Awkward Comparisons

In the past year and a half, while I was too busy getting glasses and shortening my hair to blog, I must've glossed over a dozen eerily similar internet articles condemning the practice of comparing yourself to your peers while you're still trying to settle into a career and what have you.  While most of them actually have a point, especially with all this social networking out there, now that I've been twenty-six for a while I've started...thinking.

In particular, I've been thinking about how I'm the same age as Sushi Man, who was a character that I drew a lot in middle school.  In an unprecedentedly cynical move I set the bar so low in describing the harsh and often awkward realities of J.C. Sushi's mid twenties that I figured comparing myself to him would probably just wind up making myself feel way, way, way better about where I stand in life right now.

So I did the only thing that seemed appropriate and pumped out some visuals:

...I swear, I was absolutely definitely in no way thinking about dressing up like Sushi Man and running out to a nerd convention when I bought that shirt.  Maybe if I slept upside down and paid someone to program a video game about him or something so more than three people know who he even is, I'd consider it, but I'd need money for that first and don't really like the convention atmosphere much anyway.

I also really ought to stop thinking too hard about the exact mechanics of that relationship with Mrs. Butterworth.

You know what?  Even though I am unquestionably more prepared to deal with the real world than Sushi Man would have been if he hadn't been conveniently swept up into an alternate dimension so he could actually live out his superhero fantasies, I am approximately 62% creeped out by the amount of similarities there are between the two of us.  With that in mind I can only hope that turning twenty-nine and a half is nowhere near the acid trip I expected that to be when I was thirteen...

Actually, I hear this is a pretty average reaction to realizing you're

about to hit 30.  If anyone's put up with my shenanigans long enough to know who this

crackpot is, you get somewhere in the realm of four million bonus points.

So yeah.  Final verdict, Zelda Vinciguerra officially beat Sushi Man at life, and I probably just slid down a few points on that scale for talking about myself in the third person.  I'm still beating Sushi Man, though, and that feels pretty awesome.

The Great Root Beer Heist

Last summer I spent some quantity time with my brother's friends and ended up with the plot for an actual NEW online Choose Your Own Adventure by the end of the day.  Yes, that's right, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure that I did not write when I was eleven!  You play the part of a blue ninja of unspecified gender on a mission to rob a charity walk-a-thon of its root beer.  I'd originally intended for it to be very straightforward, but then I wound up accidentally throwing in this weapon system.  That clogged the pipeline for quite a bit.

After working on this off again and on again over the summer, I've finally finished writing the story and mapping out the flowchart for The Great Root Beer Heist.  You can expect to see 17 unquestionably bad endings and 6 endings that range from dubious at best to very good for the player.  You can also expect to see the ninjas depicted below.

In light of this accomplishment, I've decided to share the process I've been using to create these things.  It all starts with a red composition book.

It has to be a red marble composition book.  I hoard the things like it's nobody's business and that helps keep them straight.  Of course, back when I started doing this I didn't have much of a choice.  They didn't really sell composition books in anything but marble style, and the red color was actually a huge novelty when I was in the fifth grade.  Now that I have them in polka-dot, taupe, European-style, glitter, unruled, and holographic with built in strobe light effects, the red marble's really just to state that yes, this notebook contains Choose Your Own Adventures and their accompanying logistical flowcharts.

To put it bluntly, I just wrote the story out in a notebook.  This was also the step where I closed the project and called it a day back in the 90s.  I still like writing my first draft in a real notebook on a stoop or bench or someplace weird, because there's less Internet there to distract me.

The second step is the one I just finished now.  I created a flowchart so I know exactly what pages need to be done.  As I finish them I fill in the little bubbles with a colored pencil or something.

I definitely do not actually perform this step on a large white board set up in public.  This is probably the worst way to make a flowchart, actually.  People around here have an overwhelming tendency to see important things written on erasable surfaces and erase them.  I use regular paper instead, because filling in the bubbles with a real colored pencil is a lot more satisfying than filling it in with the paint bucket tool in a separate tab.

 I don't even start doing anything on the computer until this is done.  I make the images first because there is a 100% chance of the image above not actually happening with that.  I set up the page in Dream Weaver and keep it simple.  Image, block of text, links at the bottom.  Boom.  Done.

And this is why there hasn't been a Lu Encounter update in over a month.

Why aren't pineapple Twizzlers a thing?

I found myself awake in the middle of the night again last night, as many creative sorts do.  Probably out of habit. Why is it that all the best ideas wait to show up until the middle of the night?  Why don't they cooperate with their host and pop up at more convenient times, when you're not trying to get some sleep?

