Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

Art by Christopher Carter

Another mixed bag today but strangely a lot pertaining to food and pizza. First we have the Bonnie car from Five Nights at Freddy’s. Most people I show this to are clueless as to who Bonnie is or what Five Nights at Freddy’s is. This always amazes me because sometime I feel like FNAF is the only thing I DO know about. Some of my kids are OBSESSED!

Bonnie is not a car in the game. Bonnie is a murderous pizza parlor animatronic. Some have concluded this car is supposed to be representative of Freddy himself, an animatronic bear. But my kid assures me the bow tie and banjo are tell tale trademarks of Bonnie. It’s hard to tell but the roof is patterned after segmented animatronic rabbit ears. Definitely not a bear. The back wheel is a fan that is in just about every installment of the game. The lighted sign with the melting pizza was my own creation. I just felt it needed some connection to pizza. To help the glowing effect, this one got some work done in the computer. No AI was used. I can’t stress that enough. Just regular computer tools, done by my own hand to create a black background and a glow.

The Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine version (above) is just done over the top of the original vehicle’s line work, a paint job I calls it. I liked that it had some hard lines with varying line thicknesses.

This is a watermelon version (above). I just like watermelons so I did a watermelon version. The “red” parts are actually a fluorescent pink which I think makes it look exciting and delicious. I don’t especially like the taste of watermelon, in fact I may be mildly allergic. I do however love artificial watermelon flavor. I’m weird like that.

In keeping with a food theme, here we have the pickle version (above). This was requested by a little girl who just loves pickles apparently. She had a pickle themed birthday party to which she invited my daughter. Kids have the greatest ideas! They always become my favorites probably because I never would have thought of it and it always turns out great. I put a dark vignette around this one to create an old fashioned photo look.

This one (above) might not be recognizable to most. It’s based on my family’s pizza parlor which opened as a Shakey’s Pizza in 1956. There are several remnants of a standard Shakey’s incorporated into this design: the wooden crisscross on the door, the colored glass circles on the front, saloon style lanterns, even the shingles or shake roof (hence the name Shakey’s). One wheel is a stack of greasy pizza pans turned sideways, the other is a beer keg (both common sights). The back wheel is reminiscent of the new sign and logo for Joey’s. The thing that looks like a street light on the roof is actually a “last call for drinks” light that was used to indicated the open/closed status of the bar back when we used to be open until 2am! Yikes!

We use a gas oven, not a wood fire oven so the orange glow in the back is fiction but it seemed necessary to indicate what it was back there and to see the pizza better.

Finally, we have a ranch gun out the back so as to easily blast ranch dressing straight into the face of every customer who requests it, a common occurrence.

Blairally is a local barcade who supplies and maintains a variety of arcade cabinets and pinball tables at Joey’s Pizza Parlor. This one got the full treatment. The line work (above) took forever simply because I took my time learning about the mechanisms of pinball tables. This isn’t just the top of a pinball table. Beneath and behind the “table” are solenoids, tilt detectors, wireform ramps, and a plunger, all accurate to their appearance and function.

Coloring this was a chore as I really wanted to emphasize the glow from the table lights but there are also back lit slingshot covers. Sometimes I would just sit and stare at this, thinking deeply about what to color next and how. Several minutes would go by before I’d make a decision. The clear blue lighted button on the side was a terrifying idea but I HAD to do it once I thought of it. It was too good of an idea. I think it turned out great but man it was nerve wracking to get right.

The “back wheel” pinball is a five point perspective reflection done to the best of my ability. I watched a two hour tutorial on how to do it right but that was for a reflective ball inside a room not next to an imaginary pinball machine shaped like a car. So you get what you get.

Final step was in the computer. I added a simple marble background, something to reflect off of and glow onto. Just ever so faintly you can see a reflection of the marquee on the glass of the table. I cheated a bit with the reflection off the floor, just taking the brighter elements, flipping them, and pasting them where I think they should go. Very satisfied with the end result. I don’t have the patience to bring all my work to this degree of polish but this piece just asked for it. The Blairally people’s minds were absolutely blown.