I spent a good deal of my time as a game master for the Star Wars role-playing game in creating alien characters that fit the movies, the books I read in the Star Wars series, and the game materials. In this post, I will give you a mini-gallery of the aliens I drew for the game.
Chee Mobok was a space trader who had a problem with his own ego. He believed that he was a genius at language and could speak any language he had heard a handful of words from.
The Galactic Common speakers were always laughing at the things he said.
Huttese speakers like Jabba the Hutt were always trying to kill him for say precisely the wrong thing.
Hethiss was the Jedi Master when my son’s Jedi character was still a padawan learner.
He was wise, but unable to keep his student from doing things in violent ways when a diplomatic solution was called for.
Merv was a potential terrorist and a suspect in a series of murders on a water planet. He was, however, the good badguy character. You know, the villain who has a heart of gold and whose actions redeem him in the end… As opposed to a bad goodguy who seems to be a hero and ends up betraying everyone.
Fisonna was a street kid from the same planet and same race as Hethiss the Jedi master. He had the potential to become a padawan learner. But he also used his Force skills to pull pranks on serious adults.
Odo-Ki was a Gotal with the ultra-sensitive cones on his head. He had a limited ability to see behind walls and predict the near future.
Nadin Paal was an actual pirate and terrorist with no redeeming qualities at all. The best thing about him was, that when the time came, he blew up really nicely. A colorful fireball.
Kehlor was a Herglic, one of the whale people who required specially built extra-large space ships and accommodations. He was also a gifted pilot. You can see that he wears the uniform of the Trade Authority.
And finally, Klis Joo was a Duro and a Jedi, a gray alien with considerable Force powers.
There were many more drawings like this as well. But these are some of the best ones.
Lately I have been having problems with passing out during low blood-sugar moments in the middle morning, early afternoon, and shortly after supper, usually when I have already had a snack and my sugars haven’t balanced yet. When I pass out, perchance… I dream. Vivid dreams. So, for art day, I will post images I have made based on dreams I have had.
This one has shadows on everything. I exhausted three pens drawing shadows. Yet, there are no shadows on the child-figures. In the dream, they were glowing white ghosts.
Snowboy is one of the main villains in The Bicycle-wheel Genius. But the boy-robot made entirely of snow, ice, and circuitry first appeared in a 1978 dream that happened while I had a fever from the flu.
This dream is a mental-disturber caused again by fever. Here the two gigantic toys play with the little girl. I was not actually in this dream. I was an observer floating above. I think the bear was inspired by a Care-Bear.
This picture has all the elements of the actual dream, the candle, the line of glowing pixies, the sleeping princess, and Prince Charming. But nothing here looks like it did in the dream. The prince and the princess were both young teens that I did not know in real life. The fairies were larger and a lot more obviously nude.
I actually passed out while writing this post. It happened right here, before I could post this dream of living colors. All the colors were in motion in the dream, something I couldn’t really represent here.
I knew when I dreamed this dream that the Bambi-kin in this dream were members of my family, but at the time I dreamt it I had not met my wife yet, let alone had three kids of my own. Yet I knew that it was not my family at the time of the dream because one of my sisters was not there.
This is from a dream I had in college at Iowa City. I made an entire cartoon out of it called Babysitters Hate My House, It is about a babysitter having a horrible time with my two sons as she loses control when they show her the man in the basement that, “Daddy built out of a kit.”
And, finally, this dream featured not only the spirit stag and the medicine man, but the bolt of lightning in the background. The Dakotah people say having a dream with lightning in it makes you a “lightning dreamer”, a magic man, or a shaman. So, I guess that qualifies me to be one.
In the Cryptofont Zoo of bizarre and exotic creatures of word, I, as a wordsmith, have become quite a keeper. My lovely Zoo is the rival of any in the world… er, U.S… er, well, it’s different. Let me give you a tour and see what you think.
First on our tour are the strange and wonderful animals in the Popeye-isms section. You know, the bizarre creatures of word first spawned by E.C. Segar in his strip known as Thimble Theater, better known by the later name of Popeye the Sailor. I regularly use many of these little animals in my writing, making the spell checker hate me and making the readers pause with a private “isn’t this wrong?” sort of thing. I am often disgustipated with the words and I should have antiskipated the whole spell-checker thing. If you just keep hitting the add to the dictionamary button, soon the whole thing is discomboobulated and ready to just give me the ol’ twisker punch! It takes an ol’ salt like Poopdeck Pappy and a whole can of Spinach to sort this sichymawation out.
