Sailor Moon - Reboot

The ever-popular Sailor Moon is getting a reboot series this year - figured I'd do an illustration to celebrate. Also: warning of a fandom rave below.

Truth be told, I first saw commercials for Sailor Moon's dolls when I was about 11 years old, so my interest was piqued from the tidbits of animation they showed. And then discovered it was on extremely early in the morning before going to elementary school. I became obsessed with it because it had that wonderful story-line that we the viewer (or reader, in some cases) can easily put ourselves in. Reminiscent of Spider-Man for guys, or for more broader, recent references to all: Harry Potter.

It got dark, fast. There were certainly hilarious things about it that I can think are absol-freakin-lutely crazy like a masked man in a tuxedo/cape combo that spouted lines of random poetry whenever he arrived to the scene.  But for the most part, it was about an average, everyday person, suddenly being thrown into something that no matter what, they had to deal with the situation that required insurmountable determination and bravery. They were given this great power and responsibility. It just screams coming of age/adolescence, and going forth into adulthood.

But for me, as a kid, all I wanted was to get to age 14, which was how old Sailor Moon was, and just hope and pray that a weird cat with a crescent moon was going to hop through my window and change my life forever. I wanted the cool costumes, and the flashy transformation sequences, and the powerful abilities (that you had to shout aloud). I just didn't think about the realistic consequences.  I mean, the thing about this girl was she wasn't incredible in any way. She failed tests, made awful tasting food, tripped over her own feet, cried when she scraped her knees, and didn't look where she was going so she ran into telephone poles, and so on. I mean, this was the savior of the world, she was given this immense responsibility. It shows at one point that she didn't even want it anymore but she turns around and steps up to the challenge to continue taking up the helm, because she has to do it.
When I got past age 14, I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, I didn't want that cat to come through my window.  Adolescence already has so many extras added on to make life so troublesome. ...As an adult, I still want that flashy transformation sequence and attack though.

Happy Singles Awareness Day! - 2013

So many pictures pop up about love and adoration or someone's misery at being single during this holiday of ..love.  Here's my 'Unconventional' Valentine's Day illustration for 2013.

Have you ever debated on sending a letter to someone you haven't spoken to in years? Has it been a long time? A decade?  Perhaps you should send them a letter.

 Would you rather regret sliding that postcard off into the mail, or going each year of your life regretting that you never sent it at all? This doesn't even need to be a scorned lover or anything, it could simply be a friend you've lost touch with!

Happy (Early!) Year of the Snake!

Happy Chinese New Year, all! I cranked this guy out real fast on Thursday. Figured I'd post today because who checks blogs and things on the weekend?! Hope you all have a great year, and according to the Chinese, the year of Snake is meant for steady progress and attention to detail.  Sounds good to me!

Snow Animation, anyone?

(click the image to view animation)

Here's some more animation for you guys, I'm obviously just having fun here. If you live in Brooklyn, make sure you go to the upcoming Bottleneck Gallery show where this piece will be featured (but obviously not animated haha)

Poor Edward

I realized I posted this on my tumblr and not my blog! Here we go:

So. The first image here is a terrible/unfinished illustration of Edward Scissorhands. It’s terrible because I had become extremely lazy in my composition and dynamic layouts. There’s no real great way for the eye to travel around the image. Hell, it sort of skirts off to one side and then you get confused and just try going around the image again.  If you ever need a refresher on making better compositions, I highly recommend delving into Andrew Loomis’s Creative Illustration book. Huge thank you to Kali Ciesemier for pointing this out on her blog.

He has something called Informal Subdivision. This consists of drawing diagonal and straight lines across a paper in your own way to try and make a space division unequal and more interesting. I created one of my own to test this out.

I then sketched something out on top of it, using the lines as a guide to help place everything in the space.

And lastly, a (hopefully) better illustration is the result. Huzzah!

Edward Scissorhands version 2.0 will be mailed off to Brooklyn’s Bottleneck Gallery for their Favorite Film Couples/Valentine’s Day show which debuts February 15th.

MOO Cards!

 I was contacted by Dan Sharp of MOO to try out some of their products a few weeks ago. They have a variety of stickers, postcards, business cards, greeting cards, and more that you can customize to however you like.  You might know them for their half-sized mini-business cards. I'll be honest, whenever I saw those things at events, social meet-ups, or conventions, I kept thinking those things are so freakin' small. I will seriously lose all of them.What is this MOO company thinking?!  So maybe that product isn't for me.   BUT: I didn't realize they had so many other awesome products available!

As an illustrator, I'm a stickler for custom cards and promotional postcard mailers (at least I think it's still awesome to receive postcards in the mail), even with all the technology we have at our hands these days.

