#fun fact there was supposed to be a third (technically first) sketch

[egginfroggin]

*Drops these* whoops more redraws

Stan is having a day, okay.

Ford is being unsettling in (reluctant) true Gothel fashion.

Someday I will figure out how to arrange words inside speech bubbles.

Transcription: First page First panel: Mabel: "I have magic hair that glows when I sing." Third panel: Stan: "ya WHAT"

Second page: Ford: "If it finds even the slightest bit of sunshine..." "it" "destroys" "it"

(program: krita; time: about 3.5 hours)

[skitskatdacat63]

Tradition vs Modernity vs Comradery

+ context & lore:

In the first drawing, Fernando is wearing a capote de paseo, which is what bullfighters wear before the match begins, as seen below:

In the second, Seb is shouting the very familiar "Olé" which is shouted by the crowd to praise the matador. He's a little brat, so of course he's yelling it for himself, but he did get many 💐

The third(which was a random sketch I had that I didn't think I'd finish tonight, so ignore if its messy) has very important context to me. Before going to the final act and killing the bull, matadors dedicate their montera(hat)(and symbolically: their kill) to a a specific person in the audience(or just the public as a whole.) Seb and Fernando are finally in the same color! Seb is bowing!!! And Fernando is honoring Seb!!!! Also ignore that I drew Seb's post-retirement hair. Though, maybe this drawing is supposed to represent Fernando making a dedication to his now-gone rival 😔(Seb: stop telling people im dead!)

Now, some more lore :D

So I talked about this in my last matador post but I'll expand more. I think it's very funny to characterize Fernando in this au as this fun-hating traditionalist. Because you have to understand; he's only this way when it comes to Seb. Because you absolutely KNOW he was doing silly, unserious shit back when he was younger. But absolutely god forbid Seb do anything silly.

It's very ironic because there literally is a part in the third act of a bull fight where it's basically encouraged to be a bit silly. This is a tad morbid, but basically right before they deliver the killing blow, some show their mastery over the bull by doing some superfluous action(ex. kissing the bull, kneeling in front of the bull.) There's some guy who literally would lean on the bull and mime taking a call. But anyways, Seb would def do this. I've not been able to draw it exactly how I want, but he would bend down and do his little bull horn symbol and mime charging at the bull. (Fernando, trying to make up reasons to hate Seb: oh my god, look at this blatant disrespect, look how he is disrespecting the bull, I cannot believe how rude this boy is!)

Also there's something to be said about how the matador shows mastery over the bull by kissing it or bowing to it...and Seb is technically the bull in this au and Fernando is the matador. There's just this unfortunate level of weird power inbalance that still lingers even though their rivalry is over and can't be affected anymore. There was no succinct answer about who truly was better because Seb was forced out of it. So there's always gonna be this level of "is he just pitying me? Is he just mocking me? Is he just patronizing me?" on Seb's part whenever Fernando praises him or makes dedications to him. And Fernando's always going to be haunted by the fact that there's no answer to who is truly better because he'll never know if Seb had reached his full potential or not. Anyways, they also have nasty sex while wearing their costumes and do weird bull/matador roleplay :)

[quibbs126]

I know you've done this before but can you please maybe make a darkwhip kid, but with the basis that Whipped comes from the Millenial Tree family?

I finally finished her, this lady is Whipped Ganache Cookie

Fun fact, Whipped Ganache was one of the first fankid names I came up with when I first made my list, which was a little before I opened up requests, I just didn’t get requests for darkwhip nor did I have ideas like I did for pureraisin and darklico, but then I finally ended up getting this request, so I could use it

So basically ganache is like this chocolate sauce or icing or filling, it has a lot of uses, and whipped ganache is this whipped version with more cream than chocolate. I picked it because it seemed like whipped cream but chocolate, perfect for darkwhip

The thought occurs to me that maybe chocolate mousse could have worked too (mainly due to my roommate saying whipped ganache reminded her of it), but I like Whipped Ganache. And I can save it for later (but not the other darkwhip kid, and I don’t need a third one)

Whipped ganache:

So this is technically my second time drawing her, with my first attempt only getting as far as the hair sketch. I couldn’t figure out what to do for her outfit, so I just left her for some months until yesterday

But I had a good idea of what to do for the hair (even if I changed it somewhat)

But let’s get to the outfit. Yet again, I didn’t really know what to give her, other than she probably wears dresses. I put her in a hanbok since I was like “I dunno, that’s an outfit she could wear”. And sure it looks fine, but I wasn’t really sure it fit her, specifically with the request of her having some relation to Millennial Tree Cookie, but you know, no one gave me a goddamn answer when I asked (well other than my friend who said keep the hanbok, but she also said she was biased so) so I just had to stick with the hanbok. I’m still not sure it works to be honest. I mean, if she’s going for a formal event/festival in the Dark Cacao Kingdom, sure, but I’m not sure it works as her default. Maybe if I can come up with something better I can make a new design with that, but for now, this is what I have

I’m also not sure about her outfit colors to be honest. I wanted her to have pinks, but I also wanted her to have browns (and also that purple I got that looked neat), and I’m not sure I found the best balance in the end. But I asked my friend and she said “look good” so I kept it

I like the mountain pattern on her hanbok, I got that straight from Dark Choco’s costume

Sorry, I don’t have much to say. I came up with the hair months ago and don’t really remember all the logic other than it being long sort of like Millie and having pearls because Whipped Cream, and I have more complaints about the outfit because I don’t think it fits. But I like everything else about her aside from her outfit

Anyways, character time

So I think I came up with some ideas for her back in July when we were coming back from England, though I soon went on to work on Vanilla Lily/Witch Hazel (and fun fact, I haven’t looked back at those notes until right now as I’m writing this)

So first thing about Whipped Ganache (that I probably should have mentioned in the design section), she is very tall. She isn’t necessarily wide, but she is tall, taller than either of her parents. I just wanted to mention that

But anyways one of her main things is that she has healing magic, which is what she’s supposed to be doing with the flower in the sketch (wasn’t sure how to give off the glowing effect though). But also, while her magic is healing, it’s deadly towards things of dark magic, like what healing magic does to undead things in old games (actually as far as I’m aware that’s only FF7)

I’m remembering now, I think one thing I envisioned with her is her summoning a giant ass laser like what Millennial Tree does in his Skill, and when she fires it, her allies caught in it would be healed while her enemies (presumably made of dark magic) would be harmed

Whipped Ganache is generally a very serene and kind person, has the patience of a saint. I’m not sure she has a breaking point, she probably does but I haven’t thought much on it. She’s very attuned to nature as well, maybe not to the point of being a tree hugger, but enough that she doesn’t like blatant exploitation of it. Also she’d survive very easily by herself in the wild

Another thing about her is that she plays a harp. Not a lyre like what Carol or Lilybell uses, but a full giant harp. I got that from listening to Millennial Tree Cookie’s theme

Anyways, I think that’s about it for her. But also just a note, she’s not the only darkwhip kid I plan to make, it’s just that she doesn’t necessarily follow the same rule of being related to Millennial Tree. I mean she and Whipped Ganache live in the same timeline, they’re sisters, but she doesn’t have much that makes that trait noticeable, so she’ll get her own thing

But yeah, I hope you enjoyed Whipped Ganache

[thoseofgreatambition]

Dear George || Gred and Feorge

pt 1 || pt 2 

description: Though he didn’t like to speak of it, George struggled after the war. He’d let himself lose step of things in the comfort of soft bodies and the hope of forever. Sleep escaped him. Worry consumed him. A spark of hope came from the cunning Gwendolyn. George tries hard to squash any thoughts down, to escape the cycle of mistakes. 

a/n: I am so shocked y’all liked the last chapter! I hope y’all keep liking it. I’ve been hoping to convey my intention through this fanfic well, and I hope my messages about different types of health start to come through. 

warnings: anxiety

Pairing: George x OC

Wordcount: 1.6K

“Hey Gred!” Fred was smiling brightly at his brother as George came through the fireplace. Fred was standing in their kitchen in front of a series of potions that he was going through dose by dose. His cane sat atop the counter next to a pile of product prototype sketches.

The elder of the twins hadn’t had too much to drink, seeing as it had been so long since he’d been able to, but it was just enough to keep him quite happy. He forced another potion down his throat, wincing at the taste. He’d complain about how many he had to take, but he was simply happy that the number was going down. “Where’d you go off to with Gwen?” If it had been a few months earlier, Fred would be quite confident with the answer to that question, but now he wasn’t quite sure.  

They hadn’t really talked about George’s behavior after the war, but Fred was happy his brother seemed back to himself. George, for a short while after the war, had thrust himself into a series of ill advised relationships. The girls had all been a tad off their rocker but then again, George had been the same. Fred knew his brother was seeking companionship instead of actually dealing with the after effects of the war.

Really, Fred was much less worried about him nowadays, though the fact George couldn’t sleep was cause for concern.

