mind because he comes up again.

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack - This show is by J.G. Quintel, and it's one of those shows that got cancelled because it's too good.  It's so good I named my goddam cat Flapjack.  Quintel so badly wants to do humour for adults but his major series are technically aimed at children.  If you only click on one link in this whole post, make it this one; it's a short he did, I believe as his graduate work.

Regular Show - This is the good stuff, right here.  Another show by Quintel, I've never seen a show where the stoner/slackerness of the two main characters was so thinly disguised.  Luckily this one is getting way more of a shot than Flapjack did, and it's now several seasons running.

Adventure Time - You have probably at least heard of this one too.  Pen Ward created this pretty excellent show and it features the previously mentioned Tom Kenney.  This is one of the biggest breakout hits of the last ten years.  With good reason, too.  Pretty much everything about it is excellent, from the art and colours to the writing and acting.  It flops between light and cheery and heavily depressing, with a story that's increasingly crazy.  A paragraph blurb isn't nearly enough for me to explain why this show rules, you'll just have to trust me and watch it.

     Ok, so, to my drawing.  There was a bit of a gap where I wasn't practising much.  I had planned on getting some adobe programs and learning to use them, so I could have more flexibility in what I did.  To get these, though, I had to pretty much get a new computer.  Then, once I got the computer, I had to actually learn to use the adobe programs.  Which is taking a long time.  I have the basics down for photoshop, illustrator and flash, and want to start screwing around with after effects and audition also.  So, I did some doodling in photoshop, and it seems like a bit of a step backwards for now.  This is because I'm still adjusting to all the new features, and I think that once I get the hang of it I'll be able to make way better stuff.

      This one pretty clearly started as someone facing forward, and then halfway through I realized it looked way more like someone facing away.  So I figured I would just roll with it instead of scrapping the whole thing.  Also it's not a gross fat guy, it's just a nude guy.  Trying to stretch out a little bit, you know?  Anyway, I'm pretty sure I can sell this guy to Marvel and have a blockbuster on my hands by next summer.

     You've seen me use this pose before, I'm not all that creative when it comes to that kind of thing yet.  Also the head is still kind of a trainwreck.  Faces and hands were where I had the biggest backslide in skills.  Hopefully once I get this photoshop thing under control I can correct that.  By the way, this is my actual, real-life fighting style.  It's undefeatable.

     And here is a gross drawing of an awful joke.  I have to go to work! Catch you later.

What am I becoming

     It's likely dawning on you that I never shut the fuck up about cartoons.  I'm sure most of the people I know start rolling their eyes now when I start, because they know I'm about to get very insistent that they start watching some show they've never heard of and probably won't like.  Believe me, I get it.  There are lots of non-animated shows to watch, and some of them are even worth watching.  Game of Thrones?  Some of the best television there has ever been.  It doesn't even need my usual sprinkling of butts and guts, it's already jam-packed with them.  So believe me, I'm not saying there are no good shows that aren't animated.  I'm just saying, why not draw some butts.

     Last time, I talked about cartoons borne of the internet.  This time, I'm going to drone on about traditional broadcast cartoons.  I'm even going to try to keep myself under control a little bit and not bore you to death.  Let's get started.

The Venture Brothers - Remember the old Hanna-Barberra adventure cartoons? Johnny Quest, Herculoids, Space Ghost, etc etc.  This is a spoof of all the funnest elements of those.  It starts off as one-off episodes mocking the general theme, and turns into one of the most plot-heavy shows on t.v.  Of all the shows I try to convince people to watch, this is the most difficult.  It doesn't become excellent until about halfway through the first season and people these days don't have time for that kind of thing.  Whenever someone goes through the effort though, they're hooked.  There aren't a lot of shows I get antsy waiting for, but this tops the list.

Related shows -The Tick - The creators of Venture Bros cut their teeth working on this, and Ben Edlund himself has written a few episodes of Venture Bros.  It wouldn't be much of a stretch for both of these shows to take place in the same universe.

Archer - I might be a little biased towards this one.  I'm a giant fan of the 60's spy esthetic, and this show uses that as a backdrop for people to be sarcastic dicks to each other.  Adding to my bias is the fact that this show stars H. Jon Benjamin, who has ridden his exactly 1 voice to the top.  Similar to the Venture Brothers, actual plot points are secondary to people hanging out and shooting the shit on irrelevant topics.  I hate to describe the dialogue as "smart" because it makes me sound like I'm all sophisticated and above low-brow humour.  I'm not.  I just enjoy when people put this much goddam effort into making me laugh.

Related shows -Frisky Dingo - Previous to Archer, series creator Adam Reed made Frisky Dingo.  It's very similar to Archer in structure and style, with a backdrop of superheroes and villains rather than spies.  Everyone is still a smug dick.
                         Sealab 2021 - Adam Reed's first show.  Like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, this show is made from recycled footage of old Hanna-Barberra cartoons.  It's "random" humour done right, with nary a mention of weasels or cheese to be found.

Bob's Burgers - Wow, a funny show on Fox? What the fuck happened, did someone really high up die? If you're sick to fucking death of Seth Macfarlane, you'll be happy to know Bob's Burgers is the exact opposite of what he makes.  Once again starring Jon Benjamin, as well as a slew of very funny people, show creator Loren Bouchard gives us a show that is reminiscent of King of the Hill and early Simpsons; genuinely funny and weirdly heartfelt.  I really hope this show doesn't tank like The Simpsons did.

Related shows - Home Movies - Further riding the Jon Benjamin train, this was a wonderful show that is the spiritual predecessor of Bob's Burgers.  Not Loren Bouchard's first show, but definitely one of his best.  Also starring Brendan Small, who can occasionally be found in The Venture Brothers.

