Another Mickey Mouse drawing, except of a robot

The idea of doing a quick five minute sketch on a post-it note like I did for Mickey Mouse seemed like a lot of fun so I tried it again with a different subject. Then I started feeling self conscious about what I was doing, mostly thoughts like, "Oh no! You are too old to be drawing robots on post-it notes". I'm good at not letting that kind of thinking stop me from trying, but it's there in the back of my mind.

Then I started thinking, "What is this, really?" Was I really doing fanart, or was it something different? At the very basest level, was this fanart or a five minute memory drawing exercise? The subject matter seemed to define the action. If I drew a rock would that mean I am a fan of rocks? Was this fanart, or an exploration of how my mind stores, files and recalls imagery? What was this thing looking back at me from the post-it note? And now that I've done this drawing, what would happen if I tried to do a drawing of this drawing from memory?

Today when I am talking to people they will think I am totally engaged in conversation with them, but my mind will really be obsessing over a five minute post-it note sketch of a cartoon robot I did last night.

I don't know what Mickey Mouse looks like but I can point him out in a bar OR: Sculpting philosophy from neither a sculptor nor a philosophizer

My latest hobby project is making multiple little spaceships out of plastic resin. For the first step I needed to track down good references. For the next step I am making the prototype out of Sculpey clay. Sculpey is probably used most by little kids in kindergarten, whose skill and mastery of the medium far exceeds my own. When I'm not burning the clay in the oven or accidentally cutting off important pieces, I'm usually spending hours carving the clay into the wrong shape and having to start over. Some people call this process sculpting, I guess when I do it it's best described as clay molesting.

I've used this clay prototype method a couple of times before but that doesn't mean it's the best way to go about a project like this. In fact, even after doing this resin casting stuff a tryptzillion times I don't have any set procedure and I kind of make up everything as I go along depending on what the project demands. So as I share with you my thoughts on sculpting, keep in mind that not only am I not a professional, but I don't even know what I'm doing half the time.

A couple of things occurred to me once I became a somewhat competent Sculpey molester. I've learned it helps to be able to draw what you want to make first, and also that drawing is hard. Good reference materials make for good prototypes. The problem is I suck at drawing. Yet I've still been able to knock out reasonably decent versions of whatever I wanted out of clay. How is this possible? More importantly, is there any other subject that could possibly be more mind numbingly boring than this crap to blog about?

I have discovered that sculpting is easier than drawing. I am going to explain this in the most complicated and verbose way I know how. It has to do with how our brains recognize objects. I don't think we record every last little detail when we see something, all that gets remembered is a kind of shorthand representation of an object's main features. This is why all dogs pretty much look the same and they're impossible to tell apart.

Have you ever tried to draw Mickey Mouse from memory? I have. It's not pretty. Here's an example to illustrate what I mean about why with my current brain, drawing is hard. I know he has two big round ears, but after that it's the wild wild west. Does he really have sharp little teeth? I couldn't remember. What's that bulbous growth on the right side of his head? A third ear? After seeing this how could anyone believe that I know what Mickey Mouse looks like? And yet, I've been able to recognize the guy every time I see him in the cartoons. AND THAT IS WHY DRAWING IS HARD AND SCULPTING IS EASY

The references of good importance OR: For those with Roboplasti-Bergers Syndrome, 208 pages of alien robot Volkswagen drawings is never enough

Back in late 2002 I picked up a hobby called resin casting where I learned how to make little robots and spaceships out of plastic. Making homemade robots from plastic isn't just fannish behavior, it's full blown roboplasti-bergers syndrome diagnosis. It was pretty cool because not only could I bring to life anything I imagined, but I wasn't limited by the fun crushing restraints a real toy company would have like worrying about what would sell or adhering to child safety laws. Over the next four years I made a lot of Transformers related figures that I shared with friends and strangers and I had fun with it. Resin casting required an enormous amount of time and dedication, though, so when my son was born last year I decided I'd retire from that hobby. I thought my roboplasti-bergers had gone into remission. But damnit, I'm having flareups again because lately I've been wanting to get back into making those wacky robot figures and spaceships I used to do.