He was curious about what had happened with Gwen though. He hadn’t seen her since before the battle, and tonight he hadn’t really gotten to talk with her. Hopefully she’d start coming back to London more often.

George raised the bottle of potion and the satchel of tea he’d been given as he walked towards the kitchen. “I told her that I can’t sleep and she helped me out.” There was a bit of hope in his chest that had gone away several months before when his other routes of relief had petered out. He’d sat with Gwen during potions. He knew she was good at this, and had faith in her.

He frowned as he noticed Fred all ready for bed and already working on his medicines. George wouldn’t say he coddled his twin, but after the war he’d been the largest caretaker in Fred’s life. More so than anyone else in the family. “You need any help there mate?”

With a shake of his head, Fred downed the rest of his potions. “Nah, I’ve got it.” He gave George a smile, quite certain as to what his partner was thinking. “You can take a break now.” As much as he appreciated all the help George had given him, it was nice to be a bit more independent now, and Fred wanted to start taking more care of himself.

Unsure of what to do with himself, without the task of taking care of his brother, George nodded and took the potion Gwen had given him. “I’m going to try and sleep.” Fixing the tea was next on his list, and he was hopeful that this might work. He situated himself next to Fred in the kitchen, leaning against a counter across from the stove as he flicked his wand to start the tea.

“Let’s try and work more on the Concentrating Candies tomorrow. I’m pretty confident we can get the recipe right with a little more tweaking.” Maybe they could get Ron or Lee to help out. Testing the candies on themselves time after time wasn’t always much fun. “We ought to get more test subjects this time, it’ll help out our sample size.”

Last time they’d made the candies too strong, and had spent the day hyperfocused on the shop. At least everything had gotten cleaned, George mused.

Fred nodded as he chugged the contents of a water glass. After taking those potions for so long you’d think he’d be used to the taste, but that wasn’t the case. He tried not to shudder as he focused on what George was saying. “That’s a good idea.” He knew what test subjects George was thinking of. “Let’s ask Ron. I think Lee’s busy tomorrow.”

Ron was more likely. He’d been quite helpful after the battle. When the twins had returned to their shop, it had been ransacked. Their inventory was all over the floor, shelves were broken, and there was enough soot to suggest that several small fires had taken place somehow. Fred had reckoned there’d been some misplaced spells when they’d left. The twins and Ron had been able to fix up the shop itself, and it looked almost as good as new. The problem they had now was replacing lost inventory. It was like starting from square one.

“I’ll pop over to his place in the morning and ask him to come over and help.” George stretched as he moved away from the counter. He was in a strange grey area at the moment, where his body felt tired from a long day, but his mind was far too awake to let him rest. “G’night Forge. Call for me if you need anything.” He clapped Fred on the back before walking out of their small kitchen, down the hallway and into his room.

Part of him was tempted to just head to bed and hope for the best. He took a sip of his tea, and decided against the idea. It hadn’t really worked for him in the past, and after all he’d promised Gwen a letter written tonight. With a flick of his wand he moved all of the clutter off of his desk, and sat down with a piece of parchment.

Gwendolyn, Gwen, Dear Gwen,

It’s about 1 a.m. I just took the potion that you gave me tonight, or yesterday, depending on how technical you want to get, and I’m drinking the tea. I hope you know that the potion tastes like piss. The tea is quite nice though, seems like something Mum would like. If everything works I won’t complain, and I’ll be sure to visit and pay you back somehow. If this works we aren’t even anymore, I’ll definitely owe you. Start thinking about what you want, alright?

Turns out I didn’t need to rush home back to Fred, he was quite alright without me, got all ready by himself. I shouldn’t be so surprised. He’s gotten loads better. It’s been almost a year since the battle after all.

George frowned and re-read what he had written. It was quite a frank telling of what was going on, but at the moment he was just tipsy enough to not really care if he was getting too personal.

It was weird. I haven’t minded taking care of him in the least, I know he’d do the same for me in a second, but it was almost disappointing that I couldn’t help this time. I’m happy, I’m very happy, but I don’t know quite what to do with myself at the moment. Have you got a potion for mixed feelings? I’d like to buy that one.

You wanted a joke didn’t you? One that isn’t an ear pun?

My friends say I say too many skeleton jokes. I suppose I ought to put more backbone in them.

Still a pun, but you ought to like it. I can’t exactly turn a phrase in a letter after all.

Fred and I are going to be working on our Concentrating Candies tomorrow. Those school aides I told you about. It’s a tricky recipe so far. First batch made us more distracted. Second batch made us sick. Third made us too focused. We did get quite a lot done on that last one though, so at least it was closer. We’re hoping to just get something done that will help students focus enough to not get easily distracted during a test or while studying, but it’s easy to get to too much or too little.

We’ll be doing the next batch tomorrow. I’m going to see if Ron or Lee can help us, it’s a bit better indicator if something works if more people can test it.

It’s actually really nice talking to you again, even if it’s just been tonight and through letters.

You ought to come by London more. Your old friends miss you here.

Don’t you want to open a shop up in Diagon Alley? There’s a lot of empty places now, that are going for pretty cheap. You ought to look into it. We could be neighbors. That would be nice. We don’t know a lot of people who live here. Fred and I are the youngest ones here.

I hope your Dad didn’t mind me popping over. From what you told me though he was probably happy to get another customer.

If this potion works I’ll be buying them from now on. It’s only fair.

George finished off the last of his tea, and felt himself growing more and more drowsy as time passed. Still, he wanted to finish the letter before he went to bed. He’d promised after all. 
 A lot of us that used to be on the Quidditch team, or at least on the Gryffindor one, are talking about doing a small game together. I’ll let you know when it’ll be. I expect you to come to it and play with us.

No more hiding away in Wales.

I was actually really happy when Fred suggested we do a reunion tonight. It was all slapped together, but it was really nice to see him well enough to go out and excited to see all his old friends together. I think it’s been hard seeing people visit him just because he’s been unwell.

I’m glad you came, it was fun talking to you.

I’m actually getting pretty beat now, so I guess you were right, relaxing before bed works pretty well. I think your potion is helping too.

I’ve got to go to bed now, so I’ll send this with an owl to you. I expect a response as soon as you can. I’m not letting you go so long without talking to anyone again.

From George From Gred Sincerely George George

George did a quick read over of what he had written before shrugging. It was a pretty personal one, but he trusted Gwen enough with all of this, and he was too tired to rewrite the damn thing.

Quick as he could, he folded the letter into an envelope, sealed it with a bit of wax, and handed it to the owl he and Fred shared. “Take this to Gwen, alright Peeves?” There was a muffled hoot in response, before the barn owl took off out of the window.

The redhead stretched and let out a yawn. He could already feel the fact that he was going to sleep quite well tonight. That was certainly going to be a pleasant change of pace.

Climbing into bed, George expected to be hit by the typical wave of concerns and busy thoughts that kept him awake all too often. Tonight though, he felt much more at ease. It wasn’t as if he thought Gwen was wrong when she said writing a letter would help, but he hadn’t exactly thought that writing down his thoughts would have such a big impact. Turning over onto his side, he shrugged the blankets on top of himself and closed his eyes.

For the first time in a very long while, George Weasley slept well.

taglist: @harrysweasleys @geeksareunique @insearchofnewdreams @notstandingstill-imlyinginwait @lumos-barnes @thatfuckingliardavidtennant @slytherinqween @xinyourdreamsx @skiving-snackboxess @wildfire-whizbangs @dwarfwizard-from-panem @diary-of-an-onliner @answer-the-sirens @woakiees @black-widow-fangirl @theheirofnightandday @summerstardust @whysoseriouspadfoot @chocok22 @myhopesareanchoredinyou @siriusblackisme @illusivedaydreamer @zeeneee @writingwitchly @wolfpotter12 @obsessedwithrandomthings @carolinesbookworld @shadowsinger11 @pit-and-the-pen @summer-writes @peachesandpinks @ickle-ronniekins @gweaslvy @alpinewinchester

[happikattwuzheere]

What is your process working on art for Ghosts? How do you choose which scenes to draw, and how do you go about capturing that essence when you’re drawing? I love your art and I look forward to seeing every doodle and full piece each chapter :’)

ayyy fun art skills question 

okay sO. here’s a cut because there’s gonna be a lot of screenshots probably. 

edit: hey tumblr why did you eat my cut--

so for choosing scenes: well i’ve got a hard rule that there’s one for every flashback, because consistency is a good thing, and as a result of that i actually have a whole file that’s JUST concept sketches for flashback pictures, but i’ll get into concepts in a second here. Other art for chapter is largely just me looking for striking visuals; moments we have planned in the chapter that i feel would translate well to art, and which i could enhance the weight of with an image, or failing a good moment sometimes as with this past chapter i’ll go for something a little more abstract to capture a general vibe of the chapter. The picture of astrid w/ trent behind her, with her in his shadow looking dangerous--A lot of the tension in Ghosts is gonna come from that; from the ambiguity on where Astrid stands in all this and what she’ll do if/when she learns certain things, etc etc 

anyway though! that’s how to choose things; the next step is for me to do some sketches until i hit on a concept/composition that i like. These sketches are sometimes very small at first, because thumbnails are a great way to get composition down without worrying too much about the details, and when i do that they look like this: 

(Both of these were attempts at the art for chapter 6′s flashback; the one on the left was scrapped, and the one on the right i ended up using!) 

