Aces

Nart is an aquired taste, kind of like seeweed and also kind of like 3 r's of feeling. At first glance one might feel feelings of repulsion feelings, rebelion feelings, and radicalness feelings, but if you force yourself to eat it enough times, then wait a few years, then your brain says to you, "hey I remember that stuff!" and before it can say "It was really disgusting" (or to use on of our motif feelings "repulsive") it is in your mouth and you are tricked into thinking you are eating memories.

Sometimes I wonder if I am just trying to relive my bleeding skull robot + Aliens vs Predator middle school study hall drawing days. Every time I find a good piece of nart it takes me back to those golden years. I can still hear the jocks, " dude can you draw me a skull with awesome snakes going through the eyes? Sweetness, now turn it into a cobra" - got to get those fangs just right!

But enough of my past, now let us look to the future portrayed here in all it's glory.

Sure we started occupying Nippon back after WWII, so this fight isn't likely to happen anytime soon. But someday our government is going to realize that it would be way cooler than WWII if we could have planepeople soldiers dog fighting and kunfu fighting at the same time. That could really get the ratings up for CNN.

The only thing is, the American version puts in a useless head with cool hair. Too much fluff if you ask me the Japanese have got it right with the propeller instead of hair.

Sure you might be thinking that Jpop's skinny wings wouldn't stand a chance against Amerible Hulk's propeller arm, but lets walk through this fight step by step...

1. Amerible Hulk smacks Jpop with his prop arm

2. Jpop loses a chunk of arm or leg or something

3. Amerible Hulk's propeller doesn't work after it gets all bent up

4. Amerible HUlk: " aggggghhahghhghghghhhhh h h h h h h "...

thud

Meanwhile Jpop shifts his weight a bit to compensate for his torn cargo pants and flys on home with that propeller head of his.

We are so totally dead...

Diving Into Oblivion

If you were a cyborg fire demon (and if you had upside down wings), and you had just given some little imps a magical potion, the next thing you would do is dive into the beautiful sunset.

Now let us explore below the surface of this colorful work of nart, after all to find answers one must ask questions. And just to understand the nasterpiece a little better, let's chose a character's perspective from which to ponder this painting.

I choose, the diver.

Q1: Why did I give these little guys my potion.

Q2: Why are my wings on upside down?

Q3: Where is my brain?

Q4: Where am I going?


A1: 255,0,255 just doesn't go too well with 255,0-255,0

A2: See A3.

A3: Obviously it is gone.

A4: The posture would indicate some kind of liquid that I am intending to enter, but none is visible from the view angle the painter chose, forcing me to make you, the viewer, believe in water, or lava, (since I am a fire demon, I can probably swim in fire). Do you believe me, do you believe there is there a good swimming hole somewhere in that vast expanse of super dodged sunset? Do you believe my thighs as they bend in anticipation of my lava's leap? If not look again and remember that my thighs are very spike covered and awesome.

Now do you believe me?

That's what I thought.

A4 - version b: I am just petting this mountain here, don't mind my pose.

I'll NEVER FORGET YOU... Iron , man...

In the spirit of full disclosure, before I review my latest find, I need to share a traumatic childhood experience that still haunts me to this day...

One day I went to the mall and bought this awesome Iron Man toy. It was red and yellow, and it had cool muscles. Then I took it to a neighborhood party, and dropped it into someone's goldfish pond, and the pond was really yucky, so I never found it, and I was sad.

I've never forgotten how much I loved Iron Man, and how much he hurt me when he left my life forever.

I have a slightly jaded perspective when it comes to Iron Man.

TONY STARK IS COOL

Over my short career as a nart collector, I have noticed a trend involving super cool summer movies. Whenever a comic book movie comes out, the nart concentration for the characters doubles, triples, and dare I say in some rare cases quadruples on the blogs and forums. So in a bit of an unconventional post, I would like to take this fine opportunity to review the movie "Iron Man" while treating you to my favorite nasterpieces involving the same.

For starters, just to give you an idea of how cool this movie is, let's illustrate the coolness level with this simple graph:

As is common with many promising super hero movies, Iron man tanks at the end with lines like, "I'm really strong and I'm going to hit you Iron Man!" and "I feel so powerful!".

It is my theory that the writing team for comic book movies follows a similar strategy to a college football team. IE if you are doing really well about 3/4 of the way through the game, it's time to give those 2nd and 3rd string guys a chance to play. I think the Iron Man team had a pretty deep bench, cause man, the writing really takes a nose dive about 3/4 of the way through (see awesome graph above). Clearly Iron Man even decsends into "The Real Ghostbusters" cartoon territory.

