Hey look, I designed my own font! (Not really.) It'd be pretty cool if I could make one of those websites that'd let you type regular text into one box so it'd turn into crazy Wingdings in the other box. Anyways, this is a tiny piece of a big project I've been working on. Remember when I talked about combining Inktober, Huevember, and Deepseamber into one big marathon of doodling? Yeah, that's what I'm doing come October. I'm calling it The Triple Trifecta of Tedium!

Felt like rambling. Deal with it. So for the past few months, I've been working on a shitload of sketches, and absolutely none of 'em have been made at home. Instead, I take my work to this outlet mall, and I specifically camp out at Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, and Taco Bell to work on my stuff. Sometimes I order food, sometimes I don't. This has me thinking, "Why don't I enjoy working on my sketches at home anymore?" Good question. The following reasons are: #1. No leveled spaces for me to sit and doodle. #2. Way too much noise. #3. Not enough space to breathe. #4. My cousins piss me off more and more every God damn day. So I get away from it all and slither on over to a random fast food joint for the next ten hours without a worry in the world. The only downside is being super broke, so I can't always afford a lunch break while I'm in the middle of doodling. That's definitely on me. I'm not great with money.

Don't worry, this has nothing to do with quitting art stuff. Lemme provide some context: I've been living with my aunt since last August, and it's been pretty nice. Except for one thing: My cousin likes to use the downstairs bathroom for hours and hours, every single fucking day. Now that wouldn't be such a big deal if she didn't play such obnoxiously loud music. She plays it so loud, in fact, that she has it blast through the whole goddamn house. You could hear it coming from fucking OUTSIDE!! I've confronted her about this time and time again, yet not once has she ever let up. So I tried to cut a deal with her. I'd let her blast all the music she wanted on ONE condition. I made her a playlist of all my favourite songs, as well as songs that I feel like she'd enjoy, so I figured if she played music we both sorta liked, then we'd have no problems. Unfortunately, she never played a single song from the playlist. Not one. I eventually went to my aunt about this, but she won't do shit about it. She tells me she's just as annoyed about it as I am, but she's too much of a spineless chicken shit to do anything. It's not like I can move out, and I can't just get rid of the speakers, they're not mine! So y'know what? I give up. I'm done. I fold. She wins. I won't bother bitching to her about the music anymore. I've learned my lesson. It's a waste of time, she's a dumb bitch who doesn't care, and I frankly don't have the energy to even be angry anymore. I just wish I could make myself deaf on command.

I... I-I'm... I'm fucking speechless. I got nothin'!

So I've recently been planning something pretty crazy. I don't know if I'll do it for realsies, but imagine this: What if I did Inktober, Huevember, AND Deepseamber all in one long and glorious run? That definitely sounds WAY too ambitious for a lazy, little Pufflug like me, but it'll at least be fun to come up with prompt lists in the meantime. Do you think I should do it or should I just get back to doing nothing? I mean, it's still five months before October, sooooo maybe I'd have some time to prepare? What do you guys think?

Do you ever feel ashamed of liking something to the point defending it feels embarrassing or pointless? I think I've been feeling that way about Hazbin and Helluva for the past year now. I don't hate the shows, nor do I dislike them personally, buuuuuut I can see why the show gets so much criticism.

I've recently come across this gorgeous animation test of the Cat in The Hat up to his usual silliness, all the while promoting a new Dr. Seuss movie in the works. The art style and the smoothness of the animation absolutely blew me away, and I couldn't help but concur with a fellow user who commented that it looked like it came straight from the original books. However, I'm always pretty skeptical in April, so I left an admittedly over-the-top comment saying, "A Dr. Seuss movie animated entirely in 2D? ... This better not be a fucking April Fool's prank or I'm gonna start cutting peoples' fingers off and force-feeding them to you."

I've been having a pretty rough month, alright? Unfortunately, someone eventually replied, "It’s just an animation test, meaning the film could be in CG, but there’s also the possibility of it being close to something like the Garfield or Peanuts movie." To which I replied, "That's it, gimme your fingers." Why the fuck does every single animated movie have to be CG now? I know there's some 2D ones sprinkled into the mix like The Day The Earth Blew Up, but these people are clearly capable of producing some gorgeous 2D masterpieces.

