SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN LUNCH BOX

Here's a new prized possession. I remember being a 2nd grader in the school cafeteria, and all my friends had colorful and exciting lunch boxes like Six Million Dollar Man, Planet of the Apes, Korg 70,000 BC and Scooby Doo, and I only had a dumb ol' blank one with a plaid pattern on the thermos. I hated that thing and was kind of ashamed of it. But now look at me! I'm as cool as all those other 2nd graders now. Ha! I bet they don't even have theirs anymore!

Why is Oscar Goldman running alongside Steve? He's not supposed to be on these missions! He's the brains of the operation! Maybe he just thought it would be cool to watch Steve bat some dudes with a tree. Maybe Steve told Oscar ahead of time he'd be doing that.

Since that one guy is already on the ground and the tree's on the other side of the standing guy, it means this is the second swing. That means the standing guy watched Steve bat that other guy with a tree, and it didn't scare him off. Man is he dumb! And the one on the ground, is that Davey Jones? Does Oscar hate the Monkees?

I figure this is where the meeting took place before the previous incident. It probably went something like this:

OSCAR: You know Steve, these two guys you're going up against, they're a little crazy.

STEVE: I've been thinking about that, Oscar. I figure I'll lure them into the woods where all the trees are, and pull up a tree and bat them with it. It's a pretty good plan because they aren't bionic, and would be unable to pull up trees to bat me.

OSCAR: Man! That plan sounds REALLY good. You know, Steve . . . I'd kind of like to see that, if you don't mind.

STEVE: Sure, you can tag along. Just don't get in my way. I'll be swinging that tree after all.

As you can see in the picture above, on the way to the woods Oscar nearly drove over Steve. It's a good thing Steve has those bionic legs.

But even with the bionics, thanks to Oscar's bungling, Rudy still had to tweak Steve's legs a bit back at OSI.

Oh no! Steve! Get outta space! That's dangerous! Didn't you learn the first time?! This is another fine mess Oscar's gotten Steve into! It sort of makes you wonder who's side Oscar is REALLY on.

The insides have a few specks of rust here and there. I blame the previous 2nd grader who owned it. If I knew who he was I'd give him the shame routine. Then I'd tell him If he isn't old enough to take care of this precious piece of metallic joy then it'll be taken away, and he'll be eating out of a dumb ol' blank lunch box with a plaid pattern on the thermos!

This is not the thermos that grubby little 2nd grader brat was eating Campbell's soup from. The horrible little ingrate lost his thermos. I had to get this one separately off Ebay. Or maybe it WAS the same long lost thermos and I just reunited it with its metallic mama.

CUSTOM UFO SOUNDS

Here are some UFO sounds I created in Audacity. Audacity is a fun program to play around with. It's free too! You can do just about anything you want, sound-wise. It's a virtual multi-track recording studio. It's probably fancier than what the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix had to work with back in their day.

UFO sound #1

UFO sound #2

There are a bunch of effects like reverse, tremolo, reverb, fade in/out, phaser, wahwah, pitch change, speed and time change, etc...

For these UFO sounds I started with a plain boring tone and just kept adding effects to it until it turned into something. Now I can use these sounds with this UFO and make a little video (if I ever get around to it.)

WIND-UP ROBOT

I just got this new robot. I know it's difficult to know the scale of it without a wiener dog in there for reference, but it's about 3" tall. It's all tin with lots of sharp edges and points, and it's really heavy. It has the potential of causing real pain if it were ever to be thrown by some mean kid.

BIG EAR SIGNAL

Here's an illustration for an album written and recorded by Tom Meigs. By day he writes and records music for video games. By night he fights crime incognito, and now he's gone and recorded an album just for the heck of it.

These songs are very reminiscent of the soundtracks to old sci fi movies from the 70s. There are a lot of old vintage Moog type synthesizers and space sounds mixed all through it. It's very entertaining, and for me, even a little therapeutic and comforting in the form of nostalgia. I like to let it play in while I draw. It's available on Amazon and they have samples for listening.



Here's the original uncolored ink drawing.