Sometimes i don’t go small at first though, it varies. Sometimes I get a sketch I like on the first try, too, but other times it takes a LOT of tries--chapter 5′s went through three attempts before I got one I liked; and these were also all drawn before the actual flashback was written!

here was attempt 1: 

which has an ok composition for the basic theme of “the boys are being romantic and astrid is being an annoying little sister about it”, but i wasn’t in love with it, plus it broke a rule that i’ve been using for the art that i can’t explain without spoiling some stuff but trust me it just doesn’t work. 

then we came up with the idea of the kids specifically hanging out at soltryce around this dried up fountain hidden behind some bushes, and that worked out better for this scene; the first attempt at it looked like this 

which was getting there but still not really interesting composition...and then, hey, third time’s the charm 

im just gonna keep using this picture as the example because its absolutely one of my favorites i’ve done. but anyway 

from this stage then i copy the whole sketch and move it onto its own file, and i collect whatever reference photos or palettes i need and start cleaning up the sketch a bit so i can lay down base colors! 

...i apparently dont have the rough flat colors for this image anymore, oops, but i can at least give you an idea of what those would’ve looked like and what a somewhat cleaned up sketch looks like! 

(i always sketch astrid in red, bren/caleb in blue, and eodwulf in green at this stage; it helps make it easier as my sketches get more complicated to determine where one person starts and another ends) 

and then this first pass of flat colors is 100% purely to determine if i like the composition still when it’s colored, how the lighting/shading works, if the characters look like they really are in the background, if the mood is conveyed through the color scheme chosen, etc. it’s not supposed to be neat or look at all polished yet, in fact a lot of the time this stage can be REALLY sloppy. this is purely just making sure the overall feel is what i want

and from there every other step is basically just cleanup and tweaking! like, lineart and everything else are technically a lot more complicated than that, but i mean, the hard part of conveying the mood and getting the composition down are done and the rest is usually pretty smooth sailing, aside from the occasional hiccup of “why wont you LOOK RIGHT” and spending hours looking for more references, 

anyway thats how the art happens! :D 

the whole time, also, ed @tactfulgrimalkin is getting spammed with wips. just. so many. 

[mysticsparklewings]

Ink Dance

I feel like it's very ironic that a break from Inktober art on my front looks like the regular Inktober content from a lot of artists. Why is this a thing when I normally don't do ink drawings like this? First of all, I was just really in the mood to draw something princessy and romantic/sweet; Second of all, probably because of all the seasonal ink drawings going around, I had kind of an itch to give more a "classic" Inktober approach a try, especially since I didn't have any super strong ideas for a color palette once I had my romantic-type sketch ready to move to the next stages. Third of all, while I was thinking about where to take the sketch and possibly doing ink things, I watched a video by one of my favorite YouTubers where the challenge was to make a drawing with nothing but dots--aka Stippling. And from that, since I didn't really want to add anything else to the silhouette/shape of the skirt after I spent what felt like way too long trying to get it right, I thought maybe stipple-shading it would be a good way to make it look more interesting by making it look kind of glittery/sparkly. Now, if you've known me long enough, you may remember that I do not have a great relationship with the concept of stippling after a certain art project I had to do years ago. Problems in that scenario include The subject matter, the "twist," the size of the drawing, etc. This time, I'd be doing the stippling on my own terms on a significantly smaller scale, and I would not be limited to stippling and stippling alone. I was still apprehensive about the idea because as much as I liked the sketch I really didn't want to start stippling and end up totally hating the final product because of it. And a full disclosure that the actual act of stippling is still pretty tedious, but this time it was more bearable because I wasn't running on four hours of sleep in a brightly lit classroom with no other option for mental stimulation/distraction, repeatedly stabbing a gigantic piece of paper, unable to stop and take a break if necessary for fear of getting in trouble or not finishing the darn thing on time, but you can't just not pay attention and zone-out because then you're going to end up with dots in the wrong place and-- Do you see why I didn't like my high school art classes? Anyway. I did my best with the proportions/pose since I couldn't find a good reference for the exact pose I had in my head and I got tired of trying to find one (and I really didn't want to settle for something that was "close enough" but still not what I wanted). So I had to go largely with what I saw in my head and my best instincts. I also purposefully used the girl's dress skirt to hide the guys' legs because I didn't feel like trying to draw guy dress shoes. Or feet, for that matter. This was largely about just having fun with some cute imagery and ink techniques, not "let's draw perfectly accurate formal clothing including shoes." And you know, I think considering I had to make it up as I went along, it still turned out pretty well. After that, I transferred the sketch to a piece of mixed media paper and went on with the ink. I did the lines around the characters first, naturally, to set the boundaries of whatever ink techniques I ended up using, and then I started with the stippling. I think I started with the guy's jacket, but as I went I did end up doing so back-and-forth between the stippled areas to try and keep the shading and contrast relatively consistent. I had decided to do his jacket as stippled during planning for a little more visual interest since otherwise, he would've been a lot of just lines/hatching. It also makes the stippled dress look less out of place. (And also in real life I wish it were more common practice for guys to wear sequined formal jackets because I think they're just a cool fashion item.) After that, I moved on to doing their hair, which was a pretty obvious thing; the hatching/lines technique is just a really nice hair texture. Though getting it just right to leave the shine did take a little extra care. And really, other than his bowtie, the rest of the ink techniques were all hatching/lines, since those seemed like the best-suited textures for his pants, shirt, and her crown since those are all supposed to be relatively smooth items. Technically, the bowtie probably would be too in real life, but I like the slight difference in tone that cross-hatching it gives. Originally, I didn't really have a plan for their skin and that held true after I did everything else. I really didn't want to accidentally ruin it with too much texture or the shading being too harsh, so after some consideration, I just decided to use a few gray Copics just a little bit for shading, kind of like what happened on Roses in Your Eyes. It's barely noticeable, but I think it's just enough to get the idea across that they're not stark-white like the paper. The only bad thing about the markers is that the ink line for the guy's chin did end up smudging just a little, so in person, it almost looks like he has some stubble or a goatee that I hadn't planned on being there. I touched up a little on the scan, but it's still kinda there. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, and some might argue it really works since my style of drawing guys tends to lean more feminine as-is, it's just not what I was expecting. Also, since they're so small, I left their eyes alone as far as any further shading or coloring goes. It just didn't seem like a good idea to try anything in such a tiny space. And from far away you really don't notice the difference. Or at least I don't. And it was mostly unintentional, but I do like the contrast of how the guy's colors are mostly pretty dark, while the girl's are more mid and light-toned. After all, that was said and done though, it still felt like it was missing something. Thus, I couldn't help myself and once I'd thought about it, I ended up adding a red box behind the characters using a Stardust gelly roll pen. So in real life, it's also nice and glittery.  And I tried my hand at doing the white outline in reverse; instead of drawing it in with a white gel pen after the fact, I just colored in the box right up to the characters and tried to leave the space behind. I did have to touch up one or two spots where I got too close, but it was an interesting experiment that worked out pretty well. Red felt like a good color to go with because of how it contrasts with the black and white, and also I thought the whole "black white and red/read" joke was kinda funny. And yet still, it was missing something. I ended up going around one more time with a Pentel Sparkle Pop, one of the pens I had considered for the box behind them but nixed because it seemed too heavy/dark, and in the end, I think that was a good call. Together, the box and the outline with them a sort of grounding and add a nice pop of color without being too distracting. Overall, this was actually fairly simple and it turned out being much faster to polish off than I expected, probably largely because of the lack of color and not having to work about picking out the right individual values and getting the blending/shading smooth between different colors or having to build up layers over time. It may not be the greatest pen-and-ink drawing of all time, but considering this isn't something I normally go for, I'm pretty happy with it. And if I'm being completely honest, it was nice to take a break from my way of Inktober and make some art using more traditional methods in the spirit of the season. Speaking of which, I can hardly believe we've come so far already; there's only like a week left to go!   ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[madcapmoon]

The mission to always be in disagreement: Interview with Guy Picciotto (Fugazi)

by Pepo Márquez

«Thanks for your questions and my apologies for the delayed reply, it's been a very busy month here. Here are my answers and I hope they will be ok ».

