Alright, time to do a little posting catch up from December-ish 2015…
As a select, special few of you know first hand, when something positive and worth celebrating happens to someone I care about, I tend to take the opportunity to craft them a custom Plunger Monkey card to commemorate the event and express my congratulations and shared joy. Graduations, weddings, births, those kinds of things just scream for Plunger Monkey’s perspective or reaction.
Back in December, my childhood friend, Aaron, tied the knot with the love of his life, Junko. They are two wonderful people and I’m very happy that they found each other. I don’t even know how long I’ve known Aaron, since sometime in elementary school, maybe? We were both sort of outcasts and “weirdos” with similar interests, and he became a good friend at a time when I really needed one. As we got older, we got into Dungeons and Dragons along with some other friends and had many amazing imaginary adventures, with Aaron usually being the Dungeon Master (he was a phenomenal one). Eventually we discovered another roll playing game based on one of our favorite imported Japanese epic cartoons: Robotech. I still remember the adventure he put us on some 20 years ago. If you are unfamiliar with Robotech, or Macross as it was known in Japan, do yourself a favor and look it up. Visually and story-wise it was a significant creative influence for me. It had space, aliens, transforming giant robots (but piloted by humans, rather than being sentient), drama, tragedy, romance, action…it was awesome. The North American version of the story is cobbled together from three different and unrelated Japanese cartoons, but rewritten and re-edited into a multi-generational space epic. I don’t yet own the entire DVD collection, but I hope to one day, preferably during the time window that I can sit down and watch them with my kids. I actually own (and have read) the entire series of novelizations for the show and still have a few of the roll playing guides on my book shelf because of the art.
I spent many years trying to draw awesome robots (or mechs) because of this show. Never did quite get the hang of it.
So, when the opportunity arose to celebrate Aaron finding love, you can guess what the theme was:
PMD is wearing the flight suit of one of the main characters, Rick Hunter. This image was so much fun to draw…it may call for a digital painting…
On the inside I wrote something amusing (at least to me, and hopefully Aaron) that you’d be hard-pressed to get unless you were a fan of the show.
Looking at this card while I’m writing this post, I’m really thinking this site needs a PMD sub-page. Maybe a gallery of just PMD art I’ve created, with a short write up about his creation or something. Hmmm…of course, I need to stay focused on current projects for now, so that idea will have to sit and ruminate. If anyone has any suggestions about what you’d like to see, feel free to share them.
Anyway, congratulations once again, Aaron and Junko!
Please let me know what you think, it makes my brain happy.