The very first things I tried to make from plastic were replicas of the triangle shaped spaceships that Skywarp and Thundercracker turned into during the first episode of Transformers. In Transformer fan circles they call those things "tetrajets". These were somewhat obscure, only appearing in two episodes throughout the series and even then only for a couple of short scenes. At first I thought it would be easy but I discovered that the toughest part of making a model based on a cartoon spaceship that only existed onscreen for a few seconds is finding good visual references.

Back then I had no access to the official model sheets that the animators used as definitive reference for what these things looked like. I watched those brief moments the tetrajets appeared in about a tryptzillion times and I used a Transformers trading card I had as references for my sculpt. I did the best I could and I thought I captured the look of the ships well enough. I was satisfied with what I'd come up with and I went on to make a buttload of those things. Heck, if you do a google image search for "Tetrajet" you'll find one of the orange ones I did. Those orange ones were the very first resin castings I gave away during the 2003 Transformer convention/roboplasti-bergers party.

In January 2003 I was able to establish correspondence with fellow roboplasti-bergers sufferer Floro Dery, the design supervisor for the 80's Transformers cartoon. Floro was responsible for much of the visual look of the Transformers cartoon. I was pretty excited about the tetrajets I made and I emailed him some pictures of them, to which he responded-

"Hello Steve! Your sculptures are good, but it needs to be bit more stylized and stretched to make it more dynamic."

I was very excited to get feedback from the guy. However, the "stylized and stretched" comment confused me a little, especially since I thought I nailed it. I would have loved if Mr. Dery could have supplied me with the actual character models for the tetrajets, but he wrote that although he did have many versions of the design, he couldn't find them at the time. I was a little confused, like if I wrote a wacky outer space movie script and George Lucas critiqued it by telling me, "Well I'm just the guy who came up with this stuff, but I think you need more incestuous kissings between your characters," and I'd be thinking, "Okay, but someone please explain to me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?"

Then last year IDW publishing published The Ark, a book with tons of original Transformers animation models including the tetrajet reference designs I wished I had back in '02. Finally I had the definitive vision, the clearest possible rendering of what these things were supposed to look like. The Ark is the ultimate reference, like a Chilton's manual for cartoon robot spaceships. For once I totally understood what Floro Dery was trying to tell me and I saw how off I was with my original sculpt. It was as if a giant spaceship of shape changing alien robots crashed into the volcano of my mind.

It always bothered me that I never got that tetrajet sculpt right. This year would be the fifth anniversary of when I started making and giving away little plastic spaceships at robot conventions. Plus I finally have the definitive reference materials I always wanted thanks to The Ark book. More importantly, the baby sleeps for 12 hours solid each night and I have enough time to myself to work on a project. If I could manage it right I think I have just enough time to do a small run of new improved 5th anniversary CrazySteveFigure tetrajets. I can't believe I'm excited about the remanifestation of the nerdiest side effects of my roboplasti-bergers syndrome. It's like herpes people being happy about the return of their cold sores.

I am intrigued by your ability to draw deericorns

There's really legendary and accomplished sci-fi/fantasy artist named Darrell Sweet coming to the art gallery here and I would like to go see him. I'm always complaining about how Rapid City really sucks when it comes to stuff I'm interested in but this guy sounds pretty cool so I wonder why he's coming through here. His body of work is interesting and spans many genres. He's done like a tryptzillion book covers and he has a trading cards set and he even did the 1982 Lord of the Rings calendar plus he illustrated an edition of The Last Unicorn. I wish I was more of a fan so I could get all hardcore on the guy, but I'm not. I don't have anything he's done. I recognize and appreciate his talent but I secretly wish he had done something I was more familiar with like maybe an Iron Maiden album cover or at least one Transformers comic book.

We went to the gallery last weekend to check out his works on display and despite my lack of exposure to Sweet stuff I even recognized one cover of a book I read in grade school, but I think I checked it out from the library so I don't have it. My wife noticed she's read a couple of books he did the covers for. But while we were remotely familiar with one or two of the over 3,000 things he's done, we were nowhere near the league of fan that the girl behind the desk at the art gallery was. Holy crap was she hardcore. All of a sudden I found myself feeling inadequate as she went on and on about her collection of this guy's beautiful paintings of winged dogs wearing magician robes and I was hoping with every fiber of my being that the conversation would somehow turn from dragons and unicorns to goddamned Dinobots. Just something I knew more about.

