Robot and Son

We’ve been enjoying reading “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown on the subway to summer camp. A robot named Roz who is shipwrecked on an island populated by animals becomes the mother of a gosling. 

In my son’s action movie universe, the second act of the story would probably involve the revelation that Roz the maternal robot was actually a high tech killing machine from a future timeline, and she would have to use her previously hidden weaponry to save the island’s residents from an interdimensional menace. Many explosions would ensue. 

We haven’t finished the book yet, but I am pretty sure that is not what is going to happen. 

After looking at this napkin, my son told me that he envisioned Roz as looking more like Futurama’s Bender than the Terminator.

Bender would have been easier to draw.

Bros in Bowls

(They hate it when you tap on the glass)

Recently, the Leviathan skin in Fortnite was of great interest to our older son, (that’s Levianthan on the left) But unfortunately, he did not have the funds to purchase the fish head for gameplay.

Leviathan was purportedly inspired by Minion from the 2011 DreamWorks movie Megamind. (That’s the one with the gorilla suit on the right)

But Leviathan also reminded us of Fish from “Fish N Chips” a comic by Steve Hamaker, unsurprisingly, the one in the middle.

And there was also Fish, a character from “Chicken Little” a rather misguided effort from Disney back in 2005. Our older son was absolutely fixated on “Chicken Little” around age three, and in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of situation, after endless viewing, I learned to love it also. And it has Fish, who is based on the children’s book “Fish Out of Water” (also obsessed over here at our house many years ago). Fish wears a sort of reverse diving helmet/bowl on his head. His pal and classmate, Chicken Little reminds their friends: “They hate it when you tap on the glass” (I may still have all of the movie’s dialogue memorized)

But, sad to say, that Fish did not have a cool robot body, so he is excluded here, despite being the likely source of our affection for fishy persons wearing helmet bowls.

Easter Bunny Kaiju and Gypsy Avenger

Perhaps I was too busy prepping Easter eggs for the Sunday morning hunt to make the lapine Kaiju and giant robot on this napkin look....well...giant.

Or, maybe my subconscious just knew that they were action figure toys and not towering monsters.

After seeing “Pacific Rim Uprising” and “Ready Player One” in one week, I’m not sure I can handle spectating on (or even imagining) any more giant CGI robot/monster battles during the next few days. 

Star Wars Poker Game

‪"The fear of loss (in poker) leads to the dark side." 

...or don't try to cheat Yoda...unless, perhaps, you are a poker playing dog.

I thought about updating the "Dogs Playing Poker" background to something more spaceship appropriate...or maybe Tatooine-appropriate... But decided to go with the classic red and green pseudo club-decor.

The "Dogs Playing Poker" painting was actually a whole series of paintings produced by one artist over a period of years around 1894-1907 for an advertising campaign for a cigar company. Or so says Wikipedia. This image is a bit of a combination of three of them. 

My younger son was the one who suggested the poker game. He now tells me that the drawing did not live up to his expectations. He thought that R2D2 and "Chopper" the contrary droid from "Star Wars Rebels," should have been the ones passing cards in the foreground, as they both have extendible arms. 

Oh well. Another missed opportunity.


a couple of the paintings:

Yoda, C3PO, R2D2 and Wicket

Group selfie of the short of stature held up by the metallic:

This particular group of characters was requested by a non relative looking for a picture for a three year old Star Wars fan.

My younger son and I discussed what would Yoda, C3PO, and an Ewok be doing if they were together? His suggestion was that they should all be playing poker like the dogs in the well known "Dogs Playing Poker" painting.  He was familiar with it because we had a napkin a couple of years ago that brought up the idea of that painting.

While I agreed that was definitely a potentially funny scenario- (is the Ewok cheating with extra cards? Or is R2 using his extension arm to hold the cards?) Poker seemed maybe not the right fit for the those under 5.

Recently, the group selfie has become my lazy fall-back explanation for any grouping of characters.

My son tells me I still need to draw his poker game idea with Yoda, Wicket and the two droids.

Robby Bobby Holly Hobbie Visits with Rosie Josie Bela Lugosi

Robot Romance:

Robby the Robot hails from the 1956 film "Forbidden Planet." When I started this drawing, I realized that I had confused "Robby"with the "Robot" in the 1960's TV show "Lost in Space" ("Danger Will Robinson!") Although, as it turns out, the two robots were designed by the same person.... and Robby made an appearance on "Lost in Space" battling the other Robot. (The many things one can discover on Wikipedia when one should be sleeping.) At any rate, perhaps it is not just my addled brain that has conflated the two.

