Me Make Monster! Launches

Click to make some monster stuff.

I've launched a new project - a new venture, if you will - and it's called Me Make Monster! I'll create a more detailed blog post in the future, but for now I invite you to check it out and play around with it. And hey, if you have a kid - especially boys 7-10 - and you get them to check it out, I'd be especially interested in what they have to say.

I've kept the purpose of the site very simple - you make a monster out of various parts, name it, and then you apply your finished monster to a variety of products on Zazzle. The products are created on the fly using Zazzle's API, which imposes a high-res image (generated from the vector monster parts in Flash) and adds it to templates. That was certainly not the fun part of this project, but working it out meant a very smooth handoff from the MMM site to Zazzle, which will hopefully entice customers to make a purchase.

As far as the monster is concerned, you can select pieces for the head, eye brows, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, body (really the torso), arms, legs, and "extra", which can be a tail, wings, and other stuff that appears behind the monster - essentially attached to its back. For some parts (eyes, brows, nose, mouth, ears) there is a blank option - essential for creating some specific monsters, like a Mummy - Mummys don't have noses, in case you didn't know.

You can also select the color (one color per monster only) and a texture (which can also be blank). For each piece except the body/torso, you can enlarge or shrink that piece, and move it up and down - all within certain tolerances. There's also a Reset button that brings it back to its base position and size, and a Random button that selects a random body part, size, and position. I've also added Reset and Random buttons for the full monster - clicking the Random All button is a great place to start - you can keep going until you see a monster you like, then jump in and start tweaking it.

Something I wrestled with was hair and clothes. At first I was going to exclude both because of technical resasons - I wanted the body parts to be varied, so I knew Frankenstein's Monster hair wouldn't fit on a Dracula-style head. Same thing with clothes. But I eventually I decided I really wanted to add those features - I couldn't make all the kinds of monsters I wanted to without them. So I created those functions, but as purely on/off options - each head and body part has one discrete hairstyle and clothing option. That way I don't have to worry about elements fitting - or not fitting.

I thought about going with a sequential setup - like Mad Men Yourself, where you select one body part at a time, and move forward and back. This may have been easier for the core demographic I'm targeting (boys 7-10) but it also slows things down, and because it doesn't present all of your options at once, it can be less satisfying to use. We'll see - I've got some beta testers playing with the site now - hopefully their feedback on the interface is encouraging. I trust 'em.

There were some technical hurdles to overcome (and some I'm still overcoming) but I wanted to get the site up and running first, then start cleaning things up. So - it's up! Check it out if you're into monsters (is anyone not into monsters?!) and let me know what you think.

www.MeMakeMonster.com

Nico's Monster Hunt

I guess I'm going a little crazy for my son Nico's first birthday party, which is under a month away. They only turn one once, from what I hear.

I'd previously posted an entry about the monster invitation I created (my wife came up with the theme, believe it or not) and since then I've printed the invitations, along with a directions card, and sent them out (purple envelope with monster-face sealer sticker) to about 55 families.

Besides the invitation, I've printed more monster face stickers on Zazzle (as part of the giveaway), and a custom shirt for Nico to wear to the party featuring this design.:


I've also printed banners with the five monsters wishing Nico a happy birthday (each including a corny joke), and a series of signs with each monster offering Nico birthday advice. I put together a 14-song CD with rockin' versions of Monster Mash, I Put a Spell On You, Purple People Eater and similar monster-themed songs, designed and printed labels for the CDs, burned 70 copies, bought purple clamshell cases and assembled them all - another party giveaway.

And we have purple and green balloons, streamers, pom poms, monster cups (the main giveaway), paper plates - even Frankenstein's Monster and Wolfman piñatas (the Monster is, fortuitously, mostly purple and green) - it's become quite a project. My wife, who is designing a Mad Hatter-style cake featuring all five monsters (she's a pastry chef) has already suggested that his second birthday party be a quiet, intimate affair - I'm in agreement.

So, besides all of the above, we're working on activities - all monster-themed as well. You can't have a theme party without constantly reinforcing the theme, I always say. We're counting the piñatas as one activity, and we're going to play Hot Potato with a Frankenstein's Monster head for a second game. For the third activity, I'm developing a fairly elaborate game - Nico's Monster Hunt.

