Bagalagalaga

Grossman Graph

2011-11-13T12:17:00.001-06:00

Rex Grossman is back in the starting lineup this week against the lowly Miami Dolphins. Although they have just 1 win, I am considering the Dolphins D/ST a MUST start in fantasy football this week, based on these numbers.

Fantasy Football - Epic Matchups

2010-12-08T21:15:00.000-06:00

This will probably only appeal to about 12 people out there - those in my fantasy football league, where I am steamrolling to the playoffs. All that stands in my way is......my brother.

Two pictures are worth a million long, smack-talking rants in the forums.

IDIOTIC CRIME OF THE MONTH - "E" For Effort

2010-06-16T19:28:00.003-05:00

Here's our third "lucky" contestant for the title of IDIOTIC CRIME OF THE MONTH!!!!

This is another beautiful memory brought to us by the magic of alcohol (I have a Sprecher Abbey Trippel right now, but no spray paint in sight so I should be ok). At 4am, cops noticed a man spray painting the middle of a lane on one of the main streets leading into downtown. He dropped the spray paint and ran inside when he saw them. He answered when the police knocked, and they told him he would be charged for cleaning up the street, and since he reeked of alcohol, would also be arrested for public intoxication if he came back out that night. So obviously he stayed inside, and the story is over.

BUT WAIT!!!!! At 6am, the cops swung back by, and the guy was back out finishing his spray paint masterpiece on the street. As promised, he was arrested for public intoxication and property damage. Obviously this man was a true artist. What was the artistic vision he had, that he absolutely HAD to share with the world, even if it meant arrest, fines, or worse?

Spreading the message of SNOZLE NOSE was well worth the night in jail and $917 fine, if you ask me.

Crime of the Month Candidate - The PITA PISSER

2010-06-13T18:29:00.029-05:00

It's about time the Arby's masterbator got some competition for IDIOTIC CRIME OF THE MONTH!!!! Again, suspect is innocent until an extremely small amount of work proves him/her guilty...

After an evening of drinking, our gentleman decides to stop at the Pita Pit for a bite to eat (I should thank him for choosing that particular place, it made writing the title so easy). We may never know how much he drank, but it was enough that he forgot 20+ years of potty training. The guy just casually started pissing in the middle of the kitchen area as staff looked on in shock. They called the cops, who fortunately caught him, so we could hear this gem of a statement:

“I regret my actions. They were stupid and not well thought out. I feel sorry for the actions.”

So, he thought it out a little bit, but just not quite enough to make it work?
BONUS: I guess in an effort to be as thorough as possible, or add some length to the short article, the paper mentioned several times that the police noticed that he smelled of zesty Italian salad dressing, apparantly a key piece of evidence in this case.

Also there was another creepy old man showing his ding-a-ling to people in town, but I didn't feel like drawing another one of those. This one followed a guy into a mall restroom, pulled it out, and kept winking and smiling at the guy. How can you say no to this guy?

Smiling in mugshots makes crime a little more tolerable.

Killing Time on the Internet

2010-06-11T19:49:00.105-05:00

Let's face it - visiting this blog will not help make you a productive member of society. Knowing this, your only options are to kneel in your closet while giving yourself 200 lashes and begging for forgiveness, or to accept the fact and kill even more precious time reading about MY favorite sites to spend time on. These are the places that get at least weekly visits from me. Now that I don't have cable, I rely on these places to burn my brain to a well-entertained lump of mush.

The Onion - Fake news at its best, be it politics, science, or sports. Some of my favorite content.

Sports Pickle - Fake SPORTS news at its best. Well, not always the best, they do resort to just calling players and coaches fat or throwing around the term douchebag sometimes. But usually it's pretty funny.

deviantART - Thousands and thousands of people post their art, including stories, poetry, flash animation, photos, or sketches scribbled on notebook paper during class. Besides posting stuffs and looking at the intricate statistics of my stuff there (I've posted 33% of my deviations on Sunday!), my favorite activities are digging through the comics, watching funny animation, and searching for "cosplay" and just letting the laughs roll in.

Facebook apps: Seeing what your cousin in Georgia had for dinner is only half the fun! I really like the beerseek application. It helps me remember which beers lured me in with awesome names and bottles, and wound up tasting like piss. Also useful for German beers - did I like Weishepstenrennerstugen, or was it Weishepstenbrellerstugen? So far I've rated 218, making me one of the most raging alcoholics in my network! I haven't tried one yet that I couldn't find on here.
Visual Bookshelf is good for keeping track of books, it has got pretty much everything there and ready to rate and comment on.
Crazy Planets is a very fun version of the classic "aim your bazooka at the right angle and shoot guys" game. It is helpful to have friends that actively play and have good weapons, otherwise it is much harder. Still fun to play once in a while.

Solve Unamusement - A blog by a guy who's goal is to, well, solve your unamusement by making you amused. I often stop by to see the (almost) daily doses of amusement ranging from beloved childhood cartoons to video game reviews and a lot more, usually with some links or youtube clips to go with it. Incidentally, this site led to my addiction to deviantArt and a well-spent afternoon rating the Most Awesomest Thing Ever.

Down Goes Brown - This guy blogs about the Toronto Maple Leafs. Normally, that would just be extremely pathetic, either bitching about or optimistically complimenting last night's loss. But this guy is very funny, willing to take many many shots at his beloved Leafs, and mixes in stuff that's relevant to all NHL fans. I found this site via a link from a much less amusing NHL blog, and now I'm placing it on my blog, which I guess is even crappier if you're hoping for NHL blogs.

Use your new found knowledge wisely.

OK, my $100,000 should start arriving....right about......NOW!!!!

2010-06-09T20:21:00.011-05:00

My wife picked up the book Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income from the library for me the other day. Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett team up to tell you the tricks of the trade that will make you lots of money. First of course, start a blog and get thousands of people to read it daily. I don't think it's really that applicable to Bagalagalaga right now, but there were a few interesting parts.

In the introduction, the author stresses that you really, really, REALLY should not rely on your blog as your sole source of income unless you are already seeing returns that justify it. Basically, don't quit your day job to start a money making blog, since it took this guy a year and a half before he could even consider it equal to a bad part time job in income.

