It’s Jean-Luc St. Laurence, an Absit Omen character written by Lily. Just more character practice.
Very happy to put together an event logo for the Assault Care Center Extending Shelter & Support (ACCESS)‘s summer bike ride fundraiser: Break the Cycle.
A new member’s character inspired me to art and so art was done! Aoife Moffett, care of Lizabeth at AO.
A good friend is in his first year of teaching biology and commissioned me to interpret some classroom signage. We worked together to come up with the best imagery, colors and overall concept to best communicate the statements. Final product was eight 11×17″ posters.
Any opportunity I have to design for the classroom and to collaborate with passionate people is an opportunity I can’t miss!
As kids, my brothers and I loved to rent Unico in the Island of Magic and one of my favorite characters was big brother Toby who gains magical powers to serve a crazy evil puppet. And like he had to turn everyone (animals too) into magical puppets too.
This is Toby, but a girl Toby.
This was just a raw digital painting – no pencil/paper like I usually do. It’s really hard to get started, but once I get painting it’s really fun. I think I am just much more dexterous with a pencil so I can get my ideas down much more quickly and in greater detail. Whereas with the tablet/stylus I feel like I fumble a little bit more to get the sketch down. I think it’s mostly to do with the free rotation of the paper – it’s not as easy to do in Photoshop.
Every year, Absit Omen puts on a holiday gift-exchange we call the Dobby Swap. Dobby the House Elf being a character of great friendship, bravery and generosity. (As well as an appreciator and giver of even the smallest gifts.) This year was our fourth year and each year more and more members join in, from all over the world, from all walks of life. WARMS MY HEART!
AO members come up with all kinds of free creative digital gifts. Polyvore sets, play lists, sets of avatars and signature images, drawings, fan fiction of their characters, video montages – it really is exciting to wait and see what someone made for you, the attention they must have paid to your characters.
I was paired to a member who’s fairly new – Aza. I drew him his character Warren. Aza, as of yet, hasn’t begun using an avatar, so I went on the physical description.
Aimless sketching with a ballpoint pen while our family played Cranium over the holidays. Utter silliness, surely!
My big Christmas craft project was portraits of the eleven cats in my life – not all of them ended up being gifted (sorry to Knox, Pixie, Popper, Winston and Rajah). But here are the others!
Mose, who belongs to my brother and his wife. He’s a snuggly, shoe-sniffing sort of fellow.
Amelia, my other brother’s happy little rescue. Her tongue hangs out most of the time.
Little Ahab, my dad’s new three-legged kitten dude. He’s really really really cute.
Xena, my mother’s matriarch cat – she’s a 17-year-old Persian/Himalayan. Spry and bright as ever!
Myrtle, adopted sister of Mose. Sweet and quiet and likes to stay home.
Muezza, she with the biggest, widest eyes ever seen on a kitty! Adopted sister of Amelia.
Have you heard of Kongregate? My brothers and my work are woven into the online indie game world at the edges and I’ve been working with Kong on and off for a couple years now – really fun company, got to say. Anyway, I want to show you this cool thing that was sooo muuuuch fun to make!
It’s the KongBot. He’s a robot.
The best part was by far coming up with the different emotes/poses for him. Can’t wait to do more sometime.
A few things I tried to think about…
- Simple, bold silhouette
- Versatile
- Allow for cartoonish warping and exaggeration
- Make him easy to draw and recognize
Dance Teachers Shape the Lindy Hop Community : In modern Lindy Hop, most people's entrance into the community is through a class. I think perhaps Back In The Day, you just got out on the floor and learned 'in the wild'. But Nowadays, instructors rule our world.
Good and bad, right? I think h...879 views
Free Steampunk Gears for Photoshop :
Download
A set of 10 free Photoshop custom shapes for any of your fine mechanical construction projects. Ideal for zeppelins, airships, gyroscopes and widgets. These gears are offered gratis, but don't go off trying to sell them.
Or perhaps y...837 views
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...832 views
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Illustration
Hand-drawn, digital or vector illustration focusing on character and movement.
Graphic Design
Logos, event and product promotion, apparel and signage.
Web Design
Web design and development-ready .psds, basic HTML, CSS and Wo...816 views
T-Shirt Mod Tutorial: Two Color Hipster Cowel Neck : I think t-shirt modding is one of my favorite craft projects because it's cheap and it really doesn't matter if you mess up - it's a $2.99 XL shirt from the Goodwill. I don't like t-shirt mods that are just a cut-job and you end up with a tattered ga...430 views
Old World Fantasy Map Tutorial : This tutorial takes you through how to create an inked effect for lines for something like a fantasy, or old-timey map. Uses Photoshop and takes advantage of an repeated Photoshop Action. The tutorial shows you how to create the Action, but you can...410 views- Steampunk Goggles Activate : Oh the days of steampunk. What happened to those simpler times where steam and clockworks powered everything, we were all zeppelin pilots, mechanics and inventors, and daily life for most folks necessitated goggles? (Was it all the alchemical motes ...358 views
Women Leading & Men Following : I've collected some YouTube clips of Lindy Hop partnerships where women are leading, and men are following. Some of them are social clips, others choreographed for competitions, and still others are improvised jam-style competitions. They are all o...322 views
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 s...314 views- The Discussion of Gender in Lindy Hop :
Reflections on Feminism & Follower-focused Events by Gina Helfrich (May 15, 2008)
Building an Inclusive Swing Dance Community by Rik Panganiban (December 20, 2009)
An entry of mine from later this month. I'd forgotten I'd written it: Leads...268 views