On the positive side though, after watching Iron Man, I added a lot of things to my "if I ever decide to be a super hero" list of do's and do not's.

If I ever make a killer super robot suit to take over the world, I will definately remember the sound system that makes my voice sound really reverbalicious and sub woofery, plus I will make sure and have the guys who make the helmet put on mean eyes (slanted down toward the middle), and maybe some cool vents where the mouth should be. That suit will totally rock man!

The other thing I will do is make the suit really, really invincible, by making it out of something like Iron (you know like Tank armor!) That way when I get hit by missiles, and anti tank rounds etc... and such it will just make me not get hurt at all. Don't let the bad guy grab your face plate though, cause his hands will be so strong the can crush it like tin foil.

Also I will make sure and go to the bathroom before I put the suit on, cause man, if you need a super cool high tech robot just to help you put your super cool robot suit on, What happens if you run out of gas and you have to make a pit stop? One mistake and there goes your image. I mean what bad guy is going to be afraid of a super hero that looses control in his metal underwear?

On second thought I think a bionic colostomy bag is a must if you go the whole cyborg suit route.

COOL POSE

Finally I will spend a little more time on my dramatic poses, cause Iron Man still has a few akward moments, especially the very feminine, "I'm about to land" pose pictured here.

Someday I will go on Ebay and get me another one of those Marvel Iron Man toys from the 80's, and then I will steer clear of any goldfish ponds while playing with it.

STREET FIGHTER FAN ART!!!

Ken Vs Ryu

Finally after eons of waiting here is the long awaited and much anticipated original posting of my very first personal piece of fan art. It is gracing my desktop right now, and even though Udon doesn't want us to post these until the book comes out, I figure I get about 5 (hi Shane) visitors a month here, so it should be safe in the narchives of desktoporama.

And to celebrate my getting into the Udon fan art book, I am posting a few pieces of Street Fighter Nart from the narchives.

Ryu's Gotta Go

I thought this was a very interesting exploration into the Street Fighter mythos. Good fan fiction always starts with an unanswered question. There are so many questions that have never been answered in the games or the comics, but this piece shows a promising window into one of the most exciting queries to date.

"What does Evil Ryu look like, when he is in the middle of a fight, and then all of the sudden he really, I mean really gots ta GO?"

I mean sure this guy is kind of in that demon / evil mode, but hey he's still gotta use the jon sometimes, so this question needs to be answered. I think he probably uses Bridie's stage from SFAII.

That Sinking Feeling

The next question that would really help Udon sell some pages is this:

"What does Akuma do when he gets that feeling in the middle of a fight"

You know like that, "I wish I had some Immodium AD" feeling? Well it's probably not gonna be pretty with that powder blue costume, I can tell you that! He's probably wishing he had worn his normal dark grey karate pants. It's really gonna tarnish his image, cause man, powder blue and chocolate brown don't go together.

Zangief Had Some Work Done

And for our last comic peddling plot line we explore the oddity of Zangief's muscles. He just keeps getting bigger and stranger with each itt of Street Fighter. So the question here is:

"What is Zangief going to look like in SF V after he's had some work done?"

Apparently, by that age his thighs are gonna be pretty saggy, and when you are a grappler in a game where everyone but you can throw fireballs and you are already "challenged" jump-wise in your first appearence, well the botox thighs for version 5 start to make sense.

And I think he's been doing that same, "I bet I can touch my lips to the bottom of my nose, and make one eye really big and crazy" face since SFII.

As long as botox thighs are in, lets go for a few pec implants too. Gotta make up for that hair loss and ambiguous belly definition. We'll miss the mohawk though, we'll miss it.

PS, I still remember your dance with Gorby in SFII, I loved that man...

SUNDAY DRIVE

Despite the technical merit of this nartarific painting (which was very nearly excluded from my realm of interest) the story it contains more than makes up for the overly proficient execution, and convinces me to display it here as a great example of desktoporama nart.

At first the narrative is confusing and any attempt to interpret the scene raises more questions than answers. Why are these rubber-suit monsters burning the family car? Why are the children standing there watching them instead of running away? Are the monsters their friends? What happened to the driver(s) / parents?

But before we can attempt to address any of these inquiries with confidence, we must ponder the title of the piece, "Sunday Drive".

Ponder with me for a moment...

