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Monster Contest: Halftime

Saturday, April 1st, 2023

Once again Bernard and I are doing a postcard art contest. This year the subject is ‘monsters’ and we collectively decided on 10 subjects before starting. Each week we’re taking turns picking the next subject.

The rules are a little different this year. Firstly we’re using identical media, specifically only the markers in the above pic. I bought two sets of each and sent him one, and (aside from pencil for the initial sketch) this means our art is black and red only.

Secondly I printed the postcards in advance with the subjects on the front. This means, unlike previous years, we only get one go at drawing our art and can’t just grab another postcard and start again if we don’t like it or make a mistake!

The judges are the same as last year (JF, JK, SMS, SS and AW) and as far as voting is concerned the only change was I formalized that they could split their votes (which most of them had been doing last year anyway). We’re now half way through and here are the results so far:

Bigfoot

Lessons were learned on card one. I hadn’t done any testing of the markers, and was very surprised to note how much they bled into the cardboard of the postcard. I had visions of fine detail in our pictures that faded fast when this became apparent. Even so I think we hit the ground running, with Bernard’s creation on the left and mine on the right.

The voting was incredibly close, with Bernard’s 2.51 points just beating my 2.49. Most judges commented how difficult it was to choose, and how surprised they were by the quality 🙂

Some judge comments:
“It’s a strong start. The depiction of trees in the first artwork is very well done as is Bigfoot striding through the forest. Although I would have preferred for him to refrain from smiling at the artist.”
“The second artwork is stunning. The shape of the head is very pleasing and the use of negative space creates effective dimensionality. He’s a scary beast even though his square chompers are only built for chewing grass.”
“I like the way we see him in his environment in left image. And I like how scary he is in other image.”

Ghost

Mine is on the left, and Bernard’s on the right. This was another tough one for the judges, although I had a ‘judging question’ about the lack of red in the right picture (it is there, just difficult to see without zooming in). Some judges questioned whether mine was even a ghost!

Voting was very split and seemed to rest on whether judges liked a darker or a more whimsical ghost. Ultimately I won with 2.65 points to Bernard’s 2.35.

Here are some judge comments:
“Right is clearly Casper!”
“There’s not much I don’t like about left. I particularly like the flame, and the teeth. Right…… it doesn’t capture me unfortunately.”
“Love the bony hand and lantern flame!”
“…I do actually like the left pic better. But right is a much better ghost.”

Zombie

Bernard is left, and I am right. This one led to another judges question about whether multiple subjects was acceptable. We hadn’t discussed that in advance, and after this one we decided to keep it at one only going forward. By this third week some judges had observed that one of us was using the same style weekly, and the other was mixing it up. Although they didn’t know who was who, I suspect this began to be factored in to their judging (one suggested that variety was advantageous).

Bernard’s apocalyptic vignette scored him an easy win with 3.26 points to my 1.74. None of the judges noticed that mine was supposed to be Michael Jackson…

Here’s what the judges had to say:
“The vertical lines speak of skeletons, the horizontal lines the prison of the life of a zombie endlessly driven to feed. Baby zombies barely exist and the mushroom cloud of death is a creature of its own advancing on us. The bloodied satiation of the zombie family gives the viewer a moment of peace to view the encroaching doom before the hunger takes hold again.”
“Right is a punk zombie head on a red gingham picnic table cloth.”

Sea Monster

I drew left, and Bernard drew right. I had a vision of a medieval style ‘monster on old map’ which didn’t quite work out, but I love that we both basically drew the same idea. Both artworks have a lot of fine detail; I wonder how much the judges noticed?

Voting on this one was very split, with three judges giving us equal points! Ultimately though the other two preferred mine and I won 3.1 points to 1.9.

Here’s the judges comments:
“Both squidtastic!”
“Impossible to choose.”
“I love left. But right will get a few points because I dig the night sky contrast.”
“Left is very well crafted. The use of white space, the detail of the ship, the twining tentacles, the striking contrast of the bold red of the monster, the minimal detail of the background that gives the artwork perspective. I like everything about this artwork??”
“Right which depicts a sea monster attacking at night conveys a terrifying sight with the cavernous mouth and enormous teeth about to envelope and destroy the ship. The detail of the ship gets a little lost in picture with the tentacles of the monster and the waves of the sea. The spotty creature looks a little diseased.”

