As it's Halloween, I thought I'd post some things I'd learnt today that are tenuously relevant.


1.) The Vampire Squid exists!

Kinda beautiful-scary, no?

Its scientific name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which literally translated means "The Vampire Squid from Hell"!

No, really!

I should like to call it Trevor, instead. That's a much nicer name.


2.) Cotard's Syndrome is a condition whereby sufferers believe they are dead. They literally turn up to their GPs, complaining of having died.



3.) The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge may have passed, but is not forgotten.

4.) I want to try this beer!

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Check out my Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/capndred

Happy Halloween!

It's almost that time of year where people dress up scarily/sluttily, and it's ok for children to threaten you in order to extort things from you.

I'm not actually working it for once! I usually am, either DJing or performing. I think I shall be having a chilled one with the girlfriend and her littl'un.

Have fun everyone!

-Curt-

Follow me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/curtisallenillustrator
And have a peek at my shop: www.etsy.com/shop/capndred

Etsy

It's harder work than I realised running an Etsy shop, and I only have 6 items in mine at the moment: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CapnDred .
At the moment, it's only Coggingtons stuff, but more is planned.

Things like SEO can be befuddling - knowing just how to write tags in a way to minimize redundancy but maximise exposure. Then the various ways of trying to get the shop noticed such as plugging it on Facebook (but without becoming an insufferable bore).
Then there's trying to figure out how Twitter works to plug it there, and the same with Instagram and Tumblr which I only really use because I wanted a good picture sharing social media site to plug my cards on.
Pinterest, which I had been using for myself now feels like there might be a way to use it creatively to sell some cards but I'm darned if I know what way that is!

There's Etsy's own forums, which can be fun and have a wealth of information on them. Simply being active there gets me some notice and is useful for getting views and some favourites, but doesn't seem to be translating into sales yet.

Then there's good old word of mouth, and now I'm selling at craft fairs too! So I need to get some more business cards printed up, that actually include my Etsy shop address.

Then I need to optimise my shop itself, making sure my banner and logos are good, making sure my prices are right, making sure my shop's policies are fair and legal, making sure my descriptions are accurate, yet enticing, and yet optimised for SEO, making sure my photos are attractive both as standalones, and displayed together on my page, or taken out of context and displayed in an Etsy treasury or frontpage.

This is not to mention the actual process of creating new items.

All of this is perpetual. It is never finished, because it is never right. Stats pages tell me what's being looked at and by how many people and how they found my shop or products and there is always something to tweak for my old products, and then more monitoring as I give figurative birth to a new product and try to mould it's development in the market. There is always something more that can be done and attending to it is addictive. I often find myself up late at night tweaking.

I've learnt masses about marketing and promotion for a small business and I find the actual learning and processes fun, but I need to make sure I don't disappear down the rabbit hole completely.

Harrassment

Yesterday, I saw this video through a link on Elite Daily.

It put me in mind of when I used to play the British-made Grand Theft Auto games where walking through the streets of its virtual, fictional American cities, as a male character you'd attract all sorts of comments, and overhear all sorts of other comments between the game's computer controlled characters.
I remember thinking the comments seemed over the top, and were probably a British developer's exaggeration of what American cities sounded like.

This video makes me think maybe I'm wrong.

It seems to me that this kind of cat-calling has little to do with trying to actually get a date or any kind of romance started. Realistically, how often would this approach have succeeded for these guys. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if I actually did it, I would have a veritable harem going on right now.
However, I doubt it. I think this sort of calling is about establishing dominance. It's about establishing dominance over the woman in question, and about establishing alphaness in the presence of other males. It shows loudly that you are straight, that you are attracted to the socially acceptable "right" kind of woman, and that you have no fear about making this known. By shouting at this woman, they are staking a claim and reminding the woman, the generally physically weaker of the sexes, and the historically less-empowered of the sexes, that she is vulnerable and could be "had".
This sort of behaviour just never occurs to me. It's not like it's an impulse I fight down, or an urge I have but struggle with overcoming the nerves to do it. It just doesn't occur.

