blog | ratpony | art | photos | links | g-book
Office Hijinks
When you work a soul-crushing job like I do, you need something to take your mind off of just how crap it is.
Lucky for me, I have someone in my office who not only encourages that, they encite it and aide in the creation.
MSPaintings
One day I was issued a challenge. To take a base drawn by my colleague and add elements to it in turns. The catch? Don't get caught by the boss...
Here we have the original MSPainting. Quite sparse and tentative. We see the birth of the Polyphonic Spree element and the cheese. This was also before we discovered that you could mix colours in MSPaint so faces didn't have to be white or orange.
Our second attempt. These used to take us two days, maybe three at the most. Here the recurring element of Wally and Pamela Anderson is born. I'm particularly fond of the Elvis.
The first success I think. Getting used to our tools, the random factor of various celebrities (notably Courtney Love and Eddie Vedder) cropping up in strange places, the introduction of Wayne Coyne in his plastic bubble... what's not to love? My manager's manager walked past while I was drawing the treasure. She didn't say a thing. Just smiled. Eerie.
Funnily enough, we thought this was as "full" as we could get them. Here we see the hellmouth, our office, with your friendly artists loitering on the roof. Two images from this were used as graphics in office documents. One, Supercheese, was used in one week's meeting minutes, and the little office was used in an iner-office newsletter. Tee hee. Kurt Cobain makes his first appearance.
Indeed, we could get more stuff in there if we worked smaller (read: Smarter!). The MSPaintings, like Max Beckmann's work (heheheheh) can be used, if you like, as a sign of the times. Here we were, in the midst of the Michael Jackson trial, Prince Charles had just married Camilla, and Winston Peters loomed over the NZ public along with an election. For the first time our office stationery family makes an appearance.
Though my co-artist deems this one unsuccessful, I'm rather fond of some of my own contributions. Pearl Jam in a conga line, the entire Love-Cobain family, a naked Tony Danza, Baby and Johnny, Danny and Sandy, squirrels... Maybe he's just bitter because he drew a mole with mental issues.
Widely hailed as the best (yet), I thought this one would be shunned because of the subject matter and the bleeding Christ on a cross. Did anyone notice Conor Oberst? No, they did not. I'm particularly proud of the carebear army and the bee girl. My co-artist outdid himself with the pot plantation, the egyptians and Ace Ventura. And that is Vanessa Mae. I don't know why. While this one was in production my boss told me he knew we did it and thought it was a good way for us to relax, but warned us not to get caught by OTHER managers. Score.
A different approach which this one... we concentrated on the theme a lot more and held off adding the people until we were a bit more satisfied that we had a decent base. I like it a lot. It is a little less random, but I think my co-worker is becoming quite the little artist. He even put himself in it... though I think it looks like he's cyclops (next to Jon Cleese and Space Ghost) where he's supposed to be aiming a rubber band, likely square at my face (as is the reality).
The first interactive MSPainting... but alas, it's unfinished and it's also the last ever created. Blame my stupid department. Please. Feel free to pass it to your friends and get them to play the game. Each individual picture in this "piece" is a song title or a song lyric. Guess the songs! And no, we didn't rip this off that damned Virgin picture. We started this way before that did the rounds.
Stationery Family
Meet Snappy. Now known as Schnappi. He was the original badass piece of office equipment. No one asks for cellotape anymore. They ask for him by name.
Also asked for by name, or sound effect, our second creation. We actually made up an entire shanty town for these things. Maybe he's not as pretty as Schnappi, but there's something special about the way he blinks when you punch holes in important government documents.
The first of the staplers to receive a face, my little devil stapler, aka Beep Click Click still delights passersby with his dull lifeless stare, but giant toothy grin.
From some reason, this charming little fella has yet to be named. Apparently his legs need reinforcements because people are not very gentle with him. If you have any ideas on how to create walking fish gills, please, sign the guestbook.
The baby of the group, Doof Doof, a one-hole punch with a sparkling personality. Once, he got all excited thinking about weddings and "doofed" in my desk drawer. The confetti is still there.
We were practically buzzing(mermermermermer) with excitement over the creation of these happy little chaps! They're named after two people in our office, for no reason other than we used up all our creative juices making these. Of course, they no longer function as office stationery without ruining them, but I don't think I've used one of these clips in roughly 8 months so I think they're safe.
The most recent family portrait
I was sitting at someone else's desk (wasting time) and I saw their hole punch and did a double take. It looked deformed and disturbing! Why? Because it didn't have a face. I remedied this. This is Eep Eek. Aint she beautiful?
Doof Doof was chuffed with his new lady friend.
Various crap
Clementine was a recent, and unfortunately short-lived addition to the team. A back history was devised which painted her as a bit of a hoochie. Clem's fastpaced lifestyle caught up with her and she passed away. Or she popped. Either was, she will be dearly missed.
Our team member of the month award, once an embarassingly naked plastic statuette is now a high fashion accessory for anyone's desk. What I enjoy the most is that we spent a great deal of time faffing about creating her outfit, and no one cared.
Remember the shanty town? It had a name. And a town flag. This is where the original idea for the stapler-animation came from.
Get it? THE GUY LOOKS LIKE DONALD TRUMP! And he has that show where he fires people... ahh forget it.
Turning a waving hand photocopy into an exquisite Rhino! You know you're jealous.