It's Christmas and I'm celebrating it with the one I love Florida Panhandle style this year. Quite the change from Victoria in December and not a flake of snow in sight. The temperature hasn't been THAT different though, I wish I had brought down gloves, a scarf and warm slippers!
To all those readers celebrating a holiday this time of the year (and everyone else too!) Joanne and I want to wish you all the happiness, peace and joy we can.
Whew! Has it really been almost two weeks since my last post?
So sorry dear readers... the confluence of house (and cat) sitting for friends, Christmas shopping, house (rental only, unfortunately) shopping and viewing, work deadlines, preparing for my trip to the States for the holidays, packing (or lack thereof) for the move (not the trip) and other junk like dat dere has left the old blog muscles to tuckered to post!
Luckily at least a couple or three of the above aren't going concerns anymore so I can fit an entry or two in before I jet off to sunnier shores. In the meantime, I just posted a few images from a swell 1954 Simpson's-Sears Christmas catalog over at my Flickr photostream.
The hype surrounding the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler (see last post) prompted me to dig up this pre-computer era (for me, at least!) moldy oldie from my art tomb to share avec vous all this week.
From approximately 1991 to 1999 I designed, illustrated, hand-lettered (completely at first, then just mostly), and hand colour-separated the colour covers and black and white interior illustrations for a local municipality's parks and recreation quarterly catalogue.
I used pen and ink on paper, Letratone adhesive film for the grays, four sheets of Amberlith film (I cut them with an X-Acto knife and laid them over the art to designate where each colour and colour screen (lighter colour) was to go), hand lettered text and logos, and personally delivered the art, in a big cardboard folder I would make for each project, to the local printer.
The example above (front cover) and below (back cover, natch!) are from one of my last - illustrated in mid-1998. These guides were printed in two colour (plus black) on messy newsprint, but I spent a CRAZY amount of time on most of them trying to get all I could out of the process.
I had been using a Mac for years, first for the small educational company I did animation for, and then later (starting a year before this cover came out) using an earlier version of Photoshop while assisting/collaborating with a fellow illustrator. But I was still more than a year away from buying my own computer and still did things by hand, BY CHOICE!
This cover's a bit of an anomaly as I did use a photocopier to duplicate some of the figures, and the folks at Saanich Recreation had just begun to provide me some computer laid-out text on the back cover which was printed out and cut and pasted (with scissors and REAL paste for those youngsters out there!) by me onto the back.
It was all incredibly labour-intensive for the measly fee I charged, and I shudder when I recall it all now. But it was pretty cool to think at the time that tens of thousands of copies of each of these labours of love would then be showing up in the mailboxes of folks in the area.
By the time this issue came out photographs were beginning to replace the more expensive spot illustrations I provided, and a glossy cover was in the offing. I left as my career began to expand to broader areas and the guide took the opportunity to change format. Luckily I was able to get back most of my original art from this client, so I may post some scans of the hand separation process in the future.
I still hand draw on paper 95% of my work, and hand colour and letter when possible. But it's comforting to know that other options are now available if the deadline or budget doesn't allow.
With the Winter Olympics rapidly approaching in nearby Vancouver and Whistler B.C. it's not surprising that one of the jobs I have on the go right now is a winter sports-themed children's magazine spread due for a coincidental release in January/February 2010.
Above are a couple of pencil sketches from that project in their original form. Sometimes when I have a lot of little spot illos on a larger spread I rough them out on a number of different pieces of paper at different sizes (fer instance... the roughs above won't be next to each other in the final) and then composite them together later. That way I'm not as constrained and can concentrate on the individual elements. Of course I then have to make them work together, but I have more choices about how I do it.
I'll post this section of the final printed piece when the magazine hits the stands.
On Halloween Saturday two weeks ago you would have found, amongst the assembled throng of Klingons, zombies, and fans of the superly-abled at the first annual Victoria Comic Book Convention, a respectably-sized dealer's room filled with comic book ephemera... and little ole' me... drooling.
