Stop motion at its finest

I went to see ParaNorman last Friday (on the day it opened, of course), and it was fantastic. It was well written, well animated and well paced. It brought up the subjects of bullying and mob mentality, and addressed them without hitting you over the head with a sermon.

Norman also solved the main problem of the movie by confronting it rather than putting a Band-Aid on it and kicking it on down the road. But more than that, he confronted it by talking to it rather than using violence. Conflict resolution: what a unique idea. I'll have some more, please.

Just a little illustration to tease you

I'm working on a novel geared toward middle-gradish kids (like The Graveyard Book or The Book Thief are considered), and I'll also be illustrating it. I've never written anything of these proportions, and sometimes so many words can be overwhelming to a picture person. A couple of times I felt the need to get away from Word and get back into Photoshop just to keep my sanity and my focus and my love of the story.

I wanted to post one of the illustrations I did for the book, just to tease you a little. If I have my way, the illustration above will cover a two-page spread at the start of the book. The text "Part One: Fliers" will be laid over the image on the right hand page about halfway down, under the bird.

How do people do it?

I'll just say it: I'm tired.

I have a job. I mean, a regular, pack my lunch, get in the car and drive to work kind of job. When the day's over, I'm beat. I didn't used to be that way, but I didn't used to have this many revolutions around the sun under my belt.

I've got ideas. Book ideas. Illustration ideas. Painting ideas. Stuffed animal ideas. Resin figurine ideas. I just don't have the time or the energy to get all these ideas out there.

I'm totally slacking.

I've been spending tons and tons of time writing my novel, and I haven't spent enough time finishing my mailing list, and my postcard mailing is months behind. I have a long list of promo stuff I need to be doing with my Twisted book, but the list is collecting dust in the pile of all the other things I've started lists for.

My office space is a mess. I haven't cleaned in forever because, well, I've been writing a novel which, apparently, consumes a vast majority of one's life.

I've started a list of things I absolutely have to get working on tomorrow. Unfortunately, none of them involve creating anything. My mom used to write to-do lists for herself all the time. She died with a list sitting on her kitchen table.

I have a feeling I'll never get finished either.

Thanks for listening.

Photos while bike riding

Yeah. It probably isn't a good idea to take photos while you're actually moving on the bike, but I couldn't resist.

Great Allegheny Passage from Confluence to Fort Hill. Cleared the cobwebs. Got me focused.

A few days ago I had written about 12 important pages for the end of my latest novel, and they felt like I just wanted to get it done. I thought about them on the trail, about what the problems were, about what questions really needed to be solved better (or solved period) and about what needed more explanation. When I sat down after I got home, I started handwriting ideas out that I didn't want to forget on scrap paper. After the third sheet and I still wasn't finished, I decided to finish up on the computer.

Two pages single-spaced later, I've got problems solved that I didn't even realize I had.

Tomorrow, we write.

Website Listing Service scam

I don't like getting junk snail mail. It's annoying and not very earth friendly. But I got a piece of junk mail the other day that's a little worse than annoying. First, here's the front and back:

It looks like a legitimate bill, doesn't it? Except for that print in the middle of the front page that says "THIS IS NOT A BILL," it would be hard to tell that it wasn't. They've even perforated the bottom of the page to send with your "remittance." This page and a return envelope were the only things in the mailing, which makes it look even more like a bill.

A few things:

1. You people suck. If you want to get business, how about doing a great job at what you do.
2. Do you really think I would patronize a business that's trying to con me into using their business? Those aren't the kind of people I want to deal with.
3. The name of the company is Web Listings Inc. Their email address is info@web-listings.net. I'm not saying you should spam them or anything. Just know who they are when you're the one they contact.
 

Shirley Jones

When I grew up, I remember thinking my mother and Shirley Jones were equals. She (Shirley Jones, not my mother) grew up in a small town (Smithton, Pennsylvania) that was pretty close to where I grew up (although my mother grew up in a town that was even closer), which I thought was terribly exciting and made the two of them practically sisters.



I wasn't quite six years old when The Partridge Family debuted, but I was instantly in love. I wanted to be in a band. My dad told me later that the reason I played drums in school was because on that very first episode a little girl drummer showed up Chris Partridge on the show. I don't remember it happening that way, but I believe him that it did.

Anyway, the point of this was that I ran across this painting I did of Shirley Jones from way back, maybe ten years ago. For those of you who follow this blog and have seen my work, yes, it was in fact painted by me. Acrylic on bristol. Before I escaped to the dark side.

Hand Lettering in Gettysburg

I can't help it. When I see lettering or graphic design that I like, I have to take a photo. I found some hand lettering at a place called The Pub & Restaurant right in the middle of Gettysburg on Lincoln Square. (If you take a look at their website, you'll see these lettering examples aren't carried through the rest of their design. As a matter of fact, the site is a bit annoying, to be honest.)

