P4A 2015 Recap...

Vlogritte John

Vlogritte Hank

The Vlogbrothers mashed-up with surrealist painter René Magritte.
Based on Magritte’s ‘La clef des songes’ where he juxtaposed ordinary objects with seemingly unrelated words. But I’ve given it a twist. The uninitiated would not see any relationship between the objects and the words, but my fellow nerdfighters probably will.

VLOGRITTE JOHN

Sharpies - Les étoiles (Stars): Referencing John’s primary occupation as author, the great impact of The Fault in Our Stars, and the enormous amount of Sharpies he used to sign more than 150,000 copies of the book.

Peanut Butter - La punition (Punishment): Everyone knows the only way to make the internet pay attention to news is via peanut butter face. Punishments and challenges have become such an integral part of online and vlogging culture.

Pizza - John: Inspired this whole idea. It had to be a thing. Pizza John a la Magritte. Hank explains how the original happened. Also, Happy late Pizzamas!

Egg - Le yéti (The Yeti): Initially, John’s very awesome wife was never seen on camera or spoken of by name, thusly, The Yeti. But more recently, Sarah has been cultivating our appreciation and understanding of art through The Art Assignment, sharing her knowledge and skill earned through a ton of study and curation. The egg is one of Magritte’s commonly repeated images, so it all comes back around to the inspiration. Here, it’s a symbol of John and Sarah teaching us, entertaining us, and helping us grow and think about the world in new ways.

VLOGRITTE HANK

2D Glasses - La baudroie (Anglerfish): Hank appears to have approximately a gajillion projects going at any time, which is hard to express with one object. I used the 2D glasses to represent the sciency, nerdy, creative, and oddball ideas that Hank has ‘made a thing’. And apparently La baudroie is not precisely an anglerfish, but it will have to do! Here representing Hank’s development as a musician and the delightfully deep Song About an Anglerfish.

Bunny Peep - La route (Road): Yet another popular community challenge, because eating a ton of peeps while explaining really horrifying world problems and hoping to decrease said worldsuck is a thing. And the road is paved with peeps on Nerdfighteria Island.

Corndog - Hank: Who the eff is Hank? Hank is a sausage covered in cornbread batter and deep fried. Hank + corndog = OTP..

Leaves - Le weegie: Leaves for EcoGeek and Hank’s effort to support and encourage technologies that don’t damage the environment and reverse some of the damage we’ve already done. Also a commonly repeated Magritte image. Le weegie is a silly play on words to represent Katherine’s contributions to GamesWithHank and Wii Wednesdays… as Luigi. Weegie! Master of Science, awesome singer, Christmas Tree wrangler, caretaker of animals… The Katherine, whose warmth and enthusiasm is contagious in the best way.

---

The process: acrylic paint on paper 16x20. Had to cut it down to fit in the scanner and stitch it back together. Some prismacolor pencil for details. Touch-up in photoshop.

Made fifteen 8x10 prints of each and doubled them up for fifteen perks.

Posted them on tumblr and got a lovely response. Lots of likes and reblogs, which is super sweet.

The Project for Awesome was wonderful as usual. Streamed as much as possible. Much silliness was had. Hitting one million was a highlight. Hank, Henry, Destin, and ViHart singing wildly. Lol. Great fun with sciency people.

A very successful P4A!

Awesome and more awesome...

FINGER STATUS:

IT'S HEALING SO QUICKLY! Historically it has taken at least a full month to recover from that level of blow-up. I took these pictures a few days ago. Christmas tree background. The fingers don't just look dramatically better, they feel even better than they look. I already have full range of motion and minimal soreness. The heat baths, man. All about those heat baths! I have no idea what's happening there, but I'LL TAKE IT!

Project for Awesome is overrrrrr!

It was a glorious time. I got a couple perks. The calendar, which is tradition, and the nerdfighter art perk, which I contributed to. Excited to get someone else's work. Woo. The livestream of night two was hysterically weird and wonderful, which seems to happen every year. Sleep deprivation and lots of fun guests makes for some fantastic chaos.

The total donations is at $1,187,869 right now. And up to $678,402 at the indiegogo campaign page. But it doesn't officially shut down until the 16th. I believe the grand total last year was about $800,000. So, like... damn. Just gets bigger and bigger every year. And this year even had a little blip 'cause it got moved earlier by almost a week at the last minute. Makes me look forward to next year even more. I'll prepare art perks earlier next time!

Took my first selfie on MY NEW TABLET as the donations updated to over a million. So awesome! Not the selfie... the P4A success. Not really a selfie person. But I did start an instagram. It will be mostly art though.

