Realistic Chipmunks

New episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip available here.

We watched a Christmas episode of Alvin & the Chipmunks, so I decided to add to my growing collection "realistic takes on cartoon characters" (Like Denver the Last Dinosaur and Care Bears)

These are fun.  Also the character designs from the Chipmunks movies are not that great to me. They live in that weird world of cartoonish animals along side of real human actors, it's usually horrifying. Take a look at any of these examples (chances are, you never actually saw those movies).

If you want to take a cartoon into the real world, just go all the way.

It's Christmas, Logan

A new episode of the podcast is up. We watched X-men from the 90s, which is a show I friggin love.

It was the Christmas episode, "Have Yourself a Morlock Little Christmas" and one of the recurring themes is the Scrooge-like grumpiness of Wolverine. There was also a Christmas tree that was as sad as Charlie Brown's. So the picture kinda suggested itself.

Care Bears, emphasis on Bear.

A brand new episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip means art. I think I say that everytime.

In honor of Thanksgiving, we watched a Thanksgiving episode of Care Bears. It was shockingly bad. I don't remember that show being that bad, but then again, I also don't remember watching it that much. 

Denver the Last Dinosaur proved to be a popular picture. And it was tough to come up with a theme for this show. So I recyled the concept of just a realistic version of the characters, and voila. That's Cheer Bear, who I think is some kind of happy bear, but I'm sure they all are. 

We did have the Care Bear's Christams record, but I'll be plum buggered if I remember what that was about. Other than Christmas. I'll also be plum buggered if I have any idea where the phrase "plum buggered" came from in my vocabulary.  

Anywho, give that episode of the podcast a listen, won't you?

Jem and the Holograms rooftop concert

New episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip is up, and we watched "Jem and the Holograms".

For the art, I had some trouble, because I'd never seen this show before. But I do know that late in 1989, Jem and the Holograms had drifted apart creatively. Their computer generated images were becoming like weights around their collective neck. The strain had let to schisms between the girls. Not helping matters was the wane of synth-pop as a marketable music form. Since their instruments were all geared toward synth-pop, what could they do. Over the course of the year, the girls put aside their differences, and managed to assemble one last album, and, memorably, that winter, they climbed to the roof of the studio and performed their last concert. A truly, truly outrageous concert.

Or maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

Poltergeist/Garfield mash up

So we have a new episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip up. It's a Halloween episode and it is something else.

It was Sean's idea to do Poltergeist. The poster is a classic. Pooky was my favorite part of this, really...

Pac-Man as Peter Venkman

New episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip (Have you listened to us? Why not?)

It is no secret that my favorite movie is Ghostbusters. This turned out to be a fairly lovlingly-rendered watercolor of the sixth floor of the Hotel Sedgewick, but with Pac-Man from the show as Dr. Peter Venkman moments before the most famous line from that movie (Thanks, Carl!)

Seriously though, this is where it came from:

And my background reference;

Watercolor is a great medium. It just feels so nice on my eyeballs...

Captain N: The Gamemaster

Anew episode of Saturday Morning Deathgrip. We watched the Nintendo advertisement... er, cartoon show "Captain N: The Gamemaster." Art was challenging for me, because what the heck do you do with a generic cartoon that featured a bunch of a video game characters? So I dusted off one of my oldest tricks, the photoshopped picture (I used to enter contests on Worth1000 and Fark all the time... I wonder if my things are still out there. I did a great "More Cowbell" arcade game cabinet back in 2003.) Anyway, that's why there's a two-fer for this episode. One is Captain Phillips (by all accounts a serious film about a serious topic) is turned HILARIOUSLY into Captain N (being attacked by Somali pirates.)  the second is of course presented by George Lucas, directed by Francis Ford Copolla and starring Michael Jackson in a 3D Musical Adventure. Also, I don't know know if you've seen Captain EO recently (feel free to here) but after my visit to Disneyland last year, I must say that I was less surprised by the prequel trilogy than I probably should have been.

Anyway, please have a listen to the episode (which doesn't feature me for reasons explained in the episode) and if you're feeling generous, subscribe to us on iTunes and/or maybe tell a friend of yours to listen, too?

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

New episode for Saturday Morning Deathgrip (if you read this and you haven't listened and/or subscribed and/or told a friend to do the same, why?). We watched and then recorded us talking about "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends," which is a poorly animated but still entertaining show to me. 

For the art, I was thinking about other famous "amazing friends" and came up with Calvin and Hobbes. So I decided to do Spidey, Iceman and Firestar in a Watterson style. It's hard to make them in some sort of battle with a Green Goblin or Sandman. So instead they hang out in a city scape. You have a problem with that? 

Incidentally, I tend to hate mash-ups like this. Especially with Calvin and Hobbes. So I hate myself. Nice...

