ISIDTA 20 : Three Square Meals (A Day)

A day late. Sue me.

Kit and I are starting a new daily strip, alternating back and forth every day of the week except for ISIDTA Wednesday. The title of this new venture (which we came up with on the spur of the moment) is Three Square Meals (A Day) and features the witticisms of two buddies who just happen to be a cheeseburger and a leg of chicken. So stay tuned for punny hijinks. Please add us to your RSS feed or check out the strip every day here.

Hut One, Hut Two, MY EYES!!!

Some of my friends posed the question, "Can Blind People Play Football?" I think they answered the question quite well in this video. Nick Faber is daring, and Austin Nava is partially fearless and partially crazy. I love those guys.

Letters And Space

Led by a post on a drawing blog I frequent, I came across a chain of intriguing animated typography videos as I wandered through YouTube. I love type (although I don't really know enough about it; I know what I like) and I love animation and video, so these are really interesting to me.

Pulp Fiction dialogue - very, very nice. Great timing, great colour, great choice of movement. Led me to...
Fight Club dialogue - fun to watch, marred by several misspellings and incorrect transcription. Led me to...
Tramp - again, nice colour choices, type combined with graphic forms to follow a jazzy blues song. Led me to...
The Lions Roar - probably my favourite of the bunch. Great rich colours, gritty textures, and a great blend of type and graphics. Led me to...
ABC Movie of the Week - included for amusement's sake. Ya gotta love the Sixties. Reminds me of other great tv idents of the era. In the 1970s, you really knew you had to stay tuned when CBS played this.

It's A Man's World

James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti. Amazing.

CageMatch 3-22-07

Another night, another CageMatch. I was really happy with the video concept for this one; it was in the vein of the "story" videos like SUMO, CCCP, or Children of the Atom. Go check it out here, and then come back and we'll discuss it.

Watched the video? Good. The challenger this week was Mother Goose Project, so I decided to got with a storybook format. I plucked some fantasy paintings from my usual sources, and modified them to fit the theme. I thought it turned out well. The overarching dragon menacing the castle worked as a funny symbol for IO's team holding the CageMatch title in DSI's own house. I looked at a lot of pictures of fantasy-style armies before I selected the one to make into Southern Cross. I had taken a few new pictures of Jeremy, but of course couldn't find them when I needed them, so that's the same damn face shot I've used over and over again. I was quite pleased with the DSI logo on the shield, the way it was perspective-ized and shaded. There's an adjustment layer for brightness over the logo, which is controlled with a gradient mask to make it smooth. I also loved the way the CageMatch Champion badge turned out in the bitter king picture; it perspective-ized quite nicely. The identity screen for Mother Goose Project, as well as some of the other amusing screens from the video, can be found in the CageMatch set on my Flickr page.

Then there's the music. I always try to make the music thematically appropriate for the videos, but also try to give it a little hidden meaning as well. PT Scarborough was the coach for Mother Goose Project, so I was quite happy to find an appropriate song from one of his favourite artists to use--Mark Knopfler starts us off with a tune entitled "Once Upon A Time." The dramatic music that kicks in at the turn of Southern Cross is the "Save The Oracle" music from God of War, the best videogame ever made. It all builds to a remix I made of "Mama" by Genesis. (Oh, and this isn't in the video, but the entrance theme I chose for Mother Goose Project was "Hey Mama" by The Blackeyed Peas. Get it? Mama, Mother Goose? I know nobody notices the entrance music, but I always try to make those appropriate as well.)

Frequent viewers of CageMatch may note that there is always a different, apparently random sound that plays during the DSI id flash at the top of the video. Actually, this is always carefully selected (sometimes painstakingly so) and has some reference to the rest of the video. Last week's was fairly obvious, but this week's amused me. Can you figure out the reference for this week? First person to correctly identify it and leave a comment on this post gets a $10 Amazon gift certificate! No, really! IT'S A CAGEMATCH CONTEST! BEEYOWWWW!

WRESTLING THIS FRIDAY!!!