Thanks to a free ticket from a friend (mucho apprecianado, Bri!) that came with an invitation to act as a tour guide (I've done the comic convention thing a number of times in the past and speak fluent geek) I checked out my home town's most recent venture at starting a lasting Con. Hopefully it'll make it to "Second Annual", and from the looks on the ghostly white faces, not to mention the hordes of costumed undead, folks seemed to be having a good time. But the highlight for me was getting to see, in glorious two-dimensions and beautiful black and white, the piece of original art pictured at the top of this post.
On display courtesy of Gareth Gaudin, of the best darned comic book store in all of Canada (offically!) Legends Comics, this pen & ink illustration is from the cover to one of my favourite 7" records of the 1990s. A split four song EP by two of Victoria's music legends...the cheekily-monikered Bum, and multiskilled producer/musician Scott Henderson.
Bum's awesomely-awesome brand of rockin'-pop-with-a-punk-twist was partially responsible for inspiring my own 1990s punk/rock/pop band (so much so that I recruited their first drummer), and we recorded with Scott a number of times for our 7"s and compilation releases, so you would think that would be enough to make me interested in this piece of local music history. But this is one of a number of Bum releases with artwork provided by the amazingly talented Pat McEown, one of the most skilled illustrators I've ever been lucky enough to know. Former Victoria resident Pat, who has worked in the big leagues of the comic, advertising, and animation industry should be a household name. He's very highly underrated.
Despite seeing Richard Hatch, Margot Kidder, and a gaggle of Star Trek actors at the Con... getting a good gander at this gem was the highlight of my nerdy day.
Forgive me friends, it's been over a month since my last Flickr post.
This was due partially to the busy-ness of things lately creeping into my free time. BUT... mainly because I've just not picked up a lot of vintage books and magazines over the past year due to...
- Almost depleting my Charlie Harper-filled stash of Ford Times publications from the 1950s purchased at the Paper Show also a couple years ago. But on that account, at least, there's enough for two last sets of images starting with the batch I uploaded yesterday!
- Recently finishing off a stash of old books and ephemera from my last US road trip a year ago.
Things should pick up again soon though, with the big bi-annual Paper Show at the end of the month (I was out of the country when the last one occurred), and a cross-continent road trip/move happening in the Spring that could afford the opportunity to hopefully run across some some vintage paper on the way back from Florida to B.C.
And even if I don't find much in the way of things to post to Flickr at least I'll get a wife and a lifetime of love out of the deal.
Once again it's time to shout from the street corners the overwhelmingly copacetic news that the new Know magazine has hit the newsstands and mailboxes of your favourite 6 to 9 year old science fan! This issue's all about the fury, feathered, funtastic fauna from that former phase of the far-flung past we all call prehistory. Above is a small portion of my regular two-page Know Fun puzzles and activities spread from said magazine that this month features all manner of Cenozoic beasties and birdies.
As November approaches it's time to welcome the cooler weather (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, of course), the slightly less busy downtown streets (until the inevitable Christmas crowds take over) and the new issue of Kayak, Canada's History Magazine for Kids.
Since those of you living in Canada can see the final cover on your newsstands, or in your mailbox, and the rest of you (albeit very small) on their website - I though I'd share this alternate colour version.
I have a predilection for limited colour palettes so I sometimes prepare two mock-ups of an illustration - one in full colour and one a la Glen. Usually, as in this case and with good reason, the more colourful will win out. But it's still fun to share the "might have beens" as well.
If, like little ol' me, you're a big fan of the spooky person behind the soon-to-be-related (legally!) Yay, It's Another Blog then you should take a ghoulish gander over at my pal Neato Coolville's wonderful Weird Hollow blog.
If I had been presented with the opportunity as a ten year old to see two of the stars of 1978's Battlestar Galactica in person, in my town, I would have been beside myself with geeky glee!
Now, thirty one years later, not quite so much.
Still, Jane Seymour and Richard Hatch will be in Victoria for unrelated public appearances on Halloween weekend. So I guess that's something.
Now if Ed Begley Jr were to also make a stop here on his book tour that weekend? That'd be a whole 'nother kettle of fish...
After twelve hours of heavy rain, look who ventured up three floors of the outside of my apartment building to greet me as I pulled back my living room curtains this morning!?