Thimble Theater by E. C. Segar
Now next on our tour, fear this thing over here, this Seussian Sphere, where we keep the rhyme animals more. I use these critters too, in place of bad glue, and to gloss over all that’s a bore.
There are also the Thingamadoodles like oodles of poodles that come from the Forest of Seussian Lore. I never will know why the Whangdoodles tootle and spurt the bright snootles while they snore. The thing that’s head-achy and a little mind-breaky about the Doctor’s good chore, is the way it is rhyming and syllable-climbing while you write it right out through the door!
Once I bounce just an ounce of the rhyming nonsense out of my head, I can tell you about word munchers and other evil critters. One evil word muncher got the word “thing” in the previous sentence and made it come out “thong” until I caught the spelling error; (My spell checker still has not forgiven me my Popeye-isms, so I have to check it myself). It is rare that a word muncher is ever useful. I collect many of them in my writing on a daily basis, but mostly they just take up space (like the “mostyl” I just captured in this sentence!). Oh, yes, the most common variety of word muncher seems to me to be the “dna” or “adn” or “nad” that always blossoms its evil petals out where ever I need a conjunction.
The family dog (not dgo) from the other day… but in full color ( not cloor)
Bedevils are evil stray thoughts that pepper everything you write with distractions. Bedevils, by their very nature, and I assure you they are natural, will… what was that I was talking about? Oh, they have evil in their very name. Emerson said that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, but I think that Bedevils are more like a real hobgoblin that plagues the minds of those whose heads are too full, and not of straw, like in this Wizard-of-Oz allusion.
Okay, I have taken you as far through this little word zoo as my mind can handle. If you really read it and now are plagued with nightmares about it, I apologize for what I just did to your own writing. You will never be free of these wee beasties again, will you?
It was during that eight-hour period set aside for sleep that Ged awoke in a sweat. Dreams again! He couldn’t quite recall what he’d been dreaming, but it gave him the uneasy feeling that it was about his brother Ham, and that it was one of those dreams a Psion sometimes has that comes true. He was sandwiched in between two small, warm bodies. Junior was snuggled next to him on one side, snoring softly. Sarah was on the other side, her small body sheathed in her white body suit, looking like an angel and radiating angelic energies.
The spaceship, in the form of an Ancient Red Dragon, continued to purr with power as it flew through jump space.
Ged knew sleep was highly unlikely for him now. Still, he didn’t turn on the lights or re-absorb the short brown fur that his Psion power generated every evening now to keep him warm. He looked at the two sleeping children. They had grown a lot while in his care.
Junior reminded him of Ham as much as any blood relative would have. The blue face was totally different from the handsomer half of the Aero Brothers’ Space Safari Service, but the unruly blond hair was similar. And Ged couldn’t help but call to mind the boy’s wistful smile, so like the smile that made his brother Ham so engaging and heroic. With one furry hand, Ged reached over and stroked the boy’s yellow hair. This child was precious to him. So alien, yet now become an indispensable part of Ged’s life as a spacer.
Sarah, on the other side, was probably the most beautiful child he had ever encountered. As he looked at her intently, he couldn’t help but think it was far more than a physical beauty. Her father was one of a handful of so-called Forever Men in the galaxy. He was an immortal, capable of traveling in a straight line through a thousand years. He had gifted his daughter with more than a thousand years worth of human wisdom, culture, and literature. What was more, she was able to draw entire libraries full of learning directly from her father’s head via telepathy. At less than twelve years old, she was more learned than Ged would ever be.
What was he doing on this alien space craft in a bed between these two amazing children? How could he ever hope to be worthy of caring for them and protecting them? Worse, he was now taking them from the relative safety of the planet Gaijin, back into an Imperial Space full of war and violence, cruel pirates, and shambling hordes of rot warriors who were no more than animated skeletons with a computerized control system. Not just these two, either. He had a whole shipload of special children that he was now somehow responsible for. What was he doing here? How could a talented hunter and space traveler from Questor suddenly be a teacher and the only adult guiding these children toward a highly questionable future? The thought made him quiver in spite of the warm fur.