I want the kids (there are sixty kids invited - and about ninety adults - that's why we're having the party in a huge park) to have a little adventure, and a monster adventure at that. So I've created something kind of like a scavenger hunt, but instead of having the kids collect things (I didn't want to buy sixty of five items), it's a clue-based adventure.

The kids will get a flyer (I've pieced the elements together below) with instructions, a map of the park that I illustrated, and a spot for the answers to be filled in. Here's the setup:

The kids will use the map to walk around the park (probably with their parents, unless they're brave) using the five numbers to locate five semi-hidden signs. Each sign will have a clue that they'll have to figure out, filling it in above. And here are those clues:

1
The monster made by Frankenstein
Beyond this hill made his decline
And as he stumbled past this spot
He feared a stick t'was flaming hot

What did Frankenstein's Monster see here?

2
The Wolfman running in the night
Silhouetted in moonlight
Suddenly he howled in fear
From a bullet he found here
What kind of bullet did The Wolfman find?

3
Dracula, the king of dread
As a bat flew overhead
But when he landed in this tree
He lost his best accessory

What did Dracula drop here?

4
The Mummy, wrapped in dust and gloom
Walked here from his ancient tomb
He fled as soon as he could see
An insect just as old as he
What scared the Mummy off?

5
The Creature From the Black Lagoon
Swimming here one afternoon
Found beneath his scaly fin
A mesh of strings to reel him in

What made The Creature From the Black Lagoon swim away?

I'm not giving away the secret word, sorry - you'll have to work it out on your own.

Developing the puzzle was more challenging than I anticipated. The rhyming of the clues came fairly quickly, but I had to make some adjustments once I'd worked them all out. I gave no forethought to what the final answer to the whole puzzle would be as I was developing the clues - I just figured I'd make a five-letter word out of the answers, which I did - but the words I was coming up with had no connection to the theme. "Ropes" was one I kept arriving at - but how do I make "Ropes" the big answer? I couldn't make it work.

Then, when I figured out a word I liked for the final answer, it required one of the clues to be adjusted. Initially, The Wolfman saw his reflection in the moon (a nice, iconic image - I'm trying to give the kids the impression that the monsters were all recently in the park - I want them to have that warm, spooky feeling, which is hard to pull off in a beautiful outdoor environment, mid-day) - but "moon" didn't have the "r" I needed, so adjusted it to be... well, the final answer. All things considered, it wasn't too big a change to make, but I did feel a little sad that I had to lose the moon for The Wolfman. I hope the kids understand.

For the park illustration, I used Google Earth as a reference - but as you would imagine, it gave me too much detail. So after reviewing the satellite image, I grabbed a letter-sized piece of paper, folded it in half, and using a thick brush-tip marker, sketched it out from memory. Then, I compared it to the aerial view and made some adjustments.

I kept the view a bit distorted - not straight above, but down a bit, yet distorting some of the views of the objects so they're more easily recognizable. And I tried to include just enough landmarks so that the kids (and the parents) would be able to find the 8.5x11" signs on a stake in a sand pit (The Mummy = sand), nailed to a tree (for Dracula), by the edge of the lake or wherever they wind up being placed.

I originally considered making the map in full color, or even two color (tints of purple and green), but then just went with tints of the green. Besides being the fastest option, I think it works best this way - giving the kids just enough detail to get their bearings in the park.


Map detail. Click for full, larger view...
you amateur detective, you.

I used the same technique for the map illustration that I did for the invitation - hand sketching and inking with brush-tip markers, scanning, Live Trace in Illustrator, recoloring and final layout in Freehand. Someday I'll break myself of using Freehand, but probably not any time soon. It's the best.

I'm going to head out to the park next week for a test-run, and to make sure my sign/clue locations will work, and that the map is accurate and workable. I don't want the kids getting mad a me for a misplaced bush or something similar - that could get ugly.

I enjoyed making this whole puzzle - it gave me new respect for designer/illustrators who develop these kinds of pieces for publications like Nickelodeon Magazine and Highlights (who gave me the worst rejection of my life in the early 90's - "We don't use material of this style - please do not ever resubmit your work again in the future." - yes, seriously - it gave me a horrible impression of them after loving their magazine throughout my childhood, and every time I see a copy in my dentist's office I recoil).

Maybe puzzle-making is something I'll pursue in the future - in the meantime, I hope the kids and parents at the party appreciate it - and Nico, once he's old enough for it. I'll have to take him back in a few years and recreate it for him, once he has the word "scarab" in his vocabulary, I know he'll be ready (there's your freebie clue).

