I’ve found one of the merits of being an artist is being able to work on what you want, when you want.
It is also one of it’s pitfalls, of course.
I have other things I should be working. There are projects which are farther along, which would be even farther along if I just sat down and committed myself to then, but this week I’ve been working on this different thing. I don’t know if it has any commercial appeal, and I don’t know if it will get me anywhere, but I find myself drawn back to it whenever I do sit down to work.
I don’t really even know what it is yet.
I know I’ve made some really cute sprites and they deserve a world to wander around in. I have some ideas about that world, but I don’t know what all these things converging will look like if I put them into a game.
This almost seems like something my brain is doing, despite itself. This is a combination of frightening and exciting for me – the muses seem to be speaking to me for once, which could take me someplace very interesting, but my rational mind tells me they also might just be leading me down a garden path, away from the other, more reliable things I should be working on.
So the one thing I have so far to show for it is these gifs, which I’m quite proud of. A non-crappy walk animation! From me! I really am getting better at animating!
This alone might actually be proof that the muses are being helpful (and not just naughty ). Even if this character never turns into a game, just the fact that I’m getting better at animating is going to make all the games I make better in the long run.
Perhaps therein lies the moral I should take away from my own story…
Because I like you guys so much, I made you all a little present: an animated .gif just for you!
Hope everyone’s having a merry Christmas day.
Hereabouts that means presents and turkey, but maybe thereabouts it means Chinese food and movies, or peace and quiet and a day to yourself. Whatever this day means to you, I hope it’s a good one!
I was lucky enough to get to showcase my game last night at the TIFF Nexus Women in New Media Day. In lieu of my normal business card, I decide to do something special and whipped up this little poster for everyone who came to play it.
A key to who’s who follows:
1. Esther 2. Joan of Arc 3. Queen Elizabeth I 4. Marie Antoinette 5. Jane Austen
6. Ada Lovelace 7. Florence Nightingale 8. Harriet Tubman 9. Louisa May Alcott 10. Marie Curie
16. Frida Kahlo 17. Mary Blair 18. Hedy Lamar 19. Billie Holiday 20. Julia Child
21. Rosa Parks 22. Yoko Ono 23. Gloria Steinem 24. Debbie Harry 25. Kathleen Hanna
These are some of my personal heroes, so it may not be the most thoroughly representative list, but I may change a few people around and swap a few people based on peoples input and sell a nicely printed version. I’m also thinking of maybe selling little buttons with these ladies on them so you can wear your heroes on your heart or your sleeve.
It would be fun to use them as a sort of identifying mark for recognizing other hip ladies in the wild! Who wouldn’t want to make a friends with a girl wearing a little 8-bit Rosa Parks on her lapel?
Also, check this out: I was on the National a couple weeks ago. Yep. Things have been pretty amazing over here.
Also, the game is now OFFICIALLY endorsed by Kreayshawn’s camp. You can play it on her new website, which colour co-ordinates pretty awesomely with my game: http://www.kreayshawn.com
My mom says I need to print all this stuff out and and put it in a scrapbook. Total mom thing to say, but she’s probably right.
People are telling me that when I first told them my idea, they knew this would happen to me, but even so, nothing can prepare you for this. Nothing. Not when all this attention comes so very quickly, and has more to do with being in the right place at the right time with a cute idea than a lifetime of hard work (although I think that considering the idea that the meandering pastiche that has been my life up ’til this point has been leading me towards something all along – maybe even this very strange, very cool place here – can only be good for my anxiety battered psyche).
So, I want to keep a record of some of my press, especially from the legitimate media over the next “15 minutes,” so I can tell my grandkids that their grandma was so super-cool, Rolling Stone knew her name…
OK, Rolling Stone dot com…
It’s not quite the cover of the Rolling Stone, but it’s still pretty super-cool (even if they did call me a “SUPER FAN,” conjuring up images of creepy shrines and tacky homemade t-shirts :/ thanks guys).
I’ll probably be updating this post as I see fit, and I’ll probably put these links somewhere more permanent too – like an actual press/media page. Crazy, right?
It’s here, it’s fresh, it’s shiny and it’s got the swag, and it’s pumping out it’s ovaries.
Left and right arrow keys to move
Z to jump
X to shoot
E to exit to world map
R to reset the level
It’s my game at long last! Actually, scratch that: it’s only been a month since I started work on this guys! You’re pretty spoiled getting to play this so soon.
[Edit - 10/10: For a little more context, for the uninitiated, this game was built, by me, inspired by but in no way affiliated with, Kreayshawn. This game was an exercise in learning game design for the Difference Engine Initiative, a new, six-week workshop program run by the Hand Eye Society here in Toronto. The DEI is a program dedicated to encouraging women to get involved in indie game design, in part of a larger movement to help more under-represented groups to have their voices heard in the game design industry.
The game was put together singlehandedly over the course of only about 4 weeks, built using the Stencyl tool for Flash game design. This is my first and so far only experience in game design, behaviours and programming.]
I really hope you like it, or at very least are amused by it.
If you still don’t know who Kreayshawn is, by the way, you should watch her video for “Gucci Gucci” (although, fair warning, you will NOT be able to get it out of your head for about a month afterwards).
Gettin’ back into the groove of things last week, we took a trip to our favourite little place around the corner (they make all their own pastries from scratch – that’s a rare find in a coffee shop).
Liam was working from home, doing some creative work and a change of scenery is always good for the brain meats, we find. Lots of good sketching happened.
Then I got sick with the flu, all weekend, yuck. Poor me.
I guess I was exhausted, but we have a lot to celebrate, as we found out not only do we get to go to Vegas (Liam, on business, me tagging along) but we’re heading to Vancouver after that to visit the plethora (really! plethora!) of friends we have accumulated out there.
Get ready, Vancouverites!
And, on top of all that Liam’s contract was renewed for another year, and six months early at that. Wooooooo to another year and a half of employment!
This sketch turned out much better, I think. I’m pretty happy with it, for once.
I tried blotting out the bleeding ink with a wet towel, which just ended up making the lines a bit fuzzy… So I gave in and just used my Tria markers.
I was worried it would look funny, since I don’t have any grays, but the grayish tones I got from combining pastels turned out to look the nicest, I think.
Altogether, it looks effortless, not like a mistake. Hopefully now that I’ve figured out a style for these things, they’ll all look at least this polished from now on.
I don’t think I’d kick either of those two out of bed.
We watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall last week, as we found it for cheap on Blu-Ray this weekend.
I knew I wanted to watch it again, but I had forgotten just how much I liked it. It’s got plenty of those classic, hilarious, gross-out “Judd Apatow” moments, but for the most part, it’s probably the sweetest of those movies.
I bought that lovely Pentel tradio fountain/marker pen a while back, and started doing all my inky black outlines with it (a characteristic of my drawings that I have stuck with since middle school).
I love the delicate, organic lines it creates, but I have recently gone back to watercolours to colour things in on top (also something I started to do around the 6th grade). I noticed my colours were getting muddy and gray. The lovely pen, which should be waterproof, bleeds! Alas and alack! This particular drawing caused me some consternation in particular, as the preliminary sketch was so nice… until I got water near it.
This makes me sad, as the pen was not a cheap investment, and it works so well in so many other instances (in fact, it refuses to budge when I use other solvents, like markers). I’ll have to come up with a new solution.
I drew this a few weeks back while watching Supernatural, and forgot to upload it. I think my Sammy is particularly good.
BTW:
Supernatural is not just a thing on the teevee box with two pretty boys in it. It’s a show that proves you can build an all-encompassing, mystical mythology, as well as compelling characters – and still give your audience emotionally satisfying story arcs that effectively deal with BOTH (character and mythology).
YOU HEAR THAT LOST?
You failed at that.
The season finale of Supernatural was way better than the grand finale of Lost. Truth.
Oh, and did I mention that, on Supernatural, Jacob played the Devil, and the Man in Black plays War? Weird, huh?
Some little character sketches I did while watching Gossip Girl last night (we’re behind by a few episodes though).
Those gals are just as fun to draw as I had a feeling they’d be. The gloriousness of the costuming goes without saying, but all the wild, flowing hairstyles are pretty great too.
Playing around with a J Crew catalogue and my Tria markers last night. I haven’t drawn like this in soooo long!
I think I’m gonna do a series in my sketchbook of these little Crew Cuts cuties. They’re too adorable to resist. The J Crew styling is also lot of fun to draw – all the wrinkles and creases and folds make for some great fabric studies.
I just need to come up with a solution for my blue pencil. The Trias kinda smear it around and sink it into the page.
I’ve been realizing something: there are only 3 months left to the wedding. So I’ve also been realizing: it’s time to get cracking!
These past few weeks I’ve been trying to focus on the invitation. As an illustrator and a designer, this is probably one of the most important elements for me… Therefore it is also the most nervewracking! It may just be ephemeral to some, but to me ephemera is so so important!
I’ve been letting ideas steep in my mind, but rather than infuse me with inspiration, they’ve kinda overwhelmed me.
She does some of the most adorable, pretty, illustrative, invites I’ve ever seen, and opened up a whole new world of what an invite can be to me. Check her out! She may just blow your mind too (and her blog is pretty darling as well)
Now I’m excited. This is gonna be good guys. You’re going to like what I’ve come up with!
It’s been printed and pressed, and the band – a little outfit cleverly named Provincial Parks – is having a party to celebrate – so you should be there. I will be there, anyways. I would like a copy of my work – and the music inside it’s pretty awesome too (sort of a sparkly-shiny indie rock with some poppy undertones) so I’m excited about getting a copy of that as well.
While I’ve been out of commission, I’ve been working on a little website for my friend Vivian (she’s a talented girl, who is a fledgling DJ – among other things). I’m doing it just for fun and I’m totally digging it so far.
Granted, Vivian hasn’t seen this yet, so it might look entirely different by the time it ends up online, but at the moment, I’m pretty happy with it.
Vivian was using a little snail with a record for a shell as her little logo, so I decided to take the motif a step further and go for a whole story-book, woodland DJ motif. She also has a love of Alice in Wonderland, so I integrated a bit of that too. Vivian’s own personal aesthetic tends to lean towards rocker-mod, with lot’s of black and white and red so there’s a bit of a subtle retro, rockin’ influence (most notably in the use of cooper black for the header – and who doesn’t *heart* cooper black!). I, of course, added in a good dose of my own Mary Blair obsession into the mix as well.
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