Fnrrf Ygm Schnish!!

Assorted weirdness from the 40 Nherbis and beyond...

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Got the idea to use these guys as minor(?) villains for the Frankfurter game idea that's been bouncing around in my head.

Since the Mind Orb is hidden away in a dream-world, I figured it would make sense for various weird things I've seen in my dreams to make an appearance there!

These two are based on a dream had back in 2010, where two "weird fat French guys" (who I remember being very round, having curly mustaches, and wearing suspenders) had tied a bunch of people to a tug-of-war rope and were leading them away from the Clifton Forge middle school. Seemed like the weird fat French guys were kidnapping them, or something.

(The sausage-link whip one of them is wielding is from a different dream, where some bearded guy had broken into my house and was trying to use a chain of sausage links like a whip to attack me. It… didn't work very well. 😂)

…and then I had the idea to make them FUSE TOGETHER and make some weird monster. 😅

I guess I thought it didn't make much sense for these two to be that much of a threat on their own, so they needed something else to bring them into "serious boss battle" territory.

Not sure if they're going to end up being the "main/final" enemy you fight to get the Mind Orb or if there's something else after them... having two fights with these guys and some other unrelated boss at the end feels like it'd make that section of the game longer than the others I've planned out so far, though. Maybe you'll fight them once earlier on and then they'll show up and interrupt what appears to be the lead-up to the "real" boss battle, so you end up having to fight them in their fused form instead of whatever other enemy was set up to be the final battle before the Orb?

I did have the idea (before drawing these guys) that something within the dream-world had already taken hold of the Orb, and when you start getting close to where it was hidden things start to feel more and more "off" and Bunessa comments on this...leading up to a scene borrowed directly from a dream I had, where you could walk from an ordinary mall food court area into a black and purple starry void for no apparent reason. ("Regular place I've been to, but then there's parts that don't belong, sometimes from other places" seems to be a recurring thing in my dreams, but that was probably one of the weirdest ones. Usually it's more like... this high school keeps going in directions that it doesn't in real life, or this swimming pool has weird columns and slopes and such that I've never seen in a real pool, or there's an extra tunnel connecting these two buildings, or there's a door in this building that has a room from this other building on the other side of it, or there's random circus/carnival tents and rides set up in what's normally an empty grassy field on my college campus, etc.)

I ended up erasing my original sketch of their fused form after drawing two others that I liked more… and ended up drawing a third version in its place, which I ended up also liking a lot more than the original attempt! Still not sure which of these I might end up using in the distant future when I actually make these sketches into a game, but hey.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

In the Frankfurter and the Eight Orbs game idea I've had bouncing around in my head a lot this year, I had planned for Bunessa to have an ability that's pretty much just Relm's "Sketch" from Final Fantasy 6. Use it on an enemy and she paints a copy of it, which comes to life and attacks them before disappearing.

I had already drawn her randomly painting ampersands on things once or twice before this, so I figured I'd mix that in here too.

So... instead of just directly painting a copy of the enemy like the FF6 ability, she paints a giant ampersand in midair and then "activates" it somehow (probably with Num Power), causing it to shift into a multi-colored paint goop copy of the nearest enemy.

The very round mustached guy is based on someone that showed up in a dream I had back in 2010. Since the part of the game where Bunessa joins you involves going into a dream-world to find the Mind Orb (which she hid away somewhere way back in there to keep it safe), I figured that for the enemies in that area I'd throw in a variety of the weird monsters and villains that have appeared in my dreams over the years.

In the dream, there were two of them. I described them as "weird fat French guys" when I wrote it down after waking up that morning; unfortunately I don't think I ever drew them back then, but I do remember pretty clearly that they were very round and that they had curly mustaches and wore suspenders.

Anyway... the two "weird fat French guys" had tied a bunch of people to a tug-of-war rope and were leading them around the middle school toward... someplace else, it wasn't ever specified. Eventually the tied-up people got the idea to all pull in the opposite direction at once, and they end up yanking the weird fat French guys right off their feet and dragging them around at high speeds.

