Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) – No. 758

Matthew Inman, who often goes by the nickname “the Oatmeal,” created the website The Oatmeal in 2009. The website features comics drawn by Inman, quizzes and occasional articles. Previously he built Mingle2, a dating website. Inman is also responsible for raising $211K for charity via his 2012 “Bearlove Good. Cancer Bad.” crowdfunding campaign, which was his brilliant response to FunnyJunk’s lawsuit threat. Inman has four published collections of comics, including How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You and Why Grizzly Bears Should Wear Underpants. He lives in the Fremont area of Seattle and was born on September 24, 1982.

For this 8-bit pixel art of Matthew Inman, I did my best to distort his face into the horrifying, exaggerated style of one of his characters from The Oatmeal. And, of course, I gave 8-bit Inman bottles of his beloved Sriracha Rooster Sauce to throw in my Gorillas game. I should also mention that today is the birthday of Nikola Tesla. This is relevant because in August 2012, Matthew Inman launched the “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum” fundraising campaign to support the nonprofit organization Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. The idea was to purchase Nikola Tesla’s old laboratory in Long Island—known as the Wardenclyffe Tower, which was built to provide wireless energy for the entire Earth—and turn it into a museum. Ultimately, the campaign succeeded, raising over $2.1 million. Thus, Inman became a Tesla champion. (Related: Matthew Inman vs. Thomas Edison.) My closest encounter with Inman was watching him present about his Internet career at SearchFest 2010 at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. It was fun to see the Oatmeal speak—and get a free copy of his first book, 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth—at a work conference.