It's all technical stuff until waaaaaaaaay at the end, when you get Chapter 10, which is called "Creating Something Worthwhile". This is also the shortest chapter. I thought the "posting stuff people want to see" concept would be a little more important, but apparantly I'm wrong, and that's why I am stuck with a $98,752 blog instead of a $100,000 blog :)

Crime of the Month - Too Excited About Arby's!!!

2010-06-07T19:21:00.000-05:00

Here's an entry for June's version of......IDIOTIC CRIME OF THE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!! It's already on my deviant art profile, since yesterday night when I finally finished coloring it, Blogger wouldn't let me log in.

Basically the story is some innocent bystanders on their way to Arby's were horrified to see a creepy 67 year old man with his pants around his ankles, masterbating furiously in front of the building. He tried to flee in an RV, but police caught him, and he said his pants were never down that night. As might be expected, the comment section on that news article is loaded with comments about "Arby's Horsey Sauce"....

Simulated Interview For a Job at DC Comics

2010-06-01T13:08:00.000-05:00

I had the typical career goals as an adolescent - pro sports, comic book artist, maybe some job where people inexplicably pay me to play great new video games. For comics, I was sure that if I could draw the main character perfectly (as in, just like in certain panels in the comics), then I'd be set and would basically be the guy drawing Batman comics. Now, I have a little more realistic view of how it would have gone when I showed up with my "perfect" Batman art looking for a job at DC....

Just flipping through an old Legends of the Dark Knight, there were about 30 unique people, 13 settings, and like 50 facial expressions/emotions to convey. In addition, I never did really master drawing Batman (see above), so I guess it's time to get practicing again....

Animation - A Boy and His Blob

2010-05-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

Watch the Magical Moving Pictures at deviantArt

Gave Flash another try, and now that I know deviantArt is a good place to post swfs for free, it can be shared with the universe (for about 9 minutes until 500 other submissions push it into oblivion). This one is kind of like a storyboard, it's just 50 drawings moved and scaled around to tell the story; it winds up looking more like a comic strip that moves for you so your eyes don't get worn out scanning back and forth at different panels. It took a few hours to make this one, so I can't imagine doing a full blown hand-drawn cartoon this long yet.

Another Beast Born of Photoshop's Fuzzy Brush

2010-05-23T21:26:00.000-05:00

Behold the Snaggle-Toothed Ragamuffin!

The Fugly Little Caterpillar

2010-05-21T19:57:00.000-05:00

Drawing this fuzzy little guy consisted of:

3 strokes of grass

1 stroke of colored fuzz

2 eyes

Photoshop brushes are pretty sweet!

Special Sauce

2010-05-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

Here's my latest comic, as often as I read them I guess it's surprising I've never tried to do a whole 6 panel strip before. I've been reading a couple graphic novels lately like The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames and Fun House by Alison Bechdel where they write some of their experiences. Experience like homosexual experimentations, hard drugs, and pooping their pants. My story is a little tamer, it's based on a sandwich place I worked at in college, but if you want to assume the characters are having homosexual encounters, doing hard drugs, and pooping their pants behind the scenes, it will make it a little edgier.

I did this completely in Illustrator, even the rough sketches, which wound up being a bit frustrating. It seemed like stuff kept moving between layers without my permission, so disembodied hands were sticking out of counters until I finally figured it out. Next time I'm definitely going to just scan in pictures and color them in Photoshop, it is much easier. For some reason I got really stuck on trying to draw the hands in Frame 4, I almost gave up and went with this:

I'm also going to put this stuff up as my first post on deviantART.com, then I will go ogle all the awesomely rendered creature concept art there.

Sketch Blogs

2010-05-14T22:02:00.003-05:00

From surfing other blogger sites and people's submissions for Illustration Friday, I've come across a lot of blogs devoted to sketches from artists of all ages and skill levels. Some pro artists blow you away with top quality stuff and a few sketches. But in general, there are two kinds of entries in sketch blogs.......

=========================================================================
The Great Artist Who Is Ashamed of Their "Crappy" Art

Hi all, I finished my algebra assignment early and had five minutes left in class so I just made this quick doodle! I know, I know, it sucks, LOL, God's knee looks all retarded and some of the angels are just stupid LOL! I should throw this stupid drawing in the trash but I decided it would be funny to put my terrible picture up on my blog so everyone can laugh at how crappy it is LOL!!!!

=========================================================================
The Crappy Artist Who is Very Proud of His Actually Crappy Art

It took a long time, but it was worth it to finally finish my masterpiece "Sir Chaos Conquers Blortho The Dragon King"!!! I redid the fire like 20 times but finally it came out great, I feel like I will get burned if I touch the monitor! For the background, I tried to keep it simple, but I think the 4 realistic rocks and the bird (based on a photo I took of a robin, but I made him green) is enough, any more and it would detract from the main battle. Then, it still didn't seem quite perfect, until I had the idea for LENS FLARES that took it to a whole new level of awesomeness!

Maybe a third category for people where 90% of the entries feature their cat or dog, but they might be either great or mediocre artists as well. I am definitely in the second category, I got the idea for this when I was scanning through someone's blog, where every day they do a "lunchtime doodle" of incredibly creative and realistic monsters that I would have trouble even tracing right.

Crime of the Month!!!!!

2010-05-12T23:55:00.001-05:00

I live in a relatively small, college town, where most people would say "nothing much ever happens here". But lately the crime blotter in the local paper has been full of wacky, borderline retarded crimes instead of the usual 50 "minors caught with alcohol" offenses. It's only the 12th of May, but there are already some solid contenders for the coveted title of......"MOST RETARDED CRIME OF THE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
There are a couple that are actually really tragic, like some deaths where the murderer only got 5 years in prison, but these 3 crimes were selected for MOST RETARDED CRIME OF THE MONTH based on the following criteria:
1) In the end, no one died
2) The perpetrators made one or more absolutely retarded decisions to get themselves in big time trouble.
And here are the nominees......I don't mean to judge before the courts have had their say, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty and all that, but I will be referring to the alleged perpetrators as "Bad Persons 1, 2, and 3".
CASE #1 - Loud Music Gives Away Crack Fiends.
Police went to an apartment because of complaints of very loud music. When they got there and Bad Person 1 answered the door, it reeked of marijuana smoke. Looking inside, the police found several baggies of pot and crack around a cute infant laying on the floor. Bad Person 1 and his girlfriend were arrested for posession, and the infant will probably wind up in a foster home.