I want to say they had whips in the dream, like they were whipping the tied-up people to make them keep walking and such... but I can't remember for sure and didn't mention it when I wrote it down. Instead of just a regular ol' whip, though, I gave this guy a sausage link whip... which came from another (much more recent) dream, where some random beardy guy had broken into my house and was trying -- very unsuccessfully -- to attack me with a long string of sausage links. 😅

I figure I'll give the other one of these guys a beard to make them look at least slightly different from each other. Probably differently colored clothes, too.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Random drawing from a couple days ago, inspired by one of the Matt Rose "autocorrect goof-ups" Youtube videos. If I'm remembering right, somebody's autocorrect mangled a typo'ed version of their own name into... "Mr. Basement." 😂

Of course I had to draw what an actual "Mr. Basement" would look like.

Basements are often kinda sketchy, so he gets the standard "hiding your identity in an '80s/'90s movie" uniform -- big ol' trenchcoat, hat that you can pull down just enough so that it shades over the upper half of your face.

And after that... features from assorted "basementy" lifeforms. Unidentified drippy fungus goop face, mushrooms growing from the coat, super long cave cricket antennae, and a rat tail!

[markovchaingang]

men and women are not opposites. men and women are not enemies. men and women are two parts of a broad coalition which fights against a mutual enemy: inkjet printers

[fnrrfygmschnish]

A couple random bits of assorted weirdness that were scattered throughout the "Yoshi and the Evil Cursed Sword" page, which I finally got around to inking a few days ago and scanned just now.

...and on another page, there's one from last weekend, which I got inked and scanned today.

THUNDER GEEZERS.

[dailytrickartt]

Strange sight of the day: a long-haired retriever who appeared to be delivering a dozen fast food containers of wet chickpeas to a nearby house

[fnrrfygmschnish]

When you try to bite into your burger but it makes a HONK and then a fake flower pops out from beneath its lettuce and squirts you in the face with... water? Meat juice? Something like that.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Earlier today, I upgraded the Yogurt Snail on the outer wall of my mom's house.

Here's how it looked months ago...

...and here it is now!

Added black outlines with one of the charcoal sticks I got for my birthday, added colors to the text, and refreshed the body color where it had severely faded (to the point where I couldn't tell if it had been orange or yellow originally.)

[probablybadrpgideas]

Beaver teeth are reinforced with iron, giving them a distinctive orange color.

This, incidentally, is why it is the one animal most feared by the fae.

all rodents have this to some extent!

this is why fairies like things clean - otherwise you'll attract rats

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Started out just drawing a random Yoshi in the upper-left corner of a page.

Then I was reminded of the weird abundance of Yoshi ZZT games back in the mid/late-'90s, most of them made by the same person if I'm remembering right. In at least one of them you could burn yourself on a hot stove, and Yoshi's comment when that happened was something similar to that thought-bubble.

From there, I ended up filling up most of the page with Yoshis.

I'm not sure why he ended up in that smelly trash can, but apparently he found the EVIL CURSED SWORD in there. Who would just throw that out with their regular trash!? Everyone knows you've got to take those to a specialized recycling wizard! 😂

Randomly cropped and rearranged some bits and now we've got the rough sketch for the Yoshi and the Evil Cursed Sword video game box art, coming soon probably never. 😅

[facts-i-just-made-up]

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Used to be waaaay more dangerous before the laws mandated that BB guns could only fire the tiniest of the tiny pellet-sized miniature Bills, rather than the standard ones which were the size of a small dog.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Welp, looks like Scelette's hometown turned out to be the first area in the Frankfurter game idea to end up with a cast of random NPCs. 😅

As you'd expect from a place called "Skeletown," the population is overwhelmingly made up of animated skeletons. The mayor showed up in the Scelette mini-comic I drew last week, and the hunched-over old man with a cane saying "I'm old!" came from a drawing I did of a near identical old skeleman from… maybe a year or two ago?… but everyone else on here is brand new.

I did have an idea for one non-skeletal resident, though -- the cameraman for the New Old News, who is uh... a camera-man. As in, a short stubby little robot with a big bulky '80s/early '90s news crew style camcorder for a head. Based on a running joke between me and my younger sibling that every time Paula Deen said "now look here, y'all" on her cooking show she was actually addressing her cameraman, whose name was Y'all. 😂 I know I've drawn "Y'all" once before, probably a decade or so ago, but I can't remember if I scanned that one in or if it's still hidden away in one of my notebooks from the years after college.

