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steve0discusses · 4 years

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Yugioh E8 S4: Joey’s Turn to Hallucinate During a Card Game

Alright, lets jump into Yugioh while I wait to wake up this morning. Hate mornings. Hate them.

So I guess in the Yugioh universe, San Fransisco avoided Loma Prieta, but instead got smacked by a KaibaCorp satellite dropping from space. Dunno which is worse but uh.......thanks, Seto. Maybe the building was empty though. I mean it’s not like anyone is here right now. apparently everyone working for Pegasus does so from their laptop in their pj’s situated in their apartments in Oakland.

And good news, this is one of the episodes with That Really Good Storyboarder. Like you can REALLY tell when this particular storyboarder enters the room, and apparently they really like Joey episodes?

Anyway, for anyone who’s like “I want to draw hands better.” This whole episode is a good study for how to do dynamic hands. It’s insane.

In fact apparently there is an art book just about hands in the works BY the guy who designed a lot of the Yugioh hand shots--thing is it’s entirely in Japanese and I don’t really know much Japanese....so I’m waiting for it in English. But, my friend translated the promo for me and mentioned that if you preorder the book you get 3 instructional videos for drawing dynamic hands from this particular artist.

Only problem is, the videos would go right over my head because it’s still not in English, so uh, missed opportunity because I never got serious with my Duolingo. O well. And people keep asking “are you learning Japanese for anime? Are you dating a Japanese guy?” and it’s like no, for reals, I’m an artist, this is just what you have to do, learn Spanish, learn French, learn Japanese, or you will miss out on so many good tutorials. Like every DAY I see a good ass tutorial on Twitter and it’s like...did they have to hand-write it?

Anyway if you want to buy it, it’s on Japanese Amazon and I don’t know what it’s called because it’s been a hot minute since it’s been a few months since I’ve looked at it. But it exists. I have no idea if it’ll be shipped internationally either, in fact, I was just gonna ask very nicely to my one friend like it’s middle school and I need some good looking authentic jelly pens delivered. But youknow...instead I’ll keep an eye out because I’m banking on this getting translated into English.

I will let you ALL know when I see this book translated into English.

(read more under the cut)

So, we start this episode with Mai being transported to Atlantis island. I’m not entirely sure if the Atlantis Island is the same place as the Atlantis on the bottom of the ocean, but whether she’s above or below the water won’t matter because they did a very wise jump cut.

So I have no idea if she jumped out of a motorcycle to get here. Maybe?

Anyway, Valon introduces her to the Lair. Shows her the snakes, the fire torches that are always lit, a couple more snakes. Youknow, normal stuff for a completely normal date.

PS I do appreciate the bismuth pattern here. Bismuth is a really amazing under-used concept art tool. I mean LOOK at bismuth.

Gollllll I just want to see a whole lot more bismuth in art, it pops.

And then, Valon decides to introduce Mai to his Dad, who is a LOT when you get up close to him.

Man just SO many elements here. The head chain, the yellow eyeball (which is the same eye that Pegasus wore his golden eyeball--dunno if it’s related but as I’ve mentioned before, this show is rude to eyes), The very LONG lower lashes (I’m a SUCKER for putting long lower lashes on all of OC’s myself, it’s a good time) the amount of side-bangs on this guy that would have taken like 12 hair extensions. the wind always seems to flow around him to pick up his cloak and his cape (yes he has both) And on the back he has like a princess Jasmine style ponytail where it’s like......how does he do that? Truly magical, this Ultimate-OC-looking-guy is.

We again recap a little more of Mai’s perspective from the Prism, which I didn’t think she’d be able to see everyone else from...but apparently she saw enough.

And so, because Mai didn’t want to feel scared ever again, she decided to instead feel nothing. Trade in your plateauing card career for getting OP card magic powers. I mean, it tracks.

Then our Storyboarder just started FLEXING.

Y’all.

He just...did that.

Do you know how good you have to know hands to draw that? You’d have to firstly know hands like a freakin hand surgeon, then you’d have to get like so many different references to study what the hell is even going on there. Go ahead and do this hand pose. You CAN’T. It’s amazing. And on top of that--she’s wearing a fingerless glove? And a weird duel disk in perspective?