As you loyal blogfans learned in this post, I will be making my triumphant return to the wrestling ring this Friday, March 23rd, at the Union Pines High School in Cameron, NC. I've been invited to be the face commentator for an AWA Power Pro show. It's THIS Friday, people! Get up, and get down there!

I just got off the phone with the promoter, so I have a few more details for you ham-and-eggers. The belltime is 8:00, not 7:00 as I guessed at in the previous email (so maybe it'll be easier to make it down there now, right?) The show is called The Night of Champions, and will feature a defense of the Power Pro tag titles in a fourway tagteam bout, an AWA Light Heavyweight match with a great guy, Kirby "Krazy K" Mack, the AWA World Tag belts, and a big Royal Rumble-style battle royal for the Power Pro title, which will end as a TLC match! In addition, a guy with a gimmick I love, Dexter Poindexter; an old friend of mine, Christian York; and the hometown hero (yes, he'll be a face, guys--cooperate!) Cham Pain. (Oh, don't worry--the heel in that confrontation will be Otto Schwanz.) I also just found out that one of the special guests will be Tully Blanchard's former valet, Baby Doll, who I had a HUGE crush on when I was >ahem< younger. So you might get to see me mark out. The first match is going to be two high fliers who I hear are good, Kamikaze Kid and Ultra Dragon, so get there on time! Oh, and due to legal reasons, you can't advertise that certain people will be making a (non-wrestling) special appearance, but let's just say that we may see guys whose names rhyme with Deaf Tardy and Cannon Gore. (Actually, those would be two great gimmicks; I should talk to Grog about that.) So come see all that, see me in the ring, and later on buy the dvd with my running commentary on the matches. Don't be a pencil-necked geek; support your not-so-local non-comedy sports entertainment.

The website for the promotion is here, and you can get directions on that page to the show. (Take US1 until you see the exit for Vass, 690 I think, and it'll take you to the school.)

Click here for a larger view of above pic of me and Willow the Whisp.

Chris Ware

I don't really know Chris Ware. I've seen his books at the comic store, but have never picked one up. I'm attracted by the crisp, sparse-but-potentially-detailed art style, and the amazing use of colour, but the subject matter doesn't really grab me. I think I'm going to grab something of his at this week's huge Chapel Hill Comics sale, though. (Any suggestions?) I love the way he uses clean lines and simple vector-inspired shapes to create an attractive image, as well as his clever compositions that invite you to just stare and ponder and investigate. So much comic art these days is all flash and no substance, comic books full of complicated-looking drawings that both overwhelm and dull the eye, resulting in a quick read that leave you feeling you wasted your $2.95 (or more!) on a five-minute experience that you quickly forget. Chris Ware's drawings make you want to look at them for a long time and appreciate their structure.

Anyway, all of this rambling was inspired by the animation Ware did for an episode of This American Life on Showtime. Very nice.

I think I might try to do some stuff in this style. I really like it, and it might be cool to try and do some lucha-style comic strip with a clean vector look.

Seriously, any suggestions for a first buy? I know that Jimmy Corrigan is his most famous thing, along with the Acme Novelty stuff, but I also know he uses a number of different styles, and it's the clean-line vector-y almost isometric look from this animation that I really like. What to get?

Time Defeats All

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Japanese popular culture?

This clip features comedians trying to move from pedestal to pedestal whilst avoiding the styrofoam hands of a giant clock. Get hit, and get knocked into a pool of whipped cream. Who thinks of this stuff? Brilliant.

ISIDTA 19 - Failure

Today's theme is crap, as in the pictured crappy attempt at painting. I spent about an hour and a half drawing in a picture on this canvas, and then the minute I started putting paint on it, I could tell it was going to be a disaster. I kept marshalling on, hoping I could make it into something passable, but once I got to trying to paint the river (the lighter blue glob) I just threw my brush down in disgust. This was meant to be a double-duty project, serving as both an ISIDTA entry and a submission to the Town's Community Art Project, but both those ideas crashed and burned last night. I just can't paint for shit. I don't like paint. It doesn't do what I want it to. Seeing the globs of uneven paint bleeding all over the place and obscuring my lines just frustrates me. Painting is just not my medium.