Dragon

Mine is left; Bernard’s is right. This was a somewhat controversial piece since two judges have very strong opinions of what dragons look like and one of the above pieces not agree with their expectations!

Voting was a blowout, and I won 4.05 points to Bernard’s 0.95. I was pleased by this since I put more effort into my dragon than any previous piece, but had been nervous since I had wanted to draw hind legs but couldn’t work out how to add them! I also liked that judges noticed I’d gone (more successfully this time) for a medieval art style.

Here’s what the judges said:
“While I’d like the artist to have shown the back legs as well, I prefer it to the “hairy” dragon on the right.”
“Left: great detail of body, especially scales and excellent flames. Right: Torching guy!”
“Left is really charming. Reminds me of medieval illustrations. I tip my hat to right for the dynamic flaming I feel in its depiction!”
“I love the shape of the flame and the traditional look of the dragon on left. A good solid effort”
“Right is a bit of an abomination I’m sorry to say. Being an ardent fan of the dragon I emphatically reject the enormous hairy slug that is for some reason breathing fire. The only saving grace of this artwork is the charred remains of the valiant knight who is a charming and comical figure.”

Halfway through I’m ahead 3 to 2, which means with five subjects remaining this is still anyone’s game.

I asked Bernard for his comments at this point and he said: “Once again the judges appear to be unable to recognize true art when they see it. My remaining five pieces will be of the same stellar quality as my initial five pieces have been.“

As for myself, I’ll probably still continue trying a different style with every piece and hoping the judges appreciate the detail and work that has gone into my mini-masterpieces 🙂

Come back in five weeks to find out what the remaining five subjects were, and who wins this years postcard art contest!

Posted in Art, Family, Miscellaneous, Postcards | Comments Closed

The Magnet-Mages

Thursday, February 16th, 2023

It’s time for the second installment in my magnet series! Sure it’s been almost five years since the last, but there’s been a development.

For the first time ever, I sorted through our voluminous abundance of magnets, discarding and rearranging them, and clearing some space on our fridge for new additions. In doing this – which took much longer than expected – I thought it a good time to showcase a few.

Some of the oldest magnets we own are Pokémon and Digimon ones bought almost 30 years ago. I’m surprised they’ve lasted so long since they’re so cheaply made: just a sticker on a plastic base. Even though they’re a little low-rent, now we’ve had them for so long they’ve endeared themselves to us.

Back in 2019 when I was in Tokyo with Bernard I picked up the above magnet of ‘Someity’, one of the two Olympic mascots. She was supposed to evoke a cherry blossom, and merchandise of her (and her brother) was abundant. She looks a bit like a Pokémon doesn’t she? The Rey is a large static cling we’ve had for about a decade but I no longer remember where I got it.

A few years back I visited Forster with Sue and picked up this magnet. Thermometer magnets like this are trash of course, and questionably accurate, but there’s a lot of good in a bad magnet! Apparently it is possible to take whale cruises from Forster… maybe I should investigate that more one day?

A recent purchase! I got this striking metal embossed magnet (it’s about 10 cm wide) from the Ultra shop/exhibition in Nakano. This is a wonderful magnet, but it was a tad expensive. I wish I’d bought more though.

Not a magnet, but the above is our first ever ‘digital photo print’. This photo of Daisy was taken and printed on a dot-matrix printer when she was a little kitten. Its wonderfully low-tech and quaint, and since it is over 25 years old now I recently embossed so it lasts forever 🙂

Can you guess where we bought this? I’ve read that tourists can’t get very close to Stonehenge anymore, since they’ve moved the barrier back even farther than when we visited twelve years ago. I’ll always remember that as a special day.

