Android/iPhone App Wishlist
Last year I got an iPhone, and dreamed of all of the wonderful things that I, as an illustrator, would be able to do with it. For one the screen is kind of small, the file system is locked off which makes loading reference pictures onto it a nightmare, and I could just NEVER FIND the apps that would let me use it as I dreamed. More recently I've got an android tablet. Much better for actually viewing reference with it's larger screen and ability to load and sort my library, and I'm currently in the process of uploading my reference library onto it. But I still have yet to find the apps that would really take advantage of carrying a touch screen library in my pocket. Here's what I want in a touchy beast:
3D Poser
a simple interactive human-anatomy 3D poser.
* few different drag&drop light sources preferably.
* The figures don't need to be infinitely customizable, just having male/female/child models to select would be fine.
* Options to choose between a simple untextured skin, musculature (even a fake skin of approximately where the muscles would be) and a human skeleton.
* Possibly also detail rigs of hands and feet.
* would be nice to upload any 3D studio max/cinema 4D rig you like!
*Not nessessary for it to need to modify the rigs, capture animation, or render at all (although saving snapshots would be nice.) Just needs a simple interface to interact with the rig... maybe to toggle between and editing screen where one can pose the rig and set the lights, and a viewing screen where one can zoom and rotate camera around the rig.
I am imagining this app as a lighting/posing reference for drawing.
Font Viewer
A few crappy font viewers exist, at least for iPhone, but none that do exactly what I want.
* for each search, entering a phrase that is SAVED so every font you view displays itself with that phrase displayed.
* saved searches. especially several saved searched within each phrase so you can go back and compare. With the font name. The ability to e-mail this reference list to your creative team would also be a huge plus.
* IDEALLY this app would search through my own font collection of OTF or TTF files, so, you know, I can make things using fonts that I already own. would be cool to have it hooked up to an online database like DAfont or MyFonts, but since so many of these viewers already available are linked to individual type foundries and so tend to have crappy selection which makes them useless, I think it's waaay better to prioritize your own fonts.
* once you've got your phrase set, searching through the standard categories of fonts, serif, sans-serif, etc
* though preferably the font categories would also be customizable - I'm such a font nerd I tend to have catagories like vintage-1920, vintage-1970s, comic-dialog, comic-sfx, etc.
Image Library/Gallery Viewer
A zillion of these exist, but ALL that I've tried so far always focus so much more on looking through pictures you've taken with your phones camera and not with collected images for projects or reference
* for iphone, the ability to sort folders! selecting an image would fullscreen it, pinch to zoom, panning, etc, all that standard (you would think) jazz. Press and hold results in a dialogue to email, SMS, all that sharing crap, or - what i've been missing most! - save/copy to another folder!
* folders! infinitely nesting is necessary! I need to be able to make both "project > blablabla > character_sketches > melinda" folder and a "type > full_alphabet > serif" folder. And I want to copy a file from the first folder into the second in case Melinda is actually a font-based alien that I might want to use on another project someday.
* browsing as a wall of thumbnails. Back button to higher folder.
* swipe to view next image. (Localized to bottom of screen probably so it doesn't get mixed up with panning across zoomed image)
* A browser bookmarklet to save images to sync with the program (either into an unsorted folder or allowing you to select what folder you want to save it to) would be great. Synced to dropbox then you can have the phone sync from dropbox when it's online.
* a web interface or drop box app to upload scans/whatever you make yourself and doesn't come from the internet or your phones camera!
* the ability to view PSD files would be soooo good.
* obviously searching phone for photos.
Smithsonian Natural History offline reference library
I have this book and it is amazing. I would love to have an app that allows to to search or browse categories like this encyclopedia is formatted, with nice, hi-res images and those nice little descriptions. button to google search for info on organisms would be nice. With bookmarking so I can go make and draw a picture of that hyena eating a cake later, maybe. Like everything else on this list, this is an app I would like to have for creative visual reference, but in this case also for learning fun.
