Category Archives: animation

WHY I DO IT?! nub nub

I’m doing it again!  I’m drawing things I’m not supposed to be doing!  Very important people call me up to have me work on their very important things and they say “Jhonen, we need this thing FAST and only YOU can do it for us because you’re sooOOooOoo cool!?

I graciously agree to do the work for them, and then I always start doing exactly what I shouldn’t, like drawing that guy up there thinking of some kind of…nuclear nub thing, when really what I should be doing is saving the world or whatever it is I’ve been hired to do by whatever secret agency.  Ah well, it only took a few minutes and I’m sure the world is juuuuust fine.

GIR a la Rikki Simons

I’ve been attending conventions since the JTHM days, my very first being an Alternative Press Expo back when it was still held in San Jose, and so from the day I started going to comic conventions, Rikki Simons has been there with me.  Sure, I don’t always go to these things WITH him, and sometimes we’re not at the same booth, but I’ve sat next to the guy for years and years now, and one of the best things about it, at least since he did the voice of GIR on INVADER ZIM, is getting to watch a couple of particular things go down when fans approach him.

The first thing is they’ll sometimes (very often) ask Rikki to say some favorite GIR line of theirs, whether it be “I dancin’ like a monkey!” or sing The Doom Song or some such thing, and Rikki gets this look on his face, this look that I know means he’s wondering whether to go through his old spiel about how we pitched his voice up to get the GIR voice and that his real voice is deeper and less robotic than their beloved green horror, or whether to just go ahead and say the line knowing most people are just too polite to point out that GIR suddenly sounds like a sleepy, convention-sick monster.

So he’ll eventually let out some little bit of dialogue and the fans will smile or laugh or they’ll cry in horror at what sounded more like Bloaty than little tiny GIR.

There’s a select few that look like maybe they’ll actually bring up the difference in vocal quality, and for those Rikki reserves a special, almost telepathic look that pretty much says “You ask me to do another line and I will punch your throat so hard you’ll shit out your screams from your ass because I’m not sitting here to dance for you, you goblin.”

The other thing is when people ask Rikki to draw GIR for them, and that’s maybe my favorite, and you can see why by the image included up there.  Just LOOK at that GIR!  He’s a deformed wonder, and yet manages to look strangely put together and way more sane than the real deal.  It’s so bad it just makes me laugh and that’s really what it’s all about, right?  Making people happy, and making them shit their screams out their asses.

 

There’s a Con for Invaders, ya know?

Did you know there was a convention dedicated to INVADER ZIM going on soon?  I had heard about INVADERCON last year but didn’t really imagine it being a real thing, more like one of those bazillions of stories I hear about things I’m somewhat connected to only with absolutely no basis in reality.  As it got closer to 2011 it became more and more obvious that it was actually happening and was actually snatching up a few guest appearance from actors, writers and crew like Richard Horvitz, Andy Berman, Rikki Simons and Kevin Manthei, with a special appearance by one of the janitors that would come in at night and clean up all the food that we’d just let fall from our mouths when we were done eating.
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Writing, comic artists and hornet-pies. OH SHIT!

Holy...mother...of god...

S’been a while since I caught people up on just what it was that was going on up here in my space station that, upon closer examination, is suspiciously like a television box under a bridge.

Look, enough of this chit chat, yeah?  To the infos!

I mentioned on my Twitticus page that I was looking for an artist to collaborate with on a comics project, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.  One of the toughest things about the venture is that, being an artist m’self and having what would be considered a ‘signature’ style (generally defined  by a mess of black ink and vomit), when anyone hears I’m looking for an artist they generally assume I want someone that does pretty much what I’m already known for doing, which isn’t exactly the case.
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Don’t cry for ZIM, he was already dead.

Back in March I spent the month doing a blog post a day covering various aspects of the creation of INVADER ZIM, the greatest animation product ever to be called INVADER ZIM.

What people don’t know, but probably suspected, was that the ZIM marathon going on at the same time on NICKTOONS was part of a sinister plan to test the waters for a possible ZIM invasion.

A part of me hates dispelling that freakishly ugly response in a portion of the fandom that seems to thrive on making up their own  reasons for why the show ended, but an entry like this kind of makes not doing so impossible.

For a quite some time now, there were rumblings at the network of bringing ZIM back to television with new episodes and such.  On my side, it was little bits of information I’d get from friends still working at nickelodeon, people who’d call me up or IM me to speak of an odd little meeting they had with some higher up or other talking about the old show in more than a nostalgic way.
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