Hello again, everyone.

It perpetually perplexes me how we can look back in time to a certain point in our lives, and marvel at how long ago it was and how so much has changed in that interval; and, alternately (sometimes simultaneously), shake our heads in amazement at how fast the years flew by, challenged to believe that it has really been so long.

Surely I am not the only one who has experienced this paradox of retrospection? Ever since I became aware of the personal milestone marked by this particular year, this is the feeling I have had nearly every time I have spared a thought for this forum.

It was this exact time on this exact date exactly five years ago (1,826 calendar days, to be precise) that I made my very first post on The Gang Of Five, officially becoming an active member of an Internet forum for the first time in my life. It is an anniversary that I feel compelled, if not obliged, to commemorate, as this was truly a life-changing event for me, and I have you, the members of the GOF, who welcomed me with open arms into the friendliest and most compassionate online family I could imagine, to thank for it.

Looking back, it amazes me how a random, nostalgia-incited (and ultimately temporary) bout of obsession with an animated film franchise from my childhood led me to one of the nicest places on the Web, and started me on a journey that would profoundly change my life for the better. It was one of those unforeseeable life-changing turns of events that seem utterly improbable in retrospect.

When I first joined the forum, I was an intensely shy and cautious individual, unsure of how to approach people or interact with them. Five years later, I’m still timid and introverted, but not as severely so as before, and I have vastly more confidence in social situations and communicating with people. Granted, it’s hard for me to say how much of my growth over the past five years I can attribute directly to the GOF, but I’ll be a sharptooth’s uncle if it hasn’t been a significant factor.

Certainly The Gang Of Five has done more for my psychological health than any doctor ever did. Posts citing me in The Member Appreciation Thread and nominations I received for the GOF Awards were among the greatest self-esteem boosts I have ever received. It has given me opportunities to communicate with people from all over the world, bearing a myriad of opinions, worldviews, and backgrounds. I’ve made friends, learned how to open up to people, experimented with new social media like Facebook and Skype, and expanded my social life beyond what it ever was before. I’ve learned new skills and developed preexisting ones, tried new things and discovered new interests. Thanks to the GOF I have broadened my horizons immensely.

But it’s not just my own personal growth for which I owe the GOF a debt of gratitude. I am also thankful for all the opportunities the forum has given me to pay back the favor to some meager extent; the times when I was able to make a positive difference in the lives of other members, however minor or fleeting my impact may have been. Whether by reviewing stories, critiquing artwork, creating star day cards, sharing scientific knowledge, providing a chuckle via a humorous caption or quip, supplying stimulating conversation, or just offering kindness and sympathy, it has been my honor and my pleasure to be able to benefit my fellow GOF members. It brings me immense joy and fulfillment to know that someone’s day is just a little bit brighter because of something I have done, and that maybe I can be of some value to the world after all.

I wish I could say that my level of activity on the GOF has remained consistent for these past five years. Regretfully, over the last two years or so, I have been visiting the forum less and less. I’m not entirely sure why myself. Perhaps one factor was the declining activity of various other members on the forum with whom I was friends or otherwise connected. It’s also likely that I was wearing myself too thin focusing on certain activities (including artwork, reviewing, and RPing) that had started out as fun, spontaneous pastimes, but that had somehow developed into challenging chores that I found more stressful than enjoyable. I find it all rather depressing, knowing how much I once loved spending time here.

There is one thing I can promise you all, though: I don’t ever plan on breaking ties with the GOF. This forum, and the connections I have made with people here, are too precious to me. If anyone ever wants to talk to me, share something with me, ask me a question, or just check up on how I’m doing, just send me a message. I have my GOF account set up so that I should be notified by e-mail whenever a PM is sent to me, or a post is made in my “ask me” thread. In addition, I have posted my contact information in the relevant thread in the AM section. If you wish to hear from me, I will be at arm’s length. I hope to maintainóand even strengthenómy friendships on this forum for years to come.

Thank you to the GOF and all my fellow members, for five wonderful years, and all that you have done for me in that time.

Sincerely,

Yes, astonishingly enough, not only is Pangaea posting new artwork, but he’s started another thread for it!

