St. Petersburg & critters

Till the 14th February everybody (and their mum...if they have an email address) can vote on the final base color of the new St. Petersburg box Irene and me are currently working on. I started the project last year and it's mostly still in the conception stage. So many material and a lot of math, color decisions and finally the little hope even the hardcore game nerds will like it.

You can vote HERE
It only takes a minute and I'd really appreciate if we get as many votes as possible. :D

More information can be found here:
my Deviantart journal
and on the official Hans im Glück facebook page:
Hans im Glück

*Update 13.02:
And because I realized some people who actually really want the game (or are simply curious about it) might read this: The illustration(s) will look like the Carcassonne Winter-Edition cover. So every "Oh it's Disney!" comment is frustrating because we 100%ly don't want or will run into that direction. Both Irene and me dislike "Anastasia" as well (no offense... but the movement animation is simply creepy), so you might enjoy reading that's out of discussion as well.
And as we played the new version just yesterday in Munich... Oh my.... the new version is so good. It's a tad more complicated but soooo good. I want it badly getting into print.
*

Last week-end Saskia, my hubby, his brother and me visit my family for the annual wood cutting. Since the "girl duty" only consisted of dragging haul 2-30 kg pieces of cut wood from one place to another on the yard we used the rest of the time to visit the wild park nearby.
Sadly the prairie dogs didn't want to cuddle this time (these are so fluffy and soft!). But they nommed away walnuts like the rest did. At least the deers and goats loved the nom+ attention.

 It's a small park but since some animals have no restricted area you might end up being stalked by deers, goats and occassionally by some pot-bellied pigs. Entry fee is only 2 Euro and we normally end up visiting the park every time I'm in my home-town. I wish some cages were bigger but I think that practically depends on donations.
If you're ever in Brandenburg: Wildpark

 Left my highly wrapped up self and right girl is Saskia :B As you can see it was still snowy but such a wonderful sunny day. Still too cold for my taste. My collection of thermal clothes grew a lot over the three years. I freeze so fast it's not funny =.=

 As you can see... stalking deers. I think in summer I will grab my sketch book and spend some hours there. Forgot to do it in summer and it's high time.

My favourite part: The prairie dogs. These were restricted to a pretty spacious area to beginn with but I think they will soon rule the complete park. This year the park guys finally gave up and removed the fencing. The fences were a joke to begin with... the clever critters simply digged deeper and ended up popping up at the other side of the meadow. :D

Moleskine Passion Journal: Food

Okay... so Moleskine decided some years ago that people like me who adore Moleskine journals should spend even more money and created a new line: The passion journals.
These things kill me!
It's not like I am getting grabby hands with every special edition but I regulary use a Moleskine for notes, sketches and meeting doodles (and pretty much everything else) and "burn up" 1 per year. These look odd since my journals don't tend to be super artsy but.... actually only there for keeping my notes neatly in 1 place.

Anyways, the food journal definitely made my heart flutter. I hate the normal looking recipe DIY books and most layouts are either not detailled enough or too cluttered. Moleskine created a tiny thing of awesomeness. And I'm happy I got mine last week.

 That's how it looks on the outside- the usual fake leather is embossed and gives at least a hint about the pretty things inside. I mulled over the decision of customizing it but in the end it will stay like that. Or get a foil cover... still undecided.

 And that's how it looks inside... at least in my journal.

  I tend to switch between languages (why translate if you know what it means?) and doodling vs photos I made beforehand. I guess nobody will be able to read it properly except me. I decided to include only recipes I already made and approved. You know these recipe books where you find on 100 pages only 2 recipes you really love? Yes, pure frustration (I have a lot of these books...argh). So my book will stay frustration free.

 At the moment I'm still trying to gather everything I made over the last couples of years. Cooking on a daily base means: lots of recipes. The good thing is: I tracked every bloody day. So it's easy to "reconstruct" mostly everything. We still have to check a lot of photos I made since usually my hubby is my guinea pig and can hopefully remember the ones he liked.

 The only downside of the journal: The pages are soo thin. I really wanted to use color but marker will 100%ly bleed through and my pencils might be too hard for the surface. At the moment I stick to my Slicci pen but the ink is pretty much a disaster because it tends to fade and even the thin gel liner creeps through the page.

One of the ups: You have a double pouch in the back. If you have any recipes you simply want to store or stickers, labels, notes: That's your place. And there's plenty of it!

