Turble

Turble is a flash game which I'm currently developing for Six AM Comics. The idea came one day when I was doodling with my Wacom Tablet and drew a purple little dragon riding a futuristic cannon (which resembled an olive). I liked the character so much that I whipped up a real quick flash file where you could drive him around and shoot the cannon. You can view the concept by clicking the following picture:

It was a very simple concept in nature. So simple that it had me reminiscing about the simpler days of video gaming. I figured it'd be cool to pay homage to the old sidescrollers for the NES. I spoke with fellow Six AMer, Dan, and we began brainstorming ideas for the plot. Dan thought the purple dragon looked like a Gerbil, so we decided we'd call him Turble... a gerbil from a post-apocalyptic future. The basic plot we came up with was as follows:

Turble is about a space age girble named Turble - who has a Grampa. Grampa, unfortunately, is a deteriorating Robot. Turble has been asked by Grampa to seek out energy sources to keep his joints going so that they can spend as much time as they can together. Turble, being a good grandgerbile, decides to help. Unfortunately, all the energy sources are in cannisters that are strewn around a post-apocalyptic landscape where robots, mutated creatures, and killer bugs roam. Turble will have to be quick, strong, and agile to get through the landscapes and defeat the bosses at the end of the level.

Next steps for this game involved some concept art for enemies and bosses. I had stopped working on Sonuva for a while to develop the look and feel for his game for a while. However, the taste of Sonuva was still in my mouth, so I re-concepted the Hunter character as a boss for Turble. This was the end result of that idea... again, click the picture... because pictures are more interesting than plain old links...


As you can probably tell from the thumbnail above, a large amount of actionscripting was required to develop the boss test. When it came to Flash work, I was always a timeline-based developer, i.e. I treated animations like a virtual flip book, drawing each frame and making my flash files ginormous in size... This game has been a very educational experience, having to work strictly in code... which for a while was almost entertaining... unless it didn't work right... in which case I just got mad and gave my computer the silent treatment... which proved to be unproductive.

This is as far as the actual development of the game has gotten. Other aspects of the game however have been just as interesting. Fortunately for me, I have a lot of friends who are musicians, and as a result, I've been lucky enough to receive contributions to the game's soundtrack. My good friend, Peter Thompson (whom I designed the Two Good Friends album cover for) converted one of his songs to MIDI format for me to use... and it was amazing. The song is called "Never Ending Fields of Pain", and for some reason it totally captured the old school Nintendo feel when played in MIDI format. The song is playing in first gameplay link in this blog post.

In addition to Never Ending Fields of Pain, my friend Dan Gillespie (who runs a very cool musical blog called "Microsong") was checking out the game and thought that Turble was riding a giant Martini Olive and composed a song called Martini Madness, which you can listen to here.

Dan also contributed a song he wrote a while back called Never Nova, which you can check out here.

All of these songs have turned out so perfectly that I could totally see them as becoming just as memorable as some of the older NES game soundtracks which have stuck in our heads over the years... Duck Tales, Mario, Zelda... and if you don't know what I'm talking about, than you obviously weren't a true child of the 80's... and I pity you.

The following were some character concepts I had come up with for the game... if you've read any of my other posts, than it's possible you came across the picture I did with my brother, and you may notice that a lot of the following creatures ended up in that drawing. I'm all about recycling ideas...


Dan also drew some interesting enemies for the game. One in particular was this crazy looking evil robot with blades for hands... he personally gave me nightmares and I had no choice but to unleash his fury on the post-apocalyptic world of Turble. You know what to do... click that picture:


Yeah... I should apologize for that animation's ending... we are pretty proud of ourselves over at Six AM Comics... The robot originally had legs, but for the sake of easy animation, we removed them and let him levitate... like a future robot should.

Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten on the game. I intend to finish it at some point... preferably after I finish work on Sonuva... but I'm sporadic, who knows, maybe I'll betray both games in favor of a new idea...

Must... Focus...
~ Mark

::play::

Since my time at Fidelity, I've been doing some contracting work for various companies. One in particular has been more than a joy to work with. They're called ::play::, an ad agency specializing in the criminal justice department. In my time there, I've designed a couple of animated banners (I just can't get away from it... I suppose it's my calling) which are now currently running on corrections.com. The first banner I created for them was for a company called Nortpointe. If you click on the image above, you can see the finished product. Or go to corrections.com and refresh until you see it at the top... though if you're reading this blog 20 years from now, I doubt you'll see it... Yes. You are reading the past.


