SuperPope: ex Cathedra

SuperPope on Newgrounds

Today I got a wild hair and decided to submit SuperPope Episode 1 to Newgrounds, the popular Flash animation portal.  In less than five hours it has received over 1000 views, 30 reviews and an average rating of 4 out of 5.  Not only that, but SuperPope is already featured on the front page!  How cool is that?

SuperPope Animation / My Life Update 1-4-06

  In SuperPope Episode II news, I’ve been animating on it the past few months when I have the chance (*cough* not playing games *cough cough*).  Here are a couple teaser screenshots.  The title is either going to be “Jaded!” or “Fistful of Demons”, and the plot will endeavor to answer the oft asked question, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?”  Of course, the short answer is, “There’s no such thing as a good person when compared to a perfect God,” but I’ll try and make a more uplifting point than that.  And rest assured that plenty of demon blood will be spilt in the process.

For my friends and the voyeuristically curious, let me give you an update on what’s been happening in my life lately.

I was sucked into City of Heroes back in September when a free 21 day trial came with my PC Gamer magazine.  No, I have not been playing it to an addictive degree, but I do have a Level 28 Illusion/Radiation Controller named “7-Year Cicada”.  My son and I also got City of  Villains for Christmas.  He mainly loves the character creation utility, and frequently asks me to fire it up just so he can create a new character.  I like how quickly I can get in the game, get on a team, tear through a mission, and log off again.  I have a family, after all.

In other news, I made the mistake of reorganizing my console game collection and putting all of the “Games I Intend to Finish When I Have the Time” on one shelf.  There are more than 45 games sitting there, mocking me.  I need to swear off new games until I get these finished (and I need to swear off of them until I get SuperPope Episode 2 finished, I know!).  On several games I’m very close to the ending (Star Ocean, Paper Mario 2, etc.), but Dragon Quest VIII is awfully hard to put down…

For Christmas I got Sid a few cool things.  He’s really been wanting an original Soundwave toy, but they go for crazy amounts on eBay.  Well, I finally discovered that they created a reissue of him in Japan recently, in black and silver with a remodeled cassette door that holds two tapes at once.  It also includes Buzzsaw and Ravage cassettes.  He was appropriately excited about it.

Sid is infatuated with video game controllers in general, and also loves the little blue slimes from Dragon Quest.  Could I give a more perfect gift, then, than a controller made to look like a Dragon Quest slime?  I submit that I could not.  He was equally pleased with this.

Review: Transformers Generation 1 DVD Box Set

I stumbled across this set on eBay, and figured it was a bootleg.  Turns out, it is an official Chinese release of all 98 episodes of the original Transformers TV series.  Twenty-four DVDs with four episodes on each, plus Transformers: The Movie, all contained in an attractive wooden (well, particle-board) box.  There’s even a poster of Optimus Prime and Hot Rod included.

Even better, though, is the fact that all episodes are presented in the original English.  All you have to do is turn off the Chinese subtitles.  The image quality is as good as can be expected, with no compression artifacts that I can see.

So far, my son Sidney and I have watched about 32 episodes.  I had forgotten almost everything about the show except for the characters, and really didn’t expect much from the stories.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the stories for many of the episodes are actually interesting.

There are three seasons of Generation 1, with the movie falling between Seasons 2 and 3.  Season 1 is short, and full of animation mistakes (All three Decepticon jets randomly colored like each other, reversed transformation sequences, the occasional blue Optimus Prime, etc.).  Season 2 has new Transformers popping in out of nowhere around episode 28, as if they’ve always been there and we just haven’t met them.

The best thing about this set is how cheap it is!  You can get the whole thing for less than $60 on eBay, shipping from China included.  Considering that the series was broken up into about 6 DVD sets here in the US, each one sold for between $30-$40, it’s a real bargain.

Toriyama designed car

Akira Toriyama (The artist behind Dragon Ball Z, Crono Trigger, and the Dragon Warrior series, in case you stumbled across this site by accident) has designed this goofy little electric car that is being sold in Japan. It is available in several different colors. Toriyama has always been known for his detailed drawings of invented vehicles, so it’s only natural for him to do something like this. The only thing that would make it more authentic is if it hovered along with no obvious means of locomotion. :)

I love Corel Painter IX

A little something I whipped up on Saturday afternoon. Anybody want to buy a poster?

