I didn't do to bad for not really knowing until it was done if it would work. :) Handmade everything except the pants.

Now this is a proper Idaho costume. One that can accommodate more layers if needed. It's pretty toasty already. Sadly no Katamari, as funds are tight due to some student loan shenanigans, but that's fine with me. Maybe at a later date.

Anywho- Happy Halloween!

I'm not much of a fanart person, but I thought this meme would be fun to do. So consider this my fanart dump for the next five or so years. :)

( 30 Character Drawing Meme )

Due to not really being able to sleep for anticipation/whirring mind, I'm up rather early on a Saturday and have caught up on a few things, internet-wise.

First off, there is a need to kill off a chunk of the backlog I have stored for this journal. I'm going to attempt to post a few large chunks of photos to get us closer to current.









Yes, the website has delayed a bit for various reasons unimportant to list. Looks like the soonest I'll have the first draft of code up will be November time. But don't worry- you'll be first to know once I go live.

Still tweaking the logo. I think it's just about there. Here are several variations of the logo, built off of recent feedback. Don't mind the black and white one. I was testing for black and white readability.



On a somewhat related note- any ftp programs you would recommend? I tried CuteFTP years upon years ago, and I remember not liking it, but it may have had time to improve since then.

Here are the two layouts that seem to be working the best. The logo on the second one is the image placeholder I meant to get up this weekend, but will now go up later in the week.

For my birthday this year, my parents got me a year worth of domain space through Dreamhost, in that they gave me the money for it. I'd been holding off registering until I had the skeleton of a portfolio website done, thus saving days/weeks of paying for a site that's nothing. Well here we are a month later, and I still hadn't worked on it. I decided to pay for the space to get a little fire under my butt. Seems to be working:



I give you the color play and final logo design of the rat tea project. What originally was going to be a promotional piece(and still is) has now morphed into the site design/identity itself. Here you see the color scheme I've decided to work with, as well as some brainstorming for tea "flavor" names. The idea is to make a sampler pack of different teas that had tags with a tiny version of a portfolio piece on one side, and the logo and name on the other. These sampler packs would be sent to places I'd like to get an interview, or as a little reminder gift at the end of the interview to make me stand out from the other candidates.

Later in the day I'll get a filler put up on the index while I put together the site, but consider this the official announcement of my acquisition of www.rattea.com. I've had the hardest time working out a good concept to sell myself as a designer, and I think I've finally found it. Now to finish the site, finish the promo piece, learn to make my own tea and make some business cards to start getting serious.

Oh Internets, I have been so neglectful of you. Here's a pile of pictures for you to look at until I can make a proper post again.

Have some snow-y robins while I pack and move (Internets back no earlier than 7-22)

Alright. I said I was going to change this into bit more of an art journal, and here we go.

I really do love my job, but right now it's a bit slow for the Meridian office while we wait for the Ion to get here. It was supposed to be here before I started in the end of April, but ha. Not so much. So to keep my artistic juices limber, I've been creating projects for myself to work on to learn CorelDraw a bit more. There are still certain functions I like better in Illustrator, but for the most part, I'm really enjoying Corel. I think my Mac at home caught wind of this and decided to begin the slow process of screen death by magenta and cyan lines. I wonder when I'll get a yellow one?

But I digress... I had been thinking about the sediment that can sometimes be left at the bottom of red wine bottles. It always looked like exoskeleton chunks to me, so I rarely try to think about them too much. I had this picture from a while back of a bright red bug that caught a ride on me when I was walking to the store by our house. Brandon and I had never seen such a bright red on a bug before. You don't get many bright colored bugs up in the northwest, let alone in the city. It seemed to glow when in the light so I took a picture of it to store away for a rainy day. Well, it's not raining, but the little red bug came out to play when I decided to make a wine label for exercise. About 4 hours later, this 2.5" x 6" was the result. I'm very tempted to scrub a label of a bottle of wine, print and paste this one on, and take a photo for example.

When I get back from Seattle, I'll share the bits I have together for my rat tea project.

I could use a break from the heat. You?