The Origins of Maverick Quickies

What's with all the Maverick Quickies I'm doing?

Well I'm trying to be more active on Blogger but I get writers block...well most of the time....

What's happening is that it's a combination of not having an idea what to write about as well as a general lack of photos and information. Most of it is often drawing a blank, getting so frusturated at things like Hollywood strikes, tax-write-offs, work, etc. that I can't concentrate on the main topic at hand.

I don't like having to make my posts without photos but at the same time, I don't want to go wax-philosophical or cherry-pick my viewpoints.

So what I do is find things I've got on my USB stick or my External Hard Drives, find a topic to talk about, and make a quick post about it. 

Despite Quickie being in the name, I don't actually keep my posts short. I have admitted in my past Maverick Quickies that they can be somewhat long and dry because I have a lot to talk about but I try so goddamn hard to condense the posts to something simple and effective. In essence, the quickies are actually filler until my head is cleared from writers block.

For example, In my Roger Klotz Hair post, I tried to keep things short which I did but then I veered off into talking about how I'm getting my Screen Captures, etc.

In fact, the only time my Maverick Quickies were actually short was when I announced the tentative end to the SAG-AFTRA strikes but I had an excuse for that. I was pissed over a snafu with my debit card the day I was going to purchase my graphics card. I worked around that but whatever, I was posting on my phone which I shouldn't do due to the small screen as well as less than ideal navigation as well as photos in my phone that aren't on topic with what I want to talk about.

So there you have it, the origins of my Maverick Quickies. 

I promise to tone down the Quickies on December.

Maverick Quickie-When Roger Klotz's wet hair predicted the show's eventually move to Disney

What I find fun is to look at the times DOUG's Nickelodeon series predicted the eventual move to the Mouse House.

The pilot episode DOUG CAN'T DANCE had a background character dress up as Mickey Mouse but what I actually like better is this one screenshot from the 1993 episode DOUG'S SHOCK THERAPY. 

There's this one scene I took back in 2019 when I got my AMAZON Nickelodeon series DVD where Roger gets his hair wet. Now I've seen several scenes where Roger gets his hair wet but look at how his hair looks.

Doesn't this eerily look similar to how his hair would eventually look in the Disney series?

Well sort of. The main difference is that Roger combs his hair in the Disney Version whereas the image from the SHOCK THERAPY above, his hair was genuinely wet.... due to Vice Principal Lamar Bone's antics.

I'm using the image of Roger from DOUG's 1ST Movie because it's has one of the few pieces of DOUG media from the Disney era that brought back Roger's old leather Jacket because throughout the tv series, Roger traded in his Jacket for a leather vest with a short sleeve shirt or a long sleeve shirt in any episode set in the winter season.

The predictions made by DOUG during it's Nickelodeon days may actually predate the memes about THE SIMPSONS making accurate predictions about the future. Just think about it.

I saw an episode from the Nick Series that had skeeter playing with an Ocarina, a good 7 years before THE LEGEND OF ZELDA OCARINA OF TIME made ocarinas popular.

And DOUG's vocal performances provided by Billy West during the Nick era gave birth to Fry in Futurama... which I actually watch on Disney+.

Most of my Maverick Quickies are pseudo-long and dry but I just love to point out many things that often get referenced in Wikis but don't have any screenshots to back them up. Well I do now.

By the way, those Roger Klotz photos above were taken on my iPhone back in the day because back then, I didn't build my computer, nor did I download VLC Player on the Macbook Pro I used back in the day but now I have better hardware.

However, unless I find the Disney episodes on Archive.org, I can only get my screenshots from my Nickelodeon series DVD on VLC Player due to how streaming apps and streaming websites have that some infernal copy protection code that gives me black screens.PNGs whenever I attempt a screen capture.

And how is it I'm getting screenshots from VLC Player with DVDs you ask?

I installed an internal LG Blu-Ray Burner in my PC back in September 2023.

Update as of November 26 2024:

I eventually made a post about DOUG predicting the rising popularity of Ocarinas back in 1991.....

Here's the link to said post:

https://maverickmartinezarchive.blogspot.com/2024/04/maverick-quickie-doug-predicted.html

The Runaway Acrylic Paint-Or how I learned to stopped worrying and love cel imperfections, and ramble about digital cels

Have you ever seen your favorite cel-animated cartoon or anime restored on Blu-Ray or 4K streaming and seen how the cels look. 

