"Everyone's" Favorites

     I've been doing a lot of patting myself on the back this month, so I figured I should wrap it up! To cap off this series of redrawing things I've already drawn, here's my original originals - Nate and George!

     Ever since I was a kid, I've enjoyed pretending that these two were just as beloved as Mickey and Minnie, Bugs and Daffy, or Kermit and Piggy. In the same way, I've enjoyed pretending that this blog has been something that has been entertaining the masses for the past decade. Neither, of course, is the case but so what! It's fun having this spot where I can always indulge in these little fantasies.

Here's to playing pretend! 

Cosplay Was Never This Cool!

     By far, one of my consistently favorite things to draw for this blog over the past 10 years has been these lovable little guys that I call 'Penguin Suits!' I'm a little fuzzy on where the concept comes from. As I said in my last post, I'm a sucker for mashups and, while this isn't technically a mashup per se, it's still along those same lines. 

     Back when things like Custom Mighty Muggs were all the rage, I wanted my own little thing to make look like other things. I don't remember why but I chose these emotionless little penguins to be my canvas and voila! Penguin Suits!

     These little guys have gone through a couple of revamps over the years and so I only thought it fitting to bring the first lineup up to date. Hopefully those of you checking in have enjoyed looking at these as much I enjoy drawing them because I don't think I'm going to let up anytime soon.

Disney Star Wars - The Special Edition

     Since I'm celebrating the tenth anniversary of this little blog, I thought it would be fun to revisit some of my favorite posts from the past decade, and on that list of favorites would definitely be my Disney Star Wars mashups!

     In 2010, my wife and I went to Walt Disney World. While there, I noticed several action figures of Disney characters dressed as Star Wars characters. I eat this type of stuff up, but what bothered me with this lineup was how few of the Disney characters were being used OR what Star Wars characters they were cast as. There was no Artoo! Donald Duck was both Han Solo and a Stormtrooper! Um.. okay. But the biggest of the what-the-what's... Goofy was Chewbacca, Threepio, AND Darth Vader!!! I mean, REALLY?!? You expect me to believe that the pickings are so slim at THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY that Goofy has to pull a Nutty Professor and play three distinctively different characters from the main Star Wars lineup?!? How were kids supposed to play with these? Was this a reference to those old shorts where literally everyone was a Goofy?! I lose sleep over this stuff!

Seriously though, an All-Goofy Star Wars would be epic.

     Fortunately for... me, ...I guess... I'm a nerd with time on my hands. I went home, pulled out my trusty spiral, made an extensive list of what Disney character would play who from the original Star Wars trilogy, and got to work bringing said list "to life." A few months after I posted these mashups, I received quite the surprise!

     For the first time, my blog was flooded with comments! People were sharing my work all over the internet! A couple of different websites reached out to me for interviews! I didn't have anything interesting to say because it's just Mickey Mouse fan art, but still! One complete stranger even had my Pluto Artoo tattooed on himself! And on an appropriate part of his body! It was a great .5 seconds of "fame" that changed my life in no way whatsoever and I'm glad it happened.

     In the spirit of Star Wars, I decided to take another stab at these characters, this time in the style of the Paul Rudish Mickey Mouse shorts which... side note, I absolutely love!

   
    Hopefully these will be as well received as the originals, and to all of you who were kind enough to make such a big deal of the originals... Thanks a TON!

The Big TEN!

     The year was 2008. Britney Spears was simultaneously having a breakdown and making a comeback, Joe the Plumber was saying things that people seemed to care about, and the seeds for a cinematic universe were being planted with a little movie called Iron Man. In the midst of all of this, ten years ago to the day, I sat down and thought, "You know what?... I should start a blog."

     I was an aspiring artist that followed a lot of better artists' blogs when I realized that there wasn't any reason why I shouldn't have one of my own. There was nothing monumental or ground-breaking about my first post. For some random reason, I had recently drawn the Otter Pops characters with an attempt at making them a little more... pop art. Get it? Since this was the newest thing I had on hand, this is what I posted, and thus, SillyNate.blogspot.com was born!

     At first my goal was to get sort of an online resume going, as well as improve at the same time. I never went to school or had any real training as an artist, but I had heard from multiple people, whose work I admired, that the best way to get better was to just draw, draw, draw! So that's what I did and this blog served as the perfect motivator for me to do so.

     Over time, things happened and dreams changed, but I still kept on a bloggin'! What had started as a place to show off my amateur work had turned into a release, of sorts. It's become a creative outlet where I could get all of this fanboy stuff out of my head and somewhere a little more final.

     So here we are! Celebrating ten years of having a blog might seem like a pretty silly thing to do, but silly is pretty much the name of the game here, isn't it? To commemorate the occasion, I thought I'd have another go at the little guys that started it all... the Otter Pops!

     Anyone who does frequent this blog knows that I am a sucker for nostalgia, so for the rest of the month, I'm keeping this trip down memory lane a going by revisiting some of my favorite posts from the last 10 years.

Get excited!