A few years ago Florence texted me a photo of the above magnet, so naturally I had to buy it. I laughed aloud when it arrived and was about five times the size I thought from the pic. There were two to choose from, the other being Putin. I made the right choice.

I don’t recall exactly where I bought the above, but they feel like they’ve been on the fridge forever. The Luke is permanently attached to the base, but the other two can be replaced with any minifig. I recently had a look in the LEGO shop to see if you can still purchase these magnetic bases and they’re no longer made. A shame, since I think they’re great.

One of my all-time favourite magnets! This was purchased in Nara (Japan) back in 1997. Nara is the city with all the deer oft visited by school groups hence the design (the deer is wearing a school backpack). It’s only about an inch high, and its smile is infectious! I want to return to Nara one day…

Two ‘home made’ magnets. The bottom I made, and the top was bought on Etsy. It’s a 3D printed skull painted black with gold accents. I bought this as a gift for Bernard but liked it so much I kept it 🙂

I wonder if these sort of magnets – funny ones with jokes on them – are made in other countries? This is one of the better ones I’ve got, and for a long while lived on the whiteboard in my office at school.

The traditional ‘lake monster’ magnet, displayed alongside a couple of others also from Inverness. I bought all these the day we went to see the loch. That was another great day, since it was a place I had wanted to visit since childhood.

These are extremely high-quality mini Star Wars magnets. These were a series of blind-box items from over a decade ago, and I first bought them in Japan and then at Target when they were (surprisingly!) released here. I’ve got lots, and they’re now all together on the fridge. Can you name all these characters?

The above are our front doors, now covered in magnets from all over the world. There’s still space though, but I’ve probably got another twenty or so years before I need to sort them again…

Posted in Art, Blog, Collecting, Home | Comments Closed

The Bonkers Picross Book

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

I bought this last time I was in NYC:

KLS and I both enjoy Picross puzzles, and even without opening it I knew I’d be buying it. Here’s what the cover says:

Summer 2022 Anime Feature?!? Fun, beautiful and easy to draw? Dream co-star feature?!? Sheep with presents??!?

This was my sort of book!

Picross is the puzzle where you fill in squares in a grid to make a picture according to the numbers along the edges of the rows and columns. If it says 4 that means 4 connected squares. 4 2 would mean an unconnected blocks of 4 and 2 along that line (or column). It’s fun 🙂

The book is loaded with puzzles – over a hundred – and they get difficult almost immediately. The above photo are all the ‘easy’ ones they have, and after these you dive right into this sort of madness:

The difficulty difference between the eggplant and whatever the above is is tremendous, and it would take a great deal of time to solve.

But this book has incentives for beating the puzzles! When you finish one you can answer the question next to it (which seems to usually be ‘identify this character’) and submit your answer to win a prize, some of which are very nice:

As befits an anime themed puzzle book, many of the prizes are for anime/game fans as well. Alas the submission for entry was September 19 (yesterday!) so it seems I’ll miss out.

If you’re some sort of Picross god and have no trouble with that 45 x 50 shown above, this book has you covered, since it even has several large fold-out puzzles including this lunacy:

That’s 60 x 200, or 120 times larger than the goat I did above. This would be a monumental achievement to complete. I wonder how long it will take me?

And if you’re just masochistic, the book even includes some (harder) colored picrosses, including this fold-out one:

Yes, it is as difficult as it looks.

Oh and if you’re wondering what these look like when finished, the book also includes the full solutions to the previous issue, which it seems was anime-themed as well:

Since I’ve done the easy 10 x 10 puzzles I’m moving on to a bigger challenge: a 45 x 50 one featuring characters from the Bastard!!! anime:

I’ll follow up if I ever manage to complete it 🙂

Posted in Art, Blog, Books, Crafts, Puzzles | Comments Closed

Panini Warhammer

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022

Panini has been releasing sticker albums for decades now and the format has barely changed: you buy an inexpensive booklet with pages full of empty spaces waiting for stickers to be applied. The stickers are of course purchased separately in packs, like trading cards. Collecting them and sticking them in the album fills out the pages until you have a nifty picturebook. Aimed mostly at children, hundreds have been released – and continue to be released – since the 1970s.

