Man, giraffes are weird to draw. They're like trannie animals, with their big mascarra eyes and giant botox lips.

So you've all heard of Epic Mickey, yes? Yes. Good. I may have mentioned it here before.
If you haven't, quickie rundown: It's set in a dystopian, steampunkish world where the forgotten characters of the old Disney cartoons and themepark rides live in jealously of all the successful Disney franchises.
It's ruled by this guy:

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, AKA Walt's first creation before Mickey. Jealous that Mickey grew to get all the fame and fortune, Oswald releases the Phantom Blot into Mickey's world to destroy all the colour and art. Mickey has to use a paintbrush, ink and paint thinner to restore his world to normal and get to Oswald to stop this madness.
Interesting plot for a Disney game, and even moreso when the art looks like this

And then I manage to fool around, get my drawing game back on, and be in a pretty good mood. All because I took little ol' Oswald up there, with some influences from the concept art right there, and made this:


And managed to create a monster

With tomfoolery, I've managed to spearhead the mementic mutation of Oswald the Rabbit from 'jealous rival' to 'obscurity has driven him Joker levels of insane'. Instead of controlling the ink, Oswald's become possessed by the ink and part of the ink - like a weird, rabbit Venom. He's later evolved to be able to control people with the ink, like a virus, and is spreading to take over everything, all while laughing hysterically and cursing Walt for abandonning him.

I'm now going to be horribly disappointed with the actual game, since there's no way Oswald is going to be like this. Well, okay, the game is still going to be completely kickass, but now anything Oswald does will be smalltime compared to the horror imagined so early on.

Aaaaaah.
Things are better. Not fixed, but better. Like I said, it's not really my problem so once I got the whole full details I can push it aside and only deal with it when it comes up. Which, knowing my friends, will not happen an awful lot.



I spent all day at work today drawing. I haven't scanned in what I've drawn yet, but I'm pretty proud of it. I'm getting more and more cartoony the more I draw, I find, it's a good way to loosen up. I need to draw more life drawing and people, still, and really hone things down, but at least I'm relearnng fun again.

So myselftheliar posts an awesome Trek gif and then tells me that I should totes draw some Kirk in my style. Considering I don't think I really have a style, I decided to play it safe and draw in the three forms I draw normally:
Loosely:


Beady little eyes and a big fat head:


SUPER GAY:


Drawing cartoons to look like actual people is haaaaard, but I drew these all in, like, five minutes each and I'm tired and it's late, so whatevers.

I hate my building. I love my apartment, I love my location, I love my view, but I HATE my building. There's always construction going on in this damn thing, as soon as one ends another begins. First I had to endure Rogers drilling into the outside of the balconies. Then I had to go through listening to them drilling in the apartments. Now SOMETHING ELSE IS DRILLING and I don't know what, I can't see anything from my apartment. At first I thought it was the annoying upstairs family doing some... whatever the fuck they do, but now it sounds exactly like last years drilling when they were redoing the balconies. ONLY ALL THE BALCONIES ARE DONE. WHAT IS THIS DRILLING. I'M GOING TO SNAP AND KILL SOMETHING. RASDFHASDIFSLDFLDSIFLASIDASJLFDAFJALSIDFJASLDFIAJSDLF
I playing Bon Jovi so loud to try and drown it out, you have no idea.

In othernews, I've redone the Cockcakes comic of old, because I can draw better now and it was bugging me. Also, I liked the pacing of this one better.

Click to head to the blogspot. I've only got the one post right now, but I'm bored and will be damned if I don't try to fill my time with SOMETHING that's not airplane with the cat.

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, I'M SO BORED
I need to start working, like, stat. My ADD can not handle both no work AND a lack of Xbox.

Today at Dinner, while Tori and I discussed many things and come cunning plans, she demanded to know why I haven't drawn a comic about her yet.
This is the result.

There you go, you whiny girl. Now off to bed!

Man, I have no idea what's going on anymore. I'm going to bed.

I managed to do a lot today. I cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom, the lizard's cage and half my bedroom, made some bread, a delicious dinner, tidied up the apartment in general and restocked on groceries. I even managed to not spend half the day online. Go me!
Although I only managed to see one movie today and that's disappointing. I'm far from giving up now, but I may not be able to meet my goal of 500 after all. Still, not going to give up until the last day.

This is the last week before Winterlude, the big winter festival up here on the Canal. Work's going to be busy busy busy and thus so am I. While being a good, productive worker has it's perks, there's also downsides. I'm practically a manager in training, even though I'm not making manager wages, and I'll be working 6 days a week starting next week, with Monday my only day off. Weekends I'm to help open; this means coming in at 8:30, which means leaving at 8am. UGH. On the bright side it's steady hours and at least I know that I'm off every day at the same time. I won't have a lot of personal time for the art unless I sacrifice sleep, but it should do for a month.

