Next Needs Up: "Demon(s)"

(Have I mentioned how much I love titles? Coming up with and giving them to things, namely? You should see the files in my computer. Sometimes [...] sits here trying to find my pictures so she can reminisce on something and she just gets frustrated at how little sense it all makes to her. Haha.)

Anyhow, here's the first design entry in the Next Needs Up series. (But be sure to stop by and read this post first, if you haven't already gotten acquainted with Next Needs Up's origin story.)

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Here, to the right, is the official (*cough*!) design document...

So, Ok, maybe it isn't so "official" looking. Or even very clean and thought out! (Excuse alert! Brace yourself...) But I'm not on a "team", so I've got little need to create accurate visualizations of what I have in mind for anyone else to follow. I've pretty much got what I want fully visualized in my head, so a quick, messy sketch like this one, with the only "corrections" or "revisions" being substituted by chicken-scratchy notes works perfectly.

If you took a second to read said notes (if you can read my handwriting...), then you should be getting an idea of what Next Needs Up's "essence" is. If I had to put it into as few words as possible, I would have to say that it is tension, discontent, confusion, and anxiety, overall. He's a character that I've always imagined would look shaky and jittery at all times, stopping to look over his shoulder every so often. It's possible that it was born from my arachnophobia. (Which, I should probably note, a friend mentioned that she doesn't believe that I'm scared of spiders very much anymore, after spending the last few years obsessed with them. She might be right.)

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And here is Next's  full body, simplified "icon" rendition, based on the above shown sketch. Not that it wasn't already a streamlined character, but these lines capture the basest essence perfectly, I feel. I am pretty happy with it as an icon for Next. I called this design "Demon"...at first. If you noticed, the title makes mention of there being a plurality of this "Demon".

Some artifacts, that come from my design process when working with vectors, created some questions in my mind, as to which "Demon" version I should choose to represent Next with. I will attempt to explain this as plainly as possible. Basically (you know you're in trouble when I start a sentence with that word), to make the negative spaces that form the eyes and the fanged frown, I used curves with no fills and strokes set to about 0.04 of an inch (Spreadshirt's minimum size for space between elements) in size. With them, I made the circles for the eyes and the lines for the frown and fangs on a layer on top of the solid shape that I had set down for the body. I then flattened the transparency to turn the strokes into outlines, then selected them and the body shape and merged them using the pathfinder window. (Found under "Window > Pathfinder", or by hitting "Shift + Ctrl + F9") The strokes were colored differently from that of the body shape, so when I merged their outlines on top, everything on the body shape that was underneath them was subtracted. And, since they were a different color from the body that they were merged to, all I had to do was select them on their own, with the "direct selection tool", delete them, and voilà!

Here's how the design looked by this point. The leftover circles in the eyes, and the triangular shapes in the fangs are the "artifacts" that I mentioned. Next, again with the direct selection tool (shortcut key "A" in Illustrator), I proceeded to select the circles in the eyes and deleted them. No qualms there, since the big, empty eyes communicate what I wanted the design to perfectly. But then, I selected the triangular shapes, deleted them, and stopped and thought, "Hm...does it look better with or without the triangular shapes filling that space?" So, I undid it and stared at it for a while. Then deleted them again. And undid. And deleted again. Finally, I copied it over to compare them side by side. Still undecided, I took a picture of them with my cellphone and sent it to several of my friends, in hopes the they would help me defeat my indecision. (One of them being Adlyn, of course. With her being Next Needs Up's "godmother" and all...) The verdict was mostly mixed, but one of the people who replied asked why I couldn't use both. Brilliant! Why couldn't I think of that?!

So I uploaded both, naming the one with negative space for eyes and fangs "Demon Alpha", and the one with shapes for fangs "Demon Beta". Not long after, I decided to also make one with shapes for both its eyes and fangs, and one with only shapes for eyes available, and renamed the whole bunch. Here they are, from left to right. Demon Alpha, Demon Beta, Demon Delta, and Demon Gamma. What a happy (but tense, confused, and anxious) family, huh?

