Last Friday, my friend Tony and I got on a discussion of old, defunct amusement parks, namely, Angela park.

http://defunctparks.com/parks/PA/angela/angela.htm

It was located in Drums, which is a few miles from where I work, and it was where I spent much of my childhood in the 80’s. I browsed through the site and the memories flooded back. The ghost house, the helicopter rides that went over the whole park, the tunnel of love.

These amusement parks did have most of the same qualities too. They all had one dark ride (like the ghost house, tunnel of love, etc). They had old, creepy merry go rounds. They had those rides that went over the whole park. And they had a lot of really cool hand painted statues that just give off an aura of years gone by. These statues are probably passed by by most without a second glance, but years and years before the mass produced society we live in today was born, there were unknown artists sculpting and painting these by hand for a living.

All that being said, this entry is about the art of amusement parks and fairs, as the title suggests. Most of the parks that I visited as a child are gone, so these things are lost to time, unfortunately. One of these parks still remains. A little place that used to, in the 80’s, be referred to as Knoebels Grove.

I don’t know why I go to amusement parks, I get sick on pretty much every ride. I was asked to go there with a few of my friends, and I went there, armed only with my camera and a lot of free time, considering I went on about four things the whole time. So, I decided I was going to search for as much as this old “art” as I could find.

The ghost house was the first ride we went on, and there were a few games that were right by the entrance. Here is the first specimen that I encountered. A hand painted sign for the tic tac toe game, featuring Knoebel’s mascot, Kozmo.

If you can’t tell what that is, a hand is coming out and grabbing his TOE. get it?

After this, we headed over to the phoenix, which, along with the ghost house, is the reason that Knoebels did not go out of business like all of the other parks in Pennsylvania.

Next to the phoenix is a really old music… thing. I actually don’t really know what to call this, but it’s hand painted and has been there forever. It’s very different from the statues, but I thought it was worth a mention, none the less.

Here is a detail:

After this we made our way to the area where the train is that takes you through the park. This guy was pointing me to the Cookie Nook, where I could get tasty treats:

I followed this little penguin’s instructions and found myself at a BREAD SHAPED BUILDING! Normally a bread shaped building would be my favorite place in the entire world because they’d sell… you guessed it…. BREAD! And I LOVE bread! … but this place does not sell bread. I’m actually not sure what this building is, but attached to it is the Cookie Nook that this penguin tricked me into going to.

After this, we searched for the pavilion where my friend Gill’s company was having their picnic. This isn’t really art related, but… I discovered that the people who designed the picnic pavilion didn’t really know their alphabet.

The bottom left quadrant is close to correct, however … U does not come after O, guys.

Anyway, after that it was on to the international cafe. They sell everything from mexican food to buffalo chicken sandwiches to alligator (i’m not kidding) They had some really neat and really “corny” artwork.

Get it, “corny” artwork? lolol.

This one was above the one food place inside of the cafe:

These puns are just… top notch.

I got some pasta from the italian place, and this horrifying thing was there to greet me:

I took a picture of the above image because I really really reminds me of old advertising characters … and I really think that that is an art style in itself.

Here is another horrifying chef that I found that was back near the entrance:

Here is a very horrifying one. This doesn’t really fall into amusement park art I don’t think. This falls into “scary coal mining museum art” because Knoebels has an Anthracite Museum right next to the international cafe.

There are really no words for this. Well, except for HORRIFYING:

After all of this, my friends went on the twister. This is a new rollercoaster, but it has the same sort of old timey statue built right into it.

While they were on the twister, I walked around and took some more shots. Here’s Kozmo again, this time on a globe.

After this, I wandered over into the kiddie ride area. I thought that I’d find a lot of stuff there, but I found just two, and they were both the same. There were two soldiers, each guarding a bridge. Here’s a detail, because I really like them.

All right. I’ve saved my favorites for last. I dont’ even know where to start. These are just… so amazing I had to actually have my picture taken with most of them.