And I've rejoined DeviantArt! I hadn't signed on since second year college, way back in 2005, and since my style, confidence and all around artitude has changed I decided to get all that old shit off and start mostly afresh. I haven't uploaded a full bunch yet and it's mostly doodles but ye gods, stuff I drew is finally on the internet, so people can see the bizarro things I draw like Sharkwar propaganda and BtVS cartoon bastardizations:

Wooooo, go me. I still haven't figured out the ins and outs of the whole site yet, or even toed the waters of the forums and chatrooms (I don't image them to be super awesome anyway) but I'm sure once I get better hold of my time I might peek and poke around. I avoided all that stuff before, might be a good idea to check it out this time around. You never know.

On a final note, the Superbowl Watchmen and Transformers trailers were awwwwwwesome.

It was the coldest day so far, -40 with the wind, and so I was told to stay home. While I'm not to keen on the not getting paid, I'd been in a doodle mood and was happy to stay home so I could essentially draw all day. And I'd found some nifty new fonts, so I was kinda paying with those for a while.
Humorously, while it was the coldest day outside it's been sweltering in my apartment all day. I've had the windows open and the fan going full blast. Cold temperatures don't mean diddly when the sun is still beating bright and cheerful through your windows and you've got 14 floors beneath you cranking the heat. It's been a near sauna in here.

My movie watching is still going slow - I'm about to start up The Spirit and enjoy it in all it's infamous awfulness. I also, finally, got to see Repo! on Sunday with Stephris and lo, what a so-bad-it's-good movie. The editing was terrible, especially for a musical, missing a ton of chances for great cuts on beats and often times being confusing, the scenes/story jumped around and they retold information more than enough and had some scenes that offered nothing to the story but were just sorta 'there'. It was helped greatly that even with the scene jumping, the story was still easy to follow and never got confusing, and all the actors were clearly having a good time and were good enough to make the cheesy dialogue work. Yes, even Paris.
Really, it was good enough just for Anthony Stewart Head using the corpse of a man he just disemboweled as a puppet while he sang. Goddamn.

I'm trusting that everyone's Christmas went nicely. Mine went pretty well - a simple affair at the family's that went without a hitch. Or, at least, only a small one. Despite the pile of food and buckets of water I carefully left for her, Kenobi decided she didn't like being along no sir and peed on some of my stuff. Luckily, it was all washable stuff, but still. Cat pee. Yuck.
( The Tally )

Otherwise I came home and set about my 'Really-Hope-It-Won't-Become-A-Tradition Unemployed/Home for Christmas' cleaning. I emptied my drawers and cleaned out my kitchen and went about the usual business of organizing and throwing out of my papers. I also took a few minutes every so often to job hunt, since this time I know I'm not going back, instead of being stung along on a thread of hope.



Besides that, I've decided the only real way to keep myself occupied is with entertainment. Oh, I have other less wasteful plans like comics and working on the pilot of a cartoon I want to pitch, but besides that I really want something to do at night and I've watched all of my current stuff right now anyway. So my plan goes as such: to watch at least one new movie every day for the next year and keep the tally. And now that I have someplace to keep them, the plan seems more feasible. I've got Forbidden Planet, Twilight and Heathers on the queue right now - Heathers should be done something tonight so it'll be my pick for tomorrow. Twilight should be done too, so I'll double-feature it. Cult teen movie vs cult classic teen movie. Should be fun.

But first I need to catch up on nearly a week's worth of Flist and RSS feeds.

Spamalot was HILARIOUS. I was chuckling all the way through, but there were some definite parts of doubling over. The French Taunting scene had me nearly in tears, I was laughing so hard. The actor who played Arthur, especially, was just really excellent at hamming it up. All in all, it was an over the top, loud, bright extravaganza.
Really, I think the only downside was that I laughed so hard my back kinda hurts now. That, and before the show I'd managed to rip my bottom lip. I'm still unsure how exactly it happened. Just that, as is my habit, while I was turning off my phone I held my program in my mouth because I had needed my two hands to actually find the phone. I don't remember my lips being that dry or the program that sticky or what have you, but once I was done and pulled the program out, along went my lip skin.

I managed to suck in my lip and eventually stop the bleeding, but damn it still stings.

OH RIGHT, IT'S DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIMES HELL YEAH EXTRA HOUR.
I just spent that extra hour drawing an awesome comic on how I could spend that extra hour. And then, while preparing the comic for friendly internet usage, I closed it and said 'no' to save, thinking it was a blank file.
NOOOOOOOOOO.
Now my fingers kinda hurt from holding the pen for so long. Damn. It was a sweet comic too. There was baking, painting, shark riding, stellar shit.

Well, I guess instead I'll post the Dinosaur lizard head thingy I did last night

I'm still clueless on this digital painting thing. Photoshop, how do I use thee right?


Though while doodling out the comic I had a rad idea for the new studio I'm too afraid to actually run by the heads. We're supposed to move to a new building (hopefully one with windows for optimal airflow) either late this month or early next, but in any case close to when our inevitable break of unemployment starts. Now, this unemployment shouldn't last too long, only a month is the rumour, but it'll still be boring to hell. And since we'd want the new studio to be all nice and awesome and Collideascope had murals painted by fellow animators, I was thinking of suggesting something along the lines of a giant mural. Like, everyone interested works together on putting their different ideas and styles on the table, and once everything's planned and placed, you have a giant smorgasbord of different doodles on one of the walls. And the thing would take a long time, be good for relations and keep folk busy.
I think it's a good idea, but heaven forbid I actually work up nerve to talk to anyone in charge of this stuff. Mercury doesn't feel as 'paint on the wall' laid back as Collideascope anyway. So I'll just hope for the windows.