The second banner I did, which went through a number of revisions from the client, was for a company called Law Enforcement Dynamics. I'm most proud of my first round with this banner, but I'm still pleased with the end result, which, again, you may view by clicking the above image, or refreshing corrections webpage.


And last but not least, this banner was for a company called Bob Barker, a clothing distributor for inmates and prisons... yes, bringing all you criminals the latest in fashion. You'll be sure to turn some heads in prison. Like the others, click above to see it, or do the corrections thing. I'm sure these paragraphs are obnoxiously repetitive, my apologies... which may be viewed at corrections.com... or by clicki- oh forget it.

In conclusion, I owe a great deal of credit to Fidelity Investments for the hours and hours of banner work they had me do, I felt as though I was immediately prepared to tackle the above banners before any information was even given to me. ::play:: was happy with the work, and as a result I've received a number of new jobs from them, which is good, because I gots to pay the bills!

::play:: with me!
~ Mark

Who Is The Beast?

While in college, I was given one of the coolest assignments I'd probably ever get to work on in my collegiate career. It was Graphic Design II and our professor read us a poem titled "Who Is The Beast". She didn't tell us what the poem was about, and instead told us to illustrate a kid's book using a couple lines from the poem.

I'm pretty sure most people in the class moaned at the assignment, but I personally couldn't wait to get started... which says quite a bit, because this is the ONLY time in my educational history which I have actually been enthused to do homework... let alone willing to do it at all.

The lines of the poem I was given were as follows:

The Beast, The Beast! We must fly by!
We see his tail swing low and high.

The Beast, The Beast! I must turn back!
I see his stripes, Yellow and Black.

The Beast, The Beast! I hurry on.
I see his legs, sure and strong.

The Beast, The Beast! Don't make a sound.
I see his eyes, Green and Round.

My interpretation of this poem was that there was a cat riding on the back of a giant grasshopper over the ocean who caught a glimpse of their distorted reflections as they passed and thought there was a terrible beast in the water. You can imagine how much fun I had illustrating this book.

If you notice, the coloring style is different from most of my work, being a little softer and incredibly Photoshop-heavy. Prior to my work with Body & Brain Magazine, this was how I generally colored most of my pictures... which is one of the main reasons I don't show my older work in my portfolio. This was one of the few pieces I'm still very happy with.

The main reason I was happy with this work was the typography. I had never considered type as a design element prior to my work on this project... which is pretty sad for someone who was going to school for Graphic Design. My professor had encouraged me to focus more on the type this time around, rather than the illustrations. Most of my assignments which I passed in were so focused on the drawings that all other design elements were just going out the window. It's one of the few times in college where I actually learned something relevant in terms of design. It sounds conceited, but it was mostly because I was unwilling to learn, feeling that design was nothing more than a means to a degree in making pretty pictures... ah, the sad, sad mind of a cartoonist...

Another reason I consider this an important piece of work in my portfolio is because it was the first time I dabbled in a more simplistic art style. As a result of being told to focus on type, I had to allow the cartoons to take a backseat while I explored typography. Before this, my drawings were too detailed for their own good... i.e. the details weren't any good.

So, in a sense, the drawings were a little last minute, and somehow were far better than anything I had ever drawn prior to this book. It was like the equivalent to speed typing, there's bound to be a few errors, but it's still more efficient... I don't know if that actually makes any sense... it does to me. This blog is about me.

An interesting story... earlier I mentioned this being the first homework assignment that I actually cared to work on, halfway through finishing the project, my computer got a nasty virus from a pirated copy of Quark Express (which I never owned, FBI) and I lost all the work I had done on this. Just another reason Quark sucks. All Hail Adobe InDesign! ... Which I would gladly pay for. Fortunately, I loved the project so much that I had no problem redoing it... I'd do it again... but I've lost the will now that I'm not obligated to do so. I'm conflicted. Due to time restraints (caused by the infamous Quark Virus of 04') the back cover I designed wasn't shaded... but ironically looked better than the rest of the book... another occurence which encouraged me to go simpler with illustrations...


Who is the Beast? The Beast is me!
~ Mark

Caring for Clayton

This was a flier I did for my sister-in-law's sister and husband. It was for a benefit they hosted to raise money to help support their son, Clayton, who due to complications at birth suffers from Cerebral Palsy and Quadriplegia. I had done a flier for the parents in 2007, which I assume they liked, and so they asked me to make another for the following year, 2008.

