The Happiest Day of my Life!

The geek-out honeymoon at DisneyWorld and Kennedy Space Center wasn't too shabby either!

On Hiatus?!

Well... if it wasn't obvious from the scarcity of new posts here at GMDC...TB wonderful things have been occupying my time recently. Let's make a list, shall we?...

-Packed up all my worldly belongings (including my surprisingly heavy toy, book, vintage magazine, and vintage record collections) for the first time in twelve years.

-Moved to Joanne and my new (old) house. YAY! (I'm living out of boxes until Joanne gets here. See below for details).

- Crazily rushing around getting last minute travel plans made.

- Crazily rushing around getting last minute work deadlines done.

- Crazily rushing around getting last minute wedding preparations done.

Because... I'm off to Florida once again. This time though, I'm coming back with a wife. (I hope!)

So, the above reasons... plus the wedding, honeymoon, packing up the remainder of Joanne's house, a short road trip to meet the extended family, and a two-week road trip across the US and up to Canada I think are sufficient reasons to put the blog on hold for a bit.

I hope to still send off the occasional missive. But I expect they'll be few and far between for the next two or three months.

Thanks for stopping by, have a great late winter and spring, and see you soon!

New Know for January!

It's that time again boys and girls... the new issue of Know Magazine has hit the stands and mailboxes of eager science-minded youngsters across Canada (and soon all of North America - details to follow in the future!)

This issue is focused on, not coincidentally due to the small sporting meet occurring in neighbouring Vancouver and Whistler next month, winter sports.

In November I posted a detail of some of the pencil roughs from one of the four puzzles I created for my regular Know Fun feature. So here's the finished images from the same game. (For the instructions and the whole Know Fun spread you'll just have to pick up the mag. I've got to make a living y'know!)

Post-Christmas Post

Christmas and New Years were fantastic with my sweetie down Florida way, but things are wrapping up for this, my last trip down that I won't be coming back with a new wife. So for the next few months the activity level here at ye olde blog will be even lighter than the light level it's been recently... with two moves (one of 3000 kms!), a wedding, honeymoon, immigration paperwork and all those minor details to deal with.

So thanks for your patience. I'll be checking in occasionally with updates on life, but it might be well into March before things pick up around these here parts.

In the meantime, and to cap off the holiday season, Joanne has posted the front of the Christmas card I made for her this year (we'll spare youse all the romantic mush from the inside!) over at her swellerific Flickr stream. Have a wonderful 2010!

Glen

Retro Southern Robot Christmas!

Hey, y'all!

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.

And funky retro robots.

Don't forget the funky retro robots.

Christmas Craziness!

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.

Enjoy!

Diggin' Through the Vault: Vintage Winter Sports Style

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.