<
Since Jacoby’s deathday and birthday are so close together, I posted some photos of him on Monday In Meöwmorium on the Facebook group This Cat is PHOTOSHOPPED. I included some cutouts I’d already made along with some favourites…and wow, the other members did not disappoint! I especially love the image Trisha Pettingill made with Jake in the Red Sox dugout.
Lucia Robson made this one of Jake in Baseball Heaven (which of course is in Fenway Park).
Helen Yang, who had so much fun with Izaak and Lorelai a few weeks ago did this amazing one of Jake on the field with Rally Cat II at an Angels-Cardinals game in Anaheim!
She also did these of Jake in various forms of heaven. So sweet!
And then there are my challenges…this cat was named Pirate, so…
Dangles’ human wanted her to have legs, but I gave her eggs instead.
This was an amazing photo on its own…most people went with an ascension or jet pack theme, but I went in a different direction.
Mr. Kringle’s human wanted him to run for president. That was easy!
This isn’t really a Photoshop challenge per se, but I had to do it.
Sophia’s smile made me think of second grade.
Someone commented on this photo of Bebby that Yoda the trapeze artist should be dancing with her. So here they are at the Bolshoi.
Switch’s photo reminded me of Theda Bara.
But this is my favourite of my projects this week. When I saw Reginald in his cowboy hat, I instantly thought of A Million Ways to Die in the West. I knew what I wanted to do: Reginald with Seth MacFarlane’s Albert and Doc Brown. It was a lot harder to get the parts to match than I expected…but I think I finally got it to look pretty good in the end.
Imma just leave this here…
I am kind of loving how the language of the internet is evolving. From L33t speak in the 1990’s to LOL cat speak, it’s really been a lot of fun to watch develop.
And now we have the newest internet dialect: DoggoLingo. Just as LOL cat speak was applied to dogs, DoggoLingo is being co-opted by kitties. It’s a world of heckin good bois, chonks, bleps and peets, and, of course, smol bols
Lorelai and Dashiell, especially, love to sleep curled up into the smallest balls they can. Rory making herself a tiny ball isn’t that hard; she’s a small cat, weighing only 2.6kg (just under 6lbs).
But Dash, who is almost as big as Alfred (who is 4.6kg, just over 10lbs), can make himself into a pretty smol bol.
I don’t know what he does with those gangly legs of his…but it’s impressive.
Freddy and Izaak tend to do a double bol. I am not sure if Freddy has much say in the matter.
Then we have the pretty poses. They have nothing to do with the language stuff above.
They’re just pretty.
Zak manages to make some pretty poses himself.
For about five seconds. Then he goes and ruins it. Way to go, Zak.
Yeah? Well…what you think is a moo point. You know, like a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter. It’s moo.
Sad news. Tardar Sauce, known worldwide as Grumpy Cat and possibly the most famous cat on the planet, died on Tuesday from complications from a urinary tract infection. She was seven years old.
She was an inspiration to all cats who wanted to become a meme, and if it wasn’t for her, Boston may never have had Strollercat. I was pleasantly surprised by her Lifetime show, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever and I love the Grumpy Cat Weather App. I can’t believe she died so young.
I drew her, once, in a cartoon about the “Aby smile.” She was surprisingly difficult ti draw!
May StarClan light your path, and you find good hunting, swift running, and shelter when you sleep, Tardar.
So I have been an avid fan and follower of LOLcats since they first appeared on the internet in 2007 (Yeah. Think about that. They’ve been around for 12 years already). I love them. So, when I got the most recent professional photos of Lorelai and Izaak (taken by Madelene Jonsson at the Örebro show in January), I couldn’t help but notice that some of them were infinitely LOLcat-able.
Rory had two photos that fell into two classic meme categories.
But Izaak had the best shots of all. Taking two shots together, it made a classic “I Love to Sing-a” meme, only made stronger by the fact that it stars an actual Singa!
This is not actually based on the (in)famous Three Wolf Moon T-shirt. It’s actually based on the even more awesome Three Grumpy Cat Moon T-shirt and the equally hilarious (if slightly illegal) Three Keyboard Cat Moon T-shirt.