The style of this flier is a bit of a different feel when compared to most of my work, but a previous job opened my mind to the joys of simplicity. I did something very different from the previous year's flier, which came out really well, but was a little cluttered in my opinion. I was inspired by a Graphic Designer named Saul Bass, who had done some amazing work with the opening titles of the movie "Vertigo".

I kept it to about four colors (save for the photo of Clayton) and used simple shapes which represented the "Murder Mystery Dinner" which was the theme of the evening... I figured a designer who worked on Alfred Hitchcock movies was an appropriate choice of inspiration for the event. There were two other color themes (blue and green), but ultimately the victor went to orange... which was the original color I used.

Murder was the case that they gave me,
~ Mark

Monogram

So my brother is getting married in less than a month... some consider this a victory, others a defeat. As a designer, I consider it opportunity. Weddings mean monograms, monograms mean design... design means something to do. So they gave me something to do and asked me to design their monogram for the wedding.

Opportunity or not, this was actually one of the trickier things I've been asked to work on as a designer. I normally do Illustration and Interactive design... logo's are few and far between, and monograms are even farther. I've never really worked with fancy patterns and scripted fonts. So this was, to say the least, a challenge. I did some research online only to find that 90% of the monograms out there... well... suck.

So I basically winged it on this one. Originally I was making all the design options in one color... black. That's just what was out there when I looked up these design delights. My future sister-in-law requested that the monogram be in red and brown, the colors for the dresses and whatnot. The only other requirement was that the K be before the B. This was non-negotiable. She claimed that it was traditional to have the bride's name first... but I still wonder...

Here comes the Bride... so move!
~ Mark

Women of Worth

So, this particular logo is somewhat of an oddball in my portfolio. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the cause, I just don't usually get asked to do graphic design for women's retreats... I was actually quite flattered.

Despite how it appears, I actually didn't use pink because it had to do with women, I chose it because it looked nice. I tried a wide assortment of colors and this was the best choice... besides, I think pink is becoming more of a guy thing than a girl thing anyway, what with the whole metro movement and all... I'm still planning to get on board with that... I'm sure it'll be out of style by the time I arrive in all my Metro glory... maybe it'll still be big in Europe.

This design was used on a t-shirt for a women's church retreat in Fort Myers, Florida. They pretty much went for the first design I showed them, though we did play around with the idea of the "O" being a ruby to coincide with the verse (Proverbs 3:15). In the end, the ruby didn't look right with the design... so I win. The flame above the "O" is symbolic of the Holy Spirit, and was meant to show how the Spirit is with God's women.

In the end, this project was highly beneficial to my knowledge of design, mainly in terms of minimalism; something I'm a big fan of, but normally not confident enough to attempt.

WOW!
~ Mark

Unsing Heroes of the Bible

My Six AM partner in crime, Dan, asked me to help out with some illustrations for a long-running teaching series at a church titled "Unsung Heroes of the Bible". They had asked him to depict some specific lesser characters in Scripture for this series which would be displayed on banners, projections and trading cards throughout the summer for the lessons. Dan and I, despite running a website together, rarely collaborate on any art projects, so he thought it'd be a good idea if we worked on these illustrations together. He took half the characters, and I took the other half, which consisted of Jonathan's Armor Bearer, Esther, Prescilla and Aquila, Jethro, Matthew (Levi) and Tabitha. The last image is Esther, who unfortunately wasn't used due to that lesson being canceled... which is depressing for me because that was my favorite...




Dan took on Centurion, Ananias, Nathan, Obed-Edom and Onesiphorus. You can see his illustrations on our Six AM Blog. I'd show his illustrations here... but this site isn't about him, it's about me... so you get me. Seriously though, go to the above link cause he did a pretty awesome job.

Unsung Heroes Unite!
~ Mark

Marianelli Rising

So there was a post I had which displayed a drawing titled "Doom Bunny VS Giant Schnauzer", which was a Christmas gift for my brother, whom I spoke of in my last post. Along with that drawing, I also illustrated our family as Jedi... probably not the most original thing in the world, but I've been wanting to draw it for like, 10 years. I'm also hoping my brother will make these characters out of clay before I die of old age... though, this is unlikely. He refuses. I will call him Abel from now on.

I guess you'd have to know us to understand the humor in this drawing. Matthew, the creator of the Doom Bunny from the other post, is decked out in yellow (he's an avid Steelers fan). He's also rocking a very short robe... we have a running gag of accusing him of wearing short shorts... he doesn't, but we enjoy crushing his spirit from time to time.

