Acid Bunny the Game!

I've been waiting for so long to write this post and now that it's here, I really just want to slap some photos on here and be done... but I'll try my best to weave in a few words and coherently as my exhausted mind will allow me.

So I mentioned a few weeks ago that Albert and I were making a game together, and it is ALMOST done... I'm done, but Albert still has a little bit of work ;) (he's the animation and coding mastermind)

Check out this teaser for the game!



This was my first ever official game project, and it was such a fun (exhausting, frustrating at times) process! I'd actually come up with the story for Acid Bunny long ago when Albert gave me a handmade birthday card with a bunny on it, but nothing really came of it. At first I made this plushie based on the character, and then we almost made a paper/flash animation, but somewhere along the line we just got too busy and forgot all about it. We finally came up with the game when Albert decided he wanted to take a break from his thesis and make some "quick game" so I suggested we use Acid Bunny.

My part in this project has been game design, character design, story, making plushies and giving advice/ideas whenever possible. I made 25 plushies! It was insane. Take away making food, working out, and going to the shop, I would be sewing all day every day. This feat was made even more difficult with my sewing machine's mood swings (she's an oldie, so she gets tired and refuses to work every now and then).. but now I'm done!

And look, I managed to get some words down as well!

Here's a picture of all the plushies!

On the right side of the photo you can see Acid Bunny's 'hooligan' siblings, with their mom (light blue) behind them. His siblings are severe drug addicts, as you can see by the bottle, pill and joint. In the middle-ish front row you can see Acid Bunny, and on his right Acid Bunny having one of his notorious flashbacks. All around him are his friends, named simply after their species :)

The game will hopefully be out next week (free and online) so I'll be sure to post here once it is up if someone wants to go give it a try and see how my plushies tie into the game! I'll probably also post some more detailed pics of these guys once the game is out.

Oh and go ahead and like SeethingSwarm (Albert) on facebook ! That's where you'll find the most up to date information about the game :)

Plushie Chat

Heya!

Okei, so it's almost been a week since things have calmed down for me (finished a 2-week intensive program at school) but even though my schedule eased up significantly, it took about a week to catch up on all the things I hadn't had time to do during that two week period. But now I'm back! :)

As I mentioned in my mini-post before my absence, Albert and I are making a game together! I wont reveal much about it now, but hopefully soon enough we'll be able to put together a little teaser video and I'll be sure to link it here.

I will reveal that a large part of my contribution is coming from sewing some plushies! So far it has been both really fun, and ultra-frustrating. I'm not being modest when I say that I'm a complete amateur. When Albert and I started planning my plushie-portion of the project, we were talking about the possibility of even selling the plushies, but I'm realizing now that I'm sooo not ready for that! But somehow realizing that, and deciding that that will most probably not happen, has relieved so much of the stress, which is amazing :) Maybe one day I'll be able to open a little online shop and sell them, but for now I just want to focus on learning and having fun with it.

So here's a little sneak peak... can you guess what it's going to be? 

<3 Anna

Newspaper Nails!

Check out my newspaper nails! Tutorial I used here.

For the past few weeks I've been restraining myself from painting my nails to give them a little break and some time to strengthen. I have psoriasis (albeit mild) and I was noticing that my nails seemed to start showing some of the symptoms, and with the combination of the dry winter they were becoming pretty brittle and flaky. Growing up I've always had ultra-strong nails, so seeing some changes in them was a bit depressing, but with some strengthening treatments and regular trimming they seem to be back to their usual form.

I was originally planning to paint them mint green or some other very Springtime inspired colour, but then I looked outside and it was raining. Now I absolutely love sunshine, but this is the first rainfall of the year (spring is coming!) so I thought I'd do something a little bit inspired by the weather and thought this tutorial I found on pintrest was perfect!

A little pop of gold sparkles to liven it up!

I only had white nail polish, but I really wanted that grey newspaper tone so I used a section of the newspaper that had some background colour behind the text. For the soaking part I used some ultra strong mouthwash that Albert got from the pharmacy after having his wisdom teeth out, and also sprayed some perfume directly onto the paper since one of the comments said this made the text darker. Despite my apartment smelling kind of toxic, it was all pretty easy and a fun little crafts project.

I'm curious to see if this would work with regular paper. I would really like to print out some text or images and have them reversed on the paper, that way when I print them onto my nails they would be read-able! Has anyone tried this?

Two New Friends

Happy Saturday Everyone! 

Hopefully everyone had a nice day, and the weather where you are is getting warmer! Finland has still been quite cold, and there's still ice/snow on the ground, but the sun is really starting to heat up! So it shouldn't be long before the air starts to warm up too and all the icky leftovers of winter melt away.