                          Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist - I don't know if this is the first Loren Bouchard cartoon, but it's the oldest I know of.  This was on it's way to becoming a huge success until South Park kind of pulled the rug out from under them.  Nothing against South Park, it's a funny show, but the fact that this show isn't more popular is a travesty.

                           Metalocalypse - From Brendan Small, this show isn't directly related to Bob's Burgers, but Small has worked with Bouchard enough that there is a large stylistic crossover.  Once again, my love for shows where characters ignore the plot and talk about dumb shit shines though.

    Ok, that's enough of my running my fucking mouth.  I did some more drawing.  I was trying to push further down the path of drawing gross dudes, but at some point I think I flipped over and now everything is just uncomfortably sexual.  Have a look, you'll see what I mean;

     This isn't my best drawing, I was trying to do a quick gesture drawing and add detail afterwards.  Believe it or not, though, this is a pretty accurate depiction of how your character in Altered Beast kicks.  I never figured out why such a jacked up dude would kick like a little girl, but I guess who would call him on it?  After that I decided to try slowing down and make things look a little better.

     I always figured that grabbing a power up would feel really good.  Apparently I can't draw that without making things awkward.  After this I just said fuck it and went buck wild.

     You can't tell me those aren't fantastic manboobs.  I'm still having problems with hands but hopefully those glorious floppers are distracting you from that.

     I'm going to try to make things more gross and less sexual.  I don't know what the hell happened.  I'm sorry you had to go through that.  I could have just not posted them, but how honest would that be? "Hi I'm Nick Woods I never draw fat men deriving inappropriate pleasure from surges of power." LIAR

     Until next time bro-dawgs!

Let's talk some goddam cartoons

     I hope your dreams have been haunted by sweaty man-boob, because there's so much more coming down the pipe.  Before I drop that load on you though, let's talk about some fuckin cartoons.  We're living in a world of people who grew up with John Kricfalusi cartoons.  John K, love him or hate him (I manage to do both), has had an enormous impact on animation.  He managed to blend classic cartooning styles (Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, etc.) with modern sensibilities (gross out humour, extreme violence, butts) and make something we had never seen before.  He's also the classic example of an artist getting the shaft when it comes to control of their own work.  It's a sad fact that for most things to get produced for our consumption, they have to be profitable.  Nickelodeon was notoriously difficult to deal with, although to be fair, so was John K.  The partnership went very well for the first 2 seasons of Ren and Stimpy, until Nickelodeon canned him for being way too difficult.  The show immediately went to hell without the creator's vision, and John K's work began to get more bizzare and upsetting.  The leash they had kept him on made him focused, and he couldn't just rely on gay jokes like he wanted to.  But, for those 2 seasons, cartoons were redefined for future manchildren everywhere.

    The internet lets us toss the creator/publisher relationship to the side.  Besides the drawing tutorials I've been using it for, YouTube is also full of independent animators.  Since my goal here is to start putting things on YouTube, I`ve been searching for people who are good at that sort of thing.  Here`s what I`ve found!

Egoraptor  - I`m usually not very down with people who focus on video game jokes.  It`s a dicey field with a few people at the top doing all the good jokes, with a whooooooole lot of bullshit floundering around at the bottom.  Luckily, this guy is not a 1-trick pony.  His voice acting is not great, but everything else is excellent.  He draws heavy inspiration from Ren and Stimpy, and it really shows in his later work.

OneyNG - This guy is killing me lately.  It`s like Ren and Stimpy crashed into South Park.  His Dragonball parodies are good enough to be funny whether you love or hate Dragonball, and his Harry Potter shorts are so funny they hurt.

Sick Animation - These guys have been around forever, and prove that you don`t have to be able to draw at all as long as you`re a hilarious asshole.

Psychicpebbles - A collaborator of OneyNG, working jointly on Hellbenders.  Also has a metric ass-load of shorts, but Hellbenders is just peaches.

     There are a lot of traditional t.v. cartoons that I want to talk about as well, but that`s for another update; you want images of gross dudes, and now is the time to give them to you.  Enjoy!

     This is another in the series of "try to make band posters".  Remember Altered Beast? Pretty sweet arcade and sega game where a dude gets progressively more ripped until he turns into a crazy monster and starts ruining everyone's day.  I want to do a series where a guy gets fatter and fatter until he turns into a big fat monster.  I'm not so good at drawing monsters yet, but god damn am I getting good at drawing fat guys!  Look at those hands! Those are great fat guy hands!

    My previous experiments with perspective went pretty horribly, and since then I tried to learn as much as I could to make things not suck.  This is making use of the single-point perspective method, and it looks like using established methods is a viable way to make drawings that don't look like total shit.  The biggest problem I'm still having with perspective is those sneaky hands; just can't trust them.

    
     I might be mistaken, but I think this one is a two-point perspective.  Aren't you glad I'm putting this education to such excellent use?  I'm sure there's an art teacher somewhere with a single tear rolling down their face.  This is the one I'm proudest of, and confidently call it my best to date.  That's not saying much, but whatever, fuck you, I'm still proud of it.

     I want you to be aware of how much time I've spent on google image search, sorting through results for "manboobs" and "male muffin-top".  It's probably longer than the average person will spend on it in their entire lives.  On that note, until next time, and always be on the lookout for a good muffin-top.

    

Now you, too, can draw like me!