Case #2 - Doctor repeatedly stabs.......self????
Bad Person 2, a respected doctor who was recently given a leave of absence by the hospital (reason is unknown so far) makes a trip to Chicago. He reports to the police that he was stabbed several times in a mugging downtown. However, many inconsistencies arise in his testimony, and he later admits he stabbed himself repeatedly and made up the story about muggers, so he is being charged with the felony offense of making false claims to police.

Case #3 - Guy beats up old man for driving slow.
Bad person 3 got extremely pissed off that someone in front of him was driving below the speed limit. Eventually, the slow driver realized he was being tailgated and pulled over to let Bad Person 3 pass. However, Bad Person 3 also pulled over, and the slow driver, an elderly gentleman, got out of the car to see what was wrong. Bad Person 3 proceeds to beat the crap out of the old man, in front of his wife who was sitting in the car, and is charged with assault.

****BONUS!!!****** Bad Person 3 was also charged with throwing a dead cat into a McDonald's drive-thru a few years ago.
So who has earned your vote for "MOST RETARDED CRIME OF THE MONTH"? Put your vote in the comments!

The Taco-Matic 9000

2010-05-09T23:46:00.001-05:00

Well, since this one is a still a bit unfinished, I'm going to just send my finger-eating monster to Monday Artday for the "favorite food" challenge. It's got all the basic parts there, but it needs a little shading or metallic texture on the surfaces of the contraption, stuff like big fans, lights and dials, and of course, a heavenly glow surrounding each delicious taco.

I'm basically a taco/burrito fiend. I was lucky enough to attend a fine institution of higher learning where you could get Taco Bell on your meal plan if you didn't feel like fried okra, fried cauliflower, or fried zucchini. I loved the concept of the "make your own enormous burrito" places when I went to Chipotle for the first time; unfortunately there were none within hundreds of miles of home at the time. Now I live someplace where a Chipotle recently moved in across the street from Panchero's, which is basically the same thing only with a little better tortilla and like 50 cents cheaper for most stuff. I think Panchero's panicked, because now whenever you get a burrito there they stuff that bastard until it weighs about 3 pounds.

Another fond taco memory is going to Wendy's when they had their salad/BURRITO bar, where for I think $5 you could have all the ground beef soaked in strange orange liquid you could handle, followed by copious amounts of Jello and pudding. Pretty much the only burrito that has every betrayed me is this place in Oxford, Ohio - I forget the name, but their slogan was "Burritos as big as your HEAD!!!" They were as big as your head, but they also made you crap as big as your head within about, let's say, about 30 seconds longer than it takes for you to walk at a brisk pace from there back to a dorm....

Midnight Snack

2010-05-09T14:00:00.000-05:00

Monday Artday is fully operational again, and one of the word challenges is "Favorite Food", so I whipped up this little guy and his favorite food. I admit I didn't try to make the blanket look folded at all, folds still blow my mind. I actually have another idea brewing, a mundane food prepared in a much more interesting way. If I can't get that one done on time, then this little critter will find a home on Monday Artday.

Reload the Cocoon

2010-05-07T00:26:00.000-05:00

Another version of the Illustration Friday topic "Cocoon", since looking back at the original version, it just looked too sloppy and blurred. Last time around, I was trying to use transparency to make the cocoon look thick, slimy, and translucent. This time I just used different tools to draw solid shapes and then filled in a little detail, and I like it much better. Also more eyes = better art.

Another Completely Original Wallpaper

2010-05-05T23:00:00.000-05:00

.....well, at least I decided on the original combinations of colors and the pattern for these obviously copyrighted long tongued dinosaurs. My son caught me playing Yoshi's Island, and he is absolutely hooked with the concept of a dinosaur that eats creatures, turns them into eggs, and spits them at stuff while looking for giant keys and flowers. Too bad he doesn't have quite the coordination to play it himself yet, but he will watch me play a stage, run to mom, and tell her all about the chomper flowers and the special doors.

Also I added a little color to the Toaster wallpaper about 5 seconds after posting it last week, this is the version that's actually gracing my desktop

Illustration Friday Cocoon - Ain't No Butterfly

2010-05-02T23:26:00.000-05:00

Here's something big and nasty that may pop out of a big, nasty cocoon. I was inspired to do a sickly green scum cocoon by the old classic "Gremlins", that movie scared the crap out of me decades ago. Unfortunetly, my attempt at drawing one from memory wound up like this:

It looks like an effeminate scaly freak leaping out of some bubbles rather than the stuff of my nightmares in days past.

Brave Little Toaster Wallpaper

2010-05-01T00:26:00.000-05:00

Decided to make this wallpaper to further feed my older son's recent addiction to the Brave Little Toaster. I like the original movie which involves a cute quest as the abandoned appliances try to find their owner. But my kid prefers the sequel where the appliances use the help of a rat to recover their master's deleted veterinary thesis by finding one replacement vacuum tube for a supercomputer that then magically reconnects all its broken wires and simultaneously stopping an evil plot to sell animals to Tartarus Laboratories. I admit that Tartarus Labs is pretty funny if you're up with Greek mythology, but otherwise the sequel is not very good. There's another one where they go to Mars; I guess I'm being a little picky if I will put up with living lamps and toasters but think it's "too unrealistic" that they are abducted to Mars....
Eventually I'll have one with a hodge-podge of characters from Winnie the Pooh to Curious George.

Redness

2010-04-28T23:48:00.000-05:00

So very scary.

If You Stab a Piece of Wood, It Turns Into This....

2010-04-15T09:34:00.000-05:00

Quite a while ago I got a whittling tool, just a handle with a couple replaceable blades on it, and a bunch of small blocks of basswood. I carved up a few of them, one wound up looking like a piece of wood that had some corners hacked off (not shown), one became the little black and red twisted tower thing, and the other became a noble beaver.

Why do bad video games happen to good people?

2010-04-10T23:52:00.005-05:00

A conversation about old NES games got me nostalgic enough to fire up my trusty emulator, NESticle. Unfortunately, instead of enjoying old classics like Kirby's Adventure or Double Dragon II, I thought "now that I'm older and wiser, I wonder if Dragon's Lair is any easier?"

It's still impossible. I tried downloading windows media encoder so I could capture video of me playing the ROM, I thought it would be funny to show how many things can kill you on the very first screen, but my review would be pretty damn short since I can only make it about 4 SCREEN LENGTHS into this platform game...plus I couldn't get it to work.