So! I decided to give it a go and got myself some round stickers(http://us.moo.com/products/stickers/) as my return-mailing address (because not many people have round return-mail address stickers, right?) as well as one-sided postcards to put into an envelope(http://us.moo.com/products/postcards.html).  (enjoy my weird floral chair cushion in these photos)

Upon receiving my package, I have to say I really loved the package design everything came in. It was a really, really nice surprise. So many places I've ordered from I'll get my postcards or products just shoved into a box with a crumpled bit of paper for 'cushioning.' MOO actually has little cardboard envelopes for all of your orders, neatly labelled so I can grab them off my supplies shelf without freaking out about "Where the heck did I put it." ALSO, them being in 'lil envelopes means I can safely slide them out of the way when I need to get something else off the shelf vs. just a stack of cards that just falls everywhere (I swear I'm somewhat organized and not a slob-DON'T JUDGE ME).

 The stickers are great, really crisp even on small text (and they gave me a few free random ones woo!). You can actually customize these stickers to have multiple images or words on them in one order. I chose all of the same color for consistency and branding but if you wanted multiple kinds of designs, the option's there!

The postcards came in really nice, vibrant colors, good card stock too (I'm using my Neverending Story piece and Failure/Moth/Butterfly piece). I personally prefer a sturdier card stock but I'm insane and like my stuff cardboard stiff; this is just a personal preference of mine. Honestly, if it were a harder card stock, the colors would get diminished, I'm sure. This worked out in my favor - so, really great colors, there's gloss on one side which I don't normally do, but again, the designs came out nice and sharp so I really can't complain!

Backsides of the cards are matte for writing out messages on them which is nice not to have cards that my pen runs all over or doesn't adhere and grip. No issue with these. I did have the option to make double-sided cards but chose not to this time around.

So now I have my two promo-mailer cards stuffed into my own vellum envelopes, with my bad-ass rounded return-mailer stickers. MOO definitely made my stuff look more snazzy and the prices are decent.  I'll be sending these guys out in hopes of getting some new clientele for freelance illustration!

A Storm Too Soon

New 2-page-spread illustration I created for Rhode Island Monthly magazine's February issue. This accompanied an article about two shipwrecks about 200 miles off the coast of North Carolina - one ship from Rhode Island by the name The Flying Colours. 

Really enjoyed working on this imagery with thanks to Carolyn Marsden for working with me.

Grow Up

This is a personal illustration I'll be submitting to Spectrum 20 this week.

I was one of those kids who adored fantasy and sci-fi and lets just say it wasn't exactly the popular thing to be a fan of back in my childhood.  I didn't enjoy playing regular 'house' or 'dress up' as a little girl; I thought that was actually quite boring.  I wanted to be a sorceress casting spells where all of the blades of grass were actually green hands that grabbed your ankles. And I wanted to fight goblins or robots instead of gossip about boys. While growing up I definitely was made fun of for enjoying these things. I was fairly shy during adolescence as a result.

As I'm far into adulthood at this point in my life, I'm glad I never stopped enjoying these things, and I'm certainly glad I didn't let the opinions of others stand in the way of that.

Fun fact: as I'm half-Chinese, the unicorn depicted here is half-kirin, which can be considered a Chinese version of a unicorn.

The 24-Hour Comic

If you don't know what a 24-Hour Comic is, it's the immense challenge of creating and finishing 24 pages of a comic within 24 straight hours. No pre-planning, no character designs beforehand, no story, nothing. The clock starts as soon as your pencil hits the paper.  This originated with one of the comic kings himself, Scott McCloud who also has posted his first 24-hour comic at the link. This was an incredible test of determination and I highly recommend trying it at least once.

 My friend Catherine, myself, and a few others tried this out ourselves yesterday as we set our own date to do it. I was on my own on the West Coast but was grateful to be connected with my East Coast pals via web-cam.

Below you can read my 24-page comic which was started at 1pm, Friday January 18th PST, and was completed 8:45am Saturday January 19th PST. I had about 5 hours to spare and spent it sleeping. (no regrets on that one). So caution: wonky anatomy, ill-perspectives, and non-existent face-continuity ahead.

Note: if the text is hard to read, I recommend right clicking and 'View Image' over Blogger's image-viewer which sizes to your web browser
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 I started this off with the intention of poking humor at what goes on in someone's head when they take a shower. It took quite a serious turn at the halfway after I'd been sitting in the dark drawing for over 10 hours straight.
Hope you enjoyed this insanity!

Nancy Drew plus Tumblr/Twitter Links

New illustration I just finished that will be featured in Gallery 1988, partnered with Hello Giggles, one of the websites/projects with Zooey Deschanel. The artwork could only consist of females from old school young-adult literature (Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, Babysitter’s Club).

Honestly, I never read any of these growing up; I wasn’t interested in finding female role models in any of those books.  I was more into the sci-fi and fantasy genres, and reading Nancy Drew these last few weeks for research was a bit of a struggle. The reading was easy of course, it was the fact that it was such a product of its time! And she’s so unbelievable without any faults whatsoever!

On another note,  I feel like I might be posting less and less to this blog; mainly because it feels like a ghost-town?

 In hopes of keeping up with general social media, it seems blogger has a bit of a setback on social sharing. If you're interested in following me elsewhere, here are a few places:

Kim Herbst Illustrations on Facebook

Kim Herbst's Illustrations on Twitter

and now Kim Herbst Illustrations on Tumblr

thanks for following and checking out my work!