He was mostly just a D&D-style "death priest". The original idea was that he was some nerd who became a "Cleric of Death" under the condition that he worshiped Grim. CN woudn't let us say words like "worship", so instead he just became a "really big fan".

We're nearing the end of this last eBay journey. Which may indeed be the last! There's not much left.

This was a fight scene from the Evil Con Carne episode No-No Nanook. I remember groaning after assigning myself this model, because who wants to draw a big fight scene on top of your regular workload?

Short answer: Me. It turned out to be a lot of fun. I don't remember this being the best ECC episode, but I do remember it being chaotic and model-heavy. There was an even bigger shot too, I remember, where the characters are basically moving like a wave because there are so many of them.

I've probably blocked out the trauma. Haha.

Here are a couple of pics from the original Billy & Mandy Bible that I found. The whole thing (including roughs) is on my Patreon. The original outline is up there too.

Eris was there the whole time! :o

I'm also still selling B&M (and other) stuff on eBay. There are original concept pieces, character art, comic pages, cels, VHS, DVDs, and other fancy stuff.

Support flesh and bone artists! 🖤🤘💀🤘🖤

As requested!

Milkman was a bad idea for a show. He was a superhero who had photos of missing kids appear on the back of his head. It's a weird joke for anyone under 45, and it turns out that networks aren't too keen on kidnappings.

Professor Death Ray Eyes would later appear (in a different form) on Evil Con Carne. And Billy & Mandy would continue to devolve as we got closer to the pilot for B&M.

I don't remember much about Marty. I know he fell to earth and was adopted by two parents with a cat, and there was a rivalry with the cat. Maybe I've still got it around here somewhere...

A long time ago, in a studio far, far away...

For the interested and curious, I’ll once again be putting some original Billy & Mandy and Evil Con Carne production artwork on eBay– probably the last of it! Starting this coming weekend (the 28th or 29th), I’ll first be posting auctions for some non-B&M stuff, like Dead Meat props and collectibles from other animated shows I didn’t work on. Then it’s on to the Grimmiverse. The goal is to drum up enough money to cover my mortgage for a few months while I try to outlast the studio drought.

It’s been… a year. I lost my job to studio cuts (but am still cool enough to get scraped by MidJourney), had a flood requiring expensive repairs, some cat emergencies, a small fire, and a dash of skin cancer. It’s all been a bit excessive, if you ask me. I’m not a person who spends much, but this has definitely been one of the more expensive years of my life. And all without an income! It’s amazing how fast things start to come apart when there’s no money holding it together.

Anyway, this is probably your best (and maybe final?) shot at getting your hands on some Billy & Mandy production artwork, some other original hand-drawn animation art, some fun cartoon collectibles, a few hand-crafter post apocalyptic movie props, and SUNDRIES!

Everyone loves a sundry.

When I’m going through this stuff, I end up taking a lot of photos of the art and memorabilia. Those end up on my Instagram, so check ‘em out there too. I’ll also be posting some new Halloweeny artwork there during October!

If you want the deep dive on all of the artwork (I’ll be posting some full storyboards soon) please check out the Patreon.

Demurely yours,

Maxwell

And a good executive dysfunction to you!

My stomach hurts.

I don't want to draw right now, but I really do want to draw in general. Just not now. Maybe... now?

No. Not yet.

There's a wasp's nest on the catio. I should be looking up how to remove it, but instead I'm in here writing this nonsense. I should be drawing.

It still smells like burning metal in here, so I probably am better off with the wasps. Did I mention that my bathroom caught fire this morning? Like an actual fire fire. I may have buried the lede on that one. I used to think it was "buried the lead", as though you'd skipped the information you meant to lead with. Fun that it still works.

Fire dept. said that there was a timer on the wall switch in the bathroom where we're having work done from the flood that happened after my birthday. When the timer tripped, a heating mesh coiled up by the wall caught fire. Thankfully, my fiancee' smelled the burning metal and we caught it early.

It's hard to make cartoons when your house keeps attacking you. Also, when you're not employed making cartoons. I'm trying some indie stuff, but again... can I get a break here? Let's just tone down the apocalypse. I'd like to get some stuff done. And my insurance runs out in two weeks.

But HA! Fincee'! So I still get insurance. Happy accidents. Suck it, world-- Oh hang on. Contractor is here...

I'm back! Where was I?

My fuchsia is on the rebound, I think. Passed it on the way back in. I don't want to call it a comeback, but it's flowering. I think maybe the pot retains too much water. We'll see how it goes. Thankfully it doesn't need much compost because I blew through the whole pile yesterday refiling the garden beds. I did the beds Hügelkultur style, but I used cacti in one of them, so the soil drop was insane after the first year. Free garden tip for ya' there.

Where was I?

To be fair, there's a lot of residual adrenaline going on this morning too.

Work.

Right...

Gotta get these drawings done. I said I'd do it by tomorrow. I only said it to myself, but I should maybe listen. Can I be trusted?

Just draw, dude.

It smells like cheese and apocalypse in here. Nothing I can do about the fried metal, but the cheese is from the toaster oven. I should go clean that now. Hang on. I'll be back.

This joint turned twelve today.

#tumblrthday

SDCC: 7/28 @ 1:45 pm

It's been a dog's age since I attended San Diego Comic Con. But I'm going this year with my friend C.H. Greenblatt to do a panel for his show "Jellystone"!

Jellystone is famous for ruining the childhoods of people who love(d) Hanna-Barbera characters. Now we're going to ruin old-school CN for everyone too.