This… is… well… hm…. really scary:

These two are actually from a different trip to Knoebels this summer, which is why I have a different shirt on. I didn’t want people to say “hey, why are you wearing a different shirt?! something is not right here!” …

This is near the arcade in the middle of the park. I believe there is a sign that says “please put trash in me” … but my reaction is to run away horrified.

These are my favorite two, hands down. I’ve blogged about this first one before, but I’m going to post it again. These are panels on the baby changing station at Knoebels. This scares me more than ghosts. Or spiders. Or ghost spiders. So, without further ado, I present to you… the changing station babies:

All right, well, that concludes this post, so I will leave you with this. While I was waiting for my friends to finish their final ride on the phoenix before they left, I found something really interesting.

Some class somewhere made an exact replica of the phoenix and it was in a glass case. That’s actually pretty cool, but I was more interested in the little figures that were placed next to this replica, who were supposedly “enjoying” this ride.

I came up with a story of what happened, but I’ll allow you, the reader, to draw your own conclusion and write your own story:

Until next time ^_^

Hi everybody! I know I haven’t been posting much, bad me, right? Well, there is a reason for it. I was going to write “there is a good reason for it”… but I’m not entirely convinced how “good” it is.

See, lately I’ve been going through this weird “creative crisis”. The problem is, it’s not the sort of creative crisis where you have writer’s or artist’s block and can’t create. It’s the exact opposite. The flood gates have been opened and all this creative energy that has been pent up for who knows how long is just gushing out. I think it has to do with the fact that I finally am free of the Sword That Cuts Things. Suddenly I’m writing my comic, I’m doing short Atom Kappa animations again, starring all my old and forgotten characters, and …. well, I’m doing what I am about to post about in this entry. The only major problem with this whole creative explosion is that I am finding it very hard to control it. One day I want to do the comic, one day I want to make an Atom Kappa doll and one day I want to animate. I said “problem” … but i don’t necessarily feel that it is a problem. I’m embracing it and just really enjoying myself, which is something I haven’t really done with my art or my animations in a long time.

That being said, this entry is about one of my recent creative diversions.

When I was a kid, I always loved making things. In 7th grade, it was handpainted tee shirts. In 10th grade I made every single one of my comic characters out of sculpy clay. In 2001, it was a Christmas animation about a fox and a kappa.

In 2003, my mother was put into a nursing home because of a malignant brain tumor which would later kill her in 2005. Most of you know this already though. It was at this time that I gave up on much of the creative stuff that I used to do. I buried myself in the Sword that Cuts Things because it made me not have to think about anything. I haven’t really felt liberated until now.

This Christmas, my friend Matt and I decided to exchange gifts, as always, and I had no idea what to get him. If you know Matt, or if you ARE Matt (Matt, I know you read this blog, so … heh) you would know that he is very much into Nintendo, but he also HAS EVERYTHING EVER! ^_^ Seeing that he is a good friend of mine, I wanted to make him something special that you cannot buy in stores. I went to the internet and discovered a site about people that make sprite artwork out of little beads called Perler Beads. Many of you probably heard of them or have used them, possibly in elementary school. From what I hear, they are a very popular craft.

The basic thing with Perler beads is that you place them in a certain arrangement on a pegboard and then iron them so they melt together. Brilliant for little kids who want to make dragonflies and cats and stuff, AMAZING for someone who wants to make their favorite 8-bit or 16-bit character.

I went to Michael’s Craft Store as soon as they opened and bought as many beads as I could afford. Then I came home and began to create.

I tend to get obsessed with things, and after a day, this is what my basement looked like:

At first I couldn’t find one of the bigger 29×29 pegboards, so i had to make most of these on a very tiny and very hard to use pegboard. I can’t remember the actual dimensions, but it was really hard. The Rydia, Yoshi, and Devout are all done on the 29×29, as are the rest of the ones later in this post with the exception of two. I also had a very hard time finding single colors, except for the glow in the dark package, so most of these earlier ones glow in the dark!

