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People ask me sometimes on stream if I still draw. Not as much as I used to but I do. Lately I have been into redrawing retro video game box covers in a vintage comics style.
Redrawing things was how I learned to draw. As a kid I would try and redraw comic panels and to this day I still enjoy doing it. Perhaps in the future I’ll do some redraws of comic panels. I am a fan of many old comics. Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, Alex Raymon’s Flash Gordon, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse and many others. But of course I also love old video game box art. At some point later maybe I’ll redraw some Atari 2600 box covers. Those were always great because the covers were often these beautiful paintings, which was funny because then you’d play the game and it was just a few very basic pixels. Anyhow, here’s a few of my recent NES box cover attempts. Enjoy.
Here was the process while making it:
Here’s the finished drawing
Next up I decided to redraw the front box cover of Hydlide on NES. This was a game everyone always said was one of the absolute worst games on the system. Many years back I was tasked with beating this game for the AVGN web series. By the time the game ended I didn’t think it was quite as bad as something like X-Men or Bill & Ted. But it was certainly somewhere near the bottom of the barrel. That said, I think the front cover of the game is pretty nice so I decide to do my own comic style redraw.
Lastly, here’s my attempt at drawing the box cover to Gyruss for NES. I never realized until recently how much I enjoy this game. Although playing it at length kills my hands. The original box art is quite amazing. Here’s my version
Next up I have a comic style redraw to the box cover of Wall Street Kid for NES. This game is usually laughed at because , well what kid wanted a video game about Wall Street as a subject? It’s really an odd subject to make a video game about and it’s pretty hilarious it was ever actually made and sold in stores.
Many people pressure me to become a speedrunner. I do not think I should be a speedrunner.
I have tried speedrunning and did not like itAs a kid, my friends and I would sometimes try to time ourselves beating Batman or whatever, and it didn’t appeal to me.
I would not be any good at speedrunningI do not have the talents or attitude to find any success in speedrunning.
Speedrunning does not look fun in the slightestI do not get any satisfaction from trying to beat a game quickly.
Speedrunning would not benefit me in any wayI cannot see any way my life would improve if I started speedrunning.
If I set a speedrunning record, it would get broken very quicklyThe stress of having to constantly defend my speedrunning records seems like torture.
The speedrunning scene does not need me in itNobody is missing out if I don’t become a speedrunner.
You don’t need me to be a speedrunnerGo find a speedrunner to watch if that type of content interests you.
ConclusionSpeedrunning does not appear to be a good fit for me.
This article was written in 12 minutes, 32 seconds.
When you think of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, most people automatically assume Walt himself created those characters. After all why wouldn’t you think that? When you search online “Who created Donald Duck” Google will tell you exactly that. That it was Walt. But the truth is a little bit more complicated.
As far as Mickey goes, you can largely thank Ub Iwerks for the early drawings. With Walt doing his voice.
But I want to talk about Donald specifically because that’s where it gets more confusing. We all know what Donald Duck became eventually, how he looks and sounds. But early on the character looked quite a bit different. The first cartoon where Donald appeared was called “The Wise Little Hen” in 1934. So you would figure, whoever drew Donald in that must have been the creator of Donalds likeness right? For that short, there were several animators who were involved in bringing him to life. Wolfgang Reitherman animated the hen. While Art Babbitt was the one who animated the pig and Donald. So is that it then? Art Babbitt? Well, he only animated the first scene with Donald.
The second scene where Donald has a belly ache was done by Gilles de Tremaudan. While Dick Huemer animated the whole finale of the short.
There was another animator named Dick Lundy who primarily animated Donald in his second cartoon appearance entitled Orphans Benefit.
Many sources say that this was the first story concept created to feature Donald, but it took longer to actually get produced as a cartoon. So the Wise Little Hen was released to the public first.
