Tatterhood

My final (and favorite) piece for the Vancouver Comic Jam Art Show! This is just a snippet of it – the full panel has some gore and a bit of nudity in it, so be warned; this is not one for the kids or the nanas of the world. It shows Tatterhood fighting a variety of (mean) trolls (and while not all trolls are mean or evil, these ones most definitely are). The full image can be seen here, and the process of the piece can be seen here.  This is a scene that could hypothetically be in my hypothetical graphic novel should I ever hypothetically get working on it.

The show is still on at The Wallflower and for those unable to attend, I’m continuing to update my list/links of other artists’ panels.

At this point and time, my site is now going to be on hiatus as I redesign (yay!) and reprogram (aargh) everything, so hopefully I’ll be back in a few months. In the meantime, I will still be creating, crafting, costuming and comicing, elsewhere on the web. In fact, you can find me on…
cosplay
craftster
deviant art
dingo games
twitpic
twitter
tumblr

I will likely sneak back in if there’s any important game news to write about. And true, while I have been quite absent before for long periods of time, at least this time its planned!

Brúsi

…he’s a goat!

Cerdic

A respected and feared man, Cerdic is charismatic, handsome, and sly. This Anglo-Saxon fighter is very devoted to his king, people and church.

Robert

Nicknamed ‘the Norman Lion’, this loyal, quiet, battle-weary foreign bodyguard was granted the title of Manglabitēs and often is asked for counsel by the Akolouthos.

Girl of Many Names

Our protagonist: loud, proud, (over) protective, determined, gangly, bright, aggressive  – and has a fondness for goats.

Sigfríðr

Beautiful, kind, organized, strong and eager-to-please, this character strives to be the perfect daughter, friend, wife, mother and hostess – a task not easy under certain pressures (including have to deal with a calf head on her shoulders!). She has a great ally in her sister, whom she loves dearly but doesn’t always pay mind to.

My posts have been few and far between. I hope to break that cycle for a few weeks, but rest assured that I will revert back to my old ways within a month – work is keeping me busy, but so is the designing of a new site! Before summer (fingers crossed) I hope to relaunch my site, to begin anew with a fresh look, proper portfolio and a smartly designed blogged. Fingers crossed.

And so begins one of a handful of posts.

Troll

This character, a ‘half’-troll, is from my in-development-personal-comic-project Tatterhood. As the deuteragonist, he’s irksome, stingy, sensitive, cynical and oh-so-awkward. Why yes, I DID base his personal traits after myself…mainly the awkwardness. Nobody does awkward like me!

So, if you’re wondering what all of this is about, I would recommend reading this.

Yggdrasils has a lot on its shoulders...

This is the digital image that was printed onto transfer paper and applied to a wooden mailbox. The colours may look off (the blue is very vivid for me!) but that’s because this was a CMYK print file, and some of the colours were not too happy about becoming RGB for the screen. I hope to post larger, zoomed-in chunks of the ‘mailbox pieces/characters’ soon. Things are very, very busy at work right now!

Years ago, I painted my mom a mailbox in “my style” (dragons and creatures and the like; she didn’t want flowers or trees, she wanted something I would normally do). It was an acrylic painted wooden mailbox, and she liked it a lot. Close to ten years later, I have tried to do other mailboxes for her, as the original was getting pretty weathered and my art skills had improved. Two (or three) failed mailboxes have come and gone…and now, I finally have created a worthy replacement.

Mailbox, Now with More Norse Fairytale Goodness

I created a digital illustration in Photoshop that was applied to a plain pine mailbox with iron-on transfer paper. This method I used was far from perfect, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. The merging of the iron-transfer paper with the mailbox produced a bit of a wood-bubble-grain-paper texture effect, which I really like

The mailbox is a mesh of norse mythology and fairytales – Yggdrasils (world tree) is the ‘setting/frame’ (you can see the unnamed eagle and Veðrfölnir the hawk at the very top). I threw in my own interpretation of the four stags, and some original characters I designed (based on fairytales) were added for good measure. Tættec is on top of the lid, with a half-troll to her left and her now calf-headed sister to the right. At the sides are two characters, “the Norman Lion” and Cerdic. And in between the two deer in the front panel is Tættec’s goat, Brúsi. I’ll post just the digital image in the weeks to come, along with details about the characters, who are part of my (distant future) comic book/graphic novel/illustrated story Tatterhood.

I used stock from MoonsongStock, xNickixStockx, Sassy-Stock, and LughoftheLongArm as reference for the eagle, the two main deer and the rats (they’re in there!). I had a screen-capture from Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) that I used as ‘arm/deer’ reference for part of Cerdic. And I used a reference from a picture of a headless guy in a red shirt holding a fawn for the Norman Lion pose – for the life of me, I can’t find the source, but I’m determined to dig it up again! I bought the pine mailbox from Country Bear Woodcrafts and the paper from Gold Seal Specialty Papers. It was surprisingly hard to find a plain pine mailbox and 11×17 dark t-shirt iron-on transfer paper that didn’t break the bank!

Whew, that’s a lot of text. I promise, next update there will be more images, less words.

Ah, who am I kidding – there’s going to be text.