Those of you who have been on the GOF a while may already be familiar with the personalized illustrated cards I have made as star day gifts for some members. What you may not know is that I have been making similar cards as gifts for friends and relatives for many years previously, and continue to do so outside the GOF today.

Though I don’t make so many star day cards anymore, I have always intended to compile them all in a single thread, so that they may be easily viewed by both their recipients and any other members who happen to enjoy them. Originally, that location was going to be my main LBT art thread. However, not all of the cards have been strictly LBT-related, and there are so many of them that I wondered if perhaps I should give them their own thread.

Meanwhile, as I continued my long-held tradition of making cards for my family on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries, I had entered a new era of card art (beginning in Christmas 2010, and really taking off in May 2011). I started inventing strange, random creatures for each new card, cards that were becoming more elaborate and meticulously drawn than ever. At the same time, my three siblings (all of whom are also artists who create cards for special occasions) were similarly refining their card art styles. Cards were becoming such prized pieces of artwork in our family that we began collecting them in an album. It may be because of this that I went from viewing my cards as a disjointed collection of unrelated drawings to a cohesive series. Thus was born the universe of the Card Critters, a vast and constantly growing menagerie of diverse beings: some real, some imagined, some based on modern animals, others extinct; some derived from mythology or popular culture, others invented entirely by me. Many of them have become recurring characters, appearing in multiple cards, and the creatures on any one card often interact with each other in random and amusing ways. Eventually, elements of the Card Critter universe began bleeding through into my GOF cards, and I had the idea to make a thread dedicated to my card artwork; mainly the star day cards, but also my non-GOF, non-LBT card universe. I probably won’t be sharing any of the actual cards I’ve made for family members featuring the Card Critters, but there’s a possibility that I’ll share sketches, character concepts, and even mini-projects (e.g., character guides?) related to them.

And just as I prepared a custom signature image for the opening post of my LBT art thread, I thought it fitting to create a special piece of cover art for this one:

[align=center](If the image isn't showing up, here's the URL.
If the image isn't showing up, here's the URL.)[/align]
When designing this title, I was very systematic in selecting characters that I hoped would represent the style of my cards as broadly and indicatively as possible. Those of you who have seen my LBT art thread will probably recognize my longneck pen that I typically use to write my official artist’s signature, shown here doing exactly that. The other characters are performing the Card Critters’ typical job: creating the shapes of the letters. For each character, I have provided one or two paragraphs explaining who it is and why I chose it for this title. Hopefully this guide is not so long that most of you will not bother reading it.

C: In late July 2011, I made a birthday card for my youngest brother featuring four small winged serpents with party hats; characters I dubbed “the Party Amphipteres” (pronounced “AM-fih-tare”; a kind of mythological flying snake or legless dragon). They have since become perhaps the most iconic of my card critters, having appeared in twenty out of the thirty-two cards I have made since first creating them. They are ideal for cards because they are simple to draw, but also incredibly versatile: their snakelike bodies permit them to be bent into a huge variety of shapes, and the fact that they have wings means that they can be suspended in mid-air anywhere in a picture, even on cards where the law of gravity is meant to be in effect. So far they have served as stand-ins in for fourteen different letters of the alphabet, and I have imagined how they could form the shapes of the other half of the alphabet as well (both uppercase and lowercase). Someday I’m going to draw a visual amphiptere alphabet showing how this is possible.
Party Amphipteres are never seen without their hats. True to their name, they typically wear party hats, but I have also drawn them in fezzes, Stetsons, Santa Claus hats, fancy feathered hats, horned helmets, and once, a paper bag. I have a regular cast of ëpteres who make recurring appearances on my cards, and who I usually try to depict with distinct personalities. The one shown here is the de facto leader, the Green Amphiptere (Yeah, I’m still working on names ). I also occasionally “ëptere-ify” characters from other media, caricaturing them as Party Amphipteres. (One of these days I’m going to do this with the LBT gang. )

