Hey there’s a 1 bedroom apartment for rent in my crappy building!
Post-sugary cereal diet
Today I begin another cycle of better eating, after the orgy of sugar that was the Saturday Morning Cartoon Party. During my MediFast diet I lost about 40 lbs in 3 months. This time, according to Joyce’s scale, I only need to lose 10 lbs so that should be a month or less I hope. That’s if I stick to the regimen which so far so good.
PS – I got 19/20 on my first 2 pages of comic book art! Wooo! And I have some interesting secrets about the World Wildlife Federation of Justice that will have to stay secret for now.
Saturday Morning Cartoon Party Thanks!
Thanks to
1. Chris Eng,
2. his wife whose name I forget but may begin with a K,
3. Duncan,
4. Jon,
5. Chris Geisel,
6. Jason,
7. Mbeck,
8. Bev,
9. Joyce,
10, Erin,
11. Stephane,
12. Sheri
13. David
14. Jeremy
15. Amanda
16. Carina
17. Nathan
18. Cathy
19. Chris Pramas
20. Nicole
21. Caleb
22. John
23. Mike
24. Alanna
25. Chris Slater
26. Kathryn
and special thanks to Mr. Chris A. Stewart for helping tidy up.
That’s 27 people (including FIVE Chris’)!
Underdog
There’s two things wrong with this movie. First, we don’t need another talking live action dog film. Secondly, Underdog is anthropomorphic and lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals.
The only thing that seems to be taken from the original is the name and the costume.
Compare and contrast:
They couldn’t even get a dog with black ears? I smell boycott! Oh wait, I’m already boycotting crap in general.
They have Chocoriffic Cap'n Crunch!
Thanks to Chris & Nicole of Green Ronin fame for bringing that up with them from Seattle. And Frankenberry is crazy neon red! It looks dangerous and tastes unusual…but sweet! 
I think that was one of the best (and longest) cartoon parties ever! From 8:30am until almost 4pm. And I was impressed that Chris Eng and his wife weathered the full 7+ hours. Duncan & Jon did well too.
Galaxy Rangers was first – Eng requested it and I provided it on the caveat that it would be at 8:30. I was half-banking on noboby committing to being here that early (boy was I wrong). As Eng left the party I said something to the effect of “now that you’ve seen Galaxy Rangers for the first time in 17 years, you never need to see it again, do you? Any time you want me to kill one of your happy childhood memories, you just let me know.” We enjoyed the exposition of Spider-Man, the crazy vacuum-clam robot on Rocket Robin Hood, and jibed about how the lesson on the D&D cartoon was that you should never trust Dungeon Master. In Jonny Quest, we guffawed over how Jonny had to rescue Race by removing the bar from a door, only to have the door swing in the opposite way.
Jeremy brought me the Transformers sticker book (you’ve seen some of those stickers on my dresser) which was COMPLETE! Cathy brought me some bubble bath in an octopus-shaped container and some stamps of the monster cereal…I’ll try to scan them in so you can see them.
Everyone enjoyed the Harry Mudd episode of Star Trek animated where we got to see Kirk and Spock finally expressing their true feelings for one another, and we had a bit of a singalong with the “Happy Happy Joy Joy” song on Ren & Stimpy. Everyone was surprised of Freakazoid and “Toby Danger” and Mike Jackson (mention #3!) remarked that I showed a Bugs Bunny cartoon that he had never seen before! I showed the “Over the Edge” episode of Batman, which always makes me cry (even through Joyce wasn’t thrilled with it! – what a crazy kid) and as usual The Ripping Friends found new ways to disgust and tickle us. I showed one of my favourite episodes of The Tick (and there’s a lot of great ones) featuring Tongue-Tongue and the Mad Scientist Expo. Venture Bros, Futurama, Samurai Jack all classic and I featured two “premieres” – cartoons never before seen at a cartoon party because they are rare and not well known: the Korgoth of Barbaria pilot (which I’m told has been picked up by Cartoon Network)
and the one and only The Amazing Screw-On Head (which I’m told will never have a sequel)
Now I just have to get rid of this excess cereal!
I believe next year’s theme will be time travel…and I will play the episodes in chronological order! Or maybe reverse chronological order???
SSZ Comic pages 1-2 Pencils
…and songbook
This is what the mechanics told me whenever I took my Chevy Nova in for repairs:
In A Secret Location An Experiment Is Underway
Hi kids! Well I got an mpeg of the N.S.E.C.T.s commercial that I was in – and it’s pretty awesome. If anyone wants to see it, just give me your email address.