Yes - some of the guys are just asking, "how you doing?". You could argue they're just being friendly. They're just making conversation. You could. And I'm not going to say absolutely that those were their only motives. That would be unfair. But I think it would be naive to assume that they had nothing on their mind other than befriending another human being. I would suggest that remaining seated with your mates as a woman walks purposefully by and shouting "how you doing today?" at her doesn't suggest a genuine interest in either friendship or romance so much as a desire to look alpha in front of your mates.
Though it is silly and a running joke, there's a reason it's Joey's catcphrase on 'Friends'. It's a line.

As for the guys who walk alongside her, that's just creepy. The one guy seems to feel that it's his God-given right to be responded to by an absolute stranger who showed no interest in an interaction, and furthermore like it's his right to claim her telephone number.
The guy who just walks with her in silence for several minutes I have no idea about. It almost seems as if he wants to intimidate her into responding to him so that she made the first move. I wouldn't be surprised if after she told him to back off, he had a go at her involving the phrase, "it's a free country", thereby reaffirming a protective belief he holds that women approach him all the time but they all turn out to be crazy.

But I'm extrapolating, perhaps unfairly.

I can only imagine how horrible this feels. As a man, the nearest thing I've had happen is for a man to call out to me asking for a cigarette, or spare change or something, and then proceed to follow me and keep asking after I've said "no". I'll be honest, I've been nervous in these situations. I don't know when or if they'll leave me alone, and if they'll get nasty or violent if I continue declining. I spend my time then wondering if ignoring them, continuing declining politely, or getting angry back at them is the best way to end the situation.
That's over a cigarette I don't have to give or be taken.
This isn't over the prospect of a sexual experience I DO have to give or be taken.
And we all know how sexual thoughts can short circuit some men's thinking. It's certainly done some pretty stupid things to my own thinking before now and I've made some bad decisions in this state before.

Through this video, I've become aware of the Hollaback charity - http://www.ihollaback.org/, dedicated to ending street harassment. I don't yet know how they plan to do that, but I see they are raising money to make videos like this, organise for speakers to talk on this, and generally raise awareness. Maybe they're combating the argument that "I'm just being friendly," or "You look nice. Why shouldn't I tell you?" by pointing out that no - it's not friendly and it makes people uncomfortable when you do that so stop it.

Follow me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/CurtisAllenIllustrator
Visit my shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/capndred

#ChocCoinGate

Search for ChocCoinGate. Go on. I'll wait.

Did you know Cadbury made chocolate coins? I work for Cadbury World and I didn't.
(Maybe I'm just a remiss employee, but I don't think so).

Search for #choccoingate on Twitter to gauge public response to the news that Cadbury isn't making chocolate coins anymore, or look at Birmingham Updates' Facebook post and check out the comments.

Am I alone in thinking this is ridiculous? If your Christmas is ruined so easily, you should probably take a good hard look at how you celebrate Christmas.
This has been picked up on by several local and national newspapers including broadsheets. Is this news? A confectioner is discontinuing one (and not one of the iconic ones) of of it's hundred of product lines. Why is this national news?

People are strange.


EDIT: Yahoo have it about right, here.


Check out my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/curtisallenillustrator
And my Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/capndred

Always learning!

I am currently designing a greetings card for someone. I can't put the design in progress up on here until after the card has been given to its recipient, obviously but I can chat a little about it here.

Last night, I sat up far too late. I wanted to get the card finished, or as near to finished as I could last night and mostly achieved that.

The image on the card is set in space and I had been putting off doing the background because I thought it would be massively time-consuming and hard going. So I cast about on the interwebs to see what I could see regarding spacey backgrounds that don't need a photo.

The result allowed me to do this, which I am very happy withs:

The gaps in the starfield are mostly covered by picture elements in the finished piece.

Now this is where I get twitchy about Photoshop. I always used to draw and paint the old-fashioned way where if there was a mark on the paper, it was because I'd physically put it there. With a drawing tablet and photoshop, when I'm using plain brushes, I feel that's ok. It's not "cheating". Using textures was something it took me a while to feel comfortable with using. The effects you can get off them are brilliant though so I have started using them. I try to use my own photos as a texture where possible, rather than download textures/photo references.

The starfield above was mostly done by applying a "noise" filter to a black background, then manipulating it in various ways. I didn't physically place any of those stars so is that ok?

