Thank god it isn't another cartoon

     Hey, I'm back! That certainly was a month off.  I hope you've recovered enough for me to start bombarding you with my requests for attention again, the pressure is building. 
     So clearly, if I'm going to make cartoons that are watchable, the drawing has to improve.  It helped a lot just to learn the basics of flash; it gave me a point of reference for how I can do things, and what kind of work I would need to do ahead of time to prepare.  After the two I put up so far, the next step is using frame-by-frame animation, which is not only an imperial bag-load of work, but it would look like total garbage if I didn't first put in another bag-load of work into learning to actually draw better.  I know the actual program you use isn't as important as just practicing and developing skills, but I feel like things have gotten better since I started using photoshop.  For those of you that have been reading this crap since I started, remember what those drawings were like?  It hasn't even been a year yet, and I'm really pleased with the improvement.  This, in spite of how lazy I am and how difficult it is to convince myself to actually sit down and do it.  You know how turds are basically horrible, and if an unexpected one turns up it can totally ruin your day?  That was when I first started.  Now, it's more like horse manure.  The smell hits you and you're all "Yep, horse shit.", but it's sort of tolerable and you might not even get PTSD from it. 
     I don't have any issues burning on my mind to talk about right now, so I'll skip spamming your monitor with a bunch of suggestions for cartoons you probably won't watch.  I've said my peace about that kind of thing and now it's ON YOU.  Since this update is fairly short after having been away from it for so long, I'm hoping I'll get enough done to slap another one together in fairly short order.  In the meantime, try your best to enjoy these.

      Still not so shit hot at feet.  Hands, not too bad?  At least the proportions are getting there, no stretch-armstrong bullshit weighing everything down.  This final product couldn't be more removed from what I set out to do; I wanted to visualize a character and then actually draw it.  For the most part, all the drawings I've done so far have been totally haphazard, I just start scribbling until something starts happening.  This one was going to be an attempt at a character for some giant manchild nerd comic idea I've been working on.  Think Conan the barbarian adventure-style story, but holy goddam it's all cold and icy and shit.  Well, about an hour into it I thought "this is more of a fun-times dancing party girl."  and then NOTHING. WAS. THE. SAME.

      At this point, you would be completely justified in accusing me of laziness.  I used this exact pose very recently, but at least this time it's slightly better.  Maybe this woman has some kind of horrible leg-ruining condition that makes one longer than the other and makes her look like a metronome when she walks.  Other than that I really like how the hair and face turned out.  Son of a bitch, hair and faces are SO HARD.  So, let's take stock: hands? hard to draw.  feet? hard to draw.  faces/hair? super goddam hard to draw.  It's almost as if I'm still terrible at this. Look at that middle finger, though.  That's what I call artistic expression.

      And here we have my depiction of my ideal self.  It was down to ninja turtle or ghostbuster.  It was a really tough call, because I couldn't decide who I had the bigger childhood crush on; Janine Melnitz or April O'Neil.  Honestly ghostbusters almost won because of Janine AND Peter Venkman, but in the end, it was the soothing bass of Uncle "Shredder" Phil that swayed my heart.  Godspeed you, Black Emperor! And may the flight of angels assist you in tossing Jazz out of heaven.

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.