Latest Posts by robtfirefly - Page 3

My performance at "Say Everything" yesterday, August 13, 2015, chatting with intrepid interim hosts Davey Stevey Dave and Babe Parker.

"Say Everything," the unique interactive standup showcase where comics eschew prepared material and just have a freeform chat with the hosts and the crowd, happens every Thursday evening at Paddy Reilly's Music Bar in Manhattan. More info at www.facebook.com/sayeverythingcomedy !

Trying out something a little different.  Here's my reading of the short humor essay "The Gusher" by Charles Battell Loomis, from the 1907 anthology The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX edited by Marshall Pinckney Wilder.

My Mother the Matchmaker

I made this comic for /r/behindthegifs, a subreddit where the idea is to take a GIF that's going around and make a comic that tells what led up to it.  I'm pretty happy with how this turned out after scratching it together at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Here's the Reddit post, and here's the Imgur gallery.

Drawn in MyPaint, lettered and laid out in GIMP.

A true story starring myself, my cats, and nypl.

I’d recently come to the conclusion that I needed to do more regular artwork to keep the brain juices going, even if only one quick doodle per day.  To this end, I began privately doodling some of my friends’ Twitter userpics.

I’d done a few and realized that the best thing to do with my growing collection of userpic doodles would be to start posting them on their own dedicated Twitter account, and throw the general Twitter public into the mix.  Hence, twitter.com/RobDrawsYourPic.

Now friends, acquaintances, luminaries, and total strangers are all finding themselves receiving my unsolicited mutations of their avatars, and I’ve even fulfilled some requests.  It’s a good excuse to not only get some sort of drawing done every day, but to try out some different styles.

So far folks on the tweetybirds seem to be digging it, or at least taking it in stride.  A couple of people have even changed their userpic to my version, which is entirely wild.  I’m sure I’ll creep someone out eventually, though.

Images are scaled down here; hit twitter.com/RobDrawsYourPic and the subjects’ Twitter accounts for the bigger versions.  Original userpics remain the property of their owners.

An excerpt from my lies-about-Doctor-Who book.

An excerpt from Doctor Huh?!, a book in progress.

3 September, 2004: The Making of a Logo

“Right,” said Russell T Davies, pouring himself another mug of tea before turning back to his art team. “Now, on to the next issue; the logo. Suggestions?”

“Let’s reuse the Diamond Logo,” said junior...

My contribution to the Ghostbusters collab, now slowly being released at whoyougonnacollab.  I'm in some insanely brilliant company here, everyone's contributions are great!

I’m in a hurry, so let’s not dawdle. @rob_t_firefly

A fascinating fact about the latest Doctor Who trailer.

Support the WHOFAX Kickstarter!

Because we all love visual puns.  Made for b3ta's verbular celebrities image challenge.

Speaking of Doctor Who, care to kick my starter?

I'm rather proud of the doodles in this one. Plus, I have a logo now!

I seem to be settling into a "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" sort of feel for the WHOFAX illustrations, which I quite like.

Another fact from the archives, illustrated.

I'm taking my Doctor Who Facts! project to a few new places.  I'm doing cartoons like this for some of the facts; also, there's a @WHOFAX Tumblr now!

A fact from the @WHOFAX archives, illustrated.

Another piece of captchart.

They have lots of new gTLDs you can put a website on nowadays.

I acquired ascii.bike and put an ASCII bike on it.

The great Harold Ramis passed away today.  His work meant a great deal to me; not only Ghostbusters (which I love) but his many other contributions to the world of comedy and the art of filmmaking.

As the news circulated, a small shrine to Ramis popped up on the sidewalk in front of Ghostbusters HQ (or, as it’s known in real life, Hook and Ladder 8.)  I sketched a portrait of Ramis on a small art card, and went downtown to add it to the memorial.  I then got to hang out for a bit with the others who had gathered there in the cold - including a Ghostbuster in full homemade uniform and proton pack - and we all chatted about what the man and his work meant to us.

He’ll be missed.

I multitrack a capella'd "Tom's Diner."

I'm your Suzanne Vega now.

This also exists on Soundcloud.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, run through Google Translate from English, to Chinese, to Russian, to Punjabi, to Welsh, back to English and performed by myself.

Music: "Hail Columbia" by the US Marine Corps Band (public domain).

Original mistranslation:

5.87 years , and our fathers that all men are created equal , dedicated to freedom of the uterus and forth on this continent a new nation came .

Now we are engaged in a great civil war , that nation or any nation has been conceived, and so dedicated , can long continue . Battle of the big war . For us to survive here in this country and gave their lives as a final place of rest in this area has come to set aside part . This we should do , which is natural .