I've noticed a startling element of similarity amongst (and throughout. Also, between and betwixt) many of my illustrations that get revised by art directors on magazine or advertising jobs. I don't know whether it's a subconscious decision, or a sinister AD plot cooked up at their secretive annual A.D.M.A.N (Art Directors for Malevolence And Nogoodnikness) meetings, held in an underground lair buried hundreds of feet beneath the statue of David Ogilvy at the corner of 11th & W47th in downtown Manhattan, just to drive me crazy.
But here it is...
Facial hair.
They don't like facial hair.
Case study #1: The illustration at the top of this post? Turned down in favour of altering this nutty professor-type character to a female nutty professor-type character.
No facial hair.
Case study #2: This early astronomer guy for an online ad campaign? Changed to a British sea captain guy with, yes, a powdered wig, but... NO facial hair. See where I'm going? Huh? HUH?!
Case study #3: This be-goateed bebop professor for a kid's book cover? Replaced by a MOUSE! Okay... arguably the mouse has some hair on it's face, but since it's the same hair that covers the rest of it's scrawny little body I say it's categorically NOT facial hair!
So... what have we we learned today? That I only came up with this theory whilst searching for a thread to tie together these three examples of unused illustrations I randomly pulled out of my files, and which has no basis in reality?
I think not!
"Youse draws yer beards, youse takes yer chances." Take it to heart my friends... take it to heart.
It allows people (me) to talk (ramble on) and see (in a pixelated way) across long distances (from British Columbia to Florida) for free (free!) to friends and relatives (my fiancee) in a futuristic videophone sort-of-way that was still sci-fi for most of us 20 years ago.
But sometimes it goes bad.
Very bad...
Yikes! I think that's the worst picture of me on the intertubes since this one!
At least the digitallizerated version of me below is more colourful...
I guess one of the side-effects of having a blog getting SLIGHTLY more popular (in relative terms anyway) is unwanted attention. I'm currently down in the bunker in the middle of my first big Spam attack!
Oh, sure... I've had a handful of people post thinly veiled ads as comments here and there over the life of this here electronical-newsletter-type-dealy. But some fine folks are letting me know how much they like my blog by repeatedly commenting "Credit Society" over and over ad nauseam in Simplified Han Chinese on many of my current and past posts. So I'm spending my time right now taking out all the garbage.
I have word verification, but I guess it's not good enough. I've added comment moderation for older posts, but I hope not to have to add it to new ones. We'll just have to wait and see.
Thanks for all those non "Credit Society" comments though! Keep 'em coming!
I'm still weeding out large parts of my collection in anticipation of an upcoming move. On the slate right now?... part of my vintage tiki / Hawaiiana collection including mugs, glasses, shirts, records, figures, and more. Photo above only of a portion.
And the record riddance rolls on relentlessly as my Cool & Strange collection from the 1950s-1970s gets pared down by 1000 albums or more!
For all the details, more photos, and pricing check out these ads. And thanks for shopping at Glen-Mart!
A big THANK YOU to everyone who stopped by GLENMULLALY.COM... The BLOG! in the month of September for pushing the number of visits to a new record high of 1310. The previous high was 1,272 in August, but things had been slower over the late spring and summer due to a dearth of posts while in Florida (a choice I'd make any day!)
So muchoappreciandos to all you... hmmm... I just got an idea for a contest! Come up with a name for the people who enjoy and visit regularlyGLENMULLALY.COM... The BLOG!
No... "misdirected", "losers", "Glen Mullaly" and other such entries will not be accepted!
I'm looking for a name for fans of this site. Along the lines of "Wreck Fans / Wreckies" for devotees of Cake Wrecks. Or "Boingers" (I may have just made that up) for followers of Boing Boing. Enter via the comments section at the bottom of this post.
The prize?! The undying thanks of the 1300 visitors (or 130 visitors who check back 10 times each if you want to sound less dramatic) to this site each month for having a name they can call themselves in public now.
Contest ends October 6th! Now... have at it!
*Note new contest end date! Get those entries in now!