Unfortunately, very few of these ever make it out of Europe. In the 1980s for instance Panini released loads of such albums for every imaginable kid-friendly film, but most were Europe and the UK only. A few were released in Australia when I was a kid, but they weren’t of little interest to me (Smurfs, football albums) so this was never a big part of my childhood.

In the years since I’ve bought a few more while on trips to the UK or Europe (a few different Star Wars ones, a WWE one) but with the exception of various sports albums or properties for very young children Panini still seems to mostly ignore the US market, and I’ve never had much experience with collecting the stickers or filling an album… until now!

When Panini announced a Warhammer 40k sticker album I was astonished, since it seemed so out-of-field compared to their other properties. But given how many other sets they have recently published – based on films, video games, toys, sports and even animals – it’s not unusual. It’s very specific though, and certainly aimed older than most of their other albums. The initial announcement was tempered (for me) by the followup that it would be England only, and exclusive to physical Warhammer stores. Bummer. However shortly after it was released sellers offered it on Amazon, which is how I got my album and a box of sticker packs.

It’s a beautiful album, full colour and crammed with detail and information. There are 204 stickers to collect, and each pack also comes with one of 50 ‘hero’ (trading) cards. The stickers are glossy and come in several shapes and sizes, some with various types of foil or holographic coating.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been opening packs and sticking the stickers into the album. With 50 packs I only had 200 stickers, and knew I wouldn’t be able to complete the album, but I hoped I’d make a good effort. It’s been a lot of fun, and now I know had Panini products been widely distributed in Australia when I was a kid I would have gone bonkers for them!

I’m impressed with how seamlessly the stickers match the book. In photos the page looks more matte than it does in real life, and when stuck (and aligned correctly) it can sometimes be difficult to see where book ends and sticker begins. A completed page doesn’t look like an array of stickers as it did back in the older versions (such as in the Gremlins book from the 1980s, shown in the photo at top).

The first and last page of the book contain 6-sticker murals. I was unable to complete either of them, and the above is as good as I got. There are many 2 or 3 sticker murals as well, most of which I completed. As you can see, the stickers align together nearly seamlessly (although I will admit I was extremely careful when applying them).

That’s a shot of two of the trading cards. Of the 50, I got 34 which I think is a good approximation of how many stickers I managed to get as well (about two-thirds). The cards are ok and have nice art, but are more a bonus than a reason to buy this collection.

Worth mentioning is the lore of 40k. If you know anything about Warhammer (which is a table-top strategy game played using miniatures) you know it has a bonkers story, and the snippets of lore in this album reinforce that. These aren’t just soldiers in robotic armor fighting orcs and demons: there’s all sorts of madness on both sides of the eternal war that is our future 38,000 years from now!

Once I had finished opening all my packs, this was the only one double-page of the album I managed to fully complete. Can you see the 11 stickers in the above photo? As I said I estimate I got about two-thirds of the stickers, which means I got about 60 doubles (which will go to Adam). Panini has a service where you can purchase individual stickers directly (for £0.28 each) which is nice for diehards, but I’m happy with my incomplete album and won’t try to finish it.

Overall I’m extremely impressed with this collection, and would love for them to not only make more genre-specific ones (such as Dungeons & Dragons or Ultraman!) or at the least sell more of them in the USA!

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Collecting, Retro, Trading Cards | 1 Comment »

Let’s Make A Rubber Stamp!

Wednesday, July 20th, 2022

I bought this in Australia:

I thought it was a rubber stamp making ‘kit’, but it’s actually just a piece of soft rubber (an ‘eraser’ perhaps, from the label) that can be used to cut a rubber stamp. Since it came with nothing else and since I lacked most of the required supplies (tracing paper, chisels) I would have to wing it.

I started small, by drawing my design right onto the surface. I planned on removing the excess rubber using just an exacto knife.

This proved to be much easier than I expected since the rubber is so soft. Soft enough it can be easily torn! I had to be careful lest the blade cut somewhere I didn’t want it to.