I'm procrastinating on an assignment (about searching, actually - information access stuff) and spent a significant amount of time wandering through Zazzle and selecting Narwhal T-shirts, and carefully mucking around with all the links and code, adding them to one of GreekGeek's templates.
My wrists hurt :D
Anyway, I finally finished, manned up and wrote the introduction, and then went 'doh! Intro image!". I hate using other people's images for the introduction - it's hard to credit, and I have this picture that Is Not Mine staring me in the face all the time. Plus, I've just finished a page about this whole topic so I'm really inspired by it right now. I do this all the time - I can point to at least half a dozen pictures that I mainly drew so that I had something to use on Squidoo, and today's sketch is no exception!
I already complained about not being able to draw digitally this evening - I miss my ArtRage - but all I really needed was a simple sketch, so I whipped out a graphite pencil, found a drawing pad, opened up Google Images and searched 'narwhal' - and voila! Instant Narwhal Picture. I had to muck around in Photoshop a little, cause the lighting where I photographed it is so bad, and because I wrote on it, but I like the result. I'd like it more if I hadn't had to use a nasty mouse to edit, of course...
Anyway, one caption and some editing later, and my new lens is complete!
A Round-Up of Evil, Robotic, Rainbow, Sparkly, Geeky and Dismembered Unicorns
Unicorns are classic mythological horned horses/deer/kirin/dainty cloven hooved things, beloved by two audiences. Little girls are enthralled with the pretty, dainty, magical horses - as a quick search for Unicorns on Zazzle and Amazon will show in a scary way.
The other unicorn-loving audience does have its "Pretty horse" lovers, true, but the major part of it has recognised the most important bit of the unicorn. It has a bloody great horn and can stab things. Who is this enlightened audience? Why - the internet, of course!
The internet loves unicorns. They're everywhere. From happy sparkly unicorns being ridden by sparkly, doe eyed, beautiful yaoi boys, to beefed-up, psychotic, robotic killers, unicorns appear everywhere! We love them so much, we want to play with them, eat them, draw them, wear them!
I got an email from ArchMage today about ThinkGeek's tinned unicorn meat - apparently if you want to import it into Germany, you better not write Unicorn on the package. Or meat. Or else label it 'JOKE. Not Real!" ... or include a Deutsch-English dictionary with 'Unicorn: fictional" bookmarked and highlighted! "Canned Unicorn Meat" Gift Delayed at German Border as Rare Meat
And then this evening, someone on Squidoo posted in the forums about the joke 'prize' (of the same unicorn meat) that you get awarded at a certain level.
This reminded me of how many unicorns I've been encountering and writing about lately (mostly amusing), so I figured I'd make a Unicornic Blog!
There's the ThinkGeek unicorn meat, of course - which started as an April Fool's Joke, but is now sold as 'real' canned meat with mixed-up sparkles. Actually, it's a dismembered toy unicorn in a can - reminiscient of the dismemberable Black Knight plushie!
The Sisters at Radiant Farms have dedicated their lives to nursing these elegant creatures through their final days. Taking a cue from the Kobe beef industry, they massage each unicorn’s coat with Guinness daily and fatten them on a diet comprised entirely of candy corn.
If you like the look of the tasty meat and want to serve up your own, well, there's a spin-off ThinkGeek Prime Cuts of Unicorn t-shirt that you can buy - ideal as a guide for serving up a nice serving of prime love-filled unicorn steak and avoiding the slightly tasteless, chewier cuts of superglue meat. There's a (rip off?) version on Zazzle, too.
Next up is the flash game, Robot Unicorn Attack. Robot Unicorn Attack is as addictive, annoying and happy and harmonious and harmony, harmony oh looove...
...
Wait, where was I? Oh yes, it's as always want to be with yo-aargh!. Addictive. Yes. Happy rainbow flash game of doom. You can basically sum it up with this graph.
I wrote a lens on it, and that's doing very well, I'm happy to say. Which is how I know that there's now a heavy metal AND a Christmas version coming out/available for iPhones. Basically the same game, just with different endless songs and appearances. There's a Chase Your Dreams t-shirt and a 'loading screen' Robot Unicorn Attack T-Shirt from ThinkGeek out finally/already. There are also a couple of AdultSwim designs available.
The Robot Unicorn was probably based off Starlite - the happy, sparkly, rainbow maned flying horse from the Rainbow Brite cartoon. The pretty horsey with the colourful mane has also been lovingly recreated by artists across the internet.
The designs of Starlite and the rest of the characters were revamped recently, from the pudgy cute little round 1980 cartoon characters, to sleeker, older, prettier, more manga-influenced characters.
OLD
NEW
On the topic of 'pretty horsies', The Last Unicorn has been loved for years, as a beautiful, classic animated film in a time when there weren't so many, and fan art and references to Almathea abound across the net. I've done my part by adding Almathea/Disney femslash to the Disney femslash collection *cackles*
Sadly, I haven't actually seen this famous film, apart from YouTube excerpts and for years thought it was the book The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge (because I could not fathom a famous book that I hadn't read, much les not even heard of!)
The AVENGING UNICORN PLAY SET is well up there in awesomeness - the Avenging Narwhal is even more awesome, as it impales endanged species (the unicorn less imaginately is impaling people), but sadly no longer available.
There's this awesome animated screensaver from The Truth about the death rate of smokers, which I downloaded many years ago and spent hours looking for recently. All I found were a couple of screenshots, and the original download site... which doesn't always actually work for me! I did finally get it to download (weird browser issues? The site itself? Dunno. But I finally have it again!)
It features badly drawn but apparently content unicorns, that jump back and forth between two clouds, floating in a pale pink sky with a giant rainbow arcing down across it...