Have we reached the same conclusion? No doubt. Simple logic leads us to the answer behind this enigmatic scene of despair. What is the most significant element of the deftly chosen title? Would you choose "Sunday" as the dominant principle, or "Drive"? Clearly days of the week are more important than any one vehicle or a ride in a vehicle, so "Sunday" is the dominant theme here.

And what should we do on Sundays? Go for pleasure rides in fancy cars in the middle of the desert? NO! We should be at Church and be spending time at home with our families! Given this tasty treat of lovely logic, the narrative puzzle starts to take form. Obviously these little kids went out on a joy ride when they should be at church, so some fire demons showed up to teach them a lesson, but just as hope might leave us there is one last shimmering possibility in the resigned and mature pose of the children.

"Why aren't you at church demons guys?" they might ask, but the demons have lots of jaw thingies and probably can't talk without blowing stuff up.

So they admit they've been bad, and they accept their loss, and hope for a better day where they can drive freely without fire demons burning their car.

So in my closing conclusion at the end of this review, if I had to summarize the message in fewer words it would be, "That's why you never go for joy rides on Sunday kids, because fire demons will blow up your car".

IN THE FUTURE, WE WILL WEAR METAL UNDERWEAR

This piece exemplifies the quintessential sci-fi nart work. Like so many nasterpieces it is the content more than the quality that earn this baby a place in the nart halls of desktoporama fame.

It also betrays many secrets of our super shiny tech savy future.

In the future we will all wear metal underwear, except for the really unusual aliens which will wear metal shoulder pads with no underwear at all. Because metal underwear is really heavy, metal suspenders will not be uncommon.

Another observation of note is that the metal underwear will often be worn on the outside of our skin tight jumpsuits.

PS all aliens reguardless of their anti-human anatomy will have totally ripped abs and pecs, because all nart-worthy sci-fi characters have pecs and abs.

NOSE LASERS AND BURN VICTIMS

This "nartist" must be a magician. I can here him / her saying in my mind's eye,

"And for my next trick, I will light this candle by shooting a laser beam out of my nose!"

You can tell by the lips, that nose lasers take a lot of concentration and mental focus.

Plus the nartist is apparently also a burn victim, cause I mean hey common, it's tough to learn how to shoot lasers out of your nose. I'm sure they make lots of accidents along the way, but man it is worth it!

DEMON SQUAD

What a demon indeed! with only a few traces of finger smudged / scanned pencil work, this baby puts fear in my eyes, and makes them burn because of the photorealistic fire.

There are three things that make this picture scary.

1. Red eyes

2. Snakes

3. Penguins / penguin esc robot guys

The fortshortening on the snake head is perfect, and symetrical as it should be.

The penguin thing is also missing its red eyes, which makes the fourth scary item in this image

4. Absence of eyes

TICKLE ME TROLL

It's been a while, but I have not given up on my quest to bring you the world's best nart. This particular piece caught my eye on conceptart.org today. The subtle airbrush shadows, the perfectly ambiguous tangencies, and the story, oh the story!

Nothing says nart like airbrushed shadows, especially if the artist manages to maintain hue uniformity through out each element of the image. This one nails it with each figure masterfully possesing their own set of light, shadow and color.

The creative, almost MC Escher esc. alignment of the trolls right leg and how it creates the illusion of being connected to the perfectly placed pile of rocks... Is the little goblin climbing a benign mountain of curiously uniform debri, or is he unknowingly scaling the giant trolls igneous calf? Not even the brittle tree can help us be sure of the truth. Is it growing from the ground level behind the stones, or is it merely a clever disguise to lure hapless goblings onto his merciless toe.

The story, the moment of ultimate anticipation frozen in time, even more so because of the snow in this wintery scene of death and despair. Our hearts are instantly drawn to the terrible fate of the unlucky stage front goblin. Heart strings are plucked to sing the melancholy tune of forboding as his splattered brains splish splash across our mind's eye.

But wait... What is this, the sole example of saturation here to shed light on the doomed, to give color to this otherwise dreary image. The lone leaf of luckiness clasped in the hands of a fellow goblinger is perched atop the mysterious masonry, and in his tiny hand is held the undoing of the magnificent foe. What will happen when the feathery weapon frolicks across the giant hairless armpit of the antagonist? The ultimate outcome is only to played out in the viewer's emotionally torn mind.

Does the boulder slip from the terribly tickled troll's clumsy hands before it is too late for our little gobblets? Will it be soon enough to fall upon his own gigantic cranium, or will it simply fall into the snow and not fall an anything but snow and airbrushed shadows.

