I plan on vectoring and turning it into a font at some point, but for now, just having the capitals designed has been a major feat, and I look forward to using it in the upcoming The Art of Words project.

Lee.

Thank you,

the Management.

Lee.

I’m also sorry that I utterly failed to capture the spirit of the letterface I’d originally set out (without my handy reference image) to recreate for the new card. So, since I’m late anyway, I figured I’d show you that instead:

It’s from a card design I did back in 2000, but I was looking to expand the letterface. Sadly, even if I restart now following the original guide (which I’m sorely tempted to do), it simply won’t be done in time. But I think it would be great to do, nonetheless.

I hope everyone had a decent year, a fine end of year holiday season, and that you all look forward to better things in the year ahead. Few things are as I’d like them to be right now, but I’m still in the game, so we’ll see what next yeaer holds in store, together.

Lee.

Ashes: Infinite Redress:

Author Unknown, Season Won:

Author Unknown: Season Too (yes, I need to correct the cover to reflect my misspell):

Hot Nights in Limbo:

LinkTales, volume One:

Poison Pen Letters From Limbo:

The Back Roads of Limbo:

Terminal Monday: Under Observation:

Terminal Monday (complete):

So as you can see, I’ve been busy. Not making much money from this yet, but trying.

Lee.

It would be disingenuous for me to tell you that I feel anything but pride for these creations. I really feel like I’ve hit on a rich vein of creative output, and that I’m doing the very best I can to promote my work and my ideas. I hope you’ve seen something here that impresses you, as well.

Lee.

It’s taken from a small abstract painting I did many years ago, which I recently adapted for the cover of a book I plan on putting out shortly:

More fun stuff from my past that I’ve been playing around with lately, coming soon.

Lee.

Now, for those who remember the original sale, this was the logo I put up for sale:

The thing about that original art (which is still attached to the full sheet, for those who want the full set) is that I did ink that logo directly over the original pencils. However, it was a light trace job meant strictly to make the scan go in cleaner. What I discovered after I’d been playing with the image in Photoshop for a bit was that:

a) I needed to separate a few of the letters that had originally been overlapping, for better arrangement;

b) I needed my ‘i’ dots redrawn as cherries, which I had up to that point been using the CGI cherry (which I actually recoloured for the brochure I was doing, because the cherry he’d coloured didn’t look 3D enough for my purposes) created by my friend and colleague Rodney Brazeau for the client’s company logo, but which I was feeling artist’s guilt over, so I decided to render my own for the logo, as I hadn’t planned on sharing the proceeds with Rod (of which there were none; as mentioned before, I was never actually paid for this logo, or any of the logos I created for the brochure. Mark milked me good on that gig. Never again);

and c) I really didn’t like how my line weights felt, and I wasn’t enjoying the feel of the weights I was creating in Photoshop, either. So I printed off a blue line version of what I’d scanned–twice, mirrored horizontally on the same page, actually–and started re-inking the logo, this time focusing on getting a nice healthy line weight that I could easily colour over later with my ‘Disney Lines’ and make the logo really look slick.

Remember, my vectoring skills were still virtually nil at that time, so any of the tricks I would use now were not available to me. Redrawing was the fastest, surest way to do it.

There was a fourth problem I’d forgotten, as well: My ‘s’ wasn’t working. I had to redraw the ess to get the separation I wanted, but I didn’t want to simply ‘draw through’ to get the full version of the ess I had, because I didn’t want the length of the tail from the ‘u’ to be stretched too far and create too much negative space between the letters. So I redesigned the ess to be a bit more like the first or second versions of the ess I’d drawn in the abandoned versions of the logo. I couldn’t do a direct swap, because the original versions were drawn and weighted differently. A new, shorter, fatter loop that didn’t disappear behind the ewe was needed.

THE DEAL

So the ess you see at the end of the first logo you see in this entry is actually the only physical drawing of the ess that you see in the final version of the logo. It looks pretty sharp, with the smooth line art that has all the proper line weights and very little correction pen fluid. It’s printed on a fairly heavy print paper (24lb or possibly 28lb bond white) which has held up pretty nicely, despite being packed away with a lot of unnecessary reference materials, in a folder in a banker box in my closet for the past eight years.

So I’m adding the final inked logo page to the set. The price of the entire logo set–which still hasn’t been vectored, BTW–was originally set at $200 CAD (minus any shipping and packaging costs). If you wanted me to design you a new logo using the same lettering style, I offered to do so for an additional $100 CAD, while the offer lasted. I’m kind of  busy right now, but I might be able to squeeze in a new logo if you contact me and convince me it’s for a good cause. I’m gonna let these prices stand for a little bit longer. Christmas is coming, so I can’t keep playing cheap forever.

If the logo hasn’t sold by the end of September, I’m gonna complete the letter set and use it in one of my current comics projects, and remove these logos from the sale until such a time as the original art is in demand, if ever.

So there you have it. The CvS Art Sale is back on, but I’ll probably set up an eBay page as well in a week or two, so don’t hesitate to contact me ASAP if you’re interested, because otherwise, I’m auctioning it off for whatever the market will bear.

I’d greatly appreciate it if you could do me a big favour and pimp this post around a bit if you don’t think you can afford such a piece. I could even throw in a little something if you help me get a sale. Perhaps a mark-up?

Lee.

Well, last night, I decided to sketch it out, and today I implemented it. Voilá:

I’m gonna print it out and draw the frond patterns into the ART letters, and I’ll replace the block text I’d used int he previosu version of the WORDS letters witht he new shapes, with the added bonus that the block text should fit better this time.

Any road, back to work. Thanks for reading.

Lee.

There may be one or two more lettersets to design, once these two are formalized. The first is gonna take me a while (three forms for each letter, and frankly, what I’ve got so far needs work), and the second comes in two or three sizes, and also has a lowercase letterset–most of which have yet to be drawn–though this project doesn’t really need them (yet).

The first set (Limbo AlphansE) is my attempt to modify my favourite Mucha-type letterset, to put my personal stamp on it and claim it for my own, while still tipping my hat to the master.

The second set (Limbo Cornice) is my long-promised full letterset for logos I did for the Tru Treat and Zoe projects. I’m struggling a little with the self-imposed dimensions, based on trying to draw them all on one sheet, but it looks like it will work anyway, and if I need to change teh dimensions, later, I’ll be able to vector thema nd strech them anyway I like. I just need full sets to work from. I don’t want to be stoppign to design all-new lettersets every other day, or this project will never get done. It’s not meant to be a portfolio; it really is intended to function as a proper graphic novel, despite my intention to make it interactive as well.

I’m looking forward to the part where I actually start drawing, you know, the actual logos for the actual splash pages. I’m starting to need to see how this stuff is going to turn out, so I can figure out how to make the interactive part work. the notions I have inmy head are untested, and I won’t know if they’ll work properly until I have finished art to work with.

I was also looking into other Kickstarter-type funding programs, but haven’t committed to any as of yet. I have no idea how credible some of these programs are, and the fact is, Kickstarter has a fair bit of heft in the comics world right now. Asking comics fans to finance a project through something other than Kickstarter might raise eyebrows, but alas, ther eis no Kickstarter for me here in Canada. *shrug*

But what I really want is to sit in my living room and chat with close friends. Alas, everyone has better things to do than spend time with a dead man today.

*waves*

Lee.