I don't know if police officers in Great Britain are still commonly called "Bobbies." As long as I am wallowing in references from my childhood in the 1970's, I am going to guess that my first "Bobby" references date from my horrified viewing of "The Benny Hill" show, a smarmy vaudevillish sketch comedy show that, Wikipedia tells me, ran from 1955-1991 in 140 countries. I saw bits of a few episodes in the 1970's and, puritanical midwestern girl child that I was, found the Britishness peculiar and the heavy handed "double entendre" jokes totally appalling.

And then there is Holly Hobbie.  I found the Holly Hobbie character back in the 1970's rather appalling also, although for totally different reasons. Again, according to Wikipedia, the human artist and author Holly Hobbie sold the annoyingly cute, rag dress and giant bonnet wearing girl character that became known as Holly Hobbie to the American Greetings company back in the 1960's. The Holly Hobbie franchise was quite popular during my childhood, there were cards and dolls and dresses and a whole sort of style embraced by my peers, or perhaps by their mothers.  At the time, I thought any fashion that entailed the wearing of long patchwork dresses was bad news. Many years later, Holly Hobbie the human went on to author and illustrate the "Toot and Puddle" series of books which are really quite nice, so I have moved past my dislike of her namesake franchise.

As long as I am endlessly harping on my gender political hang-ups regarding 1960's and 70's pop culture... here we also have Rosie the Robot from "The Jetsons" (originally 1962-63) and Josie from "Josie and the Pussycats" (1970-1) These two shows troubled me during my childhood also, but I suspect I've already said enough on this topic for one post.

As far as I know, I did not have any childhood problems with Bela Lugosi's gender politics. His name just happened to rhyme.

BabyPuppyMonkey with RobotTigerChick

BabyPuppyMonkey and RobotTigerChick:

Okay, so maybe BabyPuppyMonkey is not more horrifying than PuppyMonkeyBaby after all.

I've done some more thinking about the triple hybrid genre suggested by the PuppyMonkeyBaby commercial. I think there needs to be a human, or at least human-like aspect, and the component nouns should all end in the long "e" sound. I spent a lot of time today baking and frosting cupcakes for my elder son's upcoming birthday, so I had too much time to consider this.

These rules do unfortunately result in the exclusion of the RobotTigerChick. In that case, we were just thinking of things that were cute or cool.

But there are lots of possibilities with ponies, Corgis, bumblebees, Yetis, duckies, guppies, combined with retirees, grannies, abductees, yuppies, jockeys or amputees...maybe with some shrubbery, pastry or Humvees mixed in.

The kids are not particularly impressed by this train of thought. They did, however, enjoy eating the extra cupcakes.

BB8 In Frosting

This is the frosting that you are looking for...if you are a nine year old fan of Star Wars anyway.

February is a cruel month full of the squirting of frosting. Two kids' birthdays in one month, narrowly separated by Valentine's Day was definitely poor planning on my part. 

But as of today: one cake and a classroom full of birthday snack cupcakes down...one "faculty appreciation valentine themed brunch" and another birthday cake and cupcakes left to frost before I can hang up my wax paper tubes and boxes of confectioners sugar for another year.

Below you can see the cake with its very much beloved toy brethren, the Sphero BB8.
(and from this view, you can tell that I ran out of dark blue frosting at 1 am in the morning and resorted to putting the date on the front of the cake instead)

 

Ewok, Jawa and BB-8

Diminutive Star Wars people squabble over BB-8...or maybe they are sharing nicely?

Our kids are pretty enthusiastic about the upcoming Star Wars movie... But will there be Endorians and Jawas?

(Probably a better chance of seeing Jawas on Tatooine)

Cast of Characters Who Could be in "Goosebumps" Movie

...take one of those abominable group selfies...

My younger son and I finally saw the "Goosebumps" movie over last weekend. His brother was going to a fun birthday party, so he was feeling terribly under-served and required some compensation. As far as I was concerned the movie was pleasant, but not particularly memorable.  My son thought it was great and immediately wanted me to pledge to take him to the sequel, whenever it might be made and released.

