Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Bugs Bunny Effect

Spaz is one of the first characters I can remember creating.  I think it was shortly before the Mask movie came out.  I was too young to know of the comic, and so the movie was my first exposure to the Mask, and I remember after seeing the trailer for the first time being really pissed, because somebody did it before me.  In truth, Spaz was born of my trading card of Slapstick, a short-lived Marvel character, and my desire to have the powers of Bugs Bunny.  I have long said that if I could have three wishes granted, the first would definitely be to have the "Bugs Bunny Effect" on people.  Though, perhaps, minus the cross-dressing.
If you're wondering why Spaz is drawn the way he is, it's because he's a solid-light hologram.  I'm telling you this because I may never get to an origin story for him.  He creates cartoon objects with solid-light, and his "Bugs Bunny Effect" is actually done through light-induced hypnosis.
Yeah, I have spent a lot of time thinking of these things.
Anyway, Spaz has always been a favorite of mine (and my mother's) and he hasn't changed much in like 20 years.  For two decades I've been drawing him on paper restaurant menus and in school notebooks.  So I couldn't pass up the chance to use him in Super U.

I started the Super U. YouTube Channel and uploaded a video of the first strip.  When the "hiatus" begins, I'll put up two of these a week, until we're caught up.  They're kind of lame, for now.  Once I begin working on the new material, they will be created in such a way that they will look better in a movie / animatic format.  Ideally it would be great to re-work the older strips in this way, but I can't.  A good deal of them were created with the newest version of Illustrator, and I don't have that anymore, and so I can't alter them in any way.
To save you time, here's the movie:


I like what just having some music in the background can do.  But like I said, these are going to be a little hokey for a while, but they will get better.  Rather than working in panels, I'll be treating each "panel" as a seperate image, so I can incorporate camera movement and stuff without a loss of text.  In fact, I may do away with the word balloons entirely, and do the dialogue in captions.

Here's today's strip.  It was originally only three panels, but Jason gave me the idea for the last panel.  He suggested Chance fall into Ecstasy's cleavage, but she was knocked out inside her base "off-screen," and Justice was still conveniently laying in the grass.  Plus, this way Chance can get his lucky rock back.


Alternate Title: "Happy Landings"








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