Ten days ago, the fansite PSO World had a deadline on an art contest that was part of the Ambitions of the Illuminus launch party. [link] Two days prior, after getting squared away on other matters, I worked my butt off on trying to get an entry into the contest. There were two categories for submissions--Quality, which would be judged on, well, the quality of the artwork ... and Humor, for which artwork would be judged by its comedic value--and could include anything from stick figures to full CG.

I chose the Humor option, as I had an idea lying in my head in preparation for this contest--but not much time to do it. Not only is this picture a jab at the way every (non-story) mission is a straight-up slugfest, but also the phrase uttered in restaurants since time immemorial: "What are they doing back there, killing the cow?!"

This picture was fully rendered in Flash, which explains the somewhat haphazard attention to coloring. Also, while it might be explained by a bizzare architectural preference by the restaurant's owners, you'll notice there are mis-matching perspectives here--primarily with respect to the floor of the dining hall and the kitchen. This was partially intentional, in the sense that once I realized they were off, I decided to exaggerate it further. Maybe this restaruant's architects have a thing for optical illusions!

Of course, the two Guardians in the back are my own characters--you should at least recognize one of them. The guys in the dining area of the establishment are mostly not cameos, with the exception of the bespectacled Newman on the right. He's a shout-out to a certain webcomic I've really gotten into as of late.

Can you guys guess which one?

Anyway, I'm hoping to at least place in the top three of the Humor category, that way I can get my own inflatable Partner Machine. As of this upload, I don't know who's won the contest; the voting is still going on, but I got permission from the PSOW mods to post my work on sites other than PSOW (such as here). That way the rest of ya'll can see it.

Enjoy!