While we own several "Goosebumps" books, and I have tried to convince my horror-loving children to read them on many occasions, the series has just not been very popular in the past at our house.  I must confess that I was unaware what a publishing juggernaut the series has been...350 million copies have sold worldwide, and it is the second most popular children's series of all time, according to Wikipedia.

The movie's specific and rather dopey plot aside, "Goosebumps" the movie's charm is that it is a compendium of funny horror characters and therefore transcends the possible failings of each tale of scary zombies, creepy clowns, malicious lawn gnomes, deadly werewolves, etc., etc.

Being an 8 year old, my son was willing to attribute the original creation of many of these sorts of characters to R.L. Stine and the Goosebumps franchise. I reminded him that certainly the idea of werewolves, zombies, the abominable snowmen and ventriloquist dummies among many others predate Scholastic Publishing, some by tens if not hundreds of years.

And, on a more personal note, several of these characters appeared in my recent sculpture show "Popular Monsters," so perhaps I am particularly not willing to cede all credit to Mr. Stine.

Today's napkin is a reunion of sorts of characters who could appear in a best selling children's book series, in a major motion picture, or in my small, unsaleable sculptures.

Infant Ninja in Baby Bjorn Carrier

Even assassins need oral gratification:

While my younger son and I were discussing "The Infant Ninja," we agreed that he should be carried in a Baby Bjorn by a well-armed, deadly looking robot. And that he should have a teething toy that squirted poison gas.

I carried both of our kids in a sling (separately, not ever together, although that was often requested bu the then four year old elder brother) for years until the gel in my vertebrae squeezed out in several places.

But we were definitely not a Baby Bjorn family.  There seemed to me something slightly silly about the Bjorns.  The design was both vaguely bondage-like and awkwardly sporty.

I realize the complete idiocy of this opinion being expressed by a woman who owned a whole wardrobe of  slings. After 12 years of parenting failures, I certainly do not presume to judge anyone for practically anything... much less the use of a Bjorn.  For my compulsive baby-sling use, I can only offer the justification that we live in New York and I had to take the train with both kids, early and frequently.  In place of a stroller or a front facing Bjorn, the slings were a low profile way to keep strangers from touching the baby... or even breathing directly on him.

A robot with a baby in a sling didn't seem quite right to me when I started the drawing...although the more that I think about it, maybe a nice rainbow sling with rings on a killer robot would be more amusing...

I tried to combine the winsome qualities of the Terminator and the Iron Man/ War Machine suits: i.e., those scary red eye lights and the ridiculous-on-robots humanoid teeth, with the segmented suit with the shoulder mounted grenade launchers.  The result on the napkin was both creepy and a bit flat... but the robot is basically backdrop, so I decided not to sweat it too much.

At the last minute, I had to add a Sophie the Giraffe teething toy to the image...  We had one of these "mouth animals" during my first son's infancy.  I cannot remember who bought it. I knew at the time that it was a somewhat expensive and trendy article. Looking it up now, however, I discover that not only is it a remarkably pricey chew toy, it is the number one selling baby item on Amazon. During my organic-food-making, toxin-fearing, irrational mother of an infant stage, I was aware that Sophie was supposed to be a better, more healthful toy, made of "natural rubber" and "food paint" in France. Of course, subsequently there were rumors of carcinogens and a recall.

I do remember that our Sophie developed a nasty smell that seemed to squirt out from the interior when it was squeezed.  I cannot say whether it was from inherent vice, from exposure to my son's saliva, or just poor maintenance on my part,

But it now seems appropriate that the infant ninja's trendy mouth animal might squirt poison gas.

Popular Monsters Heads in the Studio

 

 Studio shoots of the heads that will appear in a show with the napkins in September in Brooklyn.

Mechagodzilla and Ultraman from "Ready Player One"

We've been working our way through Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One" at bedtime over the last couple of weeks.

The story of a teenager who spends all his time playing video games in a virtual universe and eventually triumphs in both the game and the real world is hugely appealing to my gaming obsessed sons. It is definitely not a book written for children, although it might well be most gratifying for people who are still enjoying their 1980's childhood.