The Princess Bride- The Animated Series

So a new episode of "Saturday Morning Deathgrip" is live in and, oh boy, did I not realize how terrible Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling was.  But I have dedicated myself to making art for each episode, no matter how terrible the show is.

Originally, I was going to take the Hulk Hogan design from the show and stick him in one of his movie posters.

Pick your masterpiece!

But then I thought I'd rather have a more recognizable scene, but, outside of Rocky III and, of course, the best mid-90s boat-based action show, Thunder in Paradise, most of Hogan's work is forgettable. But one his colleagues and Rock 'n' Wrestling co-stars is in a actual classic: Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride.   

So I took the character design of Andre the Giant, plus the general aesthetic of the characters: 

Dressed up Andre as Fezzik, made my own versions of Manday Patinkin and Shawn Wallace in the Rock 'n' Wrestling style, using this scene.

Incidentally, the official WWE website actually has a nice slide show of production art from the show. The animation and character designs were not exactly special, but I'm such a nerd for behind the scenes stuff, especially for animation.

Joan Wilder Improv team photo

My pal, Sean (one of the Saturday Morning Deathgrip co-hosts), is on an improv house team at the People's Improve Theater (Every Wednesday at 9pm, it's free!) After a harrowing nationwide search, I was selected as the artist for their team portrait.

Sean and I brainstormed some ideas, (my favorite unused idea would be everyone is dressed as Gene Wilder character but looking sad and confused) but the final idea actual came from my Woody Allen Mummy art for SMDG Episode.  Basically, everyone would select a thing or person they'd dress up as, I'd draw their portrait and put them in an appropriate setting.

The final result is here (Click to make it big):

The font is Futura Medium. Futura is the absolute best. It has slight horizontal stretch, but that's to fill negative space.

I wrote a small essay with photo references of how I came to the final design which you can find by clicking on any name.
Joan Wilder is:
Paul Gostowski, Sarah Peele, Pete LePage, Beth White, Adam Luke, David Chase, Ariel Karlin, and Sean Reidy

Joan Wilder Art: Ariel Karlin

Joan Wilder Art: Paul Gutowski

Joan Wilder Art: David Chase

Joan Wilder Art: Beth White

Joan Wilder Art: Adam Luke

Joan WIlder Art: Pete LePage

Joan Wilder Art: Sarah Peele

Joan Wilder Art: Sean Reidy

Bots Master

New episode of "Saturday Morning Deathgrip" out today. We watched the pilot episode of the 1993 show Bots Master. I had never heard of it, and I still wish I hadn't. It is a collection of noise and flashing colors and nothing all that enjoyable.

This was the hardest episode thus far to come up with some kind art for. My original idea, based on the general experience of watching the show, was to do a picture of a bottle of Adderall. But instead I decide to celebrate a show that even I, someone who's very knowledgable with pop culture in general and cartoons in general, had never heard of by mashing it up with the original poster for a 75 year old silent movie- Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The original poster is an art deco masterpiece. I love art deco- architecture, graphic design, and typography.

So this was a slam dunk, once I had the idea.

A slam dunk that basically two people will appreciate. That'll help grow the podcast...

Tim writes stuff- An empirical look at baseball

Over at Stats in the Wild, I have a very long essay on performance enhancing drugs in baseball. My person take on PEDs is quite a bit different than most of what is out there on the internets. Please read, please enjoy.

Denver the Last Dinosaur

Episode 4 of Saturday Morning Deathgrip is live, in your face, and totally radical, just like the show we covered, Denver the Last Dinosaur!

In coming up with art for this sucker, it seemed pretty obvious- just make the main character realistic. Denver was officially a corythosaur. As you can see, the cartoon took some liberties with what a corythosaur probably looked like. I'm not the first to imagine a more realstic Denever, but I do appear to be the first do it in a non-sociopathic way.

The part that made me chuckle is that corythosaurs were 30 foot tall grazers (or possibly browsers) with no real teeth. They were likely, behaviorally at least, gigantic cows. The idea that this dinosaur would be preserved in the La Brea tar pits, come out fully functional in the late 80s, self-aware, able to vocalize in English and also love rocking a mean guitar is more hilarious to me when you realize that, if you could see them in the Cretaceous, they'd literally have done none of those things. Of course, you didn't need to read up on paleontology to know they'd literally have done none of those things.

Tim Writes Stuff: ALF Colorforms

Over at saturdaymorningdeathgrip.com, to help bolster our street cred, we are adding occasional articles that should be tangentially connected to Saturday morning cartoons. And what says "street cred" better than "ALF Colorforms"? Literally anything.

Head o'er to read.

Mummy Hall

A new episode of Saturday Morning Deathrgip, as ever, means new art. We watched Monster in my Pocket which was awful. One of the characters was a mummy and for whatever reason, the actor who voiced the mummy did a Woody Allen impression. So for the art for this episode I tried to recreate a moment during the opening monologue of Annie Hall. This is also the first one I've done for the podcast using paper and scanning it rather than doing it on my graphic tablet. How retro of me...

