Zombie Love

Valentine's day is upon us and despite my efforts to prepare a good design for it, things didn't end up too well and I'm fighting to make my self-imposed deadline. The first idea I had was of a zombie hugging a brain and that's what I went with.

Turns out it's much harder to draw a zombie than I originally thought. Thankfully deviantArt to the rescue, with many a tutorial on drawing a skull. Because, really, it isn't a zombie if it has an entire face, am I right? The wonderful stock of SenshiStock provided a good reference for a pose, though I couldn't exactly capture the facial expression... what with the zombie not having lips and eyelids. Still, I took this nice lady's lovely stock and doodled all over it so I could get some skull practice.

You know just up there when I said it's hard to draw a zombie? It's even harder to make one look cute. My first attempt ended up looking too creepy and I was about ready to scrap the whole thing. Decided against it, thankfully. No point in giving up on the first go and all that. Even if your zombie looks like a horror reject version of the Phantom of the opera...

Yeah, don't look at him too long, you might have bad dreams. The writing that somehow made into the scan says "Bye bye", because I like to write comments in my notebooks. Hard habit to break, let me tell you!

Anyway, after much a-doodlin', erasing and re-doodling, a cute, happy zombie was... well, not born... transformed/transfigured... made! I'm gonna go with made. As a little sketch, he moved into Illustrator and underwent some adjustments, a lot of colouring and detailing. Lost some hair in the process, gained a lot of spotting and a brain in his jar of love. With some lettering added to convey the message I was trying to put out there for Valentine's day, "Zombie Love" was done.

So happy Valentine's day to all love-birds and happy chocolate 50% off day to everybody who'll shop on the 15th. Hope to see you in the queue!

A blog wouldn't be a blog without some shameless self-promotion so "Zombie Love" is available with or without letters at my Zazzle shop.

Getting a head start

I had spent a lot of time on Etsy, before my Chrome started crashing it and read quite a bit of the Seller Handbook. I found it immensely useful and would recommend it to anybody who would like to try and make a go of their crafting skills. It's written in a regular, human way without preaching or patronizing. The Seller Handbook (ESH from now on) is the reason I started this blog and also one of the motivators to take the time and learn to be better with my hands :)

Anyway, ESH says that you should prepare for the coming season before the season actually hits. So, for example, December 15th is not a good day to post your new Christmas themed designs, since, with settling orders, payments and shipping, the item might be late arriving. If you still want to risk it, here's a useful bit of reading for you, my fellow procrastinators. Still, better to avoid the stress, right?

I had wanted to do something holiday themed and even got in a bit of drawing in. Yes, as always, it was hamsters. This particular little guy was going to be a little ninja, trying to hit another hamster with a candy cane. I hadn't quite figured out what the other hamster would be doing to fight off the attack, but it would have been something epic, by all means.

The next idea was for a hamster stealing some chocolate chip cookies. I quite liked his happy little face and the one damaged ear was a little tribute to my current fluffy buddy, Treesha. I thought to myself that ok, this is too many hamsters, isn't it? I'm really pushing it. So I decided to take a hamster chill-pill and just not do anything for this holiday season. Yes, they're fuzzy and adorable, but you *can* have too much of a good thing.

Two decisions were made. One - the number of hamster designs should be equal to or less than 1. Two - I will prepare for each holiday/event/markable occasion on time. For 2013 (unless the world ends tomorrow), I've made a list of dates that require some sort of marking, when they are and when to start preparing themed products for them. You'd think this would be easy, but I assure you, it isn't. Many different holidays are marked throughout the world. I'm sure I'll be leaving much out, so please, let me know if you think I should add something. Also thanks to these guys for keeping their super fun site.