I digress.  I found myself lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling for at least thirty minutes wondering if Twizzlers came in pineapple flavor or not, for no real apparent reason, trying in vain to resist the urge to get up and google it (probably costing me an additional hour or so of sleep in the process).  Resistance was futile.  Turns out that Twizzlers do not come in pineapple flavor.  BUT THEY SHOULD, DARN IT.  THEY REALLY, REALLY SHOULD.

I then took it upon myself to draw some sketches of Minor 6th from the Amazing Harmonizing Police Force as a boy about to embark on a noble quest to save his homeland from invading forces.  He's one of those spry roguish sorts.  Because, you know, blog entries are always better with pictures.  It makes people more apt to read the text, after all.

He looks oddly like the demon spawn of Raz from Psychonauts, Norman from ParaNorman, Timmy from the Fairly Oddparents, and Hub from Mega Man Battle Network.  As an adult he looks less like those guys and more like one of my old choir directors.  

I need to get my head back in the game.  And Hershey's needs to get on that pineapple Twizzler idea, stat.  Seriously, pineapple Twizzlers would be nothing short of awesome. 

A Day in a Line and Choir

My mom decided to leave me at AC Moore for an hour while she had lunch with my sister, and I found a doodle journal that actually had doodle activity suggestions in it instead of just being a bunch of blank pages with a fancy cover that charged you more than a regular sketchbook. One of the pages challenged artists-in-training to draw out the events of an entire day without lifting your writing implement of choice from your paper. Aside from my crappy cars it turned out pretty cool looking, even if it was a crummy day and a nice testament to why lactose-intolerant people shouldn't eat pizza if they're going to be working all day.

Last night was my brother's choir concert. My dad ditched so I went with my grandmother. What I wasn't told was that the concert was to be combined with the elementary school choir concerts this time. Which meant that 1) They'd sound lousier than usual, and 2) Happy Harley would be there.

Happy Harley--unlike the last Harley I crossed paths with, this Harley was...not a small horse, first of all, and probably wouldn't appreciate being painted green. She was an elementary school music teacher in every essence of the word. Short and perpetually smiling, with musical knowledge ranging from "Don't wanna be your Valentine," "Suzy Snowflake," and "Plant a Little Watermelon On My Grave" to "When Witches were Waltzing" and "Swimming, Swimming, Into the Swimming Pool." Her hair was always teased and poofed into a fro about triple the size of Ronald McDonald's.

I managed to spot her again on the stage. As of 2011, the poof had been flattened somewhat and she'd essentially turned into a shrively brunette version of Mother Gothel from Tangled. Like this, with the same buggy eyes and goofy grin put on a real person.

Don't worry. Afterward I didn't do anything that would've put me in detention. Through sheer force of preadolescent apathy I completely bypassed her choir and only had to deal with Happy Harley and her sloppy air instrumentalist act. I didn't wind up in choir at all until 7th grade. What a lucky break!

The concert was long and about what you'd expect from a concert that included 4th-6th graders and a first-year middle school director.

Computer: 4,150,782...Me: 0

Seriously. I had a bajillion animation clips uploaded and without even clicking anything Blogger navigated away from the page. Now I have to upload them AGAIN. Ugh. Anyway, here's a recap of 2D Character Animation I, taught by the lovely and talented John (Debber) Webber.




I fixed the Mushu head turn. Not quite so slow but the perfectionist in me still thinks it's got a long way to go. Part of me wants to rap it upside the head and tell it to stick it. I didn't even POST my take assignment because it needs so much work in my opinion. I'm so self-conscious about my animation. I need to stop doing that.



Ah, who am I kidding? Jiminy needs slow-ins and slow-outs.




I really liked this one and definitely worked a ton to get it to the point it's at now. I've been saying that very line of dialogue ever since. Nobody really gets it anymore but Tyler and Debber.




This one actually freaked Debber out a LOT. Does the voice clip sound familiar? It's Jacques Khouri. The moral of this story is "Be careful what you record, because Zelda will probably animate it."

And that was Character I. I am now in Character II and working on new ways to harass and embarrass Debber. He's funny when he gets flustered.

Happy Midterms Week!

You know it's that time of the quarter when you're so sluggishly wiped out that all you can do is draw minor characters who are just as wiped out as you are. On the bright side I am passing 20th Century Art and Movement for Performance. Though some of those zonked out animators look awfully familiar (don't feel bad if you don't recognize them).

This was just one of those weekends that went by so quickly that Sunday felt like Saturday and Saturday felt like Friday, only it was one of those high school Fridays where you have to go to class. So today I will churn out even more characters and finalize my lead. And if I haven't, I will not eat chocolate for an entire week.