Friday Six: Keyboard Cat Plush, Failure, Preston Blair, Renegade History, FunkyWatch, Easy Pathos
[dc]T[/dc]oday on the Friday Six: Diesel Sweeties on failure, FunkyWatch, Keyboard Cat animatronic plush, Preston Blair, easy pathos, Renegade History of the United States.
And seven is RIGHT OUT
[ ] Once again, Diesel Sweeties hits it out of the park with this comic on the sliding scale of failure during the week.
[ ] I discovered the twisted joy of Chris Sims’ FunkyWatch series on Comics Alliance. In Sims’ own words:
Over the past 40 years, Tom Batiuk’s Funky Winkerbean has transitioned from a gag-a-day comic strip about a high school to an ongoing chronicle of pure, abject misery. Thanks to the ongoing commentary on Josh Fruhlinger’s Comics Curmudgeon, I am now completely obsessed with it, which is why I spend a little time every month rounding up its finest examples of crushing despair.
[ ] Geek Thing of the Week: This Keyboard Cat Animatronic Plush. Yes, it plays the song.
You had me at animatronic cat. Image via ThinkGeek.
Maybe I’ll use it to tell folks I don’t want to listen to ’em anymore (wandering politicians, coffee shop philosophers, Elder beings from a nameless void in time and space).
If you need more of a Keyboard Cat fix, well, here’s a ten-hour supercut-loop thing.
[ ] This Preston Blair animation book is highly recommend. You may not recognize the name, but you have seen Blair’s work I’m sure (Fantasia, various Tex Avery cartoons, and more).
Yes, MORE prancing animals. Image via Amazon.
Even if you don’t plan on animating anything, Blair’s principles and lessons are great for building up cartooning skills. Blair’s Animation 1 book helped me a bunch when I started my comics a little over a year ago. There’s another Preston Blair book which collects all the books he did, I think: Cartoon Animation. I haven’t read it, but if it collects Animation 1 and more, it is great investment for any cartoonist/animator.
[ ] Speaking of cartooning, check out Geneva Hodgson (Cartoon Fun Time)’s Pathos in 2 Easy Steps comic. Hilarious. And sad. She’s one of the hosts of the Cartoon Book Club podcast.
[ ] I’m reading A Renegade History of the United States
History LOLZ. Image via Amazon.
Very entertaining so far. Being a fan of history and weird trivia, this book is right in my wheelhouse. My historical weird trivia wheelhouse. Don’t go there after dark, and bring a friend.
Product Links in this post: Keyboard Cat Animatronic Plush (ThinkGeek), Cthulhu Can’t Sleep shirt (ThinkGeek), Animation 1 and Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair (Amazon), A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russel (Amazon)
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