So, here's what we've been up to...! (Shifting Focus Part 2)

I've titled this "A Shifting Focus Part 2" because it's a continuation of yesterday's exploration in the process we're still going through of learning to take time for art and ideas. Though, I'd rather call this "Expanding Focuses" (Foci? Google tells me I can use either.) because it's not that we've thrown away what we were originally drawn to (filmmaking, film writing). I am three drafts into a feature script that I want to direct; we haven't lost sight or anything. But, nevertheless, over time I'm seeing us learning "just because you make films doesn't mean you can't also..." So anyway, here's what we've been up to as of late!

Drawing Comics

Garret's always been a huge fan of graphic novels.  His bookshelves are all, what I call, "comic books" and what the rest of the world knows are mostly "graphic novels".  And when he's done storyboards for his films, I've always found them to be exceedingly entertaining.  They have characters in and of themselves.  A while back I said, "Why don't you draw a comic?" and he kind of shrugged.  Well, I gave him a sketchbook for Christmas. Sometime at the beginning of January, he did a few sketches for a character he had come up with: Galixigus Starhunter.  Galixigus is the saddest star hunter there is.  He's lonely and pathetic.  Well, Garret started drawing him, and he's now over fifty strips in!!! He publishes them on Tumblr and he's gained fans from all over!

You can see the Galixigus strips here: http://galaxigusstarhunter.tumblr.com/

And this past month, Garret was asked, by one of Galixigus's fans, to draw a comic as part of an annual comic book that's put out for free comic book day!

You can download that entire comic here: http://www.mynameisjonahfilm.com/downloads.html

And most excitingly, Garret has decided to write his first graphic novel (!!!!!!!).  It's called M I N D B L O W E R (and yes, those spaces between the letter are intentional).

Making Greeting Cards

Huh?  I know!  I never thought I'd make greeting cards, but one day, I had an idea.  I tend to take a lot of photos of very random things.  Beach scenes.  A painted canvas.  A really well-lit guinness.  I was never really sure what to do with them, and then one day I started thinking of some funny little phrases I could put in them if they were greeting cards.  One thing lead to another, and last week, I opened a card shop on etsy.com!!

Here's a preview of my shop, which you can also visit at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/1000WordsGreetings

Learning (Sort of) Graphic Design?

I'm the maid of honor in my best friend's wedding, and she had seen a shower invitation that she thought was really cute: it was the bride surrounded by all of her bridesmaids.  The thing was, when I tried to find a card with a similar design, I couldn't find any with the amount of bridesmaids we needed.  So I wondered - well, could I make one?  I had fooled around in Adobe Illustrator in the past, so I decided to give it a try.  Over the course of many days I spent many hours learning the program.  Little by little, I got better and better at it.  By the end of all of it, I had designed a shower invitation (with the help of an illustrator by my in-house cartoonist, Garret).

So then when it came time to do my Etsy shop, I was really excited to design my logo!

And since, I've been exploring the idea of custom invitation and card design, possibly in combination with my existing greeting card style.  I'm really drawn to words as art.  How does a font or the presentation of words with a certain image evoke a personality?  I'm exploring this stuff.  No promises to myself or anyone else as to where the journey will take me.  The best I can do is, "We'll see..." but so far I'm having fun seeing.

Other things I've learned lately:

-  Did you know that you can get just about anything printed on a stamp?  I wanted to have my logo on the back of each of my cards, so I uploaded my design to rubberstamps.net and a few days later, I had a beautiful rubber stamp! It only cost about $10! Since then I've been attempting to dream up a lot of other things I "need" a stamp of.

-  Apparently, if you spend time doing something, you get better at it.   spent time working with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and now I know more about how to use them (I still have a lot to learn).  I know this is a concept that most people learn at a young age, but honestly, not me.  I took violin in elementary school and I HATED it.  So much so that instead of practicing my violin, which I thought was a vile and unfair use of my time, I would record myself playing a song on a Fisher Price tape recorder, and then I would play the tape on a loop for a half hour so my parents thought I was practicing.  That is insane.  And awesome.  I was an awesome nine year old.

-  Etsy is a whole world unto itself and I'm slowly learning to navigate that.  More on that in the future (when I understand it better).

-  We're in the process of doing our first screen printing process.  More on that someday soon too!