a: This colorful little fellow is a trilobite. Known from over 20,000 described species, ranging from about one millimeter to over two feet long, this extinct class of arthropods inhabited the world’s oceans for at least 270 million years. (To see just a hint of their diversity, check out my trilobite fossil photos from my visits to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and Science Museum of Minnesota.) Among the oldest complex animals to evolve on Earth and witnesses to the entire Paleozoic era; beloved among fossil collectors and useful to geologists for determining the age of rock strata; familiar, elegant, and distinctly prehistoric; trilobites are, in my mind, the perfect emblem for paleontology and all things extinct.
Although there are many very cool-looking trilobites out there, those I draw are usually of the generalized, basic-looking variety most people are familiar with, mainly because the more unusual varieties are much harder to draw. Even these generic trilobites are lots of fun, though. I typically like to give them bright colors and interesting patterns, partly because of my fondness for bright hues, but also to make up for the hordes of trilobites I’ve seen illustrated in paleoart with drab, solid color schemes, as if the artists had assumed that the colors of the fossils themselves were indicative of how the living animals were colored.

r: Given that this is cover art for a thread largely dedicated to my LBT-themed cards, I of course had to feature one of the gang in this title. Strangely I went with Ducky, the one whom I have the hardest time drawing. She is a LBT character I am particularly fond of, however, as well as being the best candidate to stand in for a lowercase letter ër’. I also couldn’t resist the adorable imagery of her encountering the Fluffy Raptor (who, rest assured, is just as surprised by Ducky as she is by him, and poses absolutely no threat to our little swimmer).

d: This little guy is known to me as “the Fluffy Raptor”. Some time ago I learned that dromaeosaurs and other feathered dinosaurs probably had much poofier plumage than they are often depicted with. The Fluffy Raptor was my first attempt at drawing a properly poofed out feathered dinosaur. He’s still not entirely scientifically accurate: he’s not based on any specific species of feathered theropod (though I do remember thinking of Velociraptor while first designing him); he has unusually tiny forelimbs with only a single visible claw, and I doubt that real-life raptors could hold their tails at a 90? angle like he is doing here. However, by the same virtue, he is an excellent example of how I tend to draw animal characters: fairly realistic, but stylized just enough to make them extra expressive.
I’ve noticed that the Fluffy Raptor seems to get fatter and fluffier every time I draw him. In his defense, he is deliberately puffing out his feathers here in order to look as round and fluffy as possible, the reason being that he’s spooked by Duckyóbecause, after all, who wouldn’t be? :póand his instinctive response is to make himself look larger and more intimidating (Riiiiight… ). His striped pattern and the red ring around his eye are traits common to many of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs I draw: I’m very fond of putting earth-toned patterns on my fuzzy archosaurs (in the case of raptors I’ve always thought stripes looked particularly good), and for some reason I really like giving my theropods and pterosaurs a colorful ring of skin around the eye, like some birds have.

A: I call this character “The Squid Who Is Inexplicably Wearing Pants”. I can say without irony that he is one of my proudest creations; even I was surprised by how popular he turned out to be. Whenever he is included in a lineup of my card critters, he is usually one of the first characters people comment on. I love this character not only because he is so hilariously random and is a cephalopod (one of the most spectacular, beautiful, bizarre, and enchanting animal groups ever, in my opinion), but because the story of his origin exemplifies my creative process (or at least one of the paths it sometimes takes) in a way few of my other characters can: It was June or July of 2012; I was rushing to complete a rather elaborate card consisting of over twenty characters. One of the last letters was an ëA’, a letter I have trouble coming up with ideas for at the best of times, and at that point my creative well was running dry. As I struggled to think of a creature that could form the shape of an ëA’, one of my first thoughts was to use a squid or straight-shelled nautiloid, with the tentacles spread apart to form the “legs” of the letter. I was reluctant, however, since I drawn such a character once before, and had not been very satisfied with the result. Sure enough, none of my practice sketches turned out very well, and I decided to turn to something else. I thought of an ëA’ that I had drawn on another card over a year prior; a cartoonish personified version of the actual letter, with a single eye in the center, a conical party hat on top, and a pair of pants covering the “legs”. I didn’t want to reuse that particular character, since I didn’t feel that he suited the tone or style of the card I was making, but I considered possibly revamping the character, or finding some other way to incorporate pants into the letter I was working on. Suddenly, I experienced something akin to an imaginational short circuit: the cephalopod idea, still fresh in my mind, fused with the image of a creature wearing pants, and in an instant, the Squid Who Is Inexplicably Wearing Pants sprang forth fully formed, name and all, into my mind. Instantly all thoughts of further brainstorming evaporated, as I knew I had my letter. Using a tiny but realistic toy squid and a pair of pants as reference, I drew out the character, who turned out to be a hit with both the recipient of the card and everyone else I showed it to. The Squid has returned several times since then; I believe this marks his fifth official appearance.
The pants, by the way, are based on a pair of beige slacks (which are, incidentally, part of the uniform I wear when volunteering at an aquarium), not blue jeans; I colored them blue because it complements the red of the squid so well. The Squid, for his part, has no more idea as to why he is wearing pants than you or anyone else does, myself included.