     So, you might wonder how I went from zero ability to draw, all the way to a mediocre ability to draw.  Or you might not, what the fuck do I know.  The first big step was getting a Bamboo drawing tablet as a birthday present.  Before that, most of my experience was using a mouse in MS paint.  That looked about as good as you would expect, and if you are one of the unlucky few that remembers my ancient webcomic, you're already having PTSD flashbacks.  Bad enough it was a teenager's idea of "edgy".  Bad enough it was so full of itself.  Most of all, bad enough that Tripod still exists for some unfathomable reason.  Anyway, getting the tablet was a major step forward for me.  I started to approach drawing as someone who was actually interested in learning.
     As part of this process, I've been watching hour after hour of youtube videos.  This has been psychologically trying.  Did you know? Uuuuummmmmm that most people? Uuuuhhhhhh on youtube? Are really uuuuuuuuhhhhh terrible? At, like, talking? Long, drawn out grunts and heavy breathing, with every sentence ending in an interrogative inflection.  This makes the few who have the talent, ability to teach, and a lack of mong-mouth very special.  If, for some reason, you would like to draw the way I do, here are some of the people that have brought me here.

     Mark Crilley - This is the first guy I found that wasn't an idiot.  His focus is manga-style, which I honestly am not interested in, but he still covers lots of fundamentals.  He listens to the people who subscribe to his channel and covers topics they are interested in.  A lot of my earlier stuff was drawn using his lessons, which doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, but that's more my shitty inexperience than anything else.  He's also not annoying to listen to, he sounds like a bit of a goofy dork dad, laughing at his own awful jokes and generally just having a good time.  He has dozens and dozens of tutorial videos, and I would definitely suggest checking him out if you're into this kind of thing.

     Proko - My previously mentioned pally-chum Ben pointed me toward this channel, and holy crap is it good.  Now, this is just the stripped down free version, and to get the full experience you have to pay for the online lessons (I do not do this).  Still, the free lessons are fantastic.  If you noticed any quality increase at all in my drawings, it was probably after I started watching these.  The videos are well-produced and informative, with a focus on fundamentals.  10/10 would art again.

     This guy! - I only watched a few videos from This guy!, but I wanted to include him because he's adorable.  I've never seen one person have so much fun drawing naked ladies.

     Draw With Jazza - This guy was exactly what I was looking for.  He covers cartooning, graphic novels (a very mature and adult way to say comic books) and animation.  He has a little bit of the previously mentioned "youtube poster problems", but at least he's Australian so it doesn't seem so bad.  He has convinced me that I need to get photoshop, so Adobe should be giving this fucker kickbacks.

     So, armed with all this knowledge, I got to work.  Recently, a friend of mine asked me to start screwing around and try to come up with images for a band he's working on.  Album art, poster art, whatever I wanted, and the grosser the better.  I am just brimming with shitty ideas for this, and so far  I made three images that I'm so very happy with, because they represent a pretty solid step forward in ability for me.  They still have their problems, but now it's more like I'm cooking with butane (a bastard gas) than runny turds.  Let's have a look!

 

     The more literary among you have figured out this one is called "fat man dancing around a fire".  It isn't finished but I felt like you should see it.  I still have some foot issues to work out and a hand to finish, and then I have to learn to colour and shade (so a long goddam time).  Do you like the waaaaay too tight jorts? I bet you do.
     One thing I've noticed is that as a complete amateur, it's difficult to not wear your influences on your sleeve.  Whenever I finish something I have to stare at it for a while to see if I'm just blatantly ripping someone off, and I usually am in some way.  Disgusting drawing with a non-sequitur caption is straight jacking of Will Laren, and I do it all the time.  Observe this second drawing:

     See? At least this is still a step up for me.  The arms look a little stiff but everything else is a clear improvement.  I'm keeping with the tight jorts theme because I can't stop laughing.  Someday I'm going to lean how to draw feet\shoes, then y'all better buckle the fuck up.
     Also no stranger to being plagarised by me is Kate Beaton.  Something about her style appeals to me in a huge way, and I think I figured out what it is.

 

     Buttock detail!  Between Kate and adventure time, modern cartooning is approaching a singularity of butt detail.  It's like looking into the face of God.  You know what? I think I'm going to quit my job and just draw butts full time.  If you're ever walking the streets of Halifax and see an awful-smelling homeless man laying down chalk monuments to the human butt, say hi and toss me a quarter.  Your butt might be immortalized.

I'm jacked up on Melatonin fruity chews, LET'S DO THIS

      Man, turns out I will take any excuse to not practice something.  It's been hotter than the devil's jalapenos here, and it makes me want to learn science so I can find a way to send the sun into the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy and just never have to deal with that total asshole again.  I'm sitting here with two fans going, intermittently spritzing water into them so they blow a semi-refreshing blast of stale water on me.  My back soaks every chair I sit in and I have history's worst case of silly-putty-scrote.  The only comfortable way to get food in me is to either barbecue it, or order pizza.  The gas those options give me, coupled with the ridiculous humidity of Nova Scotian summers, makes my apartment feel like some kind of shitty jungle.

     Nevertheless, I've begrudgingly continued to draw stuff.  I was getting pissed at it because I was changing methods so often that I felt I wasn't making any progress.  I've finally found a few youtubers that both have the skills to teach and the vocal ability to not be some mealy-mouthed motherfucker, so that listening to their videos doesn't make me want to push strangers into traffic.  At some point I'll do an update talking about them, but this isn't that update.  For now, let's talk about some of the garbage I've been churning out.  Remember in my last update when I mentioned that I had been doing lots of stuff, and most of it has been so awful so as to have been thrown out?  Yeah, look at this and try to imagine how bad that stuff was.

