epic.gibberish

Alright! In the home stretch!

With only four pages and a cover left to go, plus scanning, cleaning up, layout / text, printing blahblahblah, I finally feel comfortable enough to share photos of the comic I've been working on (and whining about on Twitter) for the past few frenetic weeks / months! It will be debuting at TCAF in May, knock on wood (Translation: I feel relatively confident I will be able to finish this). If you happen to be in Toronto the weekend of May 5 and 6, please check it out - it's an inspiring and free comics event! :D

We are a nation of storytellers. We can make stories out of anything.

murmur nation is a collection of four short stories about stories, featuring a doctor's note, a bottle, a stone and a rubber duck. The recurring themes throughout the book are how we communicate / make sense of the world around us, how we gravitate towards storytelling, and how all of our stories, no matter where they come from, have common ground in our limited but very human experiences.

murmur nation is my first (nearly) complete attempt at doing a proper and generally serious original comic. It's been a great challenge and learning experience so far, especially in the art of disciplining yourself to put your head down and just keep forging ahead. I drew a lot of objects I've never tackled before, and there were some pleasant surprises when I discovered several things that had been stressing me out actually turned out to be quite fun to draw (e.g. stuff falling into water). I don't claim to be a super accurate artist, but it was enjoyable and didn't come out looking like complete derpiness (bonus!).

Side note: the final short story features a guest appearance by Adam from my 24 Hour Comic The Dispossessed Headboard (which can be read in its entirety on my website). This is not anything special, except for it being convenient and amusing for me.

murmur nation will total 60 pages, with black and white pencil artwork and watercolour painting featured on the cover. Here are some work in progress photos of the cover, my incomprehensible thumbnails, some character design sketches, and preview pages of a few of the stories!

Christmas for me is a crafty time of the year! While I'm not at the supermaker point of having the will/brainpower to make all of my gifts, I love coming up with ideas for Christmas cards, and also making chocolates!

I wasn't totally happy with my Christmas card from last year (I painted the image but it was just a flat print ... booooring), so I resolved this year to do something more crafty with my Christmas cards. And so I did! Except after plowing my way through approximately 50 of these I think I might go back to flat prints next year. Or I'll think of something else.

The concept for my 2011 Christmas cards was sort of a vintage feel, and also get to use up some of my extensive scraps of Japanese paper. I had the portrait concept in my head, but didn't decide on the format till after I had finished the artwork. The idea of a mini accordion fold style card was so that I could create something small and cute, but also have display potential. The production process was pretty much as follows:

1. sketch some light pencil portraits of a boy and a girl
2. scan and paint them in black and white in OpenCanvas (I also scrawled the Christmas greeting on the computer)
3. lay the images out in Photoshop and impose in Illustrator for printing multiple copies up
4. print them out on Via 10% cotton (I happened to have a whole package)
5. cut, fold, and glue Japanese paper on the ends to create a small "book". I ripped the Japanese paper by hand instead of cutting them to create a sort of deckled edge effect.

I numbered most of them with 2011 on the front (I missed a few before I mailed them ... whoops), and wrote messages on scraps of Via, which I then ripped out to create a tattered effect before gluing the messages onto the backs of the cards. This was done over a period of several weeks while multitasking (aka. surfing the net at the same time).

Last December I also learned how to make chocolates at a workshop at work (whee!). Not from scratch, but it was awesome to at least have a hand in shaping/creating yummy treats for family and friends. It was mindblowing to me because I'm totally useless in the kitchen, and here was something edible that is so incredibly easy to do, yet nice enough to give to friends or donate to a bake sale!

How I make chocolates:

1. Buy chocolate wafers.
   Merckens (carried by Bulk Barn) was recommended to me as the best brand because it melts very smoothly, but I've also used no name wafers.
2. Melt 'em.
   Possible ways: using the double boiler method, a heated chocolate pot (I want one of these but I don't think I'm making enough to warrant one ...), or, my personal cheapskate favourite as taught to me by a pastry chef friend, repeated heating in the microwave (I did 10-30 second intervals reducing the number every time) to avoid burning.
3. Mix in cool stuff.
   Like dried berries, nuts, candy bits etc. or even other chocolates to make interesting colours and textures.
4. Pour out.
   Pour into molds or, if making bark, spread onto wax paper. You can also do various chocolate dipped dried fruits and use it like a sauce. Top with various cool stuff so that it looks pretty (e.g. chopped nuts on top, candy cane powder, etc.)
5. Set it.
   Let it cool/harden and put it in the fridge. Enjoy!

Most of my friends prefer dark chocolate while I love milk chocolate. But I find white chocolate makes the prettiest palette for a lot of neat bark. So far I've made chocolate bark with dried blueberries, dried cranberries, tiny sprinkles, powdered candy cane and pistachios (the last two items happily mashed up with a mortar and pestle, a Christmas present from a foodie friend). My favourite barks that I've made so far are white chocolate+blueberry+candy cane, white chocolate+pistachio+candy cane (very pretty green and white), and dark chocolate+cranberry+pistachio (it makes me think of roses!).

For chocolate molds, I have a nice deep mold (shaped sort of like a fat bullet) that I got from the workshop I did, and a smaller, more shallow mold that I always curse at because I'm too impatient to fill it without making a mess everywhere. I like to sprinkle in a bit of powder (sprinkles, candy cane, nuts etc.) at the bottom of the mold so that the top of the chocolate will have a nice decoration. Then I pour in chocolate about 1/3 of the way, add in a "filling" item (like a dried fruit or nut), and fill the rest of the mold.

I wish I remembered to take more pictures this year, but I either gave away, wrapped up or ate all the evidence ...

Next year I want to try making a chocolate with a ganache. And more bark. Bark is so ridiculously easy and fun to make!

Last month Joanna and I attended the first ever Fall Indigo Party held by Chapters Indigo, where they previewed their upcoming collection of lifestyle products. I was lucky enough to win an advance copy of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus! I've been meaning to put together this review for a while, and I finally get around to it now that the book is out.

It was pretty funny because the book summary really emphasized the romance, and made it not sound like something I would ever pick up on my own, so Joanna and I both got a good giggle out of that. (To be honest, I've rarely read a jacket summary that did justice to a book, so there you go). I finished it over half-hour bursts while cycling in the gym, which was great.

The Night Circus is being billed as "the book of the year". It's a story about layers of dreams, magic, intrigue, and yes, a romance. It's the story of Le Cirque des Rêves, a black and white marvel that arrives without warning, traveling like magic to cities all over the world. It takes the form of a series of tents: a seemingly endless choice of tents, new ones appearing all the time, each hiding within itself an incredible performance or wonder that must be experienced to be believed. It incites passion and a cult-like fervour amongst its most dedicated fans, rêveurs who dress in black and white with a splash of red to distinguish their company. But even the most dedicated revêur couldn't possibly imagine what actually lies behind the circus, and the answer is nothing more and nothing less than a game. A deadly serious game between two disciplines of magic competing against each other beyond imagination, continuously demonstrating their powers and extending the circus until a winner can be unequivocally declared ...

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