learn to sew, dammit!!!

whilst sewing up a pair of slit sleeves on an old duster/sweater (you know, the 1s that were in style in 2000?), i had a thought...  when the boy gets a little older, say 7 or 8, i'm gonna teach him how to work a needle & thread.  oh yes, i can already hear the laughter.  that's ok.  yuck it up.  i'm about to put you in your place.

i don't know why it is that certain tasks are seen as for men & others are seen to be strictly for women.  now, if you're pregnant & about to give birth, then yes, i'd say let a woman handle that.  but things like changing a light bulb?  shit, if you have a brain & a fresh light bulb, change it!  or laundry.  men wear clothes & grime them up just like the women folk, rt?  then a man better be able to turn the knob on a washing machine & dump in some detergent just like a woman.  or cooking.  don't we all need to eat?  yeah, you better get in the kitchen & learn to make a sandwich, instant ramen noodles, or some scrambled eggs, or you starve.  if the zombie apocalypse were to happen tomorrow a pesky spider were on the wall, would you wait on a man to handle it?  you better get a shotgun/an ax/ bludgeoning device shoe & take care of business, ma'am.

all these things make a person self-sufficient.  i cannot STAND a person who plays helpless & will stand aside to let some1 else do what they could do themselves.  i also cannot STAND a person who thinks they're too good to do something & will let who they think is a 'lesser person' do it for them.  not cool.

sewing is the same thing.  i'm not talking about making patterns & selecting fabrics & making a whole outfit.  no no.  basic sewing; simple stuff.  if you have a button pop off a dress shirt, it doesn't take but a min to sew that sucker back on & be done w/.  what's the alternative?  take it to the cleaners & have them do it for $5?  or buy another shirt for $20-50???  really?

at my day job, i encounter so many ladies who admit they don't know how to sew & quite a few will almost proudly say they DON'T sew.  but they are more than happy to let their own mothers do the sewing.  not knowing how is 1 thing, but not even attempting to learn is another.  & i just can't tell you how the latter group makes me feel ill.

the boy will be proficient in sewing (buttons or holes), cooking (breakfast foods because he LURVES him some breakfast),  & will take on zombies do his own laundry like a pro.  yes, he will be a self-sufficient man.  the lady he marries will be glad that they can BOTH do chores & keep the household running smoothly as a team.

give a man a fish, & he'll eat for a day.  teach him how to fish & he'll eat forever. 

i have such dreams & aspirations for him, don't i?

now excuse me.  i need to youtube some 'how to' videos on putting up your own fence...

vector pin up tutorial - lum-chaaaaaaaan!!!

i love animation of all forms.  2d, stop motion, rotoscope, cgi.  i've always been fascinated by how an inanimate picture/object becomes animated.  traditional 2d cel animation is my favorite.  my vector style art is heavily influenced by the look of a cel, w/ the defined outlines & wide washes of solid colors.

i spent my early childhood growing up on an air force base in okinawa, japan.  there was 1 english speaking channel run by the base which ran from 7am - midnight.  after that, you got to stare @ a boring test pattern.  the rest of the stations were straight japanese gold.  it was here that i became aquainted w/ what is now known as anime.  after dinner, my little sister & i would take our baths & wind down for the evening.  1 of the shows we watched before bed was "urusei yatsura" but we didn't speak a lick of japanese, so we just called it the cartoon w/ the green-haired girl.  it wasn't until i was in my 20s that i found out the actual name of the show & the green-haired girl.  her name was lum.

what was it about lum that i loved?  she was pretty, & what girl doesn't idolize a pretty character?  i mean, disney makes a killing on little girls looking up to pretty princesses, rt?  lum had so much confidence, she'd walk around in a friggin tiger-stripped bikini & go-go boots.  oh yeah, & she could fly & shoot lightning from her fingers.  hell yeah.

so you can see why i chose lum as the subject of this tutorial.  anime = animation = cel art = vectors. & lum = tiger-stripped bikini = pinups.  see the connections?  great!  well ok, here we go!  

step 1...i do a quick sketch of what it is i want to render. i even add swipes of tones & shading. scan it & take the sketch into adobe illustrator & keep it locked on the bottom most layer. 

lum sketchy sketch

step 2...i start breaking up the image into shapes & use the pen tool to create the shapes' outlines. everything is a shape. the hair, the body, even the little horns & the pupils of her eyes. i arrange the shapes in separate layers, 1 on top of the next, according to what shape appears at the forefront. for instance, lum's body is 1 whole shape, & her boots are shapes themselves that go on top of her body. you gotta think of it kind of like a paper doll w/ different outfits or hairstyles you can place on top of a template body. it's kind of tricky to do, but once you start thinking of things as shapes & layers, you begin to get the hang of it. **i was lazy so i used brush strokes for the tiger stripes.

now you don't want too many layers because that can the file too big to work on, so it might be easier to tackle 1 thing @ a time. like rendering her eyes on separate layers (the blue eyeshadow, the whites of the eye, the green iris, the black pupil, the black eyeliner & eyelashes). once you've got that done you can group these objects together & keep them on a single layer

outlines, outlines, & oh yeah, outlines.

step 3...add in the shading.  remember, even the shading can be seen as shapes.  you can either fill the shade w/ black & lower the opacity or pick a darker shade of the base tone.

shading outlines done.

step 4...pick your palette to fill your shapes & color your outlines.

yay, colorz!

i know this was a VERY simplified tutorial.  & i know you probably still have TONS of questions on how to do a vector piece.  i wanted to give an overview of how i render.  i'll be going into more detail w/ the different adobe illustrator tools is use, how to use them, complete w/ screenshots & all.  so stay tuned...