Brian is a Southern Darth Vader... mainly because he's evil, partly because he has asthma... but mostly the evil thing... which is also the reason I am Darth Maul... and no, not because he was the most flamboyant Sith in the series!

My father, the pinnacle of wisdom in our family... and the world, in my opinion, is portraying Yoda. And last, but not least... because she'd kill me if I referred to her as the least... is my mother. There actually wasn't a whole lot of reason for her being one of those weird aliens with the eerie tentacles coming out of their heads other than we get a kick out of picking on her.

So yeah, I wrote more than necessary for a knock-off Star Wars picture... but I like this drawing.

We're not really evil,
~ Mark

A Brothers' Collaboration

My brother, Brian, is a very talented cartoonist and one of the main reasons I got into art in the first place. So the natural progression from student to peer is to collaborate with your old master... which is contrary to popular belief that you're supposed to kill your old master a la Star Wars... but I suppose the day is still young... brother.

My brother is starting up a site called Illumination-Creations, which he will be selling creations he makes from clay, as well as various illustrations, etc... So he recently developed a blue and orange feathered monster who lives in a tree with his best friend, a little brightly colored bird. So, the way we work is that he'll normally draw something, outline it, then pass it off to me to color and add whatever else I want to it. In this case he drew the monster, the bird, the tree they're in, and a couple of rocks to the left. I handled the scenery, the surrounding monsters and the coloring of the drawing.

Our styles have always blended pretty well together, mainly because mine evolved from his. So we like to mix the styles up from time to time and create some pretty impressive artwork which he sells at various craft shows down in Texas.

If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than y- oh, never mind,
~ Mark

Dahn Yoga Illustrations

If you read my last post, then you'd know my very first freelance gig was for a magazine titled "Body & Brain", which is produced by Dahn Yoga. I figured this would be a one-time fluke, being that I didn't have a very large (or impressive for that matter) portfolio and I was still in college. At the time I had been running Six AM Comics with my friend Kevin and we had an email account set up at sixamcomics@hotmail.com... we rarely kept up with this email and most of the time forgot it existed. There was a rule at the time (may still be) that if you didn't have any activity on your hotmail account for three months, they would deactivate it... so every three months we'd sign in and send out a generic email to ourselves to keep it active (we didn't think anyone was actually going to the site).

Imagine my surprise when I signed in to this account and found an email there waiting for me. Apparently a woman with the Dahn Yoga group saw my illustrations in Body & Brain magazine and was impressed enough to ask for my services with a video they were preparing for one of their training camps. It must have just been dumb luck that she would have sent that email at the end of the right three months when I was checking it; a week later and she'd have been out of luck... or I'd have been out of luck depending on how you look at it...

I'm not quite clear anymore on the details of this job (again, 2005), but there was a video about the stages of life, not young and old, but graduating High School, falling in love, partying in college, etc... They asked me to create an image for each of these stages which they would display in this video at the appropriate times.

At this point I had some time to refine the style I played around with for the Body & Brain gig (which was evolving into whatever style some consider me to have now). I had these finished up in a couple of days, it was a pretty tight deadline, which is a good thing because it forced me to draw faster and more efficiently.

The downside to this job was that I spent so much time in front of the computer working on these that I had to start cracking my wrist every three minutes, an unfortunate habit which I still have today... so I guess you can say Dahn Yoga gave me Carpal Tunnel... inner healing my right wrist! Actually, I probably shouldn't slander the people who jump-started my career and gave me a worth-while portfolio... They were actually some of the most polite people I've ever worked with, and as I stated in the last blog, Jo Badger was the most talented designer I've ever known... ever.

Yoga!
~ Mark

Body & Brain

My first gig as an illustrator came in the form of a Dahn Yoga magazine titled "Body & Brain Magazine". It was also the first time I used this style of shading on my drawings, prior to this I used a softer, more airbrushed means of doing so.

