MoCCA and Thesiseseeesseeeiisez?!

Hey, guys! I realized it's time for a new bog post, and not just because most of you new visitors from MoCCA will be routed here from my business cards because I was silly and used my blog's url and not my new site's. WHOOPS. With the Thesis deadline crunch I didn't have time to make new cards in addition to eight hand-bound books, and screenprinted covers for Rockall Part I reprints, AND facetrim a pile of Part Is and Part IIs for MoCCA. I'm still baffled at how much I got done just last week! At least ROCKALL (the webcomic) has been updating regularly! Tuesdays and Thursdays!

So, Thesis! It's all put together and handed in, and now I have no idea what to do with myself since I have free time again. I slept a lot today; it was awesome.

About eight days ago, I was finishing up the digital files of my cleaned up artwork and plugging them into the InDesign file. Exactly a week ago, this is what my project looked like:

You can't tell, but that stack of paper on the right is, like, two inches tall. Over 1,000 pages, Baby!

Then I separated out all of the signatures, cut the endpapers down to size, poked holes in all of them, and sewed them together with my Hulk Hands. All eight books took me an entire day, because I kept snapping the thread on accident when trying to pull it tight. They don't call me Amelia "Rips Doors Off Hinges" Onorato for nothing, folks. That has actually happened. Twice.

But early last Wednesday morning, I was looking at these beautiful babies! The spines are cardstock, doubled on itself and glued directly to the book-binding cloth, which in turn is glued directly into the sewn-together signatures.

So much glue, you guys.

Then I took a nap.

THEN, I cut down 12 pieces of faux-microsuede and got nine viable screenprints of the cover design out of them! I didn't take a picture of either that step or the ensuing steps of gluing together the bookboards and guts, because I was operating on autopilot at that point, but of the books themselves I've got pictures a-plenty!

It looks so much better than the dummy, haha--and that was a version that won me a cut of the April Fog Memorial Scholarship!

Plus there's a sweet little chubby-chubs hiding out on the back! EEE!

SPINES! Dummy copy is on top.

Then I sewed them all into their little knit pouches while watching Hellraiser: Hellseeker (staring the Allstate Mayhem Guy and Liz Lemon's ex?! YES, PLEASE), and lined them all up for one last group photo. Although we had to make eight copies, we only had to hand in six to the Thesis Committee; we can keep one for ourselves and send the other to our Thesis Adviser. And, since all the patterns are unique, and I'd been working on them for so long, they all felt like their own little personalities.

What should have been a moment of triumph turned into a version of Sophie's Choice, albeit with somewhat fewer Nazis.

Thursday night and early Friday morning was spent facetrimming Parts I and II for sale at MoCCA--

--Thesis projects were handed in--

Here seen with the lovely Donna Almendrala!

--and Donna, Melanie Gillman, Billage, his wife Sarah, and myself drove down to New York, where we met up with my friends Amy and Chris (citation_needed, tl-dr), crashed in my aunt's apartment, and went to MoCCA!

Our table was the best! And the only one with an orange tablecloth. That was really a sheet. Which Donna and I found for $1.26.

I made back my table cost and made some pretty sweet trades, and I got to hang out with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while! HUGE SUCCESS!

I also got to try Bubble Tea for the first time!

The tea itself was good; still not a fan of tapioca.

I also got to see Cabin in the Woods on Saturday night, which may be the best $13 I've spent in a long time. Don't listen to the critics--the ending is PERFECT.

rejected story idea #E75-119

Well, the title is exaggerating. But only just. The last time I made a serious organization attempt of the teetering pile of loose-leaf paper littering my bedroom, there were no less than 37 individual concepts. Mostly terrible. And that was four years ago! Since then I must have come up with an additional seven...teen? JKLOLOLOL.

But srsly, u gaiz.

The Concept: three mythical creatures (a Merrow, a Kelpie, and a Selkie), out of luck with today's housing market, have to share a tiny tide pool. Either that, or they're suckered into a Timeshare con; except the Kelpie would probably eat the con artist and that would be the end of that.


The Explanation: Good anatomy practice! /failed, regardless :\

I...just really like water-based magical creatures D: Originally I only thought of the Kelpie and Selkie (middle and right), but I messed up the composition and there was waaaay too much negative space on the left that needed to be filled. Before I went with a Merrow, she was going to be a Nix, simply because of their danger towards pregnant women and unbaptised children on Midsummer's Night, Christmas Eve, and Thursdays. Why Thursdays?! All Thursdays, or only some? And why on the Solstice and Christmas Eve, but not New Year's or Halloween? But Nix are Germanic mythos, while Kelpies and Selkies are Celtic, so it seemed best to follow suit.

Our protagonists, left to right:

the Merrow: Merrows are the Celtic version of mermaids; they have green hair and webbed fingers and must wear a special hat called a cohuleen druith in order to return to their underwater homes, but for the life of me I could not find a reference so I improvised. The veil made sense at the time...because she could use it to make an air bubble? Sure. Merrows like to comb their hair and sing and lead young men to their rather enjoyable dooms under the waves where they will live forever in an enchanted state. We shall call her Lurline, because it means "alluring temptress." But that's a silly name so she prefers to be called Lura.

the Kelpie: Kelpies are mean! I had been under the impression that they always looks like pretty ponies, luring small children to ride on their backs so they can drown and eat them, but apparently they can also assume human shape! Crazy! Generally the purpose of that is to lure young ladies into riding on their backs so they can drown and eat them, and they can be captured and turned into hardworking fieldhorses, but after seven years it'll eat the master's right pinky and left leg and run away. Only once was there a nice Kelpie, and even then that was only because he didn't go to Tir na nOg with his friends and instead fell in love with a clever human girl and chose to forget his mystical origin to become human. So in the end he wasn't really a Kelpie. Their manes/hair is always dripping, and they're cold to the touch. This one is named Lunn.

the Selkie: one of my favorite mythical creatures! Selkies are seals who can take off their fur like a coat, and then hang out sunbathing. Usually when they show up in stories it's because some dude sees a bunch of them on the rocks and steals one of their furs, because without it she can't go home. So all of her friends ditch her and she is blackmailed into marrying the guy, they have kids, she mopes around the shallows, until one day one of the kids asks her what Dad's oiling and it turns out to be the fur! So she takes it and runs back home, leaving her husband and kids behind. Although sometimes she comes back to play with them. Sometimes, the Selkie is happily married, and will try to save her husband if he gets lost at sea, but she won't be able to return to human form if she does. So this is Nuala, because she has bare shoulders (duh); since Selkies are seals and Harbor Seals are the best kind of seal, that's her "true" form, and that explains why she's curvier compared to her roommates.

I hope you have enjoyed this lesson in Celtic Mythology!
Also, T&A.