Maybe being a teacher wasn’t so bad, though. He was a natural with loving discipline. Except for Alec Songh, all of these children adored and looked up to him. It felt good to be addressed with respectful honorifics and awe. It seemed he did have something to teach them.
Shu Kwai had become a powerful telekinetic because of Ged’s success in describing for him the workings of the inner eye.
Ged’s own perceptive powers had grown exponentially as he continued to practice changing his own shape. He could transform now not just by taste and touch, but by scent and even by imagination. He could almost become the creatures of his dreams by placing them at the focus of his powerful inner eye.
Friashqazatla was gaining a lot in shape-change power from the instruction Ged gave him. So far, he could only take a humanoid shape with canine features or a small, black wolf with a human brain and voice, but the rest would surely come with time and practice.
Gyro, the other Nebulon boy besides Junior was learning practically everything Ged knew about starship repair and maintenance. He could find and pull the skills directly out of Ged’s memory. He seemed to have a really vast aptitude for anything mechanical or electronic. He was also a god of mathematics and space-travel equations. The need to find an astrogator was quickly becoming irrelevant.
Even the Phoenix and Rocket Rogers were learning from him. They had a power over fire that he did not comprehend at all. It was a Psion power completely un-like his own. Still, they learned to work together from Ged, in the way he had always done so naturally with his brother Ham. He taught the two boys the hunting language of hand signs and gestures that allowed non-telepaths to speak in silence. He taught them tracking skills and the interpreting of signs left by those who pass through a place.
But the question that bothered Ged most was, “What have I become?” He had taken pride in being a moral man, a servant of the true God. Now, he was the lover of two different women, one little more than a child herself. His love had caused them both pain and trouble. And the more he became a Psion and used his power, the more he felt degraded and sick. He had become a monster. And what about his brother Ham?
Still, as he lay there awake and troubled he couldn’t help but turn back to thoughts of Ham. They had escaped from Imperial Space. They had found paradise. Don’t Go Here was a source of potential wealth. He and Ham had liberated the population, revived the starport, and wove them into the great web of space. They owned the starport and had control over who came in.
Gaijin was even better. There he had found acceptance. They didn’t seem to care that he was different and tainted with Psion blood. They seemed to think it was a good thing. He and Ham could have a good life between those two planets. And now, it seemed, both of them were being drawn back into the dangerous realm that was the Imperium. Looming doom seemed to be beckoning to them both. Ged hunkered down again between the two sleeping children. He needed to get some sleep. Thoughts of the other children in his care, Billy Iowa, Jadalaqstbr, Mai Ling, Hassan Parker, Taffy King, and difficult Alec Songh, could be put off for the moment. Still, thinking about the future made his stomach churn and sleep remained a stranger.
In the hold, three decks below in the belly of the Ancient dragon starship, the malevolent Tesserah continued to percolate with sickly green and purple lights. Whatever evil thing the device was supposed to do, it was busy doing it.
Where we now stand, if you are going by the picture, is outside in the Texas sunshine and heat. We should be standing, if we were smart, under the shade of the mushrooms that grew up quickly as a result of so much unseasonable rain. Of course, that would be assuming that Mickey is currently a pixie with dragonfly wings, which he probably is not… at least, not right at this moment. Climate change is turning Texas into a giant pressure-cooker with enough leftover hurricane moisture in it to reach an explosive boil by the end of July.
We are being manipulated now by the crafty, vile servants of the deposed idiot-king, treating the righteously-installed successor as an illegitimate usurper.
We are hearing now the testimony of the castle guards as they detail the failed assault of orcs and other monstrosities as they tried to dethrone the legitimate ruler. And one wonders why there are not more beheadings going on in the currently secure castle courtyard. The villains apparently have gained more rights than they deserve.
Still, in a kingdom beset by many ill omens and partisan Republicans, there are good things happening too in the sunshine.
Mickey’s latest free-book promotion gave away twelve e-book copies of AeroQuest One: Stars and Stones. And I have actually sold for money four e-book copies of other books as well, and an additional 400+ pages read on Kindle Unlimited of three other books.
And my mother, now gone from us for ten months, has left me enough inheritance to be out of my bankruptcy for the first time in five years, and, with my two sisters, be a part owner of the family farm that has been in the family for 150 years.
