2012 April |

Yes, it’s been forever, and I’m apologetic about it, kind of. There have been some good Life things and some bad Life things, all of which have resulted in me not posting an update for a while. Today is one of those days where I’m feeling like this:

And unfortunately not everything can be fixed by re-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the eighteenth time. I really need a distraction from all of the above, and thus here I am.

So, thing One that’s kept me away from here for so long is this:

Yep, that’s a super successful Kickstarter that you see before you. To see it in its full glory, with a sweet video and everything click here.

Though that video is two minutes long, it took about 16 hours to film. Sorry, it took 16 hours to make/film the animated portions. (It also took about that long to clean up.) So now you can see where a large chunk of my time in the last month has gone.

Here’s some documentation of the mess project in action. The ladder camera rig was a pretty genius idea of Nick’s—sadly it only appeared about halfway through.

So, that’s the video. My life has pretty much been consumed by all things Missed Connections lately, like rehearsals, and photo shoots, and more rehearsals.

When I haven’t been working on that, I’ve mostly been working on artistic projects, which is A. unexpected, and B. really, really nice.

Thing One is this:

Yes! Those are finished kraken prints with nice ink on nice paper! It was a little touch and go for a while, and some first efforts were Not So Good (I was recommended a paper that is great…if you have an industrial printing press), and disheartening, but I think I’ve mostly got it figured out. Next time I’m feeling feisty (and have a free day) I’ll get some more paper, print some more, and put those bad boys on Etsy.

Thing Two is a cover for my new sketchbook:

I have a personal tradition of making covers for every sketchbook I get, and this one is maybe the most elaborate. The spring flowers were going crazy around here the other week, which was my inspiration. I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out, especially since I didn’t have a plan and I pretty much never work with watercolors OR sharpies, but I’ve come down on the side of ‘this is fun, let’s do more’.

Thing Three is maybe my most favorite. My best pal recently told me about an idea she had for a graphic novel, and asked if I’d be interested in working on it with her. Obviously I said yes. It’s fantastical and steam-punky, there’s a lad named Heinrik, and there’s going to be a story about elephants riding over the Grand Canyon in hot air balloons. Who on earth would say no to that?

So, here are some quick ‘sketches’ of elephants in balloons:

I’ve decided to work more with doing things in sharpie, or any non-erasable material right off the bat. I think it will help make me a better artist if I work more on just drawing and not refining, if that makes sense.