So I went home and I started internetting for information on this guy that could maybe give me a Cliff's notes understanding of his work so I could maybe say something halfway relevant if I were to meet him when he comes here. But about the most interesting thing I found was a message board post where somebody said his interpretation of The Last Unicorn was more deerlike instead of typical unicorns that are drawn more horselike. Deericorns? How is that going to come up in casual conversation?

I did really like the cover to one book he did called "Inherit the Stars" where these two astronauts are burying a skeleton astronaut on the moon or somewhere out in space. But I keep looking at the cover and my eyes jump around, reading the letters out of sequence so instead of "Inherit the Stars" I read "In her ars", which sounds funny to me. I wonder if Darrell Sweet ever noticed that. I also wonder if he was related to Michael Sweet, the lead singer of Stryper. I wonder if he did any Stryper album covers. So far all I have is ars, Stryper and 'deericorns'. Maybe it's best if I stay home, but damnit, he's doing a class for kids on how to draw dragons. If there's ever something I wanted to check out was a class on how to draw dragons by someone who has drawn an assload of dragons.

I am excited about what will happen April 5th. Will I go to the art gallery and see Darrell Sweet? Will a situation come up where I mention deericorns? Will I attend his dragon drawing class with a bunch of five year olds? FIND OUT IN THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE!

"Oh no, I don't bother with frets...It's supposed to look like a guitar but it's not really supposed to look like a real guitar."

That quote may sound like something the designer of guitar controllers for Rock Band or Guitar Hero might say, but it was said 27 years ago back in 1981 by Rob "Loonhouse" Yeatman, the man many consider the world's greatest celebrity headbanger. Back in the late 70's/early 80's he'd show up to hard rock clubs in the UK with his legendary homemade "hardboard" (aka cardboard) guitars and he'd engage in massive headbanging onslaughts, out-headbanging everybody in a hundred mile radius. Why did he build cardboard guitars? The interviewer says it was "in response to a challenge to decide the headbanger of the year". ROB LOONHOUSE IS MY GODDAMN HERO.

I found a 3 minute clip from a documentary on heavy metal at YouTube and I'm putting it here so that all Macrocranians may share in the genius that was Rob Loonhouse. If you want to see the entire documentary it's on Iron Maiden's "The Early Years" DVD. Rob is actually a part of Iron Maiden history as he's the guy who took the photograph that was made into the cover of their very first released recording, The Soundhouse Tapes. And of course there's this picture of him rocking out with his cardboard guitar onstage with Iron Maiden, cementing his legend in the minds of headbangers everywhere:


Rob has since disappeared from the limelight and where he is now is anyone's guess. But his legendary example of how to be a fan is something we can all learn from, whether we worship heavy metal or little plastic robots. The guy was a brilliant satirist, showing the world that there's a fine line between being a guitar hero and being a heavy metal cardboard air guitar making maniac psychopath. Video gamers, you are only one crappy nightclub away from being the next Rob Loonhouse.

I leave you now with a quote from Rob, something you can hear him say at the end of this video. When asked if he saw headbanging as a lifelong thing, he answered, "Yeah. I'm gonna make a business at being a headbanger, 'cos that's what I'm good at, basically." I'd like to think that instead of continuing with his day job as a wedding photographer, Rob went on to become the world's first CEO of headbanging. Rock on, Rob, wherever you are.

MEGABUMMED by the shirtanasia

It's not just with toy robots that I repeatedly buy the same crap just with different packaging. Back in the 90's I used to collect CDs with the same megaidiotic collector mentality. Back in '94 Megadeth came out with their Youthanasia record and I got it on release day, then I bought it again when I saw they made a super special box set version packaged with a limited edition t-shirt. The box cost $24.99 but I justified the expense by thinking the shirt would be awesome and exclusive, but then it turned out that it was extra large and I was lucky if I broke 119 pounds back then. I was megadisappointed, but mostly megadetested by my blind megadedication. They got me to buy the same CD twice, plus a shirt that didn't fit me anyways. I felt so megamanipulated by the Megadeth megamarketing machine that I stopped buying their CDs that year, and after opening the Youthanasia box that one time I put everything back and forgot about it...


