Here’s the second round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.
From left to right:
I will continue to post new commissions next week! And even though commissions are closed for now, remember it isn’t too late to donate to Help the Cheerleader.
Did you know that I’m that guy? I’m the guy who whenever there’s Transformers related news (new film, new cartoon, new video game, etc), everyone I know comes to me. I’m like… the only Transformers pundit my circle of friends is acquainted with. So how could I not review…
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (In theaters now!)
Man, after watching this movie, I’m all: O_O
As in shellshocked. Very intense.
Basically, it’s Michael Bay, you should know what you’re getting into, so don’t be hating. This one is better than the second one, and not as good as the first. If you’ve seen the other two, you have a good idea where your opinion will fall.
It’s a 4 hour plot crammed into a ~2.5 hour movie, and I felt like we were only watching every other scene–the burden is on the viewer to fill in the blanks in many instances. But you get what you’re there for: crazy intense robot battles, hot cars, one hot girl, and plenty of ‘splosions.
As promised by Bay himself, the toilet humor is pretty much gone (there were maybe three toilet humor jokes, and some innuendo, but nothing even as bad as the masturbation conversation in the first movie). And with that little modification, I did find myself enjoying almost every joke that was cracked.
Like the second movie, this one suffers from too many new robots with too little characterization. Let me rephrase that… there’s no such thing as too many robots, but let’s see some personality, yes? The old school cartoon had a cast of dozens, with distinct personalities established within the first handful of episodes. On the Decepticon side, the hordes of grey Genericons (some of whom were supposed to be “somebody”) were pretty dismissable.
Another notable downside carried over from the second movie–Optimus Prime’s moral compass goes beyond the Mortal Kombat mark, when it should really be closer to the Superman mark.
My last two complaints:
1) Why are Transformers so hairy and gooey? You’ll see what I mean.
2) They are referred to as Transformers in dialogue, which is a huge faux pas to me. Transformers is the name of the franchise dude, not the race. They’re Cybertronians. I know, pretty nerdy, right? Hi ladies.
And…
Verdict: Come on, who are you talking to here? It’s me, Transformers fan numbah one. It was Awesome. Good pacing, intense action. I’m not downplaying the movie’s faults, but like I said, we all know what we’re getting into. If you can acknowledge significant flaws without letting it bum you out, and you’re looking for some robo-centric eye candy, then go for it.
For More Giant Robots Getting Blowed Up Good: Real Steel is coming out in October, and oh my god it looks stupid and also, why do I have to wait until October??? ROBOTS NOW PLZ. K thx.
That was more like a 500 second review, but oh well. In unrelated Transformers news, I did this for my co-worker’s son:
Autobot insignia drawn by me. Child courtesy of Blabidibla, photo by Ruth666.
So I’m posting on a Sunday for what was supposed to be a Friday post. But at least my post was late becauseI was actually drawing, right? Right?? Anyone?
Anywaysss…
Here’s the first round of commissions that I’ve finished for Help the Cheerleader. To read more about my involvement with this fundraiser, please CLICK HERE.
From left to right:
Status of commissions:
We rollin’. Come back this Friday to see more commissions. And I’ll be prepared to post on time!
Yeah, sorry, just a little overwhelmed with everything, will post something later this weekend, for really realsies. I have plenty of sketches finished, just need to make time to scan them!
For those interested in such things, the current status of Help the Cheerleader sketches is as follows:
– 11 commissions FINISHED and ready to mail out.
– 19 commissions inked and ready to be colored.
– 8 commissions pencilled and ready to be inked.
Be back later this weekend with actual art,
-Jason
Until I’m done with the commissions for Help the Cheerleader, I’m going to post multiple sketches on Friday, rather than posting single sketches on Tuesday and Friday. Come back in a few days for the first of the commission sketches!
Late again!
If you aren’t aware of my commissions to Help the Cheerleader, then CLICK HERE.
Here’s the last of the sample commissions. Next week I should start posting REAL commissions. For now, here’s Jedi Master Aayla Secura:
Hurry back to your weekend, Dear Reader, and I shall do the same.
This is late, I should have posted yesterday!
If you aren’t aware of my commissions to Help the Cheerleader, then CLICK HERE.
The write ups about Help the Cheerleader have been incredibly supportive, and there have been some terribly kind things said about me, which I certainly do not deserve. However, I am grateful and shocked, to say the least. A few highlights (click to see each article):
Never did I dream that I would see a huge burst in my pageviews, and that the vast majority of the visitors would be from Ms. Magazine!
