The combatants

If these two entered into battle who would win? 

The answer could shock you!!! 

Or annoy you!

Or you could just say "meh" and keep scrolling.

But, no matter how you react to these two, the answer to that above question WILL AFFECT YOUR LIFE........... in some significant way I'm sure.

 

A review of my book I did not expect

 It's always great when something you've created (like a self-published comic book) is given any attention. Any review, positive or negative can really boost a book's visibility which could lead to more sales. Anyone, anywhere taking an interest in something I've created is always welcome. Although, some come from out of the blue in a corner of the universe I never thought I'd see. This is one of those times. The website where I found the most recent review of my book Censor Monkeys Have No Class is none other than 4chan!!!

*LOUD GASP*

Now now! Don't flip out. Yes, I'm well aware that the 4chan website has a "reputation" of sorts.  However, as the saying goes, "No Press is Bad Press" so I welcome any and all publicity that crosses my path.  So with that in mind, let's go over this 4chan thread together.

I'm not going to post a link to the entire thread simply because the channer posted every page of my book there.  If you want to see all of the pages, order the book from Amazon and/or Kindle you Sneaky Peeks.  I did however grab some screenshots of the entire thread, but I'll only put up the posts where some text was added.  Here we go:

The channer considers it "balls to the wall". Well, hey, I won't argue because that's exactly what it is.

According to the time stamp on this post, I'm guessing that this person purchased my comic at the Saskatoon Fan Expo last year.  So, hey....... it looks like there are some 4channers lurking about in Toon Town.  Does that frighten you????? *vincent price laughing gif*

He certainly agrees with me about the insidious nature of the Horrible Mother Monkey.  That's good!

Somehow, I knew the Not Muhammed Monkey would be a hit there.

Best fucking page ever, eh? I shan't quibble.

"Fucking KEK", he says! 

Ok, this might need some explaining for any normies and/or boomers reading this.  The term "kek" is from an online video game called World of Warcraft.  The internet abbreviation LOL (laughing out loud) is somehow translated into KEK in that video game.  Therefore, something is "kek" when it makes you laugh out loud. It becomes "top kek" when it is exceptionally laugh out loud funny.  So, now I hope you're caught up.

That is a fun panel.

There he is enjoying that Not Muhammed Monkey again.

There's some more kek for you.

Aaaaaaaaand he comes to the end with a belly full of keks.  Of course, these are just the original channer's posts.  Let's see what some of the other comments are.

It looks like this person is putting down my book with this comparison, but I'm definitely taking it as a compliment.  South Park is easily one of my favourite shows and has indeed been a big influence on what I do and try to do, especially their divine magnum opus: Bigger, Louder, and Uncut

Yes, I will say it, my Horrible Mother Monkey is somewhat based in part on Kyle's Mom (and we all know what she is). This is in no way me "plagiarizing" this great series nor am I trying to steal its thunder.  This is me joining them in their fight against censorship and for free expression.  They shouldn't be made to do it alone, especially not while languishing within the belly of the beast at Comedy Central which has shown a considerable push to make all of their shows "politically correct" and "intersectional".  For free expression to flourish once again, there needs to be as many voices as possible, not just the lone voices of Trey Parker and Matt Stone lifting the entire load.  Join me in joining them.

This mensa guru scholar genius is referring to this page of the book:

Yes, that's a man. In fact, that's a caricature of me circa 2012. Is that a difficult concept for some people?

"Sensible Chuckle" indeed. I did design that Scientologist Monkey to look and act like Tom Cruise, because of course he's the very whiney crazy and highly embarrassing poster boy "Messiah" for that questionable religion.  I applaud this person's ability to spot the obvious, but I'm also proud of myself because this shows that my caricature skills (especially when transforming a celebrity into a monkey) are on point.

So that is 4chan's assessment of my book.  The thread poster gave it "Many KEKs" while others were unsure.  However, I would like to point out that the person who enjoyed my book had a physical copy in his possession and read it while the others based their judgement on some blurry photos that saw online.  So, the basic bottom line is that it's best to actually read a book in order to fully enjoy it. What a concept. That could catch on.