Could you tell me what you are working on now and what is or has been your connection with music in recent years? I know you played with the much missed Vic Chesnutt and that you have produced some albums, besides writing music that has never been published and participating in improvised jams, either for cinema with your friend Jem Cohen or in improvisation festivals, but I must admit that I am a little unaware of your activity lately.

This question reminds me a little of that verse that said: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" of the song "Mrs. Robinson " by Simon & Garfunkel. Joe DiMaggio was an American baseball player who, when asked about that verse, replied: "I've been here." I feel more or less the same. I'm here, doing the same things I did when I was 16: playing, writing music and working on the music of others, as well as attending to the business of being alive. Maybe it is not as visible to the public as other things that I was involved in, in the past, like playing in Fugazi for example, but that does not mean that the whole process on my part is not exactly the same. I play the guitar and work in my studio. I work on music, sometimes edited and sometimes not. I produce, mix and assist technically on other artists' albums, which are sometimes edited and sometimes not. For me everything is the same: I'm still linked to the creative process, to the process of doing things.

Before being in Fugazi I was in five other bands [the bands that Picciotto refers to are Rites Of Spring, One Last Wish, Happy Go Licky, Brief Weeds and The Black Light Panthers]. Some of them were never, and still are not, as well known as others, but that does not mean that the work was not serious and real. Things like working with Vic Chesnutt or Jem Cohen movies are not simple elements to add to a resume or any Wikipedia entry and are not evaluable in terms of tours or products. These were and are relationships that are an enormously defining part of my life. For me, music means human relationships: music is friendship. It happens all the time, even when you do not pay attention.

The previous question has led me to the next one: your relationship with social networks. There is no way to find you on any social network. Why this position and what is your opinion about the reality of social networks?

I have no opinion on how people use social networks: I respect all the options that make sense for the rest. Speaking only about me, I do not like the ubiquity that surrounds the concept or the expectation that in a certain way each citizen is asked to participate in them. For me that expectation is very dangerous because it supposes that one does not exist at all without that presence. I think it's a very retrograde way of understanding what is actually a vision of some corporations of what social interactions should be. I understand how useful technology is in terms of disseminating ideas, bridging distances and favoring the creation of communities, but I also feel that it is not the only way to make these things happen, and it is certainly not the only way in which that these things happen I also resist the idea of ​​believing that each person is a "brand" that needs to be elaborated and maintained for some form of public consumption. For some people it may be nice, but for me it is claustrophobic and alienating, so I choose not to participate in it.

There have been times when things have happened in my community - concerts or, unfortunately, friends who have died - of which I have learned days or weeks later simply because I was not connected as the rest are. In a way it is a lonely feeling but I understand that everyone assumes that this type of information is known by the rest immediately. In fact, I feel locked in a primitive state of development: of postal letters and telephone and, to a certain extent, emails. I am not resentful and I understand how quickly people assimilate the change and I assume it is something shared. I have no moral judgment about it, but I have reached my comfort point in this way and I am not obliged to go further.

Do you keep up with what is happening in the music scene today? Are you still buying records and going to concerts? What new groups or solo acts are you currently listening to? Are you still contacting bands to produce their records?

Absolutely yes to all the questions. I still have a lot of fun going to record stores, buying vinyl and going to concerts. It remains an incredible source of pleasure for me. They also frequently ask me to produce records, although I do not say yes with the same frequency. I try only to work with groups that I know well and that are related because I do not trust in my technical abilities enough to consider myself an "available professional" , regardless of the fact that my agenda is usually full of work that I have previously accepted.

One of the groups I've heard the most lately is Xylouris White , a duet composed by the Australian drummer Jim White and the Cretan lutenist Giorgios Xylouris. I have produced two of their albums, Goats and Black Peak , and we have just started working on a third album. For me they represent a horizon in their musical capacity: their work is deep and real, but with an expressivity freed from any limitations. Their live shows are wild and I can not recommend them enough.

When did you write your last song?

I always write things, so I guess the answer is "yesterday". I would not necessarily call it a song because I believe that a song is the final presentation of a band and right now I am not part of one, so I do not have the urgency at this moment to complete my work. But yes, I write things all the time : ideas, sketches, sections. Sometimes they are used for films like Occupy Newsreels or We Have An Anchor , by Jem Cohen; but other times they have nowhere to go, so I simply file them for the future. I should be much more diligent and always record them, because sometimes they just disappear, but that's okay: some ideas always come back.

Those who were part of the first wave of hardcore / punk in Washington DC and who were in their twenties when it all happened, are older and face an adult life with new realities (having children, educating them, having jobs that may not correspond with what they had imagined, etc.). How do you apply the ideas you had in the early 80s about the world and your country to your reality today? What is your position on such particular issues as your child's education, where to live, how to live, etc.?

The people who formed DC's first hardcore scene were even younger than you say: our ages ranged from 13 to 21 years old. It was a very, very young creative community. I would say that it is probably the youngest artistic movement with a highly coherent discourse that has never had such an impact, but maybe I am crazy. In many things I would not say that I have changed so much as to how I see the world: I still think that music is a form of social connection and also of resistance, just as before.Much of the isolation and frustration I felt as a child I still feel now, but in a much more intense and at the same time more oriented way, so I feel that everything is part of the operation of my own machinery. As my friend Ian said [refers to Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records and member of Minor Threat and Fugazi, among many other projects] in one of our songs: "I'm on a mission to never agree"( « My mission is to always disagree » ). I agree with that!

After the presidential elections in the United States, your country seems deeply divided and you face (well, really all of us) the four most uncertain years of recent international political history. How do you face this reality and how do you think people can contribute to changing this trend?

Every day is one more turn of the nut. It is a horror movie and I am very anxious about everything that is to come. That said, the United States has had many years of dark trajectory, so one can only say that the struggle continues. People should use all their talents, all the strength at their disposal, to resist. I do not  think that having hope is even necessary: ​​the important thing is to fight to maintain your sanity and your dignity as a human being.

I have read many old interviews that you did and I always notice the same thing: that you talk about books. What are you reading right now? What book or books have ever inspired you? Could you recommend to us three books and explain the reason?

Right now I'm reading Uproot by my friend Jace Clayton (also known as DJ Rupture ) who explores how music is made globally in the digital age. As far as I have read it is superinteresting and completely relevant to the debate in which many musicians are now involved because the technology of production and distribution is changing radically. The book is written with huge amounts of love and respect for a wide variety of musical traditions and there is much to learn from it.

I also recommend any book by Elena Ferrante , from Italy. Her books are very popular here, so I'm not showing anything that is not known on a large scale but, in any case, I think her writing is important and glorious from all points of view.

Is there any musical, cinematographic or artistic collaboration on your horizon that you can share with us?

As I said before, I'm currently working on the production of the third album of the band Xylouris White. I'm also preparing music for another film and direct collaboration with director Jem Cohen called Gravity Hill: Sound and Image , which we will play next year in New York and the Big Ears Festival in Tennessee.

Sorry to ask you this out of context, but I need to share it: while I was researching for this interview, I discovered a version of an Olivia Newton John song that Fugazi recorded with Vic Chesnutt. I did not know about it, so I wonder if there are more collaborations, songs or versions recorded by Fugazi in the past that have gone unnoticed by most of your audience.

The song you're referring to is actually a collaboration between Ian [MacKaye, guitar and vocals], Joe [Lally, bassist] and Brendan [Canty, drummer] from Fugazi with Vic. Actually I was not in the city when the they recorded, so there were three quarters of Fugazi playing with Vic on that song. My work with Vic can be heard on the albums North Star Deserter and At The Cut , and it was seen on a series of tours in the United States and Europe for a period of four years.

With regard to unreleased material of Fugazi , yes that there are enough things that we did that have never been published, but there are not too many collaborations or covers. We did not use to play other people's songs, but we recorded constantly and not everything we recorded ended up going on the discs. Maybe one day we will listen to all this material to know if there is something worth sharing. We will see.

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars The High Republic: Light of the Jedi Review

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In the new Star Wars novel The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, a starship has broken up in hyperspace, an accident that wasn’t supposed to be able to happen. The Jedi of the High Republic era (set 200 years before The Phantom Menace), noble, strong, and united by the battle meditation of Avar Kriss, go to the scene of the accident to rescue survivors and prevent the debris from destroying a planetary system. As the Jedi start to unravel the mystery of how the accident happened, their enemies are gaining more information, too. The Nihil, once a loosely connected band of pirates, is forming into a killing scalpel as its leader makes some discoveries of his own. The two groups are on a collision course.