"Are you sure you're not just being bitchy and biased, FDM?" No, no, you're right on the mark, I totally am. That's right, I admit it, I'm a salty guy who's tired of the same CG shit, and it's driving me fucking crazy! I guess I'm still seething from the fact Pixar hasn't made anything good since they stopped taking risks, among other things, but my point still stands. 2D is not inferior, God dammit! "But FDM, some of these CG movies are actually pretty good. You don't have to like the way the movie's presented, but you can at least appreciate the effort being put into the animation and the story, right?"

Alright, look, I'm not saying a movie is good or bad depending on whatever style it takes. I'm just tired of this crap, alright? I don't really know where else I'm going with this rant, I think I just needed to vent or something. Happy April, I guess.

HATE. Let me tell you how much I've come to HATE dogs since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer-thin layers that fill my complex. If the word "HATE" were engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles, it would not equal one one-BILLIONTH of the HATE I feel for canines at this microinstant, for DOGS. HATE. HATE.

Okay, lemme clarify: I don't hate all dogs. I've encountered some pretty decent canine companions in my nineteen years on this Earth. In fact, believe it or not, I actually have a favourite dog breed, although I've never owned one myself. Y'all know it as the good ol' chai-haha, or chichi-huha, or whatever the Hell those little Gremlins are called. I remember when my grandma had one named Peanut. That little monster used to hate my guts, always barking at me the second I'd step on my grandma's property. Not gonna lie, that twitchy monster scared the shit outta me.

But as he got older, he barely bothered yip at me even as I passed him by. Then one day, as all mortal critters do, he was eventually wrapped up in a casket and shipped off to that glamorous toga party in the sky. I didn't know Peanut that well, but he was a good dog. Now, that being said, allow me to explain why I'm writing this post: You see, several months ago, my cousin thought it'd be a good idea to purchase not one, but TWO puppies, even though she already had Marley: A well-trained, quiet, and sweet golden retriever who could do no wrong.

But my cousin figured it'd be no biggie, even though the house is already pretty crowded, she has almost a dozen cats, and the average puppy could cost hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars! But whatever, she can spend her money however the Hell she likes, it's none of my business. I figured it'd be no biggie anyways. It's not like I had to take care of the pups anyways. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be that easy. When the pups finally arrived, they began to make my life a living Hell. Now it's a no-brainer that puppies can be a bit of a handful, so I should've seen this coming.

But expecting things to suck ain't the same as actually experiencing how sucky it could possibly get. About a week after the pups moved in, they were already driving me fucking nuts! The late-night barking, howling, and whining. The sounds of running, growling, and barking. I even got to smell the malodorous stench of wet dog fur for the first time a few weeks ago! So not only do I have to put up with the noise, I also have to tolerate them smelling like ass, because WHY THE FUCK NOT?!?! I'm just grateful they're too stupid to use the stairs to my cellar bedroom.

Now I can forgive all that, but I can NEVER forgive what they did yesterday! Yesterday, I went grocery shopping and bought a box of French bread pizzas. When I got home, I preheated the oven and let 'em sit on the stove in the meantime. After I came back from the bathroom, I noticed I was missing one of my pizzas, then I saw the two puppies roughing around in the living room... With a pizza stuck between their snarling, slobbering jaws... I held back every fiber of my being not to strangle the horrible, little Hell Hounds. I shit you not, I was ready to go fucking HAM!!

But I just sighed and tore the frozen pizza from their jaws and threw it out... Okay, to be honest, I just put it back on the oven pan. There wasn't that much damage, save for the missing pepperoni slices and a couple small bites. I just hope the oven disintegrated all the dog germs. This is exactly why I'm a cat person. Yes, cats can be just as mischievous, but at least they don't drive me HALF as bonkers as these God-forsaken monstrosities. If you like dogs, then whatever, good for you, have fun picking shit up off the floor and listening to non-stop barking every day.

I just hope to God my braindead cousin buys a pair of shock collars for those fucking mutts.

Today, we're gonna be talking about MAPs, otherwise known as multi-animator projects. As advertised, they're basically videos wherein various artists and/or animators will create short, animated segments that make up one long animation. Sometimes these projects are nice and simple, like a collaborative animated music video, or a reanimated episode from a beloved cartoon, or maybe they'll go for a much more ambitious route and try to reanimate a whole goddamn show! Now MAPs are pretty neat because they can benefit the participants in many ways.

