This is it. This was my first Cast of Horribles. After drawing these strange squigglies in front of a city, I realized I may be on to something. It took a few more drawings to flesh them out, but they became the loveable (at least in my head) creatures that now adorn this website.
I don't remember what I was thinking when I drew this. this was posted on sewcrates under my original Doodles category. It was the first doodle that stuck with me and made me want to draw more of them.
Here's what I had to say about my first attempt:
"I doodled for the first time in a while today. I’m not sure what to think of my creation. I always liked the cartoon-building style, and the little people staring at the rising circle thingy, reminded me of the scene in “City of Angels” where the angels wait on the beach for the sunrise. I don’t think I could sit through that movie again, but it was disturbing and very powerful. And it had a great soundtrack."
It wasn't until I drew Julie in the next doodle that I was truly hooked.
And there she was: Julie in the form of a Horribles. You shouldn't be surprised to learn that I was Julie-free when I drew this.
This is the first appearance of the blue guy. He's a combination of my friends, and my sense of philosophy. Like most of my friends, he's much smarter than me. And he wears glasses (which rule!). It's not a coincidence he first appears in a coffeehouse. Many great things begin with coffee.
There was a lot of discussion about the title of this doodle between Julie and my mother. They both think that the English is bad, that I should have titled it "If I only know now what I'll know then." I didn't agree and it remained the way I drew it. I know the grammar isn't right, but I was trying to convey the circular sense of time: the Little Guy is looking at himself in the past, and speaking as the past Little Guy about knowing the future. I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it, which is why I used the grammatically strange title.
Julie didn't like my first version of the little, Little Guy. He was full sized with an extra large foot. I explained that the large foot is like the large head of babies. Julie didn't buy it and I ended up redrawing him.
Ah, our new dining room table. Julie picked it out without any guidance from me. The first table we chose was from a Vietnamese furniture store. We negotiated the price down to a reasonable price, and were left negotiating only the delivery fee. When she wouldn't budge on the seventy-five bucks, I used the slow walk out to try to push her to see our point of view. She waved as the door hit us on the way out.
I think walking out only works in movies.
As to the dark table, after drawing the chair, I grew tired. I figured if I made everything dark, I wouldn't have to draw the other chairs or most of the table. I was right. Don't tell anyone, though. It's all about artistic effect. Or is that affect in this case?
This was my portrait shot. I threw the Cast together and made them smile. If they had mouths.
One cause of my migraines/headaches is hunger. If I don't eat a scheduled meal, there is a high chance that I will pay for it with some sort of headache. Even eating before I have the headache but after the scheduled time doesn't help. Actually, I think it's eating after I was hungry that triggers the headache. It's a vicious circle.
I've always wished for a pill that I could take regularly in lieu of food. Now, don't get me wrong, I like food. It's just that food tends to cause drastic mood swings in me. It's not consistent, and I can't predict when and how it will happen, but once it does, I feel terrible: either grouchy and miserable, or headachey and hiding under the covers. Either way, it's awful for me and those around me.
I really enjoy the colors in this doodle. I keep trying to use brighter colors, but it rarely works. This time it did. Of course, this isn't the most original of content, but we already knew I was a hack.
I'm usually good at putting things together. Give me a large Ikea box, and I can build furniture in less than an hour. The barbecue we bought for the Castle wasn't as easy. A few of the screws they gave us didn't fit in the holes they drilled. I spent many hours trying to make them fit, and then decided to create my own holes. I used too large of a bit, of course, and ended up with bolts holding on the left arm-thingy.
That's my mom (who visited for the weekend) and Julie in the back, watching my frustrations. While I didn't come away with a bandage on my head, I did get a few nasty splinters in my fingers from the deck.
The instruction book was really fun to draw. I need to do more of those.
I don't know what was said to me, but I was in a bad mood when I drew this. Although I enjoy receiving criticisms (from the growth perspective), it does tend to depress me a bit. I rely too much on others for my self worth. I think most people do.
Ah, when in doubt, I draw the little guy and then scribble a background until something hits me. Obviously nothing really hit me here.
That's us flying to NYC for the wedding. I drew this before we left. I was not looking forward to another flight, especially since our NY flight was in coach. Except for the luggage aggravations, it turned out not to be a bad flight.
That's Jason to the left. He was my trainer for the past couple of years. He's a big guy. Very big. I'm a small guy, much smaller now that I stopped seeing Jason and starting riding my bicycle home from work three times a week.
This brought back memories of my Snowmen in space doodles. I love drawing stars and the moon, and, come to think of it, anything in the sky. Throwing the earth in there with the space helmet was just a bonus.
I don't know what it is with the blue guy and the sky and the philosophy, but there you have it.
I'm rather proud of this sky. I'm still working the kinks out of my sky technique, but I feel like I'm getting closer.