FEBRUARY

Groundhog day - February 2nd - January (just for giggles, I had to list this one)

Valentines day - February 14th - January

MARCH

Women's day - March 8th - January

Pi day - March 14th - February

St Patrick's day - March 17th - February

International Earth day - March 20th - February

Easter - March/April - February

APRIL

Mathematics Awareness month

Sexual Assault Awareness month

Autism Awareness month

MAY

Lupus Awareness month

Asthma Awareness month

World Press Freedom day - May 3rd - April

International Nurses day- May 12th - April

Mother's day - May 12th - April

International Museums day - May 18th - April

Towel day - May 25th - April

JUNE

LGBT Pride month

World Environment day - June 5th - May

Father's day - June 16th - May

JULY

Bastille day - July 14th - June

SEPTEMBER

International Literacy day - September 8th - August

International Talk Like A Pirate day - September 19th - August

OCTOBER

Breast Cancer Awareness month

World Vegetarian day - October 1st - September

Halloween - October 31st - September

NOVEMBER

Movember

COPD Awareness month

Thanksgiving - November 22nd - October

DECEMBER

Seasonal Depression Awareness month

World AIDS Awareness day - December 1st - November

New Year's Eve - December 31st - November

Ye ol' grande opening

And thus most social media was conquered! 

A few days ago I got a message from the nice folks over at zazzle.com. I've seen this mail before, "Your item has been sold". Yeah, yeah, give it a rest already, I know I only sold one t-shirt. And that was to a friend who was being kind. "Curse you, zazzle!", I think and promptly proceed to their page to edit my account settings and stop all this once an for all. Imagine my surprise when the "Royalties" section opens up and I see that the messages were, in fact, informing me of different purchases by different people! I was overjoyed, to say the least. Even now, two days later, I still can't stop smiling when I think of it. 

Somewhere out there there is a little piece of my design being shared and enjoyed... Does it get better than that? 

Riding this emotional high, I decided to finally open up my pages. Thinking about it and planning and just doing nothing was left behind.'About' sections updated, ID images cleaned up and sorted, banners adjusted, I took a deep breath and clicked...

http://twitter.com/Plooshkin

Twitter is a bit of a sore spot for me. Why? My Chrome doesn't like it. Most online advice says to erase your cookies, but that won't help if there are no cookies to be found. The page would become red, I would be informed that my certificate was all wrong and all I could do was turn back. But where one browser fails, another will pull through. Faithful old FireFox to the rescue! In a few short clicks, my Twitter was updated and running. All that remains is to find some good accounts to follow and connect with friends. 

http://www.facebook.com/pl00shkin

The Facebook page has a somewhat unfortunate history.  I had a spare account and started making the page with that one. When that account got shut down, the yet unpublished page was lost somewhere in the ether, taking the domain name with it. Writing to Facebook's help center provided no help. I still feel wonky about using zeros instead of Os. Hopefully, people will still manage to find it and not think badly of the shop just because of a bit of 133t speak :)
My friends have been very supportive of this endeavor, giving little mentions and liking the page. Thanks, guys!

http://www.zazzle.com/plooshkin*

The Zazzle page has been in operation for quite a while now. I had this little hamster design and I felt it would make a good t-shirt, so I posted it, never really expecting it to amount to much. Seems other folks thought differently and bought that same design.

When you stop by the page, make sure to go to the "Hamster Rainbow" link on the left hand side of the screen. There are many colourful little guys available there. I didn't want to post them all on the front page because even hamster cuteness can be overwhelming in those numbers. The available colours are: aquamarine, blue, brown, cyan, green, grey, lime, original (orange), pink, purple, red and yellow.

The page will go under reconstruction to match the other pages some time before Xmas.

http://plooshkin.deviantart.com/

About 7 years ago I was pointed in the direction of deviantArt, to a friend's gallery. Some 3 minutes later, after I'd figured out what the page was about, I was signing up for an account. My old page is very close to my heart, it shows how I've learned and grown, practiced different media, sucked and rocked all the same. If you wish to visit it, here's a link.

The current page, though sparse in content, has more finished works that were done with more care and attention to detail, not in a rush to just post something! 

Oh my dear Etsy, how my heart longs for the day when you and I will join together. Alas, our love will have to wait for me to get a credit card and PayPal account.

It is unfortunate when you are a struggling student with no regular source of income and hence no way of getting your mits on a credit card of your very own. Local policies are very strict on this count, so there is no way around it. What's more, in each and every bank I've been to, online transactions with anybody except the bank itself were highly discouraged, followed by hushed warnings of "It's unsafe...".

For now the Etsy shop is open but sadly vacant, devoid of all possibilities for growth and joy until I can hitch a ride on one of my friends' accounts... with their knowledge, of course ;)