Y'all the Cameraman is probably an escaped creation of Dr. Volcano's, since I know N-635 is definitely not the only robot he built. Maybe not even escaped so much as intentionally planted there to keep an eye on the area? Heck, maybe Dr. Volcano has a small army of "Y'alls" sent to observe various places that the mad doctor happened to find interesting for one reason or another. Aaaand I just now had the idea that the reason why he's called "Y'all" could actually be someone's misinterpretation of his actual robot codename... something like Y-411.

Anyway...

Before you click the "keep reading" to reveal the next picture, try to guess which of these skeletons is secretly an enemy!

Yyyyep.

Skeletons don't grow hair, and yet… that was definitely not a wig. It was a mass of some sort of vaguely hair-like fungal fuzz. 🤢

The Moldewort is a sentient mold colony that has been posing as a reporter for the New Old News for some time by puppeteering a collection of regular ol' lifeless bones into an imitation of the animated skeletons living in Skeletown.

The "hair" hides the eye sockets (so nobody can notice that the faint glowing dot that's supposed to be there is absent), the clothes cover up the evidence that the bones are being held together and moved around by fungal tentacles rather than... magic or something, and the few visible tentacle loops (around the wrists and neck) can be passed off as unusual jewelry. Since I drew her disguised form with a cigarette, I figure she smokes to cover up the smell of mold. Of course, that just means if you get close enough to her she smells like cigarettes and mold... ewwww.

I'm thinking that she'll end up drawn to the power of the Death Orb after the sightings of it streaking across the sky to the northeast, and wants to use it to make all of Skeletown's residents just plain dead rather than undead. When you confront her right before the boss battle, at first she'll claim it's because she sees living skeletons as unnatural, that she believes their very existence is somehow damaging the cycle of life and death, that all those bones should rot and break down and be recycled into dirt for new things to grow from, that she's "fixing" things, blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda...

...but in the end, it turns out she's just a gross fungus monster who REALLY LOVES EATING BONES and has come to the realization that it'd be a whole lot easier to eat them if they'd sit still and stop trying to run away or fight back. 😱

[fredrix03]

flat horse

more of a thumbnail for an idea i may or may not continue on

[oriilon]

I think it’s funny when people are like “ugh it’s buggy out”, well yes. there is an estimated 10 quintillion individual insects alive at any given moment. it’s always buggy out

[fnrrfygmschnish]

And now I've got the rest of the Bubba drawings inked and scanned!

Of course, underneath the hat his hair is mullet-y. 😅 I think I went a bit overboard on the "poof" for the one where he's worn out and sweaty, but the one where he's attacking Frankfurter worked out better.

[luulapants]

Rating the birds in my backyard by tendency toward violence

Northern Cardinal, 4/10

I'm sometimes worried the male is sexually harassing the female but I'm pretty sure they're just doing some elaborate public pickup roleplay. The rest of us didn't agree to participate in your kink, guys.

American Robin, 1/10

Literally just some dude hanging out. Never bothered anyone but worms. Big fan of the way you just stand there in the middle of the grass like you forgot what you were supposed to be doing.

House Sparrow, 10/10

You're a gang. You're participating in gang violence. There's ten billion of you living in a single wood pile and it's been civil war for three years now. When will the bloodshed end?

Tufted Titmouse, 1/10

A shy baby. A pretty little guy. I saw you on the neighbor's garage roof and time stopped. There were anime sparkles around you. Come back.

European Starling, 9/10

Why is it always you? Listen, I know, I KNOW the sparrows are the problem, and YET. When the fighting starts, it's always you in the middle of it, provoking them and then screaming like you're an innocent bystander defending yourself. I'm onto you.

Carolina Wren, 3/10

This rating is not for physical violence, which you don't engage in, but for your role as an incurable narc. A tattle tale. I know they're fighting again, okay? I see it. Our yard has been a warzone for years, you don't have to make a big announcement every time someone misbehaves.

Eastern Wood-Peewee, 0/10

If this were "birds who think they're better than everyone else," you'd get 10/10.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, 6/10

It's a utility pole. It's not a tree. You're surrounded by trees that are full of bugs. But there you are, on the utility pole. Committing vandalism.