So, we stand together tentatively now, worried about what tomorrow and the next election may bring. But holding the high ground, a good defensive position.
I now have the ability to scan an artwork with my phone. And this is significant because I do have a number of artworks too big to scan in my current scanner/printer. But I really don’t have anything more to say about this particular picture. I will not tell you what it means. That is for the viewer to decide.
Yes, the universe was not formed in a big bang. It hatched from an egg. And God is the Ultimate Mallard.
Anatidaephobia (pronounced anna-tidy-phobia) is a pervasive and irrational fear that you are being watched by a duck. A person with this rare phobia fears that somehow, somewhere a duck is watching their every move.
This phobia about being watched by a duck may seem like a strange basis for forming a new religion. But I may have had an epiphany as a child when a goose at Deer Farm Zoo stuck his neck, head, and beak of retribution out through a hole in his chicken-wire cage and nearly nipped me in my five-year-old neck. That epiphany led to recurring nightmares about being chased by a duck with large white teeth that looked like he had bad human dentures in his bill.
This I tended to interpret as a sign that I was facing a big decision about what I would attempt to do with my young life, and would do it wrong.
Ducks in the farmyard, you see, are temperamental, often impulsive, and randomly violent. They will punish you for sins you did not know you were committing.
So, in this Quackatoon faith in judgmental ducks who are constantly watching our every move, thought, and deed, we should be taking Saint Donald Duck as our role-model and guide. When we see sin and wrongness in the world we are watching, we must dissolve in incoherent rage. Point your finger. Shout things that no one understands. Get the world’s attention. Confuse them completely. And get them to wonder what they did to make you so rage-filled and dangerously aggravated.
Then, hopefully, they will realize their sin and immediately mend their ways. Or at least, rearrange their feathers.
Or we can rely on the incompetent vengeful wrath of Saint Daffy Duck to see the unrighteousness in the rabbits of the world around us, posting Rabbit Season signs everywhere, and getting his duckbill blown off via the shotgun of a nearby Elmer who has been tricked into thinking ducks are rabbits.
Well, that might not be the most efficient prosecution of God’s will on Earth. But at least it will leave us laughing. And who can sin who is laughing that hard?
At this point in trying to establish this new religion, I should probably be talking about financial matters. Where you can send donations to the Church of Perpetual Quackers? Will there be t-shirts with religious slogans like, “You’re Driving Me Quackers!?” Do we still bring deviled eggs to church socials?
But I can’t talk about that right now… a duck is probably watching.
So, how do you follow up a thing like starting a new religion like Quackatoonity? Should you follow it up?
I mean, this is Art Day. And I need a theme for Art Day. How about, “Art with no ducks in it?” Well, Ducks are always watching from somewhere. So, I guess that’s a no-go.
Of course, I could always try to prove the “toon” part is real. I am a cartoonist. I do do cartoons. (Haha! He said, “doodoo!” Shows you the level of humor he will sink to.)
This cartoon is a bit creepy and definitely surreal. This was done more than a decade before I even met my wife. But the two boys seem to be four years apart in age, just like my real-life sons. They do not, however, have visible horns on their heads. This is supposed to be surreal, not photographic.
So, there’s a weird cartoon story for today’s Art Day post on a New Day. And nowhere in sight will you find a duck in it… OH, NO! THERE’S A DUCK IN IT!!! How does Donald do that?
You will have to forgive my terrible poetry at the beginning of this post. I can’t help myself sometimes.
But just because someone is a terrible poet, the way Mickey professes to be, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to them. Mickey has considerable experience with the topic of being bitter. After all, he was a teacher for 31 years, 24 of which were spent in middle school monkey houses.
But nothing is ever made better by being bitter. No matter what was done to you, how you were insulted, or what injustices you suffered, it does not make things better to get revenge or even plot revenge. The fire of hot anger burns while it is inside you, but, in truth, you are the only one who really feels the heat, the only one who really gets burnt.
You can’t even solve the bitterness by reasoning with the one who offended. They will not listen to reason. They will not yield to authority. You cannot make them do or feel anything that you want them to do or feel.
But you can forgive them. You can tell a joke, even if you are telling it on yourself. You can do the one thing that will do the most to make them feel better… listen to their actual concerns.
Catch a Falling Star 