I Vomit Rainbows

Last night, I was being super stubborn and wanted to do a perspective drawing of a bunch of ninja stars flying out in Illustrator. I know how to do it in Photoshop and it’s super simple. Illustrator, not much so. My first try was to draw it by hand, but it looked weird.

My next idea was to make a pattern swatch, hit expand, and tweak it with envelope meshing (Object>Envelope Distort>Make with Mesh) but the result was too warbly.

At this point, I was pretty frustrated. I was convinced that Illustrator just didn’t have what I wanted it to have. Dave was convinced that there was a way to do it, so more googling happened. The thing that worked was something I never would have thought of. Select a group of objects, and hit Effect>3D>Extrude and Bevel. Turn off all of the shading and bevelling, and finally there was something you could set a perspective to.

And this was the result that we were looking for

The world is a bit sadder of a place today. Barry Blair passed away 1/3/10 and I just found out via http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/01/03/founder-of-aircel-comics-barry-blair-dies/ .. he had a brain aneurysm at age 52.

In 1994, I was a 16 year old girl who drew a lot of penguins. I came to San Diego ComiCon with a single laminated copy of a comic book I drew called Peacekeepers, which had pages handcolored with colored pencils. 200 of these books were produced.

I took the book around to publishers big and small, to get advice on improving my art, and to hopefully find someone who would want to publish my work for wider distribution. Looking back, I’m rather suprised anyone took me seriously at all.

My favorite moment from ComiCon was when I went to the Elfquest booth, and Barry Blair sat there and read the whole thing. He laughed at the silly parts. Then he told me I needed to self-publish it. The idea hadn’t crossed my mind at all, and he talked me into it.

The next year I took my life savings, sent it to Brenner Printing, and had 3,000 copies of Tori Do printed, through my comic book company Penguin Palace.

RIP Barry. My life would be very different today if I’d never met you.

I don’t want to make a bunch of resolutions i’ll break, so i’m just going to stick with one: throw a party in Antarctica.

By 2020 I want to visit all the continents and go up in space once.

In the past decade I’ve:

Found the perfect boy
Travelled to europe twice and Japan three times
Gotten paid by publishers and websites to take pictures and travel
Thrown parties that have become internet-famous
Got my 6th dan black belt in Tang Soo Do
Went to the Firefly movie premiere & the Season 4 Battlestar Galactica premiere
Got a picture taken with the president (Bush, blegh) at the White House Xmas party
Had back surgery where they fused some bones together and grew new bone over it
Got to see tons of people wearing my tshirt designs at conventions
Hung out in secret bars an partied under a freeway overpass a few times
Partied in an abandoned missile silo
Frequently visited the Magic Castle, and been to Club 33 twice
Burning Man, Tokyo DisneySeas, Love Parade SF, and the Sapporo Snow Festival
Shot lingerie models on an airplane while hanging out in a scary tall crane
Made a LuLu costume with my friend and cosplayed at a few conventions
Won an award for working on a flash video game, at Schmoocon
Appeared in some small movies, and had some art used in one
Eaten raw horse and a foie gras corn dog
Explored many hidden and abandoned places
Shot Red Carpet at the Spike TV Scream Awards twice, and the 300 DVD release
Shot two weddings and attended many weddings
Ran my own karate school
Learned to cook

In the past two decades I’ve:

Thrown punk shows and underground raves
Published (and been published) in zines, comics, and a CD-ROM
Moved around a bunch in three states (California, Texas, Colorado)
Gotten sued for $100,000 by Penguin Books
Been raided by the FBI
Got on the front page of the local newspaper (San Diego)
Been in a bunch of art shows and thrown my own
Been to San Diego ComiCon 16 times
Been to Defcon 12 times. Since Defcon 4 I’ve only missed it once (or twice?)

I kinda lapsed on the comic book publishing thing, but me and Dave are working on a photo book project together. Making this list made me realize how long it’s been since I’ve published anything (The last big thing I made was a comic book on CD-ROM in 1998). I came up with a story idea while in the woods this weekend though.

Happy New Year!