Media Review: Written by a Kid

Most of my readers will be familiar with the Geek & Sundry youtube channel, if you’ve not watched shows on it you’ve had your friends break out a new game they heard about on tabletop or your mother asked you about that steampunk thing you like that Felicia Day vloged about on the FLOG (because of course your mother is just that cool).

When Tabz told me to check out Written by a Kid though, I had my doubts.  I don’t have kids, and while I like kids books and am a bit of a kid myself, I’m often less than impressed by projects focused around ‘They say the darndest things.’  This is anything but that.  They interview a kit, the kid tells them the idea for a story and as the viewer hears about the story we see a visual representation of this story.  Whether it be animation, live action, a mix of both, or played by Joss Whedon and Dave Foley, it’s always fun to see.

You could watch this with your child, or just on your own and get a lot out of it.  Evil robot families, goth babies, a S.Q.U.A.T. team, half vampires taking out pirate witches, what’s not to love?  In addition to the main movies/stories the behind the scenes videos are really interesting.  Normally, I skip behind the scenes videos on youtube, it’s a lot more extra than content, but on this channel they talk about things that are interesting to me, animation, how they got Joss Whedon to perform, painted clothing (I really want to make some and wear it for real), different video effects and a Buffy Mustache.

Enough of me blabbing, go, watch the videos.  Oh and it’s work safe, kid safe and everything safe :)

PS: thanks Tabz for being right again about something I thought sounded like it wasn’t my cup of tea but in the end was right up my alley.

Daily Creativity: Dread Pirate Rory!

Dread Pirate Rory
“then one day he said to me, ‘I am not the dread pirate Rory'”

Continuing with the theme of mashing Rory the Dragon up with famous figures we have Rory as the Dread Pirate Roberts… though this is a mask he has been donning since his infancy.

This was done with india ink/quill on cardstock. I’m happy to go back to my roots and to pick up the quill again. The precision of the quill amazes me, it’s been so long since I have dipped my quill my reserve was dried out. I of course have a huge bottle of india ink as a back up to refill.

I suggest you click on the image to expand to see all of the cross hatching I did, I think it came out really nice.  There is something about using the traditional tools that you will never get with the digital variations.  A lot of people do this style of drawing now with a stylus and a tablet, and it’s something that I strive to master myself, but it will never fully replace ink, paints, pencil and all of the other materials.