DaPuffster (imma just call him Puff) is, to me, defined by a combination of narcissism and sheer bullheadedness that shapes every part of his online persona in some way. Ninety percent of the problems he gets into come from sheer and utter refusal to bend to other people's will or suggestions, even if it can only hurt him.
DaSmashCareer
If you know Puff at all, it's probably for his smash career. Puff was a mid-to-low-tier Super Smash Bros. player when it came to notoriety and so on. One of those 'always a bridesmaid, never a bride' types, only ever winning one small tournament but placing second or third in quite a few. In Brawl, he was known as the best Jigglypuff player in the world. Also in Brawl, Jigglypuff is at best considered the 34th character in terms of viability. There are 37 characters in the game.
Puff seems to choose crappy characters and become the best at them through sheer force of will. This leaves him earning titles which boil down to 'best of the nearly worst characters in the game'. When smash 4 came out, he picked up the Mii Brawler character - one of a few characters that can have their special moves customised. Unfortunately, the smash community pushed back on the customisation characters, which significantly hampered the Mii Brawler's potential. Puff and people supporting the Miis tried to get them into the game, but the antis generally won out. The solution?
Obviously, quit the game to devote his time to his web comic. Not learn a character that didn't need to rely on custom moves, no, the tournaments bend to me or I'm living.
DaPhoxes
Puff... loves foxes. Too much. Particularly Tails the Fox, and the Pokemon Delphox - ESPECIALLY shiny delphoxes. Delphox is generally regarded as one of the worst starters aesthetically, due to having ears with what can only be described as a wingspan and being a train-wreck final stop to what had otherwise been a great evolution line. Puff hates this, even though the only reason his Delphox characters look even tolerable is because he downplays the worst parts of the design in his artwork. As a result, any group he leads eventually gets disproportionately loaded with foxes, because he'll shower them with cameos and artwork and give minimal attention to everyone else.
Here's his most common main character, Wyatt Augustin. This was an entry to a deviantart group that Puff... basically singlehandedly destroyed.
Wyatt is so much of a precious, perfect character, this guy forced a whole meme template around him. The 'You are Wyatt/Wyatt is You' memes are perhaps the biggest example of this self-important prick's ego. And if you don't bow down and worship him, he will lock you out of the inner circle of his groups.
DaArt and DaWebcomic
Puff is supposed to be an art school graduate - though he mainly serves as an example of how being a graduate doesn't mean you're any good. This is the most recent page from his webcomic, Champions of the Melting Pot and every panel demonstrates some example of puff's art flaws.
- Puff can't draw a human face. ESPECIALLY not head on. All human noses are apparently a single ( positioned with the points down, when viewed from anything resembling a frontal pose.
- Puff has what could be charitably called a loose style. He's gone to the Steven Universe 'If the character is recognisable, it's on model' school of thought. Backgrounds generally look totally lazy. Even the thing he's holding is totally incomprehensible without context.
- When Puff wants to draw an intense scene, he uses a scratchy, rough style. When he wants text to stand out, he uses vector text with clear, bold outlines and gradient fills. These two mix together about as well as raw sodium and water. He has used this same style for years, and it never looks good. Also, fucking WOW that background.
- Puff can't draw anthro faces front-on either. Not to mention the ridiculous zoom-in. Considering their face is slightly on an angle, I'm going to say this is a great example of puff's ability to perspective.
- Oh god, he's crushed in this character's muzzle to make it closer to the jojo meme, but the end result is something horrific. My eyes, they burn.
The comic stars a guy named Xero, the blue-haired guy on the page, who was basically abducted to be the 'Main Protagonist' of the tournament/videogame because he looks a lot like one. Unfortunately, he's completely incompetent. But don't worry, we have more stock cliche characters than Unlikely Protagonist Model No. 3, we also have:
- The smooth-talking troll Jack, the yellow fox from the comic page above. He's meant to be a janky, troll-y character.
- Sierra, the super peppy fragile speedster wolf girl. But she gets her peppiness from chugging soda by the gallon, so she's a TOTALLY original character type. Obviously.
- Celeborn, the... and I shit you not... Anthropomorphic Refrigerator. Big stoic tank character in the 'game'. Ironically the character whose face is drawn the best, because he has a defined nose.
- And Amaranth, a character with less personality than the refrigerator. She's meant to be a super high skill character.
In the process of doing the digging for this, I discovered that he has decided to reboot the series. While it seems like his response addresses some potential criticisms, it's certainly not going to address any of the issues I actually highlighted. Though it is gratifying to have him admit he was making it up as he went along.
I'm sure all of these issues have been brought up to him in the past, but all critique is flattened by his ego. He was an art student, after all, and that automatically means his opinion is better than anyone else's. However, in some ways I'm glad his artstyle is so unique.
I'd never have found out about his alt account otherwise.
KelicoPM and the Other Webcomic
Imagine you're me, browsing deviantart's newest deviations to see what's up. Something catches your eye.
It's a Dapuffster page, by the look of it, but it's being run by a guy called KelicoPM? You click it, curious, and you get hit with a curveball.
Allow me to introduce you to The Hammer Power-Up - the secret other webcomic. It stars Tails of Sonic fame, who picks up a hammer like Amy's and becomes some fusion of Amy and himself - complete with the same obsession with sonic. Genderbending his characters is nothing special, but causing them to fall in love with each other as a mini-series threw me way off.
An example page from the comic. Old as fuck, he'd later remake it.
The only intact image of the reboot. There's a few others, but they're only thumbnails left over. Including this to make it crystal clear that, yes, this is the same guy.
The only intact image of the reboot. There's a few others, but they're only thumbnails left over. Including this to make it crystal clear that, yes, this is the same guy.
KelicoPM's fanart archives part 4 by Gamerz31w on DeviantArt
archived 28 Nov 2019 11:40:14 UTC
Unfortunately, a while after I discovered it, it was deleted. I can only assume someone he actually knew found it, and he hid it as a result. The only reason anything has survived is because one fan of the mini comic saved a few images. If there's anyone that could find the rest of the comic... it'd be the kiwis.
Other, smaller highlights include:
- Designing and rigging an entire deviantart group tournament so his character's gf could get married to his.
- Insulting half the characters in a group he was asked to lead in one fell swoop.
- The time he put much more famous smash players into his webcomic, in one case outright despite being told not to... despite his webcomic being based around a different game entirely.
- Adding Time Travel and Mechanical Shock Collars that turn people into WEREWOLVES in a fantasy world.
- Implying that his character would be THE saviour of the world in a group.
- I could talk, in exquisite detail, about how poorly the in-universe tournament is conceived as well.
- As well as his plans to turn it into a game.
- Large swaths of general managerial incompetence.
I can elaborate on any of these if you guys want more.
Links:
DeviantArt
Youtube
Patreon with a grand total of $32 dollars of support.
The KelicoPM backup channel