Weathertop gaming convention was this past weekend. It’s the first time I wasn’t really involved in the organization (but still was to a small extent), but nevertheless I was interviewed for a Vancouver Film School documentary project which was interesting. The question of nerdism and the oh-so-spooky occult aspects of D&D always come up in the media, and I am loathe to address the latter as it is complete bullshit. Like intelligent design. My response to the question “have you ever summoned any demons duing a D&D session” was “no, and believe I’ve tried. I’m pretty clever so if I can’t do it, the Christian fundamentalists can rest assured it’s impossible. So just relax. Go attack death metal, or better yet rap.” Well I’m paraphrasing. And, of course, of all of the normal looking, socially versed, contributing members of society that were at the con, they interviewed the kid who is known for eating his earwax at the table. I wish that were a joke.
Anyhoo, I went to the con to see if I could sell some games and Thickets merch, and I sold a bit but not much. It was an interesting experiment anyway, and not only did I get a little gaming and socializing in, but I also brought my comic book homework and made some good headway.
Poncho Chilla
After ten years in Vancouver I finally broke down and bought a rain poncho (at Camouflage). So watch out for that!
I had a dream last night that I organized a Slackademics class on sex, which was basically going to be a big orgy, and for some reason it was happening in a hotel, so it got mixed in with one of my recurring dreams which is raiding a hotel buffet or banquet. I was both intrigued and extremely nervous about the Slackademics workshop – needless to say it was the most attended class. The dream ended before anyone got their clothes off though.
I’ve watched five films in probably as many days. Cocoon was great. Children of Men was great, Letters from Iwo Jima was really good, Anchorman was good and funny, My Super Ex-Girlfriend was entertaining but mostly bad – fun to watch Eddie Izzard as the villainous mastermind, though.
Speaking of movies I got the game “Director’s Cut II,” a movie trivia game. I bought it at Salvation Army for 7 bucks, still in the wrapper. Every week or so Joyce and I have been going to Stephane & Sheri’s place and watching something with David Attenborough (I got my Life in the Undergrowth DVDs recently) and then playing games – usually Wii. I think next time we may have to play some Director’s Cut. Usually Joyce kicks my ass at games but we played Boggle last night and the tables were turned. TURNED I tell you! I spelled ‘peyote’ which was gratifying.
Comic Update
I have now made a blog category for the comic, so you can see all the comic entries by clicking http://www.thickets.net/toren/category/comicbook/
I was in such a crap mood on Wednesday. I got a flat tire on my bikey bike on Sunday night and broke my hand pump trying to fix it. How crap is that? A flat tire and a useless pump. So anyway I took it in to the Bike Doctor (did you know that most bike shops aren’t open on Monday – and did you know that all of my bike repair needs have been on Mondays?) and decided to get a tune up as well. The guys there decided I needed new brakes for both tires and a new rear tire (not just the tube) as well. So my flat tire turned into a $120 bill. I’m sure all that stuff was needed as I take about as much care of my bike as I did my automobiles back in the day (did I tell you the story of how I left my Reliant K car on the side of the road with its engine on fire?), but it still sucked. Add to that the stress of getting my passport and some relationship hiccups and I was stressed out. But – the bike is fixed and rides much better, the passport is on its way in 4 weeks, and things are splendiferous with Joyce again, so all is well.
After dealing with the crud, I spent most of my time on Wednesday working on the comic. This turned out to be just like doing D&D illos over the past few years. I spent almost no time drawing and almost all of the time looking for photo references on the interweb – helicopters, snow cats, even parkas and mountains. I am trying to keep as much “freehand” as possible, i.e. no photo reference, because I find that the more I rely on photo reference, the less personal style I put into the drawing, and that’s a habit I’m trying to get out of (this is something that Mike commented on from my recent drawings). But I have never drawn a helicopter before so cut me some slack here.
Other good news is that I put the cash down for an 11×17″ scanner so I will be able to scan in the full comic pages in fewer fell swoops than otherwise possible. After being unable to get it through local computer stores (they’re made in California and don’t have a Canadian distributor), I found an eBay store in Richmond that is going to ship it to me. Came to about $225 including shipping, methinks. Much better than the $1500-2000 models sold in Canada, and Kevin* from Outnumbered ( http://criticalhitcomics.com/ ) sings its praises as he has the same model. I’ve been doing the pencils in non-photo blue so I can’t really give you my progress so far (yet), but page 1 is indeed coming along. Steve brought along a copy of his PERSPECTIVE FOR COMIC BOOK ARTISTS to the last class which looks good, and plainly explained for dunces like myself, but upon looking it up on amazon.ca I see it is not available. So I’ll have to hunt for it on eBay.
(*I also bought some Blue Line comic book paper from The Comicshop so I am in a better position to finish the wererat splash that I promised Kevin for issue 5)