Happy Birthday, MST3K!

[Cleolanta]

Well actually, I was already drawing this picture anyway, because I wanted to...then realised it _could_ also sort of kinda maybe fit the "birthday" theme as well. :P Anyway. I am such a geek.
And yes, I know it has mistakes...it's not meant to be realistic. The one I'm not apologising for, the other character I wish I _had_ been able to draw more accurately, but, oh well. I've seen worse. I've DRAWN worse.

www.deviantart.com/view/25618482/

If you read the text accompanying it, I explain what's up with the mistakes, as well as explaining the show to newbies who may wander by DeviantArt and see this. Heh. Of course you guys can ignore that part.
It's meant to go with my story "Transmission Difficulties", which I will put up somewhere as soon as I can find an MST3K fanfic archive that _isn't_ dead...

But anyway, I had fun drawing this picture. And that's the important thing. :)
By the way, if linking with a link instead of directly making the picture appear in the post also counts as hotlinking, I apologise. I wasn't exactly clear on the rules; please don't get angry, mods/admins. I'll take this post down myself if need be.

...Notorious

[Satoris]

Cute pic Cleo! I'd recognize that lime-green lab coat anywhere. Plus, it's rare to see Josh represented instead of Frank. Looks like digital art....what program did you use?

[Cleolanta]

I used Paint, as I always do for my computer-drawn programs. It's simple, but it's free...and more to the point, I _know_ how to use it and am comfortable with it. Whereas if I tried to use something fancy like Photoshop, I'd spend way more time learning how to use the media rather than concentrating on _drawing_ a picture. If you get what I mean.
Well, that, and I can't afford that kind of program at the moment... :P
But I can make plain ol' Paint do things that most people had no IDEA it could do. You should see this one picture I did--a crossover-parody "Buck Rogers" kinda science fiction thing with a huge ray gun in the background and actual _textures_ on the costumes...all in Paint. Yep.

Anyway, glad you like it. :) As I said in the description I'm going to get around to drawing Frank eventually, but I did the "oldschool mads" team because it goes with my one-and-only actual MST3K fanfic. (As opposed to MSTings, which are a different breed.) It takes place during the real early time period of the show and...well. Let's just say that I thought things out a little too carefully, but in a (hopefully) harmless and _fun_ way.

I just have this weird thing for the early days, in general. They're not talked about as much as the later stuff, and if I have to look for something on purpose and seek it out, rather than just easily hearing about it all over the place, I'm automatically at least somewhat interested. Also, I didn't even know about the _existence_ of this whole other (at the time) major character, Dr. Erhardt*, before looking up the show on the 'net. I think that's probably why I enjoy writing in that time period--because not as many other people have, so I have more space in which to work.

Anyway. The picture goes with the story, but since we were also having MST3K's premiere anniversary yesterday, I figured, hey, if I'm going to post _any_ MSTie fanart right now, on Turkey Day, it should be this one. It's the closest to a KTMA era picture I have. So I figured...it's appropriate at the moment in two ways, ne? ;)

Shutting up now...

...Notorious

*He's mentioned in "Rocketship X-M", which I've had a copy of since my original MSTie days, but at the time I wasn't paying that much attention to host segments and that bit just FLEW right over my head. Whoosh.

[sirveaux]

I like your picture, cleolanta! And it's awesome you did that in such a simple program like Paint. I, too, use that program for everything.
Great job!

[Cleolanta]

Thanks! :) And it's nice to see somebody else who likes to work in Paint. I'm always seeing people going "Let's do an art contest where we all draw in Paint, but of course we won't be expected to do anything _good_, tee-hee!" and then everybody turns in stupid-looking scribbles, even if they're normally a pretty good artist. (rolls eyes)

Anyway, thanks. :)

...Notorious

[Da Worm Fizzle]

very artistic. I can't draw at all, unless it's graffitti.

[Cleolanta]

(high, sing-song voice) THANK you!

...sorry, couldn't resist. :P But seriously...here is a little "secret" behind how I made this:

I really suck at getting complex backgrounds to "fit" properly behind characters, in pictures. Like, if I want to draw something wide behind them, I have to draw the line right _through_ the person and mess up some of my earlier drawing work in order to keep the line straight when it hits the other side, that kind of thing. So I tend to do "layers".

How you do this with Paint? Well...

--Draw in the background seperately in a new file.
--Then open up the picture with the person/people.
--Make sure their background is just plain white.
--Fill in all the parts ON the people that are supposed to be white with some other colour.
--Go to Edit in the top menu, select all, click on the second option which is the "transparent background" one, copy, and then paste into the background picture (making sure that _that_ one has the transparent option on at the time, as well.)
--Change all the white parts on the people back to white. (If you leave them white when you're transferring it over, the program will think of _those_ parts as "transparent" as well, and you end up with people who have the whites of their eyes coloured like the background, which can be annoying.)

This allows you to draw the background freely without the people in the way, and not mess up and have to keep redrawing things that you've already finished.
For this picture, I had _three_ layers, actually--the blue "stalactite" style Deep 13 picture, then those two big tube/pipe things, then the people. I also use this technique when I want to place somebody in front of another one so that they're overlapping. It saves a lot of trouble.

...Notorious

[CBG]

Don't you find the paint window constricting?
I know when I'm trying to work on a picture
with any kind of size to it, it's very cumbersome.
And paint doesn't allow you to drag-to-select
the whole picture. Maybe I have an obslete
version of paint, and I'm still a novice at this
art form.

Thanks
CBG

[Cleolanta]

Well, I always just maximize the window of any program/page I'm going to be working with for any length of time, first thing. Then I drag the Paint window itself out to somewhat larger than what I _think_ I'll need, and start drawing. If needed, along the way, I will move the picture, re-center, crop, expand the window...whatever needs to be done. Very rarely do I draw something that's bigger than an entire maxmized window.

On the occasions that I _do_, however...yes, it is annoying. But most of the time I don't need quite THAT much room.

...Notorious

[elireburg]

Happy MST3K!!