In mid-September my fiancee and I took a day trip over to Vancouver from Victoria, necessitating (unless we wanted to fly, or grease up like the appropriately named Fin Donnelly and swim the 45 kms across the Georgia Strait - he did it in under 9 hours!) the normally 1 hour and 35 minute voyage via BC Ferries.
See her fantasteriffic blog for details of the trip itself, and then come on back for the pulse-pounding (well... softly pounding in a very sleepy sort of way) tale of our FOUR hour return trip on the final 9pm sailing that evening/night/morning!
Now this (below) is how you are supposed to park on the 500 vehicle car decks of the Spirit of British Columbia (largest vessel in the largest ferry fleet in the world dontchaknow?). Which is how we did before heading on up to the cafeteria for some soup and hot chocolate. It had been a good but long day (up since 5am), rainy, tons of driving and walking, and we were plain tuckered out. Not to mention that we arrived early at the ferry terminal that evening and had been waiting for an hour and a quarter already before loading.
So as the ship sat still docked at 9:10pm, and as I supped on poulet avec nouille fantastique we were somewhat surprised to hear the chief purser come over the inter-ship communications announcing in a muffled voice ... "Due to a motor vehicle accident on the main car deck our departure will be delayed. We will keep you updated."
"Hmm" we, and many others, said to ourselves. "That's unusual..." If it's a minor fender bender it shouldn't have caused much, if any, delay. It must have been something more serious, maybe involving an injury. Oh, well... minor setback.
Life continued as normal on a tired rainy night. Finished up the soup, talk about our day, look at cool stuff picked up at Daiso, droopy eyelids abound.
15 minutes later the call of nature sent a text message to my bladder and I thought I'd kill two birds with one plate glass window by checking out the incident that was adding a half hour to our anticipated WACB (Warm and Cozy Bed) e.t.a.
Leaving Joanne to the comfort of the "Coastal Cafe" and a magazine or two I jauntily left on my appointed tasks. A few minutes later found me making my way down to the bottom level of the ferry and, after walking to the business end of the ship, this was the unusual sight that greeted me...
"What, pray tell, have we here?"
"I do believe that semi-trailer truck is jammed into the loading doors of the ship!" Let me take a closer look..."
"Yup!"
It appeared that this misbegotten carrier of freight had inextricably wedged itself (well... I assume that the driver helped a bit!) into the loading doors of the ship, preventing them from closing. Can't move trailer? - can't close doors. Can't close doors? - can't move ship. Can't move ship? - can't get our heroes back into bed at a reasonable hour!
Now, I know that loading a 1992 Toyota Corolla is much easier than loading a 48ft trailer. And since I don't have a Class 1 air brakes license I wouldn't want to pass judgment (although it appears I'm about to!). But how in the heckeroony do you A: drive into the loading doors of BC Ferries largest vessel, and B: in an attempt to get free only wedge yourself in deeper?
After rubbernecking for a bit I trudged back up the four flights of stairs to rejoin my wonderful fiancee and fill her in on the not-so-nifty news while awaiting further developments. Within what was I'm sure a short time, but seemed much longer due the curved time-space complexities and quantum field theories that come into play when you're trapped on board a ship with little to do on a rainy night and a far-off down duvet is warmly calling you...
... we were once again graced by the dulcet tones of BC Ferries personnel over the ship's loudspeakers.
This time the head honcho himself spoke to us in a disembodied, and somewhat apologetic, tone with the promised update. The captain stated that it seemed the semi was indeed stuck fast to the doors and, in fact, the ship could not sail until that situation had been rectified. To wit, a tow truck had been dispatched from points unknown to attempt to free the beached behemoth. Unfortunately the anticipated arrival time of said rescue vehicle was not until at least 10pm!
Sleepy disgruntlement ensued. Even the proffering of free and gratis coffee, tea, and fountain drinks (that's sody-pop to you and me!) could not quell the air of somnambulous discontentment that was growing. Now, if they had offered us free video games in the ship's two arcades... that might have been a different kettle of fish! But alas...