     Hey, I'm pretty sure that's not how legs work.  And I'll tell you this, I'm 100% sure that's not how the human pud works.  And mother of god, you know that Neitzche quote about the abyss staring back? Those nipples.  That's what he was talking about.  Anyway this was an example of the approach I've been taking lately, putting a lot of work into the head/face first.  I find some awfulness of body can be forgiven as long as the face is fairly convincing.  I didn't do any shading on this because I have no idea how to effectively use gradients yet, and I should probably worry about getting other things under control first.  Things like basic colouring, like at least the skill level a five year old would bring to the table. 

  

     See what I mean?  Probably not the best example of foreshortening either.  For those of you that aren't artists like me, foreshortening is when you make something smaller/larger to make it appear farther away/closer to the viewer.  At least the right hand looks kind of ok.  I was getting really frustrated with myself at this point, like legitimately asking myself if I was even really trying.   Of course I was, I'm just not good yet.  Try telling that to someone going through it, though.  Sitting around realizing you're bad at something isn't very high on the average to-do list.  It probably sits around the same spot on the list as literally anything involving diarrhea.  It was coming from this dark place that I set to work on my next one.

      Haha, ok!  I was actually way happier with this.  This is a second attempt at Matt, a character I posted a way worse drawing of in an earlier update.  Honestly, name something that isn't immediately funnier with a pot belly.  Think about David Bowie, in his prime, and add a huge pot belly.  Think about Kevin Costner, fumbling through an English accent with Morgan Freeman, and give him a big old pot belly.  Think about starving children in Africa, and-

Uh.

     So anyway, yeah.  I've been trying lately to come at things from a "character design" standpoint.  Not that I'm near where I want to be before seriously starting to create things, but this was something I picked up from some of the youtube channels I've been watching.  Just by making the heads I can usually figure out everything else really quickly.  The head tells you what a character is thinking, how they feel, whether they need a pot belly (they do), and many other things.  I've been doing speed runs, as it were.  Using the same technique over and over again to just drop deuce all over my bamboo tablet and see what happens.   On my first attempt, I of course drew some gross nerds, and also accidentally drew Ziggy.

     While none of these are what I'd call great, they're an obvious improvement for me.  Faces that are starting to look like actual faces you'd see in something?  At this rate I'll be drawing pot bellies and puds like nobody's business.  My plan right now is to add more fine detail to some of these existing faces, and then finally start trying to maybe give them some bodies that don't look like shitty mannequins.  Jesus, at this rate, I might actually learn how to draw someday. 

Lingual vomit

     Welcome to the point of diminishing returns! After I got a step beyond my straight-up terrible initial drawing skills, I got to what I would call just "bad".  This is always a frustrating step to take.  When you go from zero skill to a tiny little bit of skill, the difference is immediately apparent.  After this, it gets harder and harder to not only upgrade your skills, but to notice the improvement between each step.  In the almost-month since the last update I've posted, I made a lot of drawings.  The trouble is, most of them have been mediocre even by my current standards; I don't want to throw crap at you, no matter how hilarious the subject matter actually is. 

     Since a lot of that stuff is still being hammered out, I thought I would put up something I wrote with the intention of submitting it to Cracked.  They're a website that accepts submissions from pretty much anyone as long as they can follow certain guidelines.  One of my favourite comedy writers, Seanbaby, writes for them, and given the quality of some of the articles on there, I thought I might actually have a shot.  Unfortunately, only the featured columnists like Seanbaby and a few others are allowed to write about whatever they want.  I wasn't put off by this at first, because the guidelines didn't seem too silly.  However, after reading further, it was a dealbreaker.  "Big fan of pop culture?" they ask.  "Like to write about the quirkiness thereof? Send us a list of quirky things about star wars or some other nerd shit!"  At this point it's hard to describe how tired I am of internet pop culture.  I got the old man hipster burnout or something, because these days I just like to read the ridiculous shit that happens on 4chan and call people assholes on reddit.  I got started on this piece before I knew about the cracked submissions guidelines, and I didn't want it to go to waste.  So, here you go.

The Bus Creeper classification system:

Taking the bus is something more of us should do.  We can reduce emissions, congestion and noise on our roads while ignoring everything around us in favour of our completely odious iPod playlists.  Every time you ride around on a bus, especially those fancy-panted bio-diesel ones, you earn a little
bit of a right to some smugging around.  Guy driving an SUV? Smug at him.  Pass a guy filling up his pickup and spending enough to purchase one small human? Spread some smug.  Multiple-car pile-up? Call Jonathan Frakes, because this situation calls for some Riker-level smug.

Don't get me wrong, there are some giant downsides to bus travel.  Like what? Well, for one, the smells.  What's that one smell? Oh, it's piss.  What's that other smell? Oh right, the aforementioned bio-diesel engine smells like a fish cannery that ate too many boiled eggs.  What's that other other smell? Jesus, it's more, different piss.

Then there's the more present and difficult challenge the bus throws at us.  All we want to do is get it over with and get to our job/school/bum fight in peace, but the bus has the audacity to be filled up with a bunch of assholes! These people never seem to realize that you are an important person with important person things to do, and also insist on getting to their own unimportant job/school/alcohol poisoning! We are all this asshole at some point, because that's just my cranky "I didn't sleep well last night" pile of resentment that sits in all our hearts while commuting to work.  The real problem is bus creepers.  If the bus was just a bunch of quiet people silently stewing in polite misery, I could ride my all BTO playlist all the way to Valhalla in my mind, but these jerks can't respect the Randy.  Usually I myself am not the target of your typical bus creeper, but it is the women on the bus, usually the younger ones, who will get the most use out of this guide.