So, I have indeed started on the sketch commissions–pencilled about 23 of them so far. Nothing inked and colored yet, but I am making progress. In the meantime, here’s one of my sample sketches, Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm of the X-Men:
Back to drawing for now!
Okay, I was supposed to post yesterday, but I got a little busy. In fact, if you’re here, you probably already know that I have 150 commissions to do for a very good cause.
If you haven no idea, this should answer all your questions: CLICK HERE
I’m going to talk a little more about it, particularly some of the incredibly gracious write-ups that have been posted, but since people don’t troll the internetz as much on the weekend, I think I’ll save that for early next week. Besides, I have a tiny bit of drawing to do right now.
So, here’s the Boba Fett marker sketch that I did, that’s been floating around the internet:
Predictably, some of the other sample sketches that have been floating around will make it to this blog in the next few weeks, and of course I will be posting all of the commissions as well. Please stay tuned, and thank you again for all of your support.
Back to it!
So, to recap:
There’s a fundraising website called helpthecheerleader.com. If you haven’t heard of them, please take a minute to read about their cause. The site is run by Jessica and Theresa, who work their asses off in their free time for a good cause. If you get a chance, tweet them, or drop a comment on the site to let them know what a great job they’re doing.
A few days ago, they launched a fundraising campaign offering sketch commissions (by me) in exchange for a $20 donation.
We had a limit of 20 commission slots.
On the first day, we received about 15 requests. I was relieved that people were interested!
On the second day, thanks to re-tweets by many notable geek/comics bloggers and write ups from some well-known websites, we received over 130 requests.
Let me say that again, we received 130 requests in one day.
That puts us at a total of about 145 requests (I think we’re actually closer to 150, but we’re still sorting through them). So y’know, that’s way past our cap of 20. We are truly overwhelmed and grateful for the positive response!
Let’s cut to the chase here:
We are going to honor every commission request that was submitted before the website was updated to inform people that requests were closed.
So, here’s how it’ll work:
So there you have it.
Lastly, I just want to say a few words of thanks:
To everyone who requested a sketch (even if you didn’t make it before we cut off requests), thank you for your generosity and compassion. This nerdy misanthrope is relieved to know that there are some good people in this world.
If you tweeted about this, re-tweeted it, emailed it to somebody, linked it in IM to a friend, blogged about it, re-blogged it, tumbled it, re-tumbled it, hell, if you opened up your window and hollered about it to someone passing by on the street, then I love you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is so hard to get the word out on a good cause, but you folks made it easy.
Here are some of the notable articles and mentions:
If you wrote an article about this fundraiser and don’t see it in the links, please leave a comment with a link! I will add it to the list.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please read this post.
FIRST, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: Huge thanks and big props to Jessica and Theresa of the LXL (AKA, the League of Extraordinary Ladies) who are managing the site and the fundraising for the Help the Cheerleader campaign. And a special thanks to LXL member Jenn, who facilitated my introduction to Jessica and Theresa.
I totally forgot to mention all that in my last blog post, which I apologize for. Jessica and Theresa were fundraising long before I ever approached them with my idea, and without them, none of this would be possible. They’re doing an amazing job, so please shoot them a tweet, or drop a comment on the LXL site to let them know that!
SECOND: The first day of commission requests went great! As of 8:30pm, we had received 14 requests! Requests are being processed, and I will start drawing ASAP! Check back here for updates, I will be posting commissions as I finish them.
IN SUMMARY: Thanks again to Jessica, Theresa, Jenn, and the LXL. Thanks to all my friends on Twitter and Facebook who helped spread the word on this. Thanks to all the strangers on Twitter and Facebook who helped spread the word. And a BIG THANKS to the people who have requested commissions so far!
If you just want to get right to the specifics of the commissions, CLICK HERE.
The cause that I’m raising money for is http://www.helpthecheerleader.com/
From the site:
A Silsbee High School cheerleader took her school to court when they kicked her off the squad for refusing to cheer her own rapist.
The week of May 5, 2011 the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and is requiring her family pay the school $45,000 in legal fees.
We want to help – and we want to give you the opportunity to help too.
The less I say about it, the better, cause if I start talking about it, I’m just gonna get mad. Suffice it to say, this is utterly unacceptable, and if we can help, we should.
So for $20 bucks, you get a full color sketch from me and you help a good cause! And if you don’t want a sketch from me, you can still donate to the site, that’s cool too! Either way, please spread the word! Thank you!
… you see, because he’s got an arrow tattooed on his head. COMEDY FUN JOKES!
It’s Aang, AKA the Avatar, AKA the Last Airbender:
Return on Friday for more art and hilarity, won’t you?