Hey, anyone else out there that has a physical copy of my book (be it paperback or Kindle), it could be great fun to post your own assessment of it somewhere.  It'll generate traffic to your blog, youtube channel, Twitter feed, etc... as well as help generate traffic for me an day books. It's all win-win.  Feel free to let me know in the comment section what you've done with my book.

More pumpkin carving fun

Last year, I taught my daughter how to carve a pumpkin for the first time. This year, we had more fun doing it again. However, this time, since she's more experienced, I had her carve her own pumpkin while I did mine. Here are the results of our labour:

Neat, eh? Can you guess which one's mine and which one's hers? 

We both had lots of fun making these. She feels bad for the mistakes she made. She originally designed her pumpkin to have teeth, but cut them off while carving because she forgot that you have to go around them. She made a similar mistake while carving out one of the eyes. But, y'know what, in this case I'd say they're more like "happy accidents" as Bob Ross would say. That toothless, pupilless grin makes him look even more sinister which is perfect for Halloween.

She insisted that we take a picture of each of us beside our creations making the same face. So that's what we're doing here. Personally I think my pumpkin looks more attractive than me. If my wife leaves me and runs off with that pumpkin, I'd be heartbroken but I'd understand. Ha ha!

As per usual, I started with a preliminary sketch first and then proceeded to reproduce that sketch onto my pumpkin as best as I could. My daughter just kept the design in her head and then drew it on her gourd. Either way is a legitimate method if the results work out as well as ours did.

Anyway, that's our spook-tacular fun for this year.  I hope everyone all over the world manages to have a safe and fun Halloween.

[Yes, I know, it's been many months since I've updated this blog. As many people have observed, 2020 has been one hot mess of a year. There's almost too much to blog about. So many Censor Monkeys are everywhere doing so much absolute fascism it's hard to keep up. Maybe I'll do an end of the year recap or something, once I've managed to gather more thoughts together. Until then, keep trying to enjoy things in these troubling times]

some more Russell Mussell

A few months ago on this blog I posted some artwork for a new character I just designed called Russell Mussell.  I only had that one drawing of him at the time.  Well, since I've been somewhat laid off from my day job (because of this big big virus), I've had time to draw lots more of him.  It's been an intense labour of love of course and lots of fun.  Moreso than just the act of drawing being fun, it's the discoveries that an artist makes along the way that are just as fun.  Here's one such discovery I have made in drawing this character:

First I'll tell you a bit about Russell's design.  His head has no shape really.  I start by simply drawing two eyes and a crooked smile. Then I draw everything else around that.  He does tend to look somewhat flat when rendered this way, mostly in the front view.  However, I found that I can easily give him the illusion of a 3rd dimension by simply drawing his eyes in perspective.  As you can see, the eye closest to us is bigger than the farther one, thus the perspective is achieved.

I'm not the first to discover this of course and I'm not claiming to either.  Way back in the late '40's/early '50's many animation studios were experimenting with a graphically flat design in their cartoons.  They absolutely achieved that same illusion with their flat designs and many of the results were pretty cool.

I'm very proud of myself for rediscovering nitrogen in a way and applying that to what I'm drawing now.  I hope I can have much more drawings of Russell Mussell done very soon.

Tex Avery loved Katherine Hepburn

"Tex and Katherine sitting in a tree
K - I - S - S...."

Ha ha! No, I'm not copping to that childishness.  I would just like to use this day, what would've been Tex Avery's 112 birthday (if he had somehow become a vampire so he could live forever), to talk about an observation I've recently made between this man and that particular actress.
Of course, it's no wonder that Tex appreciated Kate Hepburn on any level.  She was a 3 time Oscar winning actress whose filmography spans a decades long career.  What's NOT to like?  For reference, here's a bit of the Great Kate in action in one of her more acclaimed roles:



There she is holding her own beside two other Hollywood giants, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.  It's easy to see how anyone, not just animation geniuses, could be inspired by her.

The main reason I'm bringing this up at all is because of much of the reaction I've seen over Tex's cartoon The Hick Chick.