I wanted to share two of latest creations: Blu Bub and Meeks! They are a blue squirrel, and a flying squirrel-bear thing... either way they're cute. I'm such a sap for stuffed animals and plushies. The second I get their little eyes and noses sewn on my heart melts, it's like, even if they have exposed seams that have been driving me insane and I've wanted to throw them in the trash and give up a million times, in that moment I'm always so glad I didn't and I give them a little hug. (yes, I know I'm crazy!)

These two were made from original patterns, which I have so not perfected yet! I also mentioned some exposed seams, this is mainly due to getting used to the sewing machine (I used to sew my other plushies by hand) but also just because I'm a bit impatient to get things done so sometimes I may rush steps that really shouldn't be rushed. With that said, I'm learning a lot about both sewing and patience through the process of making these guys. :)

So here are my little Bub and Meeks, I hope you like them! 

Blu Bub

Flying Meeks!

Bub found an almond

P.S. Leave me comments, they make my day and I'd love to know what you think!

Snow Acid Bunny

This past weekend I went with my parents to Hyvinkää to see my grandpa (read: Pappa) and I wanted to share a little something I made in the snow. Even though it was -6 degrees the sun was shining so brightly that it melted the top layers of snow and made it  possible for me to craft a little Snow Acid Bunny!  It's probably been about 13 years since I made anything out of snow, so as you can imagine I was pretty excited.


The building process went pretty smoothly but I did struggle with his mouth and eyes. When we had arrived at my grandpa's we were greeted by a colorful array of birds, so after a few failed attempts at using twigs and berries I opted to use sunflower seeds instead. I think they ended up looking pretty good and if the birds are brave enough to approach him, they'll get a little treat!

Here's a few pics that my dad took with his phone :)

I added a little heart by squishing the berries!

Sunday and Acid Bunny

Say hello to my two newest creations!

Sunday (named after the day of her creation) was originally made just to learn how to sew a ball. Then I decided to add on some ears, a little bunny tail, and some button eyes and nose.

And here's ACID BUNNY. Last year for my birthday Albert cut out a little pink bunny onto my birthday card. After that we started working on a little animation with the bunny and developed a little back-story for him. Basically he's a good loving bunny, who comes from a tough background. His mother, a severe drug addict, took a lot of acid while pregnant and as a consequence our sweet little bunny now and then gets some acid flashbacks and goes completely crazy.

And now I've brought our little Acid Bunny to life! :)

The body is based on an online tutorial I found for a teddy bear. 
For the ears I added in some wire to hold them up, which also makes them bendable. The mouth is just done with some string, and the eyes are two black buttons that I drew on to with a silver marker.

Faceless (plushie #3)

Here is Faceless! A plushie I hand sew. He is all white with blue on the inside of his ears. His name 'Faceless' was first given as a temporary name holder while he spent about 3 months on the shelf without any kind of face. So even though he finally has eyes, the name stuck.

And hopefully by tonight I'll finish another plushie that I started and can post him/her here too! :)

Tea-Party with Minnie and Friends

Had myself a little tea party with Minnie and friends :)

A self portrait, showing my identity as a child. I think everyone has (or at least should have!) a little bit of their childhood left in them. I wanted to capture that childhood imagination, except while little kids play dress-up and dress as adults, I decided to dress a little bit more child-like.

Colour me Purple

It's been a few weeks since Albert and I moved into our new place together, and I wanted to share one aspect of our home that I'm super proud of: Our purple wall.

We were so excited when we moved in and our new landlords told us that we could pretty much do whatever we wanted to the place: "Its your home now, do what you like" (side note: they did say no skulls or things of that sort, damn!) Not only was it exciting to be able to do something hands on with our new place, it was also a relief- our new lovely home had the most blah, and hideous golden-ish wall in the alcove. It had to go.

We began by toying with the idea of wallpapers, and were leaning towards something like this. 
I'm not quite sure how we moved away from wallpapers and started to consider paint, but I think it was a mixture of: we don't know how to do wallpaper, what if it looks too patterny? Is black really a good choice?.. But anyways, we decided to paint.

I did some google searches for 'wall painting effects' and fell completely in love with the sponge effect! It looked so much more organic than wallpaper, but still had some life and intrigue to it that a solid wall just doesn't.

Next I revised my google searches to 'accent walls'. Accent walls are a single wall that is painted something different from the rest of the walls. Albert and I both really liked the blues, purples and reds- but since our couches are red we scratched that as an option. We didn't end up settling on purple, until we were at the paint shop looking at the swatches. We chose a lighter, slightly more blueish purple for the base, and then a slightly warmer redish dark purple for the top coat.

Neither of us had really done anything like this before, so we watched a lot of youtube tutorials before we began! To paint a wall like this you need: at least two different colours of paint, paint rolers, natural sea sponges, masking tape and newspapers.