I know some people would question whether or not it's normal to see all the imperfections of paint show up on the cels since most of us grew up watching these on VHS or DVD and the masters used for those older prints general don't show the imperfections but Blu-Ray and 4K generally use the original 16MM or 35MM masters so it's pretty much justified.

And that's only if the artwork wasn't artificially restored with AI Tools.

I like my 4k Restorations done using the original artwork rephotographed or by using a surviving 16MM, 35MM, or 70MM print available.

The above image is a cel from NADIA: THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER, originally broadcast from 1990 to 1991. As you can see, the paint seems to go haywire and sometimes can slightly leak out of the lineart of the cels.

Such is the life of a painter but you can't help it since many an animation company in the early 90s didn't want to switch to Digital Ink and Paint due to fears of making the animation appear synthetic.

I get where this early 90s mentality came from. Even I could see it from Disney's early renaissance films.

Little Mermaid was Disney's last theatrical film in their main canon to use traditional acetate cels and acrylic paint for their animation.

By 1990, they transitioned to using Computers for ink and paint and compositing.

Despite RESCUERS DOWN UNDER being their very first 100% digitally animated film, the visuals look stunning even for animation. My guess was that the people using the computers applied a filter to the cels or the images to give that filmic feel to the digital cels and make it look aesthetic enough to make people think the company went back to their pre-1961 production practices. 

But RESCUERS DOWN UNDER underperformed in the box office due to a lack of marketing and competition from HOME ALONE. On top of that, Jeffery Katzenberg demanded a rewrite for Beauty and the Beast so that may explain why so many flat colored scenes in the film looked pretty much synthetic even with colored lines.

It looked fine when view through 35MM film stock due to how the projector bulbs increase the color contrast but since Disney uses the original CAPS masters for DVD, Blu-Ray, and 4K Streaming, the synthetic look of the colors and lineart are justified.

Really, I don't blame the film for it's cels. Jeffery Katzenberg rushed the production of the film during the early 90s. Plus, Howard Ashman was dying of AIDS so cut the film some slack.

Aladdin is a slight improvement in the digital cels.

Sure, the film has some slipups of Synthetic cels, especially during the scenes of daylight and flat colors but....

Come on. If sometimes you gotta sacrifice some aesthetics if the focus is the genie. He practically steals the show due to the Late Robin Williams' excellent performance.

Of course, as the years progressed, the technology got better and better.

And look where we're at right now!

Jeez. Why did I decide to make a rambling post about my views on Digital Ink and Paint colors and cel presentation.... oh right. The title of this blogpost.

But I digress, sometimes, even with your own digital tools, you lose more than just cel aesthetics. The push for digital perfections also mean you lose the imperfections that were so prevalent in the old style cels.

Ever seen those 90's anime that still use cels? Just take a look at the cel below.

I like the scratchy lineart of Ranko, Female Ranma, because that time, anime companies were style committed to xerography so maintaining that line was necessary for many an animator.

Even when companies had no choice but to make the required switch to digital ink and paint, there were several holdouts that refused to make the switch and stay committed to the old style. And sometimes that actually worked out better in terms of artistic presentation.

For example, DOUG's 1ST MOVIE from 1999 still used traditional cels because Jim Jenkins fiercely believed that acetate cels were the only way to go for animation aesthetics which despite the film's average reception, actually gave out the best visuals in any DOUG property.

In fact, according to the credits, DOUG's 1ST MOVIE only used digital ink and paint to correct the colors on the cels.

Similar to Princess Mononoke in 1997 where it still used traditional cels but used digital tools for color correction, Non-linear editing, and some tiny bits of CGI.

RECESS SCHOOL'S OUT from 2001 had a much better critical reception than DOUG's 1ST Movie 

But the digital cels to me were a representation of a time when color artists for film and tv abused the hell out of the brightness settings in software which resulted in the cels looking like a product of the time they were produced.

"Uh Oh. Someone insulted our digital cels. RUN!!!"

Though the digital ink and painted cels in Recess School's Out were still 10x better than the episodes that used digital ink and paint.

"Don't compare my digital cels to the TV series. The argument will get you nowhere."

There are also animators or artists that I know that have fully embraced digital tools for art (Except for AI) But they still prefer the earlier look of the imperfections of cels so we do our very best to emulate that look using the software of their choice.