The main problem was that Dragon's Lair in the arcade was popular because it had amazing animation by guru Don Bluth (Secret of NIMH, American Tail, Land Before Time). That fails miserably on an 8-bit system. On games like Mario, you can make him duck in one frame, almost as soon as you hit the button. In Dragon's Lair, the hero Dirk takes 5 or 6 frames to slowly get on his knees once you hit down. The same problem occurs for attacking, jumping, and even turning around, meaning that even though the enemies are slow as shit, you just CANNOT respond in time to do anything unless you memorize it.

Luckily for me, there is already a pretty funny youtube video of some guy bitching about this game.

Illustration Friday - Rescue

2010-03-31T22:40:00.001-05:00

Here's a rescue maneuver that anyone living with toddlers should know how to perform. Even if you know it was flushed before the keys went in, there's still psychological damage from having to reach wrist deep into that toilet. Personally, I've fished for toothbrushes more often than keys though.
And now thanks to my genius, if you were scanning Illustration Friday you got to enjoy two thumbnails of this pic since I posted just the link to the picture the first time, and there's no undoing it - my shame will be forever recorded in the I.F. archives.

Rock On, Arctic Monkeys!

2010-03-25T22:46:00.000-05:00

I knew I couldn't miss Monday Artday's word of the week "Monkey", so I whipped up this fellow inspired by the band "Arctic Monkeys", who I've been listening to a lot lately. Looking at it now it seems I've forgotten his guitar strap, so if you were hoping for an accurate depiction of a monkey playing bass I hope you're not too disappointed. But I'm happy with the furry little rocker, I guess I'm in a good mood since I didn't have to inhale any acidic gasses at work today. And finally, a list of some of my favorite monkeys of all time:

#5 - Grape Ape

#4 - Gleek or Glook or something, the one from Superfriends

#3 - Curious George

#2 - The one I saw at a Russian circus riding a horse and throwing a ball, while wearing a cute and practical monkey diaper

#1 - Mr. Teeny

Illustration Friday - Expired

2010-03-20T00:05:00.000-05:00

Haven't done the old draw n' scan in a while, but here's a new one for Illustration Friday, drawn in pen with a tiny bit of color from Photoshop. What I learned while doing this one is:
1) Should practice drawing noses
2) Should practice drawing hair
3) While cross-hatching adds volume to milk jug shapes, it may make a person look like Two-Face.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Star Wars CCG

2010-01-25T15:42:00.003-06:00

Finally we know what a Womp Rat looks like!

Decipher's Star Wars CCG expanded to the point where every character, ship, creature, location, object, or spoken word in the original trilogy was on a card somewhere. The Phantom Menace expansion came out and had everyone enjoying Darth Maul and Qui-Gon, but then apparantly Decipher could or would not continue their liscencing agreement and this great game abruptly died.

THE GAME: One person plays a light side deck, the other plays a dark side deck and you switch after each game. Decks are exactly 60 cards, because the goal is to totally deplete the other guys deck (drain all their Force in Star Wars talk). The most enjoyable way to do this is of course to slaughter the other guy in a battle, but you can also slowly drain a deck just by having characters on sites where your opponent doesn't. Also adding to the challenge is whenever you draw cards or use disposable interrupts, you are actually also depleting your deck and getting closer to losing if you're not careful.

CONS: It's the most complex CCG I've reviewed by far. Cards tend to contain paragraphs worth of effects instead of simple stuff like "add +1 to some skill". It takes a while to figure out the fighting system, where you are firing weapons, comparing power, "drawing destiny" if you're allowed to, and then deciding which characters have to die and if any additional Force needs to be lost. The game is loaded with complicated rare interrupts and effects which are only useful under very specific conditions, such as "if Han and Chewie are in a battle together". There's even the game-within-the-game of Sabbacc; I don't even recall when or if it's mentioned in the movies, but if someone plays a Sabbacc card you'd better break out the rulebook and figure out what the hell is going on.

Interrupts with 2 or 3 very different uses, characters with lots of conditional powers, and most of all Sabbacc make it a little complicated to play

EPIC EVENTS: Depending on your point of view, Epic Events could fall under either "why it's fun" or "cons". It's cool that you can blow up the Death Star, blow up a planet with the Death Star, blow up the Endor shield generator, or train Luke on Dagobah like in the movies. However it takes a lot of cards and a hell of a lot of planning and luck to actually accomplish them. Doing so normally gives you some good bonuses, but it's much easier to just play huge characters and ships and beat the crap out of the other guy.

WHY IT'S FUN: Star Wars + CCG = nerd heaven. It's fun when you finally figure out how to string together combos of all the crazy effects rather than just deploying all the main characters you can get your hands on. It's challenging to make a balanced deck that can attack and defend both the land and outer space locations. It's fun to pull out some alien that was on-screen in the movie for 1/8 of a second who winds up being as good as a Jedi in the CCG. It's even fun to try Epic Events and fail horribly.

MEMORABLE GAMEPLAY: Luke's Aunt and Uncle successfully kill Vader for invading their moisture farm. Vader misses a generic Rebel Soldier with his lightsaber twice. Sending Leia to the Rancor. All this and more, in the (sadly defunct) Star Wars CCG!!!

WHAT THE HELL? While it's intended to have Yoda train the Dagobah expansion Luke, you could technically have Luke's uncle train a Jawa in the Jedi arts.

Monday Artday - Invisible

2010-01-24T00:11:00.000-06:00

The word challenge was "invisible" - glass is sometimes invisible to some unfortunate birds. One time one slammed the huge window door in our basement and stood out there totally stunned while my dogs went nuts trying to claw their way outside to get it. So far I've experienced 3 bird on window collisions in my day.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - DOOMTOWN

2010-01-20T22:17:00.001-06:00

THE GAME: Doomtown is the CCG based on the “Deadlands” world, which is full of cowboys and grotesque abominations in about equal numbers. You have a bunch of cowboys/freaks. The other guy has a bunch of cowboys/freaks. While you can win in the obvious way of wiping out the other guy’s entire crew, you can actually win without ever starting a fight as long as you earn more control points than the other guy has influence. All the characters are moving around Doomtown which you create with location cards, so you have to outmaneuver your opponent.