At the time I was still attending UMass Lowell and getting by with a stock boy job at Macy's... which was basically just an excuse to take naps in a storage room behind a pile of toaster oven boxes... I probably shouldn't reveal this information if the economy continues the way it has... I may need that job back. My friend Jen was working for a design agency called "Cros Media" and heard they needed someone to illustrate an artical about discovering your Inner Hero. Being a good friend, she didn't hesitate to bring my name up and within a week I was sitting in a room with one of the most tallented designers I'd ever know (Josephine Badger, may she rest in piece). I guess they liked somethig in my very limited portfolio because they had me signed up and ready to go for the illustrations

The goal was to design an unnamed hero in training who would battle an assortment of inner demons. These demons being Self-Doubt, Pride, Ego, and Anger. Ego and Anger were my pride (not the demon) and joy of this article. I tried to make each character resemble their respective title; Pride carried a staff with a mirror on the end, Self-Doubt was blue and sad looking, Anger was a ferocious, serpent-like beast... and my personal favorite, Ego, which was the most twisted looking of each demon, whose spine was almost detached from his body. He went through a number of revisions, they felt he was coming across as a little too twisted in earlier sketches. They had a pretty good point. Actually, here's an exerpt from one of the emails which were written to me in regards to an earlier drawing of him:

Mark,
Everything looks good, except one thing the fight scene with the ego monster
the tail still looks like he is getting his vertebrae ripped out of his
body. Maybe you can make him being thrown by his arm instead of the tail I
am not sure, or you can make the top half of the tail solid and the bottom
half spiny. What do you think? Let me know.

I went with the half-spiny solution.

The next panel of images would involve the main hero battling these inner foes with the tools he'd been given (through Dahn Yoga, of course), along with the courage and the training. Upon defeating these inner demons, our hero is told by his master (we're just going to call her Master Yoga, an obvious Star Wars reference for all the fanboys out there) that there is an even greater foe of equal strength... canst thou guess which foe this might be?

Bingo! It's his own self. Despite the other characters receiving more thought and more love on my part, the hero's alter ego was given the majority of my attention to create. This was mainly because I decided to draw a much scalier version of our hero... and I chose to draw and shade each scale. As you can imagine, I went with a simpler rout for drawing the other two illustrations involving this enemy and merely drew less detailed scales which were faded over the already shaded skin. To end the article, I concluded with a drawing of the hero with the seven points of Dahn Yoga... I'm not quite clear on the name of this concept anymore, it's been quite a while since i did this... I believe it was 2005.

All in all, this gig gave me my first real taste of freelance... it wasn't very long after this that my employment at Macy's came to an end and my paychecks were coming from Fidelity Investments... so basically I upgraded from sleeping in a storage room, to sleeping in a finely kept executive bathroom... no they didn't know i was using their bathrooms.

...

Yes, I was ultimately laid off...

...

Maybe they knew afterall.
~ Mark

Sonuva

I've had a game idea in mind for quite some time now. I always wanted to make a fighting game, reminiscent of the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter II era. I always preferred the 2d, sidescroll look of video games, was never a huge fan of 3D unless it was a first person shooter, or something like Gears of War. It just seems to me like games used to be about the art work, not how advanced the graphical engine was.

In any case, this was my idea, the game is called "Sonuva"... it's really not worth looking into, it was a nonsense name... I actually got the idea when I was discussing the idea with a friend of mine and for some reason he was like, sunuva gun... and I for some reason saw the word Sonuva from that... which sounds completely different than "Son of a"... it sounds more like Sun-oov-uh. Whatever, I got side tracked...

Here's a screenshot of how the menu will most likely look:

The basic plot is this:

A powerful ancient mystic, Riluto, grew so powerful that her very essence evolved itself into a separate entity known to many as "Sonuva". It was rumored that Sonuva held the power to manifest the very will of whomever controlled it. Riluto prophesied her death. In a final attempt to control her own destiny, she extended an offer to the world. If anyone dare challenge her power and arise victorious, she will hand over Sonuva, thus granting him (or her)any wish of their own desire. Many battles have ensued, and these challengers remain...

The characters are as follows:

Riluto:The main antagonist of the game, her bio is basically described in the plot.

Jack:Born and raised in a small Irish community in Boston, Jack has given everything to keep his neighborhood thriving and honest. Surrounding areas have been giving into Mob rule due to poverty and unemployment and the Mafia has been slowly intruding on his community, endangering his family. Fearing for his children's safety, Jack enters the competition with nothing but his fists and a hand-made baseball bat. The underdog of the competition, Jack has surprised even Sonuva as he ruthlessly and violently makes his way to the top as one of the final fighters remaining.

Azriel:Sacrificing his life to save the one he loved, Azriel was granted a second chance at life... only not as a man. Taking on the mantel of the Grim Reaper, Azriel was fused with the Angel of Death, who's wings manifest themselves as scythes protruding from Azriel's hands. Feeling Sonuva's offer to be both dangerous and blasphemous, Azriel and his Scythe embark on a mission to see Sonuva destroyed.