If you've been following the independent animation scene, then you know about MUSHKA, Andreas Deja's independent short he's been working on for the last 10 years.

It stars a Ukrainian girl in the 70s who adopts a Tiger for a pet but as the tiger grows up, it becomes a burden on the girl.

The film has a very scratchy line art feel because Andreas Deja grew up watching Disney's xerox era films and to him, the scratchier the outlines, the more artistic the integrity of the film is. 

It also helps that one of his favorite films is THE JUNGLE BOOK so with the model sheets, his many years of experience in animation, as well as his favorite film being from the Xerox era, he chose that look for the film.

Please forgive the cursor on the capture. I pulled the image from IMDB but the website won't let me save in JPEG or PNG so I had to use screen capture for this.

As for me, I don't believe in perfections in my art. To me, the more imperfect the line art or color enclosure there is, the more personal the artwork is.

Of course, sometimes my tools for my art evolve to the point once I experiment with a certain technique, I will eventually stick with it on the long run.

For example, Here's an above cel for one of my own art featuring my original character Hayden Brentwood as he is surrounded by a bunch of girls.

This was in 2019 when I drew and colored this and I used to use thicker outlines and more neutral colors.

Why is the background off-white? Well I didn't have a Wacom Tablet at the time I drew this. They were drawn on my Nintendo 3DS using an app called Colors!. I export the art to my computer and then into photoshop where I removed the white background and composite the cel on a background.

Anyway, I've changed my style as the years went by where I finally decided to stick to thinner outlines in order to maintain aesthetics on my own art.

I may have better technology such as Wacom Tablets, AMD Ryzen CPUS, Nvidia RTX 4080 GPUS, etc but I will never abandon the tools I originally used for my own artwork. Sometimes there's a certain charm to your original tools that you can't replicate with your older tools.

However, at the moment, I haven't done much newer digital art. Either on my computer or my Nintendo 3DS. The reason is not because of the earlier Hollywood strikes or the rise of AI Art and the controversy relating to it but the real reason is the MicroSD card reader i had from back in the day crapped out on my during the Summer of 2023 and considering I've moved all my PC stuff from my laptop to my custom built PC, I feel inclined to use my laptop to transfer my art from one system to another. In Around December 8 2023, I got my paycheck from work and I went and bought that Lexar 3-in-1 SD Card Reader so now I can do more art..... sort of.

I'm thinking of switching my painting model to Photoshop but only time will tell if I do that.

My Two Cents on SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF

The anime is actually good. Although I only watched one episode, Scott Pilgrim happens to be a very good anime adaptation when compared to all the quote-unquote modern animations I'm seeing left and right. 

I happen to be doing this Maverick Quickie post because while I was installing my GIGABYTE EAGLE RTX 4080 Video Card, I decided to tune into Netflix as an excuse to keep me occupied in case the upgrade went awry.

And that excuse was for me to watch the Scott Pilgrim anime. 

To be honest, I never read the comics but I have seen the 2010 movie. It was of dubious quality but still faithful to the source material.

I will preface by saying that the anime has made some changes compared to the movie... or most importantly the original Graphic novels.

For one, the Pac-Man reference was completely replaced with a reference to the two competing early 90's Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, you know, the two cartoons that featured Jaleel White in both of them.

The other change was that Ramona no longer works with Amazon but rather, with Netflix during their final stretch into DVD rentals... actually a pretty clever joke considering Netflix's monopoly in the streaming scene.....

Until Disney+, MAX, and many others came along with differing plans.

But you may be asking how am I watching Scott Pilgrim when my computer was off during the GPU upgrade? 

Actually I don't have Netflix on my PC but I do have it on my PlayStation 5 which is my go-to for watching movies on my TV.

To be honest, there's no way I'd be able to use my PC for Netflix since I'm paying for a 2-device plan.

But anyway, Scott Pilgrim, the perfect blend of art and anime is a lovely marriage altogether and one that has prevented the series from the puppet-rigged fate as most of the other Graphic Novel to animated adaptations have went through.

(HILDA, eat your heart out.)

Anime is definitely the future of animation. 

AVATAR, KORRA, and most recently MY ADVENTURES WITH SUPERMAN have all their shares of glory and balls to avoid puppet rigs but Scott Pilgrim is a true masterpiece of the artform of hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation.

