Lunarbistro.com is the
art, comics and sketch blog
of indigo kelleigh.
Where the gentle maiden dwelleth, named 'Yum-yum'?
I don't know why, but I haven't been able to get the idea of creating a Muppet version of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado out of my head. So, I finally decided to at least do some of the character designs. Here's Kermit the Frog as the heroic lead, Nanki-Poo:
(click the image to hear the song over at Youtube!)
There may be more coming, I don't know yet. I've only got a couple of the characters figured out - Piggy as Yum-Yum, Gonzo as Ko-Ko, probably Fozzie as Pooh-Bah. Sam the Eagle would make a great Mikado, but I haven't thought about that one too much yet...
Hey, all:
Just a quick reminder that I'm heading up to Olympia this weekend for the Comics Festival there at the Vault at 425 Franklin St.
I'll be exhibiting with my old friend Chris Baldwin, and hanging out with my other good friends Erika Moen and Derek Kirk Kim. Come up and say 'hi!', and help yourself to some free Ellie Connelly 'Sweet Peaches!' buttons. I'll also be trying to do some quickie-portrait sketch cards. The show is from noon to 5 on Saturday. I hope to see you there!
Here we have the first 67 boxes of tarot cards, waiting to be collated into 1000 little boxes:
You can see they're all labeled with suit and denomination, once I have all the cards I'll start collating sets of each suit until I have the boxes, which should be by the end of the week. Then I'll start assembling those, and putting the full decks together. This is going to be a loooong process, I figure it'll take a good solid month to put ALL the decks together. Expect more photos!
There's been an unfortunate delay on the release of 8-Bit Tarot pack 6, I'm sorry to say. The cards arrived on Friday, but the cutting of the cards was so inconsistent across the board, in some cases even trimming into the orange border, that I'm having them reprinted. It's probably going to take a couple weeks to ship the cards back to the printer, and get the new ones back to me, before I can ship the packs out to everyone who pre-ordered them. I apologize profusely for this, but I think you'd all agree that consistency is key when making a deck of cards.
I'm hoping these same cutting problems don't affect the massive batches of cards which were printed by the same company, and which I'm expecting the first delivery of today. I'll take a look at them as soon as they get here and I'm praying to every deity I can think of that I won't have to send THEM back as well. At least the printer is issuing me a UPS number so I shouldn't have to pay the return fees.
Also, the boxes should be finished this week as well. I'm very excited about those, they're being printed locally by Pinball Publishing, with whom I've worked before, and am always impressed by the quality of their work. Austin, one of the founders there, is handling the printing personally and is very excited about the design of the box.
I'm hoping to be back later today with much better news as regards the Decks...
UPDATE: The first boxes of cards for the Decks has arrived! Six large white 55-lb. boxes filled with tarot cards oh my god what was I thinking are sitting in my living room. I've gone through half of them, giving the cards a quick inspection, and they're looking good. The cut looks consistent, and none of the art got trimmed off. There are a few instances where it's right up to the edge, but that's to be expected when there's this many of them. I'm hoping that the pack 6 cards were truly an anomaly, and expect to see better results when they come back.
It's been a long time in coming, but preorders for the 8-Bit Tarot Deck are now available in the store! Each complete deck comes with a keepsake lidded box and an All-Seeing Eye button. If you've been wanting to get in on the 8-Bit Tarot deck, but missed your chance with the individual packs, today's your lucky day!
I had a really great time at the Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend! After spending five years as the 'man behind the curtain', so to speak, it was really nice to get behind an exhibitors' table! I can't really judge the con based on sales, since I wasn't there to sell things, but rather to promote my book-in-progress, Ellie Connelly. And on that level the show was excellent! Handed buttons and flyers to everyone who gave more than a passing glance my way, and even ran out of the freebie buttons mid-afternoon on saturday.
Traffic seemed really solid on saturday, at least on par with the previous year's Fest, though I heard from several other exhibitors that sales were pretty slow. I wasn't too surprised, considering both the slow economy overall, and also that Portland characteristically has a lot of vocal support for the arts, but not a great deal of transactional support. The pattern seemed to continue on Sunday as far as traffic went - saw a lot of faces returned from the day before, good to see that people are making use of the weekend passes! - though I heard from the same exhibitors that sales had increased considerably, and some even sold more than they had at the larger Emerald City Comicon just two weeks ago.
I received two great honors over the weekend which I wanted to mention, though - the first being that I won the Stumptown Mystery Award at the awards ceremony on Saturday night! I should have known something was up when the awards organizers became very interested in making sure I was going to be there for the ceremony. The Mystery Award is the only award that's completely up to the discretion of the Fest organizers and the foundation, so I really do appreciate the gesture, which took the shape of a giant brass bell with my name engraved on it. Convention-goers on Sunday were maybe less appreciative of my award, which was rung on a few occasions by curious hands.
The second big honor was being asked to contribute to both Leigh Walton's and Douglas Wolk's amazing convention sketchbooks! Leigh's been doing a Tintin-themed book for a couple years now, and I contributed a Snowy-in-spacesuit drawing that I was quite pleased with. Douglas's sketchbook is more nebulous in theme, but the quality of artwork was just astounding, and I really shouldn't have looked through it BEFORE I did my drawing (of various dangerous desserts, including Creme Flambé, and Parfaitron the destroyer of appetites). I recognized Adrian Tomine, Charles Burns, Jeremy Brown, Derek Kirk Kim, Renée French, Matt Madden, Jessica Abel, and dozens of others whose work I've admired for years, and it's a great pleasure to be held in their company.
The last big honor I received was the quantity of compliments and words of support from various peers and associates all throughout the weekend. It was gratifying to have people who discovered my work at Emerald City walk up to my table and tell me they checked out the comic and were enjoying what they read so far, and looking forward to continuing it. I'm happy to see that there's so much appreciation for what I'm doing with Ellie Connelly, and I only hope I can continue to live up to the hype that I'm trying to generate.
My next convention will be the Olympia Comics Festival on June 13, where I'll again be promoting Ellie with free buttons and flyers, and I'm also hoping to debut the 8-Bit Tarot Decks! Keep an eye out for more news about that soon, too!
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