I want to say some words about the tablet. It's the Nvidia Shield Tablet. I've had it for about a week now and I love the hell out of it. Good decisions were made. I'm so happy with it. Takes a lot of pressure off of nighttime work to have seen a bunch of news/social media/youtube sub videos earlier in the day. I can usually get through a podcast while I'm washing dishes. And I'm on a more satisfying fitness schedule. And, most importantly, it's going to work great for checking KPOPPY's responsive-ness (and future sites).

It's dark in here, but this is it:

Comparisons to my computer monitor. My tumblr page and the new responsive KPOPPY I'm working on for launch in the new year. I've been posting highlights of the P4A perks I drew/painted and they've gotten waaaaaaaay more attention than anything I've put on tumblr... other than the first ballet sketch. Really grateful to be part of a supportive/creative community like nerdfighteria.

And the responsive design works reeeeaaaallly well even though I coded it all without testing it on any device. The dropdown menu is a little clunky and I need to adjust some column widths, but otherwise it's great. Gonna add some new graphics and work on a poster for the rest of the year. That's my focus!

But I'm also really excited to get back to drawing already. Usually I can't even imagine wanting to draw stuff after a blow-up, but I'm there! I want to! I'll resist for a while to allow for more complete healing, but I'm itching to get back to work regardless!

It's Junsu's birthday. The fancams from the second Osaka show are absolutely adorable. The next post will definitely be a JYJ post. IT WILL HAPPEN.

Oh, and #hellastorm happened. Lol. We've been hit hard here over the last week in the Bay Area with a Pineapple Express. Rain. So much rain. It's fantastic for the drought, but... rain. SO MUCH.

I've neglected the birds a bit because of it. Gonna remedy that tomorrow. Although, it's raining again I think. XD

Rain or shine.

I just glanced through my twitter notifications. Never did I ever think my most viewed tweet would become part of a worldwide trend of #butfart and #butfartman.

@smartereveryday @P4A Butfarts for Destin. Seeing money under a microscope was never so entertaining as this! pic.twitter.com/KJp5lUVa2B
— AlleyBetwixt (@AlleyBetwixt) December 14, 2014

Life is weird.
That's the P4A night-stream for ya.

Huzzah.

Done and dusted...

45 completed.
WOO!
They're packaged in groups of three and on their way to the P4A perks gathering place. Took about a month of work. Many continuous hours over the last two weeks. Abused my body in the process. A vicious knot over my right shoulder blade. Neck aching. Sleep-deprived. Too sedentary. And my fingers are all wrecked, thumb included. I won't be doing any art for the next two weeks. At least nothing that requires holding a tool of some sort. Might do some Illustrator work since it's just clicking paths into place. I'm typing this entirely with my left hand at the moment. Lol.

Totally worth it though. The Project for Awesome will be in a couple weeks. I'm very happy to contribute to the cause.

Here are some highlights out of the 45.

It's all Vlogbrothers/Nerdfighter stuff. I'm really pleased with the results.

The packaging is cute, too. Little brown paper envelopes with handmade stickers to close.

That's the look of glorious victory.

And also aching fingers. XD
I've even been taping my thumb, which is super tricky to do with the need for so much bend at the knuckle. It's quite furious with me, to say the least.

While working on this, I was reminded that most folks don't have to worry about using scissors or pencils for a few minutes. And also that I used to not have to worry about it. I went 20 some-odd years without having to limit tool use, and now I can hardly relate to what that must have been like.

Sad thoughts.

I'm now in the indecisive mode of how to encourage healing. Tight taping to stifle swelling? No taping? Heat soaks? Ice? Pure rest? Normal use? I wish I knew what it was. I'm tempted to take prednisone, which I know works, but the side-effects are miserable.

Just gonna tough it out and monitor recovery along the way.

FINGER STATUS

Little epicenters everywhere. My pinkie is the first to be fully swelling. Can't bend it much. Ring finger looks like I took a hammer to it. Small puffy spots on the middle finger. It's the least affected actually. The tip of my index finger is beginning to be unbearably sensitive. The thumb also has the hammered look going on at the knuckle, but the worst pain is around the side of the pad.

Mess.

I've had a few nights now where the overall ache and prickling is keeping me awake and it will probably get worse.

It's not all doom and gloom. It was a good test to see how much I can push it while also taping religiously. And I got some fun art out of it. S'all good.

Also got through all of Star Trek:TOS. I'll post on that at some point. Hoo boy. It really never improved. -___-

But next post will probably be about JYJ. I still want to say a few words about the album. Plus, they're currently on a dome tour in Japan and releasing a new single. They are singing Begin during the concert encore. EMOSHINKI. The tears. THE TEARS I HAVE SHED. T___T

Hajimarusaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Oh, and I think I'm switching lanes to the Nvidia Shield Tablet instead of the Nexus 9. Android Lollipop rolled out for the Shield a few days ago and I think that just sold it for me. Waiting to see if there will be any Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that become the determining factor.

K. I'm done.