The Shire LaBeuof

So while watching The Hobbit films recently I thought a play on words with The Shire and Shia LeBeouf would be a fun idea. After a bit of brain-storming, I was brought to this vision involving the "Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf." So thanks to Lynn for helping with this one!

Dementor Vs Ringwraith

There are many parallels between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings characters, such as giant spiders, old white bearded wizards, giant trolls and I'm sure many more. I'm also sure you can connect both of these to other films/books/whatevers too, but one of the the biggest that stood out to me was the similarities between the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter's Dementors. They do have their own origins, abilities and motivation, but personally I always found them fairly similar in appearance and the way they both track down the protagonists. I just wondered what would happen if these two were up against each other. Who do you think might win in such a fight?

Menace Vs. Menace

I've never read, played or watched Spy Vs. Spy but I decided to do a Dennis the Menace inspired parody of it anyway.

Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace first appeared in newspaper comics on March 12, 1951. He's caused mischief ever since along with his dog, Ruff. I remember him mostly in my younger years from watching his old cartoon series and he's even had live action movies made about him. I always remember Matt Groening saying he created Bart Simpson in response to not liking this Dennis the Menace as he always carried around a slingshot but never really used it or did anything particularly bad.

Dennis the Menace, star of The Beano comic, debuted just 2 days later on 14 March 1951, in an issue dated March 17 (Thanks to The Beano editor for personally clearing that up for me.) He's also had his own animated series' over the years and together with his trusty dog Gnasher would be more likely to cause a disturbance with his catapult. Maybe Matt Groening should have been reading The Beano instead. In recent years I have heard criticism of him being less of a menace than he used to be. I haven't read his comics in years though so I couldn't comment on that personally but when I was younger I did read some of the even older comics as well as the (at the time) new ones and I felt like the older ones, even back then, were a little more violent. Certainly towards the kids themselves, who would frequently be hit with a slipper or cane in the last panel by a parent or teacher in comeuppance to their antics.

Tales from the Till Roll: I AM NOT A ROBOT!

Now that there's a second "Tales from the Till Roll" we can officially class it as a series. Whenever I work behind a till there's a bit of paper behind it which, among other things, says "Remember, you are not a robot." I think it might be lying. Of course whoever wrote that was unaware of the origins of the word "robot." The word "robot" comes from "robota" which, in Czech and a few other European languages, means "labour," "drudgery," "hard work" and "servitude." Either they didn't know or they didn't expect anyone reading it to be aware of the origins to pick apart the irony of the statement.

#100 The Back to the Future Tilll Roll Tapestry

 Warning: Almost 50Mb

So here's the full Back to the Future till roll tapestry, to conclude my overly milked episode 100 celebrations, in gif form. I came up with a few ideas on how to present the full version in a way that people could easily view it and possibly share it. The scrolling gif format as suggested by someone on one of my previous posts seemed like the best idea. I also like the unintentional texture that the gif format adds to the piece which actually makes it look a bit more tapestry like. It is a little jerky but I seem to have reached the maximum limits of the gif format, as I did with Photoshop when creating the full image.

Of course if you want to see it in more detail and spend a bit more time looking at the images it's still available in it's cut up format on my other posts.

Now you can enjoy all it's 42.88 foot length in one manageable file.

After this we should be back to our normal programing.

#100 (Part 3) The Back to the Future Tapestry

As we reach our exciting conclusion you may all be wondering just how big this thing is in real life. You may have seen my previous post with a photo of it spread out through my living room, all the way along my hall and out the door, well it still wasn't all fully unravelled. After taking that photo it took my around 5 hours to scan the whole thing then I'd hate to even figure out how long to piece it all together to then only split it up again to post here. The till roll is a standard 8mm in height, or 3.15 inches if that's your preference. I didn't even use half of the full roll for the tapestry, probably not even a quarter but it's still a pretty impressive length. Sitting at 13 meters long, or 42.88 feet or 14.29 yards. That's half the width of a hockey rink or a little under 44% the length of a blue whale or about 68.6 standard pencils long. While not as long as the Bayeux Tapestry (last time I mention it, I promise) if you scaled the height up to match it, my Back to the Future version would be longer.

So now that all your questions have been answered you're free to enjoy the last part of the story. Of course I will be back to present the whole thing in a slightly different digestible format.

#100 (Part 2) The Back to the Future Tapestry

Wondering what happens next to The Doc, Marty and Jennifer? Well wonder no more as Back to the Future Part II is now available in online webcomic till roll tapestry format!

It really helps to be already familiar with the films to know what's happening in this "tapestry." It's not designed to tell the story outright like a comic might, it's more to show the essence of the films and to pick out some key scenes and sayings that stand out. I hope this doesn't alienate anyone that doesn't know the films (though if you don't, you should) as I think you could still enjoy scrolling through the images with even just a little understanding of what they are about.

I added a few limitations to help make it tie in with the Bayeux tapestry theme. Things like using only a select few colours. Of course I stuck to using ballpoints as is tradition to Working Doodles but I bought a pack of 8 coloured pens and stuck to using only those. I also added the border round it which really limited the amount of space I had to draw in (easily takes over about 1/3 of the height in total) but gave it the tapestry like feel. As you can see I quickly abandoned the little drawings in the borders, they were taking up too much time to add in there and were difficult to think of details small enough and relevant enough to put in each section.

Wondering how big this thing actually is? You'll need to wait until Part III to find out.

 

#100 (Part 1) The Back to the Future Tapestry

Great Scott! We reached episode 100. I'm sure once you see this you'll be able to see why I needed to take that short hiatus to get it ready.

After doing something a little bigger than normal for episode 50 I decided I wanted to take it a bit further and do something even more epic. One of the advantages (possibly the only advantage) to using till roll as a medium is the infinite canvas like properties. While not entirely infinite it's probably longer than anything most people would like to create. It reminded me a bit of old tapestries. Arguably the most famous tapestry is the Bayeux Tapestry which tells the story of the Norman conquest of England.

At first I thought of recreating the Bayeux Tapestry but adding some kind of twist to it but then I decided I wanted to do something a bit different but still keep a similar-ish style. My first thoughts, following the release of the newest film last year, was to do a Star Wars tapestry but upon a quick Google search I discovered that had already been done in actual tapestry form. My next thought was maybe Lord of the Rings but that maybe seemed a little too large scale and people can get a bit picky with the continuity between film and books. For some reason the next thing that came to mind was Shaun of the Dead but I wanted something a little more expansive and the whole Cornetto Trilogy isn't one continuous story line. That's when Back to the Future came to mind. There was a lot of buzz surrounding it last year too what with it being 2015, and I've already done a reference or two to the films, so why not go one step further and create the Back to the Future Tapestry.

Anyway, I'll let you enjoy part one now and I'll annoy you with more facts and figures in the next part.

Back to the Guinea Pig Cage

Great Scott! So to round off the requests, I bring you the first of two requests from creatures that can't even speak the English required to make requests. Just in the nick of time, before 2015 ends I get to post the original version of my Doc and Marty drawing.

Earlier this year we got a couple of guinea pigs and, as it was 2015, named them Doc and Marty after the iconic characters of Back to the Future. A couple of months ago, on the day the characters arrive in the future in Back to the Future part II, I posted a final full colour version of this picture over on my other blog. Due to me having a large buffer and wanting to post the doodles in order though I'm only just getting round to posting the original here. Enjoy!

Gandalf the Bride

A day late but I hope it was worth it.