DESTROYER ROBOT

This was created on the computer pretty much the same way it would be created in 3 dimensions. I drew one block first. I made a block shaded 3 different tones on 3 different sides. After that the bulk of the drawing was finished.

I copied that block and started stacking pieces together the same way I'd stack real blocks together. There are a few non-block elements but it's mostly the same block either squashed or stretched.

FACE BANK

I bought two banks from a Japanese website called Strapya. They were around $20 each. I got this and another bank, and the total shipping for both was only $5. That boggles my mind how I can get something shipped from Japan for $5. I recently bought an $8 How-to-Draw book from here in the USA and the shipping was an additional $8.

There are motion sensors in the eyes and that triggers the chomping.


Look at this thing go!

CEREAL BOX PRIZES and LAUREL AND HARDY

I found this stuff cheap in a box at the Louisville flea market last weekend.

Here are some Laurel and Hardy rubber figures about 2 inches tall. They're made of pretty hard rubber so I don't think they're erasers.



This is a random hodge-podge of weird stuff.

The 2 guys on the top are little aliens or robots. What are these things? Does anybody know? They still had the plastic wrappers. One was opened so I could look at it better. Normally I don't care about keeping things in wrappers but since these things have made it this long with them, I might as well keep them like that.

The orange thing on the lower left is a Freakies cereal prize. The thing on the lower right is a cave woman. I don't know what she comes from. Does anyone know who she is?

BABOON COCOONS (from the Moon)

When I'm bored I usually draw one of two things: monkeys or frankensteins. It always seems to come down to that. I guess a Frankenmonkey would be the most perfect thing I could ever draw. I don't dare draw it though because then the fantasy would be over.

Today was monkey day. I added some words so it would look like a book cover. The more distant the monkeys were, the less opaque I made them so they seemed like they were fading in the distance.

Here's a single monkey pod.

Maybe when these monkey pods hit the ground they sprout arms and legs so they're mobile, and able to make trouble.

AND ONE MORE THING QUESTOR-RELATED

This kind of goes with that last post, sort of. Here's a video of Questor making demands on the Earth. I used a free program called Audacity to create the sounds.

For the heck of it, here's a black and white version with old film scratches.

I know it would have been a more effective video if Questor wasn't just lounging on the couch in my living room, but I'm too lazy to walk over to the door and go outside. The door is AALLLLLL the way over there, and I'm over here.

If you watch this video and say "Hey, that doesn't make any sense!" don't think you're missing something. It really doesn't make any sense. I just wanted to test out the robot voice and see if it sounded roboty and looked right with a video of Questor moving his lips. The background noise is supposed to make it sound like he's on a different planet. I should go out to some rocky area with no trees, like a strip mine.

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 11

It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! mwa-ha-HA! The dowel in his head slid into the body but the hole was a bit loose. I squeezed out some of that Gorilla Glue onto some paper and rolled the neck dowel in it until there was a thin film around the circumference of the dowel, and let it puff up and dry. It formed a pseudo O-ring and gave the neck a friction fit. DONE!

For no reason, here are some random photos of the big and little Questor brothers.

Here is mini-Questor crawling out of his UFO.







And Happy Halloween! In spite of what they say about Christmas, I say Halloween is the most wonderful time of the year. You don't have to drive around in the miserable cold and icy snow going from store to store looking for gifts and worrying if they will like what you got them, or if you forgot someone, and never getting there because someone slid in the ice and crashed into your car and now you're standing out in the sleet waiting for the cops to come, and blah blah blah and so on and so forth!!!

You just sit around and eat candy and watch monster movies. That's the best night ever.

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 10

These are the final steps in the Mini-Questor project.

I painted his back details to match the colors of the original larger version.


I painted his front details. It's not very clear in this picture, but also I glued wires in the holes on his chest.


While that stuff dried I got some wire and bent it to match his antenna.


On the top of the antenna, I made a little ball and painted it yellow. The ball is made by rolling up some 2-part epoxy putty like the kind Billy Mays was always hawking on tv. Then I pushed it onto the wire before it cured. You have about 5 minutes and then it becomes as hard as a rock.