Speaking of which, I take back what I said in the previous Maverick Quickie about the DOUG revival's animation studios. I don't feel safe about having DOUG be animated by the studios in my area due to puppet rigged mandates by showrunners

Instead, If Jim Jenkins decides to revive the series, I want in on the production as art director and my first choice of animation studio would have to be JC STAFF... or maybe KYOTO ANIMATION, or even better STUDIO TRIGGER as my ideal choices for animation. The animation will be anime but the art style will remain the same such as the Rick and Morty anime where they did retain the art style of the characters.

Regardless of changing animation companies, I still firmly demand that Billy West return as the voice of Doug Funnie.

Speaking of voices, It's great to hear the voices of the live-action films cast once again. Always nice to hear Micheal Cera's voice once again take the realms of Scott Pilgrim.

Maverick Quickie-Doug shares a lot in common with other shows in terms of animation studios.

Both Nickelodeon and Disney, Doug shares a lot in common with other animated shows than you can imagine.

Sorry for the cropping. I can't abide with Network bugs on the screen. And yes I adjusted the color because I need to match as close as possible to my DOUG Nickelodeon Series DVD.

I kid you not. I often forget that despite being overshadowed by the likes of Ren and Stimpy, Hey Arnold, SpongeBob, Recess, Phineas and Ferb, just to name a few, Doug had a major influence on a lot of Youth in the 1990s and the 2000s.

I'm not going to get into the brains of all the other influences out there because:

1. I'm heading out to a computer store in Vancouver to get my Corsair Type 4 600w cable for my RTX 4080 GPU.

2. It's better to list the influences in a future blogpost, not a Maverick Quickie.

So let's keep things slightly simple and condensed.

Doug shares the same overseas animation studio with two shows depending on the particular era you follow.

The Nickelodeon series, with the exception of DOUG CAN'T DANCE which was animated domestically at Jumbo Pictures New York, was animated at HanHo Heung-Up.

Can you guess what else Hanho worked on?

The Disney Series on the other hand has more in common with these two shows shown below:

Don't ask why Jim Jenkins decided switch to Mike Judge's overseas animation studios during the late 90s because that just opens further questions that I just don't have all the answers to.

It's perfectly normal for a Saturday Morning cartoon to share the same studio that does animation for Prime-Time Adult Animation.

While HanHo Heung-Up is still active today, especially since they have Bob's Burgers to work with, Plus One Animation however is pretty much dormant. 

As a matter of fact, Plus One is not working on the Beavis and Butthead Paramount+ revival since it switched to TITMOUSE Inc. for it's animation.

And we don't know if the King of the Hill revival will switch to Titmouse too.

And in the event DOUG is revived, chances is that it may have to change animation studios too.

If so, it might by animated at Atomic, Bardel, Wild Brain, Titmouse, or Mercury Filmworks.... or maybe even Rough Draft. Who knows. Revival plans are not on the table yet until I hear that Jim Jenkins wants to revive the series.

And one thing I highly request if the series is revived: BRING BACK BILLY WEST!!!!

Clash of the Alien Humanoid Girlfriends-Is Star vs. The Forces of Evil a Copy of Urusei Yatsura?

This is not a comparison and certainly not me bashing the show for copying a manga series.

Although I will admit when I first signed up for Disney+ back in November 2019, I did grab the opportunity to watch Star. vs. The Forces of Evil but I could barely get into the show due to the puppet rigged animation. However, I did enjoy the Fan Art better. Most of the Fan Art did often change the art style to anime style but there are a few fanart of the series that did retain the art style of the show but still keep everything hand drawn.

But back to topic, the reason for this Maverick Quickie is because I was browsing through my iPhone's Photos and I happened across this meme I saw about a back in 2022 on Pinterest comparing the show to Urusei Yatsura.

Keep in mind, this meme was referencing the original 1978 version of Urusei Yatsura since 2022 saw the release of the remake but the screenshots are from the early version of Rumiko Takahashi's own series. But yeah, the similarities to both Star and Urusei Yatsura is rather uncanny. It's almost like Daron Nefcy was actually inspired by Takahashi-Sama's own work.

As a matter of fact, while I was making this blogpost, I went and read through Star's Wikipedia page but there was no information on Urusei Yatsura on the BACKGROUND AND PRODUCTION tab. 

