Super Post III -- Christmas in March

I was consolidating/deleting some files on my desktop when I found a folder containing a bunch of images I meant to post to the blog a while back. Since they are all gifts I made to give to people for Christmas, I decided to make it into another big fat super post!

It's become a yearly tradition for my mom to brew some variety of alcohol to give as gifts during the holidays. This year, she wanted the bottle to look a little more 'professional', so I designed a wine label using an updated version of the one I did for Vargo's class. For those of you who are wondering, 'Trois Amis' is French for 'Three Friends'. At least that's what my mom said. I have a limited knowledge of French (a.k.a. none whatsoever).

To further develop the sewing skills I discovered last year, I decided I wanted to try my hand at making hand-sewn ornaments. The moose was for my mom (she's crazy about moose) and the owl was for my good friend. Funny story: the design of the owl is actually based off of one of the designs I created for my application for the internship at Carter's. The difference is that this time, the recipient actually liked it.

Before my sister moved to California, she adopted a kitten from a litter one of her neighbors abandoned. For her gift, I decided to make something she could give to Florence (her kitten), so I made a handmade catnip-filled dead animal toy. My original idea was to make a set -- a bird, a fish, and a mouse -- but I ran out of time. Maybe next year!

When trying to figure out a gift for another one of my friends, I remembered how taken she was with Lizard Wizard, one of the abandoned toys in the Toy Story short that proceeded The Muppets. What's significant about this drawing is that I used markers over top of my rough pencil sketch, and then added stronger values with colored pencil. I didn't do any ink outlining -- which you all know I am so prone to do. You can scrape your jaws off the floor now.

In addition to moose, my mom has always been an avid collector of nutcrackers. So every Christmas, my sister and I make a custom nutcracker to add to her collection. This year, we decided to do a matched pair -- a tamborine player and a trumpet player that were supposed to be Salvation Army workers...but we lost the Salvation Army scarf and badge accessories, so we decided to made them into a police band. My sister knit mini-scarves for them to replace the ones we lost.

...And that's what kept me busy during the holidays. I'm currently working on some more projects now, so expect some updates in the near future!

Super Post II -- Booktastic Boogaloo

Oh, hello there. As you guys probably know, one of my main focuses post-graduation has been marketing the heck out of my children's book Vesuvius -- The Jet-Pack Bat. In October, I was in a reading festival hosted by the local newspaper and in the few weeks prior to the event, I made a bunch of new stuff to go along with my book.

It began with an attempt to fix the book's interior type since it felt a little thrown-on-at-4-in-the-morning-so-I-could-get-the-book-printed-in-time-for-my-final. I then got it reprinted at this local print shop I found and they did an amazing job...but I'm not posting shots of my new book, so I just made you read this exposition-laden paragraph for nothing. Nyah!

Following that, I figured that kids have walls and probably like to put things on them, so I made posters of each of the characters featured in the book:

Vesuvius! A surprising amount of children asked me why he is wearing his little aviator helmet/goggles since he doesn't have his jet-pack on. Clearly, I fail like a whale with no tail.

Chickadee in all her pink pinky-ness. You can't really tell, but her talons are pink as well. Too much? Nah.

Copernicus, a.k.a. The One That Started It All. Interesting fact: this is the very first time I have drawn him with his mouth shut. Seriously.

Sassy Hydrangea. She's a whole lotta hippo. You didn't hear this from me, but I'm pretty sure when I get around to actually making a follow-up book (which I really want to do), it's gonna be about her. Sorry Drummond.

And finally, Theloniussss. Unfortunately, he is another instance of my no-tail-whale-fail seeing as he is a totally different snake in this image than he is in the book. Don't judge me.

I then thought that maybe it would be cool to hand out character bookmarks with my information printed on the back rather than business cards. I created three different versions:

I will probably make one for both Sassy Hydrangea and Theloniussss at some point in the future, but these three seem to generally be the favorite characters of the group, so I'll stick with them for the time being.

