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.