However , in a broader sense , we can not worship the earth , we can not dedicate , devote unable . Who struggle brave men , living and dead , surrender, or to add it to roam far above our power is poor . Note Small World , nor long remember telling us , but they can never forget. Dedicated to the work on the cross , our life , , , , , and fought heroically . None of the rest of them here so that we can complete their last full measure of devotion to die to become more committed to the work we have great honor to devote themselves to this is that we will not die in vain , because they are the very definition of it - the dead by God , freedom and government of the people, people , freshmen will , and will not destroy the earth .

This also exists on Soundcloud.

Over on Twitter, patrickfedo has been organizing a neat Ghostbusters fan-art collaboration.  I'm pitching in with this pic of one of my favorite ghosts from the series, the taxi-driving ghost from the first film.

I got another amusing CAPTCHA and drew some CAPTCHArt around it.

This is a new variant of Scrabble I'm working on which is fairly mean to its players.  Rare letters are no longer rare, point values are rendered mostly meaningless, and you have to make valid plays without actually seeing any of the words on the board. Please click over and share your thoughts, I'd love some input on this.  Would it actually be any fun to play this way?

This is a digital painting of Mrs. Ho, the Cook from the wonderful film Clue.  Mrs. Ho was played by Kellye Nakahara, and her only line of dialogue is represented here.

I scratched this out with the classic/modelling brush in MyPaint.

Some days you find yourself illustrating venerable Irish actor and Star Trek alumnus Colm Meaney, and affixing him to an ancient meme.

Today, for me, is one of those days.

Modified from this original Keep Calm poster.

I stayed up late last night painting this portrait of my Midwestern hacker/artist pal Sigflup Synasloble.

While this started as a simple doodle, I kept wanting to do more with ink and paint effects.  I'm really happy with how it all came together in the end.

A charming and familiar-looking Renaissance lady I digital-painted, with Leonardo's original open in another window.

I just scratched this little fellow out while half-listening to a TV show my girlfriend was watching.  I don't know who or what he is, but painting him made me feel a little better.

We at The Media Show got wind of some dodgy claims by McCormick Spices extolling the supposed health benefits of that pinch of dried plant matter with which you might flavor your food.  Weena fights hyperbole with Youtube Poop.

Last Tuesday I worked as an election inspector, which meant a long shift sitting in the gymnasium of the grade school I attended in the early 1980s.  It was a slow election, so I had ample time to look around the place and trip out on nostalgia.  I sketched this on my lap in short bursts over the course of the day.

I remember being fascinated as a kid with those basketball nets, specifically the collapsible framework of pipes and cables which held them to the ceiling.  At the start of first grade gym class we were usually directed to sit in a group on the floor under one or another of the nets, and they always seemed impossibly huge and heavy hanging above me.  I imagined they could fall down and squash me at any moment.

The basketball nets were noticeably less forboding this time around, but still interesting.

Pencil on paper, 8x10".

The Fifth of November, 1955

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The scientist hanging a clock, Who knew on that date, That fortune and fate, Would reveal so much more to the Doc. Doc Brown, Doc Brown, he did invent Such objects of folly, with good intent, He tumbled and fell in his lavatory But soon after took to his lab'ratory For though he'd been woefully injur'ed A vision unfurled in his bruis'ed head Great Scott! Great Scott! From this disaster Great Scott! Great Scott! The Flux Capac'tor! And what did he do with it? Build it!

Archival ink on paper, 6x8". The original drawing is now owned by a private collector. I've also done a reading of this poem on YouTube.

This is a quick five-minute doodle of everyone I've ever seriously dated, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, in no particular order, for no apparent reason.  While some of you who know me might also know one or more of these individuals, I'm not naming names and will not comment on which squiggle is meant to be who (unless you are one of the squiggles, in which case feel free to ask me privately which one you are.)

No idea why I felt the need to get this out of my head and onto pixels, but I do know I'm grateful these individuals will probably never end up gathering in a group like this in real life.  I'd be doomed.  DOOMED.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 seats, the most minimalist ASCII art I've ever done.  Thanks, ISO-8859-1!

fuckyeahmst3k:

ooòôõ

Filmed in letterrama

Stupid Twitter trick: 1) Crop an image down to 338x83px (or a multiple thereof.) 2) Slice it out into four 83x83px blocks with 2px gaps in between (or your multiple thereof.) 3) Tweet the images via Twitter's internal photo-uploading gadget, from right-to-left. 4) ??? 5) Profit!