In a non-Smithsonian variety, a plant/animal offline database with 3D turnarounds would be so, so excellent. Actually, if you guys are aware of ANY cool reference/art books that are published in beautiful, immersive format let me know. I've got this cube of digital glory and all I want to use my 32 GIGS for is beautiful, beautiful pictures (and video because goddamn it we can MAKE books with video illustrations now, why don't we?!) Especially if they have to do with looking at & learning about creepy fishes. I just want to fill my brain up with beautiful objects when I'm on the streetcar, ok?
RT this list, comment on it if you'd also find these features amazing, and let me know if you find anything that has any similarities to anything on this list!
If you are an app designer who has any interest in collaborating on these projects please e-mail me. I've done some wireframes for a few of these and I've got a bit of a programming background but making these all by myself would be way over my head (especially since they all pretty much deal with reading different file formats..) I can't imagine that having apps like these available wouldn't help anyone but me and I'd love to be able to contribute to the making things/tech nerd community.
The illustrations for this article were originally done last year, and there were more of them - each one more clever than the last. But after several hard drive crashes and me generally being a slovenly woman, the only ones left are these, which I just scanned out of the Take Me Out of Context zine you may have seen me hawking around town. I know there was at least one more about my heart being broken. (There is always one more about my heart being broken.)
Uncomfornt Zoning Board
I am a Canzine Sardine! It is packed here despite a $5 enterance free! You shod visit, that fee gets you a bunch pf door swag, plus enterance to a crazy good time! With food downstairs! Such adorable cupcakes!
Picture above i spent last night painting up but don't have room for on my table, look for it in the sky to located me!
It's nice to not be seeking legitimate illustration work anymore, now i can draw my sullen mishappen chicks without thinking it will disqualify me from the New Yorkers good graces. Creep for the win! My comfort zone, i bask in you again.
Canzine 2011
Sunday, October 23
918 Bathurst Centre
918 Bathurst St (just north of Bloor)
1 – 7pm
$5 entry includes the fall issue of Broken Pencil.
I will be sharing a table here with the lovely Kat Verhoeven! Come by and see us, if you have zines in your heart.
Queue Entry Thunderbird Themesong
The Thunderbird Silkscreen studio has reached it's goal!
Just because the fund-raising goal is met doesn't mean you can't still donate and get some of those sweet prizes. Ordering anything from us after the campaign ends will be more complicated, since our priority will be to create the things we have already promised. This is why you should keep giving us all your money right now.
I cannot wait to start updating this blog thing objects I've silkscreened. So long in coming!
Zine Dream Follow Up, Attempt #1
I really need to sit down and do a few proper updates. I have my scanner hooked up and a new drafting table with drawers and shit now, so that should start happening once i adapt to this nine-hour-work-shift-plus-two-hour-workout schedule.
Anyway, the other thing I missed updating on was thanking everyone who came out to Zine Dream. It was awesome! My first event like that in Toronto, I met so many great people.
I stole this pic from Kat Verhoeven (you can read her article here) , my table buddy and general co-conspirator, although it was originally taken by my partner Misha Snyder, from who I will steal some photos of my actual setup to share with you.
I have terrible posture. More dumbbell reverse fly!
Sorry about all the typos, I wrote these on my iPhone.
more screenprinting: zines: no illustration to be seen.
Finally returning to my old habit of keeping this blog well maintained and topical, although it's so much more I'm Sorry You Can't Really Can't See or Participate In This Unless You Live In Toronto Type Content then the Pure, Unadulterated Drawings Of Weird Crap one would expect from me. I'm sorry about that. I do have pictures, I draw them and everything, still, but while the sadly neglected animation set takes up my studio, my scannner has been relocated to the projects. (Projects, in this case, is the shelf where I keep my art supplies, too far from the USB ports on my computer to maintain that sort of intimate, every day relationship they both so desire.) Plus, many of the images I've made over the last year ended up being put in zines instead of on the internet.