But since Orphans Benefit was in development first, does that actually mean that Dick Lundy was the first to work on Donald? Welp, again, not really. In part because the Wise Little Hen may still have been animated first. But either way, because before you do animation you need to first design the character and to do that – they first make model sheets for the characters.
From what I have read, Albert Hurter did the first Donald model sheets, which ended up being made for The Wise Little Hen. But what were Hurter’s influences? The plot idea that became Orphan’s Benefit called for Donald being a young character, a cranky little boy forced to recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on stage. Since he was a little boy, Donald was drawn wearing a sailor suit, which schoolboys were often depicted as wearing in the early 1900s. The comic strip artist Richard Outcault had introduced Buster Brown, a school-age little boy who wore a sailor suit. The comic strip artist Lansing Campbell drew comics of Uncle Wiggily, a rabbit cartoon character whose friend Jimmy Wibblewobble was a school-age little boy DUCK in a sailor suit.
So there you have it. Alburt Hurter seems to be the first to have drawn Donald Duck right? Well, there is still a bit more to this story, because Hurter’s Donald seemed to have preexisting influences. And you might be thinking, WHAT ABOUT WALT?!
Well, Disney had the name Donald Duck kicking around in the studio for a few years even before the first animated shorts. So he had the desire for this duck to come into existence but it was his artists and animators who made it happen.
There was also a voice artist named Clarance Nash. He would do animal impressions his whole life and one day auditioned these voices for the studio. Walt was impressed with his goat voice, but thought it sounded more like a duck. Nash imitated the goat in the role of a bratty little boy, struggling to recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a stage—that’s where what became the Orphans Benefit concept came from. So Walt knew he wanted to have a bratty child duck character with a bad temper, and ended up using Nash’s goat voice for Donald.
And even before the first shorts, Nash performed “Mary Had a A Little Lamb” as Donald on a Disney-themed NBC radio broadcast in 1934. Which would be the first time the public at large heard Donald’s voice.
“The Wise Little Hen” came out in June 1934. And this Radio broadcast was a few months earlier, in March. So Donald was living on the Radio even before the animated shorts. Possibly even before the model sheets were drawn up.
But guess what, the story doesn’t end there. Because Donald actually existed several years even before this 1934 radio broadcast!
In 1932, a character called Donald Duck appeared in a British Disney children’s book. “Mickey Mouse Annual #3” In a story called “Mickey’s HooZoo”. He only appears on one page of the story, just long enough to be named as one of Mickey’s friends, but he’s there. The art there was done by Wilfred Haughton.
And we’re not done yet. A year before that, in 1931 Disney had released a book called “The Adventures of Mickey Mouse”. Donald Duck is called by name in the book and there are drawings of him, even though he looks entirely different.
Here’s how he appears on the back cover, which I believe to be the first drawing of Donald Duck.
Some of the art was done by Roy Nelson who had also assisted on the Mickey Mouse daily cartoon strip. The artists are unknown but some of the art looks like it could have been Earl Duvall’s work, who had worked on Disney newspaper comics and later some Warner Bros shorts like Honeymoon Hotel.
All in all, it seems that Donald Duck’s creation was truly a fusion of several different animators and illustrators to bring us the character we now know today.
Thanks to David G for research help.
Channel Points were something I never asked for. One day, Twitch dumped this feature on us where viewers passively accrue a fantasy currency as they watch streams, and then they purchase stuff with them. The problem is, Twitch didn’t furnish creators with enough built-in ways to let people redeem channel points, and this feature was enabled by default. I was expected to come up with my own ways to let people redeem them, and frankly I’ve been stumped as to what they should even be used for.
Part of this might have been because I thought Channel Points couldn’t be disabled. I had looked for the option a long time ago and couldn’t find it, so I assumed I was obligated to use them. Recently I discovered I could turn them off, so I did. People who have their own Twitch channels can tell you that the Dashboard on Twitch is really poorly organized and is constantly changing.
