My favorite part…

…of the creative process is the conception stages. I love ideas, and I love playing on ideas, and I love love love seeing all the potential images in my head. Here is an Idea for Swandive Theatre’s next production, it’s nowhere near a finished product. Hell, it may not even wind up being the final idea, but it’s an Idea, and the final product is crisp and clear in my head. That is what I love most about design, seeing a million and one pictures in my head, fishing through all the ideas, and finding that one perfect image.

The hard part is getting it just right for publication.

Hunting, but not finding.

I’m one of those people who is in a continual renewal of my portfolio. Every once in a while, I’ll get focused and really push to make something presentable, this is one of those times. The job hunt in Minneapolis is going as well as it can, I guess, but it sure bites. Looking for work is kind of a bitch. I just need a lead. I know I clean up well. I know if I can just get the proverbial foot in the door, and get a physical meeting, I can charm the pants off nearly anyone. As an added bonus, I have the skills and ideas to back up my claims and charm.

Someone give me a damn chance already.

Oh, and here’s a long overdue thing to look at. It’s the logo for Swandive Theatre’s upcoming “Trash Our Site” campaign.

On the list of things I should be doing…

…reinstating my weekly image challenge is on the top.

Not like I haven’t been making anything recently, with The Baltimore Waltz coming up, I’m up to my eyeballs in projections, staff bios, and page layouts. So, without further ado, here’s the postcard image.

I really like the way this came out, especially the title. I worked diligently on that Bezier curve till it was perfect. Poking and prodding each point, scaling and stretching the shapes, it took longer than I’d like to admit. It looks wicked sharp on the print version, but when its scaled down to a viewable web size, it loses some of it’s sheen.

The postcards were a blast to work on this time around. The idea came easily, the picture came together nicely, and the size of the card was dramatic. A whopping 6 by 9 for the final printouts to be mailed. Fun all around.

Oh, hey. I have a blog! I should use this thing.

Aquaria.

Holy crap.

Aquaria.

It’s a damn fine game. It’s a bit slow at first, till you get the energy form, and can finally start to really hurt things. Battle feels like aerial dogfights. Succesfully swimming around enemies and their bullets is tricky, but not overly difficult, and I feel remarkably dexterous whenever I make it through a difficult battle. The first boss fight in the Energy Temple was a good fight, and I can’t wait to see what other battles are in store. I imagine they’ll get rather epic.

You hold the mouse to move in any direction, click the left button to do a quick boost that has a bit of a recharge time, and right click to fire. In close quarters, boosting onto a wall will grip it, allowing you to do a wall boost, which you can chain, in order to zip around hallways and enemies.

The world is beautiful, eels lash around smoothly, schools of fish flutter, seaweed sways as you pass it… It’s just really damn pretty.

Aquaria isn’t without fault though, there is very little hand holding. You are forced to explore in order to move forward through the story. You really have to want to explore this world, and in doing so, unwrap what is going on, who this mer-lady is, and what the hell anything has to do with anything else.

Another complaint is that their obstacle course sections are long, and you are often forced to repeat them. Example, in the Energy Temple, You have to get two pearls into keyholes to open two doors in order to move forward, one pearl is close by, the other is way deep in some caves, through laser beams and enemy swarms, and a fair distance away. Yes you can clear out the enemies so they aren’t there on the return trip, but you still have to swim back through all those empty caverns, and re-dodge the lasers. The map is even set up to be semi-circular, so at one point you can see the pearl, but cant get to it because of some debris. They could have very easily had a switch, or some kind of event, on the pearl side of that debris, that would clear the mess, allowing you not have to retrace your steps through empty caves.

I got this gem on sale for 9.99$ on Steam, full price is 19.99$, either price is worth it. A stellar game, and another reason I love small developers. It’s rare to find a game like Aquaria that feels remarkably familiar, but completely fresh at the same time.

Kyle’s First Comission.

Isn’t it cute?

From Jewelry

So, I’m back to working days. That’s harsh, but the light of the sun will be banished by the cold covering of winter soon. Plus, Brutal Legend comes out tomorrow and I’ve got it on pre-order. A recording of Jack Black called me today to remind me. It’s was mildly epic.

I sold a necklace (pics of it to come soon) and was comissioned to repeat part of it. I made some leaves out of a sheet of metal for the necklace, and was paid to recreate them in sets. So, here’s a pic of the leaves. I might have another comission soon for a full necklace. Rad squared.

Here is another image for this week, a necklace I call “Hurl.” I still need to make a clasp for the cord, and a set of earrings to go with it.

From Jewelry

For Sale: Handmade comet, extra tail.

This necklace is called “Two Tailed Comet.” It’s a 21″ handmade copper chain. I coiled every one of those 450+ loops, from a spool of 20ga. wire, and weaved them together. It is a square style chain, made with 3/16″ links, so the chain has a lot of girth to it. The pendant is an orange-red glazed ceramic disk, just over 1.5″ round, and there are two tails of white seed beads that fade away as they travel further up the chain. There is no clasp on this chain yet, if you want to purchase this before I open an Etsy.com store to sell it, tell me what kind of clasp you would like, if you have a preference, and I’ll see what I can do.