CLASS 1 - Not their fault
     It's a sad/hilarious fact that there are a lot of people in the world who come off pretty bizarre.  It's not their fault, that's just the way they're wired up.  They want to be our friends and deserve our respect, but jesus christ they can be off-putting.  This category can cover everyone from the "lizard people have infiltrated the government" lady to the "gubbmint controls our minds via chemtrails" fellow, and even the good ol' "I really, genuinely enjoy the music of Limp Bizkit" guy.   All of these opinions can be explained by some sort of mental imbalance or deficiency, and can often reside within the mind of a totally decent person.  But, holy shit dude, don't talk about Fred Durst so loudly, I don't want people to mistakenly think I like him too.  Also, I hear if you say his name three times, he appears in a puff of smoke and poops in your ears.  Anyway, these folks will latch on and rattle off their psychoses for as long as you let them, but overall they are the lowest risk group for serious creepin.

CLASS 2 - Kind of their fault
     This person is what you would expect to be the endgame of the Andrew WK lifestyle (which Andrew himself is exempt from because I'm pretty sure he's some sort of demi-god), wherein a lifetime of partying too hard has left their brain in a state pretty similar to a class 1.  You might find this guy lounging across a few seats, shirtless, maybe with a leather jacket, with torn up jeans and really frizzy, long hair.  He is clearly approaching 60 and doesn't seem aware of it.  Usually smelling of booze and continually indulging his coke sniffle, he has no qualms about approaching women embarrassingly younger than him.  With stale-beer breath and all the subtlety of a nickelback song, he will proceed to flirt with her in the only way he knows how; opening his jacket enough to show off his gut, singing Bon Jovi songs, and talking about all the coke he does.  I personally have never seen this tactic elicit more than pity/disgust, but there must have been the one guy that pulled it off once, or else why would they all keep trying? These guys are a mid-tier creep, because although they creep hard, you can't help but feel they may have been a normal person at one point.  One point, like maybe in the 70's.  Maybe.

CLASS 3 - TOTALLY THEIR FAULT
     A class 3 is an emergency situation.  This is a guy who has every reason to know better, but just doesn't.  He may be a pick-up artist, he may be a brony, he may just be a full-on asshole; whatever the case may be, consider the cleansing power of flame.  I'm not saying this guy is necessarily a rapist; I'm just saying that if there was some kind of rape epidemic, this guy would be first on the suspect list after you convince me that there's no such thing as an unstoppable robot designed to forcefully penetrate anything resembling a hole.  Are you standing while on the bus? You might feel a very uncomfortable sensation on your buttocks.  That is because a class 3 is staring at your behind with the ferocity and desperation of a starving dog.  For the love of god, don't make eye contact, because this will be interpreted as the go ahead you slowly look you up and down (with uncomfortably long pauses on your chest and crotch) followed by a tip of the fedora and some horrible lewd comment.  It is here where the class 3 seems the most like a class 1, because he genuinely believes that this is an appropriate way to meet women, and that seems like something that only a severely unbalanced person would think.  But no, this is an otherwise normal person who is determined to be icky.  When you rightfully tell this person that you feel like dropping some fancy knife moves on him, you will be labeled a bitch, lesbo, etc.  This is a desirable outcome because now this person will go home and tell reddit about how all women are bitches who don't like nice guys.  And honestly ladies, I'm with you on that one.  Nice guys are basically the worst thing.

I think he's actually getting worse.

     So I just keep sketching stuff, sometimes making slow progress.  As far as just faces go, I'm for sure better than I was, but still below some arbitrary boundary I've set for myself.  I need to get better at other aspects of drawing though, because there's not a terrible amount you can do with just the same faces over and over again. 

     The first thing that kind of pushed me a bit was no less than an artist's challenge; I was dared to draw Slash.  The gauntlet was thrown, the challenge was issued, and the smacked out sloppy-joe was drawn.

     You might gather that I'm slightly critical of Slash.  Well, for the record, Appetite for Destruction is one of the best albums of the 80's, and then none of the members of Guns n' Roses ever did anything worth listening to ever again.  Right after this one I wanted to do one more straight-on shot, before trying to stretch out a little.

     This was an attempt to do a little bit of detail, specifically I wanted to do some more hands.  They're still a little awkward but and freakishly long but it does seem like progress.  Also I was playing a lot of Fallout and figured "Why wouldn't radioactive soldiers of fortune have a little panache?"  After this I decided I needed to try experimenting with perspective.  Not every drawing can be a straight-on shot, no matter how much I want it to.  Unfortunately, since I have no experience with perspective yet, it seems like a giant step backwards in quality.  Check this out;

     So this pretty much turned out looking like a guy who got grazed with a shrink ray.  Maybe Rick Moranis was jealous of his handsome junk and got too drunk to shoot straight.   Actually, call Disney, I think I just came up with a script to pitch.  I bet changing the dimensions of the door would have helped.  I mean, art lessons would help too, but let's be reasonable.  I tried one more perspective shot.

    I don't know why I find gross nerds so funny.  It might be because this could have been me, had a few key things in my life gone wrong.  I also have always enjoyed the idea of people resting their gut on various things.  So, expect more attempts at perspective from me in the future, and honestly, you should also expect a lot of them to be gross nerds.

This update makes no sense at all

     This is a short one, y'all. (who even says y'all anymore? I do, and it's ridiculous.) One of my favourite things about myself is the amount of effort I'm willing to put into a really dumb joke, and a pun at that.  Here's something I thought of the other day and gave myself the dumbass "huh huh" chuckle.

     And that's that! I don't know anything about colouring yet.  Your average five year old has me beaten in this department.

So how long before he gets good at this?

     Well, last time I was pretty much a lazy douchebag, what with my not putting up the final picture in my "how I'm trying to not suck at drawing" manual.  I left you all high and dry, moist and wanting.   I've been focusing on the drawing lately, which I never intended to be the focus of this blog.  Who cares though, right? It's what I've been doing, so it's what you get.  Maybe to start off I'll show you what should have been the final image from my last update.