Sometimes whoever's hosting the MAP just wants to expose some would-be artists who wanna get their foot in the door, sometimes these collaborating animators wanna get together and form friendships, and sometimes participants will wanna just go nuts with whatever assigned segment of the video they were given! It's all a-okay, baby. So in short, MAPs are a great way for artists and animators to come together and create something awesome, whether it's to expose each other's talents to the world, or to just make something cool together... And here's why I kinda hate 'em.

Now I wanna make something abundantly clear: I don't hate the idea of MAPs. In fact, I encourage them, but here's just a few things I don't like about 'em. I've been meaning to get this off my chest for a while, and if I don't, it's just gonna burn a fucking hole through my being, so here goes: I really fucking hate how most MAPs I've encountered are comprised of really shitty and God-awful animations ninety percent of the time, but the other ten percent are made of extremely talented people who only take up four or five seconds of the video.

Now I know the super experienced animators are probably busy or just can't be bothered to be part of an MAP, so of course not every submission is gonna blow me away, and I know animation is extremely hard to learn and sucks the life outta you no matter how experienced you are, but sometimes these lamer entries just piss me off! It just makes me think, "Dude! You're clearly not fucking ready for this! So just go home and don't come back until you're better at this! I'm sorry, but you fucking suck and so does your style!" Sometimes you have to give people that bitch slap of truth!

Just stop fucking accepting these terribly animated segments! Some might argue that they like the crappy entries because they have a "charm" to 'em, but I beg to differ. I like quality animation, alright? I don't wanna see the same grungy-ass, terrible fucking animatics over and over again! This is kinda the main reason I don't watch MAPs as much as I used to. A lot of them are just so fucking bloated with awful entries that make me wanna tear my hair out. "Well I'd like to see you do better, FDM." Okay, fair, I'm not an animator, so what the Hell do I know?

I'm sure these inexperienced people work just as hard on their animations as any other schmuck. I'm terribly sorry for my rude and insensitive ramblings and I apologize for the negative vibe. I guess this was more of a vent than an essay. I just really wanted to get that off my chest, man. Again, I'm sincerely sorry for sounding and acting like a total dickweed earlier, I just really needed to let that out. "Well, what MAPs DO you like, FDM?" I guess it wouldn't hurt to share a few of my favourites. Here's a little list of MAPs I personally like.

Migraine

Fly Away

The Dover Boys

Animate-A-Grump

The Grump Variations

OneyPlays: The Totally Tubular Collab

Anything You Can Do

Firework: JonTron Edition

I friggin' love Clarence. For those who don't know, Clarence is this pretty rad cartoon from 2014 that I watched pretty much religiously when I was eight. I was a cable kid growing up, so I didn't watch that much TV at home, but when I was at my aunt's place or I was forced to visit my mom, my only source of entertainment was the Devil's Dream Box. The show revolves solely around Clarance Wendle and his friends, Sumo and Jeff. I'm not gonna go super in depth with the show, I just wanna talk about why I like it. I really love how somewhat grounded the show is.

There's no overly weird or stupid stories. Instead, it sorta takes place in the real world, albeit exaggerated. Basically you won't have to expect any crazy crap to happen like Clarence and the gang going into outer space to rescue the Moon Princess from a giant alien hotdog king. Instead you'd only have to expect them to get into random, every-day stuff, but in spite of the simplicity, it still feels super interesting and chaotic at times. I also love how the environments look kinda dirty or rough instead of looking super clean and soft. It feels super natural and nostalgic, in my opinion.

I'll admit though, the show has a lot of gross-out moments, and I guess they did go a little far sometimes. Heck, there's literally a whole episode dedicated to Clarence and his classmates trying to come up with really gross stories. Still, none of the episodes felt like too much or too little. Even when they did more high-stakes stuff, it all still stayed nice and "normal," for lack of a better term. They did do some pretty fantastical stuff from time to time, but only when it made sense. They saved their super crazy stuff for dreams, fantasies, inaccurate flashbacks, etc.

Plus it reminded me of all the simple pleasures of childhood. Spraying yourself in the mouth with a hose, screwing around in the woods, catching frogs, wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until it bursts, wandering around an arcade, doodling monsters and Dinosaurs on scrap paper, staying up super late at your friend's house on a weekend, etc. I also really like how the show doesn't shove exposition down your throat. It all just kinda comes naturally, I guess. You might hear little bits and pieces, but they're super far and in between. Alright, I'll shut up now. Bye.