Hey all,

Sully here of SullySplatter.com!  I think it’s common practice to start a blog (belligerent letters of gibberish) with a sort of mission statement.  As a professional Illustrator, I think I’m supposed to use this blog as a place to eloquently write notes and editorials about the state of my field and my opinions about the changing tides.  That’s all well and good, and some of that is probably going to happen.  But for those of you who already know me, you know it’s just not going to stay to that.  Random stories, rants, and a gratuitous number of Simpsons quotes are probably going to wind up littering this journal.  However, I’ll also be posting sketches and doodles as often as I have time to scan them so you guys should look forward to (or dread, use your discretion) that as well.  In fact, I’d love to start this blog off on the right foot and present one of my favorite placemat doodles I’ve ever done.  This was created while waiting for Mexican food when I was with a party of about 12 people.  The food was taking forever, and I was just reaching that stage of hunger when you start to feel slightly nauseous.  Then they brought me the wrong thing and I had to wait longer, which was good news because it let me finish this sketch!

OK, I’m just quickly going to review one of the best cartoons on television right now.  It’s called the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.  If you haven’t seen it it airs on Cartoon Network and I believe there are episodes streaming on their website.  The show is about a boy named Flapjack that hangs out with a washed up old pirate named Captain K’Nuckles.  They live inside of a whale named Bubbie and spend most of their time romping around in Stormalong Harbor, which is a city that is built completely on a doc in the middle of the ocean.  Their main goal in life is to adventure their way to the legendary Candy Island.  Candy is a highly sought after commodity in Stormalong, subbing for Gold and even for Booze at times.

First of all, the show is downright hilarious, which is the most important thing.  The writing style is geared toward the status quo which is a classic kids show theme.  The characters have well defined personalities and it seems like the stories almost write themselves because of that.

Visually, Flapjack is stunning.  The world and most of the characters who inhabit it have a real grit to them.  Dirty, muddled colors.  Most of the sailors of Stormalong are riddled with scars and wrinkles and are just plain ugly, which is beautiful.  To contrast that, Flapjack, K’Nuckles, and Bubbie are all very bright and vibrant.   There’s a great use of mixed media in the show which never feels phoned in or gratuitous. Claymation, or even still shots built with clay, are primarily used during dream/fantasy sequences, or for “grossups” (a closeup shot with repulsive details a la John K’s Ren and Stimpy).  The ocean is built with what appears as layers of painted on cut paper.

Sometimes the main characters feel like they don’t have much structure to them, which is usually good because it allows them the elasticity they require to display the vast array of emotions they constantly emit.  Sometimes they do feel a little wonky or overly simplified, but for the most part it works in the show’s favor.  Especially since that simpicity of the main characters is balanced out by the heavily structured tertiary characters who have all that vile detail built into their ugly mugs.

The only thing that disapoints me about this show is that it seems to be of a dying breed.  So much of the shows out for kids right now are just not stimulating to watch.  Flapjack is a product of a lot of love and labor and it shows.  Most shows aren’t doing much with their animation at all.  They seem to follow that trend started by the Fairly Odd Parents where everything has to have a four inch thick line on the outside of it so all the characters feel like they’re in a sticker book.  It also seems like most shows are just using the same characters and same plot lines we’ve been seeing for a decade.  And don’t even get me started on ANIMATED REALITY TELEVISION.  Drawn Together was one thing, but now we have shows like Total Drama Island, marketed towards kids.  It’s just frustrating that the television industry doesn’t seem to recognize that reality television is the downfall of any sort of stimulating thought the idiot box had left to offer.

That said, there is still hope, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack is a great example of that.

To those who may have seen and may now miss the original sullysplatter.com, you’re probably asking what the hell happened to that format.  Well the short answer is that it was a huge pain in the pants to update.  I’m in the midst of overhauling the site from the ground up, so be patient as I’ll be updating with more content and playing with layout for a little while.  To hold everyone over, here’s a place mat doodle I did while out to breakfast with my lovely Fiance, Rachel.  Turtles have been a favorite subject of mine since my youth, not quite sure why.

Attention everyone!  The gallery page has been updated, for your convenience, to include doodles.  Now when I post random drawings in this weblog they’ll also be included in the doodles section for easy browsing.  In addition to the small selection of doodles the ants have already brought to this blog, I bring you three new doodles for viewing!  Enjoy!

-Sully

P.S. If all goes according to plan then a gift I put together for a friend of mine should be heading out in the mail today.  As eager as I am to post the drawing, I really would hate to ruin the surprise.  Expect an add on to the portfolio section in the near future, though!

So I went through my hardrive and found all the doodles I had stocked up for “the daily doodle” on the old website.  For those of you who don’t know, the daily doodle was an overly ambitious mission statement for the original sullysplatter.com, and part of the reason the old site wound up sitting around doing nothing for the better part of two years.   Most of that junk was severely embarasing to look at, frankly, so I just picked out some of my favorites to include in the doodle section here.  You can go ahead and check it all out in the gallery but here are some of the highlights just to wet your appetite.