Around 10pm I headed back down to take gander at the hoped-for progress, leaving my much smarter partner to take up residence in a padded chair in one of the main passenger areas. "You go have fun" was how I remember her dismissing me (I recall some shooing, but that may be embellishment on my part) to once again take up my photographic pursuit of (and I can't decide which works better)... " The Case of the Shmooshed Semi", or "The Mystery of the Stuck Truck".
Sometime after 10:15, to an ever increasing crowd of onlookers with nothing else to do, the tardy tow truck finally arrived, and proceeded to hook up his winch to the back corner of the trailer. A BC Ferries employee positioned himself with a charged fire hose in what I imaginatively, and very wrongly, assumed was in case of a massive Michael Bay-worthy explosion from the highly volatile cargo (I'm guessing here for dramatic effect) the truck might have been hauling...
In fact he just wet down the deck to make it easier to slide the vehicle over. And that's exactly what happened...
The tow truck slid over to the unmoved semi.
With thoughts of dancing sugarplums fading fast in my head I once again walked (although little slower with each successive trip) back to the upper decks to wait out our fate.
Fast forward through a couple more trips down to the main car deck, a groggy visit to the gift shop to make fun of the goofy souvenirs, and one or two more restroom breaks (there was free pop after all!) to 11pm... two hours past our scheduled departure time. With nothing else to do Joanne finally decided to go see what all the hubbub was about. This time, wisely taking the elevator down, we arrived just in time to watch as either a larger, or better anchored, tow truck finally succeeded in pulling the wayward trailer away from the car deck doors!
As the echos of squealing tires reverberated throughout the cavernous innards of our mobile metal marine motel a halfhearted "YAY!" rose up from the three dozen or so pooped passengers present. "We is free!" they exclaimed! (or at least that's how I choose to remember it. But I was really tired). I suspect, however, the twelve foot gash down the side of the smashed-up semi will not be free when the repair bill comes back from the shop.
Now only 15 more minutes to check out the doors, a 95 minute sea voyage, 10 minutes to dock, and a 30 minute drive from the terminal to home.
"Yay!"
So... although I'm tempted to say that this is where the story only starts getting interesting (I was going to regale yous all with tantalizing tales of high seas hijackings, run-ins with the law, and lost house keys) the truth is that we slept in the car for the rest of the ferry trip, and eventually, and uneventfully, arrived home safe and somewhat sound about 1:15 in the a.m.
Elapsed time from arrival at the terminal to Victoria that night?... 5 1/2 hours.
Elapsed time from the front door to the warm duvet and sweet slumber?... 5 1/2 seconds.
Yep... the magical day that comes 'round but four times a year has occurred once again - no... not the changing of the seasons. Not the new fiscal quarter. Not even TV's sweeps week! - it's Toy Show Day! The four largest toy shows and sales in Western Canada (and possible the Pacific Northwest of North America) take place in our collector-rich hometown of Victoria, B.C.
This time I went in planning not to buy much, if anything at all, if I could help it. But once again the temptation was just too great. The five large boxes of $1 items at one dealer accounted for most of my cave-ins, but a few other siren songs called me and my wallet irresistibly towards a rendezvous avec treasured vintage paper and plastic items.
Although I didn't require it today I'm sure others would have appreciated the sentiment behind this vintage advertising sign at one table...
So here we find the end result - two-thirds of today's haul (some Mad magazines, a vintage Star Wars Probot, and a couple more kids books are missing in action from this spread). Although a few of these pieces will be headed for hopefully immediate resale, the rest are happy additions to my menagerie. Grand total... $22!
Left to right... 1977 Star Wars birthday card, birthday invitation and stationary, 1978 Star Wars die-cast landspeeder, vintage Star Wars bubble bath container, 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind & Star Wars movie programs, two 1969 Whizzer tops, 1976 Micronauts Crater Cruncher, vintage water rocket, beautiful 1965 children's book, vintage children's record, Star Wars book & record set.
Born with a pencil in his hand (after
four unsuccessful attempts doctors
managed to transplant it to just above
his right ear) Canadian Glen Mullaly
draws neato pictures for kids of all
ages from the swanky west coast
studio that he shares with his
awesomely-understanding wife and
their spectacularly indifferent cat.
Find out more at GlenMullaly.com.
Hey, y'all!