When I was taking the photo of the lettering in the bathroom, I tried to hurry before the lady came out of the stall there, but I didn't make it. I had to explain that I was a type geek. She said that was fine. That might have been her way of backing away slowly.

You know what? I'm still proud of this drawing.

I submitted this and a few other drawings to a certain industry newsletter (I won't mention names) over a year ago, and I'm getting the impression they aren't interested. I found all those submissions lying around recently and realized I'm a little proud of the work. I think she's cute, and I think she wants to be seen.

So here she is. Her name is Paula, and she's really into books.

Like I said, NO SPEC!

So as I've posted a couple of times before here and here, spec work for designers and artists shouldn't even be something we're discussing now that we have minimum wage and the robber barons have long since disappeared and all. For those people who still aren't "getting" what the problem is, here's a little video I ran across that might explain it better:

The Kirkus review is out!

My book Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1 got reviewed by Kirkus Reviews!

http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nora-thompson/twisted-xobcEFVd/

Some highlights:

"A clever collection of stories and comics by debut author Thompson.

An experienced illustrator and graphic designer, Thompson organizes this flash-fiction book into 28 extremely brief chapters on many subjects and uses both text and spacing to heighten interest. Her artwork tends toward the gory, though the drawings also contain elements of humor. The words themselves are arranged on the page for an atypical and interesting reading experience...Thompson shines at using unexpected or multiple perspectives to breathe new life into conventional tales, with story endings that are surprising and skillfully foreshadowed. This balance between the unpredictable and the expected rewards rereading. Thompson uses amusing chapter titles like “Cleaver Over-Achiever” and “Lobotomy Pie,” and her phrasing is often similarly adroit...

An assortment of repulsive yet funny chapters makes for a quick and enjoyable read."

Although I'm not sure about reporting that my artwork "tends toward the gory," I'll take it. Alfred Hitchcock banked his career on people seeing things that he never had to show, so I think I'm in good company.

In response to VistaPrint (and now 99designs)

Where do I start?

I guess I could start by saying this blog post has been sitting around as a draft since Feb. 6, 2012. I started it, took a few deep breaths and slowly lost the fight in my belly that got me started on it in the first place.

So lets begin there.

I'm sure most everyone has seen the commercials for VistaPrint (I refuse to link to the company here). Who wouldn't want to bypass the time and effort—and let's not forget money—it takes to hire one of those elitist graphic designers when you can so easily create your own designs right from the comfort of your own computer (and in your jammies).

For cheap. Let's not forget that part.

You can make your designs look the way you want. You can pick the colors and fonts and logos yourself. And hopefully you're pretty good at proofreading, because who wants to pay for 1,000 brochures with embarrassing typos? Because, really, what difference does it make which colors you pick, as long as you like them, right? And as long as the font looks cool, your business will look cool. Anybody can throw a logo together. Geesh. All it takes is one of those fonts that you like, a color that says, "POW" and one of those free stock pieces of clip art. You know, the same clip art all those other people who are using the service can choose from.

You'll be good to go in no time.

I had a client who I've worked with for years ask me to design a sign for their business, which I have done numerous times in the past and have always received an enthusiastic "thank you" for how great I made their business look. I waited for their email reply with size specs, but was punched in the gut when the email instead said, "I decided to use VistaPrint."

They decided to use VistaPrint.

They were able to create the design themselves online. Not that they had any experience in how that would work. You pay with peanuts, you get monkeys.

Let's knock some things out of the way up front:

• I went to school, have years of hands-on experience and have taught graphic design at the university level
• Things you learn in graphic design classes:
• Fonts are a whole lot more than fancy lettering; they themselves carry meaning above and beyond the words they spell out
• Colors are a whole lot more than attention grabbers or personal preferences; they themselves carry meaning above and beyond the spaces they're filling
• Layouts are a whole lot more than making everything fit in a space or taking up every square inch of the space; they direct the reader's eye and carry meaning above and beyond the content they are arranging
• Yes, we love what we do, that's why we chose this profession. Isn't that why you chose yours? Would you expect to show up at work and not get paid for what you do just because you love what you do?
• Your graphic designer knows how to brand your business because she understands your business as well as you do. If you own a business and don't understand the importance of branding, maybe start with a Google search
• Graphic designers can integrate your brand across all your materials: logos, business cards, marketing materials and websites, to name just a few
• Those logos, business cards, etc. from above? They all require Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Acrobat, minimum. The Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Premium costs $1,899 if you aren't upgrading, $749 if you're upgrading from CS5, which I would be if I could afford it. And new upgrades are released every year and a half or so. You do the math
• I was just starting out in graphic design when I hooked up with the client that started this rant and, because I didn't want to cause their business any undue financial stress, only charged them $15/hour. Yes. $15. (P.S. I'm also still paying off my student loans. Even now.) And yes, that made me one of those people who devalued the work of a designer. When I upped my fee, I priced myself right out of new clients. Rock. Hard place.