THE CARDS: They contain some of the most unique game lingo of any CCG, for example: Pay 2 Ghost Rock and boot a dude at a strike to call out a posse.

MEMORABLE GAMEPLAY: The Grim Reaper gets suited up with a New Hat and Blue Jeans, and rides off to a shootout on his Penny Farthing.

WHY IT’S FUN: The card art is great! Most items, characters, and events have funny effects and flavor text. Battles between characters are resolved by drawing poker hands, with other cards letting you draw more than 5 or discard more to make monster hands like 5 aces or the ultimate “Dead Man’s Hand”. But if it’s not a legal poker hand, your opponent might get the last laugh by playing a Cheatin’ card and turning the tables on you!

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Marvel/DC Overpower

2010-01-14T19:50:00.001-06:00

I had plenty of friends who played collectible card games, and most of them also liked the X-men and Spiderman and superheroes in general, but for some reason I was the only one that liked both of them enough to get some Overpower cards. The Marvel version of Overpower came out first, and I was a little dissappointed that when I opened a starter, about 2/3 of the cards were similar to this:

I mean, it's got Spiderman punching the crap out of some VCR thief (this was the 90's), but other than that it doesn't have any more info on it than a 2 of clubs. This is a "Power Card", the most basic way to do damage in the game. Fortunetly there are some cooler cards as well. I have never used the few mechanics that were introduced after thefirst DC Overpower expansion, such as location cards, or ImageOverpower (with Spawn, WitchBlade, etc.), so they aren't in here.

THE GAME: You've got 4 hero/villain characters, the other guy has 4 hero/villain characters. Beat them all into submission.
EASE OF PLAY: It is remarkably simple compared to other CCGs I've played - if you have a character with a certain energy/fighting/strength/intellect stat, they can play a power card with a value up to that level and try to damage the opponent's characters. To defend, you do the same thing, play a card equal or higher in number to your opponent's to block it. If any character takes 20 damage or at least one hit from 3 different categories (En/F/Str/Int) they are knocked out and your one reserve character takes their place.
A LITTLE MORE COMPLEXITY: Well, if you had all characters with an "8" stat in some category and the other player didn't, you could just play "8" attacks all the time and win, right? The only catch is when you draw your hand, you must discard any duplicate power cards (regardless of type), so you can only have one "8" in your hand on any given turn. There's also "Training" and "Teamwork" cards, which add value to your power cards if certain conditions are met. Universe cards, which represent chucking a tree or hot dog cart or using a death ray, also add to card's power. Finally there are character specific Special Cards that are the best part of the game and usually influence it the most.
The most unique part of the game is you have a seperate stack of 7 cards called the missions; they have cool art but they might as well be tokens since there is nothing different about any of them. Each turn, you bet a number of cards depending on how strong your hand is, and if you do more damage than your opponent, you "complete missions" and they lose missions. You can also win the game by completing all 7 missions, but if you bet over two missions, your opponent gets to draw extra cards to help balance it out.
CONS: The Special Cards are cool because they represent specific characters powers, like Superman's heat vision, Wolverine's regeneration, or The Penguins penguins. The problem of course is if you open a booster pack and you find that half the cards are totally worthless at the time because you don't have the characters to go with them. From a booster box of DC Overpower I got after the game was dead, I got 13 characters with at least 4 Specials to go with them, 3 characters with only 2-3 Specials which wouldn't be worth using, and 40-50 Specials with no character to use them.
WHAT THE HELL? Superman isn't Strength level 8, and his energy level of 7 is the same as the Metropolis special crimes unit.

WHY IT'S FUN: Betting on hands usually makes games more interesting. Every card is full of our beloved comic superheroes, and it is really easy to play. Deck making is pretty simple, but you can't rely too much on one character's Specials because once he's knocked out, they're worthless; also too many copies of anything will lead to lots of duplicate discarding. If you don't mind (or cover up) the different card backs, DC and Marvel Overpower are completely compatible.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - 7th Sea

2010-01-11T19:07:00.000-06:00

When I can get a starter deck of a zany CCG for $1, it's hard to resist. I haven't dug out 7th Sea in a loooong time, but I have two decks just in case someone comes over, wants to play, and forgot their discontinued-10-years-ago cards.

THE GAME: You've got a Captain, the other guy has a Captain. Go kill their Captain. All this takes place on 5 Sea cards (always the same seas and layout), and your whole crew is on your ship which is unique to your Captain and his faction. To power up your crew, you can add attachments like Mr. Briggs the parrot (sacrifice him to save your crew) or the cheap cutlass (breaks after one use). You can also place adventures, then move to and complete them for additional bonuses. If you're in the same sea as an enemy, you can attack with cannon fire or attempt to board and duel.

EASE OF PLAY: Pretty straightforward after seeing a turn or two played out. Every character card seems complicated, with at least 6 numbers and 3 big letters, but the use is quite simple: if you need to do some feat of sailing like moving the ship, it costs sailing points, so look at the number by the sail icon on your characters cards and "tack" (tap in Magic lingo) enough to pay the cost. The boarding battles involve playing any card out of your hand, and the letters on the side determine what type of attack you're trying, like a slash or punch. The opponent gets a chance to counter if they have the right card, making it so a puny rower can beat a Captain with luck, although it probably won't kill him.

WHAT THE HELL?: "Laerdom" and "Glamour" are important traits crewmen can have.

WHY IT'S FUN: Characters and effects are a good mix of badass and funny (see "Blows up in Your Face" in the picture). The gameplay is fun and simple, it's fairly quick to build up a good size crew and then you can go for the kill. Wish I had a few more Captains and ships: right now all I have is two sets of Sea Dogs.

A Mystic for Monday Artday

2010-01-10T01:46:00.004-06:00

Here's my Mystic for Monday Artday this week, colored in Photoshop over a very loose and cartoony pencil drawing.

Defunct Collectible Card Games Review - Lord of the Rings TCG

2010-01-09T23:24:00.000-06:00

I've been getting reinvolved in the beloved nerd pass-time of collectible card games lately. For Christmas I signed up for Magic Online, since I hadn't used my stack of real life cards in forever. It's pretty fun to be able to play whenever you want, even if you have to start over. And if you're willing to pay 30 cents for a picture of a dragon with some typing on it printed on a piece of cardboard, it's not that much of a stretch to pay 30 cents for a digital picture of a dragon that you can use to play online. Then today at Dollar Tree, where we normally get the kids some balloons or something cheap as we pass by, I saw a pile of Lord of the Rings boosters and had to get some. I only had a few starter decks and maybe 5 boosters from a few years ago, but I was willing to give it another try and write this DEFUNCT CCG REVIEW.

