PM: FOUNDRY SWAG

Items available for our players to purchase, based on some of the new enemy characters created for The Foundry.

MEETING D.J. AND THOMAS

Only a few weeks after meeting David and Deborah Weekley, I got to meet another of my illustration clients, D.J. Grothe, and his partner Thomas, when I visited Los Angeles for a vacation! This was timely too, since I had worked on their respective commissions back to back.

D.J. and Thomas took us to the Magic Castle, which exceeded all expectations and was an amazing adventure. Pictured here with us are my travel buddy Mike, a friend from Madison, and our lovely friends Justice and Kristin, whom we stayed with during our trip.

I had such a great time with all of these people, I'm already planning my next visit to L.A. And I really love meeting my clients in person, I want to make this an on-going trend. The latest person I've worked with has been Chris Stedman, so I'm thinking a trip out east is in order some time soon. :)

FAIRY TALES FEATURED IN THE ADVOCATE

Very excited that The Advocate featured my MFA project on their website! Quite the honor.

I also really love how they worded the short intro they included: "Like you always wanted Classics Illustrated comics to do..." Absolutely! Aesthetically, I wanted to give gay people the same kinds of generic, stereotypical romantic images and tropes that straight people grow up with and take for granted. I researched comic books, romance novel covers and movie posters to get most of these poses.

The calendar is still on sale in a slightly modified version on deviantART.

Funny back story: The reason The Advocate noticed my work in the first place was because of my Marriage in the Bible infographic that had gone viral. Apparently, the odious anti-gay group NOM had commented on it. A friend of mine suggested I send NOM a thank-you card for the attention. Haha! So thanks, NOM! You helped us get more positive images of same-sex relationships into the public consciousness. Hope you are proud of your good deed! :D

*Some people have been asking about the calendar year. If you buy a calendar it will be for 2013. I double checked with deviantART:

The year will automatically change in July to the next year.

Example: If you submit a Calendar for the year 2013 before the end of December 2012, the Calendar will automatically change to the year 2014 in July 2013.

We currently ship calendars for the year 2013.

PM: THE FOUNDRY

We have a big gameplay event in Parallel Mafia called The Foundry, it's a multi-tiered dungeon that must be played through several times to unlock new paths and enemies. I got to create a lot of important images including the huge bosses, so I had a lot of fun with this entire project.

MEETING THE WEEKLEYS

I had the great pleasure of meeting David and Deborah Weekley in person, when they stopped by Madison on their way from Portland to Boston (quite a road trip!). They were such wonderful, friendly people, I really felt like I already knew them. We had curry and I introduced David to Spotted Cow. :)

Full disclosure: I'm wearing jorts in this picture. I cropped them out.

David presented me with a signed copy of his book, which is on sale HERE. As always, I am recommending this book to anybody with an interest in biographies, transgender issues, LGBT rights in general, religion, and the intersections between them; regardless of your own personal beliefs. I have a lot of friends who are atheists and agnostics, so I really want to press this: as a non-religious person myself, I found it completely accessible, and a terrific read. It is a beautifully written personal telling of David's journey as a transgender man and a minister in the United Methodist Church, we all have a lot to learn from David and Deborah, and I am beyond thankful that I got to work with them.

SBA CONFLICT RESOLUTION GUIDE

I landed a really fun commission project for Steve Brown Apartments. It's a conflict resolution guide for college roommates, although the principles in it could probably be useful for any social situation. The guide highlights five different types of conflict resolution styles and represents each one as an animal with its own unique personality.