My Tail Is Long

Click for larger image. Sorry, you won't see anymore of his elusive tail.

I have no idea where this one came from. I just drew the eyes in FreeHand one day, and started adding features. Eventually I had a head. Then I cloned the ears and made them into tail spikes. Water, sky, super-de-duper simple clouds, a reflection, and I called the image done.

Then I added some text in the same simple, unplanned style - I just typed some words, making each line shorter, mirroring the tail. The text suddenly made the sea monster seem neurotic, which fit in well with his wide, lidless eyes. The guy needs help.


Absolute symmetry, they say, does not occur in human faces - but my
sea monster possesses this attribute. Oh - except, I guess, for the higlights
in his eyes. Darn.

As I've mentioned in other posts, I sometimes feel guilty when working in such a simplistic style - but it's very freeing, and it isn't always any faster, either. I need to work on those feelings. Maybe I can find a support group.

I didn't do anything with this illustration for a couple years, and then I opened my Zazzle store and applied the graphic to a bunch of products. I've sold a few My Tail Is Long t-shirts in kids' sizes, but I think it works best on a mug - I like the way it wraps around the product. If you spin it fast enough, it gives the illusion that the creature is swimming past you (this works especially well if you've been drinking).


My Tail Is Long mug on Zazzle

I've started working on another monster in this style - maybe there's a future animation project or book in the future, filled with imaginary creatures, each with unique personality disorders. Could be fun - fun and therapeutic at the same time.

So Freaky

I did this illustration purely for me, sometime back around 1996 or so, and boy, it really reflected how I felt at the time. Yes, of course I was single, and not dating anyone. And I wasn't too happy about it, either.

I still have the original sketch, which I did on letter sized typing paper, then blew up to 11x17". I inked using my brush tip markers on another 11x17" piece of paper, photocopied the inked piece at Kinko's (I went to Kinko's a lot in the 90's - mostly after midnight) and colored the photocopy with my PrismaColor markers. That's how I rocked it in my pre-digital days.

Looking at it now, it's not a perfect piece - some of elements could have benefited from a slight tweak in placement, and the colors of those highlighted bricks are too intense. I never shoot for totally perfect perspective, but the mailbox here could have really been reworked. Still, though, it was a pretty pure piece, nice and loose with varied coloring and expressive linework - very typical of my style at the time.

I've used the illustration in self-promo pieces over the years, and it's got me a bit of illustration work. And now I use it on products like the t-shirt below, which I sometimes wear on the weekends to remind me of my single days. Don't tell my wife (oh yeah - she'll be reading this).

So Freaky on Zazzle

Nico's Monster Bash Invitation

My wife is cool for reasons too numerous to go into here (though she'd love it - who wouldn't?), but one recent example of her Fonzie-ness is when she suggested to me that our son Nico's birthday party be monster-themed. His birthday is in mid-September - not really close enough to October to be a logical tie-in - which makes it even cooler in my mind. Monsters just for the heck of it! Sharon's a pastry chef by trade, so she may just have been hankering to create some monstrous cupcakes, but whatever the reason, I was very happy with the theme and immediately began sketching. Here's the first concept I came up with:

Yes, Nico being surrounded by monsters is a dream of mine. Brings me back to my childhood. I wanted a Brady Bunch kind of feel for this layout, with Nico smushed in the middle, but that forced me to go outside the bounds of what I consider to be the five classic monsters (for the uninitiated: Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon) so I had to add a witch, a King Kong (looks too close to the Wolfman), and a skull - traditional Halloween stuff, but I don't think the lesser creatures can really hold their ground when put next to the five legends. Sorry, Kong fans.

I reworked the concept a bit, limiting it to the main five monsters. I wanted to keep the style light and fun (this is a kid's party, after all) and I wanted each shape to be distinct. Round two of the layout:

I was pretty happy with this, though I think I pushed the Wolfman too far into a cartoony realm, and too far away from Lon Chaney Jr.'s alter ego. I redrew him, then I inked the sketch by hand, using my favored brush-tip markers. I discovered these markers in 1988 and haven't stopped using them. They create a nice varied line weight, and they're easier to use than a traditional brush and ink combo. The downside of the brush-tip markers is that you've got to give the lines some time to dry (a few minutes) before your hand goes over them, or they'll smear. And the ink is water-soluble, so you can't color directly on the inked page. This was not a problem, however, since I knew I'd be coloring digitally anyway. The inked piece:


I think the Wolfman and Mummy were much improved here. So I scanned in the inked version of the art and pulled it into Adobe Illustrator. Using the Live Trace feature, I vectorized the outlines, making them into solid digital shapes. Some people don't like this automated feature, but I did some early tests and really liked the way it treated my linework. It was a little rough in some places, but that was perfect. My monsters can take it - they're tough.