It's a "defunct CCG" because expansions have stopped, and Decipher, the company that made the game, are done with it, are shutting down servers for the online version this summer, and the website has tons of broken links to stuff like card lists and the rulebook.

THE GAME: Your deck consists of half "good guy" (Frodo and his many Hobbit, Dwarf, and Elf friends) and "bad guy" (anyone uglier than a dwarf) halves. The goal is just like the movie - get the Ring from the Shire to Mt. Doom, only this path is represented by 9 lands that you move your characters across. On your turn, you play cards to protect your Ring-bearer and try to move him further along the path. Your opponent responds with evil minions and events to try and kill the Ring-bearer. If you survive your turn, you switch places and you get to send minions to kill the other guy's Ring-bearer as they move. There are of course plenty of weapons, armor, and special effects to help both sides, but it's possible that you'll get stuck with a hand full of Hobbits or other good guy stuff when you need orcs. It seems you're more likely to win by killing your opponent rather than actually guiding your fellowship to the end.

EASE OF PLAY: From the cards I have, I can say it's fairly easy to learn how to play a starter deck, but my few boosters haven't added much to their effectiveness; if your rare card from a booster pack is an event or possession based around a character you don't have, you're S.O.L. on that one. The complete rule book was only around 20 pages vs the 169 of the Magic rulebook.

CONS: The card art is still frames from the movie, so some of the art looks blurry if it was from a scene with fast moving CG characters. A lot of the common cards just don't look that impressive.I haven't played it a lot so I don't know how tough it is build a really competitive deck.

WHY IT'S FUN: I'll give almost anything related to Lord of the Rings a chance since it is one of my favorite book series ever. There are multiple versions of each main character, like Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, etc., of differing rarity, so it's easy to get several of your favorite characters to use in a deck. It's like you're totally switching games every time your turn ends and you switch from Ring-protecting to Hobbit slaughtering.Worth trying out if you can find some starter decks for cheap.

Summing up 2009

2010-01-06T01:29:00.001-06:00

Here's my experience with the long gone year 2009:

Game I wasted the most time playing: Plants vs. Zombies, it is so simple to set up a few plants that spit vegetables to kill the army of zany zombies, but the mini-games and endless survival kept me playing this for months. Also, I finally completely potty-trained my son using Plants vs. Zombies as a reward for dropping a deuce!
Best book I read: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen was surprisingly good, a novel following a kid who is invited to give a talk at the Smithsonian based on a series of famous illustrations he did. Of course it's one of those "they never realized he was just a kid" type stories, but this one is full of margin illustrations that supplement the story, more novels should have pictures!
Best song I downloaded: Mississippi Queen by Mountain, an old old song that still really gets stuck in my head.
Best beer I drank in '09: Bell's Special Double Cream Stout is as special, as creamy, as double, and as stout as it claims.
Most common activity at 8:30 pm: Vacuuming up Cheerios. Yup, it was exciting.

Christmas at Grandma's House

2010-01-05T08:44:00.002-06:00

Back from two weeks of hanging out at both sets of grandparent's houses. The comic above, titled "Christmas at Grandma's House" sums up the results of our trip, only we had two kids in the car swimming in the sea of presents. We brought clothes for a week, snacks, and about 10 presents for 10 people, most of which were the size of a DVD, and got about 4 garbage bags full of toys. The panels were originally side by side but that doesn't look good in a blog.

Moving Pictures

2009-12-17T11:51:00.000-06:00

Here's two flash animations I made recently; I uploaded them to megaswf.com and you can view them by clicking on the links below the still pictures. If anyone has better ways to upload and display swf's in blogger for free, please leave a comment! I would like to embed them directly into posts so there's no clicking links and navigating away.

The frog animation was the first simple one I did, trying to learn how to make the fly follow a path. You might notice if you drew out the path the fly follows, it never loops over itself - Flash wouldn't let me use guide paths that crossed over themselves. Again, if anyone has ideas on how to overcome that, please leave a comment!

The Wallaby Brutally Assaulting the Dog is not an endorsement of hurting animals (I don't want to lose my $100 million in endorsements), but was used as visual trash talk in my fantasy football league. Unfortunetly, my Wallabies were soundly defeated by my brother's Mad Dogs thanks to Brandon Marshall breaking the all time single game receptions record and everyone on my team scoring about half their average.

The joys of animated GIFs

2009-11-13T21:05:00.000-06:00

No file format seems to be quite as entertaining to me as an animated GIF, no matter how crudely it is drawn. I got Flash with the CS4 Suite that I wanted mostly for Photoshop and Illustrator, and haven't done much with it, but since animated crude drawings are 1000x more entertaining than my still crude drawings, I think I'll start practicing with this stuff.

Fantasy Football - Wallaby Cheerleader

2009-11-07T17:14:00.000-06:00

The greatest (Jack and Jill related) comic of all time!

2009-10-31T15:03:00.000-05:00

So while I realize these crude sketches of the story of Jack and Jill going up the hill aren't very impressive, I basically just wanted to say that it is a fun exercise from the book "Drawing Words and Writing Pictures" by Abel and Madden. It's a very comprehensive book about creating comics, guiding you through organization, layout, character creation, and some comic-specific techniques like brush inking and lettering. It's not a how to draw superheros book, it's how to make a solid comic strip or book on any subject, even without mind-blowing art (yay!). It's got lots of homework assignments and challenges to do to get you involved, and even a website where it helps show some example critiques of people's work on these exercises, it's a very cool read for anyone who is into comics at all! Also good are DC's Guide to Inking/Coloring/Writing Comics, they are more geared toward hero comics and have good examples, but they're not as interactive as Drawing Words and they're spread out over several books.

Too fast for Illustration Friday

2009-10-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Wanted to draw something quick, looked at Illustration Friday theme of fast and thought of frog's tongues of course.