... and 30% (or some similar smoking death statistic) miss, and either fall to their deaths, get struck by lightning or crash into the cloud. The corpse then falls to the ground and burns or decays into a skeleton. The longer it runs, the larger the pile of skeletons below...
And on this topic of horrible medical conditions, let us segue into the internet classic, Charlie the Unicorn.
And then there's this mysterious cutie
HELLO my name is the Unicorn of your dreams
And to round off, have some general unicorn art and linkage
And I've been writing this for about three hours (admittedly, while being distracted by Eufloria) so I'm going to suddenly stop, with no real conclusion now.
edit: And now, of course, there are the unicorns of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
One of these prints (of course! I sell more of this than any other put together). It was also the only thing I sold in September which was very sad after August being relatively huge (mostly referral sales, but I actually earnt a volume bonus for the first time.)
And this - I had to get my brother this kitty on a hoodie from RedBubble (we order from RedBubble because the shipping's free for me, being in Australia, if I order five shirts)
I remember being so pleased when I discovered that the 'Pussy Cat, pussy cat' rhyme was free to use :D
I'm in mild shock - I didn't really think anyone ever bought anything from RedBubble, I just used it for its nicer and more official-looking gallery/portfolio set-up (and later to order my own stuff. Like t-shirts for my family, and stickers. THEY DO AWESOME STICKERS. I shall be selling them at the Armageddon convention in a couple of weeks :D )
The Stickers - they're die-cut from the t-shirt images, so have a small white edging around the actual colour because my transparent PNGs worked
Someone ordered this mermaid print from RedBubble last week which was a complete surprise and a great delight. I've also discovered that my RB account is set up in pounds *facepalm* (I never sold anything! I had no need to check!)
I'm linking the Zazzle image, because RedBubble isn't set up to allow that.
. WANT. These. Too much 'cute' in your world? Here's the solution.
The narwhal is an arctic-dwelling whale that's been called 'the unicorn of the sea' due to its long pointed tusk. While there's much debate about the true purpose of this appendage, the truth is finally revealed!
The narwhal uses its mighty tusk to skewer the cute smaller animals of the world specifically baby seals, baby penguins, and koalas. This 5 1/2-inch long, hard-vinyl narwhal comes with 4 magic tusks (crystal, onyx, ruby, and ice) to impale the three 1 1/2-inch, soft-vinyl cuties included.
Unicorns never lie, always lend a helping hand, are loyal, can keep a secret, don't use drugs, and viciously skewer mimes on sight. The Avenging Unicorn play set comes with everything you need to decorate your desk with an angry creature of myth determined to impale terrified onlookers: 3 human figures, 4 different magical horns, and 1 cute little unicorn of death.
There is only room enough on this earth for one majestic horned beast, thus the Unicorn and Narwhal must clash to decide the fate of their species. Two previous battles ended in a tie, with both sides claiming to be the victim of dirty tactics. Now you can settle the score with your very own Unicorn vs. Narwhal Play Set.
I have a weird sense of humour... occasionally I succumb and make random t-shirts (and stuff) instead of updating my store with my artwork like a good artist should.
Especially when it comes to unicorns. Unicorns are FUNNY. I restrained myself after four, though... if you've got a better caption, care to share? (And if you really want your idea on one of the t-shirts below, they should all be customisable, so just replace the text)
Then there's the silly-to-me but probably not to other people ones...
Plus a bit of promotion for an Auckland friend who's trying to take over local politics from the inside. Specifically, he's running for the 'Albert-Eden-Roskill Maungawhau subdivision Local Board election'
He's a good guy; educated, very into the environment (and lives it), more transport, that sort of thing. A bit idealistic (my disagreements with his Grand Plots usually centre around "yeah, but people are idiots and won't let you") and despite his education has still been attacked by the dread Alot. Once. And I don't think I'll tell him where *cackles*
And he seriously lucked out on his last name - I mean, imagine the puns and slogans! Goode Enough, Goode For Auckland, Goode for You, The Goode Guy, ... they just weren't Goode enough *zing* His blog covers general Auckland issues and analyses the actual campaign (which is a relief - now I don't have to do it!)
...also, he made me find an excuse to buy a Lego cannon today.
(and going to find his links, I found he'd posted about Women's Suffrage Day - today in 1893 women got the right to vote in New Zealand, so I better do it too!)
Patrick Rothfuss is the guy who wrote the very brilliant fantasy book, The Name of the Wind (that utterly horrified me when it suddenly stopped - turns out he's writing a sequel, so I'm happy again!). The main character's a guy called Kvothe. Apparently he was once a lesbian unicorn. Or more honestly (and less amusingly!) the author made a joke about him being one, and Kvothe is now permanently a lesbian unicorn in the eyes of the internet (and I am so very much not helping with this).
This really makes me want to draw a lesbian unicorn. And wish that my fingers didn't keep writing 'unicron'. I did paint a unicorn last week though... and it's purple. The colour of being bisexual. I've decided that retroactively counts. Zazzle appears to have gone down, so I can't make amusing captions. Pity. I seem to compulsively consider unicorns a fit target for mocking captions. We could have had such fun...
Also, those stories and that big industry about the Magic of Cancer-Curing (s)Chark Cartilage? Debunked, as in kicked off the top bunk in the night as they rolled over on their pile of money. Sharks certainly do, probably, get cancer, and there's no reliable science to say otherwise.
An interesting read about the recalcitrance of publishing companies to seriously embrace digital media for its own sake: Please, Just Kiss Digital Comics On The Mouth Already ...and while we're on that topic, I've been sorting out my top webcomics page, so I've got pages for each update day (Monday, Tuesday... you can probably predict the rest!)
An internet artist's place to write.
will show in a scary way.
).