It had to be done. And I am going to try to get a shirt made, too. I’m holding my breath to see if Zazzle will let me make this – if they do, I’ll try to make a version for sale:
The moon background is actually two different moon photos by Moon-WillowStock on DeviantArt.
(Click cartoon to embiggen, or you can view all cartoons in Slideshow mode on Flickr.)
So, I’m sure you’ve all seen the incredible and internet-infamous photo of a weasel riding a flying woodpecker by now.
If not, you probably saw my Wordless Wednesday post this week.
However, after I posted this on Wednesday, I got to thinking that…while it was good, it could be better. So, last night I went back and fixed it. And while I was doing that, I thought people might be interested in what I’d done to make Jacoby ride the woodpecker.
For the quick original version, I went through all my photos of Jake looking for one of him in a pose similar to that of the weasel’s on the bird’s back. I finally decided on this one of Jake playing with the kittens in the Kitten Bowl.
Then, I found the biggest, highest-res image of the #WeaselPecker on the internet that I could, and I erased the weasel, leaving only the bird.
Then I scaled Jake down, put him on the bird’s back, and filled in the “holes” with colours taken from the bird and painted on underneath Jake using a feather brush. I also refined Jake’s edges using the “Refine Edge” tools under the “Select” menu. Then I toned Jake down to match the lighting on the bird a little better and put a slight motion blur (1 pixel) on him using the Motion Blur filter.
And it was good…but I knew I could do better. Jake’s front arm didn’t look right to me, his shoulder looked Photoshopped – even though it really wasn’t! – and I didn’t like the way his tail looked. So I went through the photos again, looking for arms and tails that would look better on my flying Jake.
I found this photo of Jake hooking a toy with his paw, so I selected just his arm and shoulder, copied it onto a new layer over the current Jake and sized it down.
Then I erased the original arm, and blended the new arm in. Using the “Warp” function under the Transform menu, I tweaked the arm a little bit to make it look like Jake was holding onto the woodpecker’s neck (despite what National Geographic might think, it’s not that hard to make a mammal virtually hug a woodpecker).
I also wasn’t happy with Jake’s tail. Even though that’s how it really looked in the original photo, on the back of the woodpecker it looked odd. So, I took Jake’s tail from this photo of him and Angel.
Just as I’d done with the arm, I selected the tail and part of Jake’s rump, pasted it onto a new layer, and blended in to the rest of Jake.
I still wasn’t happy with Jake’s neck and shoulders in the original version. Even though they weren’t Photoshopped at all, they looked like they were – it looked like I’d attached Jake’s head and shoulders to a different body, even though I hadn’t. So I took a nice shot of Jake’s body that I had considered as a possible arm donor…
This time, I didn’t need to flip it. I sized the body piece down, placed it over the rest of the body, and blended it in using the eraser in brush mode, with one of my fur brushes.
I did one more tiny tweak to Jake’s tag, bending it back with the “Warp” tool to make it look like it was being blown back by the wind. Then, when I had all the body pieces blended together the way I wanted them, I merged the layers to create a consolidated Jake.
I turned the woodpecker layer back on, placed Jake on the bird’s back, and touched up the empty spaces underneath Jake with the rubber stamp tool. Then I added a slight motion blur to Jake as well as a slight drop shadow. And there you go: Jake riding a woodpecker!
…Because I had cartoonist’s block and couldn’t come up with an idea until this morning. And I don’t have time to finish it properly, and a good cartoon that’s late is better than a half-assed cartoon that’s on time.
So, I apologise, and I’ll blame it on the snow. Everything is delayed in Boston these days…
In the meantime, I present a special LOLcat starring Jacoby.
This was made by Abyfriend Max Boutelle. You may recall Max from the story about her 18 year old cancer survivor, Moose E. Puss. I don’t know where she found this, but she added Jake to it and it made my day. Since her Moose was the star of a Cartoon Tuesday, it seems fitting that her little LOLcat be a place-saver for this week’s cartoon.
