Created for Gallery 1988‘s upcoming Judd Apatow tribute show, I sort of can’t imagine that anything there will best this ‘Smear Weir’ contribution from the oft-featured Jude Buffum, which perfectly mashes up Technos’s classic Super Dodge Ball line with Apatow’s early cult hit show Freaks and Geeks.

See Buffum’s blog for more details & background on the piece, and visit Gallery 1988’s opening for the show Tuesday, December 4th, at 7PM for a chance at grabbing the original.

A fantastically and appropriately chaotic version of the transformations at the heart of under-dog (wolf?) arcade classic Altered Beast by Rory ‘Puppytube‘ Morris, a special color version of her submission for the previously-mentioned Sega-tribute art-zine coming from Ted Martens, Paul Veer, Corey Lewis & Ashley Davis.

While further submissions have now been closed, I mention it here because it’s sneak peeks like these that’ve got me super-hyped for the final product — keep your eyes on the SegaZine tumblr for more information on its eventual release.

Just to put that last post in a little more artistic context, especially if her name seemed to ring a bell you couldn’t quite place, above is Laura Bifano’s deer duo, part of a similarly voxelated (?) series called ‘Menagerie’ that originally put her on the map (or, at least, the ‘Tumblr radar’).

You can find a bunch more of those at Bifano’s other illustration blog, and get prints of these and a whole bunch more from her Etsy shop here (I’m also partial to this ‘Foxhunt’ painting).

My favorite illustration from one of my new favorite game/art sites is this Vaporeon, via Pokemon From Memory, a new undertaking from artist Laura Bifano, who by her own admission “hasn’t seen a Pokemon since [she was] 12”, and otherwise only relies on the descriptions sent in by request — basically, and awesomely, a 21st century version of 18th-19th century zoological illustrations from far-flung explorers.

In this particular case, the request came from Toronto indie dev Damian Sommer (he of the previously-featured Comics Vs Games submission The Yawhg), who supplied only that a Vaporeon has “a body sort of like a dog, except for its mermaid-like tail. It also has a short face, big black eyes and a raised spine. Its head has three fins on it, and around its collar is what I guess would best be described as a frill?” I’d say she basically nailed it.

My favorite comic the unusually talented and previously-featured Zac Gorman‘s produced in forever, not least because it highlights one of Nintendo’s most under-sung series, Chibi-Robo.

If you haven’t yet experienced it, track a copy down as quickly as you can: not only is it one of that generation’s best 3D adventures, but, as the comic does a masterful job of expressing, it’s got one of the most cutely tragic portrayals of domestic turmoil under-pinning the entire game, a fantastic and trademark humanistic touch from director Kenichi ‘Route24‘ Nishii.

Browse the rest of Gorman’s work via his Magical Game Time blog here, and join me in ruing the fact that Nintendo never localized Robo‘s “New Play Control” Wii re-release for stateside players.

Friend of the site & comic artist extraordinaire James ‘American Elf‘ Kochalka finds himself with entirely unique day-one quad-arbor Wii U troubles. Those especially concerned will be pleased to learn that a replacement is on its way & should be received by the beginning of next week.

One more hit of Patrick Smith awesomeness for the day, this time his Caterpillar, another fractured creature that should be right at home to anyone that’s been following his Vectorpark work.

If you’ve only played Windosill, you also need to stop what you’re doing and pick up his similarly amazing iPad app Feed the Head (also available in miniature iPhone form), and then Levers and smaller toys Acrobots and Carousel, at which point all your iOS devices will be at maximum (read: proper) wonder-levels.

Following a conversation earlier today about the enduring brilliance of Patrick Smith, best known as Vectorpark, I thought it was long past due to feature some of his non-interactive work, here with a 2007 painting called Cabin, which, along with this Citadel pencil drawing, should look somewhat familiar to anyone that’s played through his fantastically enchanting Windosill.

See more of his sketches & paintings via his Smithpix portfolio site, get Windosill for iPad here, or sample a bit of the PC version here.

One more Hotline Miami tribute to round out the morning: a super ominously quiet version of the hare-headed Graham, by deviantart member Pa-go (see also: his entirely unrelated Breaking Bad tribute and his slightly more related mockup of a 8-bit NES 28 Days Later game).

While I’m still patiently awaiting the Mac version to fully tuck into Dennaton’s Hotline Miami (not least so I can finally reach the Fantastic Arcade bonus level, Highballer), its release is already paying off with the amazing fan-art starting to trickle in, like Jouste‘s tribute to its resident drill-killer, Carl.