I drew a circle for the planet, then used a bit of basic brush and erase, applied a texture and Photoshop's spherising effects, embossing, glow effects and various other things to create the planet. Is that ok?

I've not really experimented with different brushes and custom brushes much, but I know you can get great effects form them. Is that cheating?

What do you think?

Please do leave me a comment with your thoughts on whether this is cheating.

What is life?!

I have just spent the last couple of hours trying to sleep, all to no avail. Which is ironic because I spent the few hours immediately previous to that trying to stay awake. It's like my body knows which I want to be doing and decides to mess with me. My head was cloudy and fuzzy and I was blinking a lot and getting up and down a lot to stay awake for the last hour of work. Literally, at 17:06 (that is actually when I finish work) I felt grogginess and sleepiness lift almost in an instant.

I probably need to make some changes.

I have a 9-5 job (well, 8:42 - 17:06) and that is good. It's steady work. It pays regularly. There is no need for me to take it home. It does, however take up most of my day. From when I wake at about 7:30, until I get home about 17:35 is given over to work. Then I get in and have to do the essentials: y'know, eating, washing up, taking the rubbish out, ringing the insurance company, and so on.

Then, because in any given week I am usually DJing at least one night, there's that to think about. I normally decide the setlist on the fly but having a 9-5 with less time spent at home and less time on public transport, and less opportunity to sit up late listening to music makes it harder to keep up with new music so I have to make more of a concious effort to get new music and get it into sets. IT's getting harder. But I try when I can. And if I'm doing a special event with a genre or mood I'm not so familiar with, like a fetish night, or a speakeasy night, or a wedding with specific song requests that I may never have heard of, then I will plan out the setlist beforehand. That's time-consuming. I need to get hold of the music, listen to it, and figure out the best way to play it. Then there's the late nights DJing involves. I try, like tonight, to sleep beforehand but spending the only free bit of the day asleep feels like a waste. IF I can sleep. So tonight I will get to bed about 4am and be up again about 7:30am which will leave me painfully tired at work tomorrow. Then I'm Djing Subside from 8:30.

I also have my greetings cards business. I need to research and create new designs for that when I can. I also need to keep promoting my Etsy shop which currently, mostly sells steampunk and dieselpunk cards - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CapnDred. It's plugging it on social media - on my pages, finding groups and joining them and interacting and trying to get my name and products out there. It's drawing little things that are relevant to make sure I have content to post. It's repinning things that may encourage people to browse my Pinterest and find my cards. It's blogging like this. It's reblogging the tumblr posts of people who may be inclined to check out my stuff. It's commenting on Etsy's forum posts and getting involved in the community. I enjoy it and there's a lot to learn and I am enjoying learning. Then when sales come, I have to get them posted.

I find it hard to say no to new jobs. DJing new events that may be fun, or a new genre that I could have fun with. New drawing commissions that push me to improve or just feel nice to do.

I resent this sometimes and make myself put a film on to chill, but normally end up tweaking my Etsy shop listings while I do.

The thing with music and drawing and self-promotion is there's no end point. There is ALWAYS more that could be done. Which means whenever I get some free time, it is very easy to almost accidentally keep doing these things. Suddenly, it's 2:00am and I have work in the morning but a drawing that's nearly done, or a load of ideas for content to post, or just half an hour of a setlist to fill with a tricky transition from black metal to RnB. When I'm not doing anything actively, I feel like I'm wasting time. So I rarely chill. Jess has been great for me. We do things together often (we're doing a craft fair up in Bridgnorth on Saturday which I am really looking forward to but for which I will have had very little sleep on account of all of the above), but we also chill sometimes and I need that. She's let me rant at her about this and she's tolerant of how bad I am at making future plans. I worry about the fact I'm always tired and broke for her though. I don't like that.

All of this is compounded by the fact that no matter how long I work a regular job with regular daytime hours, my body clock still defaults to going to bed at 4am and waking around midday. It makes it hard and feel unnatural to go to bed at an appropriate time for work. 11pm would be a good time. 12 wouldn't be too bad. 2am is usual for me and it's just not enough! And 7:30 really doesn't feel like a time people should be up at all. My body clock wants me to get the recommended 8hrs sleep... it's just the wrong 8hrs for sensible civilised jobs.