     I was "pleased" with the final product, but there's lots I want to work on.  For one, I want to expand on what kind of poses and perspectives I can do, along with working on various head-related things.  Things like faces and hair, which you can clearly see have a long way to go.  As far as trying different poses, I suppose I should have maybe looked up some common ways human beings stand, but that's way less fun than just drawing a stick figure and seeing where it takes you.

 

      This is for you Harry Potter superfans.  I know it doesn't really come up in the book, but Harry has a rare condition where the funk causes him to dance until he dies of exhaustion or dehydration.  I guess it never came up because J.K. Rowling had a bad experience with Bootsy Collins and a bottle of Beefeater.  I don't know exactly what dance move Harry is dropping here, but whatever it is must be good for toning the glutes.  I'm not terribly disappointed with this one, but the head is a little bit of a trainwreck.  After this one I wanted to do some drawings with a focus on heads, with varying degrees of success.

     Ok, so the face is pretty horrible here.  I was taking a stab at some Adventure Time facial expressions and really wasn't able to make it work.  I think in that case it's probably because I tried too hard,  the simplicity of the faces in shows like that is what ties the whole thing together.  I straight up need to buckle down and start making some faces that aren't mushy turds.

    
     Ok, now we're talking! It's pretty sad that I'm admitting that this is, so far, one of the best faces I've ever drawn.  I know the shading is a bunch of bullshit but I'm sort of getting used to that too.  One thing is for sure, how the fuck do you draw hats? Jesus.  Anyway, this picture still sidesteps the fact that I don't know how to draw hair either.  I guess I should at least make an attempt at a hairstyle so I don't seem like a total cop-out.

    See, that's way better.  I didn't mean for this to come out manga-style when I started on it, but it's what happened and there's no turning back.  In the immortal words of Robert Tepper, "I'm not asking for another chance, I just want to know why there's no easy way out, there's no shortcut home". 

     So there you have it! As slow as it's been, I can honestly say I've made some semblance of progress.  I guess to end this entry I want to give a shout out to Russia.  I noticed that there's upwards of 2 people from Russia that check this wet fart of a blog out once in a while, and that's kind of mind blowing.  So here's my shout out: HEY RUSSIA, WHAT UP BROSKIS!

Just call me "Pablum Picasso"

     So, as it turns out, when you practice something, you slowly get better at it.  Did you know this? It seems kind of unfair.  Where's the fun in not just being instantly good at everything? Anyway, I've been doodling like crazy lately.  Trying to stick with a more cartoony style, because drawings of real things are boring.  Like, New Brunswick boring (ooooooh burn ooooooh).  If I had to name a style I wanted to shoot towards developing, I guess I would call it modern internet? It's sort of a mish-mash of art styles brought together in one glorious orgy.  Take some Ren and Stimpy, mix in a little manga stuff, maybe garnish with some absurd for the sake of absurd, and have it fart.  Adventure Time is a great example of this style; you get the overly-detailed butt-cheeks of Ren and Stimpy, the huge eyes and weird facial expressions of manga, all dropped into situations that make no sense, with farts.  Kate Beaton is an excellent example of on-the-internet internet style.  Add to that the fact that she's a fucking scream.  She's making one of the smartest, funniest comics on the internet today, and the biased part of me says it's because she's Nova Scotian.  Something about crushing economic depression and alcohol abuse brings out the funny in a culture.  From a different angle there is Will Laren.  This guy totally eschews realism and goes straight for disgusting, and then puts great captions on them.  I'm not as funny as either of them, but maybe someday I'll find a combination of drugs and attitude that will at least make it look like I am.

     I did some more doodling.  Like I said I would.  It's not great, but I'm making myself laugh.  My facebook feed is swimming with people who have been going through proper channels to learn art, and they've been making great progress.  It's a funny contrast to see their ever-improving realism while entropy grips my skills harder and harder.  Whatever, I'm still going to show you my shitty progress because I think I'm a total scream.

    
     So, hey! Those look like actual hands and feet! I've only been at this for a few weeks and I'm already doing better than Rob Liefeld! Even though the face is this weird mask of angry darkness (so about on par with Liefeld).  Take note of the drawstring hoodie, because I've noticed it's the only clothing I can draw.  I assume it's what the young and hip kids are wearing, but I'm so out of touch I'm still wearing straight-leg jeans.

     This is Francis! Or at least a prototype of him.  He's a character from the same project as Billy Hunt, from a previous update.  Want to see a close up of his face? Rhetorical. You have no choice.

     So this is almost on the grossness level of the Will Laren drawings, just with more of an amateur smack.  I'm hoping that if I just keepdrawing this disgusting asshole over and over again I'll land on something I can call a finished product.  Well, at least progress on him has come farther than the next guy;

     So Captain Clubfoot here is Matt; another character from the same project.  I don't even know what I want his face to look like, every time I try to imagine it I come up with David Cross' character from the King of the Hill episode "The Witches of East Arlen".

      I've been trying to come up with a process to maybe make my drawings more consistent, and I've decided that I'm going to subject you to that process, step-by-step (day by day).  Check this shit out:

 

     So, lay down a stick figure skeleton first, right? Pretty simple beginner stuff.  Gesture drawing for a rough outline of the body shape, good good.  Honestly I should start using reference pictures and not drawing this from my mind's eye, but whatever, I do what I want.  Note how the head is in a very uncomfortable looking "oh no you di'int" sort of position, that could probably stand to be changed.  You'll also notice this is nearly the same pose as Fargo from a previous update; this is because I don't know how to art.