It did list Daron Nefcy saying she was inspired by Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z during the making of the show.

What's interesting is that Star vs. The Forces of Evil was originally supposed to be on Cartoon Network but The Rabbit Hole rejected the series. Instead, Star became Disney's Magical Girl.

Hmmm.... I wonder why?

But it isn't strange for Disney to buy a series that was rejected from it’s rivals. Pepper Ann was originally supposed to be a Nicktoon but The Slime Factory rejected the series so the Mouse House bought the series and the rest is history.

But while the comparisons of Star Butterly to Lum Invader and Tom to Rei is accurate, the person who made this meme sort of didn't do his homework when he was comparing Marco Diaz to Ataru Moroboshi.

Marco Diaz is a teenage heart-throb who at least wants to have a normal life while Ataru Moroboshi is a GRADE-A pervert who's ridiculously average at best and the only girl who genuinely loves him romantically speaking is Lum herself. 

Lum Invader is a humanoid Oni who can control electricity while Star Butterfly is just a magical human being with somewhat inexperience wielding her wand at first but later becomes proficient.

Rei rarely has brains while Tom pretty much as some form of intelligence. Both are massively jealous of the protagonists stealing away their girls.

The other difference is Marco has a girl for a Stalker while Ataru has a rich bastard for a rival/friend. And of course, another girl who masquerades as a boy.

So with the info I've got, Star Vs. The Forces of Evil is thankfully not a carbon copy of Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura so this meme's a little overblown but that's why I like to make these comparisons because with later shows like THE OWL HOUSE, many shows regardless of network are starting to see a major increase in influence from ANIME.

Next thing I know, the next Disney show, Nicktoon, or Cartoon Network show could be heavily influenced by RANMA 1/2 or Inuyasha.

For me, My show pitch probably is more or less influenced by Ranma with several sprinkles of Haruhi Suzumiya on the side.

Speaking of anime, NETFLIX's anime adaptation of Scott Pilgrim is out. I might as well go and watch it when I get the chance. 

Well, I've watched the first episode. If you want to know more about it, I have another Maverick Quickie about this anime:

https://maverickmartinezarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/maverick-quickie-my-two-cents-on-scott.html

The Evolution of Animation Stands

How far have we come in animation stands?

What's an animation stand you ask?

It's a custom built desk meant for animating characters on a specific type of paper meant for animation. The paper is a few centimeters larger than your standard photocopy paper you get from stores like Staples or London Drugs.

The desk seen above is one example of an animation desk. But it's not just for holding your papers on pegs, or lights underneath the translucent white acrylic sheet but if you see what's next to the paper, you know it's something that's actually vital for your animations.

On the left is reference photos or whatever the hell is needed for your animations. 

On the right is an exposure sheet. That's a piece of document that allows you to time your animations and dialogue to the beats.

Nowadays, animation, both 2D and 3D, is now done on the computer.

But what's interesting is that when companies like Hanna-Barbera and Disney started using computers for ink and paint, they still did animation the old fashioned way. Maybe it's because the computers used at the time, even though they were more powerful and more expensive than consumer PCs, didn't have everything needed to replace the old school animation desk.

WACOM tablets did exist back then but none of them used screens for professional animation purposes. 

I mean, Wacom Touch screens did exist back in the early 90s but almost all of those used those goddamn passive matrix LCDs and were mostly used in Tablets sold to government, education, and medical fields.

Nowadays, all our animation is done on state of the art machines with a state of the art animation screen:

A WACOM CINTIQ!!!!

The above photo isn't my workstation. This is something I pulled from the Internet but It looks as if almost every photo of people's home workspace for animation is always going to be a laptop connected to a Wacom Cintiq via HDMI or Mini-Displayport. Why laptops instead of desktops? Not much desk space for a full tower.

I'm one of the few animators who actually uses a Desktop, and a Custom Built one for my own animations, albeit with a smaller Cintiq. Take a look below:

Yes. This is my Custom Built PC I've been talking about. This is my Maverick Warhawk PC.

The photo I have however is outdated. For one, I have 3 Monitors on my desk. The MSI, the Acer, and my Wacom ONE Creative display.

Also, This photo was taken when I had my ZOTAC Twin Edge RTX 3060 GPU installed. I now use a GIGABYTE EAGLE RTX 4080 GPU.