American Crow, unrated

For who am I to cast judgment on the actions of La Famiglia? I assume you are doing what is best for the neighborhood. If I could, though, without criticism, make a single observation. That when large numbers of you gather in the ominous dead cottonwood - no? No, you're right. None of my business.

Great Crested Flycatcher, 5/10

Frankly, I think you could be doing more. I think your name implies a great potential. I think you should massacre the insects. I think your beak should drip with viscera.

Stay tuned for more criminal activity!

[luulapants]

(continued)

Common Grackle, 7/10

La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.

Tennessee Warbler, 2/10

You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10

You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.

Gray Catbird, 5/10

Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.

Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10

You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10

A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.

Blue Jay, 12/10

If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.

Honorable mention:

Turkey Vulture, 5/10

You weren't in my backyard, but you WERE eating roadkill in the street in my neighborhood. I know the animal was already dead when you got there, but you get violence points for frightening the small children that walked past you. Incredible work.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Venture far enough into the Backwoods north of Skeletown, and you'll eventually come to a point where the maze of dirt paths through dense, shady forest suddenly gives way to flat open land covered in cornfields almost as far as the eye can see.

The few citizens of Skeletown who've ever found their way there were so spooked by the sudden change of scenery (and the unexpected presence of so. much. corn) that they turned and ran back into the woods immediately rather than exploring any further. And thus, the legend of the mysterious and vaguely menacing "Corn Area" was born.

If you do explore further, you'll find that in the center of the cornfields is the town of Lumpsburg. And the most notable resident of Lumpsburg is... this guy.

BUBBA!

As it turns out, Bubba is the one responsible for the Corn Area expanding further and further away from Lumpsburg, and for the plants and bugs and such in the surrounding Backwoods growing out of control to the point where foot-long flies are buzzing around and the carnivorous plants are reaching "final scenes of Little Shop of Horrors" sizes rather than a more modest height of 3 or 4 feet max.

He found the Life Orb after it fell into the cornfields near his home, and after fiddling with a bit he figured out that its power could be used to encourage plant growth and decided he'd use this to make sure all of Lumpsburg had a good harvest this season.

Of course, the Life Orb's power didn't stop at just encouraging the crops to grow -- you can't be that specific when you're spreading the Orb's energy across such a wide area all at once, especially if you just stumbled across it and don't really know what you're doing!

A few more little Bubba drawings from the same page -- climbing in through a window and startling Scelette a bit, and then making a bit of a grumpier face and going "hmmm."

The idea so far is that since Bubba isn't knowingly causing problems with the Orb he got his hands on, you won't end up fighting him upon first meeting. Instead, every time you spend a night in Lumpsburg (maybe in an inn-type place, or maybe even in a guest bedroom at Bubba's house??) you'll be able to sneak out and search Bubba's house for the Orb while he's asleep.

Once you've retrieved the Orb and started to leave, of course, Bubba will be startled awake (due to his elemental affinity toward the Life Orb) and realize that you're stealing it out from under his nose... so he'll get pissed off and chase you through town and across the cornfields. I'm thinking it will be impossible to escape into the Backwoods without fighting him, but the longer you're able to avoid him the weaker he'll be in the ensuing battle. If you manage to make it all the way to the edge of the Corn Area (only to find that the path you came into town on has gotten so overgrown that it's a dead end now), you'll get an extra turn at the start of the fight while he catches his breath.

When I showed her this page a couple days ago when it was still in pencil sketch form, my roommate asked me "what IS Bubba?" and my response was "...good question" 😂

Bubba is a character I drew for the first time back in 2003-2004ish (either the summer before my last year of high school or the one after, I'm not 100% sure which) but never really used for anything. Which made him a perfect fit for the Frankfurter game idea! So many of the characters I've included in it so far are ones reused from older game projects that I never finished or miscellaneous critters I've drawn a few times that didn't really fit into my existing projects.

I'm not entirely sure myself what Bubba is just yet, and I might just leave that question unanswered. I do have the idea that he (and the rest of the population of Lumpsburg) might be the descendants of humans that diverged into a whole different species thanks to mutations and/or generations of inbreeding, but I haven't decided on that for sure just yet.