She also made this one.
I feel really bad about not meeting this deadline – in 162 cartoons, this hasn’t ever happened. I just hit a sort of wall, where I have lots of half-ideas, but no solid jokes. I finally managed to sketch up something, but I haven’t got time to colour it in tonight. However, I promise it’ll be posted later this week, and then I’ll have something for next week, too.
Right now, though, I need to feed the kitties, and then I’ve got some serious scanning and Photoshopping to do!
Because it needed to happen:
So it’s still snowing. It’s been snowing, on and off, for about three weeks now. In fact, today, I had to work from home because the MBTA was closed.
(Click cartoon to embiggen, or you can view all cartoons in Slideshow mode on Flickr.)
Remember this LOLcat I made last year?
It is, of course, based on the “I should buy a boat” Aby:
Recently, I discovered a continuation of the meme, in which Mr. Aby does buy his boat:
There’s also a “bad decision” version which is pretty funny, but it doesn’t use an Aby as the cat. And, since the “bad decision” is funnier, really, than the “good decision,” I came up with this…
But how did I do it? Well…I’ll show you. First, I found a photo of a snowmobile without a rider on it that I liked.
And yes, I did look for a green snowmobile if at all possible. I got lucky when I found this photo! I cropped it like this:
Then, I found a photo of Jacoby that would fit with the buried snowmobile.
Since he was already in snow, I didn’t have to do much to blend out the background to fit him into the churned snow behind the snowmobile.
I used a feathery brush to blend in the edges of the snow and his coat.
Here’s a close-up that shows how I’ve actually erased parts of Jake’s coat so that it looks like it’s buried in the snow even more than he actually was.
I also placed the text at the bottom for two reasons: one, to match the first LOLcat, which also had the text at the bottom, but also to disguise the Photoshop blending between the snow and Jake’s coat. I could probably do more to improve the lighting match between Jake and the background, but for an LOLcat, it’s good enough.
I am so behind on my “extra” posts, because I’ve been concentrating quite a bit on the cartoons. I have a collection of “other Aby” things to share, and this is one I’ve been meaning to get to for some time.
Weather Whiskers is a smartphone app that my sister got me hooked on last year. It’s just a weather app like the default one all phones come with…but with cats. It’s free, and it’s much more charming than the usual clouds, suns and lightning bolts that regular weather apps give you.
That’s right. Regular, as-accurate-as-any weather…
…just illustrated with cute, dressed up LOLcats.
Like this Oriental Shorthair.
And this Bombay.
But you know I wouldn’t be posting about this app if it was just random cats, no matter how awesome it was. Of course there’s an Aby connection.
I’ve seen this Somali for Fog and also for Hot & Sunny. I have not seen an actual Abyssinian yet, but…
…Weather Whiskers does feature this Frida Kahlo Aby on their Facebook page banner!
It’s been a good week for Abys on my calendars this week: Look at this little cutie who was on yesterday’s I Can Has Cheezburger Day-to-Day Calendar page!
I think they actually meant “Goggie” (LOLcat for “Doggie”)…but still, look at that face!
Because it had to be done…
You all remember this guy, the famous “I should buy a boat” Aby from the Bjork video, right?
Well, this photo…
Yeah. It had to be done.
I’m really not sure how or why it started, but there’s this “Feminist Ryan Gosling” meme going around the internet where random photos of actor Ryan Gosling are combined with sensitive, gentlemanly captions. Like this:
So after a couple of comments on my crafting post this past Thursday, an idea evolved…
What if I took photos of Jake and combined them with these Ryan Gosling captions?
So, I did.
Every single one of these captions is stolen from the Ryan Gosling meme. Word for word.
It was kind of too funny the way it was to make up new stuff.
And oddly, a lot of photos I have of Jake fit really well with the Hey Girl captions.
It’s uncanny, isn’t it?
I was cracking myself up finding the perfect caption for each of the photos I’d selected.
The crafting ones in particular dovetailed nicely.
(Nice to know I’m not the only one!)
Yeah. That was fun.
The Daily Abyssinian...and Singapura 