Monday Artday - Pumpkinhead goes trick or treating

2009-10-24T15:46:00.003-05:00

Here's the character that combines my love of jack-o-lanterns with my love of Batman, on his way to trick-or-treat. It's going on Monday Artday for the "jack-o-lantern" challenge, of course someone beat me to the concept of a pumpkin-head kid going trick or treating, but Batman trumps everything. This little guy was supposed to just be a part of a bigger composition for that challenge, I didn't think I'd have time to finish the sketch though. I also was having trouble getting the human head jack-o-lanterns to look grotesque enough.

Photoshop skills

2009-10-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

Ah, technology! I can now answer the question, " What would my brother look like with Joaquin Phoenix's beard" without waiting for months!

Sketchy Sketchy Sketch Sketch

2009-10-05T23:17:00.000-05:00

These are... sketches!!!

Illustration Friday "Pattern" - Dino Wallpaper

2009-10-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

Here's my pattern, using Photoshop to draw, color (with 2 filters), and arrange a bunch of dinosaurs into a wallpaper. I wanted to submit this link tonight before the new word of the week comes up, so Brontosaurus sadly did not make the final cut.

As a bonus for the "pattern" topic - here are two patterns I stared at a lot in my youth. First, the DC characters wallpaper, featuring short shorts Robin, and Shazam, who is remarkably like Superman with the Flash's color scheme and lightning bolt symbol. It's still up there, even though the youngest kid in the house is 21, and the other walls of that room are a bright orange and yellow.

Then there's the speckled desk in the speckled room, the desk has some darker trim and speckles so you don't walk into it. Here is our old word processor, it was cool because it had a screen like a computer, but when you hit print, it started click-clacking away with typewriter keys and would take about 5 minutes a page.

Monday Artday - Fast Food Farthing

2009-09-25T23:32:00.001-05:00

Here's the colored penny farthing, cartoony style. When I saw the term bike, the old-timey big wheeled bike sprung to mind, and all I had to do was think of somewhere to put one. I'm going to try to work more on my coloring, just coloring in the inked in spaces makes it look a little flat. About 5% of the coloring was done with my fancy new drawing tablet, my early b-day present, those things are cool.

Penny Farthing - Still the Greatest Invention Known to Man

2009-09-25T08:35:00.000-05:00

Monday Artday is closing in on the end of its "bicycle" challenge. People have already submitted cute robot on a bike, a crazy bike that looks like it's made of squirrels and antlers - but so far, there is no representation of the greatest bike ever......the penny farthing! I must admit it was hard as hell for me to figure out the spokes, and they wound up a little arbitrary. Also some of my earlier tries had pretty wierd looking legs, so congratulations to anyone who can draw a realistic bike! I was going to post it yesterday, but got addicted to Plants vs Zombies, a pretty fun game where you plant attack plants to protect your yard from zombies.

Illustration Friday "Infinite" - Smashing Pumpkins

2009-09-19T13:44:00.002-05:00

"Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" is one of my favorite albums ever, and I guess going with a music themed Illustration Friday last week left my mind primed to do another. This time I tried to do a little more realistic drawing - I know the guys in this band aren't what I'd call pretty boys, but here they look a little on the mutant side. The guitarist on the left wound up looking like a fish man, and poor John Chamberlain looks like a retarded caveman. Corgan put on about 90 pounds in my interpretation as well. Oh well, I guess that means Smashing Pumpkins won't stumble across my blog, decide the picture kicks ass, and take me on tour with them. I used a ref pic of a classic poster of the group.

Illustration Friday "Welcome" - WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

2009-09-14T23:26:00.001-05:00

SHANANANANANANANA KNEES, KNEES!

OK that's the first thing I think of when I hear welcome, now the song will be stuck in my head for days. Also, Slash must be the easiest musician on earth to draw an identifiable cartoon of. I know it's crudely done even for my drawings but.....IT GETS WORSE HERE EVERY DAY!

Graphs Never Lie, especially if they are color coded

2009-09-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

At work, I make a lot of charts - most of them are boring and science related, and even required to be in black and white. Here's an incredibly useful one I made - if you didn't already know the 2008-09 Lions sucked, this chart sums it up for you. It shows how far they made it into the game before being down by 17 or more points, which is enough that it would take a pretty serious comeback that only a diehard fan would expect. One of the most special ones was week 12, where the Lions actually TOOK a 17-0 lead against Tampa Bay....then gave up 35 unanswered points. And if you missed this week's game vs the Saints - they were down by 17+ at 28:50 into the game.

Monday Artday - Breakfast Battle!

2009-09-12T15:29:00.004-05:00

This week's Monday Artday topic was "Cute Object", as in add some personality and cuteness to some inanimate objects. My original idea was to do a bathroom with a happy smiling toilet, sink, and TP roll - then it could double as encouragement for my kid to potty train (however, it also runs the risk of possibly making him think the toilet is alive and scare him so much he never uses one again). But I decided to animate this BreakFast Battle instead. The characters were drawn in ink, and I finally learned how to be a little more efficient with coloring them in Photoshop so it doesn't take days. One last piece of trivia - the wooden surface this takes place on is my actual table!

Wallabies Unleashed

2009-09-10T17:07:00.005-05:00

So here's the face of the 2009-10 Windsor Wallabies, my fantasy football team; may they fare better than last year, when the season went so bad I switched to the logo of Orlovsky's famous safety that summed up the Lions season.

Healthy Competition

2009-09-10T11:38:00.004-05:00

It's almost NFL football season, which means it's almost Fantasy Football season for us armchair QBs/RBs/WRs/TEs/Ks/DSTs. I've been in one league run by my friend for like a decade, although it's gone through some improvements (online scoring vs manually reading box scores) and several website changes. It also switched to keeper format a couple years ago, which was the start of my downfall (check the stats on Mushin Muhammad, Curtis Martin, Ahman Green, and I think McNabb for 2004, and compare to the next year when I kept them). Anyways, I'm the Wallabies and my brother is the Mad Dogs, which obviously is the story behind this classy picture.

Illustration Friday "Strong" - How much is in there?

2009-09-09T23:07:00.002-05:00

Living in a college town at the start of football season led to the immediate association of "strong" with "drink". This scene has probably already played itself out a million times this fall, at campuses all over the world. I was going to put some Greek letters on their clothes, but I guess getting stupid drunk in college isn't limited to Greeks. Although I used to be happy with just pencil sketches of everything, now it seems incomplete unless I ink it and add at least a splash of color, so for this one I did a real quick color job in Illustrator. Keep browsing the Illustration Friday posts this week, there was a really good one that also did "strong drink" of a guy hacking up something at a bar too.