He's soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo close to being finished now.


I used Gorilla Glue to glue the bubblegum machine container to his neck ring. Be careful with this stuff. The container says it expands 3 - 4 times its original size and they ain't kiddin! A tiny drop the size of a sesame seed expands to the size of junebug! If I didn't know better I'd swear it was the same thing as that spray foam insulation stuff. I just held it together by hand until the glue dried. It took about 10 minutes. When you are holding something tightly 10 minutes seems more like 30.


After that dried, I drilled a little hole in his helmet and into his brain for the antenna to attach. I didn't have a small drill bit the size of the skinny wire, so I put another straight piece of that same wire into the drill and used it to drill the hole. Then I used that Gorilla Glue again to mount the antenna onto the brain and the bubble.


Tomorrow after he's good and dry I'll put his head on his body and be done with him. YAY!

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 9

Two things happened today.

1. He got a white undercoat:


2. He got painted silver from head to toe.


I don't usually mess with an undercoat, but silver paint is a weird thing. It's very watery. It's almost like water with little metallic flakes mixed in. Without an undercoat, the silver paint seems to absorb into wood as many times as I care to brush it on. The white provides a barrier. Even with the white undercoat, it took 3 coats of silver before it looked evenly coated.

Tomorrow I'll do the detailing.

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 8

Painting-muscle engage!

His brain is a big ball of electronics. To simulate that I used gesso, which is a really thick acrylic, to make dots or bumps all over his head. I made an extra large bump for his nose. After that dried I painted it black.


After the black undercoat dried, I put random dots of random colors of paint all over his head. His nose was the innards of an earphone speaker. That, the eyes and mouth were the only things I actually had to do a good job on. The rest was just sloppy dots.

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 7

Robot construction continues.

His arms were glued into his body. Also I drilled some holes in his chest for wires to be attached.


His hips were glued into his body.


His head is temporarily resting in place to check the fit. I can't glue his helmet bubble to the neck ring until I paint his head. After his head is painted I'll give him an antenna.


After seeing him put together I noticed his arms were too long. I considered just leaving it but every time I looked at it, I couldn't NOT notice it. They were supposed to stop at the bottoms of his knees but they went down in a gorilla fashion almost to his feet. In this pic you can't tell so much because his elbows are bent. When they are straight he nearly drags his knuckles.


I cut his forearms in half and removed a chunk so they were the right size. Then I drilled a toothpick-sized hole in each of the 2 halves and glued them back together with a shortened toothpick.


Ahh... That's better.

MINI-QUESTOR PROJECT PART 6

Howdy! This is part-6 of a Who-Knows-How-Many-Parts series where I am making a miniature robot to match a larger version called Questor. This robot will have joints in his arms and legs so I can animate him in a film. Either animate him or control him like a marionette. Also his head will need to turn.

This picture shows the jetpack for his back. It's not easy to carve a piece this small without fileting my fingers. When it happens it's usually due to my laziness. If I wanted to go to all the trouble I could glue newspaper to a board and let that dry, then put a dot of glue on this jetpack and glue it to the newspaper and then let that dry, and then carve it on the board, and then pop the carving off the newspaper board and sand off the glue, but who wants to do all that?! It's quicker to just hold on to it and try to aim away from your hand when you carve into it. Usually it works okay. It only takes a few accidents to learn not to aim a sharp blade at yourself.

One time I was reaching for a chisel and I didn't see another chisel in the way, and cut my ring finger on the side, a little above where a ring would go. It cut a nerve and half of my finger stayed numb for 10 or more years. I didn't notice the feeling coming back into it month by month, but year by year I could tell it was getting better. Now it's fine.

Here's a front view of mini-Questor's chest. Besides the boat, everything is made from drilling holes and gluing in dowels. Even though the real version has gears on his chest I think it's small enough no one will notice if I don't put teeth on these dowels.

Back view. It's not exactly the same, but with paint I think it'll be okay.

Speaking of paint, he's almost ready it. I need to glue his hips and arms into his body and that's about it. Oh, he will also need an antenna. And then THAT'S about it.