So after that fiasco, I tried to draw the Riddler. I tried to do it in the style of this amazing Talos Tsui picture of the Justice League. Due to the style, I figured I should eschew pencil and paper and draw the whole thing on the computer. I tried a similar method to the Batman artist I blogged about a few days ago, using a thin blue brush to do the light roughs, then a thicker black brush to do the cleaner roughs. It looked like shit. I tried throwing in some colour to see if that would inspire me to press on, but I was done for the night. I had lost my fire for the whole night's project. I had never really gotten focus from the very beginning, and decided to go ahead and give up.

Better luck next week. I'm sorry, I'll draw that again.

Crappy painting.
Crappy Riddler.
My old crappy stuff.
Kit's stuff.

The Weird Wild Web

I do a lot of research when I'm making videos. Sometimes when I'm searching Google for information or pictures to use in my video projects, I come across some odd matches that have nothing to do with what I was searching for. This weekend, I had to gather material for the three videos I'm making this week, and I tripped across some absolute oddities. I thought I would share them with you.

Searching for "mexico tv" brought up this. Click the little icons randomly to view odd pictures. They get weirder towards the end.

"mexico test" led me to this disgusting fast food burger, wheras "mexican ha-ha" came up with something much more amusing.

A search for "poochie" gave me a page on custom Simpsons figures. (Maggie as Yoda and Bart as Yosemite Sam were particularly disconcerting.)

Googling "mother goose" turned up this VERY disturbing picture, as well as this saucy number.

This one isn't so wacky, but it is interesting. Searching for "test pattern" gave me this information page about the history of radio and television. The same search on YouTube eventually led me to this page, which has software to create your own custom test pattern cards, based on vintage designs. It's PC only, so I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds fabulous.

Duh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh

I adore this thread. It's a bunch of people reimagining members of the Justice League.

Highlights include this link that shows how a guy drew his version of Batman in Illustrator. I wish I could save it and watch it over and over again!

I also love thissun, thissun, and thissun.

All courtesy of this very fun and inspiring drawing site, which I have only barely begun to explore.

Scott Sullivan Returns To Wrestling

I've been asked to do a charity wrestling show back in my old Omega stomping grounds of Moore County. I met a guy at Matt Hardy's Christmas party who is a promoter and wrestler, and he said he loved my work and would like me to come down and do a show for him. A couple of my old Omega buddies will be working the show, including Marty "Cham Pain" Garner and a man I haven't seen in a decade, "The Nomad" Christian York. Christian was Joey Mercury's tagteam partner for years before Joey (who used to be Joey "The Future" Matthews) went to the WWE and became part of MNM. He's a great guy, and I had really hoped he could've made it to the bigtime with Joey. It'll be great to see him again. I think Jeff and Shannon will be making an appearance as well, although not wrestling. (Hmm...I wonder if Willow Tha Whisp will make an unscheduled appearance? He is unpredictable...)

The show will take place next Friday, March 23rd at the Union Pines High School in Cameron, NC. I'm not sure what the belltime is...maybe 7:00? I'm still waiting for the full details. Come on by and see Ted in the ring, and enjoy plenty of great rasslin' action!

ISIDTA 18 - Richie Rich Redo

ISIDTA 18 - Richie Rich Redo
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

So this week, Kit and I decided to each try and reimagine a classic cartoon character. After flipping through my encyclopedia of cartoon characters, we semi-randomly selected Mr. Richie Rich. I was terribly amused to see how each of us decided to approach the character. I went pimptacular. I thought my Richie was okay, but I was quite happy with Gloria the ho.

This whole thing was done pretty quickly, maybe two hours for the whole project? Richie's right hand sucks, but when I tried to touch it up, I had the same "ink running all over the goache" problem that I did back in ISIDTA 12. I also had to touch up Gloria's left hand and cleavage area, but that came out much cleaner.