With The High Republic series, which also consists of the young adult novel Into the Dark, middle-grade book A Test of Courage, and comics from Marvel and IDW, the team of authors reverse engineers the MCU model, introducing dozens of new characters at once, and then digging into their personalities and backstories later. It means Light of the Jedi is refreshingly free of info-dumps: the scenes themselves illustrate new ideas. For example, this era has cool starfighters the Jedi pilot with the Force alone. A Jedi of this era only draws their lightsaber if they’re willing to use it, and each character feels and connects with the Force in distinct ways. If these Jedi are superheroes, they can be distinguished by these traits. This one experiences the Force as music, this one as an ocean.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

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It’s the ultimate Star Wars in medias res, offering an excellent adventure if you’re able to just stick around long enough to figure things out. The first Del Rey novel in the series has plenty of reasons for me to want to stick around. Cool creatures, inventive action that bends but never breaks the rules of the Force, and compelling relationships and perspectives are all here. But Light of the Jedi also requires the reader to do some work, with an opening that introduces so many characters there’s no time to understand why one should care about any of them. Someone in this book is named Wet Bub.

The plot is broken up into two large sections that bounce around between events and perspectives. What’s at stake? The reputation of the Republic, now expanding into the outer reaches of the galaxy. Who has to make a choice? All of the Jedi, all in their own ways, but none who take the full weight of the plot. It starts the series off with a bang, certainly, introducing the vast number of Jedi and their allies, but the best human touches come only at the end. Sometimes I wondered whether the whole book could be reversed, starting off with smaller moments and building to a big climax that instead gets the book going. The opening is too clean and shiny (perhaps an intentional divergence from the usual Star Wars grunge look). The dialogue is choppy, the characterization vague.

You have to be willing to settle in, and perhaps read the other books in the series so the characters begin to feel a bit more like a central cast, and then you can pick a favorite and read for them. In Marvel terms, pick your hero. Does all of that sound like work? Maybe it does. I don’t generally like the “just wait until it gets good” method of consuming media, and that was very much my experience here. Scenes put in place for context simply feel meandering.

I kept coming back to the fact that I counted 11 named characters in the first third, and that none of them are listed on the front flap. And the lack of a true main character makes it difficult to describe what happens without turning the book upside down and inside out.

But once Light of the Jedi got going, I had a lot of fun. This really is a book about good people, including politicians and ship captains who are easy to root for. The novel isn’t deep, doesn’t interrogate decades of Jedi discourse and re-knit them from the inside — but it does the work to prove that being good can be deep and difficult too, that good people are complicated. These Jedi have lots of different perspectives, opinions, and their own personal moral lines they will and won’t cross. Best of all, the book shows that good is cool, especially as illustrated by a daring rescue on alien horseback.

And I chose which heroes I wanted to see on my backpack. Both are on the front cover — Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann, old friends who might have been lovers if they hadn’t been Jedi. Avar is the quintessential Jedi Master — serene, kind, focused, effortlessly comfortable connecting the minds of dozens of people around her. In contrast, Elzar is an unpredictable “tinkerer,” interested in what he sees as the depths of the ocean that is the Force. Jedi apprentice Bell also gets a nice little arc about learning to use an impressive power, but “having a character arc” is a low bar for a novel to reach. Many of the other characters felt like sketches or profiles more than fully fleshed out people.

Overall, Light of the Jedi is a Star Wars adventure full of potential, thanks to what’s on the page as well as how it’s informed by the original 1977 movie. The book also found in me an emotion it sometimes becomes hard to access these days. There’s a lot of justification required to like something lately. The people who unabashedly enjoy things they don’t find technically good are often the quiet ones, disinterested in the very justifications that would make noise online. Even the very fact that I try to write seriously about tie-in novels, a subgenre that gets blanket scorn from one side of the spectrum and blanket approval from the other, sometimes forces me to veer away from apparent contradictions. I need to get back to thinking a different way. This book isn’t technically good. And I liked it.

The post Star Wars The High Republic: Light of the Jedi Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[didsomebodysayspaghettimemes]

Fun Fact!

I actually spent about 2 hours writing this. I needed to do some character sketches for school and technically they were supposed to be new characters for a short story but I realized that I never wrote out character sketches for my Gasters! So I spent a lot of time on these and it’s nice to have them written out instead of just in my head. Ready?

When I was writing another comic with UT Gaster, I came up with a few different personalities for Gaster. Since the character is pretty much left to head canon, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a personality for him. I’ve always had 3 different "Gaster personalities" that I liked and, when I ended up doing a comic with Fell, Swap, and Dr. Gaster, I got to use all of them! So I tweaked the personalities to fit with the Gasters from each universe. I started with the common head canon that Gaster is Sans and Papyrus's father and I based his personality on his relationship with them.

The first personality, I gave to Fell. He's a good father and really cares about his Sans and Papyrus. But he's sarcastic, lazy, spiteful, selfish, and doesn't really do his job anymore. He spent the majority of his life trying to break the barrier and found that nothing he did could break it. After he accepts that he can't break the barrier without human souls, he gives up. He stops taking things seriously and uses his scientific knowledge to create useless little things just because he can. In spite of becoming a lazy jerk whose given up on trying to help his fellow monsters, he makes sure that his Sans and Papyrus are well taken care of. They're the only reason he puts any effort into anything. Sans and Papyrus are failed experiments and not what he intended to make but instead of seeing them as failures, Fell sees them as the one good thing that came out of his experiments and therefore, they’re very important to him. He’s more emotional and less logical than his Undertale counterpart.

I gave Swap the second personality…sorta. I had a more lovable, innocent Gaster personality that I had to change a bit to fit Underswap. Swap isn’t a scientist so that aspect was hard to work around. I made it work though. The means of his Sans and Papyrus’s creation is a bit more complicated but because of Swap’s more loving nature, his Sans and Papyrus were never used as experiments. Swap is also a very good father. Probably the best out of these three. He’s very friendly and helpful. Just a real pleasant guy.

Then the third personality…hmmm. This one’s complicated. Dr. Gaster is, at heart, a very dedicated scientist. He’s not necessarily cold or evil but he is very blunt and he bottles up emotions until they become toxic. He has many regrets. After initially failing at every turn to break the barrier, instead of giving up like Fell, Dr. Gaster becomes more determined to break it. Through any means necessary. When Dr. Gaster creates Sans, he isn’t happy. He wanted to create an artificial soul for experiments, not a child. Sans being a sentient child and not an empty soul doesn’t stop Dr. Gaster from doing the experiments he had intended to do on the soul. Dr. Gaster then creates Papyrus for a few reasons: the first being that he needs a stronger test subject; the second being that he wants to see if he can recreate the mistake he made with Sans; and the final reason, as Sans grows older, he wants more attention and Dr. Gaster, being much too busy with work, makes Papyrus to keep him company. Dr. Gaster’s relationship with his Sans and Papyrus is…complicated. He had the best intentions, he really did. Most of the experiments are harmless and done with Sans and Papyrus’s consent. Dr Gaster does see them as his sons so he tries not to do anything that will seriously hurt them but there are a couple experiments that he deems more important than their relationship. He wants to free everyone. He’s so focused on providing a better future that he doesn’t pay attention to the damage he’s doing in the present. After Sans and Papyrus fail to do what he created them for, Dr. Gaster begins to resent them. He doesn’t blame them, they were only tools in his experiments, but he stops seeing them as his sons who need him and only sees them as constant reminders of his failures. Of course, after years of being told that their value to Dr. Gaster is based on their usefulness to him, this really hurts Sans and Papyrus. Dr. Gaster didn’t intend on hurting them like that. He’s very logical and sees things as they are. Sans and Papyrus are not useful to his work so he treats them as such and ends up shutting them out. 

So long story short, Dr. Gaster just sucked at being a father. Anyway, kudos to you if you took the time to read all this. I’ve put...a lot...of thought into my Gasters. If you have any questions about them, feel free to send them in to me, Laney!

[cobrienba1b]

Weekly Summary 11 - (23/02)

Animation Principles

This week, I have finished my morph animation completely, polished it and is now ready for submission. I made sure to look at the answers to the questionnaire and make my fixes based on those.  I feel like this as gone well, I am finally finished with all of my work in this and have even done more than the required amount because I had realized that I needed a better balance in both character animation and morph animation. I had a dilemma before changing my animation for the last time, as there was a part where the liquid fills up, there is a different shade of orange to distinguish it from the background, whilst its only a shade, it does technically count as a 5th colour which goes against the brief, so I had to try and fix that.  Pros: I have finished everything, I have done my animation and done more than enough principle analysis blogs as well. I also really liked the way my animation has turned out, it is a lot better than my first iteration.  Cons: There aren’t many cons this week, although I do think another iteration of my animation might have been really good since I could have worked on making it even better and probably reevaluate the colour scheme. Overall I am glad that everything is done and finished and ready to submit since there are a few days until hand-in, I might try and do extra work just before to strengthen my blog.