This is one of the many cartoons included in the new Tex Avery Blu Ray set.  I've ordered my copy and it should be arriving hopefully sometime next week.  I might find time to do a bit of a review of it.  That should be fun.
About the Hick Chick cartoon.  I can understand how people can be so ambivalent about it.  It certainly doesn't make most people's "Tex Avery at MGM Top 10 List". Possibly it didn't do well when it originally came out in theatres and even Tex himself was gravely disappointed in it.
However, I do feel that some of those same people are using their underwhelming feeling over this cartoon to gloss over what it's really about.  The man who wrote Tex Avery's biography, Joe Adamson, even seemed to do that.  In the back of that book is Tex's entire filmography with all the credits listed as well as a brief synopsis/opinion of each film.  Here's what he says about The Hick Chick:

Granted his space to use was limited, but it still seems like a gloss over to me.  That character was not a "Katherine Hepburn caricature". She was simply talking in that Hepburn voice to the slick talking "Charles Boyer" guy so she could impress him because she was disappointed in her very rural boyfriend.  Tex seemed to favour that Kate Hepburn voice a lot in many of his cartoons, such as:

Little Red Walking Hood

Daffy Duck in Hollywood

Hamateur Night

Dangerous Dan McFoo

A Gander at Mother Goose

Holiday Highlights

Red Hot Riding Hood

and the aforementioned Hick Chick

Other animation directors throughout the golden age years certainly used Katherine Hepburn as well.  However, to me it looks like the way Tex utilized her voice his attitude was that a Kate Hepburn performance made everything better.  Remember one main key factor to what inspired Tex to make many of the cartoons he made.  Many times he'd see a cartoon in theatres that in his opinion could be done better.  Then he would try to improve upon it.  The set up for The Hick Chick looks very similar to a Friz Freleng cartoon from 1938 called A Star is Hatched.




The Hick Chick from Movie Memories on Vimeo.

There's the two cartoon embedded next to each other for comparison.  Did Tex make improvements on Friz' work.  That's up to every individual reading this to decide.  I just wanted to get that out there for Tex Avery's birthday and I did.

Happy birthday, Tex and thank you Katherine Hepburn wherever you are.

Nurse

Here is a picture of a nurse I have drawn.  Just so you know, it ties in with this character I've drawn as well as this guy I've drawn.  "What is the connection between all of these characters?", you ask.  Hopefully everyone will find out soon long before this year ends.

I did some more commentary

That's right.  The good people at Ferris Wheelhouse invited me back to do some more commentary on Looney Tunes videos.  I and host Trevor Thompson had such fun last time and it looked like most of the response to those videos was positive, so we got back at it again. The two of us recorded them just last week.  We did all Pepe Le Pew cartoons.  His plan is to release them all on every Saturday in February in time for Valentine's Day.  So February looks like it could be a fun and romantic month.  Everyone can curl up with a significant other and bask in the amorous glow of Pepe's raging hormones accompanied by commentary by me and the self-appointed Looney Tunes critic.

"Cwitic eh? Wook at him swandering me! I'll bwast him to smiveweens wif my...."

Hold it! No! No, Elmer. I'm not doing that routine in this blog post this time.  For one, it's somewhat redundant.  For two, the last time I did that I............ broke somebody.

Please observe a moment of silence for the that person's two lonely brain cells who died that day.

Now on with it.  The commentary we did was...

"Why that doggone stubborn little.... I'LL GET THAT CRITIC!! WAGHWAGHWAGHWAGH!!!!"

Donald, you're at a different studio. You have nothing to worry about.

"If that Trevor Thom[stone] ever dares to critique me I'll bring down a slab of bronto-ribs on his head!"

Jeez, Fred. Are cartoons from every other studio going to vent for the sake of their delicate egos now or....?

"Oh! A critic on the internet! Is-is-is-is is that what's happening now? Why don't you just SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD??!! RIGHT NOW!! COME ON!!!"

Okay!  Back through the timeline portal you came from Rick.  Mr. Poopy Butthole says "hi".

Yeesh!  That was a mess.  Anyway, like I said, expect to see new commentary from me and Trevor in February.  In the mean time though, I'll embed all of the commentaries we did the first time.  Whether it's your first time seeing them or your 10,000,000,000,000,000,000th time, enjoy!

I'm selling a mug

I set it up on teespring just recently.  It's got artwork of my own design on it.

Front

Back

You can order your own mug at this link to teespring here.

Happy drinking!