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They're currently available as Flex prints as either singles, pairs, or trios, grouped by type, and arranged horizontally. (For example here's an example of a trio of Alphas.) That's all I have for this one. I'm not making any promises or predictions, but I'm going to try and crank out as many posts as possible so I can catch up to all of the designs which I've yet to cover. Feel free to swing by the shop if you want to sneak a peek at any of these. (Or purchase a t-shirt or accessory with the design on it to see it in its full glory.) Until the next time, y'all carry on, I'll be going to sleep!

J, out...

Next Needs Up: The Origins

(Some needs must be met, as some origins must be known...)

This post has been coming for a long, LONG time. Not only that, it's been a while since my last post. I've actually been sitting here and reading back through some of them in an effort to get myself back into the groove of it, so please bear with me.

This is a tale of a creature  that was born in the depths of my subconscious. How it got there is somewhat mysterious. But even more mysterious than that, is why it got its name. That is something that in all honesty, I am still unaware of to this day, and I am almost certain that it is a question that I will never be able to answer. Its name is "Next Needs Up"...

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I cannot say exactly when it came into being, since I do remember there being prior instances of me drawing it which I do not have on hand, but the drawing on the cover of this notebook, which I began to use for a "Contemporary Ethics" class in early October of 2009, is the earliest recorded instance of its appearance that I have available. This "face" came from a smiley that I began using regularly around that time. Some of the girls in school and I would text back and forth a whole lot back then, and we'd always invent these crazy looking smileys. The one that this creature came from is ":E". As you can see, it's got the beady eyes, and the distinctive three fangs.

The next known instance is found as a doodle on a loose sheet of paper with all sorts of scribblings on it. The presence of a doodle labeled "duodenum" on this page leads me to believe that it was all done during "Intro to Human Anatomy", which I was taking during the same quarter as the aforementioned ethics class. Those doodles and scribbles are how Cindy and I communicated (don't ask) during many of our classes, hers being in pencil and mine in ink in this example. As you can see (as if I hadn't make it plainly obvious), the creature is present again, and with a whole body this time. The changes that it has gone through up to its final iteration are not many. It is basically more rectangular now, as seen in this instance (whose original file I cannot find) found on my Facebook, dated November 22, 2010.

Now that Next Needs Up's (Adlyn and I began calling him "Next" for short.) physical origins have been explained a little, I'd like to get to the subject of its name. The mystery surrounding this is something that interests me greatly, since my curiosity for it will never end, and it has probably given Next a lot of appeal for me. Just the origin of its name is something that has pushed it into being a character that I will continue to proliferate, maybe in hopes of growing to understand it. Anywho, on to the name...

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It was a chilly night, and I was having many, many drinks with friends. The occasion: My friend Adlyn had lots of left over alcohol, and she enlisted my help to try and get rid of it...properly. In the morning, while we were all sitting around eating breakfast and laughing about the previous night, she showed me something that I had doodled the night before, and she was laughing at how strange it was. It was on a page on the very back of one of her school books, and it is the image you see to the right.

This...confused me. A lot.

(I'd like to note that I just took a break from typing to stare at the drawing, laugh a whole lot, and to yell "What does it mean? What does it MEAN!?" It is truly baffling...)

So I just looked at her as if to say "What the fuck is this?!" From top to bottom, you have some crazy monster thing (as I named it) with the words "basic needs" in parenthesis. Next down the line, you have my recurring character, which I labeled as "next needs up" in parenthesis. But what does that mean? If it is the next needs up from the previous...thing, which I labeled basic needs, then why is it below it in line? Was I referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs? And if so, does that mean that I meant for it to be a physical manifestation of the "safety needs"? But why would it look like some monster/demon thing? UUGGGHHH!... Next down the line, is some...really stupid looking thing, which I labeled as "wut?" in parenthesis. Yeah...exactly. (Interesting to note is that these three, if looked at from top to bottom, have progressively less fangs showing from one to the next. Wonder what that could mean...)

I was positively blacked out while I drew this so, of course, I have no idea why I drew any of it, and lack any recollection of what was going on in my head, or around me, during this time. So, after a moment of inspecting it some more, I began to ask her questions. "Why did I draw this?" She didn't know. "Well, what were we talking about?", "Nothing. You were just laying down the moment before." "Well...was I saying anything?!", "No. You just dragged the book over to you, pulled out your pen, and started drawing without saying anything..."