I didn't really feel like posters and bookmarks were quite enough, so in an attempt to create other things to sell at my booth, I picked up a needle and thread. These are what happened:

I think Copernicus came out best, but considering I had never sewn anything before in my life, they all look decently endearing in their crudeness. I made two different Sassy Hydrangeas, but they are both AWFUL, so I shelved her stuffed form for the time being.

Clearly posters, bookmarks, and stuffed animals were still not enough, so I had t-shirts made as well:

With all this shiny new merch in hand, I was ready for the festival and aside from the fact that I was put next to another children's book booth with an overzealous lady who would swoop around and steal costumers from me as I was talking to them, it was a success! I sold stuff, people reacted really positively to the book, and I even have my own mailing list going.

Since then, I was in another show in December, recruited a 'street team' (i.e. four awesometacular high schoolers volunteered themselves), and I have read at two local elementary schools. I have another show coming up in April, and I might apply for two more, so I really need to crank up the production of the stuffed guys. I kinda wish I could make like The Prestige and clone myself endless times, but I think the moral implications would prevent me from actually going through with it.

To break up the monotony of just working on one big thing for an extended period of time, I have been trying to randomly draw and sketch as much as I can, so I will probably upload some of that stuff in the near future.

Brendan, draw more.

Super Post!

So, at the beginning of the summer, I decided it would be a worthwhile venture to try and read everything on my shelf of 'I Never Got Around to Reading This/I Started This But Never Finished' books. I was gonna start with The Lovely Bones, but about 60 pages in, all I could think about was how awkwardly horrible the Peter Jackson adaptation was and decided maybe it would be best to stop.

And then I saw it. My bound collection of Pullman's His Dark Materials series. I started reading The Golden Compass three years ago, but stopped halfway through because I was foolish enough to try and power through it during a super busy quarter. Oh, and also because the cover is SO GODDAMN UGLY.

Is this not the ugliest thing you've ever seen? Uhm, excuse me. I was referring to the book cover.

Anyway, I decided that if a cover is so frustratingly ugly that it prevents me from wanting to read the book, it might be in my best interest to redesign it. So once I finished the series, my first order of business was to sketch out each of the characters I wanted to feature in the cover. Unfortunately, life kinda got in the way of this project, so I only have three done.

First we have Iorek Byrnison, the rightful king of the Panserbjorne who pimp-smacks the jaws of his opponents clean off. I drew this while riding in a car (and my dad is not the smoothest driver), so some of it is a little rough. Namely his feet. Those damn feet.

Next up is Nameless/Gracious Wings, one of the many ugly-ass harpies who guard the underworld. I gave her this wicked liver-spot on the top her head, but when I drew in her hair, I had to cover it. It looked too awkward without hair on that part of her head. Not gonna lie, I cried a little. It was a really good liver-spot.

Lastly, we have Serafina Pekkala and Kaisa, witch queen (and all around fierce bitch) and her snow goose daemon. No, I did not intend for her to slightly resemble Alanis Morissette. And that's not ironic, so don't even think about making that joke.

I also found my color comp from when I tried to make a cover for this back in Power's Materials + Techniques class, and decided (since it sucked inordinate amounts of butt) I would give it a facelift (i.e. fix the color and put in loads of superfluous detail to try and cover up how awkwardly disproportionate the drawing is) to try and make it match with the new character designs I did.

This comp features Ms. Coulter, Lyra Belacqua, and their daemons The Golden Monkey and Pantalaimon, respectively. As you can see, the one on the left is just a hot mess. Maybe I was scared of blending colors three years ago? Lyra's prominently blushy cheeks makes her look like a Victorian Era prosti-tot, and apparently Ms. Coulter has a hickey. Anyway, this also features three of the limited amount of things I liked about the movie: Ms. Coulter's hairstyle, her claw-like fingernails, and her daemon's Reverend Al Sharpton-esque hairdo.

So there you have it. I still intend on doing more characters and eventually making the cover one day, but I guess right now my primary focus is getting employed so. . . this is on hold temporarily? We'll see.

Oh, and by the way, has the world gone mad?! Am I, Chad 'avoided-making-a-post-for-a-whole-year' Jacobs, really the one keeping this blog alive? Preposterous. Remedy this.