Anyway, back to Computers and 2D Animation. We're now at the point our animation desks are just PC's or Mac's connected to a Wacom Cintiq either as our primary or secondary display.

And the software we use for animation greatly differs from Artist to artist.

For me, I primarily use Toon Boom Harmony Premium as my choice of animation Software for 2D Animation. I did at one point switch to Adobe Animate but the software offered little of what I want in an animation software package.

Ignore the Activate Windows Watermark. This screenshot was taken before I bought my license key for Windows 11 Pro.

Also what's not seen is my secondary screen which is where I actually draw and animate my characters.

Just wanted to point that out. 

Update as of February 2024:

As of January 2024, my MSI monitor is now busted. I've been getting these horizontal lines on the bottom and well, after disappearing, the lines came back and more assimilated than ever.

Update as of August 24 2024:

The above image of my PC is outdated as I've since moved bedrooms, mounted a third monitor, and changed the internal hardware of my PC.

DryBrush-The traditional way to motion blur 2D Animation(And you can still do it today)

One thing I've always been fascinated with in traditional 2D animation is the tools you can use to create exaggerations and blurs.

One such thing is the Dry Brush Blur. This is a technique used by artists to simulate speed and blur on acetate cel animation.

The issue however is you have to not only reference the animation cels but also pay attention to the inking but when executed right, you get that wonderful blur.

The joys of 2D Animation using the right tools.

Nowadays, we don't see this type of drybrush blur anymore. Now it's you have to keep things stiff or do things like add speed lines or use some weird in-between shit just to exaggerate the movement.

Or at worst, let your computer calculate what it thinks is a blur which only works well for 3DCG.

CGI Motions blurs do however become a burden on both your CPU and GPU and I bet you even your RTX 4090's RT Cores won't do any good for speeding up your MAYA renders unless you're using a rendering engine that specifically uses RTX technology. The RT Cores are more or less built for real-time raytracing on gaming.

But still, you don't need to enable any blur tools in the rendering settings in 2D Animation because you can just replicate it the traditional way just like the good old days.

Such as this screengrab from one of my demo reels where I did use a drybrush technique to exaggerate Shasta's arm motion.

Well, I say drybrush technique loosely. What I actually did was use a brush preset that doesn't truly look like a drybrush but is actually a close approximation of the technique.

What I did was create a separate drawing layer on ToonBoom Harmony Premium so one layer has the drawing labeled SHASTA, which is the character shown above, and another layer called DRYBRUSH.

With that, I'm able to retain the original drawing without effing it up but still get my intended blur.

This does however complicate things where Because using the same colors for things such as Shasta's skintone, her clothes, or even her hair, the colors blend a little too well but no need to worry. I use the premium version of Toon Boom Harmony so I have access to advanced Node Tools.

It's where I have nodes for things like composites, drawings, etc.

I use what's referred to as a shadow node which creates a pseudo drop-shadow like you see on animation cels on things like old school animation or anime and that helps to read the drop shadow so it doesn't get lost on the actual cels. 

Of course, to keep things aligned, I have to create a peg node which is a node used to hold all things together in the node graph.

Ahh technology. Maybe I should start using the nodes more often for my animations.

The craziest places to get story ideas and character designs at the most random places imaginable?

Wanna hear something Crazy? 

You can actually find things in your area like your home town or maybe references from cartoons just to help your creative side.

Yeah, Life is weird but so is finding random amenities that lead to great story ideas or even character creation.

Here are a few to list:

George Liquor-American!!(A.K.A The man with the liquor store name from Van Nuys)

Everybody has a family member who has a no nonsense attitude or they like nonsense but at the same time, has a strong belief in hyper masculinity.

John K's George Liquor actually borrows heavily from his late father Michael Kricfalusi who was a hyper masculine male who believed that the breadwinner should be manly. The man tried to get John to stop drawing cartoons and even stop watching them but alas, he failed but what he did get was someone who whined about 80's Saturday Morning Cartoons and his lack of pure masculinity.

I wish I had a father like that but my father never acted like that. Instead, my parents separated and and my mother smothered me. She tried to censor my viewing habits and other things I'm not going to get into....

Anyway, back to George Liquor, the guy's name is taken from a random sighting of a broken signage for a Liquor Store in Van Nuys, California in 1979.

"AHHHHHHH!!!! GEORGE LIQUOR!!!!"

