I was skipping merrily across the internet earlier today when I stumbled across the press page for Skin Graft’s Gumballhead the Cat. There I found a snippet from a post I wrote on the comic from a few years back, sitting alongside reviews by The Wire, Pitchfork and The Comics Journal of all things. It was the blogging equivalent of finding five bucks in your Spring jacket.

I’m not going to repeat myself, particularly since I’ve apparently become worse as a writer as I’ve grown older, but please do check out the comics, the music and the shirt. Especially the shirt. Somebody buy me the shirt.

I use to get a kick out of watching the show Scare Tactics whenever it would be on. How great is it to find this frightful gold on YouTube now! It’s tends to be hit and miss with the pranks. If it was my show, I’d definately take the pranks a few steps further, why even tell the victim it’s a show?

My clip recommendations are probably the mutant rat, the barber, the werewolf (not what you’d expect) and the doll party

…are you SCARED?????

A few days ago Journalista posted a link (via Boing Boing) to an artist who has drawn his mother’s entire high school yearbook. It reminded me that I used to do the same exercise, though not nearly as ambitious or as well-drawn as John Martz’s project. I used to dig up my old yearbooks every time I found myself falling into the trap of drawing the same kind of face over and over again. I’ve been having a slightly different problem recently, but returning to this practice has been helpful in getting me over that hurdle.

I realized tonight that I hadn’t been to life drawing in over a year. You’d think I would be grateful for the opportunity to get into it again, but I haven’t been to life drawing in over a year. What a depressing experience.

Friday Night Fights returns, this time in glorious black+white.

So does that mean they’re making comics in colour now? And here I was just getting used to the idea of talkies.

In the good ol’ days, a man might enjoy a cigarette while kicking you in the balls and pistol whipping your brother, but he always knew when to draw the line.

Or not.

I may be bringing the black and white, but Bahlactus has the market cornered on black and blue.

“From this day on it will never be like it was, but only as each person remembers it.” – Woolie Reitherman, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men.

The quote above was made in reference to the death of Walt Disney, but I think it’s just as fitting in describing the passing of Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney’s Nine Old Men, who passed away yesterday.

As an animator I feel that the death of Ollie Johnston, and, as a result, the dissolution of the Nine Old Men, is an era-defining event that’s hard to articulate. My animation teachers would tell their students of the excitement they felt upon the release of The Illusion of Life, the book considered by many to be the animation bible, co-written by Ollie Johnston with fellow Old Man Frank Thomas. It was a revelation to them. Even if I had never read the book myself, through my teachers I learned their lessons. More important to me than that was John Canemaker’s book devoted to The Nine Old Men, a tome that detailed the triumphs and tragedies of those nine animators, their mentors and peers, and the studio that grew up around, and eventually away from them. I came away from their stories with the realization that great art was as much the result of sweat and happenstance as it was natural talent, and their example reminded me that life outside of animation is not only desirable, but is also necessary to the creation of art.

This is… one of the greatest things in the universe I and discovered it completely by accident. M.U.G.E.Ns are basically fan-made sprite characters for fighting games. Use characters from different games or make up completely new ones!

Pictures are kinda tough to find. My searches keep coming up with damned automobiles! Video, on the other hand, is pretty easy to find on Youtube.

Thor! This one’s worth it for the super move at the end alone.

Peter & Ryu Vs. Homer & Krusty because YOU demanded it!

Marvel vs Capcom 2 is pretty much my favourite game in the world and the idea of making your own characters and sharing them online is just…too much awesomeness. Looking around I’ve found Ash (Army of Darkness), Mario, Spawn, and loads of naked versions of all your favourites!

A few weeks back I was in the mood for a Parisian heist film, so I watched Rififi, the grandaddy of them all. I love seeing pulp and noir filtered through European sensibilities. The rain-slicked streets of Paris seem less frantic, darker than their New York counterparts, with Death taking a leisurely smoke break during its steadfast pursuit.

Death certainly took its sweet time with Jules Dassin, the director of Rififi, who passed away at age 96 at about the same time as I was being introduced to his work. Dassin was an American living in Paris, a victim of the Hollywood blacklist. Considering his name and the ease with which he slipped into French noir it’s not hard to see why so many people, myself included, assumed that he was French himself. During a ceremony honouring his achievements, a French flag was raised behind the podium. “It should have been a moment of triumph but I feel awful. They were honoring my work and I’m an American. It should have been the American flag raised in honor.” Not only had his country disowned him, but forces beyond his control seemed to conspire against allowing him to claim his own birthright.

I don’t feel as if I’m knowledgeable or gifted enough to offer up a decent obituary. I’m not even going to try. I’m just glad that, even in the time of his death, this man without a home was still able to reach out and touch people around the world, like the spidery slivers of shadow in a Parisian alleyway.