Will they all be friends after that? Will the troll let everyone climb on his tricky trap toe?

Only a nasterpiece (nart masterpeice) could pull off such a wonderous struggle between a giant troll and two tiny gobulerians in the snow. Plus it has a pile of rocks...

SUPER SPY

There are a few things that turn an ordinary spy into a super spy.

#1 Being lowered into a pool of sharks by an evil mastermind who hates you deeply (but smiles warmly at you).
#2 The evil mastermind is holding a fluffy animal (in this case a white bunny rabbit)
#3 He has a beautiful female sidekick with uncomfortable levels of testosterone running through her veins.

If you have these 3 + nuclear warheads launching in the background, you've whipped up a fantastic piece of nart.

MACHINE GUN HEAD

This beauty speaks for itself, so I'll be brief.

In fact, why don't we describe the success of this piece with a few lines of code:

totallyAwesomeness = machineguns + skinlessCyborgMuscleMonsters + int(tentacles) + ["razorblades" + "Blue jeans"];

totallyAwesomeness*= sternoclydomastoid._xscale;

if (machinegun == head){totallyAwesomeness*=1000000;}

Based on this formula, the totallyawesomeness of this image easily reaches into the billions.

GOLFER OF DEATH


Aaaaahhhh . . . nothing like the sweet smell of new nart to start your day. Just pulled this one fresh off the forums at conceptart.org.

The beauty of this piece lies in its subtle homage to the classic symbology of the human skull. But wait something is a little out of the ordinary here, hey, those arn't cross bones! Those are golf clubs! Truly a masterful application of phychological illusion.

Not only does this work of nart include fantastic worship of 0,255,0 green smoke, but it also continues the faithful use of subtle airbrush driven shadows.

The smoke is topped perhaps only by the puffy ball on top of the traditional golfer's hat. It sits there 255,255,255 as if to say, I am an innocent hat, don't mind the glowing green eyes of my owner, I won't hurt you . . .

CAT MAN LOVE

Another priceless piece from the desktoporama vaults.

The Nart tradition continues with flawlessly soft airbrush shadows, but adds the subtle glow of airbrushed highlights. Green emotes many emotions, but in this work the feeling is one of dread and forboding.

The beautiful cat woman is embraced by her stoic cat man arrior lover, but is she satisfied with her romantic lead? No she looks out of her world and into ours pleading for rescue from her doomed habitat.

But wait, what is that in the distance, silouhetted against the army green sky? IS it the birds, yes it's the birds come to save us all from our greenery and gloom . . .

WOMAN ON ROAD BLEEDING

This is a classic from the official nart vaults here at desktoporama. This gorgeous painting single handedly contains the quintessential values of good nart.

1. "Fresh" style uncontaminated by heavy handed traditional conventions. The obligatory use of color is accented through slight value shifted airbrush driven shadows. these are especially evident on the leg of the focal character - the bleeding woman. The image preaches devotion to vanishing point perspective, while magnificently defying it's companion - atmospheric perspective. The selective use of cast shadows gives the scene that perfect blend, grounding the bleeding woman, while floating her enemies and the motorcycle.

2. Engaging, but open narrative. The heroin sits motionless against her bike . . . bleeding, but alive, while her pursuers lay lifeless and shadowless in the crystal clear distance. Is she trying to escape the dangerous city, or flee her forsaken home. The 0,0,128 blue pants coupled with the 0,128,128 blue shirt peg her as an obvious servant of the local law enforcement. Is she a seasoned veteran or simply a meter maid caught in the web of the crime loards croanies. And in the background, the fingers of total destruction emerge from the underworld to pull the city into its depths of despair. In the shadow of this collossal phelange, does the plight of our traffic cop really matter? No it does not, not to most of us, but to the painter of this story, the slow dripping death of one unlucky cop and two floating thugs is where the attention of the audience belongs . . .

"PRINCESS"

This gem hales from Conceptart.org, one of my favorite sources of good nart.

The glossy eyes exuding a tearless state of sorrow and empty hope contrast the meticulously manicured mane and twice tied tail. The crystal crown and gilded name plate silently mock the fallen fate of an ugly dog / monkey.

Who's eyes look down to meet the gaze of the pitiful pup? Despite the sideways stare I feel the orbs boring into my soul as I contemplate the horrible humiliation suffered by the subject. Only a monster would attempt to beautify such an animal, but it took a saint to paint this image of intrepid depth and meaning.