Somewhere deep within the “my old stuff” box was this super squished Michelangelo, made from folded graph paper and colored with some kind of cheap thin-tip markers like these. Even though it’s beat-up pretty badly (and he lost part of it’s head at some point) it still looks pretty good!

Mikey’s got a sweet 8-pack and rocks the orange elbow/knee pads. At one point his eyes were drawn on a headband that sat on top of his square jaw, but that’s long gone.  I remember building big rectangle feet, but the graph paper wasn’t strong enough to hold his body, and suprisingly the thinner tubes that make his legs were sturdier than big feet as long as you propped him up against something.

I remember planning this guy out while i sat on my bed with the 1990 Macy’s Day Parade on in the background. I drew him up and put him together over thanksgiving break in my 5th grade year, mostly at the kitchen counter.

Like many things, I started with big plans but never saw it through. I wanted to build all 4 turtles, and it’s a shame too cuz it would have been way easier once I had a finished one to use as a template. 

That’s how it goes though - not every wild idea gets to be called “finished”, but it’s the process and experience that matters in the long run. Some might call a half-finished turtle with no feet or shell a failure, but it no doubt was practice for bigger and better 3d projects later in life.

Go Ninja GO!

Possibly the most awesome thing ever.

I’ve heard people say ”don’t lead with your best!” but I can’t help but make my first post about this kickass megaman tribute.

Megan Man 3 hit the US in September of 1990, so you can probably carbon-date this piece around then (I was 10 at the time).  I definately remember that this was originally going to be a drawing of spark man, who is by far the sweetest of all the mm3 robots, but at some point i got hungrier.

The big guy in the back is named ‘Gamma’ and was teased by Nintendo Power, which was the only real source of nintendo knowledge at the time. I’m pretty sure that I drew him in the background after Spark Man was fully colored, and went from there.

I got my reference from this nintendo power poster - I don’t remember this specifically, but It’s pretty obvious that the I used it as inspiration: the concept is totally the same. Still, it’s cool that I retro-fitted the spark-man drawing to this montage idea, and even gave it my own spin, using not only all the new Mega Man 3 bosses, but also a bunch from Mega Man 2.

It’s funny to notice that between the Nintendo Power poster and my drawing, I totally squared off the jaw and smile so that I could stay within my graph-paper grid. (This is a trend that you’ll continue to notice as you look at drawings from when I was a kid.)

The whole thing ends up being 19 pages, with some pages still taped together and folded together from years ago.

The very bottom page is simply of Mega Man looking upwards. Obviously, I already had a flair for the dramatic, eh?

I laid the whole thing out on my kitchen floor tonight and put it back together. I remember being super proud of this and hanging it on my wall in my room.