I feel like there's a chance for a series of these. Pick some movie monologues, change the actor to a classic movie monster. Maybe I'll get invited to an art show like Crazy4Cult or one of those booths at ComicCon. I am available...

Saturday Morning Deathgrip Episode 2 "Pryde of the X-men"

Episode 2 of Saturday Morning Deathrgip is now available.  The associated artwork is a take on the Crocodile Dundee movie poster (by Drew Struzan, the last great poster artist.) Why Crocodile Dundee? Wolverine is Australian, for some reason. That's basically it...

Tim Writes Stuff: Nick Cafardo Remains an Idiot

I take down Nick Cafardo and his unending idiocy over at Stats in the Wild.

Tim Writes Stuff: The Pirates and Playoff Chances

With the Pirates enjoying first place and the best record in baseball I wrote up a little bit on how the Pirates and their playoff chances.

Photoshop trickery

Buzzfeed bothers me (though I find it occasionally enjoyable). Today it was this article "23 things we all do but none of us admit to. And yea, there's a ring of truth to some, but that is not my point. A lot of times, Buzzfeed has lists about ironic signs, many of which are photoshop so blatantly. So today's got me to stop at one entry and post to my handy blog that literally no one reads!

The offending item:

#5. Ignoring a text for days* and then saying “Omg I’m SO sorry, just noticed my reply didn’t go through!”

Accompanied by this picture:

LOL, amirite? Ugh. Now, it doesn't take a genius to see artifacts around the second "1" in 2011. I'm no photoshop genius (I'm lying. I am.) but look what I did in 20 seconds!

I mean, LOLz!

Additionally- iMessage debuted in October 2011 with the release of iOS5. The lower case first letters in "hey" and "i sent that..." also indicate that the messages were sent from Messages on a mac, and Messages on the computer came out as a beta in Summer 2011 but couldn't go to phones yet. 

I have now vented my spleen.

Tim writes stuff!

I occasionally write for a blog called "Stats in the Wild," which belongs to a friend of mine who holds a PhD in statistics. He did the stats for my resident research project. He's a good guy, you'd like him. The blog is basically items related to practical statistics (as in statistics one would encounter in everyday life). He invited me to write some stuff about baseball, which generally means I make fun of Nick Cafardo, but I have clandestinely added more to my plate.

I saw a Buzzfeed article,12 Extremely Disappointing Facts For Geeks, and was bothered by something that happens every day on every news site that uses statistics: improper context. They happen to use a bunch of logical fallacies too, but in the end it's mainly bad math and poor context.

So head on over to Stats in the Wild to read my brilliance and hang around for Greg's stuff too.

Fleischer Man of Steel

I was trying to come up with a cool present to give my nephews (who were 2 and 4) this past Christmas. They're both superhero crazy, and the younger one, Patrick, loves Superman in particular. So I came across this beauty and fell in love. The Max Fleischer Superman shorts  were amazing, rotoscoped pieces of gorgeous art deco awesomeness that inspired my favorite Saturday morning show of all time. But I couldn't find an actual print of the original art, and that site was literally the only evidence I had of it existing. So I used my art skills and my graphic tablet to recreate the scene.

And, hey Zack Snyder, look at how brightly colored the costume is. Isn't that odd?

Saturday Morning Deathgrip podcast episode 1

 So this podcast I'm co-hosting- Saturday Morning Deathgrip- is about 80s and early 90s cartoons (exactly what a professional should be talking about).  It does, though, give me an opportunity to do some art to support it. So our first episode was about the 1990 PSA Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, and as promotional art I did a bit of a parody (hear that US copyright law?) of one of the posters for The Expendables (below). Except for Theodore and ALF, I have doodled these characters on notebooks throughout my school career, just not recently. What am I, a child? I have doodled a Ninja Turtle since second year of dental school...

Bored at work sketch #2- The Real Dr. Peter Venkman

The Real Ghostbusters was one of my favorite shows growing up because Ghostbusters is the single greatest artistic and comedic accomplishment in human history (If only the Pietà was funnier...) I hadn't drawn something from the show since I practiced using a book like this (though not this specific one. The one I practiced on focused mainly on Egon).

I doubt anyone reading this doesn't know it's this scene that I was going for. Also, I doubt anyone is reading this...

Bored at work sketch #1- Scrooge and Flintheart

Sitting at my desk, rather bored, as patients refused to show up. So I drew my two favorite Scottish ducks. (Though as I cover in the first Saturday Morning Deathrgip, Flintheart was supposed to be South African.)

Also, dear reader, if you know (or you are) Alan Young, tell him (or yourself, if you are Alan Young) he (you) is (are) legitimately a hero of mine.