Step 1: Pick a wall.

We chose the inside wall of our alcove, 1) because it was ugly. 2) because it was a good size.

Step 2: Prepare the wall.

Line all the edges with masking tape, and place newspapers on the floor

Step 3: Paint the base coat

Allow the base coat to dry (refer to instructions on the paint bucket) And don't be discouraged if you can see streaks or some unevenness- this will all be covered by the sponging!

 Step 4: Start sponging!

First dip the sponges into some water to soften them, then dab into your paint, gently tap onto some scrap board or paper to avoid dripping, then finally take it to the wall. Make sure to twist and turn the sponge and move in random directions. We used two natural sea sponges- because all of them are unique, and create different patterns. We also cut one of them in half, to again add more variety.

Step 5: Admire.

Here's a photo of our wall at night in some dimmer light.

And here it is in daylight- I love how the colours of the wall change depending on the light! As you can see we painted the edges and corners more solid with the sponge. This was achieved by running the sponges along the wall, and then dabbing towards the middle to make a gradient type effect. 

**Note! Albert and I weren't aware that the masking tape should be removed immediately after painting, otherwise when you remove them, they will pull away some of the paint as well. We solved this issue by running a key along the edge  (only sharp tool we had avaiable) but if you decide to embark on a project like this, it's smarter to remove the tape as soon as possible to get nice clean edges.

The story of Ilo and Milo

I’ve posted my Ilo and Milo animations here before, but now I thought I’d give some background information about these two. About a year ago, Albert introduced me to a game called Ilomilo.  Ilo and Milo are two friends that meet every day at a park in a strange world, populated by peculiar characters. In this bizarre world, their path to each other becomes obscured each time, thus Ilo and Milo have to navigate through puzzles to reach one another. In the co-op version of the game, each player chooses to play as either Ilo, or Milo, and then you alternate turns and work together to reunite Ilo and Milo. Albert used to always play as Ilo, or Ilona, and I played as Milo, or Milton. We quickly became addicted to the challenge of the puzzles, as well as the cuteness of the characters! We had seen some plushies and toys that other fans had made on the games blog page, and to no avail we tried to search for some that were being sold.  

Christmas time was approaching, and since Albert and I had only been in a relationship for about a month, this was the first big ‘gift’ opportunity, and I wanted to get him something he would really like. Im a huge fan of handmade presents and cards, so I decided I would try to make him an Ilo- as a side gift/card, since I was sure it would turn out more ‘charming’ (read, shitty) rather than good. I hadn’t ever hand sewn anything so I started with zero knowledge. I used google to find out how to make a simple, but strong stich, and then began to work with some felt-like material that I found at a crafts store. The storekeeper did warn me that it wasn’t appropriate material for a stuffed toy- but I figured it would be good enough for the crafty thing I was making. I sewed the main body of Ilo and realized that perhaps this doesn’t have to be a just a crafty and "charming" present, so I purchased some higher quality material. The whole time I was making her I was stressed out! It was really hard to tell if it would work out or not until the very end, and since I was staying at Albert’s almost everyday, I didn’t have very much time to work on it. I completed Ilo a day before Albert left for England for the Christmas vacation and I was pleasantly surprised at how well she turned out. And most importantly, Albert really liked her too. :) 

It was about three months later that I decided to make Milo. The process of making him was a lot less stressful, and since I already had all the patterns ready, it only took about 3 days to finish him- and this included the time I spent making the second stop motion animation. I have to admit, Milo turned out a little bit wonky! But according to my animation, Milo was made by Ilo (Frankenstein much?) therefore I think his slight kookiness is a happy accident. 

Some technical notes:

Both Ilo and Milo are made of jersey material, Ilo of a slightly thinner one that I reversed (to get the fuzzy soft side), and Milo of a thicker one with a slight ‘furry’ texture to it. Both of their eyes are made from earrings that I found (this was the hardest thing to search for!), and then painted black with some glass paint, and then superglued on.

Well there’s the story of Ilo and Milo! Those two now happily reside on a small table next our couch and have both retired from the animation business- or at least are taking a long hiatus. I have some plans to make some original character’s to make animations with, but as of now I have nothing in the works- just some ideas that are slowly forming.

There you are

Part 2, to my earlier ilomilo stopmotion.

Ilo without Milo

For an online course I created a short stop motion animation that I'd like to share :)

For the animation I used Ilo - a stuffed toy I made Albert for Christmas, based on the game ilomilo.
The original plan had been to make Albert a Milo for his birthday this month, but since I haven't been able to find the right materials that's not going to happen :(

But anyways, here's the animation I made showing how much little ilo misses her milo :)