Far Out There

Dang it, this is probably gonna bother me all year. Back when I first started trying to think up Christmas art ideas MONTHS ago, I hit upon a really cool idea to do for the 25th. Instead of another single page, why not do some ANIMATION? The idea was to make an animated loop of all the characters doing the little dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas, like, rigged up through flash or something. Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned in SEVERAL other rants, real life intruded when I expected to be working on all this stuff. Thus, when I really DID start work on the Christmas goodies, it became abundantly clear that it was physically impossible for me to finish the (at least) 66 frames of animation that the freaking dance loop would require. Sadly, as you can see, I had to demote the idea to a single, still picture. In fact, I never even had time to draw a “real” version of this page. What you’re seeing is just the rough doodle I made to work out everyone’s placement. I was so pressed for time that I just colored THAT instead of drawing it again in more detail (though I guess it turned out pretty well when you take that into account)

On a less whiny note: OH MY FREAKING WOW! There’s Frank, The Third Most Important Person In The Universe! We haven’t seen him in longer than Vengeance, Stilez, OR Tax! They are just coming out of the woodwork this week!

(Historical Note: I occasionally thought about tacking this idea again, as an early experiment in doing actual Far Out There animations, but there was never a point where I actually had the time to seriously work on that many frames.  I supposed it’s just as well, because this is another one of those early bits of weirdness where the parody is WAY too overt.  If I were to try and do a reference to the dance scene NOW, it’d have to be slipped into some larger gag where you don’t even need to notice the reference to be entertained.  In this, the reference IS the entertainment.)