I have news on that front, though! I am reprinting many of the zines I spammed the world with at TCAF. So far I've reprinted Scared of Skin Sack & the Whole Human Meat Mess, which in the following illumination is the one of the top left:
I think since TCAF I've may have drawn enough other pictures on the same theme to make a sequel. 
So I may have one new zine available, and I'm still humming and hawing about combining the orange and grey ones into one tiny mega-zine, since they're not all that thematically dissimilar. (The next time I start a band I'm going to call it The Thematically Dissimilar. Rolls off the tongue.)
Why, you're very kind to show such an interest! (I sound like an infomercial lately. Alienating the audience. Eek.) Well, for one, you can always e-mail me and maybe I can mail them to you, old fashioned like, because mail is cool and I hear they're delivering it now. Or, you can show up at Zine Dream at the Tranzac club on August the 21st, where Kat Verhoeven and I will have a little table dishing our wares.
To get to the point, about there being drawings in this blog, I am going to post one of the short comics available in Scared of Skin Sack here after Zine Dream, as well as a few other illustrations from the zines, I think. I am also thinking I should name my next zine something a little less gross. That's what I was going for, but titles, man. They live longer than content a lot of the time.
Thunderbird Studio on Indie Go Go, for those who are just tuning in, is going really, really well. As of this post, we've raised over half our goal already. I am excited to turn this fundraising into art. On a personal note, I have been so busy lately with ambitious film-like, studio-production-house real-job prove-yourself-as-professional type heaviness. I am really grateful that I have this screen printing studio project, and things like zines and friends that keep me making art for arts sake, and making sure a good part of my skillset it still going towards expressing myself and being an artist and all those silly childish pursuits they try to scrub out of you in college. Thank goodness!
This post has too many commas and not enough pictures.
Thunderbird Studio
Thunderbird, our screen printing studio, is now raising money to finish our beautiful exposure unit, and a few other odds and ends we need to really have it done. We have an indie-go-go campaign to raise money for our opening show. The Indie Go Go account has a bunch of it's own share links, but you can also "attend the event" on facebook and share it that way, to help out!
It doesn't state it in the perks section because we assume most contributors are going to be art enthusiasts rather than artists, but if you donate anything reasonable and you're an artist in Toronto we'd be happy to arrange for you to participate in the studio, and have access to our glorious facilities.
ETA: The above illustration was miscredited, it's actually by JJ Tebrake! Kat did design the poster though, and put the whole indie go go project together. Thanks Kat!
The Ballerina featured in the National Post!
A film that I worked on was featured in the National Post! This was a fantastic film. I am so excited to see it when it when the effects are finished!
I mostly helped with set dressing & construction, but you can see me between the lines in this article as one of the three people simultaneously on the phone with the City of Toronto when we realized the costume designer's landlord had mistaken the corset - which was drying on the porch - for garbage. And still at her place helping out with last-minute costuming at 3am when Jacob and George suprised her with its inconceivable safe return. It was just completely balls-out ridiculously awesome.
Also: Everyone who worked on this film was awesome. I am not sure how many more times I can fit the word "awesome" into this post.
SPACE AND TIME
Thank you to everyone who came out to our opening! We had such a fantastic time, and everyone was really, exceptionally nice. It was especially nice to see a lot of people I know but don't get to see often, as well as STRANGERS. Thanks be to BlogTO for picking us as the best bet for art shows for the day!
The opening is over but the show is still running, so you haven't missed your chance to see our art in this beautiful building. It runs until "the end of the month", which I think is the 30th! SO GO SEE IT.
Steam Whistle Brewing, The Roundhouse, 255 Bremner Blvd., Toronto.
Monday to Thursday: Noon to 6pm
Friday and Saturday: 11am to 6pm
Sunday: 11am to 5pm
They have beer. I hear a rumour they'll give you a free sample of Steamwhistle Beer. You might have to take a tour or be exhibiting in a show, but either of those tasks sounds kind of awesome.
Paintings from By The Pound
Technique i never used before, acrylic and masking tape. It was a lot of fun.