Anyone remember a short-lived show called "Kappa Mikey?" It was about a North American cartoon boy trying to fit into the Japanese anime he was somehow cast into as the protagonist. Of course, it was short-lived because, at least in the U.S., it had the misfortune of being on Nickelodeon, and we all know what Nickelodeon does with any show that DARES to co-exist on the same channel as SpongeBob.

Not to say it was a "classic" cartoon, unfortunately. It seemed to miss every single opportunity to make any notable insights about the western industry and its values vs. Japan and its own cultural values, or even make an actual joke about the "fish-out-of-water" nature of its plots. Also, the anime character designs were made by a lot of the infamous people that made "My Life Me" and various poorly-drawn "How to Draw Manga" books that I would always see at Scholastic book fairs in grade school, so of course they never seemed to be designed by anyone that has actually seen a Japanese production outside of maybe watching a snippet of a Pokémon episode with their children on occasion--resulting in the characters being dumbed-down stereotypes (especially Yes Man--seriously, even 15+ years ago it was shocking they got away with Yes Man's character design). Naturally, besides SpongeBob it got overshadowed by a far more genuine attempt at North American "anime," Avatar: The Last Airbender. Talk about a tough act to follow. At the time, though, it was just cool to see a show even attempt to mix the typical western cartoon art style with standard anime designs.

That is the long way of saying that mixing cartoon designs with anime in my own sketches is also fun. Also, the original "fat" Pikachu with a decidedly-more-American diet, because why not?

Unsurprisingly, my default anime design tropes are trapped in the 1990's, just like my western cartoon design tropes.

I was considering doing a Mermay thing this month, uploading different mermaid ideas I've had (whether they are hideous products of human pollution, conventionally-attractive and/or other people's female OCs as mermaids) and even got a bit of a head start on it back in late April, but unfortunately I DRASTICALLY underestimated how much my workload would increase throughout this month due to certain things I need to do for my day job (I won't even have my long-coveted four-day workweek for the next few weeks, have to work 5-6 days on ACTUAL work like the rest of you street urchins!). Still, I'm proud of the 3 sketches I did get done beforehand, particularly the cursed reverse-mermaid for Day 1 and finally giving into my slight preference for...more-huggable women for what would have been Day 3's Mermay sketch.

Nomad Sculpt on my iPad got some great (albeit paid) upgrades that will make the process of creating extremely-detailed character sculpts that I can then rig and pose (or even animate) a bit easier, so I will likely make a sculpt of the cursed reverse-mermaid in the near future. Not now, I'm swamped at work!

"Barttv" on Blenderartists.org has just informed me "Whiny Do-Do-De-Do is one of the featured "Best of Blender Artists" submissions for this weekend on the Blender Nation website! You'll have to scroll down quite a bit to find it (it's next to the fan art illustration of Geralt from The Witcher), but still, what an honor that this silly little cartoon I made impressed the Blender 3D community!

https://www.blendernation.com/2024/04/26/best-of-blender-artists-2024-17/

I have just finished the cartoon I've been working on, Whiny Do-Do-De-Do!

Watch it here on Newgrounds!

Progress will slow a bit on my current Whiny Dodo animation because I need to take some extra time optimizing the background and its textures/lighting before I can REALLY move onto animation, just so it won't be a complete pain to animate and then render everything on my laptop. Sorry...

I've finished creating all the assets and rigs for my latest animation (Whew! Lot of work for one guy!). I got some good feedback on the island asset I downloaded from my 3D Modeling and Design phone app, suggesting I add more texture to the flat colors of the island. Here is my progress so far.

I still want the background textures to be simple to avoid distracting from the characters, but I think adding some normal map textures add some extra visual interest while still ensuring the background, well, fades into the background. What do you think? Do I still need to do more work on the island textures, or can I move onto the animation, now?

Here are the characters, in case you need the reference to figure out whether they'll clash with the background textures or not:

While we mourn the passing of the late, great Akira Toriyama and celebrate his one-of-a-kind art and storytelling style, I thought I should mention an interesting, obscure PS1 fighting game that he did the art for that might be of interest of fans of Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest, or even Virtua Fighter (the actual gameplay was designed by former Virtua Fighter vets)--enter 1996's Tobal No. 1 from Squaresoft (before they merged to become Square Enix)!

As you can tell just by this "Character Select" screenshot (featuring some characters you have to unlock, so uh, spoiler warning for an almost 30-year-old game?) Squaresoft really let the great artist go to town with some extremely unique character designs that I don't think I've really seen before or since, even if the 3D artists seemed to have struggled to properly recreate Toriyama-san's designs in 3D while also drastically simplifying the 3D rendering so that the game could run at 60 FPS on the PS1, a smooth framerate that was often impossible to accomplish on consoles at the time.

My personal favorite design of the Tobal No. 1 bunch is for the BBW fighter, Mary. Totally not because of fetish-related reasons...