See the full pic here and the inks here.
Kit's Richie Rich Redo is here. WARNING: Kit FitzSimons is a horrible, horrible person, and did something horrendous and hilarious for his cartoon.
My old ISIDTAs remain here.

Miscellaney

I think that most of the time, commercials are a waste. They spend millions of dollars on them, and how often do you actually say "I'm going to switch to that beer because I saw it on the Superbowl?" One deviance from that rule, personally speaking, is my choice of shaving cream. Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, Edge was a sponsor of the WWF tv shows, and I've used it ever since. The reason I started buying it is what still runs through my head every time I use it: Lord Alfred Hayes' measured pronunciation of the phrase "Edge Shaving Gel; the first defense...against ray-zore irritation!" I love the way he pronounced "razor".

I saw 300 yesterday. I thought it was okay; it wasn't stunning, like Sin City was. I liked the gritty, grainy look of the film. I liked the multiculturality of the Persian forces. I liked the nipples. I loved the soundtrack. I loved the animated end titles. I guess it just didn't seem as tight as I would've liked. There were some plot holes and strategy holes and gratuitousness that distracted me from the overall experience. I thought the oracle priests looked far too much like The Emporer from Star Wars, pale warts and hoods and all, and The Immortals were far too Darth Vadery; their masks were certainly reminiscent, and when we first see them, their breathing actually sounds like it was sampled from A New Hope. And Spartans don't throw pro-wrestling dropkicks. (However, huge towering beastmen definitely do pro-wrestling chokeslams. My friend Brantley leaned over and whispered "Undertaker.") Oh, and I kept watching Leonidas and flashing back to Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon. "Hawkmen? ...DIIIIVE!!!!"

I just tripped across this Sesame Street parody.

Two days until you'll never see me again, as I lock myself away with God of War 2.

Good Art Idea

This is a really cool art idea. Flickr guy "Hawkstudios" takes pictures and then draws a little miniature version of himself in the picture. It looks really cool, but it's also a really clever and fun way to practice drawing different perspectives, lighting effects, shadows, etc. I may have to try and start doing this (although obviously in a far cruder fashion, considering the difference in our levels of talent.)

I really like his style, too. Very clean; cartoony but not sloppy, with lots of character.

Oh, and I want these gloves of his.

CageMatch 3-8-07

Had another CageMatch last night.

The video is here.

The identity screen for Southern Cross is here.

I'm Famous

Patton Oswalt just unveiled his new website, and guess who's on it?

Go to the Spores page and scroll down to the bottom. When you get to the Ted page, be sure to notice the clever logo that pops into place around Patton's head at the top of the page.

God, looking back at this picture just reminds me of how much fun I had putting the whole thing together for my buddy Jason.

ISIDTA 17 : Reading, Rhythm, and RED

Okay, this is one of those ISIDTAs where you should probably go read the strip first, and then come back here and read the notes. So go read it!

Did you read it? Good.

Long story. Basically, my buddy Jackson trimmed his beard down to a little strip, and some of his friends said he looked like a communist. I said he looked like a jazz musician, and so we christened him "Comrade Jazzman". Then we got on some weird tangent about how I hated grapefruit, and Jackson slipped into the Comrade Jazzman character, and said basically what's in the first word balloon in panel three. And obviously, it all had to be immortalized in comic form.

Postscript: this was all done with my pad in my lap as Kit and I sat around the living room. I even inked it with the pad in my lap. Jackson will be pleased to know that, while working in these cramped conditions, I managed to spill whiskey on the bristol board.

Kit's ISIDTA contributions for this week AND LAST WEEK are guaranteed to be found here.
My past crap is here.

Postscript 2: Kit asks me to remind you that those are grapefruit, and NOT BREASTS.

Frylock, er, Fryclock

Okay, who's going to get me this clock?

A Novel

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
by Snoopy

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!

A door slammed. The maid screamed.

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!

While millions of people were starving, the king lived
in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was
growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the
tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.

At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was
making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in
Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas
who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the
daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?

The intern frowned.

"Stampede!" the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head
of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men
rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves.
A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An
uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch
was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the
coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more
importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END


via The Peanuts FAQ