Portion Control
[dc]T[/dc]oday, Clattertron joins the fine tradition of spoofing the star gate/freakout scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is there a film which has been referenced more? I don’t know. What I do know is, others have spoofed 2001 better than I¹, but I still had fun trying to recreate the famous star gate effects in black and white.
Keep in mind, I already spoofed the sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
Today’s gag was inspired by something I saw in real life: I watched someone feed a squirrel a peanut butter cup. And, well, let’s just say the squirrel didn’t move for bit. Maybe 20 minutes or so. Sure, you might think, ‘it is just one peanut butter cup’–but it is a matter of scale. As the comic says, imagine eating a piece of candy the size of your head. I don’t know about you, but I would certainly freak out a bit–heck, I might even turn into a star baby like Dave in 2001.
Originally, for the inverse panel (panel six), I tried to create the effect on paper. Steph watched me laboring over this and said, “Can’t you just do that in Photoshop?” I told her sure, I could, but I wanted to try it on my own first, because I’m crazy.
Long story short, I ended up creating the effect in Photoshop (I just copied panel five, and went to Image > Adjustments > Invert). Not that I couldn’t finish the effect on my own (I’ll throw up a behind the scenes post soon), but I ran out of time.
–
¹ Yes, I know The Simpsons spoofed this scene as well. Find me five jokes The Simpsons haven’t done.
Hey, that squirrel had a great day. It was like post-Thanksgiving dinner stupor.
He sure did! It was the best candy-coma of its life. Until the next one.
Despite never having seen 2001, it was still enjoyable watching you work with these characters. *revises Netflix queue*
Tsk, tsk, Ryan. Get on that. It is a must-see film–if only to get all the pop culture references (see also: Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Gone With the Wind).