Adventures in Fan Art and the Origins of the DLA (eh-heh sorry it's so long.)

Emily got to go see AFI again yesterday.

Not only that, but Emily also got to meet AFI yesterday.

If you're catching a slightly jealous note....Well, you're not too far off base.

I was a wee bit anxious about that particular trip because I had given my bosom chum four pictures of the AFI band members done up as super heroes. This was all at her request threat, of course, and being the good little trained art zombie that I am, I complied. If you have visions of strong, muscular men set against spectacular backgrounds........Sorry, no. The one that originated it all was Vegan Man (Davey Havok's alter-super-ego). The style's very anime-chibi-ish and the super hero identities themselves are a little silly. In fact the whole thing's a bit silly, but it does make for a good story, so without any further ado:

The Origins of Vegan Man and the Creation of the Despair Leauge of America!

Vegan Man was created late one night-before-finals night, shortly before Emily's fabled trip to San Deigo. I was taking a break from making up a sheet of Maths notes that would hopefully help me pass my final and figured I'd add a legitimate pen-on-unlined-paper drawing to the stack of random-arse notes I was going to give Emily to read during her great oddessy. the sketch had actually been around forever, but I inked and toned and in the end, it came out looking quite sharp.

To be honest, I don't know exactly where he came from, but all of a sudden, there he was! Vegan Man! Waging his never ending war against crowdsurfers everywhere! I don't remember where I saw it, but we watched something once where Davey was talking about how stupid crowdsurfing was. It just sort of made sense (because logic was totally a key part in this entire adventure) that Vegan Man's arch enemy would be crowdsurfers. That and I've always felt bad about crowdsurfing during their set at the 2006 Warped Tour. Okay, yeah, "about ready to pass out and have to get out" is probably a good reason, but I felt pretty bad about it after I had regained enough of a grip on reality to think straight. Even though I didn't know about the crowdsurfing-sucks thing at the time, I thought I was pretty wussy for not sticking it out when I would have only had to make it through four or five more songs.

.............Keeping in mind, of course, that logic has never been one of my strongest features.

Needless to say, things that seem like pure brilliance at three in the morning are pretty damn embarrassing by noon. I gave Em Vegan Man anyway and hoped to hear no more about it. So, I'm an idiot. Big deal.

Emily decided that she wanted to give Vegan Man to the guy who inspired it all (yep, Davey), but didn't have that oppurtunity at San Deigo. She mopes a little, tells threatens me to draw the rest of the guys and gets a huge kick when I get flustered. It never really came to anything until a couple weeks ago. By then, the whole routine had turned into another gag argument between us and I wasn't really all that put off about drawing the rest of the guys. She got lucky. A lot of my initial embarassment had worn off by the time she rolled around and announced that she and Tiff were going to the AFI show in Medford and would I please draw the rest of the guys so she can give it all to them?

Really, she's not nearly as manipulative as I make her sound. In fact, out of the two of us, I'm usually the one who's more inclined to be devious and a bitch, but I'm also a sucker for my friends and I like giving my art as gifts. And a terrible procrastinator. I got the initial sketches done several weeks before she left, but they weren't inked and toned until the night before she left. Adam was the easiest. We had him basically planned out right after Vegan Man. I remembered watching a pre-show thing where he pointed to the twenty or so bottles of water sitting around the room and said something to the affect of "I take a drink of one and then set and walk off. I always forget which one is mine, so I just open another one. All of these are probably mine. It;s really not ecologically friendly."

Okay, so we can make up for that! His alter-super-ego is H2O-Man, a superhero who controles bottle water. Hell of a lot more effective than most water based superheroes, as far as I'm concerned. And it gives you a pretty effective picture as to just how seriously I took all this.

Jade's was fun to do. The idea actually came from the forum. Apparently, there are a lot of kids with Jade-style hair does, like "minature army" lots. There's a quote from him about it that gave me the idea, but I can't remeber any of it other than the jist of it was how they should organize an army of all the people with his hair style. He became Clone Man, who had the power to call up an army of Hair Ninjas, little, poorly drawn mini Jades with kung-fu skills. His costume design was based heavily off of the old Ant Man comics, including the helmet that the Ant Man used to call army of ants to him.

By now, I had started reffering to them collectively as the Despair Leauge of America (DLA, JLA, yeah why not?), it was probably a little before midnight and my creativity had officially bit the big one. I'm actually amazed how well Hunter's alter-super-ego turned out. It came out all in a rush; sketched, inked and toned in a little under twenty minutes. The only real basis was that I remembered that Hunter had more cellphones than any one person really should have and wasn't too shaby when it came to technology in general.

And thus was The Technology Wizard born. You know those super heroes who have the long, long capes, nice suites, masks and top hats? Yeah, he was one of those.

Drawing that top hat just about friggin' killed me. Before that, I had suscessfully drawn one top hat. Damn thing drove me nuts.

So, she took them up to Medford with her. I'll admit, I was nervous. I'm still kind of self concious about showing off my art. It's not that I think I suck, it's just part of the residual shyness that will NOT friggin' go away! But she took them anyway. And she gave 'em to the guys.

And they liked them.

I called Emily during lunch break today to ask her how it went. Swear to God, I was blushing like mad right in front of everyone when she told me that they had said that they liked the drawings and told her to tell me "thank you." Seconds after I got off the phone with her, I was grinning my head off.

I don't fan girl often, I try to keep it to a bare minimum and only do it in the privacy of my home, but come ON! How cool is THAT?!

You'd be shocked how completely amazing it feels when someone you admire and respect a lot likes something that you make for them. It's really silly, I know, but sometimes it's hard to create anything when you don't think you're very good and nobody really likes the things you do that make you happy. It may or may not be true, but it's one of those feelings that just sort of happens sometimes and to hear that someone who isn't your friend or your family really liked what you made for them is one of the greatest highs ever.

So...yeah, I think my feelings of being a failure and a waste will be a long time in returning.

Rock on.