r: A small dragon, standing on its head. Rotating a character by 90 or 180 degrees is a simple and very handy method for dealing with letters that might otherwise be difficult to represent. For example, a fat frog tilted on its side can become a ëD’, while a dodo balancing on its beak can stand in for a ëP’. Oftentimes, however, I draw characters in unusual positions just because I can. There’s something I find hilarious and adorable about upside-down characters (maybe that’s one reason I find bats so endearing), and they appear regularly in my cards.
Dragons are among the most common card critters I draw, which probably has a lot to do with sheer freedom of design: although just about everyone has a familiar mental image of the archetypal dragon, there are virtually no rules as to what a dragon should look like. As a result, I revel in creating dragons with unorthodox designs and unique characteristics: furry, mammalian Chinese dragons; rotund wyverns with stubby legs and wings; dragons with sickle-shaped heads, beak-tipped snouts, serrated jaws, sluglike bodies, hook-tipped tails, therizinosaur claws, and spiky beards. And so on. The saw-edged tail of this dragon was inspired by Pterorhynchus wellnhoferi a pterosaur with a series of flanges running along the top and underside of its tail. I’m guessing that they probably weren’t used to slash at enemies, but it looks cool enough to borrow for one of my critters.

t: Chibis
It was sometime between January and May 2011 when I started drawing chibis (apparently pronounced “CHEE-bee”; a term which I understood at the time to be a style of drawing characters with short, stubby proportions to make them look cutesy). My chibi style typically involves beginning with a rotund body shape, and adding features to it until it satisfactorily resembles the creature or character I have in mind. Chibis usually appear in my cards in groups, stacked or clustered together to form exclamation points and letters like H’s and N’s that are difficult to portray with a single character. I have also been increasingly using them to stand in for squat, rounded lowercase letters such as o’s and a’s. My chibis are usually the smallest characters on a card; they usually end up at around one centimeter (2/5 of an inch) or less in diameter. Recently, however, I have found myself drawing “giant chibis”, similar in shape and other features to my regular chibis, but considerably larger, allowing for more detail. I gave up on counting exactly how many chibi characters I have drawn so far, but I know that it is over four dozen. As for the six chibis I have drawn here, I will be describing them in turn from bottom to top, left to right:

• Derpy: One of my favorite methods of making a card character more comedic or endearingly random is to give it “derp eyes”. It’s hard to find a card without at least one character sporting misaligned pupils; I’ve put them on everything from dragons, to moths, to platypuses. For this cover, I thought it fair to pay homage to my original inspiration for this stylistic habit: “Derpy Hooves”, the legendary background character from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
  
• Walrus: For a long time now I have loved using walruses as comedic characters. Not only are they some of the most comical-looking animals out there, but I find “walrus” to be an inherently hilarious word; ideal for inserting into a sentence or phrase, Mad Libs-style, to create an amusing and random mental image. As a result, it’s very easy for me to come up with humorous ways to portray walruses, such as standing on their heads, offering aspirin to Liopleurodon, spontaneously falling from the sky, and, of course, holding buckets. They are the blubbery, tusked, mustached agents of randomness. Thus, when creating a picture intended to be symbolic of my card art, it behooved me to pay tribute to the walrus.
  