This whole thing is FORESHORTENED are you freakin kidding me???

This storyboarder!

Enter Duke, who just woke up today thinking it’d be a normal day but alas, it was a Yugi Muto day, and you can’t escape this asshole even if you fly halfway across the world. He will show up, somehow blow up some gas station, and your boss will be mysteriously dead and there’s nothing Duke can do about this horrible curse he’s had to deal with ever since Pharaoh cursed him with Being Friends With Pharaoh. The worst curse.

Like imagine you showed up at Apple Headquarters and this madness was there instead of a lobby.

Then, because things aren’t yet weird enough for Duke Devlin to just walk into, the dragon card starts glowing and takes our third dragon boy on a Spiritual Dragon Journey.

Right now.

During a card game where Joey is facing off a serial murderer/ex-not-a-girlfriend.

And it’s not just Joey and Yugi this time.

...I know I was just applauding this storyboarder but there is NO WAY they didn’t know what they were doing. I get that Seto has a thing for dragons. I don’t need this upskirt shot to remind me of his weird hallucinatory love affair with dragons.

The amount of weird upskirts they like to do with Seto. I mean I’m glad it’s not Mai but youknow...I just didn’t expect this.

Ever.

I never expected this shot with the...joystick.

There is a very obvious joystick in this shot and like 15-45 animators looked at this and said “well it’s too late now, the good storyboarder likes it, and this is the toll we pay.”

I just want to know if any animators saw this and said to their friend “hey....I need to go take a break. Want to go to a very long lunch and forget this ever happened?”

And that’s the whole dream. We are now officially out of porky dragons, which means everyone else in this party will just have........nothing to do, right?

Is it too much to ask that Mokuba get to have a dragon?

Way too much to ask, just realized it as I was typing it.

The concern coming off of Mokuba right now.

Like seriously Mokuba is in a constant state of “do I listen to my older brother or do I heavily sedate my older brother before I get abducted for the sixth time?”

Apparently all of the Orichalcos etc is responding to the dragons, which makes sense, since it’s like...toys that were sold next to eachother in the toy store. Just feels like these things are constantly glowing but everyone forgets that there’s not just three cards and three stones but also Yugi has a stone in his pocket somewhere.

We just have a lot of artifacts hanging out everywhere but it’s Yugioh, so of course no one is going to keep track of any of them. If only Bakura were here, he’d have that down but like...instead it’s the Yugi team, so if it’s not directly around your neck it just doesn’t exist.

Anyway, it’s the holidays so I’ll get the next post up......sometime? Kind of a shame what happened to my update schedule but that’s life.

And if you want to read these from the beginning, you can click on this link here

#yugioh #ygo #joey wheeler #yugi muto #mai valentine #valon #tristan taylor #duke devlin #rex raptor #weevil underwood #seto kaiba #mokuba #rapheal #tea gardner #ah we're back to just 20 people on set all the time huh #S4 #Ep8

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karlchristiankrumpholz · 7 years

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I was honored to be asked to do a presentation about my life and artwork at Lighthouse Writer's Workshop's quarterly event 'Making a Mountain' on Feb 24, 2017. In addition to showing slides of my comics and artwork, I also gave a short speech.

Here is the full text:

LIGHTHOUSE - Making a Mountain.

There was always art in my house. My uncle was a painter. So, as a child, I was always surrounded by art. We would visit his house and I would see these pieces painted on plywood as well as scattered around his studio and think “I want to do this.” Now I could have followed his lead and been a painter and create static scenes filled with color, but I also wanted to tell stories. So, I could have been a writer, but I also still wanted to create images. I chose to be a cartoonist.

There is a quote I once saw, I think it was from the cartoonist Robert Williams, that said “If you ever fail at being a cartoonist, you can still always be an artist.”

How did I find comics? Like almost everyone else as a young child, it started with newspaper strips: Garfield, Far Side, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes. But then you want more. Soon after, it became Mad Magazine, where I discovered the artwork of Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Wally Wood, and Harvey Kurtzman. Of course, I didn’t know their names. Just their art. The names came years later.