Don't ghost us!

I bought a Gartenmeister Fuchsia plant for my birthday back in January. It was a centerpiece all winter long, but recently it started looking a bit sickly. I'm not a "green" gerdener anymore (haha), but I am also by no means a master. I think it was infected with powdery mildew, but I also convinced myself it was spider mites. I try to keep things all -natural out there, so I dried it out and sprayed it with some neem oil after pruning it back a bit. I really should've pruned off all of the infected bits, but I didn't want to lose the flowers.

I did that a few more times, unable to commit to a hard prune because I kept telling myself "I don't know what I'm doing, so maybe it's not sick. Maybe it'll fix itself. Sure would be nice to have those flowers back." I finally gave up and cut it to the bone yesterday, but yesterday was too late. I had to remove every single leaf because I dithered for too long. It's probably not going to make it.

I feel the same way about our culture. US culture. Western culture (though its really a global problem). The Entertainment Industry. The Media. It's sick. We probably need some rather serious surgery to fix the problem, but we just will not see a doctor. To see a doctor would be to admit there's a problem, and for some that is the greatest sin of the 21st Century. Maybe some of us are just hoping the system will recover on its own so we can have our pretty flowers back.

For me, it was around 2010 or so when I first started to smell something "off". The symptoms had certainly been around a while. This was just when I noticed. This was when I got my first, "Hey, let's not make fun of corporations" note. It's when The History Channel stopped airing stuff about history in favor of aliens because that's where the money was. And rather than rebranding, they just left it as "History", encouraging future generations to believe whatever they felt like. This was also about when traditional news outlets started skewing to clickbait in order to compete with sites that were clearly 100% not legitimate news sites. Again, as long as the money is right it's "just entertainment" and you' can're welcome to believe it if it means you'll watch more.

I'm all-in on Dead Internet Theory now. The disparity between what major news media outlets will report and what you see from actual people on Tumblr or Threads or Reddit is pretty shocking. And those sites are already compromised by bots and bad actors. The tools exist now to actively bamboozle millions of people, and I have no doubt we're already seeing some of this now. In six months or a year you'll find out it (whatever it was) never happened or was generated by an LLM. The time to stop listening to anyone online was a year ago.

Trust no one.

Not even me!

It's cultural rot. It's spreading faster and faster, and I'm not sure what happens when we get to the end of this ride. Actually, I AM sure what happens. If we don't prune back hard now, then the rot takes over. Best-case, you clip the infected branches off too late and it takes years to recover. Worst case? Nature soldiers on but the plant succumbs to infection and dies completely, replaced (eventually) by something that can actually hack it in that spot.

When humans produce art and information, and then comment on that art and information by producing more art and information, we call it "culture". We're moving toward a time when the vast majority of art and ideas we get out eyes on won't be created by humans. Or at the very least won't be created with the purpose of commenting on or enriching the organic human experience. When that happens, what will we call it? What will remain of our culture?

I wrote a whole long thing on "Atlas" the other day. Reading it back... it sucks. The movie, not my review.

A true Strong AI would have no use for anything the AI does in that movie, including being Simu Liu. The whole movie seems moot, since we established up-front that AI can transmit its consciousness across space to replicate itself indefinitely. Have fun with the sequels.

I also have little use for "pro-AI" propaganda B.S., which is the rest of the movie. Pay your fucking artists. And your screenwriters.

I'm still working on "Billy & Mandy vs. The Entertainment Industry". I have four or five interviews in the can that need to be edited. There's work to do there, but it's coming. There's some impetus to get them done sooner rather than later. The animation landscape is changing (degrading?) so rapidly that I'm not sure my "state of the industry" talk with Mr. Warburton and Greg Miller last month is as up-to-date as it could be.

When I do get back to live streaming, I'll be working on whatever I end up working on. The early delays on the live streaming were due to equipment problems. Now it's a production problem. Well, I did also just lose my stylus. But mostly it's a logistics problem now. There's not much point in having a Patreon or live streaming if there's nothing to feed those. Eventually I'll need to be producing the art to make the... shows or whatever we end up calling them. That's what I'll be live streaming, most likely.

I'm starting to get excited about making something new. I think I finally wrapped my head around the inherent problems and expectations that come from working in a team of dozens and dozens of people and doing something completely solo. We'll see!

I had to throw out a lot of the bigger props I built due to the flooding I had... and the fact that it would have cost hundreds of dollars just to ship one of the cars. I sold a puppet for $130 last year and by the time I bagged and shipped it, I was ten bucks in the hole.

I do have some of the best pieces left over and I'm trying to decide what to do with them. I also have the last of my Billy & Mandy Production Art Treasure Trove. Necessity suggests that I get rid of all of that ASAP, but I'm looking for a less obnoxious venue than eBay.

Also, it's not easier as a solo artist to animate a full length motion picture than it is to shoot pieces live-action and then composite them. So (even trauma aside) I think Dead Meat is done.

You nailed it.

I do think there will be some original animated show creators coming out of this next generation, but the chances of a studio supporting a young creator of an original idea seems much lower than it used to. CN is making some new shorts, so something interesting may come from there. Mostly, though, I think that the new stuff will come from people who just make something because they want to make something.

That's my current, sloppy plan anyway.

Things are going to get even weirder in the future, I think, as studios continue to push to replace or overwork their existing workers. LLMs are a bad investment all-around, but we may still end up fighting them for space on the internet. Studios would love to have complete dominance over the media space, so flooding the internet with AI trash is in their best interest.

So yeah. Make something. Make it now before things get harder.