Ok, I found some time to work on my Santa Destroy shirt this weekend in lieu of doing homework and playing X-Men Legends 3 Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I like the way it’s turning out so far. I’ve tried to keep the luchadore mask in the spirit of the traditional Mexican mask designs, while also incorporating a type of skull theme, invoking the Aztec god of death Mictlantehcutli. From what I’ve read, early luchadore mask designs were based on Aztec gods, and the god of death is an appropriate choice for a wrestling team connected to a game in which you are an assassin. See, it all ties nicely together. Sometimes I think about these things a little before I do them.

The biggest thing I need to work on right now is the little “wrestling move” design I’ve added to accent the text. It could use some cleaning up, and I’d prefer to have something a little more exclusively Lucha Libre, like some guys flying through the air. I’m having a hard time finding good reference material to work from though. I was beginning to think if I could find some good old fashioned pixel art wrestling moves (pro-wrestling from back in the NES days?) it would even more strongly connect itself to No More Heroes’ art style.

If I can find some good material to work from I might be able to get this baby cinched up in a week or so. Then we can all have back to school shirts to wear!

Also, if you take a trip over to Tiny Gods you can catch some good PAX stories, and a video of a Jonathan Coulton/Felicia Day duet of Still Alive that Pasty managed to capture. Good stuff.

The moment that school shootings were associated with my first No More Heroes inspired design, I knew that I was very close to something awesome. Rather than find out what that something awesome was and face the horrible consequences that would have followed in its wake, I decided to dig a bit deeper and move in another direction. So Travis Touchdown assassinated, yes. But what else did he do? What else did he love? And what love of his could translate into something a little more within the realm of reality that high school students could also do? How about some high flying, death defying Lucha Libre? I’ve slapped this design together with a fair amount of quickness. The lines on the bottom are the beginnings of a kind of wrestling ring design, the mask is going to become a bit more unique, the stars might change a little. But overall I think it’s a lot stronger than the previous design/concept. Anyone have a use for a nicely drawn tiger?

As always, feedback welcome.

Before I get too side-tracked with ranting, I’d like to direct your attention (specifically mandrake’s) to the image above. It’s the early stage of a Santa Destroy High School shirt design that I’ve been sporadically working on for the last week. For those of you not in the know, Santa Destroy is the (fictional?) town that is used as the backdrop for Suda 51’s No More Heroes. For as many assassins as there were who called that town home, I figured that there had to be some kind of breeding ground for that behavior. As I remember, high school was pretty vicious. I wish my HS had a junior assassins league. By the by, should assassins be possessive? I’m sure someone can answer that for me.

Why make this shirt? Because I really liked No More Heroes from what I played. I also like things that make obscure references that can act as a vetting device for people before I even talk to them. Like, say, a Paddy’s Pub Shirt. I think I need one of those too. But back to my shirt…react to it. Thoughts, suggestions, whatever. I’ll be cleaning it up as time permits, but lemme know what you think.

A two-semester gap might be a bit far off to start anticipating graduation, but I think I’m going to savor each and every day that ticks off of my shiny new countdown timer displayed in the sidebar. I have no idea what sorts of obstacles I’ll face between now and then but I’ve formed the resolve to fight like a madman until the end. I know one of my first hurdles will be working out my living arrangements until next summer as my roommate is looking for greener pastures. The rest of my obstacles will no doubt involve me and my crazy obsessiveness, but I think I’m prepared for that as well.

I guess that means I won’t be spending hours upon hours on Kongregate.com like I have been for the past month or so, bolstering my geek cred and whittling the summer hours away until classes start again. My big summer cash cow bought the farm earlier than I had expected so of all the riches I had dreamed of attaining these past few months, my macbook pro is the sole sign of my personal financial boom. I had some wacky adventures this summer, but not nearly as many as I would have hoped.

I enjoyed working on the Tiny Gods Tiny Godcast, and that’s a good thing since it’s the practically the only proof that I even existed between the months of May and August. My goal is to have more proof of my existence between the months of August and May of this coming year. Possibly intern somewhere, get my degree, get some experience, and then head back to the place where the madness all started. When you’re searching for things you’ve misplaced, it always helps to retrace your steps. The beginning seems as good a place as any to start searching.

So you might have noticed that the page looks a little different. I needed some change. If you mouse over the image, the alt tag should explain it properly. It might take two or more mouseovers to read it since it’s a bit lengthy for an alt tag.

Additionally, I accidentally trashed all the comments from the previous two posts. I’ve been getting slammed with spam in my moderation queue and while moderating I somehow found myself moderating all comments instead of just those in the queue. I hit the stop button. It’s funny that WordPress seems to lag a lot in updating, making one think that if the stop button was hit, that those changes wouldn’t be made. At least I found this to be untrue.

I do have a backup of the database, and I could try to restore those comments, but I think it would be more trouble than it’s worth. Although I would like to have that one comment from Futile.com back. Ah well.

So here are my two podcast image options side by side. On the left we have the more conservative B&W logo based partly on the header image for Tiny Gods, on the right is my more radical growing image idea, currently populated with a tiny Ganesh, Nightmare, Buddy Jesus, classic controller, Salacious Crumb, mini Pac-Man machine and mostly obscured MTG box. Preferences, thoughts, comments, criticisms on which to keep going with? Lay em out.

Oh and I almost forgot. Buy my Shirts.

UPDATE: Option three has been added, for those who didn’t like the “busyness” (business?) of the photo option. I quite liked the photo. It seemed to encompass a lot of what the Tiny Gods are all about…