• Alien: Ever since I read Expedition by Wayne Barlowe, I’ve loved drawing alien creatures. Some have been serious attempts at creating plausible alien life forms; others are simply weird creatures that don’t quite fit in with any of my Earth-based characters and therefore become classified as extraterrestrials; a few are completely bizarre, implausible creatures that I envision as hailing from another dimension where the laws of physics are different or absent. I personally find humanoid aliens to be horrendously boring, so when I want to evoke the classic image of an alien; a design that’s original, but instantly recognizable as an alien, I come up with characters like this guy. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some of my more creative alien designs in the future.
  
• Viking: I typically draw very few human characters, but in the past year (arguably it began in June 2011, but it really took off in May 2012), an entire world in the Card Critter universe has grown around one exceptional group of them: the Vikings. Before I go on, I feel a disclaimer is in order here: my “Vikings” are pointedly not based on real-life Vikings, who did not wear horned helmets into battle, whose ships usually had sails (or at least oars), and who probably did not have regular encounters with dragons and sea monsters like those that I frequently portray in my cards. At best, they’re my take on the romanticized Vikings of popular culture, my chief sources of inspiration being the Vikings of the online game Ice Breaker (namely the chibiesque design) and the movie How to Train Your Dragon. In a nutshell, my Vikings are a band of slightly sub-sane seafaring glory-seekers (Well, at least the chief is; most of the rest of the crew would rather take a day off from adventuring whenever they had the chance) who regularly run afoul of the monstrous residents of the seas and lands they attempt to conquer. The creatures they meet are seldom aggressive, sometimes mischievous, and always seem to get the better of the Vikings one way or another.
  This particular Viking also happens to be a self-portrait, or at least a self-caricature, sporting the same bushy reddish beard and curly “bullhorn sideburns” that I have. As I mentioned before with my Party Amphipteres, sometimes I affectionately caricaturize people and characters from popular media as Card Critters, this being a rather straightforward example (normally the person being caricatured does not remain human ).
  
• Chicken: In my experience, when you need an easy-to-draw creature to give your picture a booster shot of comedy and/or cuteness, and you don’t have room for a walrus, you can’t go wrong with a fat bird. And one should never underestimate the comic potential of the humble chicken. They make for great “straight men critters” because they’re so inherently funny that you can draw them pretty much just standing there and it’s amusing. This chicken also exemplifies the unusually vivid color schemes I sometimes give to my card critters (especially deliberately cartoony ones like chibis), sometimes in complete defiance of what would be considered realistic for their species: green bats, blue rabbits, purple brachiopods, etc. (There’s a reason I chose these particular colors for this chicken; I’ll wait to see if anyone gets the joke.)
  
• White Tent Bat: For as long as I can remember, bats have been some of my favorite animals, so it should come as no surprise that they appear regularly among my card critters. They can be tricky to draw, however, especially when it comes to their wings. (In fact, I don’t think I have yet managed to draw a batóflying or perchingówith accurate wing anatomy.) This is one of my favorite bats to draw: the Honduran white tent bat, arguably one of the most adorable mammals alive (see the first two photos in this post). Not only are they simple to draw, but they’re one of those rare animals that comes pre-chibified, courtesy of evolution. And, like most of my chibis, they naturally tend to be found in clusters, so if I have the patience to draw a lot of them, they’re perfect for forming letters (and as far as I’m concerned, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cuter letter than one consisting entirely of fluffy snuggling bats ). Admittedly, there’s not much that I specifically use bats for on my cards, but I guess you could say that they represent my obsessions; the things I draw simply because I am passionate about them.
  

To anyone who took the time to read all of this, thank you very much. And thank you in advance to everyone who chooses to leave comments. I greatly appreciate hearing what people think of my artwork.

EDIT: Uh-oh…did the image turn out too big? Is it stretching the text out too much? Please let me know if I should upload a smaller version of the picture and create a link to the full-sized version.

Here's to a certain awesome member's first star day on the GOF. Happy 19th, Fyn!

P.S. In case you haven't seen the LBT TV episode "The Star Day Celebration", a "star day" is an LBT term for a birthday, called such because the date is determined by observing the positions of the stars. (LBT V contained a passing reference to the potential alternative term "hatchday", but that doesn't work as well for humans, so we use "star day" when celebrating members' birthdays. )

Littlefoot505: I have edited the title to reflect Fyn's recent name change.

