“It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…”
Those words mean a lot to me. The Muppets mean a lot to me. I was one of those kids that grew up with the Muppets on TV and it was a family event in our house to watch it. As I grew older, I fell in love with other works by Jim Henson and consider many of his films to be some of my favorite movies of all time. (Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, the original Muppet Movie, etc.)
Hi Gang! I started posting some pictures up on my facebook page the other day and started thinking I should do a more in-depth feature on the blog about the process. This is part one in the Zixie (The Adorable Zombie-Pixie) behind-the-scenes series! Feel free to post comments and questions and I’ll add more posts here to the blog as I progress. I have a few different papercraft in the works, so this will be on a leisurely timeline, but Zixie has made it VERY clear to me that he wants to be made. (And I plan to fulfill her wish as soon as I can.)
So let’s get started and discover where this idea for a new papercraft came from.
Hello gang! Just posting a quick review for you to make sure you don’t overlook some fantastic content on the first edition 2011 LEGO® Club DVD. The arrival of the LEGO Club magazine is always an exciting event in our house and we were even more intrigued when we spotted the enclosed DVD in the November-December 2011 issue. I was assuming this would be full of advertising and clips of LEGO shows, BUT there is an amazingly wonderful selection of features on the DVD that every LEGO fan should see.
Honestly, I can’t believe these features are not better-promoted on the DVD sleeve or in the DVD menus, so I’m going to cut to the chase and discuss what I consider to be must-see content.
I stumbled across the film Between the Folds (Exploring Origami) while on Netflix the other day and naturally it caught my eye. I have never really tried origami myself (apart from the random attempts to fold a dollar bill into some interesting shape) but I certainly enjoy the aesthetics of if. I also respect the rules of origami: no glue, no tape, constructed from one sheet of paper and no cutting.
When I first heard about LEGO’s new game called Life of George, my imagination went haywire. I’m a big fan of the LEGO board games and I love downloading apps for my iPhone so the pairing seemed like a match made in heaven. LEGO was kind enough to rush me a copy of the game so I could do an unboxing video and review for you. (Perhaps you’ve already seen the unboxing? If not, click here.)
The evening after making the unboxing video, I took the game home to try it out with my kids. The promise of what the game could do, once I saw all the components laying out in front of me, was nothing short of magical.
I’m going to let you in on all the secrets of what you can do, what you can’t do and my super-huge playing tip that makes the image-capture aspect of this game much more consistent if you’re having trouble.
Hey gang! Earlier this week, I spotted a news item about the latest LEGO game that is about to hit the shelves at a store near you. This one is quite different than the LEGO games that have come before it. So, in my quest to share “artistically geeky-cool things” that you should know about, my friends at LEGO rushed me a copy of the game so I could share it with you.
For now you can enjoy this unboxing video, but I will also do a full review in the next few days. What makes this game unique? Could it be the retro/mod cool design? Could it be a distinct 8-bit aesthetic? Could it be the fact that you have to have an iPhone or iPod Touch with free app download in order to play it? Well, it’s all of the above.
So join me for a peek inside the box! Please share this post and leave any comments or questions.
Here’s a ghoulishly-cool cake I designed for a Monster Mash party this week. I wanted to keep it pretty simple and rectangular – so what Halloween creature lends itself to being blocky? Frankenstein’s Monster of course!
“Battle of the Books!” Every year, the 5th graders at my son’s school can volunteer to join an event called the Battle of the Books. Basically, the kids that sign up are divided into teams (of 5 or 6 students per team) and a list of 12 books is compiled by the librarian and given to them. Each member of the team is required to read three books on the list and the team as a whole needs to make sure that each of the 12 books is read by at least one person on the team.
Then later in the year, a semi-final and final competition is held (game show style) as the children answer questions about the books via buzzer.
Ah…”Jangle.” Where do I begin telling his tale of woe? I started sketching him very early in the birth of the Desktop Gremlins experience – before my papercraft brand was fully developed. Jangle represents an interesting exercise in staying (or rather NOT staying) true to a brand culture. I was very excited about the raw pencil sketch and had fleshed out his fascinating “origin story” quite easily.
Hello world! I am thrilled to launch this BLOG area of my site. I’ve been planning to do this for a long time but FINALLY getting around to making it a reality. This will be the place where you can go behind the scenes and read about my process, my progress with the Desktop Gremlins book as well as post up other neat things I find on the web that are super cool.
I had tried this years ago (for those of you who have been following me for a long time) and I enjoyed it. But I have to say that the Word Press theme I chose was super hard to customize and once customized, it did not play well with my mac. So I spent more time fighting the blog than posting to it.
But not long ago, a blog theme called Thesis caught my eye and I decided to plunk down some cash (it’s a pay theme) based on its promise to simplify the blogging customization and let me concentrate on content. So far so good. I am really impressed with the theme and have enjoyed the customization process. I will be tweaking the design more over the next few months as I realize what I really want to do here. But to tell the truth — this is pretty empowering.
I tend to ramble a bit and facebook is NOT friendly to ramblers. So this will be a place where I can stretch my thoughts out and flesh out some neat features for you!
I can’t wait to start adding content.
If there are specific things, you want to hear or see from me, post your comments below.
Best wishes to you all and thank you so much for your support!