     Ok, that's a little better.  The head doesn't look like it's been stuck onto a broken neck, and while the hands aren't great, they sort of look like hands.  Also, boobs! I feel like I'm trying to not go overboard on the boobs, because I really feel they distract from my poop jokes.  The head has a kewpie doll/Betty Boop thing going on that I'm not super pleased with, but this is all part of the sucking less in small increments process. 

    Here we see the return of my beloved drawstring hoodie, and I figured why not toss in a pointless skirt to add a little sauce to it.  Accompanying this look is an s.o.s. pad hairstyle, because holy shit I haven't learned to draw hair yet.  That seems like it would be important.  What is this picture missing, aside from the feet? Probably some kind of stupid caption.

  I think my favourite part of this blog update is how I made it seem like there would be a conclusion picture, and then didn't follow through.  The truth is, there totally is one, but all attempts to put it in this update were stymied.  Maybe I'll get around to putting it up in the next one.   Anyway, I'm going to keep trying with this, and I'm going to clockwork-orange you into observing it.

Drinking apple snide-er

     I've been thinking of getting a digital video camera for a while now.  Sometimes I see things on youtube that tv network execs would never, ever consider airing (because it's great), and it kind of stirs me inside.  Suddenly everyone around the world has a way for their voice to be heard, no matter what they have to say.  This removes a certain barrier, where some fat billionaire gets to decide what my choices in entertainment are, based off what he thinks will net the most return on investment.  On the other hand, it also allows every untalented jackoff who thinks he's hilarious to inflict himself on the rest of the world.   I look at the average quality of youtube videos and realize that most of the people putting stuff up are about as terrible at it as the people that make most television shows.  I feel as though I could learn the basics pretty quickly, stuff like framing, lighting, optimal camera settings,  etc.  Video editing is already something I know a little about, whereas most of youtube clearly doesn't.  (Rare exception, here's a good example of youtube genius)

    The other half of making videos for youtube is actually having an idea worth doing.  Again, see most of the selection on youtube for examples of "why the fuck would someone waste their time making/watching this".  So far this sounds pretty cantankerous and dismissive of me, and that's almost exactly the point I'm driving at.  One of the show ideas I had is called "Objectively Crap", wherein I would break down point-by-point why a certain thing (tv show, band, etc) completely and totally sucks.  I called it objectively crap because, of course, taste in such things is totally subjective.  But come on, do you actually know anyone that thinks Gallagher is funny?  How about Larry the Cable Guy?  Anyway, most of the things I want to shit on are nearly universally hated, but people don't put any effort into explaining their hatred.  They feel the natural, visceral hatred deep inside that they certainly should feel whenever they are forced to listen to Dane Cook, but never muster a more convincing argument than "he just totally sucks".  I mean, I agree, but at least try, dude.

     Anyway, since it's going to be a while until I scrape together sufficient ducats to purchase a pistol for robbing an electronics store of a sweet piece for viddy-taping my seductive features, I might as well spit some flavour on here.  Here's the semi-rant that happened entirely in my head, it's a pre-production write up for the first installment of Objectively Crap.  Sometimes I get a little over the top when I'm drinking the haterade (or cruising around on my roller-hates) so, I don't know, don't take any of this personally if I fuck up and kind of insult you?

     Objectively Crap with Nick Woods, subject one;
     JERRY SEINFELD

     I'm not even kidding when I say Larry David is totally tits.  He's so awesome I wrote a poem:
Larry David is a genius, this I must admit
Unfortunately a poison turns his work to shit
Replace his awkward shittiness with observational "humour"
From a no-talent jack-off, malignant comedic tumor.

     Did you like it? Probably.  The best humour is rooted in truth, and what in this life is more true than the objective fact that Jerry Seinfeld is an utter comedy toilet? The show "Seinfeld" had almost everything going for it; the aforementioned Larry David, the always hilarious to see/hear Jason Alexander, and the upsettingly attractive Julia-Louis Dreyfus.  Although I did get pretty tired of idiots constantly repeating "huhuhheuheu a show about nothing", the lack of point and general human shittiness of the characters was a great idea.  It's just too fucking bad that the worst stand-up comedian in history was the main attraction.  On the scale of comedy, Jerry Seinfeld rates just slightly funnier than Harlequin icthyosis, and just below colo-rectal cancer.

     You're probably wondering why I feel so much hostility towards the guy.  It's probably because of my complete intolerance for intellectual laziness.  Don't misread me, it's not like I'm some genius myself, and I don't hate people for being "stupid" or what have you, any number of factors can contribute to a person's development and that leads to a pretty crazy-wide spectrum of intelligences.  The raw intelligence you have is almost completely out of your control, and nobody should be made to feel shitty because they drew the short straw in the nature/nurture lottery.  No, intellectual laziness is when you have all the necessary faculties, and you just don't fucking use them.  Let me break this shit down:

1 - Comedy for people that don't like to think
     "So!" said Jerry, his eyes playfully scanning the crowd of dulled eyes staring blankly at him, "What's the deal with those plastic things on the end of your shoelaces, anyway? Does anybody know what those are called? What's with that?" Uproarious laughter erupts from the docile herd, while a small, almost unnoticed voice pipes up: "Aglets, Jerry.  They're called aglets.  Pick up a fucking book once in a while."
     Jerry moves on to his next atrocity against humour; "And hey! What's up with skydivers?" The voice sighs audibly.  "Why do they wear helmets, anyway? What good will a helmet do when you're falling from thousands off feet in the air, right? What's the deal with that?"  The lone voice grows louder now, a palpable hatred growing within; "Jerry, for fucks sake," it sputters, exasperated, "Do you even know what skydiving is? There's such a thing as wind, Jerry.  An unexpected wind can blow a skydiver far off course, and a landing site can change from the intended wide-open field to a dangerously dense forest pretty damn quick.  If the chute gets caught in the foliage, the diver can hit the tress fairly hard, or even get caught very high off the ground, risking a fall if the chute rips.  A helmet only makes sense, Jerry."
     Jerry continues to blather his nonsense, much to the delight of the people who inexplicably paid to be there.  The lone voice walks out into the night and wonders if maybe he can find the grave of Mitch Hedberg, because even his dessicated corpse has smarter things to say than Jerry Seinfeld.

