The Maitre d': A Legacy of Failure (in Pixels) - Part 1

The Maitre d'

As I've said, I tend to delude myself into thinking I have talent. This definitely includes drawing. As a child, I'm pretty sure I colored outside the lines. And by that I mean, completely ignored the lines. As in, I took about five crayons and covered the page in one big swatch of color as if there were no lines. Deliberately. Until I was in second or third grade.

I would like to think that this paints me as quite the rebel, but really I was just stubborn and liked doing things my own (crappy) way. Incidentally, you'll find that I still approach almost everything I do with that attitude.

I wish I could say what little talent I have in this area comes from my hippie-sculpture-major father, but... not so much. Actually, it developed around 5th or 6th grade due to two formative events in my life:

• I had a friend who could actually draw, and so I ripped off elements of his style.
• I drew like ten bajillion pictures of Mario and Luigi, copying Nintendo's style.

I AM FAIL.

Fortunately for you, I got rid of all of my writing and drawing from those days. So, let's start out in 2001, with this little picture I scanned in and GIMPified:

Look how dark and mysterious I am!

Wait... no. I just used the invert effect and threw a gradient on top of it. This was before I even figured out what a layer mask was, which makes me feel sad. OK, whatever. Next.

Here's a case where I decided to get all fancy with the GIMP. Did you know that the GIMP can apply textures to an image? Well, in 2001, I discovered that it could! And right off the bat, I figured someone needed to get on the ball and start abusing that feature:

It's like I drew it on canvas with a piece of chalk! Wowee wow wow wow! That's cool! (The sarcasm, it sustains me.)

Moving on to drawings that were merely scanned (as opposed to being pimped out in GIMP 'til they got ugly), here's one I drew back when I was still active in the JK community. The segment of the JK community I hung out in--the -ites, as we were called--were an interesting group. Thanks to the magic of The Neverending Story (a series of fan-fic-style forum threads where we were the heroes), many of the -ites developed their own inside jokes and personas. Like Fuurgh, the guy who everyone pretty much accepted was a perverted little orange monkey.

No, really. It got to the point that we thought of Fuurgh as a perverted orange monkey instead of a person. Not just in the NES mythos. In chat, on the forums, everywhere. (The fact that he was one of the few people whose real name wasn't well-known probably helped that mystique.)

So anyway, here's a couple of those personas that I sketched out. The guy in front who looks like me is me. The slug is Slug (duh). I think the guy in the back is p3. I can't for the life of me remember why he had a betta fish, but it seems like that was a running joke for about a week or so. Also, I want to say the guy in the X-Wing flight suit is Firefox, but I honestly can't remember. (And yes, he used that nickname long before it was a browser.)

Anyway, I think that's enough for this edition. Rest assured Part 2 will be coming soon. It'll feature more of the Maitre d's so-called art, including some of my work for the short-lived TWC Science Club. (Raise your hand if you remember that.)

Also, if we're lucky, we'll get into the funny pictures, where the Maitre d' tries his hand at (and fails) Photoshoppery and internet memes.

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