Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Glass Blowing - Making an Ornament


The sequel to Lords of Dyscrasia is coming in 2014, entitled Spawn of Dyscrasia.  It features a hero from Clan Tonn who is a glass blower.  My wife empowered me to do some research by signing me up for a basic glass blowing class; the goal being to make a glass ornament.  So across town to Brazee Street Studios (Cincinnati, OH) I went and had a great time.  John Ruzsa (glass blower) guided me through the process.  The below montages summarize:

  1. Gather some glass (Furnace 1)
  2. Manage temperature of the pipe and glass (Furnace 2)
  3. Add some color (colored frit is worked in)
  4. Shape it (molding, blowing, pincing)
  5. Anneal it (Furnace 3, not shown here.  Essentially the glass is equilibrated at a cooler, but still "hot" temperature.)

The ornament is quite robust, and rather heavy.  The blowpipe is the length of an Aikido jo (staff) and could easily be employed in combat.  And the furnaces...wow...they are hot!








Monday, December 9, 2013

Holiday Card 2013

Season Greetings & Happy New Years! 

The Lindberg Family wishes everyone a smooth transition into 2014.

 2103 card

Mythic Santa Concept

The Lindberg Card tradition has been escalating since 1998 (see Teamlindberg crafts gallery).  Each year I arbitrarily blend two themes.  This year was "Myths" and "Santa," borrowing design elements from the 2010 and 2011 cards, while portraying Santa as are more heroic. Below I list some of my initial concepts to explore:
 2010 Holiday Card 2011 Holiday Card
Santa + Centaur = "Santaur." Okay, I made that word up.  I liked the idea, but centaurs do not fly. I went out looking for horse creatures that could (i.e. Pegasus).      
Santa + Sleipnir = creepy weirdness.  The centaur alternative would be "Sleipnir", the 8-legged Viking horse who could ride the sky.  This concept just produced creepy sketches (not shown here :) ).   Winged horses might work, but didn't Santa have reindeer?
Deer + wings = "Peryton." Okay, Santa doesn't need wings if his reindeer have them.  Thanks go out to Seabury Court Resident Mythologist Erin (a.k.a. daughter) for educating me that winged-deer actually have been classified already.
Sleigh or Chariot?  Suitable vehicles for sky riding include chariots, as per Helios, Sun-driver.  For starters I tried working with the chariot.

Sketches Start the Process

Setting the Landscape with Photography & Virtual Globe

Envisioning an epic, celestial landscape, I went to my neighborhood street (Seabury Court) to capture the sunset's awesome clouds.  Thanks to neighbor Frank for letting me trespass on his driveway and grab the below snapshot (in July no less, I had to plan early this year!).   For the earth, I decided to take advantage of Photoshop's 3D object capability (I had to learn how to use it sooner than later). Online tutorials (video demo and step-by-step tutorial links) guided me through wrapping the 2D earth-map over a sphere.


Composition: Rotating Earth & Adding Sketches

The sunset image and globe were combined to get the composition started.  Adding the sketches came next. The earth had to be turned such that the sun came from the east, chasing Santa as he rides into the night.

Blocking-in Sketches

Next came painting the characters, so I “blocked in” their bodies by tracing over the previous sketches with the digital paintbrush.  

Readjusting & Detailing Perytons ... Chariot morphed into a Troika Sleigh

The chariot idea wasn't working for the image, so it morphed into a sleigh. Notice that Santa is more like a beefy-god rather than beer-belly fatso.  Custom brushes were used for the fur, cloud, and feather textures. The Swatch and Brush panels serve as paint palettes.  A Wacom Bamboo tablet enabled pressure-sensitive brushing.


Photoshop Workspace

A screenshot captures the complex document.  It is >250MB, full of layers (most with masks) and Smart Objects.  Had to colorize the 50+ layers to maintain sense of them.  Adjustment layers (also masked) help tune lighting, saturation, color-temperature.  To wrap things up, the year was added in Roman Numeral style (as done in 2007, 2012).  Then it was submitted to psprint.com for hardcopy printing ~Nov 5th.  This provides a few weeks to approve the proof and get copies in before the hectic Thanksgiving Day week.  







Sunday, December 8, 2013

RobotSlayer, Vince Kamp's Family Friendly Graphic Novel - Review by S.E.

Robotslayer by Vincent Kamp

S.E. Lindberg rating: 5 of 5 stars

Family Friendly Heroic Fun: Looking for a fun, meaningful book to read to your child? Read this with your child, or let them have a go at it. Great art is inspired by passionate creators, as is Vince Kamp, who delivers this family-friendly graphic novel in a variety of forms (paperback comic and interactive “app”). The author’s engineering-minded father clearly influenced his own creativity; here, he pays the gesture forward to influence his own children, Leo and Benny, who literary play the heroes. Each panel is beautifully designed and painted.



The real Leo and Benny fight 8' tall, Kamp-made robots outside their Dad's "robot lab" (photo from author's website)

Availability: As good as the paperback is, most people will enjoy getting the electronic version (iPad only), since the entire graphic novel comes with a splendid mini-game and a host of interactive frames (only $2.99 in the US app store). Currently (Dec 2013) the paperback is easiest to get via a United Kingdom source (i.e. Amazon.co.uk), even if you are in the US.

App: The App is the entire graphic novel in electronic form, amplified with sounds, interactivity, and a cool mini-game. The arcade-style game is worth the price of admission; it is quite addicting too. Conservatively rated (Rated 9+), I think any boy from 2yr to 13yr’s old would enjoy this without issue. Any fantasy violence presented is really quite tame. Juvenile humor manifests in numerous “farting rats.”

Younger readers would need help with the reading, of course; this provides a great opportunity to read to your child. Let them press the buttons along the way to stay engaged. Older readers (adults mainly) may have to squint to read the font, until their tech-friendly counterparts show them that flicking the screen can “zoom in” (the flick-to-zoom feature may be turned off but can be activated in the settings).

More info:  The official Robotslayer website and its Facebook Page offer many details.  Best to hear from the author himself though, and you can do that too. Here's an interview with Geek Native talking about how Robotslayer came together - thanks to everybody who's getting behind it! The book is available to buy on amazon, there's a week and a bit until it's on the App Store... Mental. All the high fives!

Interview: Also, check out my 2011 Interview of Vince Kamp in which he discusses how he illustrated the book.



View all my reviews

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Sword and Sorcery Movie Queue: 2014 and beyond

Sword and Sorcery list (Link)

Instead of maintaining separate postings for Sword & Sorcery movies (blog link) each year, I am now doing that via one list on the IMDB (the internet movie database).  Please suggest any additions/edits.  Here are some of the cool features:
  • Sort List: by Ranking, US release date (and flip/inverse ordering)
  • Immediate Streaming:  Click the buttons on the side to see which one's you can stream immediately...and if you are a Amazon Prime member (watch some for free...right now!).
  • Quiz: there is a fun quiz offered for this list
  • Trailers and Reviews
  • Export the List (so you can graph trends, like the quality and quantity of the genre)

2014 Highlights:  Some neat films are coming out in Dec 2013/2014, including:

  • 47 Ronin
  • A 300 sequel
  • Seventh Son
  • Hercules (2 of them actually)
  • Hobbit sequels

IMDB Sword and Sorcery movie list