The food journal comes with different stickers and labels I might or might not use. I think an unhappy face won't make it into the book but some things might come in handy.

You can check all the different Passion variants on the official Moleskine page. Enjoy!

Christmas impressions...

I know I should post more art but the last days week was loaded with preparations for Christmas and driving around a lot since neither my in-laws nor my parents happen to live in Berlin.

 Morning at the border to Poland. Seriously I can't remember having seen such a wonderful dawn on Christmas morning. It was pretty amazing.

Preparations for the dinner are in my parents' household always... kinda nightmarish. If you ever had the chance (or bad luck) to grate fresh horseradish -and I mean garden fresh- you know how bad I want to avoid having horseradish duty. These stinkers are literally deadly. The smell and essence clog your lungs, sting in your eyes and make breathing so hard you just want to throw it out the window.

 The culprit.... I hate the horseradish a lot but dang, freshly prepared it tastes thousand times better than anything from the supermarket.

 Nature at it's best. Quail's eggs- nearly too beautiful to eat.We did it anyway... ._.

 

Oh it sparkles! My dad didn't like my glitter decoration that much but hey, if you leave tree decoration to a girl you have to prepare for glitter. At least this year no pink... :D

And here comes something we got this morning...

 

 A little package from the Czech Republic. :3 A big thanks to Danilo for the cookies and the little figurine. :D The figurine got tucked away into the side board and spooks all the Kulla figurines I got over the years.

We also got a cute christmas card from Marina. I feel bad I didn't manage to get my card printed but next year.... hopefully... meh! I should start earlier- the last minute jobs always kill the time frame for getting things done on time.

 

 And last but not least... a culinary adventure. I started preparing vanilla essence.

 

 After 24 hours it's so dark I had no idea how to get a proper shot. It will darken even more over the next days and hopefully in two weeks I have 1.3 litres vanilla essence which... might even last a year. 

If you wonder how it's done:

Vanilla essence instructions

The recipe is in German- if you still want to try it and the automatic translation confuses you let me know. The preparation is really simple.:D

I already wish you a Happy New Year and hope you'll have an amazing 2014.

So Fluffy!

 

I can't get over Hantje's paws... these are so effin fluffy I want to poke them all the time! It looks like instant slippers. She hates getting cold feed and won't go outside in winter (seriously!).

Spreading Love...

.... or winter fuzzles. It's this time of the year again when I put on clean clothes and after 2 minutes with the cats they look like this:

It doesn't look that bad but having a third cat (amount of hair) spread all over my clothes is sometimes really annoying- my back is the worst part and I wonder how the hairs got *there*. The third unwanted cat is everywhere. Hantje tends to nap in my freshly washed pile of shirts and I end up frantically removing the third cat every morning. I love my kittens but the third cat in spring is the worst part. Probably.
Since Tretel still loves to sit on the balcony freezing his booty off he has a decent amount of third cat he loves to share. Same goes for Hantje.

Happy Stalking

 Hantje does the ceiling cat with much more grace than Tretel... I think. Did I mention they'll turn 3 in April already? O_o Time flies by.

And I really wanted to post this little creeper weeks ago but I never found time to do so. Stalker Kitteh!!!! Isn't he great?! Saskia give him to me and he's still sitting in the same position on my table. Stalking my every move. Oh I love him O_O and it's the only stalker I love.

This blog will get some major pimping in the next months and I hope you bear the absence of more posts. I am happily drowning in (partially private) work again and I hope the new look will be much loved. It certainly will make some things easier. For everybody.

Ceiling-Tretel

Perfect round chubby face look he does so often... and I never managed to get a picture of. Till yesterday. Cleaning the aquarium is always verrrryyyyy interesting for the cats. Han's always winking and mewing and checking out the fishies and Tretel loves to sit on the ladder (feeling quite superior) we use to refill.
If the ladder is blocked (with the water bucket... yes, we do it old school) he moves to the top of the cat post and makes those funny looking faces. Gahh, chubby face is so effin cute!

Who needs Maru....

... if you have Tretel :D Same genes, same reaction to empty boxes... I really wanted to reuse this one but seems it's a useless battle.