I've had to do a bit of editing during the reading, with varying success. We listened to some of the novel during a car trip, playing Wil Wheaton's reading for Audible because I cannot read in the car without projectile vomiting. Unfortunately, we listened to the section where the protagonist encounters another character whose avatar is named "HotCock007."  Needless to say, this and some other instances where I have neglected to filter out all profanity have only made my sons love the book more.

And, one of the last scenes features an epic battle between Mechagodzilla, "Godzilla's robotic doppelganger"  and Ultraman, another colossus from a 1966 Japanese television show.

Inappropriate language and Mechagodzilla: what could be better than that?

Robot Wolf

I had to work to meet a deadline yesterday afternoon, so the boys got to watch a pay-per-view movie instead of doing their homework and cleaning up the huge mess they had made in the living room.

The movie in question was a recent release, "Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts." As I fortuitously missed most of it, I will quote the imdb synopsis: "When Gotham is plagued by crime committed by an animal-themed villain squad composed of The Penguin, Silverback, Cheetah, Killer Croc and Man-Bat, Batman and other heroes band together to stop them." The movie also featured Nigthwing, Red Robin, the Flash and Green Arrow.

Besides the amazing laundry list of super heroes and villains all rendered in boxy hypermuscular forms, the movie also featured a weird series of robotic animals. I did see the last scene during which Batman was hanging out with the wolf/dog robot which he was calling Ace.  My younger son was very pleased by this canine robot even before it transformed into a motorcycle.

We had experienced a couple years worth of obsession with "Ace the Bat Hound" back in 2011 and 2012.  You can see our long history of Ace napkins at this link. (this is mostly good for appreciating how much my napkin drawing skill- and my phone camera- have improved over the years)

I was not able to get more than a very brief glance at this Ace robot in the movie last night, so I resorted to just making up a wolf robot. He has the same glowing red eyes at least.

The Clumsy Ninja Takes on Ultron

What level does the Clumsy Ninja need to achieve in order to take on Ultron?

Of course we had to see the new Avengers movie "The Age of Ultron" when it opened last weekend. I observed the usual family movie viewing phenomenon where the kids' attention tended to wander during any scene with dialogue, and conversely, I found it hard to pay attention during the battle sequences.

"Ultron" has some nice light interpersonal moments like the scene when all the super-powered boys tease each other about who can pick up Thor's hammer. But the movie is mostly devoted to complex digital orchestrations of objects and bodies flying through space and crashing into one another and the surrounding architecture....And why would you be there to see an Avengers movie anyway if not for that?

It is remarkable what can be done with millions of dollars of CGI...But it all looks like a video game to me. To which my sons would say, "So what?"  Or, more likely, "Yes!!"

While we are on the topic on digital animation in video games: the kids are still enthusiastically working on "Clumsy Ninja." The game features some subtle and realistic interaction with the ninja character which is not just about running around whacking things. Despite their diligence, however, the kids have only managed to advance their ninjas to level 21 out of 99.

They're definitely going to have to make a lot of progress before the ninjas are ready for Ultron.

Sphynx and MagnaGuard

Elongated and creepy, with drapery:
Cats & Robots #15

My sons decided that we could not leave the MagnaGuards out of the robot series. The Wookieepedia (Star Wars universe version of Wikipedia) reveals that they are also known as IG-100's or  "the Self-Motivating Heuristically Programmed Combat Droids." That description makes them sound more philosophically interesting than I remember them being in the "Revenge of the Sith".... not that my memories of that movie are extensive or notable.  My sons like them because, to use a description that they would support, the MagnaGuards are the extra baddass droids.

The MagnaGuard seemed to need a similarly attenuated feline companion.  There are a great many images of Sphynx cats floating around the web, often making reference to a JRR Tolkien character (see Hairless Sphynx Cat That Looks Like Gollum from Lord of the Rings Goes Viral) There are also quite a few disturbing images of obese hairless cats, but I am not going to suggest viewing any of those as they cannot be erased from memory once they have been seen.

Remarkably, I don't think there is a individual Sphynx internet cat celebrity like Grumpy Cat or Lil Bub... or at least not one famous enough that I could turn it up in a few minutes of Googling.

Surely this is a gap in popular culture that will soon be filled.

Atchoum and the Iron Giant

Cats & Robots #13
Scary at first sight....But actually rather endearing.


In the last post, I said that we were done with the Cats and Robots thing, but it seems that I was wrong.

