The Animated Woman: March 2013

March 29, 2013

PickleWeasel EGG Hunt - CONTEST.

It's a contest! Because the PickleWeasel app is marvelous and should be a household name, dammit. Also because Easter Eggs are funny.

To enter:
All you hafta do is click to tweet THIS (← click it). Or copy-paste this into a tweet or Facebook:

"The #PickleWeasel app is simply marvelous for comics & drawing. But don't take my word for it - try it yourself. http://itun.es/i6JL3nG"

Then leave your name / Twitter @ / email / way-to-find-you in the comments. You can also guess where the Easter Egg is hidden in this drawing.

It could be anywhere....but you don't have to guess correctly. You just have to guess.

The prize? Any t-shirt or mug from my shop. I'll tell you right now that these are quite popular.

Contest closes at midnight on Monday April 1st 2013. I'll draw the winner from all the entries and announce it on Wednesday at 9 PM.

Good luck and don't eat too much chocolate.

March 25, 2013

The real Canadians.

The Cree Walkers completed the Journey of Nishiyuu in support of the Idle No More movement and aboriginal issues. In January six youths and one guide left Whapmagoostui and walked 1600 kilometers, their numbers swelling to 400, to arrive in Ottawa today. They were welcomed warmly by thousands of people on Parliament Hill.

Walk tall.

Meanwhile two very expensive giant pandas arrived in Toronto and were welcomed by Prime Minister Harper.

I find this somehow extremely embarrassing.

March 23, 2013

The Animated Mammogram.

WARNING: Squished boobies.

In animation, we have this thing called “conservation of volume”. This means that while an object can change shape, it’s volume should be respected (unless it is moving towards or away from the camera). In the classic case of the bouncing ball, for example, the effects of gravity on the ball affect its shape as it travels, but the size of the ball remains the same.

This animation tidbit was running through my head as I was about to have a mammogram.

A kindly Alien being named Sylvie placed one of my breasts on the slab.

She told me not to move, not even to breathe...what is it with these Alien probes? You hafta hold perfectly still for all of them?

Then she lowered the presser thingie down on top of it.

Lower…

and lower…

and lower.

I thought, "surely she's going to stop right about now?" But no, she just kept lowering the gizmo and squeezing the living fark out of my girl.

I literally thought my tit would split.

Amazingly, they bounced back to their usual shape afterward. I hadn't lost any volume either. Thank goodness for good bras!

I'm rather fond of my boobs and I'd like to make sure they're ok. What do you all think about mammograms?

March 19, 2013

JC's ALL CAPS (a cocktail).

I just now invented a cocktail. I really wanted a glass of wine, but there weren't none in the house. Faced with a gigantic pile of dishes and no dishwasher, my cocktail was born of necessity. I checked the pantry but all I could find was a cheap bottle of Sangria someone had left at one of our parties...and some scotch. BLEGH.

I decided to raid the canned goods shelf; and lo, nestled between the Chinese rice wine vinegar and the coconut puree was a glass container of homemade raspberry liqueur, a gift from my Aunt back in 2007 (it has a label!). Beside it: Poire William.

Here's mah recipeh:

Mostly raspberry liqueur...say, 2 oz.
Same for Poire William, 2 oz.
One quick grind of pepper - don't put too much.
6 cubes of ice.

Put it all into a shaker thingie. Shake it up. Pour through a strainer thingie into a really nice glass. Garnish with a couple of raspberries. Drinksies.

YOU WILL BE ALL CAPS FOR ABOUT 20 MINUTES.

If you don't have raspberry liqueur just use whatever. And if you don't have Poire William...go to the shops and buy a bottle of wine.

Oh gee, I wonder if this is original...

Does it matter? LET THE ALL CAPS BEGIN!

March 18, 2013

I draw YOU - Amiyrah Martin.

I met Four Hats And Frugal vlogger/blogger in person at Aiming Low's Non-Con12. She smiles easily and is smart and funny and really good with the whole having-a-fabulous-time-while-not-spending-money-thing. But it was her Halloween costume that made me fall in love with Amiyrah Martin.

She was the X-MISS - a super heroine who lost her family in a tragic tree-lighting accident, so she turned rogue and started to fight crime...but only during the Holiday Season. She had props and everything. She lifted up a bunch of bangles and shook them in my face, singing ominously, "Fiiiive goooolden riiiiiiings...!" I couldn't remember what the five golden rings were for, on account of ~~being kinda tipsy~~laughing so hard. I had to ask her to remind me this afternoon on Facebook:

Me: "Hey. What were those five golden rings for?"

Amiyrah: "They were the rings of death, so mostly for dismemberment."

Me: "Jeeeeezus woman. Lol. I pity your enemies."

Amiyrah: "I have a lot of pent up anger and I project it all into my characters."

Scary. But clever. Oh, so clever.

Clearly there's more than meets the eye with this one. When I asked Amiyrah what her four hats were, she said this:

I'm like...dude, how do I draw that? I need hats that rep.

Being a frugalista with fashion sense, she wasted no time in giving me a list of her favorite four hats: "top hats, berets, baseball hats and those big floppy hats you wear to the beach".

I assigned them as follows:

But today is her birthday, so she needs a fifth hat:

Her mom made her this cake. (I mean the actual cake; I drew the cartoon version). It makes for excellent headgear.

You can totally cut these out and stick them on Amiyrah's head and they will fit. I am nice.

Happy Birthday Amiyrah!

March 17, 2013

The DOLL.

This story originally appeared on Aiming Low.

When our first baby was born, the stars twinkled and all the flowers bloomed. It was spring and we were blown away. We were in love, we had cool hair...and a brand new daughter.

The infant girl was perfect. I dressed her up in old fashioned baby clothes, kinda vintage, with lace dresses and Victorian bonnets. She never cried, except when she wanted my milk. I used to joke that “sleeping like a baby” actually meant “waking up every two hours”. Ha. Ha. Ha.

After two months of Sleepus Interruptus, reality kicked in. Life as we knew it was OVER. Forget about cool hair.

We were living in London at the time, and it happened that we drove down to Penzance in Cornwall to visit my mother-in-law. One evening, The Huz suggested we go out to the pub and have a civilized pint. I wanted to go …but I couldn’t leave my baby alone with anyone, not even my MIL. I just wasn’t ready yet. So we decided to see if the pub would let us in with our baby.

Out we went with our tiny daughter in her pram. She’d just been fed so she was quietly blissed out.

We walked along until we came to a really nice old pub called The Admiral Benbow. And in we went with the pram. The barman marched right up to us and said we couldn’t come into the pub with a baby. The Huz looked him right in the eye and said,

“That’s not a baby. That’s a doll.”

The two men stared at one another.

The Huz raised one of his eye brows.

The barman glanced down at the pram.

What he saw was a Victorian bonnet with tiny silken eyelashes resting on a pink porcelain cheek, perfect rosebud lips mutely dream-sucking, and an impossibly dimpled hand on the lace blanket.