Next, I used Illustrator's Live Paint feature to drop big flat colors into the shapes. The colors were very literal at this point (the Wolfman's outline was incomplete, so he's not colored here) and didn't have the subtlety I was going for - but that was fine, too, as this was only an intermediate stage:

Those colors absolutely suck. That's the problem with coloring everything as you "know" they should be - everything looks right on its own, but the colors are so far apart, the full piece isn't cohesive.

My next step was an not a traditional one - I pulled the vector art from Illustrator into Freehand, the best vector drawing tool ever created. Never mind that it's a dead program. In Freehand, I pushed all the colors toward green so the monsters and Nico would work harmoniously with each other. Even the Wolfman's fur is really a very greenified brown, though in the spectrum used, it winds up looking natural (at least, to my eyes). I also manually added the highlights and shadows to each monster, giving them a bit of depth. This was probably the most time-consuming step, but it made the monsters pop (a way overused term) more, which is what I was going for. I like things that pop. Like Pop Rocks. Or those snappy things with gunpowder that you thrown on the sidewalk ("Snappers"?). Those are awesome.

Once I was happy with the colors, I added a white outline, radial gradient purple background for maximum contrast (complimentary colors, you see), and text in Mufferaw and a great free font (Feast of Flesh) I'd recently found online, and used for the word "Monster" and some additional text on the reverse side of the invitation. What a serendipitous font discovery. The result:



The biggest wildcard here is Nico him - I'm sure I'll be tweaking him more before the invitation gets printed. I may have made his flesh too yellowish, but a natural flesh color didn't blend with the monsters' palette - and he needs to blend. He is "one of them" after all. It's also difficult to render fuzzy baby hair in a flat vector style. And his face is still changing, too - that'll need some modifying before I "go to press" (probably Kinko's or VistaPrint).

Because I am an unabashed entrepreneur, I reworked the art into a product design, adding the text "Everybody Needs A Little Monster Love", and repositioning the five monsters onto a crackly heart shape. The new art was uploaded onto my online stores, and the pieces were up for sale. Hopefully all the monster fans of the world will eventually find the products and decide to show their love.


Everybody Needs A Little Monster Love on Zazzle

And of course, Nico will be wearing one of these shirts at his actual birthday party. I've also designed stickers of each monster's individual face, and Sharon is going to recreate the illustration for the cake. Hey, you've got to reinforce the theme, right?

My Secret Lair (or "Home Office")

When I started doing freelance work, I was living in a one-bedroom apartment. When I'd sketch, ink, or color an illustration, I'd clear off my coffee table and work right there. And when I eventually got a workable Mac, it sat on a tiny corner shelf in the middle of my living room. Not the most inspiring of environments.

A few years later, I met my wife (no, she wasn't my wife then - that would be weird) and we moved into a larger apartment together. We set up the second bedroom as an office for both of us, and I began acquiring the kind of art and objects that would inspire me when I was working. It was a start, but my office didn't fully take shape until we bought a house. Just being able to paint the walls my favorite color (a kind of pukey, limey green) was a huge head start.


It's difficult for me to really remember what it was like working anywhere other than in this office. I tried to convince myself that working in a sparse environment, like that apartment living room, would keep my head clear and allow me to focus on my work - but that really never worked for me. I like to be in the midst of fun, interesting, and meaningful things, as you can see by the photos.


Surrounding my workstation are a collection of monsters (mostly from Universal films), Kiss paraphernalia, superhero pieces, Star Wars and other science fiction elements, and other assorted collectibles from comics, cartoons, television shows and other sources.

Now that we have a baby, the dusting has become an issue, but I wouldn't trade my green palace for any other workspace on the planet. It's my secret lair, my Fortress of Solitude, my Sanctum Sanctorum (that one's for the comic nerds) - and I know my work output benefits from the rich surroundings. That stuff just seeps right in - osmosis, you see.

For a detailed description of the contents of my office, click below.

My Home Office: A Nerd's-Eye View