After Christmas, I decided I was going to make sprites of a bunch of things that I always wanted action figures of as a child, but that they never made figures of. Now, Keep in mind, I have very weird taste in things I like, especially when it comes to video game characters. As a child, I would always draw tons and tons of pictures of “random enemy A” because I thought that when I was playing the game it “looked adorable” …. I also would do things like avoid certain enemies because I liked them too much to hurt them. That being said, below is Quick Boomerang Mega Man, Crash Man and Panser from SMB 2. Now, back when I got Mega Man 2, I was quite angry that there wasn’t a “mega girl” that i could play as… so… I would beat Quick Man’s stage and change into the quick boomerang suit as soon as possible and pretend I was Mega Girl. Yeah, that’s right… ^_^ Then there is Crash Man. He’s just my favorite Mega Man guy for no good reason. I really want an action figure of him!

…. and… then there is Panser. This is probably the weirdest story of all. When I got Super Mario 2, I opened up the instruction manual to look at the characters, and there she was. Panser. Just a random flower enemy that shot fire at Mario. But…. IT WAS OH SO CUTE! I mean, LOOK AT HER!

(actually, this picture is perfect because I also am in love with that porcupine and made a sprite of him just a few weeks ago ^_^) So anyway, throughout my entire life I have just been drawing pictures of Panser everywhere. I even had Panser address labels at one point. So, anyway, after that long drawn out story about why I’m weird, here are the sprites:

When I was a young child, my parents got me an Atari 2600. I loved it and I loved dragons, so it was only natural that I would become obsessed with the game “Adventure”. I always wanted figures of the dragons when I was a kid. I used to buy random dragon figures at the store just so I could play “Adventure”.  I’ve used the dragons in my animations before, and  now they are magnets in my basement. Oh, yes, and I realize that the red one is backwards. I realized it AFTER I had glued the magnet on the back!

Another things I always wanted when I was a kid was action figures from various Final Fantasy games, especially Final Fantasy 1 and Final Fantasy 4, which, in my opinion, are the best. (before you Final Fantasy 7 fanboys and girls beat me up or something, I am referring to earlier final fantasy games, because they DID make and continue to make FF7 action figures)

I have now made it my project to make all the characters from FF1 and FFIV. I realize it is going to take me a long time, but it is something I really want to do. I am going to make a few enemies, too, and if i have it in me, I am going to make a Behemoth from the final place in FFIV. But that, my friends, will take a VERY long time.

Anyway, here are a few final fantasy sprites. Rydia is my favorite character of all time ever, so that is why there are a million versions of her and that she is in like every picture. I also LOVE Edward. The one with the pink hair is sorta obscure, it’s Edward’s girlfriend who gets killed, Anna:

This is a Piscodemon from FF1 (A wizard from the Ice Cave), chibi Edward and a chibi Rydia that I HAVE to redo cause I don’t like it. It was my first sprite and it is messed up.

I got a lot of guff from my friend Jamie for doing an injured white mage, but I think the white mage looks extremely cute like this. I made the Cecil for my friend Fatt, and the Devout for myself.

I made this Cecil sprite for my friend Bill. The stuff in the background is from an animation idea I had. ^_^

I also made Kain, but I don’t have a picture of him right now. I gave him to someone and forgot to snap a picture!

Last, but certainly not least, I decided I was going to make a really big one. Well, all right, not a REALLY big one, but one that used two pegboards. I give you………(drumroll please)………

THE CHEETAHMAN!….. and toad TOO!

Anyway, it’s been really fun doing all of this. I will post more here at some point, I actually think I feel like making more today. What I’m going to make, I dunno… but i just got 1000 brown beads…. can someone say…. TANUKI MARIO!

I hope that I can focus my creativity soon, and finish something, but for now I’m just going to let all of this come out however it wants to, whether it be drawings, animations, comics, etc. I’ll post the results. ^_^