Maverick Quickie-Shinji's Leap Year Peanuts surprise I guess

Oh hell...... what the hell...... It's a leap year and it only happens every 4 years.

Funny how a leap year also happens to be the year when U.S Elections occur but oh well.

This is not a full post but rather a filler because I'm once again having writer's block as well as have to go to work at the airport cafe the day I'm posting this.

AND DUE TO THE LEAP YEAR OF COURSE.

Anyway, here's the money shot shown below.

The year was 2014. It was fast approaching the 20th Anniversary of the Evangelion Franchise and of course, the year the series takes place.

I saw this image from this game called GIRLFRIEND OF STEEL, a visual novel released for WINDOWS 95, Sega Saturn, and Sony PlayStation.... only in Japan though.

And then I saw some forum posts back then talking about this screenshot where someone mentions that Shinji looks like a PEANUTS character on the whiteboard.

However, if memory serves me right, the forum post was mostly someone providing the following caption:

"QUESTION ASUKA, WHY DO I LOOK LIKE THAT CHARLIE BROWN KID?"

Doesn't really look like it exactly but the hair is a dead giveaway.

For those who need a refresher, here's what Charlie Brown looks like

Many years later, I stumbled upon this 4-strip comic which I think was from Facebook.... or was it Pinterest... anyway, the style of the poses and I think the mouths are more akin to Peanuts.

The theme was on Friendship but in different character perspectives.

My guess is that whoever drew this fan comic certainly thought the forum post was funny and is also a PEANUTS fan so he/she drew it.

My personal favorite is the one with TOJI beating the shit out of Shinji because according to him, fighting back is what being friends is about.

Considering that Shinji does punch Toji back in both the TV anime and the Rebuild movies, the friendship is returned in favor. 

One last thing to discuss. 

I vaguely remember someone else on that forum also said this whiteboard drawing of Gendo Ikari looks like DILBERT.

I don't have a strip or a screenshot from the DILBERT animated series to compare this drawing to so here's what DILBERT really looks like

But if I do see the resemblance, the caricature looks more rounder and it looks like Gendo stole WALLY'S glasses.

"Hey those aren't my glasses Gendo Stole. If he stole them, he can't see through them because my glasses are OPAQUE."

This is MAVERICK MARTINEZ ARCHIVE'S first leap year post for me so I guess I have the opportunity to make the most of this leap day. 

We won't get another leap year until 2028, assuming I'm still active on this blog that's for sure.

Hollywood's true masculine Figure-KIRK DOUGLAS

I've been getting obsessed with this notion of exploring the physique as well as the interesting lives of masculine figures, hence why I'm trying to get into caricatures.

But I think the most influential of all masculine figures and one that people want to emulate is none other than KIRK DOUGLAS.

I've dealt with masculine figures before but most of the ones I talk about are from the New Hollywood era with the exception of Orson Welles but Kirk actually has it all. The big meaty hands, the serious stare of his, His chiseled chin with his signature hole in it. It all screams MANLY!!!

He also makes for the perfect father figure too. How else would you describe feeding his hardships to his son Michael Douglas

I'll get more into Michael Douglas in the future but for now, let's all focus on his father since that's the main topic of this blogpost.

Like I said, Kirk has it all with that chin and chiseled features. He's been keeping it well maintained since his entrance to manhood many years ago

What were the hardships he face? Well Kirk's childhood was an unhappy one. His father was abusive and one hell of an alcoholic. Also, his family endured crippling poverty. 

And you got to understand that this was before the Great Depression. That wouldn't happen until Kirk was in his early teens.

As neat of an actor as Kirk is, he's also the most caricatured. It's also a bugger for some artists to get his facial features right when caricaturing him. 

I know, I've been there.

Looks like Kirk but I felt I've made his caricature a bit too elongated vertically. I definitely need improvement on this caricature that's for sure.

Oh well, thanks to the internet, I've search for other caricatures and they're 10 times better than my own attempt. Check them out.

Kirk’s likeness not only permeates the realm of caricatures  but also in the realm of animation and comics too.

Here’s Michelangelo in ANIMANIACS(1993)

Asterix creator ALBERT UDERZO is such a Kirk Douglas fan that he parodied his SPARTACUS character in the 1996 album ALL AT SEA.

John K. Is such a Kirk Douglas fan that he made a small cameo in the 1991 premiere episode STIMPYS BIG DAY.

Say what you will about Disney and Pixar but I think Pete Doctor agrees that Kirk is so manly, that he couldn't pass the opportunity to caricature Kirk with Charles Muntz

Can't find any screenshots of a really pissed off Muntz so I guess this will have to do.

Maybe that's why I'm seeing so many memes on Facebook, Instagram, etc. of men ranting about the state of Hollywood movies today. They all love KIRK DOUGLAS so much that the moment he died on February 5 2020, a part of their Hollywood died as well.

I was in college when I heard the devastating news of Kirk's Death but at least the man with the chin left an everlasting legacy for all us men out there. 

We desperately need a new KIRK DOUGLAS in our industry. 

NOT SOMEONE WHO TRIES TOO HARD TO BE LIKE KIRK BUT RATHER ONE WHO'S GOT THE HARDSHIPS AND EFFORT.

Fun Fact:

Kirk Douglas is not his actual birth name. His birthname was Issur Daneilovitch. 