I decided that Atchoum was so distinctive that he merited last minute inclusion.  He is a recent arrival to the feline internet saturation party but is catching up quickly.  Google "Atchoum the cat," I dare you.  My favorite is the boredpanda.com post: "Atchoum: The Cat Whose Death Glare Will Devour Your Soul."

Of course this is just an ordinary 9 month old cat we are talking about... albeit one with a disorder that prompts him to grow excess fur. Google "hypertrichosis" for a few minutes of fun....Or Google it adding the word "cat," and have less fun, but get many pictures of this particular cat.

I paired him with the Iron Giant's silhouette for a few reasons,. None of these reasons will be particularly convincing, but let's try some of them:  My kids refuse to watch the very nice  "Iron Giant" movie, althiugh I am not sure whyt. But I haven't given up entirely, so I did not want to leave the giant off of the robot list.  I thought Atchoum and the Giant each had some nice glowing eyes framed by black. (Yes, I have used this excuse for previous cat/robot combinations) And they are both initially frightening in appearance, yet friendly in person...or so I hear.

Ansel looked at the napkin today and said, "Oh come on! No one in my class is going to be able to recognize that!"

Bullet Cat and EVE from "WALL-E"

 

Missiles of Cute:

Cats and Robots #12

The original image of Bullet Cat seems to have proliferated in 2010. It still pops up occasionally, which is how we became aware of it. 
Pixar's "WALL-E" was released in 2008, but I don't remember when we saw it.  Ansel was only one in 2008, so he definitely watched it in the years after its release. While EVE is the love interest of the movie, our kids were much more interested in her ability to sprout and fire plasma weapons.

I think we might be done with the Cats and Robots theme for the moment. I have received several admirable suggestions over the last couple of weeks, but, for various reasons, I don't think I am going to be able to pursue any of them.

Atom from "Real Steel" with Nala

Cats & Robots # 11:
Large, glowing blue eyes will get you remarkably far with 8 year olds and Instagram followers.

Ansel really enjoyed "Real Steel," the movie about prizefighting robots back when it was released in 2011 and he has watched it a couple of times since. Atom is the robot underdog, salvaged from burial at a dump by the under-parented kid at the center of the movie. Atom eventually almost triumphs over much glitzier and better funded bots owned by people of questionable character..

The boxing robot has endearingly luminescent blue eyes like social media phenomenon Nala the cat. With 1.8 million followers on her Instagram account, Nala trounces even Grumpy cat on that platform (a mere 598,000 followers.)

One does wonder at the remarkable extent of Nala's internet celebrity. She is certainly a cute cat, and has some winsome baby blues. However, she isn't surrounded by the snarky jokes and commentary that seem to boost the popularity of other cats like Colonel Meow, Grumpy Cat, Garfi and many of the other lol cats and feline memes. Her overall message is mildly upbeat and pro pet adoption.
The Nala website does have an online store with an amazingly extensive selection including Nala throw pillows and over 20 cat sized bow ties and neckerchiefs. But one would imagine the store is a offshoot of the popularity and not its driver.

Could it be the eyes?

Fat Cat with Mechagodzilla

Size still matters:

Cats & Robots #10

Yesterday Archer and I were debating which cat would be the best companion for Mechagodzilla. (These are the kind of compelling questions that I discuss with my sons.) I did consider Mercury, the two legged "T-Rex" cat, because of his similar-to-giant-reptiles upright stance. But the primary problem seemed to be one of scale: how would a domestic cat be visible in relation to a giant robot monster?  It seemed like the cat needed to be as large as possible.

There must be a significant online audience for oversized house cats as there are a good many images circulating around the web of purportedly huge, or just hugely fat, felines. Most of them seem to have been liberally photoshopped, and perhaps that is the better part of their charm. There are some documentedly large cats out there, but I picked an image of a fat cat who has definitely been rendered more obese through the magic of digital intervention. His (or her) image comes up in a couple of sizes when one Googles "fat cat." The actual cat IRL does seem to be rather overweight and is pictured on the very appropriately named "fattest cat in the world" blog,

While I did have to enlarge the cat to make him show up on the napkin, I used the less rotund image of this cat for the napkin today because I did not want it to be too... unrealistic. (Yes, my tone is facetious, Archer, in case you are wondering)

The images that come up when one Googles "fat cat" follow below: