• Posted on May 05, 2012
fi

Pottermore: Back to the Beginning

My mom brought Harry Potter home from the middle school where she worked. She was the English teacher and had a book she thought I’d like. It was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Actually, it was Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, because by 1999 (when I was a freshmen in high school) three books had been published.  I took it up with some interest and soon I was engrossed.  I read through the first three books quickly and right away wanted more.

I loved to imagine myself as a student at Hogwarts, and what all other spells there were, and what the books in the library were like, and all the strange teachers and creatures that roamed the halls.

 

All through high school and college I had been writing in online role-playing communities, imagining our characters engaging in JKRowling’s immersive Wizarding world.  And today it continue to be one of my most treasured hobbies.

Pottermore just opened to the public this April 2012.  And it took me right back to my roots as a fan.  It made me feel 14 again.  Even 11 again, the age I would have been to get my Hogwarts letter.

In Pottermore, you create an account and then you begin exploring a series of interactive scenes that follow along with the events of the first book.  And when you reach the right chapter, you get a letter.  Then you shop for your supplies, and Ollivander helps you choose your wand.  You arrive at Hogwarts and the Sorting Hat sits on your head.

I maintained for a long time that I would be sorted Ravenclaw.  I’ve always been quite studious and fancied myself witty and was broken if I got even a B+.  And as I got older, I latched onto Hufflepuff as my home house.  I see myself as a person focused on interactions between people, as someone concerned with communication and sometimes lacking a clear place in social groups.

And so I experience the drama and self-questioning that those little Hogwarts students must have felt at their moment of truth – I was sorted into a totally unpredictable place!  Slytherin!  Even though I knew it was just a game, I allowed myself to be there and wonder at what it could mean, that all this time, I’ve been Slytherin.  I was jarred but happy.  Turns out there had always been that inkling feeling that was destined for better things than my peers – and it turns out I’d always been quietly right.

And so in honor of that, I drew myself as an 11-year-old Hogwarts student, with my blonde bangs and ponytail, the pants I would have worn instead of a skirt.  A too-big sweater as was fashionable in the 1990s…(Not that I was fashionable!)  The cauldron that I would explode after trying my first potion, and a stack of books who would be my companion for all seven years.

 

Pottermore did something I didn’t expect.  It surprised me.  :)

  • Posted on April 27, 2012
fi

Malanast Warrior

Have I told you guys about the amazing Prismatic Art Collection?  It’s awesome.   This week in my extra time I was inspired by things like Avatar: The Last Airbender and the pose-stylings of Senshi Stock.  And this happened.

Creative Commons License
This work, like all others in the Prismatic Art Collection, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 

  • Posted on April 26, 2012
fi

Shikamaru Model Sheet

My brother Joe The Animator asked me to do him a favor – draw this Naruto character for an animation he wants to do.  I said, sure awesome, yes!  What is a model sheet.  And what is Naruto.

Up to speed now.

  • Posted on April 19, 2012
bearlabelsfi

Handcrafted Beer Labels

I’ve been illustrating beer labels for a local artisan brewery in Glenwood, Iowa – my hometown.   A gig like this is kind of a dream gig.  You have so much room for expression in a beer label, and hey – I happen to know a thing or two about beer, thanks to my husband Tim who does some home brewing.

Keg Creek Brewery really likes to connect to its local history, so the beers are named and themed after important local places and events.  Like the Wabash Wheat, honoring the old Wabash Railroad.  And now, a broad swath of it’s old tracks has been converted into a beautiful scenic bike trail.

The home base of the brewery is in this old building that has been many things, but when it was first built in the 1950s, it was Kizzier’s, a gas station and mechanic.  So with a few reference photos I got to recreate the scene.

These are just the juicy parts of the label with the text and government nonsense layered out and cut off, just to show the good stuff.

It’s a really fun style to work in, and I have loved every minute of working on these.  And probably more to come.

 

  • Posted on April 05, 2012
Lindy-Hop-Challenge-11-12-13

Lindy Hop Challenge: 11, 12, 13

Ha ha, okay so I’m doing this my way.  More like a 3 Year When I Feel Like it Lindy Hop Challenge… 

From Swing It Out, a 30 post challenge about Lindy Hop.

Q: Favorite Songs to Dance To

I tend to favor that kind of trad jazzy, gypsy stuff with a minor key and a bumping, jank-ified rhythm stuff happening.  So here are my favs.

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Q: Favorite Pros

I’ll take this questions as performers and competitors since we did instructors already.

I like Bethany Powell.

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I like Frida Segerdahl.

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I like Alice Mei.

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Q: Favorite Dancing Memory

There was a night at the Saturday night dance at a past Cowtown Jamborama that I remember still as one of the most amazing moments dancing ever.  I wrote a narrative about it here, but here’s a quote from it.

Saturday night the energy apexed to a peak at pumpkin time, the band riding hot like a hell train full of spangled troubadours, thrusting inward and inward exploding exploding. We were drawn in like moths to the light, crowding in close, pulsing like all the blood in our ears.  The sound and fury escaped through a tiny hole in the crowd.  And from it were born dancers who emerged like fire.  Swing out after swing out they danced like tigers.  The jam circle grew around them.

The tigers traded their crazies in that pit, its walls a percussive force of elbows and palms. Our clapping was thunder chasing the guitars and the horns.  When the bodies were spent,  and the dancers melted back into crowd, our minds fled – no! – flew to the men with the music.

But another memory I can never forget was being a part of ULHS 2007 with one of our modern iconic moments as a Lindy Hop community.  The video went viral and it was amazing to be there.  The energy was overwhelming and more exciting than I’ve ever felt.

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Sklenarney OUT.

  • Posted on March 30, 2012
settlersfeat

New Settlers Box: A Better Way Of Living

So like, I love Settlers of Catan.  But the freaking 7 cardboard boxes you lug around, mostly full of air and a mixed up array of production number chits, kind of cramps my style.  My style, which is decidedly more… flavory.

I never did get my act together last summer and create my own hand-crafted deluxury 3D sculpted Settlers set, but I did do something else a couple weeks ago.  I made our settlers set fancy.

I bought a decorate ‘home accent’ kind of box from Hobby Lobby.  One that seemed kind of cool and old-timey, and would fit the largest element.  This is maybe a little larger than one of those metal lunch boxes.   We had to root through the selection in the store though – many on the shelves were damaged or warped in some way.

 

We laid out all our Settlers stuff – everything we’d need for the 5 to 6 Player Cities & Knights expansion (our preferred mode), and got it all sorted out and it all fit super duper.

Also purchased at Hobby Lobby was a little bundle of quilting squares – one bundle had 4 of the six colors I’d need, in an 18″x18″ square fabric – plenty to make some simple draw-string bags to replace the plastic baggies. For the brown and white, I had some fabric already in my scraps box.

Draw-string bags are super simple to make.

And now I feel very fancy indeed.  Now I can carry around this super nerdy game in true nerd fashion: a nearly role-play level of old-timey Catan Crafty flavor.

  • Posted on March 29, 2012
settlerfi

How I Learned to Play Settlers of Catan And Other Games

It’s both a strength and weakness – I don’t like to be told how to do things.  I know this about myself.  I prefer to figure things out on my own, and when I get stopped up, seek out the answer I need to move forward.

For this reason, I spent many years not playing games with my friends.  And my friends loved games! I still had fun – I liked attending the gatherings and sitting on the side doing my own thing.  Drawing.  Role-playing at Absit Omen.  Watching Netflix.  I just liked being there and hanging out.

And nothing reinforced that more than hearing my friends spend an hour explaining games to new-comers.  My friends like complicated strategy games.  Settlers of Catan, Agricola, Dominion, Game of Thrones, Puerto Rico.  These aren’t your normal board games.  For the most part, they have lots of rules and are flavor-based on the exhilarating world of agriculture.  So being uninterested in the economy of wheat and sheep, and reading complicated card instructions, and feeding workers on a farm, I didn’t take to the games naturally.  And having to sit through a long explanation didn’t help matters.

And so I didn’t play, despite being courted.

This went on for many years.

Until one day.

“Okay.  I’ll play.”

There was a blink-blink moment and then an enthusiastic making-of-room on the floor, to get me ready to play Cities & Knights of Catan.  And even before I was sat down and picked my color, three people began to explain the game to me.  I stopped them.

“No,” said I.  ”I know how to play.”  I had realized it just in that moment.

I had passively absorbed all the knowledge of being present at a thousand and one lengthly explanations that I already knew how to play, excluding a few nuances.  We played and I loved it and was hooked on Catan.

And I realized: I am a staunch advocate of Learning By Playing.

 

If you accept that the first time you play will be a possible throw-away, there is really very little you need to know to get rolling.  You need to know turn-order.  You need to know your general goal.  And then some of the more basic mechanics.  Do away with strategy for now, or for minutae – you’ll get to them later.

 

And so then this happened.  I was begged to consider playing Dominion, a deck-building card-game where the cards in the game change every game.  The game-play was quick, I was assured, and the flavor was fantasy and magic and medieval cities and stuff.  And then, of course, the explantions began.  And of course they should! They wanted me to learn to play so I could enjoy it.  I don’t fault them.

 

But I had other plans.

 

“Here is how it shall be!” said I.

“I will play if you follow my rules. And they are these:” And I listed them.

  1. You must not explain to me how to play.
  2. You may correct me if I do something against the rules.
  3. You may prompt me if I am delaying the game by inaction.
  4. You may NOT give me advice, or inform me I’ve made a strategically bad decision.
  5. You may only answer direct questions, and only one person may answer.

My friends are lovely folk and seemed to enjoy the game-within-the-game.  And so we proceeded.  I asked basic questions and was given a straight answer.  They bit their tongues at my mis-steps.  And when they erred from our agreed course, I took points from Ravenclaw.  Because you know how Ravenclaw can be.

Mid-way through the first game, my husband came home from his late shift, so happy to see me playing Dominion.   He leaned over and promptly began to give me friendly advice – but the whole table quieted him! “No! SHHH!” And explained the game within the game.

And so I also began to love Dominion because it is an awesome game.  And you can learn to play in about 3 turns without a word spoken to you, pretty much.

 

So yea. Learn by doing.  Talk less.  Play more.  Write more. Dance more.

  • Posted on March 28, 2012
domfi

014 Dominik

Sometimes you simply must draw, and in those times I just drop everything and do it.  Like writing down a dream if I don’t do it, the feeling might disappear.

This is Dominik Wiedman, Natalie’s character at Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG, surrounded by thirteen moons, all pulling him in different directions.  He and Niobe have this thing together, but there are forces in Dom’s messed up vagabond criminal life that are pulling him to reform his ways.  Poor lil’ fella.

 

This is a pencil drawing with alterations in photoshop.  I played with values and gradients and filters and junk to work with a fast pencil drawing.

  • Posted on March 22, 2012
hidefi

013 Hide

Yesterday I felt I needed extra protection so I wore the biggest t-shirt in our apartment, fuzzy pajama pants, my nice plaid Converse blazer, my infinity scarf, sunglasses and the larges knit hat in the world which I bought from Thailand because I have a big head and big hair.

Clothes are armor.  I am a clothie?

 

 

  • Posted on March 12, 2012
012monkfi

012 Monk

Or maybe she’s a Jedi.  Just sketching last night to help myself think about a website project.

  • Posted on March 05, 2012
rockyfi

Rocky Creations

My brother Joe, like my brother David and I, lives the life of destiny and wonder – that of an internet artisan.  Joe’s an animator and artist. I mean, check this out:

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My brothers are so damn amazing.

He’s at the Game Development Conference in San Francisco this week, and ahead of that, I built him a portfolio website.  It’s an HTML/CSS with a little bit of javascript and php.  Inspired by his logo, the eponymous Rocky the Gorilla himself, (The Hobbes to his Calvin…) I built a website around some motifs he liked.

Please, check out his website, have a look at his work – there are some really great nuggets in there.

  • Posted on March 01, 2012
bramble

OmegaTech

Big news.  It all happened so fast! (For me anyway…!)  A few weeks ago I was brought onto the team for a brand new game development studio out of Austin TX called Mega World Studios.  They needed a community manager and website person and I was instantly interested.

But I’m going to talk about the website and community later. :/  Is that weird?  What I do want to show right now is some of the art that I get to do for the game.  I get to draw the characters for the game! The art team is big and the work is shared, but I was really really stoked to be a part of the character design process.   A recent task was to design and execute one of the bad guy super soldiers – a member of the genetically modified, invading Brambleclaw.

As always, I began just drawing with pencil, referencing stock photography for inspiration about poses.  I ink with Adobe Illustrator’s pressure sensitive brush tool, then take it into Photoshop to lay in basic colors.

You can play this game now! It’s still in demo, but it’s good guys.  It’s really good.

  • Posted on February 26, 2012
princes

Hufflepuff Princes

Figaro is notoriously distracted and loud-mouthed.  Seto is infamously lazy and flippant.  They are made for each other.  They are the princes of Hufflepuff.

  • Posted on February 21, 2012
no

Role-Playing: Nothing Wrong With No

This post is for the role-players out there, but my Lindy Hopper people will know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s about saying No.  And surviving No.  And the life-skill that is No.

No, Thank You

In the dance world, we tell the new kids that anyone can ask anyone to dance.  And just as importantly, we tell them that it’s okay to say no to any dance from any person at any time.  You don’t have to dance if you don’t want to.  And you never have to explain yourself.  You can always just say ‘No Thank You.’

Now there’s a little more to it, and dancers are always discussing the social nuances of how to be polite and respectful when turning someone down for a dance.  There are many situations and scenarios that require some extra thought to do it right and save face in a community important to you.  It’s not starkly simple, but it isn’t as complicated as we make it sometimes.

In dancing, our basic interaction is agreeing to dance with each other.  And in role-playing, our basic interaction is soliciting and inviting others to join our plots.

I want role-players everywhere to know: you can say no.  And it’s okay. 

No doesn’t need to be a judgement or personal, or be loaded with anything other than a little no.

If someone sends you a private message inviting you to a thread they want to start or a plot idea they have going, and for whatever reason you don’t want to write in it (or can’t) you can just say “No, thank you.”  Maybe you want to provide some explanation – go for it! But make sure it’s true.  Even when you’re saying no, you should be polite and respectful.

Politeness does not require a friendly role-player to accept all offers or acquiesce to all requests.  After all the person most responsible for you having fun at any given role-playing site is you! If you can’t say no, who else will?

Know the No

It’s easy to say no, and even be polite about it to leave both writers feeling encouraged.

  1. Say thank you! Thank them for asking, for thinking of you.  Acknowledge they thought you’d be fun to write with and thank them.
  2. Say no thank you.  Be clear that you’re not interested and won’t be joining them.
  3. Explain why. (Optional!) You are not obligated to reveal why because you are not obligated to write with everyone who asks you.
  4. Initiate another opportunity.  (Optional!) Maybe you’re busy now, but want to write when you have more time – say so! Maybe the plot just doesn’t interest you, so suggest something else for another time and place.  Suggest something for your other characters.  Be as vague or as clear if as you wish.  The point is, this step can help alleviate the sting of no and reassure the other person that it’s not forever no, but just no for now.

Okay, So Someone Just Told You No

It’s okay.  Don’t sweat it.  Move on! I know it’s disappointing.  You were looking forward to it, it sounded really fun, you had such great plans! I know you did! But you are master of the universe and your imagination is a thrilling machine.  You’ll come up with something new and it will also be awesome.

That’s the thing.  No can suck, but it’ll just suck worse if you attempt to dissect it or take it personally.  In the end, we want to role-play with people who want to role-play with us.  And to attempt to convince, pressure or guilt someone into writing with you isn’t going to be a thread you want to be a part of.  Chin up and carry on!

 

 

  • Posted on February 20, 2012
amyfi

015 Blue Amy

A 30min digital painting.

I’ve been using kuler for help/inspiration with color sets.  I grab a set and just use those colors to paint.  It’s been really fun!

  • Posted on February 17, 2012
ojweb

Omaha Jitterbugs Has a New Website

The Omaha Jitterbugs are a fantastic organization and a danciful group of people.  It’s my dance home.  One of my martial arts teachers once told me that you owe your art everything you receive from it.  It’s a principle I try to carry with me wherever I go, to pay back the good that I’ve got.  And so when I had the opportunity to design a new website for the Omaha Jitterbugs I felt very excited.  I could use my powers for good and help a wonderful organization and all the hard-working people there have a web presence that would show all who visited their vibrancy and spirit.

My broad goals for the new website were:

  • Look awesome
  • Easy to use

And more specifically:

  • Direct new dancers to Get Started resources right away
  • Keep an active calendar and class schedule
  • Integrate their very effective use of Facebook
  • Showcase their cornerstone night, Jitterbugs Night Out every Friday
  • Provide a headquarters for their volunteer team Jive
  • Have a bright, somewhat retro look, that feels exciting and classy

I am not primarily a web programmer but I do have ever more growing experience configuring WordPress to fit purposes other than a blog.  I love it as a CMS.  So my plan was to build the website with WordPress, customize a premium theme from Elegant Themes, and configure it to fit the needs of the Jitterbugs.

Before I got online, I spent time sketching out an organizational structure for the website and talking to the people who’d be using the site the most.  Then I gathered ideas for color schemes, fonts and typography options, and all the copy I would need (and there was ample, well-written copy already at the old site).  I began the build first by installing and configuring WordPress without worrying too much about what it looked like.

Elegant Themes already have some great functionality built in, but I did want to incorporate a few plug-ins:

  • Calendar by Kieran O’Shea which allows users to easily style and manage multiple calendars and events.
  • Google Analytics for WordPress by Joost de Valk which provides easy installation and maintenance of GA
  • Google Analytics Dashboard by Carson McDonald which installs a great dashboard widget
  • WP-Table Reloaded by Tobias Bathage, a nice plug-in for maintaining and styling large tables – vital for the volunteer area HQ.

Check It Out!

 

  • Posted on February 16, 2012
lolofi

The Importance of Routine

A good friend of mine has always been a man of self-imposed routines and rule-sets and we, his friends, have come to rely on these for both entertainment and a feeling of consistency in a world so fraught with chaos.

He is a teacher.  And he has a system for that as well.

 

 

Purple is a keystone of system, anchoring the week, bringing a sense of optimism and victory to the week’s end.  He tells a story of a time when he’d quietly established this pattern during his student teaching, and one day (I think it was Greenday) the day’s shirt lost a button and was unsuitable.  And so another day’s shirt was worn.  The students noticed the wrinkle in the system and fretted.  He reassured them that the system would resume and their sense of confidence in a world where goodness was possible and real was restored.

And then this happened. Click on it to see it move.

And the original sketch, just for fun.  He’s great fun to draw because of his iconic features, like a well-designed character.

(There’s been much more personal work in the blog lately, but that’s because the professional work I’m doing can’t yet be revealed! I hope to be able to show some exciting new projects I’ve worked on soon!)

  • Posted on February 08, 2012
niobecoatthumb

Niobe’s Fancy New Jacket

I tumble. You know.  And I tumbled upon this fantastic, amazing jacket/coat/robe.  I love how heavy it looks, how much rich ornamentation there is, how it holds a shape, the long-long sleeves.  This kind of look always reminds me of the fashion/clothing of witches and wizards in the Wizarding World.

As when tumbling, it is difficult to find out the actual source of what’s posts. You’re mostly tumbled over to another tumblr.  Then over to a pintarest.  Then back to a tumblr.  Search-By-Image on Google gave me the most information on it.   It is, according to Vogue, a French ‘shawl’ from the 1880s, and inspired by eastern fashions.

The point is, I had to draw it! Plus I got a chance to draw Niobe’s beautiful dreadlocks.  She’s holding a quill, not her famous Verbatis here, but rather something more casual.  As Niobe is a witch for the Daily Prophet, I feel that a quill better represents her role in the world and as a witch than a wand sometimes.  And it’s hard to tell, but she’s missing the ring finger on her left hand – a casualty of her too-bold guts and glory out in the field.

Niobe Thursby is one of my original characters at Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG.

  • Posted on February 03, 2012
tomwaits

Tom Waits

This Tom Waits interview from 1976 is kind of hilarious.  He’s not a very good guest and in that – he’s a great guest.  Makes himself right at home.  And his voice is crazy awesome.  Anyway, I’m all antsy about moving so I sat down and drew a thing.

The thing:

EDIT 2-8-12: I wanted to scan this properly and then experiment with color.  Boop!

  • Posted on January 29, 2012
wizards

Wizards

So this happened this weekend! I’ve been very busy for some great clients and haven’t had time to draw for fun for weeks, so yesterday I broke out some Crayolas and drew some wizards.

So that happened – Figaro with a wand. Watch out.  And then this happened:

Knox Greyfriar’s proportions are kind of exaggerated here.  He’s a stocky gent, with big hands and a big head.  I wanted to emphasize and focus on his sweet old man Wizarding fashion.

 

  • Posted on January 13, 2012
Knoxxie (1)

Freelance Cat

Workplace hazards of a freelancer…! I don’t know what it means that I’m now posting unapologetic posts just of my cat on my very high-minded artistic artblog, but here it is.


Click to embiggen.

Knox is my 20 pound snuggle-dudecat. He is named after a role-playing character for their shared traits of impressive size, impressive noise and strong left-leaning politics.

  • Posted on January 11, 2012
illustriousthrive

Where Is The Bear?

I have changed the operating name of my freelance art business from Bear on Fire to Illustrious.  This change is ahead of updates to my website and over-all branding.  But the question some of my friends and clients might have – where is the bear?

Short Answer

I had a bad dream about bears.

Long Answer

I was taking a critical look at my business because life was very changey in 2011.  I had changed, my business had changed, and my goals had changed.  I wanted to think very hard about who I was as a designer, and what I wanted my brand to say about me.  I do not disavow the bear.  I love the bear.  But it wasn’t saying what I wanted it to say, (and I had a bad dream about bears).  And my website  needed an overhaul.  So I bent my will towards a make-over.

New Name

The important thing about brainstorming (or sketching or thumbnailing) is to honestly write down everything that comes out.  It gets the clogs out, it gets the mind used to generating.  And I brainstormed like crazy over multiple sessions in order to let ideas sit in my head over nights and weeks, and to be able to spend my days with the question in the back of my mind.  I think you’re more likely to pick up on fresh ideas that way.  If you have the time (and so often we don’t!) totally let things sit in between sessions.

I wanted a name that evoked the emotions and impressions I wanted to feel about myself, and what I wanted my clients to see in me, too.  Maybe something that sounded cool, but also reflected my design philosophies.

I brainstormed all kinds of crazy names and here are some for you to laugh at: Jump Fox (as in the quick fox jumped…), Quick Draw and Scribbilus.

And here are some honorable mentions: Madam Infinity’s Imagesmithy, InkShout and Fixt.

After all of it, I landed on Illustrious.  It says that I and the work I do are notable and worthy. It gives the impression of a storied existence.  The root of the word is in light (illuminate, luminous, lustrous, luster, lumos)- I love the idea of art and light and ideas, that where once something was dim now there is clarity.  Then there’s the connection to illumination as in illuminated manuscripts.  Images supporting and adding meaning and excitement to the written word.  Also, I illustrate.  It all seemed to come together in one word.

New Logo

In thinking of a name, I couldn’t help but think about the imagery associated with it, and what a logo might look like.  I liked the idea of keeping something familiar from Bear on Fire.  And even though fire isn’t the most original visual concept, I forgive it.  As I just discussed, light brings with it strong meaning.  We’ve been psyched about fire since Prometheus, after all.

I started reworking the flame shape without the bear and drew by hand to make it as gestural as possible – that was another thing I wanted to preserve in my work was the hand-done spirit of creation, that even if it looks clean there should be the hand of a person behind it somehow, in the flow of the lines.

I wanted to brighten up my colors and so I went nuts on the oranges and blues and brights.

New Website

Every day I learn more about building websites, and I realized my fascination with it reminds me the Hogwarts class The Study of Ancient Runes.   I realized my fascination with exploring code had to do less with its mathematical, logical precision, but more with what makes learning languages fun, and how in terms of role-playing Harry Potter, it’s this hunched-over-a-desk and a cramped-hand-with-quill magic that seemed so interesting to me.  That these little symbols when strung together the right way create magic, create movement or illusion.  Out of nothing but scribbles and scratches, otherwise unintelligible there is now SOMETHING.

For real magic, I love to follow Codrops.  They are a positive grimoire of ambitious runes.  I love the web as a place were the laws of print don’t apply and how much fun movement is.  So there are moving parts.  Because? Magic.

Taking about magic is dorky, but you know, I’m not talking about like… fluffy magic.  I’m talking about the systematic magic of HarryPotterVerse.  I don’t have to justify myself! It’s cool!

So anyway, the new website incorporates a feed to my blog here – which is important, and my most recent tweet.  A nice, easy-to-update portfolio gallery and then the all important client testimonials.

 

So yes.  The bear, sadly, has gone offline.  But he shall always live in our hearts.

 

  • Posted on December 30, 2011
jackandjillthrive

Jack’ing in the J&J

A couple weeks ago, I competed as a lead in a fun little Jack & Jill at the Omaha Jitterbugs’ Christmas party.  I say ‘little’ because well, there’s probably no friendlier audience and lower stakes than that homey atmosphere surrounded by your home scene.  I love that the Jitterbugs hold these from time to time because it gives casual or beginner dancers the opportunity to step out of their comfort zone and try competing.  I think many dancers see as I do the difference between dancing socially just for your partner and dancing in a competition where your choices and skills are judged.  And even as competitions go, the Jack and Jill is right down the middle of social and competitive dancing in that, well, it mimics social dancing.

I was really happy to see some of the newer dancers entering.  My words of wisdom? Pretend you’re not competing, and just focus on having fun and dancing with your partner.  (Sound advice, I think, for this level of competition and even up into most amateur Jacks and Jills.  I think once you go pro or start competing in the pro/advanced circuit more competition strategy is required, but then, well, you’re advanced now.  You probably also practice.)

I’ve been dancing since 2001 and Jack and Jills don’t make me nervous anymore.  But I had the butterflies this time around because I’d decided that in this safe little Jack and Jill I was going to step out and compete as a lead.  I’ve been riding this intersection for awhile, this social lead and social follow balance beam and I’ve always felt very cozy playing that role among my familiar friends.  But it’s kind of a controversial issue sometimes.  I can’t help but understand that in leading I am committing a political act and gender-bending.  What I want is to be watched and considered as any other lead up there, but no matter really what I do I am the ‘Woman Lead’ and my presence there has meaning that perhaps my dancing or intentions don’t.  In stepping out there as a lead, in putting my name on that side of the list, I’m notable, or at least that’s the social pressure I perceive.  I’m competing as a lead to put my skills to the test, experience a much-loved competition format from the other side.  But I think I also competed to show myself and others that I can lead, to perform an example of something different.

I’ve only been turned down once as a lead asking a woman to follow.  But I’ve been turned down tons of times as a follow asking a man to lead.  The sample size of that really just doesn’t compare so I don’t find it useful.  For the most part I get positive comments from the women follows I dance with in classes and on the social floor.  Some of them seem surprised that I can lead so directly or firmly.  I attribute this to my years’ experience and having been a follow and knowing what feels right – both advantages over the intermediate leads I’m in class with.

I think it’s very significant to note that I am by far NOT the only female lead in the Omaha scene.  (I’ve admired Christy V’s leading for years.) I would chance to say that something like a third of the women who have been dancing there for at least a couple of years lead capably and frequently socially, and there was even another woman leading in this Jack and Jill we’re talking about.  I am not some strange animal  in my scene or in the scene at large, but I am probably the loudest.  (The men in Omaha follow from time to time as well, and some of them are quite good at it.)

All that said, I competed as a lead in the Jack and Jill and wowy zowie! What a crazy experience! Jacking was notably different from Jilling especially in the spotlights of the finals.  Grow a beard and call me Dumbledore, I have NO idea how to compose a spotlight.   See, as a follow, I know EXACTLY how to do a spotlight.  I can’t even articulate it, it’s so natural to what I’m used to.  I complete and add to patterns, I watch the lead LIKE A HAWK, and stay grounded.  I listen to the music in such a way that I am able to bring in expressiveness that my lead can participate in.  I don’t know.  I GET following.  But boy did I have no idea how it felt from a leads’ perspective.

Quick thoughts about leading vs following in a Jack and Jill:

  • It makes it so much easier if you just trust your follow.  I became so much less head-spacey when I just lead because my partners just followed! They did their part, they really did feel like an equal partner who was taking care of business on the other end.  It wasn’t really all that scary or tricky initiating most everything because my partners were on the other end dancing just as much as I was.  Maybe that sounds obvious, but experiencing what I know to be true (I handle my shit as a follow.) from the lead’s perspective painted a very clear picture of what it meant.
  • I didn’t feel at all out of place or ill-prepared in the ‘all-skates’ parts of the competition.  I had long stretches of music to compose to.  I could listen and play and had time to get used to what kind of dancer my partner was.
  • It’s not cheating: I asked my partner questions and talked to them while we danced.  From ‘do you do swing outs?’ to prompts and preparations like, ‘okay ready?’ to cue something strange coming up that I wanted to try. One of my partners was very new to dancing and so I talked her through a bunch of stuff and she was a champion who really seemed to ‘get’ swing dancing already, so it was a real pleasure.
  • Oh yay! I got to swing out in the final ‘all-skate’! Like here, like here. I know enough of the California routine as a lead to be a part of that awesome homage to community, history, and just crank out the best swing outs I could.
  • I ended up placing second and winning a snuggie.
  • There were feelings I had that I didn’t really want to have or acknowledge, but in full honesty, I kind of felt like… a trespasser.  Like some kind of jerk for crossing over and taking the chance to win from male leads, who in my brain, had more right to be there than I did.  I know these feelings are insecurities that shouldn’t mean anything to me, but they do.  They’re the echoes not of the way anyone treated me, but echoes of the social dialogs we hear all the time when men and women cross lines and ‘invade’ the others’ space.  Those thoughts were there and made me nervous.  There was a part of me that didn’t WANT to make finals and place myself in that political space of who belonged there.  But there was also a part of me that wanted to win and ‘show’em all’.  But really, who would I be showing? Certainly not the men in my scene – they’re personal friends many of them, good sports all, none of them having ever treated me in a way that made me feel unwelcome.  So yes – I had many thoughts about the event, such a small, fun little event.  But I had these thoughts just the same.  I felt like there were things at work other than opposite footworks, y’know?
  • All told, it was a positive experience, and in thinking about why it really boiled down to how fun my partners were to dance with - just like when I follow.  The excitement and surprise of what we made together, and that giddiness of something new being created from an inkling of an idea.  The completeness of unity between partners and music.

 

*Photos by Jen Weinlaub.

  • Posted on December 28, 2011
freelifethrive

The Freelancing Life

It can be difficult to define success for yourself and even harder to visualize what that looks like and how to make that happen.  The old adage of following your heart can be difficult to decipher, but for me, that means looking inside – am I excited every day? Do I feel like I serve my community in some way? Do I feel fulfilled? Do I feel valued?

For me, that meant taking a leap.  A leap off a path, a path that promised security and success, and into the rough where the right answer was no longer so easily identified.  I decided to give working independently a good honest try.  My monthly living costs were super low, I had the support of my spouse, I had an idea of how it all worked, and I had the audacious notion that my skills would be of value.  So I set up an LLC and started doing full time what I’d been doing as a hobby already for many years.  I became a freelancer, focusing on graphic design and illustration.

That was 2008.  Now as 2011 wraps up, it’s clear to see that the audacity of going freelance wasn’t so audacious after all, but the entry into a vast network of creative professionals in all different fields and industries, all working as kind of… specialized artisans.

I wanted to share some of the greatest parts of what life as a freelancer has brought me.

01. Drawing For My Job

I get to sit down with a pencil and paper every day and draw pictures.  I smile when I do because I realize how happy I am to be doing the work that I’m doing.  I get to draw pictures.  AT WORK.  FOR WORK!  Having been in school for not-art, and worked at not-art jobs, realizing fully that my job is drawing pictures makes me giddy.  As I was telling my husband, pencil-and-paper is more natural to me than talking or writing.  It’s a way where my ideas are most clearly and easily expressed.  I wake up every day excited to draw, excited to create and solve design problems.

02. The People

My clients are such a diverse crew: martial arts masters, photographers, web developers, cupcake bakers, urban farming enthusiasts, lindy hoppers, technical gurus, beer brewers, and all kinds of entrepreneurs.  And they come from all over the US and even places abroad. But most of them share a common attribute – they are passionate about what they do.  That is fuel for me! It makes it so much easier and so much successful from my end when my clients have the passion they do, the eagerness and love for their business and a genuine interest in providing wonderful things for their clients and community.  Getting on board always feels like a privilege, like guest-starring on some thrilling new team.  The people I meet are rad folks.  How else would I have met them then through freelancing?

03. Using Your Powers For Good

In so many ways we are always encouraging ourselves and each other to live up to our potential, to cherish the gifts we were given and worked to hone.  To use our powers for good.  Because I work independently I am in the position to choose what clients I work with, and in doing so, I can choose to only work in those industries that reflect my own values.  Not only that, but my design work itself has value, and in working for myself I have the freedom to send it towards the good in the world, to support the good in the world, however small it may seem sometime.

04. My Time

My day starts when I want it to and it ends when I feel finished.  In any job, the balance of work and play is always tricky and that’s no different in freelancing.  But I feel like I have an advantage.  I schedule my own day, so I can more easily work in a trip to the post-office, take the dog for a walk, take a day to see family, or have lunch with my husband.  I can more easily allot time to exercise, or volunteering.  I can more easily pursue my other passions like lindy hop and martial arts.  Having total control over my day makes me a very happy, calm person.  Perhaps that means that I schedule myself into an all-nighter, but it’s an all-nighter I chose to take.

05. Working At Home

I am so much more productive at home, or at least I’m happier here.  I stream NPR, I dress down in sweats and a t-shirt, I can open a window, I can burn incense.  I can have a purring cat in my lap or have a 1-minute dance party to tones of sweet Freddie Mercury.  My commute is a few paces down the hall instead of battling traffic and weather, and I can make myself meals instead of eating out or bagging a lunch.  I’m sure there are some great office cultures out there, but none of them are in my house where I keep all my stuff.

06. Fashion

I am so much better dressed now that I used to be.  It’s an illusion, of course.  I just spend so much of my time in sweats that when I do go out – to meet a client, get some prints made up, eat out, go dancing – I actually WANT to dress up nice.  I’m not burnt out on it having to do it every day.  Stacy and Clinton will never convince me that work pants and heels are just as comfortable than raggedy old scrub pants, though, so when I want to be comfortable at work, I can be.

07. Room for Growth

There’s an excitement about the future with all of this.  I still feel quite young when it comes to doing this right.  I’m proud of my success so far, but as I like to say – art is the easy part.  Managing a business, navigating the industry, managing my time: all of this feels like the real challenge.  Certainly, my work and skills are growing and visibly so.  I’m exploring niches and learning new things, learning as much from my clients as advise them on design matters.  There’s an excitement to that.  I don’t know exactly what my life will look like in 5 years or 10, but I know how I want it to look.  Here’s to 2012!

 

  • Posted on December 14, 2011
lastslice

LoveDrunk Music Video Featuring ME

…in a starring role.

Just kidding.  I was an extra in a one-take-wonder music video shot in my gallery show at the Hot Shops Art center in Omaha NE in August 2011.

 

I am in it at 0:05.

  • Posted on December 08, 2011
FlyHeroThrive

FlyHero

Working on something for a client, and not everything makes it to the cut – presenting FlyHero, a spruced up idea from the cutting room floor, slathered with Photoshop Effects.

He reminds me of a World’s Fair kind of innovator, just vaguely Rocketeer or steampunk, but not really.

 

For this I didn’t make a sketch. I really deviated from my normal way of drawing. I used many different references, pulled and combined shapes, and then grabbed the shadows with the lasso selection tool trying to not really sweat it.  I pulled it into Illustrator and did a Live Trace to grab clean shapes, then back to Photoshop to add RAD FX.

  • Posted on December 02, 2011
georgepractice

012 George

I’ve been watching a lot of Grey’s Anatomy, so I took a screen grab of one of my favorite characters George O’Malley (fav hands down is totally Christina Yang, crazy Slytherin that she is). And I just very casually went about having a good time painting with my tablet. I’ve never really had much success making anything without a pencil sketch first, so I’m quite pleased!

  • Posted on November 22, 2011
tableclothpreview

Reversible Tablecloth

One of the best Christmas gifts my husband and I ever got was a 6-foot-long folding folding table.  We don’t have proper dining room furniture (because we’ve never had a proper dining room) and at one point we gave away our table to Tim’s sister because our roommate had a table and she didn’t.  Long story short, we use this rad folding table for all kinds of awesome gaming time.

Settlers of Catan, Dungeons and Dragons, as well as all my sewing projects and crafty-ness.  However, it is also used for parties in the carport and beer brewing.  It’s beginning to get battleworn.

For my brother’s wedding we got him the same 6-foot-long folding folding table, and to personalize it, I made them a reversable table cloth so that it could be presentable.   And we also got fabric to make one for ourselves.

Final Product

The final table cloth fits my table exactly and has corners – that is, they are structured around the edge of the table with a touch of fanciness.  It’s also reversible.

Materials

    • Table you wish to cover
    • Masking tape
    • Tape measure
    • Two types of fabric – I used cotton.  Launder it, dry it, and iron it.
    • Sewing machine
    • Strait pins & thread
    • Iron & ironing board

Step By Step

I am not a master sewer and I improvise a lot, but hopefully this tutorial will be helpful in your own problem-solving.

1. Measure and Map

Measure the dimensions of your table.  Length, width and then how much overhang you want on each side.  Then add one inch around the outside for the hem. Lookit my blueprints!

Use easy-to-remove masking tape (like the blue stuff) to tape an outline of the correct dimensions onto the carpet.  My table was so big, I didn’t have any better surface.  It worked out really well – I could pin the fabric to the carpet.

Cut out the pieces.

2. Hem

Get your iron cookin’ to the correct setting for your fabric.  Then, fold the edge over by about an inch and iron it down as you go.  You could skip this step, but then you are more badass than I.  Every time I skip this step, I regret it.  Making a nice hard crease makes great hems.  You could even pin it!  Go all the way around – the hem will hold.

Bust out the sewing machine and some thread – I used a contrasting color and just did a regular old straight stitch.  Get fancy.  Express yourself.  I used the edge of the foot along the crease as a guide and just chug-chug-chugged until I’d hemmed all the way around! For the corners, slow down and hit the curve.

Repeat for both pieces of fabric.

3. Sew Together

Put the ‘wrong’ sides of the two sides together and pin them all up.  Again, I used the template on the floor to line everything up.

Start sewing around the edge, again using the edge of the presser foot and edge of the fabric as a way to stay straight.  The hem stitching and this stitch’ll come out pretty neatly, nice and tight next to each other.

4. Positioning and Pinning

Time to make the fancy corners.  Lay out the tablecloth on the table and center it so that the overhang is equal on all sides.  Then on each corner two pins will hold it in the right shape.

This is a small decision time.  One side of this table cloth is going to have more fancy than the other.  Now, don’t worry – both sides will look good, but one will just be more fancy.  That side you want to have the most fancy – put that side up for this step.

5. Sew The Corner

Flatten the corner you’re going to sew.  Stitch a straight line between the pins.  It should make a right triangle with the corner.  Repeat on all four sides.

6. Fold The Fancy

Have you ever done origami? This is essentially a squash fold.  We’ll take the corner and flatten it out over that inside seam to make a kite shape.  Center it and adjust it for maximum fancy.

You can iron these in place.  I highly recommend that.

7. Sew The Fancy

I used just about an inch or inch-and-a-half of the zig-zag stitch overlapping a couple of times to secure the corners.  You’ll see it on the less-fancy side, so be clean about it.

Repeat Step 6 and 7 for all four corners, and you’re done! Try it on, then flip it over and try it on again!  Just in time for Thanksgiving…

  • Posted on November 17, 2011
edprattpreview

Ed Pratt the Auror

This time a friend’s character at Absit Omen – he’s called Eddie Pratt and he’s quite the Auror.  Known to be irreverant, he’s a laugh around Level Two.  Zora and he are partners these days and neither of them are coping well.

 

  • Posted on November 16, 2011
skillzpreview

Skills Illustrator Tutorial

I have put together a weird little tutorial on how to make a vector illustration fellow I call a skillz.  He loves you.  This tutorial takes great advantage of the Appearance functionality as a great way to layer gradients, colors and shadows, but keep that clean vector feel.

 

  • Posted on November 15, 2011
zora1

Zora The Auror

This is my character Zora Roh from Absit Omen: Harry Potter RPG.  She’s an Auror and can be grouchy – her new partner Ed certainly thinks so, but that’s because he’s a goof-off, isn’t he.

I love that AO is on an art kick this last year or so – there’s a lot of talent, but also a lot of support.  People love seeing drawings of their characters and others, giving visuals to all the writing we do.  I go absolutely giddy for any AO art.

And the sketch.

The rune on her back is Algiz.  Not only does it stand for ‘protection’ which is a very Aurorly, but it also stands for the “Z” sound, as in Zora.

 

 

  • Posted on November 14, 2011
potterverseschooluniforms

Potterverse School Uniforms

Absit Omen is getting ready for the TetraWizard Tournament, which for our role-playing site is going to be a massive, probably years-long site-wide plot.  It’s probably the biggest project we’ve taken on and one of the things we wanted to sort out as a community were some of the fun, arty details behind the scenes.  We held three design contests, each one to decide what the school uniforms for Durmstrang Institute, Beauxbatons Academy and Salem Witches Institute would be.  (Links lead out to our wiki where you can see the local canon we’ve built up around those school which are quite fuzzy areas of official Harry Potter canon.  The winning uniforms are there was well.)

People were allowed to submit their designs in whatever way they wanted – Polyvore, drawings, written descriptions.  I drew with pencil and then colored in Photoshop.

Salem was such a wildcard since we didn’t have any suggested canon for it, like Durmstrang and Beauxbatons which were even featured in the movies.  But if there’s one thing that US schools and businesses love it’s khakis.  :P The challenge I set for myself on all three was to make a believable, wearable school uniform, but to have something about it that was unmistakably wizardly.

  • Posted on November 11, 2011
building-black-eagle

Building Black Eagle

I was very happy to be approached to build the website for the newly founded Black Eagle Martial Arts school in West Des Moines, Iowa.   As a student of Master Son myself, I was excited at the opportunity to leverage my design resources in service of the art.  Pay it forward, yo.  See the live website here.

Logo

For whatever reason, the only version of the logo I could get a hold of was a too-small jpg that already looked kind of pixilated.  So I went about creating a vector version with Illustrator.

The most difficult part was the lettering – the rest was very straight forward – make shapes in the right proportions.  I wasn’t able to identify exactly what fonts were used in any case.  The Korean also posed a slight problem in that I don’t know how to type in Korean.  Luckily, Seth Miller does.  Artistic liberties were taken to make something that would fit in with the feel of the new website.

Website Structure

I try to work at problems from scratch, and think outside the template.  I ask myself (and Seth Miller and Master Son) what they need to website to do.  To whom is it providing what functionality?  What information will there be? Which of it is most important? How can it be communicated most effectively?

WordPress

Ease of use was important.  Those who would be updating the website most frequently are people who aren’t experts at web programming and so the job would require a CMS.  Wordpress is my favorite for this kind of thing and I have the most experience configuring and customizing the look.  This way it would be easy to re-arrange and edit pages, have a built-in blog and news feed, fancy photo galleries, and other cools stuff – things I don’t know how to build from scratch.

Elegant Theme

When I shop for a theme to modify, 90% of what I’m paying attention to is the How It Works, not What It Looks Like.  I can edit the crap out of a CSS, and I can brutishly shove around php, and I can create custom assets and images and things with the Photoshop.  But I can’t develop javascript or jQueries.  So what modifying a theme gets me isn’t look, but functionality.  I’m very happy with how Elegant Themes builds things, and their support set up.

I modified from LeanBiz.  Major changes were of course the stronger colors, and using my own selection of Google Web Fonts.  There was also a great deal of tweaking margins and paddings and menu styles for a good fit.

Little Things

There are some little things I like to do to make the website feel like home, such as making sure to include a favicon.  I also like to customize the log-in page.

For me, this is a pretty typical WordPress customization experience – knowing as much as I can about what the software can do, and then applying that to what problems need solving.

  • Posted on October 29, 2011
crochet

Sackboy Is Green: Adventures In Crochet

I made a sackboy! And there are two more on the hook.  My husband taught me to crochet back in college, and I mostly just liked the activity, and never really bent the skill towards a project.  I tried a sackboy once a year or so ago, but got stumped by the fingers.  But this week I took up the hook again and after some experimentation and some unravels came up with this lime green fellow.

Happy birthday, little brother! I’ve got more yarn now, and a second sackboy’s in the works specifically for spelling out a tutorial.  I’m a fool for promising.

 

Also, my cat couldn’t stop stealing his legs before they were attached, so I made an absurd crocheted shape that resembles nothing, stuffed it.  He promptly became blurry and ignored it.  As cats do.

  • Posted on October 20, 2011
zephyr

A Strong Zephyr Blows

I love the Daily Propeht – they are so liberated in their typography. Collage including holodeck picture of Guinan…

This is a part of Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG.

  • Posted on October 04, 2011
knoxgreyfriar

Knox Greyfriar, Wizard

Knox.  Wizard, father, werewolf, professor, wizengamot elder.  I write about Knox at Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG.  He’s one of my oldest characters, created in 2005.   He’s a good guy and kind of enjoys being controversial.   I’ve played him a few different times, once as a Healer, another time as the History of Magic professor, and most recently the Hogwarts Headmaster turned Wizengamot Elder.  Fun new twists in his life are the discovery of a teenage son and being turned into a werewolf.

I experimented with different ways to do color. I’ve been experimenting with different techniques for awhile, trying to find a way to add that rich color I like, but still keep and love the pencil line-art.

Here’s a rundown of my Photoshop Layers, if that’s even remotely interesting.

TOP

  • Adjustment Layers.  Levels, Brightness/Contrast, Color Fill (50%)
  • Two copies of the original scanned sketch, both set on multiply. (This is how I keep the line-art strong.  The tone of the paper DOES affect the colors beneath it a little bit.)
  • Flat Hair Layer + Clipping mask with all the texture and painting.
  • Flat Skin Layer + Two clipping masks.  One for the highlights and one for the shadows.( I guessed at the tones for the highlights and shadows, but then messed with the Brightness/Contrast and Color Balance to find just the right color. )
  • Layers and clipping masks for the jacket and sash.
  • Background painting

BOTTOM

*Oh derp. I forgot.  I used a bit of pale canvas texture set on Multiply on the jacket and hat.

I think the biggest thing I’ve changed about how I paint this time around was to really use the Brightness/Contrast and Color Balance adjustments instead of trying to guess at the colors I need manually.

  • Posted on October 01, 2011
ulhslive

Live Jass Broadcast

I am tuned in live to the Ulimate Lindy Hop Showdown in New Orleans.  I feel like… a time-traveller.  What kind of crazy times do we live in that I can watch authentic-style jazz dancing and hear the music in its ancestral home live from my bedroom all the way across the country?  It’s this crazy mix of new and old.  Live streaming on the web combined with a 1930s dance style.

The future is now.  The past is also now.

You can watch too if you happen to be reading my blog right now. 

  • Posted on September 19, 2011
jambo4

Cowtown Jamborama 2011 – Day 4

Sunday

Tim and I took it easy Sunday, totally rocked from Saturday.  Family activities kept us away from classes and we napped through the corn eating contest.  Big mistake it turns out, after seeing the photo evidence.  Hijinks! Antics! Near ‘reversals’.  And then the winners went on to sing and play horn in the band, and place second in the solo jazz contest and dance all night long.

Yea, Tim and I took it easy.  Part of me wishes I could have danced more – but really, I danced exactly as much as I wanted to.  :) There were just some people I missed.  Get you at Nevermore!

What a great weekend. :)

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

  • Posted on September 18, 2011
jambo3

Cowtown Jamborama 2011 – Day 3

Saturday

The night of nights!  The pinnacle of annual cowtowning and jamboramming, this year with Meschiya Lake and dem Little Big Horns.  (Links to a street performance in New Orleans.  Grainy, street noises, unpolished – JUST HOW I LIKES EM.)

Saw Meschiya Lake when she was performing with the Loose Marbles at Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown 2007 and have been inspired by her since then.  She’s just a raw badass and I love what she does with music.  Also a sousaphone and a peanut butter sandwich is all I need to be happy forever, I think.

I am plain knackered from this weekend! Not used to this kind of athleticism and neglect of well-being.  :)

Suffice it to say, last night at the Eagles’ Club, the Omaha Jitterbugs did not disappoint, delivering another amazing night of dancing, camaraderie, sweet vintage clothes for my husband (who looks smashing!), and true blue New Orleans jass sound.

But the party don’t stop until you’ve had tacos, danced among art cars and razor angel sculptures, over a perilously improvised floor.  Late night at Studio 906 is quickly becoming an incongruous hallmark of the Jamborama, frightfully off theme, but absolutely perfect anyway so like whatever man, that’s just, like, your opinion man.

Knackered!

I fear I might have slept through today’s Corn Eating Contest.  It’s art of the grotesque (and quaint Midwestern caricature the out-of-towners so love).  Tonight, more music and dancing by Kansas City’s Grand Marquis at sweet home Eagles’ 38.

  • Posted on September 17, 2011
jambo2

Cowtown Jamborama 2011 – Day 2

Friday

Part of me wants to provide some kind of analytical run-down of the event and how things are working out compared to years past or other events, but I think I’d rather just gush about how much fun I’m having. :)

I always have fun, but I think I get better at it every year.  I’ve had a hard time keeping dance in my daily life, and so the way I dance has changed.  I just can’t afford to sweat it, or worry, or be self concious.  I just have to dance in the way that makes me the most happy and embrace each moment because they’re rare these days.

Song after song, I had great dances with all the happy people at the Jamborama.  Dancers new and old swinging out, endless delights. Thanks everyone. :)

Competing in the Jack and Jill is always a highlight.  The energy at this competition is always so positive!  The competitors are happy to be there, the crowd is supportive.  Jamborama isn’t a high octane competition-centered event.  The contests really are more about a celebration of the dance and a way to support other events in the Midwest.  One of the cutest things about the way Cowtown does their contests is that partner switching is determined by a cow stomping his foot.  I dunno.  I just love how dorky it is, but it’s not something we could ever take away.

I made the finals this year for the Jack and Jill last night and felt great about that.  I sometimes joke that I love making the finals, but that actually DOING the finals is stressful.  You know how contests are – you want to do awesome.  Stress is part of it!  But butterflies aside, my partner Billy was great and I feel good about what we were able to pull off.

My technical performance has dipped, no question.  The last time I really danced was at the Hawkeye Swing Festival.  I missed a bunch of cues, and misjudged some connections.  That kind of stuff comes with experience and dancing with partners who challenge you.  I just do not get to train or practice, and I think that shows.  I try not to let it get me down – my technique will improve when I put time into it.  Can’t do it now, but I look forward to getting down to business soon as I can move to Kansas City.  (Or someplace!)  But it’s still validating to make the top five and get to be a part of that finals excitement.

The Little Harper Big Band is so funny! I think they perform very infrequently (maybe just for us?) but they pack the floor and deliver solid dancing music.  Nothing lacking in the music last night!  At the end of the night the drummer delivered a crazy, one-of-a-kind, jam experience.  I’ll say … it was weird.  But then, I can’t fault weirdness.  I’ll go with a general positive since everyone was clearly just doing what they felt, what moved them and we all got to share in that.

The Careless Lovers were perfect for late night.  Our late night venue is a small cozy space with a small cozy floor and tiny little stage.  They delivered the most perfect janky little numbers.  Can’t wait to dance to them again tomorrow.

 

Boo, I slept through classes and the Thai buffet today, but that’s okay.  It’s all about the social dancing for me. :) I did really want to take the Collegiate Foxtrot classes though.  I’ll have to get someone to dance with me, see if I can pick anything up.

  • Posted on September 16, 2011
jambo1

Cowtown Jamborama 2011 – Day 1

Last night was Day 1 of Cowtown Jamborama 9! I have been to every Cowtown Jamborama, and every year I have an amazing time dancing and making friendships.  This is what I had to say about my Jambo Journey last year. 

 

Day 1 Thursday Welcome Dance

It felt so great to dance!  I’ve had a really busy summer and I just haven’t been able to make social dancing a part of it.  That’s why I’ve been looking so forward to Jamborama because I knew that I’d get to dance to great live music, and just lose myself in dances with old friends.  (And new friends!)

The Eagle’s club, while a little dingy, undergoes a transformation for the event.  It becomes a vintage clothing shop, with Carol’s Closet using any free space to bring in what must be their entire stock!  Shoes, hats, dresses, mens’ wear – everything!  Everyone seems to come away with some amazing find.  I’m not much of a vintage shopper, but I’m not blind to how cool this set-up is.

Davina and the Vagabonds killed it last night for the welcome dance.  Welcome dances are always a more low-key affair.  Not everyone has arrived yet, and dancers are content to get their sea legs gradually, spending lots of time shopping and socializing.  But Davina constantly called the attention back to the stage.  Not everything they played were my tastes, but I was entranced none the less.  She does such cool things with her voice, that I sometimes forgot to dance.  Their arrangements are unashamedly quirky and original, filled with joy and ‘edge’.

It really has been too long since I’ve just lost myself in a dance, lived in that moment and felt entirely fulfilled.  But I had some amazing dances last night and all that time spent thinking, imagining, dreaming about Lindy Hop – well last night didn’t disappoint.  I felt great last night, and I feel great today!

Today there is a lunch-time jam with Seattle’s The Careless Lovers!  Then tonight? Little Harper Big Band!

 

Highlight: My shirts are on sale this weekend at the merch table!  (Not currently listed at Etsy.)

  • Posted on September 09, 2011
sciencefeatured

Science

Always use your powers for awesome.  My best friend Mary X is a science wizard – always has been.  She is many things, but her image has come to represent female scientific badassery.

I have made a limited run of these.  One, super delux framed 12×16 masterwork. Twenty, 8×10 signed and editioned prints on museum-quality paper.  They look hawt!

Find them at ETSY or email me: sarah at sarahcarneycreative dot com.

  • Posted on September 08, 2011
rpgratingsept

RPG Rating: New Fall Look

Inspired once again by the amazing Codrops resources, RPG Rating got a new design.  I got to hunker down and do more with CSS than I did the last time I put the site together.

Check it out:

Instead of using Cufon font replacement as I have in the past, this time I used Google Web Fonts.  Talk about easy!  It’s so easy to call the font up like normal CSS without having to do some strange Cufon configuration, and I can now highlight the text like real text.

One thing I implemented this time, an idea I got from my blog’s skin, is two overlapping backgrounds for the primary content div.  There’s a 1px by 1px alpha transparent grey background (you can still see the stripes through it), and then aligned to the left is that stripe of bokeh glowing rainbow that I like using for RPG Rating.  Thought that looked cool.

I also did a lot more with formatting tables with CSS that I didn’t last time.  I really wanted to showcase the four tiers and make a very easy to read table of what each content rating is defined as.

I carried the same bright colors and table look into the actual creation form.  That was pretty fun, switching from simple drop-down menus to radio buttons spread out in a more visually pleasing away – again tying the four color experience into creating the rating.

 

I created the RPG Rating back in November-ish, and it’s great to see it becoming an oft-used resource.  I’m not exactly sure what’s to be done with it next – I’m hoping to get some cooperation from some of the big directories so that people can more easily search for an RPG within their rating preferences.

  • Posted on September 01, 2011
shoutsister

Shout Sister Shout

This one’s called Shout Sister Shout. Sometimes with commas, sometimes without.

If you get to around 1:10, you’ll see what inspired the drawing. It’s not literal and I’m sure Rachel had her own reasons for doing what she did. But it just made me draw right now.  This second.  For me, the drawing isn’t about anger or fear, as screaming or yelling often means.  It’s about passion, about saying who you are, being yourself, not being worried about being loud.  It’s cathartic.

The dancers are Rachel Green and Kevin Clark of Albuquerque.  Albuquerque. Albuquerque.

I have made a limited run of these. One, super delux framed 12×16 masterwork and twenty, 8×10 signed and editioned prints on museum-quality paper. They look great on paper, they really really do.

Find them at ETSY or email me: sarah at sarahcarneycreative dot com.

  • Posted on August 31, 2011
rats

Rats Are Comrades

Still posting art from last month’s art show at the Hot Shops.

I read Animal Farm by George Orwell when I was in middle school, knowing nothing about the allegory. I loved it. It was tragic, and does not end happy. But I just loved a book about talking animals. I spent most of the 1990s imagining a world with talking animals, so it was right up my alley.

Learning about the origins of the book hasn’t diminished my love for it.

 

 

I have made a limited run of these.  One, super delux framed 12×16 masterwork and twenty, 8×10 signed and editioned prints on museum-quality paper.  They look great on paper, they really really do.

Find them at ETSY or email me: sarah at sarahcarneycreative dot com.

  • Posted on August 30, 2011
Worsethanwands

Somethings Are Worse Than Wands

This is Theodora Kingstreet again looking horrible and frightening. It appears she’s set something on fire.  Theodora, as many of you may know, is one of the Ministry’s Most Wanted at Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG.

This began as a daily sketch, and has grown and grown.  I plan to make a tutorial showing how I made that paper flutter so magically.

 

I have made a limited run of these.  One, super delux framed 12×16 masterwork. Twenty, 8×10 signed and editioned prints on museum-quality paper.  They look hawt!

Find them at ETSY or email me: sarah at sarahcarneycreative dot com.

  • Posted on August 14, 2011
011-PaperStreets

011 Kingstreet Returns

Theodora Kingstreet is so easy to draw because she’s completely bats and belfries.  I have this old sketch of her (silohuetted below) and I wanted to work on scenery.  Everytime I browse through DeviantArt’s Daily Deviations, what always catches my eyes are the photographs and paintings of amazing places, nooks, and environments.  I wanted to try my hand at imagining a place for all the characters I draw.

 

 

This is 1/8th of a painting in progress!  I hope that i finish it.   For the first time, I didn’t hand-draw and scan.  I composed the light and dark and perspective with broad blocks of grays.  Decided to do the whole thing in grays just because I’m so new at this kind of painting.

I am really looking forward to doing all the cobblestones.  Because there will be cobblestones.

Also, Wizarding architecture is great because perspective is a muggle myth.

  • Posted on August 13, 2011
rpgvocab

RPG Admin Vocabulary

Language dork, checking in.

This post is about forum-based online role-playing.  It’s a totally rad hobby that’s not the same as fan-fic.  Not saying fan-fic is bad, it’s just different.  Online rpg doesn’t have to be about a fandom, but it sometimes is.  But it’s always collaborative.  Writers take turn adding what comes next from the perspective of a character they’ve created.  It’s super fun.

We should always ‘say what we mean and mean what we say’.  We can really define who we are and what we’re about by being careful with the words we choose.  I’m not talking about political correctness, I’m talking about precision and accuracy, controlling our message with words.

When it comes to running an online rpg, there are some words that come with the genre/culture.

Admins and Moderators

These are techie internet words that came into the genre via forum software.  The owner account, the big bosses are forum Administrators and the default account is an admin.  Moderators are member groups with special powers that all them to do a variety of things, like banning players, moving and removing posts.  Maintenance stuff.  These words always sounded very technical and custodial to me.

Applications

Or character app is used to describe the form or post one makes to introduce a character to a game.  Usually, these are required to play, and often they are reviewed by rpg staff and then accepted.

But I don’t think the words that come with our genre always communicate exactly the right thing.  When we were creating Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG we really wanted to custom-build the structure from the ground up, to suit our goals.  Rather than using old words to describe something new, we wanted to use words that actually reflected what we did.

Curators

One of the most important of our little decisions was to remove ‘admin’ and ‘mod’ from our staff and replace them with Curators.  When we looked at what we wanted our staff to do, we realized that we felt like the custodial portions of the job were far less important than the stewardship parts of the job.  We wanted our staff to be collaborators, creative editors, and mediators.

Biographies

Very quickly we tried to phase out using ‘character applications’ so much because it just wasn’t striking the right tone.  An application has this connotation of an audition, a try-out, something that one can be rejected from.  And an application is a thing that is only useful for a short period, but at Absit Omen, the character’s ‘application”s main purpose is to provide constant reference for all members as time goes on, something that can be added to and adapted as the character grows and more information about them is amassed.  And so even though a character must be approved before play, we call them biographies as much as we can.  It is almost never the case that a character is outright rejected – frequently the new bio is work-shopped with the writer to help bring the character inline with our local lore and policies.

 

Perhaps I’m more sensitive about these kinds of language things than others, but I’ve felt the positive effect of using these words in place of the traditional words.  As a Curator, whenever I state my title, I am reminded of my responsibilities and the tone at which we carry them out.  Supportive, flexible, creative.  Rather than janitorial, technical, executive.

Any other rpg admins out there who’ve stepped away from the language in favor of words with a better fit?

 

I role-play and Curate at Absit Omen Harry Potter RPG.

 

  • Posted on August 12, 2011
NikkiPowerProcess

Process: Nikki Power

A work I’m calling “Nikki Power” was my featured image at the art show YOU CAN GO AND LOOK AT RIGHT NOW at the Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

Here’s what went into making it.

 

 

Signed and editioned 8×10 prints are for sale.  $25.  These are premium prints on badass archival paper, and the colors are amazing live and in person.  She’ll come to you in a sweet archival comic book baggie with some cardboard so no bending.

  • Posted on August 11, 2011
Parts-Of-The-Whole

Parts of the Whole: Art Show

I’m not the photographer, by the way.  That’s Mike. Or Lisa.  Or other people with cameras.  Photography requires mastery over a contraption.  There are numbers, too, and measurements and tri-corder readings.  So there are photographs of this event, but I didn’t take them.  I am only in them and around them and using them to give you a visual aide.

Parts of the Whole

Featuring Sarah Carney, Brad Miller, and Mike Machian

Hot Shops Art Center, Omaha Nebraska, August 6 – 26, 2011

Brad Miller is the one who put this all together.  He’s been showing in Omaha for a couple of years now and is chummy with all the players and knows about things like framing, matting and putting holes in walls.  I’m grateful for his encouragement and guidance and our stream-of-consciousness art-talks over the phone this year.

Since Brad, Mike and I are coming from three very different media and subject matter we kind of wondered this whole time what would hold this show together.  Creating a theme artificially just didn’t give any of us good feelings and we proceeded down a path of doing what we do best the best we can.  Hanging the show on Friday was really where the fun came in.  All the work is in the room and we just began setting it against the wall one at a time, each piece being set down in kind of response to the one before it.  I think we did a good job with it, achieved a kind of diverse rhythm as you moved around the room either way.

The turn-out was great and again I was overwhelmed at all the faces old and new who stopped in for the experience.  All my work has a story behind it because they are about characters real or otherwise, so when the conversation called of it I got to share those stories.  And again, I had the gift of hearing what stories other people saw in my work, and the faces of their friends and family I’d inadvertently depicted.

I showed what I’m calling digitally manipulated drawings.  Basically P’shopped pencil sketches.  The sketches were made over the last year-ish, and I tried to do them in a playful state of mind, the same place where I used to draw as a teenager.  Just for fun, no expectations, drawing what made me feel good, what intrigued me.  Maybe it’s the rats from Animal Farm, maybe it’s my dog as she sleeps in some contorted pose.  I’ve decided not to try and conceal the pencil marks as one might with other digital painting, instead doing everything I could to make them the focus.  I dunno.  The pencil’s the good stuff so no reason to try and be someone else and hide it.  :B  So I do add color and texture but they seem more like washes than actual painting.

There are many sides to the experience and I hope to deal with them in their own posts as time goes on.  I mean, I’ve yet to show the internet the work itself, and there was also a music video filmed in the gallery on Sunday.  There’s lots to process.