Perhaps some day, you will be ready. Until then, Mogwai waits.

“The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas.  Oh, God.  It was so horrible.  It was Christmas Eve.  I was 9 years old.  Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work.  A couple hours went by.  Dad wasn’t home.  So Mom called the office.  No answer.  Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing.  So the police began a search.  Four or five days went by.  Neither one of us could eat or sleep.  Everything was falling apart.  It was snowing outside.  The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire.  That’s when I noticed the smell.  The firemen came and broke through the chimney top.  And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird.  And instead they pulled out my father.  He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit.  He’d been climbing down the chimney… his arms loaded with presents.  He was gonna surprise us.  He slipped and broke his neck.  He died instantly.  And that’s how I found out there was no XXXXX XXXXX.” ~ Gremlins, 1984

Ok… that’s not a real story from my life but in my Springfield, it is always Christmas lol.  I blocked those last two words just in case any of y’all have tiny tapper buddies.  So… I’ve been slacking lately on doing 2D with all the Halloween shenanigans to mess with, but today I decided to get off my DUFF and make some art.

A little while back, one of my buddies over at Tapped-Out.co.uk. did me a favor and I promised him a 2D just for him.  I planned on doing a Simpsons Gremlin for Otto Mann (aka Chris J.) to ram his bus in to but found out this was already done by another one of my 2D peeps.  Well, what to do now?  The other Gremlins are too scary for TSTO, right?  Well, I went out on the internet and found a pretty great image I wanted to do.

This movie scared the Jeebus out of me when I was little (should’ve seen E.T. instead) but Gizmo is just so stinking cute.  I could take care of a Mogwaii in my town easily.  Preferring a live subject to a computer image I headed off to the local Chinese pet store.  The only Mogwai left was this guy…

Not as cute as Giz but still sort of precious in a weird, creepy way.  The staff at the store were very helpful:

“First of all, keep him out of the light, he hates bright light, especially sunlight, it’ll kill him. Second, don’t give him any water, not even to drink. But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much he cries, no matter how much he begs, never feed him after midnight.”

Brought my new pet home and decided to let him relax in Wookieetown for a little.  Left him unattended for just a little and next time I go to pet my Mogwaii, this guy is chilling on my couch eating cheetos instead.  Good glayven!

What to do now?  Well, I guess it’s a Gremlin 2D after all.  Stupid TSTO characters feeding my Mogwaii. Thank goodness there was no water around!

Alright, enough rambling… I just really love this movie.  It really was the first one I ever remember scaring me and I did have Gremlin nightmares for quite a while but hey, I was a 4-year-old Wookiee so cut me some slack.

Every 2D has to start with an image and I chose this one.  Small glimpse into my real life… I have quite a few bobble heads I’ve been given/acquired so it only seemed natural to use one as inspiration.

This image ended up being much harder than I thought but I hoped I was up for the challenge (the readers will ultimately be the judge).  Started with Stripe’s eye brows so they’d be centered with his nose.  The 25 dollar bushes are usually my go to for outlines even if I do replace them later.

With this done, I shaped out the eyes and started working on the mouth.  At this point, I almost gave up because I didn’t feel that Stripe looked scary enough but Bunny Foo Foo would beat me up if I ever quit so I had to keep on trucking…

Next, I used my precious pile of propane tanks to give Stripe some teeth.  Had a few left over so I decided to give him at least a few of his white markings.  Also used the mailboxes to give him evil eyes and a tongue.

Now he’s starting to look a little creepy.  Black snapdragons were next for some more detail work.

At this point, I tried a bunch of different decorations for the color of Stripe’s ears.  I couldn’t find the right color (come on EA, how about some more small decorations of various colors?), so I took a break.  Literally closed my game and went for a walk.  When I came back, the brown wooden fences seemed like the closest fit.  I added some lines with more bushes just to give some texture and like the boardwalk benches at the top of the ears for more of Stripe’s coloring.

Finished the ears and then went in to the face to add more detail.  I initially planned on completely filling in Stripe’s face with bushes but this didn’t seem to work like I wanted.  My biggest grievance with this 2D was that I didn’t have enough propane tanks for the white mohawk.  Oh well… it’s art, right?  No one is ever gonna claim this as an exact duplicate so artistic license has to come in to play.

And after a bunch of tweaking and my daughter knowing what it was a 2D of without seeing the source image, I was satisfied.  Wookieecorp brings you… a real Gremlin.  He turned out a lot more creepy than I expected lol.

GIZMO CACA!

I probably will end up going in and tweaking my guy a skoshi more in the future but I’m pretty happy with this 2D.  If you’re one of my neighborinos, feel free to tap the heck out of this guy but he won’t give you any GOO.  I have him specially trained to guard my 2D palette and all I have to do is let him watch Snow White every once in a while.  No squirt guns allowed in Wookieetown btw.  Hope every one is enjoying the Halloween Event!  Wookiee out!