Narratology

This week in narratology, I have completely finished my 3rd draft of my essay, I have sent my essay to my lecturer and my friends to have them look over it, then I got my feedback and worked on that to make sure it is ready to be submitted. There was a lot of things that I needed to work on in terms of this essay, however, I did get a lot of feedback which suggests that there was a lot that went wrong which makes me slightly nervous that I did ok responding to the feedback. However, I am glad that I did get all of that feedback so I could improve it because if I submitted it as it was then I would get a far worse grade.  Pros: I have completely finished my essay and I feel like it is ready to be submitted. I have also run it past two people to make sure it is ok and I have acted on my feedback.  Cons: I don't have many cons this week, however, I did struggle to fit everything into the word count as I had to remove some things to make sure I had room for my improvements.  Overall, I am happy with my essay and if I had more time, I would try and research more and try to make some more points. However, I would struggle with word count. In my next essay, I am going to try and research everything as early as I can so I can dedicate a lot of time to the planning of my essay. 

Sketchbook

I have almost finished my second sketchbook, I have researched different artists to make inspired sketches from and made lots of artwork. I have also worked on my confidence in my linework by drawing with a pen only, not using any pencil construction lines, just like one of the artists I have studied.  I feel like, albeit a bit late, doing artist research was really beneficial, I really like the way that some other artists work and doing that research really broadened my horizons in terms of sketching. I think that it is a good thing I have spotted certain artists because they have given me a new method to my work, whether it is the use of markers or it is drawing without any pencils or construction lines.  Pros: I have made good progress on my sketchbook as well as research, I have also done some fun artworks based on some of their processes, and they have turned out quite well.  Cons: I could have started the artist research a lot earlier, it definitely would have added a lot to my sketchbook artworks. I also think I could have done research on places as well as artists. Overall, I am glad for how my newer sketches have turned out and I quite like the research system that I have taken on. However, I could have done it a bit earlier on in the project as this would have benefitted me much more. 

Mystery Box

This week in my mystery box I haven’t done a lot, I have made another storyboard that uses the techniques I have learned in last weeks lesson. It looks a lot better now than it did before that lesson which I am happy about. I feel like the camera angle I used is just right, mainly due to the fact that the walk up and the run away can be seen clearly.  Pros: I have made a decent looking storyboard, it has colour and depth to it, it also utilizes the rule of thirds as well as the silhouette being a lot cleaner.  Cons: The only con would be that the camera angle is very restricting. It is supposed to focus on movement so I am going to try and find a way around it.  Overall I am quite excited to move onto the animatic stage, I think the storyboard could have been better, but for camera angles, it might have been difficult. However with this limitation, I think I did quite well.  

Digital 3D

I haven’t done anything in Digital 3D this week as this week is the final week before the deadline for my other projects so I have been focussing on that, in the next week, I expect to be doing a lot more research in 3D, mainly because I will be doing this medium for my mystery box. 

Stop Motion

I haven’t done anything in stop motion this week as it is the final week before the deadline for other projects so I  have been focussing on that. I don’t plan on prioritizing this as there are no more sessions on it for me and I am moving onto CG, however, I will try and remake some of my stop motion videos if I have the time. 

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: NHL Awards Are Exactly What We Want, Getting Old, and Doughnuts

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Jack Campbell – This may have been the only legitimately funny moment from the NHL Awards.

And yes, we'll have more on the Awards in a bit. Sit tight.

The second star: David Leggio – The veteran minor league goalie had some thoughts on golf.

The punchline, of course, is that Leggio's trademark is cheating like hell in a vaguely legal way. It was kind of his thing.

The first star: Kelly Cohen – She's a political reporter in Washington, DC. She's also apparently a Capitals fan, and found out about Barry Trotz while she happened to be at work—and on live television.

Somebody make sure there's a camera on her when John Carlson signs for $58 million.

Be It Resolved

The NHL draft begins tonight, and it will be a mildly depressing event for us old-timers. This is it—the draft in which most of the kids taken won't even have been alive for the 20th century. We're officially into the 2000 cohort. We are all so, so old.

But every tragedy brings opportunity, and we can find some here. For years, NHL stars have been choosing jersey numbers based on their birth year. Sidney Crosby was born in 1987, and he wears No. 87. Connor McDavid was born in 1997, so he wears No. 97. Other examples include Patrick Kane's No. 88, Vladimir Tarasenko's No. 91, Evgeny Kuznetsov's No. 92, and Jesse Puljujarvi's No. 98.

But this year's draft class won't be able to do that, because the NHL doesn't allow players to wear No. 0 or No. 00. It used to—John Davidson, Neil Sheehy, and Martin Biron all wore either zero or double-zero during their careers. But at some point in the late 90s, the NHL decided to outlaw the number, apparently because it was causing some sort of database problem.

I don't know what kind of database the league was running back in the 1990s, but I'm guessing it's had an upgrade or two since then (although anyone who's tried to use the league's stats site might wonder). We have self-driving cars and virtual reality now; we could probably come up with a database that can handle a zero.

So let's do it. Let's use this year's draft as an excuse to bring back the number zero. It would give players a chance to show a little bit of personality. Not much, granted, but in today's NHL, every little bit helps.

This will actually be the second straight draft in which most of the players picked won't be able to do that. Last year, most of the top prospects had been born in 1999, and the NHL retired No. 99 league-wide when Wayne Gretzky played his final game. That was the right call, and nobody would want the pressure of wearing the Great One's number (except maybe Josh Ho-Sang). There's a good reason not to allow players to wear No. 99, so we should stick with that rule.

But No. 0 and No. 00? They're not hurting anyone. Let's give tonight's draftees some options. And who knows, maybe a few established NHLers would like to show off their inner Al Oliver. It would be kind of fun to see which player would want to be patient zero of, well, zero.

So be it resolved: Databases be damned, let's break out the doughnuts. There was a time when the league wasn't shy about offering those. Let's bring those days back.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

The Sabres will make the first overall pick in tonight's draft when they officially add elite blueline prospect Rasmus Dahlin to the organization. It's the third time in franchise history that the Sabres pick first, and the first since they picked Pierre Turgeon back in 1987. The only other time came in their very first draft, way back in 1970. That was the year that saw the expansion Sabres and Canucks forced to rely on a novelty roulette wheel to figure out who would get Gilbert Perreault.

The Sabres eventually won the spin and made Perreault the first draft pick in franchise history. But as important as it is to nail the first overall pick, true contenders are built in the rounds that follow. So for this week's obscure player, let's go with the second player ever picked by the Sabres: winger Butch Deadmarsh.

Deadmarsh was a power forward who was coming off a strong junior season with the Brandon Wheat Kings. He was known for his physical style, not to mention his kickass name. ("Butch" was actually a nickname; his given name was Ernest, which admittedly wasn't quite as intimidating.) He'd play ten games for the expansion Sabres that year, but didn't record a point. He'd get 46 more games over the next two seasons, scoring just twice, before a 1973 trade sent him to Atlanta for Norm Gratton. He was also drafted by the WHA's Cincinnati Stingers that summer, but stayed in the NHL and was slightly more productive in Atlanta, scoring a career-high six goals during the 1973-74 season. That was enough to attract the attention of the expansion Kansas City Scouts, who picked Deadmarsh in the expansion draft—the third different way he'd been drafted in his pro career.

He'd play 20 games for the Scouts in their inaugural season, which by this point was his third different stint with a first-year NHL expansion team. That would end up being his last NHL action, as he'd head to the WHA and spend four seasons playing for five teams, including a 26-goal year with the Calgary Cowboys, a team whose entire roster-building strategy seemed to consist of acquiring players who sounded like characters in an old Spaghetti Western movie. (In addition to Butch, the Cowboys also featured names like Wally Olds, Pat Westrum, Danny Lawson, and Wayne Wood.)

His final NHL totals were 137 games, 12 goals, 17 points, and approximately zero craps given. And if the name sounds familiar, he's the second cousin of former NHLer Adam Deadmarsh.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL Awards were handed out on Wednesday, which means we got to watch the league's annual attempt to be hip and funny: The NHL Awards show! The outrage: It was terrible. Embarrassing. Cringeworthy. You know, the usual. Is it justified: No, dammit, and I will fight all of you over this.

Did the show have some less-than-inspiring moments? Sure, maybe it did. There was an extended ventriloquist bit that kind of died. There was a magic trick that went wrong. There was that glorified ad for NHL 19. There was plenty of awkward banter. There was a little kid interviewing players.

Look, let's just say there was a lot.

Some things worked. The treatment of various real-world tragedies were all well done. Brian Boyle's speech was touching. Scott Foster showed up. There was a long Keenan Thompson sketch that never really worked but did feature an old man yelling "Ass Man" for some reason. They got in an "Alexander Ovechkin drunk in the Bellagio fountain" bit, although it lasted three seconds instead of the entire show like it should have.

So sure, a few hits, many more misses. And everyone watching made fun of it, and complained about how terrible the whole thing was.

In other words, it was exactly what it's supposed to be.

I've always been a fan of the NHL awards. Something inside of me just loves the fact that the most boring, traditional league in the world suddenly decides to get weird for one night out of the year. Whether the NHL is trying to be hip or going for the dramatic or trying their hand at sketch comedy, the awards are always fun. Sometimes unintentionally so, but fun is fun. We don't have anywhere near enough of it in this league, so let's take what we can get.

