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!

Our App Is Out! The Dingo Games’ husband-and-wife team have released our first app – the game Tasty Planet, available now in the App Store. Good fun for the whole family! Four different ways to play (tilt, tap, joystick or trackpad), over 50 levels, and an all-you-can eat buffet of objects from microbes to solar systems! Get it today!

Tasty Planet

Control a tiny ball of grey goo with the ability to eat anything smaller than itself. The more it eats, the bigger it gets! Soon you’ll be able to eat the entire planet!

The grey goo was originally created as a bathroom cleaner. It was only supposed to eat dirt and bacteria – cleaning your bathroom automatically. Instead it eats anything that it touches: dirt, bacteria, bugs, fish, mice, cats, dogs, cars, trees, houses… Everything!

Supports all iPhone and iPod Touch models. Tested on iOS 3 and iOS 4. Supports the Retina Display.

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.

It's Hobbes!

…from Calvin and Hobbes, the great comic by Bill Watterson of course.

Self-made pattern – as there isn’t a real stuffed Hobbes out there to buy. A decision (that included not licensing his characters for coffee mugs, plastic figures, and a major motion picture with two sequels, each with their own video game) that I support…but I still wanted my sister to have her own Hobbes, so I made one! (Don’t be mad, Mr. Watterson).

More photos here!

I made my sister a shirt for ol’ Yule time givings.

Calvin and Hobbes Shirt

Based on the beloved, beautiful comic by Bill Watterson, I screened/stenciled a design of one of the most memorable Calvin and Hobbes strips. I was heavily inspired by the fantastic needlepoint of armaine, and one of the saddest shirts in the world. More pictures here!

Christmas gift for my Dad…

Don't bleed on my shrubbery!

…a handmade Knight who Says Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing Zow Zing and The Black Knight, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They might be silly, strange and lopsided, but they do function as golf club covers, and they were a big hit! In fact my sister was rather sad that she didn’t get one…

I'm invincible!

…but I did screen-print her a Black Knight shirt! Now they can be twins!