How's that for a character who's goddamn personality comes from a creator's father's demeanor. However, John K made this character ultra-conservative but I don't know what political affiliation his father was. 

And he's not going to like this: His favorite hero KIRK DOUGLAS actually was a DEMOCRAT.

So much for trying to emulate your favorite actor, only to realize he's a democrat but not a republican.

The Cosmic Owl from Adventure Time, where did he come from?

Well, I read an article on a July 2012 issue of Nintendo Power that Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward actually was inspired by a certain reflection from a Bathroom Urinal and it emitted an interesting reflection that looked like a face or a mask. That's how it gave birth to the Cosmic Owl.

But wait, there's more:

What about Ren and Stimpy?

Well, they actually come from two sources.

Stimpy's design was based on the two cats from the 1945 Looney Tunes cartoon A GRUESOME TWOSOME.

The red cat in particular inspired the design of Stimpy due to the hands and the bulbous nose which John K stated was sort of a throwback to 1930s animation where due to the cartoons being produced in Black & White or Two-Strip Technicolor, characters like Mickey Mouse or Sylvester needed gloves so it's easy for audiences to see their hands. 

The bulbous noses are sort of something that some characters had but no longer do unless you're drawing cat characters.

Ren Hoek however was not based on anything cartoon related but instead, his design was based off an old photograph by Elliot Erwitt.

You can imagine how pissed off that Chihuahua looked having been forced to wear such an embarrassing sweater.

Ren's voice, if you can hear it in your head, will always have that Peter Lorre impression regardless if there's an accent or not.

Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin have two things in common with each other, Their voices are actually based on real-life people.... well sort of.

Homer's voice(He's always been voiced by Dan Castellaneta) was based on Walter Matthau so if you watch the Tracey Ullman Shorts and Season 1 of THE SIMPSONS, that's Castellaneta's impersonation of Matthau. However, the Matthau voice proved to be problematic for Castellaneta's vocal chords to the point he eventually dropped the voice in Season 2 and went for something more boisterous.

Peter Griffin's voice on the other hand was based on a security guard that Seth Macfarlane heard when he was studying animation at RISD. He originally used that voice for an earlier character named Larry Cummings in his thesis film THE LIFE OF LARRY and later LARRY & STEVE.

And here's another crazy inspiration fact:

 Boomhauer's voice was based on an old voicemail that Mike Judge got back in the mid-1990s.

The voice was allegedly from what he described as a deranged hillbilly but from what the message sounded like, the deranged hillbilly was one who preferred high culture and didn't appreciate the low-brow nature of Beavis and Butthead and left a diatribe on Judge's answering machine. On top of that, he thought the name of the show was PORKY'S BUTTHOLE!!!

"I'VE BEEN CALLING YA'LL FOR ABOUT A MONTH NOW GRIPING ABOUT YA'LL THEM TIME THAT DANG OLE LOONEY TUNES COME ON YA'LL PUT ON THEM PORKY'S FREAKING OLE BUTTHOLE!!!"

"I GUESS IMMA HAVE TO CALL FCC ABOUT SHUTTING YA'LLS BUTT DOWN!!!"

The absurdity of that phone call is enough to split your stomach from laughter.

What about my experiences when I created my characters?

This character who I've named Butch Sutherland is based on two things.

His personality and voice is based on Roger Klotz from Doug. The part where this guy bullies the protagonist but proves to be a walking irony and later befriends the protagonist.

Butch also is based on this guy I knew from childhood who at first hated my guts but soon warmed up to me and we became to be good friends. I won't mention his name though.

The shirt design is soft of based upon that vintage 1970s Zenith Advertising design because why not.

This Japanese Girl I drew is actually based on this Asian Girl I knew from high school who I've always had a crush on. We actually were very good friends but I haven't been speaking to her for the last 7 years since my high school graduation.

This character was originally named Tippi but her name is now Megumi. The hair is sort of a mix of 1960's front hair design that I really appreciate but I will admit it did bring challenges to create side profiles of this character.

I have other character design amenities but I didn't copy everything I had on my custom built PC to my USB stick just to create this blogpost. Hopefully, I'll get everything I have and continue this in a part two to this blogpost.

Update as of May 12 2024:

9 Days after I posted this blogpost, Elliot Erwitt passed away at the age of 95. I was shocked but I guess it was his time.

R.I.P Elliot Erwitt.