Bowser Bait?

Click image for 960x480 version. 1920x960 version on DA (download for full size).

I couldn't resist doing a followup image as it would give me an excuse to draw Bowser, and I love how Bowser looks and have wanted to draw him for years. I'm not sure why I hadn't. Come to think of it, I've barely drawn any of the Mario characters in spite of wanting to. Why was I depriving myself?

As a kid, the idea of transforming into various things interested me (shocking, I know). Thanks to the media I was interested in, a bizarre amount of time was spent imagining myself as a turtle-like being. Seriously, between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Koopalings, it's surprising that turtle-like beings are so underrepresented in my current drawings and comics.

I'd also say it's odd that I choose Charmander over Squirtle in Pokemon, but dragons win over turtles. That's why Koopas are so cool; they're BOTH. That, and the Koopalings had magic wands in Mario 3, and I think I was simply born thinking magic wands are cool.

Which isn't to say I approve of princess-napping. As a kid, I had this annoying tendency of liking a lot of bad guys and imagining them being friends with the good guys, which would often include the Koopalings (this is how bad fan fictions are born, people). My action figures got along much better than they should have, though there was always some bigger threat they had to work together to beat so at least I had some excuse. It wouldn't hold up now, but dude, I was in elementary school. Cut past me some slack.

Of course, I didn't have Mario toys. There weren't any action figures of them to buy, at least as far as I knew. After learning how to make home-made clay in school, however, I tried to make my own Koopa figures. I made an acceptable Larry Koopa figure, a less acceptable Ludwig, and Bowser... let's not talk about my attempt at making Bowser. It... it did not end well.

Speaking of which, they have Mario figures now. I own some myself, but the only Bowsers I've seen have been stuffed animals. Are his spikes that hazardous? I'll wear mittens, whatever, just let me buy Bowser!

...Okay, wow. I thought I was gonna post the image, maybe have a paragraph and be done, but I guess I'm a Mario Bros fanboy. Who knew. I'm going to go save me some princesses.

Mama Mia!

The full version of this image is 600x600 pixels, so it's twice as large as what I tend to post here. Larger version at DA Account.(download for full size).

Yesterday, aka Easter, I foolishly joked on Twitter about drawing Princess Peach in a bunny suit and holding a Yoshi Egg. This was a joke, but then I wanted to draw it.

In my mind, the narrative is that Mario is out on a mission, and Princess Peach is helping by providing Yoshi eggs. Which, of course, begs the question: what the hell is Mario's mission? Peach is clearly not captured by Bowser, so... what? Was Luigi kidnapped? Some foe from the Mario RPGs who doesn't care about Peach?

I have no idea. This image of a princess ruler of a mushroom kingdom in a bunny outfit who is handing out dinosaur eggs that hatch out full-sized to assist a stocky plumber who can jump twelve feet into the air and teleport through pipes has somehow managed to confuse me.

My Name Is Dan Shive. You Read My Blog. Prepare To... Um... Read More?

I have finally seen The Princess Bride. I intend to record my thoughts on it tomorrow, and make the video during my leisure time over the next week (as opposed to playing video games or hopscotch).

The video itself will mostly be narration with still images that I've drawn or appropriate stills from the movie, but there is some animation planned. This isn't intended to be a huge task, so what animation there will be will be limited, but I will do my best to give a good presentation. Most of what I want to animate is my avatar as the host, which is relatively simple given that I'll be using Flash and will essentially be posing a puppet. The hardest part is the lip sync, but that's actually not that hard to do in Flash. It's just that it's about as tedious as watching paint dry.

Given yesterday's sound test, I'm going to go ahead and get right to working on this review over making the "How To Draw A Dragon" test. I already know what I need to know, so I'd rather leave that on the back burner and get the review done first.

YouTube Sound Test

The embedded video (one instance of "hell" being said) is simply the previous post in audio form with comments from the nerdy squirrel avatar thrown in. It was a test of many things, one of which being conversion of stuff made in Flash to something I can actually upload.

This image looks a bit blurry because I wound up sizing up the video with the solution I used, which wound up involving Windows Movie Maker to make a "DVD Quality" version before the final web one. Not perfect, but it's worked well so far.

By the way, it's worth noting that this was all one take with no do-overs and I was dumb and didn't turn my head away while taking breaths. Well, not "dumb", really, given that I was testing the pop filter's capabilities, but it's something I should do for future recordings.



I'll eventually try out recording with the software that came with the mic. I recorded and edited this via Audacity, and it's not perfect. I mean, it's really good and miles beyond what I was able to get before, but I detect some minor issues. This may be just me listening to it too much and the fact that my computer's speakers are in the monitor (i.e. not the best), but then one of the reasons I'm posting this sound test is for feedback.

Oh, um, considering I WANT feedback, you may be wondering why I disabled comments on YouTube. People wondering this have clearly not spent much time reading comments on YouTube.