Addicted to Filters

2009-09-08T21:14:00.004-05:00

Maybe if I don't get my Illustration Friday pic done soon, I will just call this one "Strong Green Wavy Lines".

From The Briney Deep....

2009-09-06T21:49:00.002-05:00

The latest submission I have for Mojizu is this Zombie Tuna. I got a five pack of different width pens to do more inking, but I seem to only like the smallest one and the biggest one. I left this one with the black ink lines - I was thinking about recoloring each one so it was a darker shade of the shape it surrounds, but decided not to do all that. I was happy to see lots more comments and a higher rating on my Rat Wizard on that site, and I am more proud of my fish!

Fresh from the Rat-Infested Swamp!

2009-09-03T20:12:00.004-05:00

Here's another character for Mojizu, the aptly named "Rat Wizard". So far he's my highest rated submission, but still not beloved enough to be close to making the Moji War. He was drawn out with Sharpie, vectorized and colored in Illustrator, and shaded in Photoshop. One quick filter made the alternate version, with more blocked-in dark areas.

Illustration Friday "Caution" - Experimentation

2009-08-26T11:38:00.005-05:00

This week, to illustrate the word "Caution" for Illustration Friday, I decided to go with a topic I'm quite familiar with, teaching undergrad chem labs. It's a little dramatized - the earlier labs here are actually designed pretty well to prevent the possibility of any dangerous unintended results. When stuff goes wrong, it's usually just someone didn't follow the procedure to the letter and is getting results that don't make sense and they lose a few points for the week. I'd like to recolor this sometime, and make the panicked running instructor into an avatar for me, I drew it a little too small in this version to get much detail.

For Monday Artday - Big Ol' Moon

2009-08-23T21:28:00.005-05:00

Since I've become addicted to websites that let you post art, I've joined the blog Monday Artday. It has two overlapping, biweekly challenges, where you illustrate a given word. It looks like fun, but there is some pretty great artwork on it, so I feel kind of like I'm showing up in an NFL locker room with a nerf football. For "Moon", my first thought was drunken college kids mooning someone, but I figured I'd keep it classy and do a collage. I'm kind of excited with all the textures you can do in Photoshop, either with the built in filters or by blending in a textured photo, so that's basically all this picture is. It includes textures from my ceiling, towels, play-doh, and a couple chairs. I tried to make the textured shapes all resemble moons within the big moon.

And since the picture is taking a long time to upload, I'll let you in on another artistic secret of mine........Goose Island Oatmeal Stout is delicious!

Mojizu, Rookie Wizard

2009-08-20T11:24:00.006-05:00

Another Mojizu creature is up - Rookie Wizard! It started out with paint, I tried to fix up some mistakes and add detail and outlines in photoshop. It didn't turn out quite as awesome as I intended, I'm just trying to get each one better than the last (Qazax and Idle Octopus were rated like 3 points out of 10 by votes). I was envisioning lots of folds in the wizard's robe that just looked dumb when I did them, and I wanted the skull to be sort of translucent, but in the end I think this looks pretty good. It did turn out a lot better than my first all digital attempt, where the big grey skull looks less than intimidating!

What the crap?

2009-08-11T21:02:00.003-05:00

Apparantly I'm not the HTML coder I thought I was (extreme amateur) as my special animated swf banner no longer shows up, and even the little list of links I had isn't working. I had messed with the "Link List" widget and tried to make it so you could put the hyperlink followed by a short descriptive text in normal font, but now I see only ________ and ________ so ____ that.

Illustration Friday Impatience - "Sneak Peak"

2009-08-11T14:59:00.004-05:00

Is there anything that makes a kid more impatient than knowing there's a big present that can't be opened until "later"? I must admit I was also impatient in creating this - I smeared marker and pen all over the place. Not the most technically sound piece, but it's good enough for me today!

8 Arms of ACTION....well it has 8 arms anyway

2009-08-05T21:23:00.005-05:00

Another Mojizu submission - Idle Octopus! I guess he sets a bad example for the kids, so I'll give him the PG-13 rating right now, and if some terrible parent lets them stumble upon this website and see him it's all their fault now. This is a really cool site, there are a lot of cutesy, simplistic designs mixed in with some incredibly detailed monsters. A lot of the artists are actually pro illustrators or designers, and it really shows mine up.

Mojizu, wacky character creation

2009-08-01T11:01:00.003-05:00

While surfing people's Illustration Friday entries, I found someone's link to Mojizu, a place where you can submit wierd characters and others can rate them. I have sketchbooks loaded with doodles to colorize and turn in to that, and the first one is.......QAZAX!!!!!!!

Illustration Friday "Idle" - Saturday = Good

2009-07-29T19:09:00.006-05:00

Ahhhh, idleness, one of life's finest pleasures. I immediately thought of hammocks, since I've never known anything productive to happen in a hammock. Mostly I used it as a chance to mess around with shadows and shading in Illustrator. Next time I may be more ambitious and add some detail.

Header is now Bagalagalaga-tastic!

2009-07-23T15:09:00.002-05:00

I know it's a bit of overkill for a blog with one post, but I finally figured out how to do some really basic Flash animation, so I whipped up the fancy letters of the "Bagalagalaga Logo". Of course I wanted to try actually posting it somewhere, and I had a rough time of it, my internet connection (borrowed from the city park area wireless if near an open window in our bedroom) was doing crazy crap, and the one how-to article I was relying on ironically had so much animation on the page it was freezing up Explorer every 2 minutes. Finally, I started again and found someone's blog that told me how to get it done in like 5 minutes. Thanks funonmars!

Illustration Friday - "Tango"

2009-07-18T21:18:00.005-05:00

Found Illustration Friday the other day, and it seemed like a fun idea to help get me back into drawing again. It gives you a word that you base your illustration on for the week, and you send it in with a link. It was the first time I've tried out Adobe Illustrator and its "Livetrace" options to vectorize a sketch and color it, and the edges came out a little awkward. This week's word was "Tango", which originally didn't seem too interesting - you could draw two wierd creatures tangoing or something I guess, but I decided to go with "Beginner's Tango, Room 215, 6-7PM". The outlines were sketched and scanned, but the faces were drawn in Illustrator, making them look like they don't quite fit in.