Family Portrait

Got another new piece completed for the show I’m doing in November, so I thought I’d share it. I think this turned out kinda cool, and I had better luck with scanning it than usual, too, so yay. Plus I’m KIND OF getting the hang of seeing where the colors are off, and knowing what I need to do in Photoshop to adjust them. (Although I really cannot emphasize “KIND OF” enough here.)

Anyway, check it out:

Isn’t she cute?! I love my weird, unpleasant-looking little kids…she would so be friends with the little boy in the Silver Key.

Now back to what I should be working on, which, as always, is an assignment for library school.

*pities self*

[eats some potato chips out of boredom and despair]

*loathes self*

finished moving…

I had to move all of my posts from Sitekreator by hand because I couldn’t find a way to export them… It was a pain, but I think it was worth it–I really like WordPress’s blog features (still like the rest of my site on Sitekreator better, though, so there it stays). So here I am! I can tag my posts, and categorize them, and oh my gosh do I love sorting things, so I’m really enjoying obsessing over that. Like, for example, since I’m posting this when I should be working on a paper for school, I can tag it with my “things I do instead of schoolwork” tag! Perfecto.

Oh, and and and, I have been working on my Coraline box, and I absolutely *love* what I’m making, and I found the niftiest old cigar box for it! Yay! I wonder if it’s okay if I post pictures of the works in progress…? Probably supposed to be kept hush-hush or something–but I reeeeally want to! I’m going to take in-progress photos anyway, I’ll post them after the swap is over if nothing else.

Okay, now back to work *sigh* on that paper *sigh*
Blah…(Ooh, now I can add the “blah” tag!!)

oh my gosh, you should see this crazy thing from my view

Yay, I’m at WordPress! This “dashboard” view you get when you’re looking at the blog as the administrator is so complicated, I had no idea! Sitekreator is way different.

Anyway, I have nothing at all to say, but I just *had* to get rid of that “Hello world!” post that they automatically give you. You know, I’ve seen so many blogs with that as their first post, and I didn’t realize it’s automatically generated by WordPress to get you started — I thought that everyone just thought that was a cute thing to say!

Coraline box swap

I was looking around some more at the Coraline movie website and came across Bobinsky’s blog, which I hadn’t read before (really funny!). Anyway, it looks like I’m not the only one still wishing I’d gotten a Coraline box…(Even Bobinsky wishes he had–poor guy, you’d think he’d have been a sure thing!)

Some bloggers are organizing their own Coraline box swap (that’s a really wonderful crafts blog that link goes to–my little mochi, it’s called–look around at all her neat teeny dollies and stuff), and I keep wondering if I should sign up for it. I reeeally want to, I’m just nervous about it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone! Still……

I think I will. Or try to, anyway–only the first fifty people to sign up tomorrow get to do it, so even if I try I might not get in. But I think I’ll give it a shot. Eek, I’m scared! (but now that I’ve decided to try you just know I won’t get in, heh…)

Oh, and look, here’s my kitty with button eyes (scary!):

You can make your own button-eyed picture at coraline.com–go to the Other Mother’s Workshop!

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interview with Henry Selick

Just wanted to post a link to an interesting interview with the director of Coraline (you remember, I was raving about his cool movies in an  earlier entry), Henry Selick… very fun read!

I love this part where he’s talking about what he loves about stop-motion–this is exactly what’s so magical about it:

“Stop-motion is what I keep coming back to, because it has a primal nature. It can never be perfect. There’s always something like—[Points to the Coraline puppet on the table.] Coraline’s sweater, you can notice here that it’s sort of boiling. And that’s because people are touching it and moving it for every frame. There’s an undeniable reality that I don’t think any of the other mediums give you. You know these things are real even if you don’t know exactly how they move, how big they are. [. . . ] It’s never going to be the dominant filmmaking style. It’s always going to be the cousin off to the side. You know, the more eccentric relative of yours that some of the kids like.”

Henry Selick talks to the AV Club

oog, major unreasonable fit of envy

I’ve just been looking around at all the mysterious boxes various super-special bloggers have been getting from the people making the Coraline movie and I am so excessively green with envy right now, I can’t even tell you! And then Billy insists on being all reasonable and junk, telling me things like “Well, since you’ve only been blogging for like two months and plus you don’t let anyone see your blog and plus you rarely write anything of consequence or interest to anyone, you couldn’t possibly have gotten one so how can you be jealous of something that you couldn’t expect to get?” which of course is just so irritating. Has anyone ever liked the voice of reason, ever? I doubt it.

Anyway, these boxes are so amazing! All handmade, and each one different & full of these wonderful little artifacts from the movie. I can’t do them justice; I’ll just post some of the pics I’ve found:

Here’s Fashionista Piranha’s:

Here’s the one Cleolinda got (love Cleolinda–I’m dying for her to finish her book The Black Ribbon):

Here is the one Geeks of Doom got:

Apparently each box came with a password for the movie website (www.coraline.com) to unlock some footage, too..(passwords so far are “stopmotion,” “buttoneyes,” “armpithair,” “sweaterxxs,” “puppetlove,” and “moustachio”). This is just the coolest promotion idea I’ve ever heard of. And the movie is another stop-motion one from Henry Selick, who directed Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach (squee! I just love both of those movies so much. Stop-motion is my favorite kind of animation…so much detail and richness in the settings and characters and everything, there’s nothing else like it). And I loved the book so much, and now the movie looks like it will be just *incredible*…yay for things to look forward to as school does its best to beat all the joy out of me, haha.

in which i begin a blog

Well, I’ve decided to make some new goals for myself to help me keep on track with getting new work done, working on submitting to publishers, and that kind of thing. So I thought keeping a little journal here would be a good way to remind myself of what I want to focus on, new ideas to work on, sketches, projects, etc. I’ll posts scans of new things I’ve finished, works in progress, and updates on where I am with getting manuscripts ready for submission.

So, on with the “blogging”! (Boy, do I feel silly using that word!) For now, it’ll just be for me to read and look back over, but maybe someday if it seems like there would be some interest in it, I’ll publish it to the site…