This year was no different. It wasn't second-row guy good, although really, what ever could be? But it was fine.

But that's not good enough for you. You had to talk about how terrible it was. Well I'm not having it.

Folks, we live in a world that has fans, and those fans want to make fun of the NHL. Who's gonna give them material? You? Jay Mohr? The NHL Awards have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the awkwardness and you curse the ventriloquist. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know; that the Stanley Cup sketch's death, while tragic, gave you something to complain about. And Chaka Khan's existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, gave you something to complain about. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about on Twitter, you want the NHL Awards to be terrible. You need them to be terrible. They use words like banter, magic, ass man. Well, ass man is technically two words but you get the point. They use those words as the backbone of a life spent producing terrible awards shows. You use them as a punchline. And that's the whole point, because punchlines are awesome. But Gary Bettman has neither the time nor the inclination to explain himself to a fan who can't wait to make fun of the cringeworthy entertainment he provides, and then questions the manner in which he provides it. He would rather you just booed him and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a deck of cards, and present the Mark Messier Leadership Award For Excellence In The Field of Leadership. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think on the NHL Awards show!

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I'm being told that 90 percent of the people reading this are too young to remember A Few Good Men and have no idea what I'm talking about. We are all so, so old.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

On that note, let's remember the time Chris Jericho got to present an award.

It's 2002, and our old pal Ron MacLean is here to introduce the presenters for the next award. They're noted hockey fan David Boreanaz, who you may know as "That Guy Who's Always Starring in a Show You've Never Watched but Still Gets advertised During a Football Game," and Chris Jericho, who you may know as the Man of 1,004 Holds. Never let it be said that the NHL can't bring in the big names.

No, I don't know why this clip is in black-and-white. I'm assuming it's just a VHS glitch, but I can't rule out the possibility that the NHL went all avant-garde on us back in the pre-lockout days when we weren't paying attention.

No countdown? No fireworks? No light-up jacket? This Chris Jericho entrance sucks.

Jericho and Boreanaz do a little bit where they act like they want to fight but it's obvious that they really don't. As a result, they were both immediately offered contracts to join the Ottawa Senators in time for their next playoff series against the Maple Leafs.

(Why yes, this entire section is just going to be pro wrestling references and jokes about the Pat Quinn-era Leafs and their rivals. I'm not sure why you would have been expecting anything different.)

After a little off-the-cuff joking about cleaning up somebody else's mess that somehow doesn't include a punchline about Rejean Houle, we get to the award. It's the Selke, and after Jericho and Boreanaz read through some completely natural dialog, we're onto the nominees: Craig Conroy, Jere Lehtinen, and Michael Peca.

I like how the nominees are all just a woman's voice telling us what we need to know, and then a man awkwardly interjecting random facts. The 2002 NHL awards basically invented Twitter.

Wait, Craig Conroy "scored a point in almost every game"? Fact check: Not true.

If you turn on YouTube's closed captioning, it thinks that Jere Lehtinen just earned his fourth "sake bottle." Or, as Stanley Cup champion Alexander Ovechkin calls it, "pre-gaming."

We're told that Peca is "a survivor," which sounds weird until they get to the part where "fans voted him onto the island." Man, even 16 years ago this reference was two years out of date. Was the NHL ever cool? Don't answer that.

We cut back to our presenters, and my favorite moment of the clip, as Jericho starts opening the envelope and then randomly mentions that he's a Flames fan. That's a Grade-A psych out on Conroy, right? He must have already been halfway out of his seat to accept the award when Jericho drops "It didn't work" and announces Peca as the winner instead. He may as well have gone full heel here and told Conroy that he'd never, eeee-ver win an NHL award. (He'd have been right.)

Wait, Chris Jericho is "a huge Flames fan"? Since when? His dad played for the Bruins, Kings, Rangers, and Blues. And Jericho is always parading around in a Jets jersey. He's basically their official celebrity fan at this point. I realize the Jets were between teams back in 2002, but you can't just jump ship to a Smythe Division rival for a decade and then act like it's no big deal. You don't see Bret Hart walking around in an Oilers jersey. Wait, bad example. Man, I'm starting to think that some of the pro wrestlers may not be on the level.

Anyways, Peca wins, and then takes forever to make it from the front row to the stage. If you remember, this was just a few weeks after he had his little incident with Darcy Tucker, in which Tucker threw a totally legal hit and Peca tried to draw a penalty by rolling around the ice, leaving the game, missing the rest of the series, having surgery on his ACL, and missing the first month of the following season. Nice try, Mike!

Which was the better swerve: Jericho turning on A.J. Styles, or Peca signing with the Maple Leafs in 2006 and somehow becoming Tucker's best pal? I'm still stunned that little festival of friendship didn't end with somebody going through a flatscreen TV.

Peca begins his acceptance speech by referring to some "tough years," presumably a reference to his contract dispute and season-long holdout from the Sabres. We also get a Charles Wang sighting and a Mike Milbury shoutout, in case you were wondering if all of this ended well for the Islanders.

"I think we're all here tonight because we've all got great teammates. I want to thank Alexei Yashin for being here tonight…" [record scratch] . I can't tell if this is serious, in which case it's kind of sad, or if Peca is making a joke, in which case it's the greatest moment in NHL awards show history.

Peca closes out our clip with a genuinely nice moment: Wishing his wife Kristin a happy anniversary and saying hello to "My little guy Trevor."

By the way, that little guy was born in 2000, and is now a 6'1" forward who recently committed to the NCAA's Miami RedHawks. Have I mentioned that we are all so old? We are all so very old.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.

DGB Grab Bag: NHL Awards Are Exactly What We Want, Getting Old, and Doughnuts published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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DGB Grab Bag: NHL Awards Are Exactly What We Want, Getting Old, and Doughnuts

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Jack Campbell – This may have been the only legitimately funny moment from the NHL Awards.

And yes, we'll have more on the Awards in a bit. Sit tight.

The second star: David Leggio – The veteran minor league goalie had some thoughts on golf.

The punchline, of course, is that Leggio's trademark is cheating like hell in a vaguely legal way. It was kind of his thing.

The first star: Kelly Cohen – She's a political reporter in Washington, DC. She's also apparently a Capitals fan, and found out about Barry Trotz while she happened to be at work—and on live television.

Somebody make sure there's a camera on her when John Carlson signs for $58 million.

Be It Resolved

The NHL draft begins tonight, and it will be a mildly depressing event for us old-timers. This is it—the draft in which most of the kids taken won't even have been alive for the 20th century. We're officially into the 2000 cohort. We are all so, so old.

But every tragedy brings opportunity, and we can find some here. For years, NHL stars have been choosing jersey numbers based on their birth year. Sidney Crosby was born in 1987, and he wears No. 87. Connor McDavid was born in 1997, so he wears No. 97. Other examples include Patrick Kane's No. 88, Vladimir Tarasenko's No. 91, Evgeny Kuznetsov's No. 92, and Jesse Puljujarvi's No. 98.

But this year's draft class won't be able to do that, because the NHL doesn't allow players to wear No. 0 or No. 00. It used to—John Davidson, Neil Sheehy, and Martin Biron all wore either zero or double-zero during their careers. But at some point in the late 90s, the NHL decided to outlaw the number, apparently because it was causing some sort of database problem.

I don't know what kind of database the league was running back in the 1990s, but I'm guessing it's had an upgrade or two since then (although anyone who's tried to use the league's stats site might wonder). We have self-driving cars and virtual reality now; we could probably come up with a database that can handle a zero.

So let's do it. Let's use this year's draft as an excuse to bring back the number zero. It would give players a chance to show a little bit of personality. Not much, granted, but in today's NHL, every little bit helps.

This will actually be the second straight draft in which most of the players picked won't be able to do that. Last year, most of the top prospects had been born in 1999, and the NHL retired No. 99 league-wide when Wayne Gretzky played his final game. That was the right call, and nobody would want the pressure of wearing the Great One's number (except maybe Josh Ho-Sang). There's a good reason not to allow players to wear No. 99, so we should stick with that rule.

But No. 0 and No. 00? They're not hurting anyone. Let's give tonight's draftees some options. And who knows, maybe a few established NHLers would like to show off their inner Al Oliver. It would be kind of fun to see which player would want to be patient zero of, well, zero.

So be it resolved: Databases be damned, let's break out the doughnuts. There was a time when the league wasn't shy about offering those. Let's bring those days back.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

The Sabres will make the first overall pick in tonight's draft when they officially add elite blueline prospect Rasmus Dahlin to the organization. It's the third time in franchise history that the Sabres pick first, and the first since they picked Pierre Turgeon back in 1987. The only other time came in their very first draft, way back in 1970. That was the year that saw the expansion Sabres and Canucks forced to rely on a novelty roulette wheel to figure out who would get Gilbert Perreault.