This week sometime, I’m going to be opening a store at Etsy.com specifically to sell this. It is the first piece of jewelry I’ve made that I’m really proud of, and think that I could easily get my asking price for it. The asking price for this necklace is going to be 65$, +5.00 for shipping. But, if you buy this now, and you live in Minneapolis, I will hand deliver it for free.

This item is one of a kind, and will be sold on a first come first served basis.

Once this sells, I’m going to turn that cash into a spool of silver wire, and I’m going to kick out something incredible. I love metalwork. I just fucking love it, what else can I say. I’m actually considering going back to school for it.

Oh wait, I missed Monday.

Yeah, I slept through Monday. Short and sweet this week. This past weekend, I remembered I’d hidden away some more pressed flowers at work, and pulled them out for high res scanning.

The image here is a low res version of the scans I made, but If you want a zip of all the pressed flower scans I’ve done so far (probably wind up being at least a 200MB zip file.) just drop me a line and I’ll send them your way.

+1 Rings of Awesomeness

Jewelry

In the past two weeks, I’ve done horrible, torturous things to metal. I’ve bent it, hammered it, and shaped it. I’ve burned, scratched, punctured, and marred it. I’ve even bound it to things, like wood, or stone. For the most part, it’s been pretty fun, and now that I asked the internet some questions, I’ve figured out that my gas stove flame should be hot enough to anneal copper, among other non-precious metals.

Working metal, with hammers, pliers, or whatever, will harden the metal, making it brittle, and prone to breaking. Annealing the metal, softens it enough to return the metal to a workable condition. I know this because of my learnings… and the internet… and the library, believe it or not, the freakin library is even involved in this project.

I’m going to attempt another copper bracelet tomorrow, but this one I’m going to really hammer, and shape, and see if my stove can really anneal it, and make it workable again.

Enjoy the handful of images for this week, the first image in this post, is a link to my picasa account, like usual, and here is a close up of a copper bracelet. This was an experiment with filed holes, scratching the metal, and an attempt to color the copper with a lighter, which isn’t hot enough for that purpose.

These are words.

This week, no image, just lots of words.

I quit smoking two weeks ago. It’s been difficult, and I still constantly have to fight that little voice in the back of my head that says “I should go have a smoke.” The involuntary hand twitching has stopped at least, but I’ve been fidgety, sleepless, and disoriented at all times since I quit. I’m also finding that I hate beer even more now that I can taste it better.

This has been a huge change for me. I’ve been a smoker for almost fifteen years. Almost, thankfully. That was the big motivator that finally made me able to quit for good this time. My reasoning for this quit was because my 30th birthday is coming up at the end of September, I started smoking when I was 15. I was finally able to quit smoking this time because I keep telling myself that I don’t want smoking to have been something I’ve done for over half my life. It was as simple as that, I just needed the correct motivation.

I have a lot of nervous, fidgety energy now, so I’ve picked up some tools again. Metalsmithing, and jewelry making have always been something I’ve enjoyed dabbling in. I like making things with my hands. I recently splurged on a bunch of tools for smithing, and I’m looking for classes in the cities. Metal Heart Jewelry is the closest I’ve found, but they’re in White Bear Lake, and 330$ per course. I really just need some pointers on owning and wielding a propane torch, and some tips for using silver solder, and the process of high quality soldering. So, if you have any experience with the processes, hit me up, I’m desperate.

A little over a week ago, I paid someone to stab me in the face. Hahaha, I meant, I got my septum pierced. The septum, if you don’t know, is flap of skin and cartilage that separates your nostrils. It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would, but the healing pain was the worst out of all my piercings. Every new pierce hurts, gets inflamed, and throbs with pain. But, with the septum, it felt like every nerve ending in my face ended at the tip of my nose, and for the first few days, the slightest brush on my nose would send my whole face into a fiery pain spiral for a few minutes.

It’s healing really well now, hardly hurts anymore. I’d even say it’s safe to switch out the jewelry for something else. Granted, I’m not going to, because I don’t need to, but if I got a random job interview or something, I’d be willing to get a retainer for it, and switch it out temporarily.

This friday, when I get paid again, Leo and I are finally going to go open a joint account to save for a house. For realsies this time. We’re planning on dropping my whole paycheck into it to start of the savings right.

I’m still procrastinating on sending in the paperwork to make myself officially a business with the state. I’m still undecided on what I want to name my doing business as alias. It’s either going to be “Kyle Truss, Graphic Design,” or “Kyle Truss, Professional Creative.” I’m leaning towards Professional Creative, because it’s more all inclusive, where as Graphic Design is a very specific thing. Leave a comment, what do you think?

Things are going well here, sorry for the lack of images today, I’ll post something later when Leo comes home with the camera. He should be home today. Thursday, he left to go run around in the woods for a few days, took the camera with him. So, be patient.

WordPress for iPhone is difficult.

Like seriously. This is my serious face.

I forgot it was Monday. Interesting things are in the works here. I’m playing with metal and hammers.

I made a bracelet, out of copper and glass. I bought a square anvil, some copper and some aluminum. Just some cheap materials to experiment with.

More to come later this week.