Hunter:A government experiment gone very wrong. Hunter, a skilled swordsman, was chosen by the US to enter Sonuva's competition. Being trained heavily in a virtual reality simulation, he experienced a psychotic break and could no longer distinguish between reality and VR.
Thinking himself to still be in training, Hunter has begun a psychotic rampage on his way to Sonuva, killing everything in his path using his government issued "Flame Blades". Mentally separated from reality, it is uncertain whether Hunter will complete his original mission, or if he has ulterior motives for the prize.

Here's my first run at his animations, just a starting point if anything:
http://www.6amcomics.com/fightingGame/

Nark:Member of an elite collegiate-aged group of heroes known to many as "Abundant Life". Nark wields supernatural artistic abilities of manifestation and decimation. After his team mysteriously disappeared during an encounter with a demonic presence, he discovered Sonuva's challenge and entered the competition, determined to win prize and bring back his friends.

Nephilim:Nephilim belongs to a race of beings conceived of an unholy union of Angel and Man, almost 4,000 years ago. Immortal, yet forbidden to ever enter Heaven's gates (nor Hell's for that matter), his kind were outcasted and shunned. Wandering the earth alone, Nephilim seeks to obtain Sonuva's prize and become human... whether his mortality leads him to Hell or to Heaven.

Mille:I actually haven't written a bio for this character yet, mainly because he'll most likely be a bonus character... But he'll probably be from space or something...

The gameplay will be pretty basic, there's not much you can do to improve on 2d fighting games, especially when done in Flash... and you don't have a very large amount of coding experience. But there will be a store between matches which you can use points earned in each fight to purchase new moves, finishers, characters, stages, etc...

Basic fighting moves will be a little limited for the sake of production time, there will be a quick strike, a power strike, a jumping attack and a ducking attack for basic moves. Each player will get a special attack and one additional attack which can be purchased at the store. Also, the method for these special attacks will be a little different from most games, you'll have a limited amount of specials you can use per round, this way we can prevent any cheap "Shoryken" fireball nonsense each fight. It'll add some strategy to the game, though additional special attacks per round may be purchased at the store as well. We'll see how that goes.
There will be a finisher system, i.e. Mortal Kombat Fatalities, haven't given a huge amount of thought to how that will work though, most likely there will be a Teen version and a Mature version which will be accessed differently for the sake of various audiences, we like to keep 6am family friendly.

In the past, I've made some attempts at developing a Flash-based fighting game... it was definitely an experience. The end products were pretty good, but still not perfect. You can view them here (Don't forget to click on the flash piece before trying to use the key commands):

Attempt # 1

Attempt #2

So yeah. That's the whole schpeal on S0nuva. I'll be designing it and programming it in Flash, which is my true love... that and Gwen Stefani... which my girlfriend is not pleased about... it's all lies, baby.


I'll be updating this project through this blog as I work on it. I'll hopefully have some more character animations and whatnot pretty soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

FINISH HIM!
~ Mark



Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Mario

So I think the Mario franchise is just about the greatest thing to ever happen to my generation... right after Niel Diamond's "We're Coming to America" and the original "WWF".

The concept is so goofy that you can't help but love the little fat plumber from Brooklyn who gets sucked into a drain one day, gets addicted to steroid-injected mushrooms and kills turtles for a living.

I love seeing various people interpreting this universe in different ways... So imagine my disappointment when the Mario Brothers Movie got released. We shall never speak of this incident again.

Anyway, I'm not really going a whole lot places with this other than to say I enjoy doodling Mario and friends from time to time... But for real, that movie was horrible.

Eet'sah mee,
~ Mark

Joanasaurus Rex

So I have this friend in Florida. Her name's Joana. She's Brazilian and she plays the guitar. So why, might you ask, have I depicted her as a dinosaur?

Well, it's not really that interesting a story, but she was roommates with a really good friend of mine. This friend of mine got stuck in Haiti on a missions trip because her passport got stolen. So her roommate, Joana, informed me of my friend's situation...

At the time, I'm not sure I knew her name very well, so I had been referring to her as "Roommate X"... Though it was a long name to call her every time we spoke, and let's face it, once a nickname has been established, you can't revert to calling people by their real name. That's just silly.

So Roommate X slowly evolved into a highly shortened version of her nickname. Rex. Which was soon modified to the dreaded "Joanasaurus Rex"... okay, so maybe this is longer than the original nickname, but it's got so much more pizazz, wouldn't you agree?

Oh, and my friend in Haiti made it back just fine.

Rawr!
~ Mark