When we were looking for rings, I told Julie that after the wedding I didn't want to wear the ring. I decided to give the ring a chance only if it provided me with powers. I told her I would accept invisibility or invulnerability, but actually I was open to anything.
As I was sitting around with Chuck and Charles after the Taiwan wedding, we were discussing what powers my ring granted me. I forget which one said it, but they told me that my ring did not grant me powers, but granted Julie powers.
I do wear my ring more than not, but we'll see how long it lasts. I occasionally attempt my "Sleeeep" (think Dark City) technique, or try to move objects with my ring-clad hand, but so far no good. I'll keep you updated on the powers of the ring.
This is one of my least favorite doodles. I expected so much more from it. It was supposed to show how playing video games is not the same as living. Now, don't get me wrong. I play a lot of video games. It's just sometimes when I've played too much, I feel like I could be using that time for better things. You know, like doodling or writing useless paragraphs on nothing.
Ah, the day and a half between the Taiwan wedding flight and the NYC wedding flight. Surprisingly, I wasn't that tired. We somehow avoided jet lag on the way home, and relaxed during the break. I even caught up on some work mails.
The title was taken from the fact that people who fly in airplanes a lot gain microseconds on their life. This is a relativity thing: if you move fast, time for you slows compared to things moving slower. When you fly at 500mph, you are moving faster relative to the people on earth. It's not that you live longer since according to your watch, you live the same amount of time. It's more that your life appears longer to those who aren't moving as fast. It's confusing and funny and absolutely brilliant (not my doodle, but that it works that way).
I drew this right after we returned from our wedding extravaganza. I enjoy sameness. I like habits and patterns and doing the same thing over and over again. I like change as well, but I view change as the opportunity to create new and better habits.
This might have been the inspiration for the color scheme of the Horribles website. I wanted to give the doodle a 50s feel. Notice the string holding up the earth? That was a last minute addition, and gave me the title.
I used to love to draw random objects. When I worked as a computer programmer in Washington D.C., I spent a lot of my time drawing wallpaper for my computer screen using random objects around my desk. I would draw coffee rings (and I didn't even drink coffee at the time--such a foolish youngster I was), paper clips, mugs, pencils, you name it, I drew it. I wish I still had some of those computer drawings. The scary part is I used a hand-coded pixel editor to draw the images pixel by pixel. Luckily, we've moved beyond pixel editing for the Horribles.
And, yes, the rug does say Geeks.
My mother called me after this was posted. It went up after our wedding, and my mother was very concerned about the newlyweds. I assured her that I drew this much earlier in the year, and it had nothing to do with our relationship. (This was posted before my fancy new website, with Create and Post dates, and squiggly lines on the bottom.)
Julie and I used to jog in Seward Park. This was in our starry-eyed living-in-sin stage. We would jog around the park, and I would listen to Julie complain: pain in her side, trouble breathing, heart rate too fast, unbearably itchy legs (I can't make this up!). After a while, I began keeping a complaint meter. The more she complained, the higher the levels. From the looks of the smoke coming from our sneakers, you can imagine the level of complaints.
Spiderman 3 was similar to the earlier Spidermen (and, yes, I can create a plural for a trademarked movie franchise): fun but not spectacular. It would have been better if it focused on less stories. There's only so much you can do in two hours and change.
Another hot day during spring. The rocket ship was originally much bigger, but I couldn't figure out how to make it look like it was approaching the sun. I eventually shrunk it down for this uninspiring doodle.
Another in a long line of tributes to Cy Twombly: the artist who taught me that if you draw enough, no matter what it looks like, it's considered art.
His art is much deeper than that, of course. It was just that before I saw him at the wonderful Menil collection in Houston, I never understood modern art. His works made me smile for two reasons: first, I couldn't believe that someone painted those scribbles and got away with calling them art and making money on them; and second, they truly were wonderful.
I never had to write stuff on the chalkboard as punishment during school. Then again, the thought of detention scared the shit out of me. I remember intensive crying in elementary school when I was given detention for throwing snowballs while working as a bus monitor (yes, I was a geeky kiss-up in my scholastic years). There were two injustices: first, I don't think any of us threw snowballs that morning; and second, they gave us the option of a week of detention or a month of not being bus monitors. I chose detention for us since it was shorter. Looking back, I should definitely have taken vacation over detention. I can't believe I volunteered to work for free. What was I thinking?
For the record, injustice tastes worse than detention.
This was drawn before summer, during a spring heatwave. Very few houses have air conditioning in Seattle. We happen to live in one that does. Of course, everything is relative. You get used to anything after awhile. That's why I keep trying to get Julie to join me as a Mountain Man (and Mountain Doctor!) in Alaska. You know, to test my theory.