2 - Refusal to acknowledge things that are actually hilarious
     Remember Michael Richards ending his career? That was the hardest that guy ever made me laugh.  Watching it all fall apart in a matter of seconds was almost indescribable. It was like Magnum P.I. had T.C. drop him off just so he could give you a thumbs up in person.  The mustard on this meatloaf was that the DVD box set of Seinfeld season who gives a shit was about to drop, and they had to pull damage control.  What would normally have been a standard promotional visit to get people to spend money on the obsolete idea of physical media storage became a plea for forgiveness.  My favourite part of the whole fiasco is the laughter of the audience being met with admonishment from Jerry.  "This isn't funny!" he insists, glaring at the audience.  Oh, Jerry, I vigorously disagree.  Neither one of you assholes has ever put this much joy in my heart.

3 - What's the deal with a thing; The next generation
     So, every successful comic spawns a generation of imitators and admirers.  After Lenny Bruce you see guys like George Carlin and Richard Pryor pop up, and from there things blew up and we have this fantastic amount of excellent comedy available to us today.  The Yang to this Yin is the Seinfeld school of observational "comedy" (I know I keep putting that in quotes and it seems excessive, but I really want you to understand how strongly I feel about this) that was so popular amongst lazy hacks.  Some of these jokes, I don't know, they could be from one of any dozens of terrible Club 54 level dingii or they could be from Jerry himself, I'll be god damned if I'm going to go back and listen to his routines some more to verify it.
     You've heard the quintessential "what's the deal with airline food" before.  That might be Jerry, it might not, but whoever said it, it's the most Seinfeld joke ever.
"Deeeeeeer why don't they put a full kitchen and cooking staff on airplanes?"
"HEY GUYS, EVER NOTICE MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT?"
"What's up with Mexicans?"
"catch phrase!"

Conclusion:     For real, what else is even left to say.  The dude is odious.

Let's just set that bar nice and low.

     I wanted to knock out another update fairly quickly while I'm still full of piss and vinegar.  One of the interests I had mentioned before was animation; I never really grew out of the whole cartoon thing.  I could write out a list detailing all the cartoons I enjoy, but that would take an amount of time bordering on absurd.  I enjoy it as an expressive medium because the only limit is your own shitty imagination.  Live-action entertainment can cover all the same bases, but making it look good starts getting real expensive, real fast.  With cartoons, any pasty jerk with an idea can slap together something special.

     A while back I started constantly yammering to anyone unfortunate enough to be around me about how I'd like to produce animation.  I had started writing down and refining some concepts, when I realized how many more things were involved. I mentioned in my previous update that my ability to draw is somewhere around the "embarrassingly bad" level.  The closest I came to drawing experience was an offensively bad stick figure comic I had the audacity to put on the internet when I was 16.  As it turns out, drawing is kind of relevant to animation.  Learning to draw is a relatively cheap activity, and usually doesn't involve bears, for the most part.  Why not try?

     Because the artwork of a beginner is hilariously bad, usually.

     After hours of youtube tutorials and looking at pictures of naked people (anatomy research, you understand), I was ready to start.  First challenge; human face.
                                         
                                                                            So, ears, I guess.

     Ok, well, while that is a bit off-putting at first, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's terrible.  I'm sure it would at least get a stiff smile and a "Good effort, keep trying!" from an art teacher.  After this it was time to take a stab at some bodies.  Drawing them, I mean.

                                        I have no idea what the kids wear on their shirts nowadays

     Aside from the moderately ridiculous proportions on that poor woman, this also wasn't quite horrible.  I'll say this, though; hands are a total motherfucker.  You would think something I use all-day every-day might be a little easier to visualize and draw.  At least I was able to communicate a feeling of a strong wind on an emo kid, coupled with the angst of handlessness.  After this drawing I thought it might be a smart idea to go a little more cartoony, so I can pretend the hilarity is completely intentional.

                                                                      Pockets?! Genius.

     This guy is Billy Hunt, a character from a show I've been obsessing over writing.  I sketched out this first draft of him with only a vague idea of what he would look like, and so far he's way less of a disaster than I would have figured.  The more musically astute among you might notice his name is a deadly song by a deadly band called The Jam.  The less musically astute among you are lucky, because holy shit, you just heard about The Jam! Go to youtube right now, dude! Listen to some Jam! I was pretty happy after drawing this guy, because even my fantastic power of self-deprecation had to admit that there was visible progress. 

I don't even know what to say about this one

     After Billy came this, which I didn't really know at the time, turned out to be a different version of the main character of the awful internet comic I made so long ago.  I have to admit I was pretty pleased after this, the body is intentionally minimal and there's still the problem of the ol' flipper hands, but that face!  I'm so self-satisfied I might just go waste time on video games.

     So, there's a little bit of what I'm doing as far as trying to learn to draw.  Journey of a thousand miles etc. etc., but I'm hoping to occasionally have some more improvement to put on here.  Since I left you last week with a song by Ben and me, this time you get a song written and performed by Ben and his brother John Ross, and I swear it's the punkest fucking thing you'll ever hear.