Holy buckets, I just noticed that today is the 21st birthday of one of my bestest buddies on the forum. Somehow I had thought that your birthday was still at least a month away, so I don't have a star day card prepared for you, Sparky. The most I can offer you for now is this thread.

Happy star day, Spazzy Sparky! :huh: :!

We have a GOF member turning 39 today!

Happy star day, karkovice!

This is a thread for posting witty quotes, funny stories, and transcripts of amusing conversations from real life. These include wisecracks, taunts, and unintentionally hilarious things that you have said or heard someone else say, funny stories and experiences you have had, and humorous exchanges between two or more people that you have overheard or been involved in. Subjects of stories and speakers of quotes can be you, family members, friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers; as long as it’s something you’ve said, heard, witnessed, or experienced in the real world (and not routines or staged performances as in a play or a comedian’s stand-up act), and isn’t too rude, dirty, or otherwise inappropriate (see the GOF censorship rules), it’s acceptable.

This thread is not to be confused with the “Funniest Quotes You've Heard
Funniest Quotes You've Heard” thread in the Silver Screen section, as all quotes and stories in this thread must be from real life, not from movies or television. It is also distinct from the “Make your own quotes” thread, because quotes here must specifically be humorous. And that said, the stories and quotes shared here should not be jokes, per se; those should be posted in this thread.

To start off, and to provide examples of the kind of material that should go in this thread, I am reposting these quotes (originally posted here), all conversations that took place between members of my wacky family, which essentially provided the original inspiration for this thread. Enjoy!

Me: “I would appreciate it if you would let me get a word in edgewise.”

My older younger brother: “But we ain’t in edgewise. We’re in Minnesota!”



My sister: “Hey, guys. Guess what? Today I saw a real dead human brain.”

Me: “Great. I’m glad you two were finally reunited.”



My older younger brother: “There are monkeys in this world!”

Me: “Of course. There’s one in the living room talking right now.”



*My brothers and I are watching a Three Stooges short, and our mom walks in.*

My mom: “What’s this show called?”

My youngest brother: “ëI’m A Monkey’s Uncle’ (*the title of the short*).”

My older younger brother: “You are?”



*My mom and older younger brother are sitting on the couch in the living room. I’m looking for my two youngest siblings.*

Me: “Where are those other two chumps?”

My mom: “I don’t know. (*pause*) Hey! What do you mean by ëother chumps’?”



Me: (*carrying a roast turkey from the oven*) “Turkey coming through!”

My mom: “You talking about yourself?”



Me: “You can pick your friends, but not your family.”

My mom: “You can pick your friends, you can pick your petsó”

My dad: “You can pick your nose…”



My mom: “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Me: “Ah, I’ve seen weirder things.”

My sister: “Yeah, the mirror.”

P.S. I’d like to thank Cancerian Tiger for suggesting this thread, and Rat_lady7 for asking the question in my “Ask Me” thread that led to me originally posting the above quotes.

Whoa! Today's become a double star day!

Congratulations, 2007excalibur2007, on turning sixteen! I don't know if there's any particular significance assigned to that age in Indonesia, but in some countries, it's a landmark, and since this is an international forum, we'll treat it that way here.

By the way, you don't have an "Ask Me" thread, but I've always been curious: why do you have "2007" at both ends of your screen name?

You share your birthday with NewOrder, but I thought I'd create a new thread. May it be bumped each year for a long time to come.

Happy 14th!

Ptyra and I started a sort of impromptu discussion of this movie on the “How are you Feeling?” thread, so I figured I'd start a topic for it.

Personally, I'm really excited for this movie. I saw the trailer today in the theater, and was positively overwhelmed. Still, I'm pretty worried about how the movie will be condensed and changed from the book series it is based on. :unsure: (For starters, I don't like that the movie title was changed from “Guardians of Ga'Hoole” to theóin my opinionórelatively boring and unoriginal “Legend of the Guardians”.)

I'm not usually the one to start birthday topics (actually, I've never started one; somebody else always beats me to the punch ), but I thought Spyro deserved one (even if it is a bit late).

Happy belated 15th star day, pal! Here's fifteen emoticon party guests!