Isn't it weird when people send you birthday wishes way to early? I always feel uncomfortable. O_o

Tretel is a real man... now

Tretel catched his first bird yesterday- a young titmouse. Through the wired cat-net we have on the balacony. I was stunned, horrified and proud at the same time.
Lucky he is a wanna-play-cat and didn't kill the bird immediately. Thank god I am sick and home right now. O_o Otherwise we'd have a dead bird and even more feathers in the apartement. I snatched the birdie and set him free. He wasn't injured and everything seem to be still in place. After heavily breathing for 15 minutes he finally took off.
Tretel was highly dissapointed and lamented the whole time.

I am still horrified AND proud. Twisted mind of a cat owner I'd say.

Cute galore!

*click for bigger image*
Next to finishing pages, 2 board games and keeping up with social life (I am still surpirse I keep that one steady... wow) AND normal work I prepared some things for the Animaco in Berlin.
I got my proof prints yesterday and realized these went horribly wrong with a flipped backside. Lew said she wouldn't mind but I mind a lot and less than perfect is not on my Wanted list.

Everything's already in pre-sale since I have no problem with first come, first serve. If I end up having three mugs and only buttons left... oh well, it will be fun anyway.

If you are still looking for cute christmas gifts read the journal entry HERE.

Tetris cat 2

I'd wish I had anything else to blog about but the exciting stuff comes out in October and January so... cat pics till your eyes bleed.

around 10:00 in the morning.... tetris cat 2.0- the "I iz dead"-position

1 hour later.... slowly crawling along on the floor. I still don't understand his need to lie on his back and why he keeps hogging chair legs. Normally I find him in exactly *that* position on his back... facing the wall. Strange cat is strange.

Hantje seriously doesn't care.

He doesn't even care if I walk around taking pics. I even poked him with my feet twice. Utterly igorant with zero reaction. Oh well...

I have to finish some things today and hope we won't melt away. Ty said it will be the hottest week-end and all I can think of is that I need to work, drown in coffee and maybe enjoy some balcony time in the evening.

I'm totally looking forward to starting my vacation in 1 week. :D It's nothing special but I want to make the most out of it which means lotsa napping, skating in the middle of the week *luxury!* and visit family (at least the part that's in Germany right now).

Tretel's breakfast nap

The cats tend to rotate with us in the appartment. When I am in the studio room... they hover along. When we're having breakfast you have to keep an eye on your feet since Tretel tends to flop down and you might step on a tail accidently.
Hantje prefers the tables and windows since she has a much better view on the table's content. Clever cat.

Tretel... i have no idea if this is relaxing but he keeps doing it and today I finally had the chance to take a picture while he was snorring. It's a bit like cat tetris- see if you can fit your body in every free space. Well, if it's comfortable. O_o;

Chillin' Tretel

When I did my Christmas illustration somebody complained that Kiki's pose is absolutely impossibe. Actually... it's just what I see every day. Tretel loves to sit like that *everywhere*.

TV -dangling paws in front-, couch, table, kitchen, tub, toilet, cat post, cat post II, cupboard, 2.25 m cupboard top. He just does. And I often wonder if it's really so comfortable but since he keeps doing it I guess it is. Somehow.

If there was a competetition about doing whacko posing he'd totally win it.

Random cutie Han pic

Lew complained I don't blog often enough... maybe a cute snap-shot of Hantje justifies it. I've been @ home this week- working quite frantically on comic pages, cover sketches, corrections (I feel really dumb when it comes to mirror and reflection... theory and practice have never been more.... miles away from each other) and dealing with a sick bf.
I wanted to work on several things additionally but I was so tired I mostly just ended up napping on the couch whenever my mentally wake presence was not needed. It was so good and I really needed it.

I try to blog more often in the future if anything interesting pops up. At the moment I'm a bit wrapped up in the odds of life and getting the last big bunch of comic pages done aaaand a board-game finally rollin' into conception phase.

Zebra-Schwein got pre-nominated for the Graf Ludo 2012 and in 2 weeks the winner of the Origins Awards will be annouced. I don't really try to hope but it's good to see things get recognized. Actually it's pretty lame not to scream hurray but last year kind of sobered me up. ;)

Yay! Boxed!

IT's grass time again! Tretel looks a bit... actually he looks like he's in hunting mode, but he's enjoying his flower-box full of grass.I have no idea why he loves to sit IN the box instead of chomping on the strands but well... I can't blame him. I'll prep another box and hopefully Hantje will spend some more time outside as well.

11.11. impressions

 From the lovely Mirjam. Can't show the other thing since I got the prototype :3

 Whoot!

 My Marimos: Herbert, Kurt, Gundel, Hank and Frank.