And for all of it, I'm broke. I spent a lot of today at work researching the Aztecs and Maya for our presentations. I was using Google Earth to check out their historical sites - temples and the like and desperately, painfully wishing I could go there! But I consider a month where I finish the month without having gone over my overdraft limit a success and one where I finish with a few bob to spare makes me nervous that there is a bill around the corner I forgot about. Being able to drive down to Bournemouth and stop in a B&B for a friend's wedding was a decision I had to weigh carefully and figure out a contingency plan for how that would leave me short for the rest of the month.

I'm always working. I'm always broke. Because I'm always broke, I feel like I can't be turning down work when it comes so I'm always too tired and too busy to take stock of the situation and change it or at least organise it to be manageable.

Writing this has helped. Now, feeling like I could finally sleep again (like I could at work earlier) I have to get up and go to work.

Just posting for some analytics...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I don't know how this post will appear but I'm just posting this to let Bloglovin deliver me analytics.

Follow me there if you like.

Otherswise, carry on about your business.

Creating my Steampunk birthday card, with Geoffrey Coggington.

So, I decided to create a birthday card.

The decisions in this card were all very simple and, to be honest, it was quite a simple card to do.
I had couple of ideas about this. I knew I wanted to use the idea of a hot air balloon being a birthday balloon but didn't know whether I wanted to have a Coggington in the balloon, or interacting with it some way else.
When Izzy suggested having him holding onto the balloon, it sounded perfect and I liked the idea of it yanking him off his feet which went on to lend itself to the caption inside of "Don't Get Carried Away!"

I began with my now standard process of starting up a Pinterest board for the card and collected ideas and references and so on.
I took a few photos outside work of the sky, and downloaded a sheet of typewriter keys:

I'm a little disappointed I used a downloadable pack for the keys. I would rather have photographed them myself but I had a time restriction because I wanted one of these ready for someone's birthday, and I didn't have time to find and photograph a typewriter. Maybe one day...

I isolated the keys I wanted and digitally cut them out from their background and arranged them, set up  my drawing space with my regular Coggington grungey frame, then laid down my photograph of tea-stained paper with a blue colour layer over the top of it for a placeholder for the sky.

Then I pencilled in the design and lay down flat colours, just to see that it worked as a concept.

It seemed good, so I refiined the pencils to 'inks', digitally.

The photo I took of the sky was good, but a little too clearly defined so I blurred it up, then to give it some interest, I added some fake bokeh effect as described in this tutorial.
I considered cutting the trees out as they were a distraction, but decided against this as they give the pic a vague point of reference and suggest it isn't happening in a vacuum.

The original photo

With some blur added

With some bokeh

 "Bokeh" is the way a camera lens renders out of focus points of light and is often considered to be aesthetically pleasing so I wanted a little here in the trees.

Then I filled in the flat colours, and the shadows which was quite fiddly around the balloon's rigging, but nothing too complicated.

I had no idea how to create the flames and the glow of them in the balloon  so I had a close look at photo references to see how the flames appear in hot air balloons and then hand drew the flames and the glow effects.



Once I'd done that, it was mostly a case of adding textures to the drawing:
There is a crinkled paper texture (that I often use from a photograph I took after screwing up, then straightening out a sheet of new A4 paper) all over but carefully masked to reduce its intensity over the key areas of the drawing.
Likewise with a tea-stained paper texture I created and often use.
There's also a rusted metal to Geoffrey Coggington in separate sections such as torso, left leg, head, foot-bottom etc. I applied the texture and warped it to vaguely fit the contours of his body. For this purpose, I didn't need to map the texture to every contour of his body.
I also applied a flat rusty metal texture over all of Geoffrey, masked it to just the 'ink' outline, and brought up it's intensity while getting rid of the actual inks. This means his outline isn't entirely solid but made just of a rusty metal image.

I popped some shadows behind the typewriter keys and fiddled with their colour levels to make them fit in with the rest of the picture and added some lens flare across Geoffrey and this card was pretty much done!

The finished card! Click to buy!

I couldn't decide whether I liked it darker or lighter so I produced both and put it to a Facebook poll.
The darker one won by quite a large margin, but I have sold a few of the lighter ones too so it would seem there's a place for both!

The card is available now in my Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/capndred

-Curt-

Check out my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/curtisallenillustrator