As I hit awkward adolescence, it was superheroes that I found among the racks at 7-11: Batman, Daredevil, and the X-Men. White long boxes filled with comics and backing boards started appearing in my room. I grew older, got into college, and discovered the other side: indy comics like Milk & Cheese, Cerebus, Love and Rockets, Hate, Eightball, Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children, Palookaville, Billy Coorigan, Black Hole, etc. With all of those books came the idea that you can do stories without capes, smaller stories that says something about your life and surroundings.

Eventually, I worked at a comic book store for a couple years where I learned more about the history of the field and discovered older artists that opened my mind up on what the craft could be: Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and the names of all those Mad Magazine artists that I knew so well.

It was around this time that I started to get my own ideas of what I wanted to do and started to create my own comics and zines. My original pages were pretty raw stuff about my life and relationships. After a few years, I started moving away from that and into my own fictional stories. Felt that people would not be interested in me talking about how depressing I thought my life was.

Why did comics appeal to me? Well, it’s an open field. You can do anything. Everyone has a different styles, points of view, and approaches on an art as well as story level. You want to do a small story about being raised in a fundamentalist household? You can do that through comics. A teen’s search for meaning and sexuality? Comics. A story about a giant space squid’s bloody invasion of Earth? Comics.

I was doing self-published and distributed zines for about ten years before a publisher picked up my book. That was called ‘Byron’ and it was published by SLG Publishing in 2009. A second series started appearing online, but I found it not to be very fun. Looking back, I was simply doing the exact same thing that hundreds of other cartoonists were churning out. It wasn’t my own voice and I grew bored.

So then, what is my voice? What was it that I have to say that is different from everyone one else. This seems to be something all artists have to come to terms with. When I started thinking about it, the one thing that has always fascinated me, which also seems to put others to sleep is history. The idea of what has happened before and how did we get to this moment. What are the stories that make up a place? I think about this constantly and can easily see another reality where I would have wound up being some sort of teacher in this if I had any sort of patience with instructing students.

Now, these sorts of history stories are usually in two forms: The grand and the small. The grand stories being: This building was built over 100 years ago, several people died in the construction, and Teddy Roosevelt once slept here. The small stories being the streetwise tale of a kid living on the street just trying to make it through her day. Both these sorts of stories are interwoven and make up a community, city, and culture.

The other thing that I find myself drawn to are the rebels, the outsiders, oddballs, artists, musicians, and drunks: The Beats, Howlin Wolf, Joe Strummer, Hemingway, Thelonious Monk, Hunter S, Bukowski, Tom Waits, and the Pogues. How could I bring all this together?

Now, it didn’t come at me overnight. Inspiration originally came from smallest of places: drinking in a bar.

What would make up my current comic career started as a drunken conversation, likely at the Lion’s Lair around the corner. The conversation started randomly, as drunken conversations always do, looking around and asking each other: Who is the King of the City? Since Colfax is pretty much the main artery and right outside the door, it was thought that any such person would likely some sort of hobo king.

This idea about the city being personified moved onto stories about Colfax itself and what makes up a city. As you could likely guess, my friends and I spend a lot of time in the bars. One of the things that seems to seep into you, almost unconsciously, are the stories that surround you in these places. They could be weird, odd, brilliant things that happen while you are there: Some drunk homeless guy wanders in, pukes, and slips in his own vomit. Or things that happened while you were away: did you hear about that one time that the bar back was sleeping above in the crawl space and fell through the ceiling into the bar? or even things with deeper pathos: someone alone at the far end of the place wondering aloud where they are going to stay that night.

All of these are small stories make up the history of a place. So, I started collecting, telling them, and slowly developing my own voice. 30 MILES OF CRAZY! started weekly back in June 2013. The name itself comes from Colfax itself, which is approximately 30 miles long. Though it started out as stories about Colfax and Denver, it’s it quickly moved to stories from other cities as well. Boston, Philly, San Francisco, anywhere. If you have a good story, I wanted to hear it.