Fucking. BAFFLED! It's, like, the perfect mystery! I could try to attribute some kind of meaning to this, but it would just be a lie. I have no freaking clue! So, that day I just decided, "Well, I guess that's his name! Next Needs Up!" and Adlyn and I have just run with it ever since. I kind of love it now! Hell, I feel safe in stating that I am as obsessed with Next Needs Up as I am with spiders and my own arachnophobia. (And hilariously enough, here is a merging of both!)

Since this post has run a bit longer than I anticipated (really now?), I will be turning it into its own post, and linking posts which contain Next Needs Up related designs back to it, for anyone who cares to read about its messy origins. Thanks for reading this far. I know it's a lot of craziness to read through. Until the next time, take care of yourselves, and carry on!

J, out...

The *Biggest* Fan

(like, ever)

S'been a week since my last post, so I think I'm ready to make a design related post now! Here's a design which I had actually been meaning to make for a long time. Lemme put it this way; that conversation that I describe in my [Backstabber] post, in the second paragraph? The receipt I pulled out to write that "Blades & Blood" idea down on had a sketch for this design already on it.

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So, lemme give you the backstory to this one. Before she moved, I'd hang out with my friend Adlyn about once a week to bullshit, catharse, watch a movie, or whatever.

Well, one of those times, on my way out, something caught my eye. So I pulled a receipt out of my wallet, popped the top off of my pen, and began sketching. When Adlyn asked me what I was doing, I told her I was sketching her ceiling fan and began rambling some nonsense.

To put it plainly (probably plainer than how I explained it to her), there was something about the way the ceiling fan looked that gave it the appearance of a character to me. Like it had eyes, y'know? Well anyhow, that's the original sketch to the left. That thing had been sitting in my wallet for a while...

I can't tell when or where the receipt is from, only that whatever it was cost me $8.03. Knowing me though, it was probably sitting in my wallet for a while before I even sketched on it (I like having makeshift canvases like this available, to take ideas down on should nothing else be available, so I keep such things stored in my wallet).

Fast forward to April 13th, and on the way out of Adlyn's I decided to get a reference photo of her ceiling fan, so that I could be prepared when the time came to crank out the design. Not too soon after, on June 29th, after finalizing a few other designs, I began work on it. Strangely enough, I also prepared and posted a blog on the same day, mentioning that I was actually in the process of finalizing the design near the end.... Geez, creating a design and writing a blog at the same time? I guess that could give y'all some idea of the way my mind works at times. At this point I remember wishing that I had taken a picture of the ceiling fan with a better camera (i.e: anything other than my cellphone) and with better lighting (i.e: anything better than with the lights off...at night). By then my friend Adlyn had already moved out of that apartment though, so that wasn't possible. Well, enough of my blabber. Here it is!

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Pretty silly, huh? Designing this was straight forward enough, even though I began with a different vision of what it would be in my head. Still, I like this much better. After I sent Adlyn a text with a shot of it though, we kinda got into a little back and forth on the font choice.

Basically, it all boiled down to her not liking the asterisks. I informed her that they were there for emphasis, so she told me I should italicize the word. When I told her that I didn't want a design in which just two words were in use to have differing looking text she told me I should use all caps then. When I replied that all caps took away from the readability, and that the emphasis was of a quiet, self-assured type (with the all caps being more of a yelling type), she... Well, actually, I think she left me alone at that point.

It's alright though. I've made the ceiling fan design, sans the type, available as well. So anyone that doesn't like my font choice, the asterisks, or even the message itself can add in their own. Interestingly enough, some folk must not mind the font or the asterisk, as someone actually purchased 4 products with the complete design on them! I thought that was pretty cool. Also, I showed a friend a few days ago, and she couldn't stop laughing, so I'll take that as positive feedback. Or maybe she was just high? Most of y'all reading this probably are also, so maybe I've found my audience? Hahaha! Ah, what an asshole....

Drop on in by my shop every now and then. There's new stuff coming in irregularly, so look out for that stuff. I'll try to crank more of these blogs out, possibly even catch them up to the corresponding designs available. That's all I had for this one. Y'all carry on.


J, out!