Here’s a series of pics of the process …

copy of sketch and blank wood

using graphite paper to trace the sketch onto the wood

finished tracing

let the burning begin!

trying out going over the same lines to create thicker lines

final burned image

final (stained & sanded) x 3 then waxed, pyro piece

And sometimes, it turns out awesome.

2011 was the Year of the Rabbit (Year of the Bunny in deference to my buddy Bud), and it was a very good year for me.

January 23, 2012 starts the Chinese New Year for the Dragon, specifically the Water Dragon. To celebrate this upcoming auspiciously awesome twelve months, I used some of my Dover clips art, photographs of water I took in Canada and Mexico, and created the following image.

Click on the water dragon to see the full size image. Download it if you like.

And best wishes for the New Year.

So, here I am, starting another blog, in another year, but I have the feeling it will be like learning a new programming language – special syntax and logic and creativity and learning enough to understand how to get this thing to create the stuff I want to create.

Therefore …

Hello world

Two hot spring stops, hiking, shopping, and multiple chargings of my camera battery. I’ll not bore you with all 1237 photos, but if you’d like to see a few pics, here you go.

Kayaking on the lake …

Hiking along Retallack Cedar Trail …

Hiking up to Idaho Peak …

Smelling alpine wildflowers along the way …

Admiring mountain views …

Riding ferries …

Shopping in Crawford Bay …

And eating at lovely little lakeside cafes in Kaslo …

A fun read, I enjoyed playing with the words and sentences. Someone told me about Lulu.com, a print-on-demand service. So I decided I wanted to make my set of bunny doodles and alliterative sentences into a full color children’s picture book.

My friend Ronnie and I brain stormed pen names for over an hour and I like the way Kirean Lloyd-Quinn sounded. He recommended a college student from North Texas as the illustrator. I hired Ian, he did a fabulous job, and I love the find Bud the Bunny book.

I also know I never want to project manage anything every again.

Thankfully for the Bud the Bunny iPad app, I just have to do the marketing and promotion and Bud the Bunny website. Waaay easier than project management, lemme tell you.

So, check out the brilliant one-page Bud the Bunny website when you have a chance. The Lulu website has a preview of the first few pages of the book (click the too-small-a-font-IMHO Preview link under the Bud the Bunny book cover).

Bud will start blogging about how he came to be on July 4th.

And the Bud the Bunny iPad app will be ready when it’s ready.

Please indulge me by reading my post about why over at my LiveJournal page.

Kidding.

As much time as I spend on the computer, it’s nice to play with arts and crafts in the real world every now and then.

For 2011, I’ve taken on Leah Piken Kolidas’ Creative Every Day Challenge.

I will make an artist trading card every day and post it to my heidi2524′s Artist Trading Card website, which is really just an extension of this site, but it let me play with Headway, a WordPress framework that is a whole lotta customizable fun.

See, I can even rationalize my offline time with online skill development.

Authors love to write. They also secretly (or not so secretly) hope their story will someday be made into a movie because that’s where the big bucks are (so they say).

Several of Neil Gaiman’s stories have already been made into movies (Neverwhere, Stardust), but turning his short story “The Price” into an animated movie is a special instance of crowd-sourcing and alternate funding and probably a couple of other online-related buzz words I can’t come up with just now.

Watch this video to learn more about Christopher Salmon’s efforts to create this movie.

The reason I’m posting about this is because I think it’s fabulous in many ways, from idea to demo to execution of a fan-based funding plan through Kickstarter. It’s also a perfect example of the power of having an online author platform. Neil Gaiman wrote a blog post about this project. He tweeted about it. The backers increased and so did the amount of funds raised. Christopher Salmon has a website about this project. He created a video to promote it, and uses easy tools for anyone to use to pledge money and spread the word.

True, there is no one like Neil Gaiman. But there is also no one like you, and how you reach out to your fans will be in your own style and in your own way and they will support you in their own style and their own way – once you build a relationship with them. Which is getting easier and easier to do, online.

Yes, there is more spam than fish in the sea. There are also emails for every hobby, profession, and interest you can image and would want to opt-in to get quality information.

Like a steampunk band such as Abney Park.

I have permission from @CaptianRobert to feature the latest email from the H.M.S. Ophelia on my blog. The reason to do so is because it is a great example of what is possible for anyone who wants to communicate directly with their people.

Some cool graphics, some informational copy, some sales copy, some personal copy and a request for feedback.

Here’s a screengrab of the email. You can click on it to see a larger version.

It’s long and scrolling – that’s okay, that’s what websites and emails are designed to do. If this email were all text, that would be a beating, but the graphics break up the copy nicely and keep the people interested in reading more.

The graphics show information (date and place of the next concert, the design of the tshirt), add resonance to the copy (the Captain’s actual daughters on his actual motorcycle), and reinforce the Abney Park brand (logo at the top, airship at the bottom).

The copy has some sales to it (most emails do), but also shares unique information with the people on the list (lyrics to the new song). This makes people feel special because you just gave them something they are interested in, out of the blue, that they didn’t have to go search for on their own.

When someone signs up for your email list, they are telling you they want to hear from you – they are giving you permission to send them stuff. They may change their mind later, but until they do, do not neglect that invitation.

And when you get ready to send out your email to your people, think about this message from Captain Robert of Abney Park aboard the H.M.S. Ophelia, and what you could do to make your communication as cool.

I did not work in the creative department.

“Creative” people could attend client meetings in torn jeans and no one would say anything about it, nor think any less of them. If one of them showed up in something more formal, we joked they were interviewing or had run out of clean clothes.

I was an information architect.

My output was black and white: a website audit with tables of heuristics, or site maps of lines and boxes showing webpage hierarchy, or wireframes/page schematics that showed what kind of content went on what kind of page. I was expected to dress up for client meetings.

However, I was, and am, creative.

My stories are creative. My choice of walking up the embankment instead of using the concrete stairs is creative. My artist trading cards are creative. My use of a laptop during meetings as a heat source is creative.

And because I am creative, I see creativity in
- the doodles of a programmer as he designs the table structure of a relational database
- the number of different greens in a sun-lit tree
- the clothing choices of a 5 year old
- the change in pitch as the neighbor’s dog continues to bark for over two hours
- the exact number of sweetner packets an elderly man puts in his coffee

It doesn’t matter what department you work in, or whether you create stuff in color or black and white. I’d bet money you are creative.

You’re human after all.