...until last week when I bought a new Megadeth CD for the first time in forever and it got me wondering if the Youthanasia shirt fit me 14 years and 30 pounds later. I opened it up and to my horror the Youthanasia CD got stuck to the shirt! After 14 years of being megamushed together, the silkscreening began adhering to the CD case. I carefully pried them apart but there's a lot of megasticky junk on the back of the CD case now. It megasucks! The shirt seems okay and the design isn't noticeably damaged but I still feel dumb for not averting this disaster earlier. I still don't fit in the shirt but maybe in another 14 years I will. This time before I put everything back I'm leaving the CD out. Had I waited longer the CD would probably have been permanently stuck to the shirt. Then in 2021 by the time I'm finally big enough I'd be wearing a gigantic black shirt with a CD stuck to the front of it, plus I'd be bald. I would look like some sort of megaretarded Darth Vader.

Heroic Ultra Magnus didn't have a birthday because Jesus never went to Cybertron (this is also why heroic Ultra Magnus is going to burn in hell)

When I was a kid I used to count down the 100 days until Christmas. Every year from around '86-'89 I would make a big calendar from 22 by 28 inch posterboard and tape it to my wall above my bed. Whenever I got a toy or a comic book during that period I would write it in on my calendar. That third of the year was special to me more than any other time because it held the beginning of the new Saturday morning cartoon season, Halloween and Christmas. If somebody put 12 year old me in charge of calendaring the world, there would only be 100 days in a year and New Year's Day would be September 15th. I guess to my childhood self the passage of time was only worth noting if it involved cartoons, candy and toy robots.

I think my intention was to track on my calendar the 'birthdays' of my toys and comics as I got them. I never actually had birthday parties for my Transformers but for some reason it was important to me to mark the exact day that they entered my life. I may have been influenced by an episode of the Transformers from 1986 where the little kid tries to figure out the birthday of one of the Autobots, the heroic Ultra Mangus. After nearly getting killed when he goes searching for the robot birthday computer, he ends up looking stupid at the end of the episode when the Autobots tell him they don't keep track of that stuff. And I think everybody starts laughing at him.

This being leap year I hear a lot of those heartwarming human interest stories about people born on February 29. I am a little confused about whether or not these 40 year old people are laughing about how they're really only ten years old or if they're crying because they got fucked out of 36 birthdays.

Having a birthday at all is a luxury. I remember hearing of a Bosnian guy who didn't know his birthday. At first I thought it was shocking but when you think about it there are lots of parts in the world where buying a new Hooters calendar ranks far below other priorities like surviving long enough to see tomorrow. Instead of being a manic depressive birthdate obsessed leap year weirdo, lots of birthdayless people are just happy to be alive. Some sperms never even hit the egg! Imagine how they feel, whiny leap year baby bastards!

I think birthdays should be totally abolished and forgotten, just as they are on Cybertron. No cakes, no reminiscing, no reflecting on the past or getting presents or any of that. All that stuff should be done every single minute of every day. I was thinking about how any given specific day from the calendar-any birthday-happens over and over throughout eternity regardless of whether or not we are still alive. Think of the calendar month and day you were born-your birthday. There will be infinite repetitions of that day well after you are dead. In fact, there will be more repeated occurrences of your birthday throughout infinity than the total number of days you were actually alive on earth!

I think just celebrating life on that one day and living out the other 364 days in a zombie trance is forgetting that our real purpose while we're alive is to get down to the business of being the best heroic Ultra Magnus we can be constantly all the time. To some that means working hard to help improve the human condition, for others it means watching cartoons and buying assloads of toy robots. For me it meant redirecting the misplaced sentimentality I wasted observing birthdays or the 100 days until Christmas or Halloween or Christmas and focusing instead on the true purpose of my life-preparing for the coming of Galvatron.