Mer-Man Dimensional Coast

Hi, Wastelnd. Just scored a 5-Up in Super Mario Bros. 3 for GBA - the best version. It's been a quiet, lazy time of the year - things are getting colder, leaves are falling... but, you can always count on that ever-present beaming Florida deathheat during the day. 

I recently rewatched the instant classic Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, for roughly the... 4th? time...? followed by the mid-90s italo-horror gorefest, Casper. What a weird one. Other than that, I've been watching a ton of RedLetterMedia, with the occasional peppering of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think I'm spiritually somewhere between Mike Stoklasa and Larry David.

The other night, I caught the great Thomas Bangalter's first DJ set since 2010ish - insanely wicked show. Sort of my first "Daft" concert, y'know! Best believe I blasted the entire set at work the following shift. I'm absolutely obsessed with Two Months Off by Underworld, and Thomas' remix of Signatune by DJ Mehdi, both from the set. Y'know, The Robots have been suspiciously active lately. I got a feeling some kind of reunion isn't too far fetched...

T-Bang witnesses a disturbing atrocity in chat...

Bus stop denizens

In the wacky world of MidLife, I've been working on a new sequence in which our lovely lead, Vienna, is smashed into the sky by a gigantic Big Lots semi; landing before an eerie bus stop, naturally populated by a smattering of zombie-types and demonoids. 

The original animated sequence basically had Vienna very directly encounter the bus stop - no real character to it, sort of awkward, stilted. I'd get into specifics, but the summary is, it was... unnoticeable. Didn't feel like a natural progression of the scene. So, I brainstormed something a little more exciting, cartoony. Fun!

A shot from the original sequence

WIP screenshotty...

Right now, I'm working on a horizontal shot of the truck barreling down a highway; specifically, editing generic little cars meant to bolt past the truck - one of many not very exciting side-quests necessary for animation. Oh well. Editing the truck was fun, at least - I hate drawing vehicles, so it's mostly traced off of a 3D model off Sketchfab, something-or-other. I think it sticks out against my usual janky art style, but then, there's a lot of semi-traced environments and characters in the surrounding sequence... so, yeah. Here's a different angle I've been editing - the gnarled truck driver is a deep-cut Godzilla Vs Megalon reference... if ya know, ya know. See any other references?

Here's another one (below) - this shot I animated a while ago, but in order to fit the new footage bookending it, I've had to go back and change the whole background... normally, I might not care about the inconsistency, but luckily I still had the year-old project file ready to go. It was originally this vague, pink-and-blue distortion of liminal signs, and windows, but now, it's the eternally blinking stoplights hanging over the crossroads just outside my window. In fact, a lot of this sequence has been shot semi-locally. Spooky. Here's (nearly) the same frame, the original on the left, "final" on the right.

Beyond that, I'm still adding stuff to Neon Pools, storyboarding little ideas for the ever-elusive Arcade sequence (one which I've stopped, paused, and started multiple times), and, occasionally, doodling the rare totally unrelated art thingie here and there. Here's a poster I recently did for my buddy Super Jack's upcoming Halloween shows!

Happy Halloween o Digital Ghosts. Oh yeah - I also just ordered the new Godzilla 1989 + Super X2 MMS! Big hype.