Nope, totally don't want her to sit on me. Nope-nope-nope. Still, regardless if Mary is your specific type, Akira Toriyama demonstrated years before we even worried about diversity and inclusion in the media that, if you must draw a bigger woman, at least make her look about as feminine as her thinner counterparts unless she is supposed to be queer or transgender. Mary is not completely devoid of "fat woman stereotypes," unfortunately, she has a deep voice similar to the "fat man voice" Zach Hadel does in OneyPlays bits, and in the pre-rendered cutscenes with Mary in more casual dresses, it is implied she is even wider than this, but she's probably wearing a girdle or something to give her a more-conventionally-attractive hourglass figure in the ring. Still, Mary is a very bold character design from Akira Toriyama, especially since it was made back in era where artists weren't forced to draw diverse body types so the company can come across as "progressive," they just did so because they wanted to.

Here is the inevitably-superior Japanese box art for Tobal No. 1:

And of course, here is the inevitably-laughable box art we got in North America--though I imagine promoting a demo of the now-legendary Final Fantasy VII helped sales a bit:

It did get a sequel, simply called Tobal 2, but unfortunately it only ever officially released in Japan (though of course nowadays you could download a ROM with an English-language patch, plus getting ahold of the actual CD and box of the original Japan-only Tobal 2 is surprisingly cheap, only about $30 on Amazon or eBay as of this writing). It's a shame it's not as accessible as the first, because it is a MASSIVE improvement over Tobal No. 1 in every single way. The visuals are more detailed and better capture the feel of Akira Toriyama's concept art, while STILL running at 60 FPS on the humble PlayStation AND even running at a higher screen resolution than most PS1 games at the time, looking more like a PS2 game at times! It also has more of a story and even a dungeon to crawl through and unlock goofy animal characters to play as, such as Brown Ape and Chocobo!

Fascinating stuff, this obscure Tobal franchise! I encourage you to at least watch some YouTube gameplay videos of Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2, especially if you are a huge fan of the late, great Akira Toriyama!

Thank you for your support on Keister Bunny! Believe it or not, it is my most well-received Movie Portal submission yet, sitting at 3.5 stars exactly as of this writing! Good news is that I can, and am already doing, better on my next animated personal project, because let's be honest, you don't have to have the eyes of a hawk to see that I rushed certain things to make absolutely sure it got done by Easter Sunday. I was also working with a director on a project they ultimately decided to scrap, anyway, in addition to this, plus of course I had my day job on top of all that, so I've definitely learned better time management and to only work on a single animated project at a time after all this.

This also means I am not going to be open for commissions, art trades or collabs in the near future, sorry, because I have quite a few short cartoons that I want to get out of my system and I can easily make by myself with a combination of Blender and my 3D Modeling App on my phone. The only exception is if you need an artist to make high-quality assets and visuals for your game (preferably Godot Engine or RPG Maker series, and in the RPG genre), because while I could never quite get into game programming and design, it would be a dream come true to contribute beautiful visuals to a big indie game, and I would happily drop my personal projects just for that honor! I have no desire to work in the so-called "triple-A" video game industry in North America, GOD NO that ship has long sailed.

I have already been hard at work on my next little cartoon (I am perfectly fine calling my LULZRANDOM humor "cartoons" instead of something more prestigious/pompous), called Whiny Dodo-De-Do, about a Dodo so whiny and obnoxious in front of the ruthless conquistador, Pants de Ranchero, he drives the extinction of his own species (Dodo birds actually existed until about the 1600s, when conquistadors basically hunted them to extinction)! Hey, if Dreamworks could make heartless colonialism and subjugation of cultures the "White Man" disagrees with in The Road to El Dorado whimsical, so can I! Maybe...

Um, on that bum note, here's some WIP images to show how much I've already improved since working on the Keister Bunny! 4 out of 5 stars, here I come!!

I should mention the island (not the clouds, skybox or all the lighting) is actually a low-poly pre-made asset I downloaded from my 3D Modeling app to save time in the asset creation phase. DON'T WORRY IT'S NOT AI-generated, it's just a pre-made asset that I paid an extra $35 a year to the app creator to transfer from my phone to my PC and B4Artists/Blender (among other subscriber perks), and of course it's not the main focus of the animation, the Dodo and Pants de Ranchero are 100% custom-made by yours truly and are the focus. It's just a harsh reality I've had to learn as a solo animator, that I at least need to save time and use pre-made assets for the unimportant background details so that the BGs would look less barren than if I made everything from scratch (and burn out in the process), as well as so that I can spend more time polishing the actual custom-made characters I want to focus on. This does basically mean, though, I'm already almost done with the asset-creation phase (just need to rig the characters), can start on the animation in the next couple of weeks, and I'll be able to show this new cartoon to all of you much sooner than it took me to make absolutely everything from scratch from Keister Bunny! Stay tooned, San Diego!

Sorry if I haven't been all that active on Newgrounds lately, but I have FINALLY wrapped a large solo project I have been working on for the past 5 or 6 months--it is called "The Keister Bunny Featuring Punk n' Gunk," and will star this handsome fella here, the Easter Bunny's free-loading cousin, The Keister Bunny! Thanks to Newgrounds not letting me schedule an upload more than a month in advance, it will actually arrive in the Movie Portal early, on March 9th! March 31st is when Easter is this year, btw. The same goes for the YouTube version, even though YT does allow me to schedule the video premiere closer to Easter Sunday.

It was a lot of work making all the assets from scratch, even if they are mostly low-poly, and I hope you will enjoy the final result on March 9th! After all, he won't go away...