Issur changed his name to Kirk Douglas when he enlisted in the U.S Navy during the WWII and he's stuck with that name ever since. 

Did I also mention Kirk was also the perfect father figure? Take a look at the photo below of Kirk giving important acting advice to his son Michael.

"Michael, you are to grow up a manly actor like me who doesn't take crap from those who domineer you with soft sentiments. I grew up with hardships via my father and the great depression so you should be grateful for all the knowledge I've fed you in childhood."

Hayase Nagatoro Teaches us about animation antics her way

Looking through my photos on my iPhone 15 Pro and I stumbled upon several pieces of fanart of Hayase Nagatoro and Naoto Hachioji and I figured, This would be a very good use of Body Mechanic studies.

Man, I wished I had known about using them during my body mechanics classes in Spring 2021 but the fanart wasn't saved into my phone until sometime around August 2021.

"Don't worry Senpai, I won't hurt you. I'm just using you for acting exercises."

The more I look at these fanart pieces of Nagatoro, the less I see Body Mechanics and more Antics.

ANTICS, the word for anticipation, which in animation is to allow the character to prepare a pose by providing a beginning pose....

Think of it as the Golf Logic. Have you ever seen someone about to hit a golf ball by swinging the club, then hitting it? That's what the antics are all about.

But for animation, unless golf is part of the plot, it operates in a different principle. Here are some examples shown below.

And then performs that action

Don't have an image of Donald Duck charging so instead I'm using this screenshot of Sylvester running to get the can opener.

Here's a pose sheet on how to do antics as well as stay within the line of action

And here's a rough of Donald Duck playing Baseball

And for you Looney Tunes fans out there, I managed to procure this wonderful gif of Bugs Bunny Playing Baseball to accentuate the antics studies. In full motion.

Believe it or not, My 2D Animation instructor showed me this exact gif during the lesson on ANTICS and Baseball.

Antics vary from the simple move your body from one pose to another as shown above

Others use the shrink takes where to really sell the antics, you shrink your characters and make them grow again to accentuate the next pose.

Such as this girl who shrinks in midair, then grows back to her regular size before settling down to the ground via gravity.

Gotta Love that secondary action with the hair and fabric. Hair flowing like that deserves gravitational overlap.

All settled down now.

It's not a matter of doing the antics, it's how to control it. It's hard to control your antics when animating on ones but even when animating on twos, the poses can sometimes pop, requiring in-betweens or just limiting the frames down to a certain level.

I don't know if Anime does antics. Probably because animators are frequently at the cusp of fans who demand perfection in the drawings. 

"The best you can find poses that are extreme or have your antics are often in Hayao Miyazaki films, not me drinking water like a pro"

Marin...... thank you.... In fact, I have a gif from Cagliostro that's close to that:

I don't think you're gonna find poses like this in any modern Lupin Anime so KUDOS to Miyasaki-San for this beautiful 1979 film.

Actually if memory serves me right, I think the more cartoonier anime out there do indeed do there antics. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough or that I don't have much images but I think anime like SOUL EATER, KILL LA KILL, GURREN LAGGAN, ONE PIECE, just to name a few, they do like their antic poses.

Thank Balls that anime knows how to control their antics. While the Western side of animation does still use antics with their puppet rigs, It's a mixed bag for me.

I feel animators just love antics too much so that's why when I watched shows like Grosology, 6teen, Captain Flamingo, El Tigre, Loud House, etc, I frequently see the rigs squashing during one antic to another

Dude, chill out with these antics. Not everything in Teen life is antics.

While the modern puppet rigs downplay this kind of antic poses, I felt somethings disconnected here. Maybe it's just because I've avoided most modern puppet-rigged shows since the mid-2010s.

If memory served me right, I think this kind of posing was downplayed the last time I watched STAR VS. THE FORCES OF EVIL but I don't have any screenshots and besides, DISNEY+ always disables screen captures so even if I had the app in my PC and use WINDOWS 11's print screen function, the app would still show me black in the window... 

I guess I'll have to get my screenshots via my iPhone pointed at my ASUS TUF monitor as usual.

"Hey do you MIND!!! I'M TEACHING HERE!!!

Yikes. I sort of stole the show from Nagatoro. 

Anyway, here's how she prepares her antic poses against NAOTO.

"First I start my pose...."

"As well as calm down SENPAI."

"Then I analyze the situation, environments, etc."
 

"Then I start my pose..... EASY THERE SENPAI! THIS WON'T HURT!"

"Then I pinpoint where my foot will make the mark."

"Then I go back to prepare and....."

"HANK HILL, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!!!!"

"God Dammit Nagatoro-san!!!"

"Hey, Maverick-Sama wanted anticipations poses, he asked for it."

I can imagine both Erik Kimerer and Kimberly Ann Campbell, the respective voices of Naoto and Nagatoro, being hired by Lasalle College as acting coaches for one of my acting classes and using these pieces of fanart as an acting exercise.... without the physical pain of course.

But alas, a man can dream..... 

And hey, why not do some stuff like this with fanart and education as well. I'm trying to be more active on Blogger so I don't suffer the same Writers Block Issues I had in 2023. I'll see what I can find on my iPhone so I'll use them for future use in my next posts.

Until then, stay tuned.

"Relax Senpai! I promise I won't literally kick you in the ass during next blog post."