The Sabres eventually won the spin and made Perreault the first draft pick in franchise history. But as important as it is to nail the first overall pick, true contenders are built in the rounds that follow. So for this week's obscure player, let's go with the second player ever picked by the Sabres: winger Butch Deadmarsh.

Deadmarsh was a power forward who was coming off a strong junior season with the Brandon Wheat Kings. He was known for his physical style, not to mention his kickass name. ("Butch" was actually a nickname; his given name was Ernest, which admittedly wasn't quite as intimidating.) He'd play ten games for the expansion Sabres that year, but didn't record a point. He'd get 46 more games over the next two seasons, scoring just twice, before a 1973 trade sent him to Atlanta for Norm Gratton. He was also drafted by the WHA's Cincinnati Stingers that summer, but stayed in the NHL and was slightly more productive in Atlanta, scoring a career-high six goals during the 1973-74 season. That was enough to attract the attention of the expansion Kansas City Scouts, who picked Deadmarsh in the expansion draft—the third different way he'd been drafted in his pro career.

He'd play 20 games for the Scouts in their inaugural season, which by this point was his third different stint with a first-year NHL expansion team. That would end up being his last NHL action, as he'd head to the WHA and spend four seasons playing for five teams, including a 26-goal year with the Calgary Cowboys, a team whose entire roster-building strategy seemed to consist of acquiring players who sounded like characters in an old Spaghetti Western movie. (In addition to Butch, the Cowboys also featured names like Wally Olds, Pat Westrum, Danny Lawson, and Wayne Wood.)

His final NHL totals were 137 games, 12 goals, 17 points, and approximately zero craps given. And if the name sounds familiar, he's the second cousin of former NHLer Adam Deadmarsh.

Outrage of the Week

The issue: The NHL Awards were handed out on Wednesday, which means we got to watch the league's annual attempt to be hip and funny: The NHL Awards show! The outrage: It was terrible. Embarrassing. Cringeworthy. You know, the usual. Is it justified: No, dammit, and I will fight all of you over this.

Did the show have some less-than-inspiring moments? Sure, maybe it did. There was an extended ventriloquist bit that kind of died. There was a magic trick that went wrong. There was that glorified ad for NHL 19. There was plenty of awkward banter. There was a little kid interviewing players.

Look, let's just say there was a lot.

Some things worked. The treatment of various real-world tragedies were all well done. Brian Boyle's speech was touching. Scott Foster showed up. There was a long Keenan Thompson sketch that never really worked but did feature an old man yelling "Ass Man" for some reason. They got in an "Alexander Ovechkin drunk in the Bellagio fountain" bit, although it lasted three seconds instead of the entire show like it should have.

So sure, a few hits, many more misses. And everyone watching made fun of it, and complained about how terrible the whole thing was.

In other words, it was exactly what it's supposed to be.

I've always been a fan of the NHL awards. Something inside of me just loves the fact that the most boring, traditional league in the world suddenly decides to get weird for one night out of the year. Whether the NHL is trying to be hip or going for the dramatic or trying their hand at sketch comedy, the awards are always fun. Sometimes unintentionally so, but fun is fun. We don't have anywhere near enough of it in this league, so let's take what we can get.

This year was no different. It wasn't second-row guy good, although really, what ever could be? But it was fine.

But that's not good enough for you. You had to talk about how terrible it was. Well I'm not having it.

Folks, we live in a world that has fans, and those fans want to make fun of the NHL. Who's gonna give them material? You? Jay Mohr? The NHL Awards have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the awkwardness and you curse the ventriloquist. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what they know; that the Stanley Cup sketch's death, while tragic, gave you something to complain about. And Chaka Khan's existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, gave you something to complain about. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about on Twitter, you want the NHL Awards to be terrible. You need them to be terrible. They use words like banter, magic, ass man. Well, ass man is technically two words but you get the point. They use those words as the backbone of a life spent producing terrible awards shows. You use them as a punchline. And that's the whole point, because punchlines are awesome. But Gary Bettman has neither the time nor the inclination to explain himself to a fan who can't wait to make fun of the cringeworthy entertainment he provides, and then questions the manner in which he provides it. He would rather you just booed him and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a deck of cards, and present the Mark Messier Leadership Award For Excellence In The Field of Leadership. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think on the NHL Awards show!

[Checks earpiece]

Right, I'm being told that 90 percent of the people reading this are too young to remember A Few Good Men and have no idea what I'm talking about. We are all so, so old.

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

On that note, let's remember the time Chris Jericho got to present an award.

It's 2002, and our old pal Ron MacLean is here to introduce the presenters for the next award. They're noted hockey fan David Boreanaz, who you may know as "That Guy Who's Always Starring in a Show You've Never Watched but Still Gets advertised During a Football Game," and Chris Jericho, who you may know as the Man of 1,004 Holds. Never let it be said that the NHL can't bring in the big names.

No, I don't know why this clip is in black-and-white. I'm assuming it's just a VHS glitch, but I can't rule out the possibility that the NHL went all avant-garde on us back in the pre-lockout days when we weren't paying attention.

No countdown? No fireworks? No light-up jacket? This Chris Jericho entrance sucks.

Jericho and Boreanaz do a little bit where they act like they want to fight but it's obvious that they really don't. As a result, they were both immediately offered contracts to join the Ottawa Senators in time for their next playoff series against the Maple Leafs.

(Why yes, this entire section is just going to be pro wrestling references and jokes about the Pat Quinn-era Leafs and their rivals. I'm not sure why you would have been expecting anything different.)

After a little off-the-cuff joking about cleaning up somebody else's mess that somehow doesn't include a punchline about Rejean Houle, we get to the award. It's the Selke, and after Jericho and Boreanaz read through some completely natural dialog, we're onto the nominees: Craig Conroy, Jere Lehtinen, and Michael Peca.

I like how the nominees are all just a woman's voice telling us what we need to know, and then a man awkwardly interjecting random facts. The 2002 NHL awards basically invented Twitter.

Wait, Craig Conroy "scored a point in almost every game"? Fact check: Not true.

If you turn on YouTube's closed captioning, it thinks that Jere Lehtinen just earned his fourth "sake bottle." Or, as Stanley Cup champion Alexander Ovechkin calls it, "pre-gaming."

We're told that Peca is "a survivor," which sounds weird until they get to the part where "fans voted him onto the island." Man, even 16 years ago this reference was two years out of date. Was the NHL ever cool? Don't answer that.

We cut back to our presenters, and my favorite moment of the clip, as Jericho starts opening the envelope and then randomly mentions that he's a Flames fan. That's a Grade-A psych out on Conroy, right? He must have already been halfway out of his seat to accept the award when Jericho drops "It didn't work" and announces Peca as the winner instead. He may as well have gone full heel here and told Conroy that he'd never, eeee-ver win an NHL award. (He'd have been right.)

Wait, Chris Jericho is "a huge Flames fan"? Since when? His dad played for the Bruins, Kings, Rangers, and Blues. And Jericho is always parading around in a Jets jersey. He's basically their official celebrity fan at this point. I realize the Jets were between teams back in 2002, but you can't just jump ship to a Smythe Division rival for a decade and then act like it's no big deal. You don't see Bret Hart walking around in an Oilers jersey. Wait, bad example. Man, I'm starting to think that some of the pro wrestlers may not be on the level.

Anyways, Peca wins, and then takes forever to make it from the front row to the stage. If you remember, this was just a few weeks after he had his little incident with Darcy Tucker, in which Tucker threw a totally legal hit and Peca tried to draw a penalty by rolling around the ice, leaving the game, missing the rest of the series, having surgery on his ACL, and missing the first month of the following season. Nice try, Mike!

Which was the better swerve: Jericho turning on A.J. Styles, or Peca signing with the Maple Leafs in 2006 and somehow becoming Tucker's best pal? I'm still stunned that little festival of friendship didn't end with somebody going through a flatscreen TV.

Peca begins his acceptance speech by referring to some "tough years," presumably a reference to his contract dispute and season-long holdout from the Sabres. We also get a Charles Wang sighting and a Mike Milbury shoutout, in case you were wondering if all of this ended well for the Islanders.

"I think we're all here tonight because we've all got great teammates. I want to thank Alexei Yashin for being here tonight…" [record scratch] . I can't tell if this is serious, in which case it's kind of sad, or if Peca is making a joke, in which case it's the greatest moment in NHL awards show history.

Peca closes out our clip with a genuinely nice moment: Wishing his wife Kristin a happy anniversary and saying hello to "My little guy Trevor."

By the way, that little guy was born in 2000, and is now a 6'1" forward who recently committed to the NCAA's Miami RedHawks. Have I mentioned that we are all so old? We are all so very old.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.

DGB Grab Bag: NHL Awards Are Exactly What We Want, Getting Old, and Doughnuts published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/