Well, speaking of work, time to head out there and keep making my extra dough. If I'm going to have a whole month off soon, then that's my free time. Right now it's work work work.

( A fishy )
My Ritalin perscription ran out about a week ago, and I haven't made the appointment to refill it yet. At first I didn't really notice anything but now, obvious with hindsight, I realise there really is a difference. I'm going to try and remember to call the doc on next Tuesday for the refill and hopefully it'll push me back up. And it's not like my work's suffered, thankfully, but looking at my recent habits at work and I could be making more money and I should probably really want that. So hoping I remember!

And in other life news, it looks like I am finally moving forward in the date I mentioned earlier. I'd seen the girl for lunch and other a few times after that and we still got along swell, but nothing seemed to be happening. I wondered if there was miscommunication or she just wasn't interested, or whatever else and finally just upped and asked her and found out that she was wondering the same thing! So now that that's cleared up, we're both agreed now that it is dating we both want and will keep doing.
Exciiiiiting. Everything's lining up for ol' Liz Lemon.


Linkspam:
Interview with Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies*Del toro to fly solo on Hobbit*How bad with the American 'Absolutely Fabulous' be?*Hathaway and HBC head to Burton's Wonderland*5 badass reasons fans will love the Green Lantern movie*5 ways Doctor Who made a difference*Shamalamadingdong on Unbreakable 2*Watchmen sneak peek reveals Snyder's ambition

Glowing Jellyfish win Nobel Prize*Body in suitcase was full of heroin*Creativity and mood disorders linked?*10 ways to eat more bacon*6 menacing towers fit for a supervillain*My roommate, the drug dealer*The coolest apartment block on Earth

So Avatar ended this weekend, eh? I'm afraid the barrage of OMG BATMAN completely distracted me from it. I've managed to catch up on Southern Raiders, but then had other things to do.
Like naps.

Gonna go see Dark Knight again tomorrow (today? God these midnight things mess me up. Maybe I should start updating in the morning) Will probably see it again on Friday. Yes, I'm loving the movie that much. Maybe it's just because of the adrenaline it serves. Maybe it's because of Joker's disturbingly awesome role. Maybe it's because it had Gary Motherfucking Oldman. Whatever the reason, I have fallen for this movie and I have fallen for it hard.
We're gotten some good films this year too. Cloverfield, Iron Man, Wall-E, TDK, Speed Racer and Hulk weren't that bad either. This has been excellent flick season. Bolt doesn't even look that half bad. And while I haven't seen Caspian yet I hear it was a kicker of ass and I don't care what anyone else thinks. I grew up on Narnia goddamn, practically have Dawn Treader memorized, and it'll always be awesome to me.
Yessiree, it's a good time for entertainment.


My friend 'Abnormally Tall Chris' has decided he wants to be a Patissier, and I keep trying to tell him it's the queerest job he can get. I know it actually isn't and there's a wide variety of gayer jobs out there, but seriously, creampuffs? Tarts? Small little cakes? You're telling me that's a straight man's vocation?

And also, now that I've purchased Pearl, I've been getting into Pokemon again, which means I've been getting into drawing Pikachu again. I don't know why I love drawing small, chubby animals, but they're so much goddamn fun that I can't stop. Just like I can't stop playing Pearl. I'm playing it right now. Goddamn.
So here's something that will haunt my sleep and hopefully yours. I don't know why I draw these things sometimes. I wonder even more why I save them.

GODDAMN I cannot stop listening to Space Oddity now. My addiction to Ziggy Stardust was bad enough, but now that I've got my hands on even more Bowie I've just been going nuts. I'm going to have to find out if my dad has these records at home. And then steal them.

Today was awesome Pancake Day at work. I made many a pamcake for the night crew, got some blueberry on my shirt (D:) and did something to my left index finger that's not a burn, but still hurts. It was fun and delicious.
And keeping with pamcakes, I saw Hellboy 2 today and it was stellar. There's a lot of mixed feelings buzzing around about it - a lot of people didn't like the love story (which, if I recall, was the exact same complaint the first time around) or that the plot was a little loose. I didn't care. It had clockwork robots, urban mythology and a troll named Mr. Wink. And Hellboy hitting lots and lots of things. Not to mention how motherfucking cool the whole movie looked.
Dissimilar to the comics it was, and a little too silly at times true, but I had a blast watching it and felt good at the end and sometimes that's all a movie has to be. Plus, it was a good tie over until The Dark Knight.
TWO AND A HALF MORE DAYS

It's like Christmas right now, I swears to ya. The anticipation is nearly over whelming. So far the plans are to get to the theater four hours ahead of time, although we're toying with earlier. It's already sold out and we want the best choice of seats possible and have no qualms waiting late. Now that I have a DS, I have all the portable entertainment I need.
Or I guess I could talk with my other friends there. If I have too.

In conclusion, I leave you with Sharkwar propaganda.