Anyways, the Channel Points are gone now, and here’s a bullet list of the various reasons why I turned them off.
Why Channel Points are not a good fit for Mike Matei Live I can’t have audio or visual popups on my stream
I used to have audio alerts when people subbed or sent out bits. Unfortunately, this didn’t work because I like to edit my stream footage into compilations later, and bells, whistles and graphics onscreen can interfere with that process. So, I can’t have people redeem Channel Points for alerts like I see some other streamers do.
* I have a hard time committing to gimmicks for long term
Long time fans remember I used to do all sorts of stuff that I no longer do. I used to have a big physical lever I’d pull that would show Thunder in Paradise clips. There comes a point where segments need to be retired, and I think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to run things into the ground.
* Most Channel Point redemption ideas would involve copying other streamers
I like to do my own thing, and frankly I’m not particularly interested in borrowing other people’s ideas for my own stream. People would say “just let people redeem their points for X like such and such streamer does” and the idea of just copying someone else doesn’t exactly thrill me. I’m not saying Mike Matei Live is the cutting edge of innovation in live entertainment, but I think it’s reasonable to say that for the most part this channel has its own distinct style that we came up with over the years, and we do our own thing.
* I don’t believe in highlighted comments
In my streams, I try and replicate the feeling of the 80’s/90’s when you’d go over a friends house and hang out. Imagine for a second, it was 1991 and you are over your friends house. You want to talk to him while you are both sitting on the couch, but you can’t get his attention unless you used a point system. You would think your friend is a crazy. That is not the type of atmosphere I want in my stream. I want to talk to people like they are human beings. Not to where they have to acquire points to get my attention for a highlighted message. I do not believe in the system and I don’t want it as a part of my chat.
* The economy of Channel Points is impossible to balance properly
So let’s say one of the Channel Points redemption ideas is I draw you a picture of anything you want onstream. Okay, I can do that. Here’s the problem: how much should it cost?
For the sake of argument, let’s say I made Draw You a Picture cost 100 channel points. Well, guess what? Now I have to draw hundreds of pictures for everyone in the channel because it’s too inexpensive.
Okay, so what’s the solution? Make them absurdly expensive? How expensive should they be? The problem is, I can make them really expensive, but they still have to be affordable by SOMEONE. But, there’s a cluster of people who have tons of Channel Points, so I still run into the problem of a bunch of people purchasing Draw You a Picture all at once. The amount of people with tons and tons of Channel Points is actually a pretty big group of people.
What if all these Channel Point millionaires buy a picture simultaneously and I can’t draw all the pictures at once? I have to keep track of who bought what and then promise to draw them a picture later? Now I have to keep appointments with people? Instead of streaming video games, which is the main reason the channel exists? I don’t want to do it.
Being able to balance the economy of Channel Points requires a lot of math. It feels as complicated as game developers balancing stats in an RPG game or people working in government passing laws to help the real world economy. It’s actually quite difficult to figure out how much these Channel Point redemptions should even cost, and Twitch doesn’t exactly provide me with tools to figure these questions out.
* I never wanted this feature*
Literally, one day I woke up and now there’s Channel Points. There was no warning, it was dumped on me. I never asked for this feature, I never once had a single thought in my head to the effect of “I wish people would earn a fantasy currency for watch time on my streams.” Never asked for it, don’t want it, never did.
When Channel Points were introduced, I felt no excitement. There were no butterflies in my stomach fantasizing about all the possibilities for fun ideas involving Channel Points. Quite the contrary, they have been a huge thorn in my side and since the beginning I have wanted to disable them and for a long time, I believed I was unable to.
I could probably make more bullet points, but that’s good for now. I know some of you guys care about the Channel Points but… I’ve been pretty transparent about how I have never cared about them and didn’t want them on my channel.
So, from me to you… sorry about your Channel Points. I hope you guys can see my point of view, and thanks for reading this and at least understanding my reasoning.
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