 I hope I won't fuck it up.... always wanted a cube, never dared to buy one. Hantje & Tretel are looking forward to get Marimo and Pawn TV.

Tretel looking very important.

Thanks for all the wishes I got. Actually the most impressing one came from the absolutely great team of Burton. You guys rock so much! 

I'm currently working in a maddening speed together with Irene and Lew on graphics for them (and a pretty cool app I'll show off when it's available). It's one of those things you think you can't finish on time. But we did last year and we'll do it again. I hope so... at least.

Camoukitteh

Where's the kitteh? One of the older pics when Hantje was still only Babyhan and a camou-kitteh.... cat+ freshly washed clothes= instant blissfull sleep I guess.

Since today's the only day having 25 hours, it's Sunday and I'm working anyways I feel like I'm not really getting out of that weird zombie mode which started one month ago. I guess one reason is that it's getting dark so early. The other might be that I'm tired of animals and those are haunting my dreams...
     17- Goat
                  21- Crocodile
     uh...
23- Mouse
                             26- Bunny... arg brown or muddy or white?
                arg...
30- Cow
and so on. I haven't drawn so many pigs in... practically never and though I have to admit my ability to draw cheeky pigs went from -5 to 120% it's kinda unfunny to see how many hours you can spend with inks and flats and thinking about giving a camel a mohawk or not (it has one btw...).
So much for jobs. I should work on my comic pages. I really should. I should also learn to say "no" to awesomely interesting jobs but it's like telling an alcoholic beer's a totally bad idea to order.

My birthday's in 2 weeks btw and I want to have a Marimo. If anybody wants to make me happy you know how ;)
Doh... I should work on 16- MohawkCamel now... and 15- Frog .... ElephantBadGoldfishDogPolarbearsomething... arg...


Ever had a job haunting you so much you just wanted to finish ASAP?

Tretel and Hantje again

Tretel is 100%ly too big for this napping place but alas, the other place was already taken by Hantje and she's in bitch mode every time he tries to sneak in hissing like a maniac. Poor Tretel... ;)

Since they are practically out all day sitting on the balcony watching birdie& bug TV they get winter fur and... I daresay gain another pound of winter coat by eating more.

Tretel is much more open for evening cuddling than he was half a year ago and Hantje is still very very possessive and naps on my back/stomach every time I'm on the couch. Wierdo cat stays weird.

Nerd-Entry ... for nerds

Cintiq 21UX... I has it! I know it's like men with cars or girl with shoes... showing off. But yesh, I finally got it (DHL-Shipping was a horror trip). It's very nerdy to post pics but like Lew said: mutual orgasm to look at it.

And sheesh, that thing is HUGE. The white paper is A4. I hope I'll see my screen when that thing is in front.

Eeep... The Intuos has to move. I guess at least Lew will be happy (maybe) about getting that one for work.

I just hope I won't melt off in summer again. o_o

Before I forget: I saved up for it, I worked for it and I know I spend every bloody Cent I paid with sweating over illustrations. So yeah... no whining or weirdo mails why I can afford it, plz.
The world needs more greatly payed jobs. We all know that.

What will we do 2011?

I actually started it with being sick and spend my New Year's Eve on the couch watching kitschy movies with Ty.
I hope the next weeks will be happy ones since I expect payout from three jobs I did last year and gosh, I'm so craving for the Cintiq Q_Q
I realized that it might be a chance to get one comic page done in two evening-sessions. At the moment I'm bloody slow and it makes everything a lot more complicated and exhausting than I thought.

My Christmas was a mixture of super-sad crying and happy being together. I happened to pick up my mum up at the nursing home (who works there) and saw my grandma (who lives there). It was so sad.
"Switch the lights on. Why is it so dark?"
"But granny, the lights ARE on. All of them."
My mum told me afterwards that my grandma lost her eye-sight. I know it happens every minute around the globe but it hurts alot when you have somebody close slowly fading away and you can't do anything about it.I'm not good handling those situations since I turn into a neverending emotional waterfall. I guess that's one of the many reasons why I skipped the "family-tradition" of becoming nurse number23452 in the family tree. Arf.

More happy news: Jan/Feb will be awesome, since the board game I worked on will be out. (German, French, Italian language... :D )
The rest.. oh well... next entry with pics again. I'm already late on so many things but at the moment the couch seems the best choice. With a huge pile of books and tea. Yay. o_o