Not available at the Sanrio overstock outlet...

(the following text was taken from the Mainichi Daily News website)

A platinum Hello Kitty figurine encrusted with diamonds went on display at a Tokyo department store.

The 41 mm-tall "Queen" Kitty was created in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the popular pop icon, and is worth 10.5 million yen.

New SuperPope Graphic

I've had people e-mail me saying that they want to buy a SuperPope T-shirt, but they'd rather the design show SuperPope being himself instead of being pasted on an NES cartridge.

So, I've done it. The SuperPope On-line Store has been updated with several different shirts and a huge poster that feature this new design. In the near future I'm going to change the design on a lot of other products, as well as add notebooks, buttons, and magnets. Lemme know what you think!

The definition of "Anime"

Type the following words into dictionary.com and you'll get these definitions:

an·i·me: n. A style of animation developed in Japan, characterized by stylized colorful art, futuristic settings, violence, and sex.

Japanimation: n. A style of cartoon or animation made in Japan that focuses on futuristic themes and robotlike characters; also called anime.

What the heck? “Characterized by futuristic settings, violence, and sex!?!” Who came up with those definitions? The last time I checked, Hello Kitty always kept her clothes on, did not live in the future, and refrained from murdering Keroppi the frog.

Talk about stereotypes! That’s like defining the word “movie” as “characterized by famous actors making smart remarks before blowing up evil scientists who are always from the future and are generally portrayed by Christopher Walken.”

Here is my definition:
an·i·me: n. An animation created in the country of Japan.

Short, simple, and 100% accurate. Put that in your pidgeon-holeing pipe and smoke it, Webster!

The Garfield Movie

This is not a review of the Garfield movie. Make no mistake: I will not go see this movie. Every time I see an ad for it I throw up a little bit in my mouth. This movie disgusts me in the same way the Scooby Doo, Cat in the Hat, and The Grinch movies do (the live-action Grinch movie or as I like to call it, “Hypocrisy Incarnate”).

No, I just wanted to point out something amusing about the casting in this movie. Bill Murray is the voice of Garfield. So let’s think about this:

Bill Murray is the voice of Garfield in the movie based on a comic that was made into a cartoon in the 1980s. In that cartoon, an actor named Lorenzo Music performed the voice of Garfield. Lorenzo Music was also the voice of Peter Venkman in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon, which was based on the movie in which Bill Murray played the same part.

I realized these facts on my own. Does it mean that people think the two men sound alike? I don’t. And at any rate, who cares? Bill Murray is hilarious, and Garfield quit being funny about 20 years ago. Hey, maybe Garfield was never funny and I just thought so when I was in elementary school. That would make sense.

A-Kon 15 Anime Convention

This guy wasn't there...but I wish he had been. Pretty cool costume.

Well, I just returned from our annual weekend excursion to the Project: A-Kon Anime Convention in Dallas, Texas. This year marks the ninth consecutive year I have attended. As usual, I hardly participated in any actual convention events. I consider myself more of a convention tourist. I take photos of the freakish natives and crowd into elevators filled with all types of unwashed nerd BO.

Here are some of the most common aspects of the con-going archetype I have noted in my years of observation:

* They cannot resist the urge to speak randomly to complete strangers about things the strangers know nothing of and care nothing about.

* If given a small amount of authority by the convention organizers, they thrive on this power and become an incredibly annoying sort of Nerd Gestapo.

* The bigger the girl, the smaller the costume.

I'll stop there and save the rest for my eventual book about the con-freak phenomenon.

You might be wondering, if I'm so turned off by these people, why do I go to anime conventions? My wife and I go to anime conventions to buy cool stuff and to learn about new anime. Yes, we do love Japanese cartoons, but we still manage to function as relatively normal human beings. It's also just a good excuse to spend a weekend in the Dallas area each summer.

I may post some photos of the convention at a later date.