I’ve always called my comic “True-ish Tales of the City”, True-ish since there is almost always a slight adjustment for artistic integrity. However, all the stories are true, either witnessed by myself, my friends, or even related to me. I’ve been doing the comic long enough that people seek me out, hoping to get their stories illustrated. In this sense, the comic takes on an almost oral history of life on the streets. And these are not just stories about drinking and bars, though they can have that aspect to it. These are all stories about the city, the events, happenings, characters and strange people that you meet … and yes, in the bars as well. I like to view my slice of life comics as something akin to a Tom Waits’ song or a Bukowski short stories. Things that happen late at night, around last call when people are despairing or lonely. I want to tell stories that may make you laugh, but may also rip your heart out as well.

I’m also using this comic as a stage that I set up to explore some of my own issues, like my relationship with my father, which is all tied up to my introduction to alcohol and bars. Again with comics, you can do anything.

I grew up on the East Coast, spending most of my life in Philadelphia and in Boston. Both cities have a strong historical vein running through them, which could be another reason this subject has always fascinated me. Looking back though, one of the reasons I originally moved to Denver was that I had spent my entire life along the East Coast. Sure Boston and Philly are about a 6 hour drive apart, but culturally they are pretty much the same with slightly odder accents. I wanted to experience a different culture in the West. I’ve been here ten years now. Sure there are superficially differences and points of view, but the people are still the same. The small stories that I hear in Denver are pretty much the exact same ones that I hear back in Boston. I know that it’s only about 2000 miles apart (I know that cause I looked it up), but this still makes me happy. That a Chowdahed on the Bay and some rhinestone cowboy-wannabe at Union Station can somehow relate. That even in slightly different cultures, we still experience the same things, same troubles, and tell the same stories.

This has become my love. Finding and telling these stories. Stories about people, their views, their struggles, and the city.

Now there is also the other kind of stories that I mentioned. The GRAND stories. Yes, I have been here for a decade, but in some ways Denver still confuses me. I still encounter some things that makes me baffled like a dog shown a card trick. One of the ways I found to deal with this confusion is to figure out the grand stories of the city around me. Again, this started out as something that I would do on my own. I’d be out with friends walking through a park and someone would casually mention: Hey, have you heard about all the bodies buried here under Cheesman Park? … sudden stunned amazement. Tell me more… This how it starts to lure you in.

I got my chance to start telling my own versions of these grand stories in 2015 when the Westword hired me to be their new cartoonist. This was the start of The DENVER BOOTLEG. Again, this was something I had to work on and develop. I was originally hired to tell the stories of the various venues in the city: Larimer Lounge, Lion’s Lair, Bluebird, etc. This is why it was named The DENVER BOOTLEG (Denver Boot… Bootleg music… I thought it was clever.) It was only when I pointed out to my editor about a year or so in that there is only a finite amount of venues in the city that I was finally able to move the comic into a more historical direction: The Rainbow Music Hall, Denver’s Great White Way, The Bonfires Memorial Theatre, and Cheesman Park.

Now, it is all great to be able to create and show these comics, hopefully to be read, entertain, and maybe teach someone. In the end, these are still comics. There is a great Jack Kirby’s quote that every cartoonist worth his salt seems to know: “Comics will break your heart.”

So, what are the difficulties on being a cartoonist, aside from ink stained fingers? Well, there are a few.

To start off, there is the basic view of comics that it’s a childish, a thing of superheroes, and adolescent power fantasies. That it’s a low art, something cheap to be found in newspapers. That it’s something cute and free to be found on the internet. That with the decline in publishing, it’s a dying art form. All of this is to say… there is little respect or money in it.

It’s a lot of work as well. You can spend hours working on a single page, only to have a reader zip through that same story in moments.

Also, as much as people like think that you are only drawing funny little pictures all day, there is also the hours you have to spend plugging away your work on websites, various social media sites, and traveling to conventions. There is always the problem with getting your work in front of someone. Either through finding a publisher, or a distributor, or online, or in their hand at shows. I’ve always called this “banging your head on the wall of indifference.” Like most things, you need a degree of luck, a lot of persistence, and wade through many rejection letters. Things are not impossible, but can be difficult.

The great thing about being a cartoonist or any art really, is that anyone can do it. The bad thing about it is that anyone can do it. There is so much out there that it can be hard to be heard over all of the noise.

Then why do I or anyone do it? Cause I love art. I love telling stories. I love comics. And I cannot see myself doing anything else.

Thank you.

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