Let's take a step off to the side here for a second...

When someone asks to get work done for free and they get it, they'll probably expect that work to get done for free again in the future, right? And if you won't do it for free, surely someone else would love the opportunity. And if enough designers (or artists in general) do the work for free, then why would anybody want to actually pay for that work? And what if someone actually decided, yes, they would pay you for your work with, say, exposure, then you could get paid for some other job at a later date? So if you actually did get that paying job after working on that first job for free, in the end you've done two jobs for the price of one. That would be worth the money you spent on all those programs and schooling, wouldn't it?

Which brings me to today.

I saw a commercial on TV for 99designs.com (again, I'm not linking). They're a crowdsourcing site where, if you want a design done, you post a contest where you get to pick a winning design from all the free work that gets entered into your contest. Sure, that winning entry gets paid, but those other entries? Yeah, those guys just spent hours (maybe days) of their time and will get no money for it. None. But they'll have a great design for their portfolio.

Let's put this in perspective. I want a deck built on my house. I decided to have a contest where contractors can each build me a deck to look at. Not just an idea of a deck, they have to build the actual deck. All those decks will be gathered in one place, and then I get to pick which one I'd like to use and pay for. Those other decks, and all the overhead that went into building them? Yeah. Those contractors can use those in their portfolios. Oh, and by the way, I'll be paying for the deck by inviting my friends over and telling them who it was that built me the deck. I don't have many parties, and I don't have many friends, but what a great opportunity for exposure you'll be getting, huh.

Is any of this making sense?

Has anybody read this far?

Is there anything that can possibly be done?

Probably not. Maybe. I don't know, it might be too late.

If you're a client, pay for the work from a real designer. My husband knows enough about plumbing that he knows somebody else should be doing ours.

If you're a designer (or artist), don't work on spec or enter contests. Period. That not only devalues your work but all the work of the designers that have come before you and all the future designers who will be following your ass out of school. Do you really want them getting the job instead of you because they'll do it for free?

If you want to read more (after this, I'm not sure why anybody would), try:
http://www.no-spec.com/faq/
http://www.specwatch.info/why.html
http://twitter.com/specwatch

Also, you may have already seen my post on yet another problem with working on spec (could there really be more?) in a post from February which I'll link to here.

I'm going to go ahead and post this one before I take too many deep breaths.

My Twisted book just won two awards!

I just found out yesterday that my book Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1 has taken first place in the category of "Fiction: Collection of Short Stories" in the 2012 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards! The interior design layout also won a second place award.

They don't have the winners listed yet on their site, so I can't post a link, but once they're listed, I'll post.

Mockingjay, I so wanted to like you

No, actually I wanted to love you. But it was me. I just couldn't do it.

When Hunger Games first came out, I was reluctant to hand over my money for a book that I thought was about kids killing each other in a futuristic reality TV show. People kept telling me, "No. It's not like that." Eventually I caved and bought the paperback at a Scholastic book fair for something like 50% off.

I put off reading it until after I had already read the other book I bought at the book fair (a hardcover copy of Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos). Then, I read the first chapter and put it down. I wasn't too interested. Then, I read the first chapter again because it had been too long and I didn't really remember what had happened. But this time, I made myself keep reading.

Somewhere around the middle of the book, I realized for myself that, "No. It's not like that." Yes, there was that kids killing each other in a futuristic reality TV show thing, but it was more than that. And I was getting it, and I was starting to look forward to reading the next one.

By the time I finally got to Catching Fire, the second book in the series, the Hunger Games movie had been released, and the second book wasn't available from my local library. I put my name on the waiting list, but found it hard to wait. When Barnes & Noble sent me a coupon for a bunch off, I put it toward my very own copy of the hardcover boxed set of the series.

So yes, I'm now the owner of both a paperback and hardcover copy of Hunger Games, but I was totally fine with that. I figured I'd donate the paperback copy to some worthy something or other someday.

Finished Catching Fire and was still O.K. with the series. I didn't think it was as good as the first book, but it was certainly a page-turner, which isn't bad.

But then a few days ago happened.

I finally finished Mockingjay and was terribly disappointed. I guess in my idealistic world I was hoping the problem that needed to be solved in the book would happen in a genius kind of way. In a way that I would have never thought of or that showed just how genius the concept of the book actually was. I'm not sure why I expected that.

What I got instead was a bloodbath. I suppose that's fine with some people, and maybe even embraced by others, but I'm having a bit of a problem with it. To add to my frustration, when I finished the book I turned on the TV. I flipped to a kid's channel that was showing Kung Fu Panda which I'd seen before, but it had been a while. For the 15 minutes or so that I watched, I witnessed a fight scene that just went on and on. The part that bothered me was the fun, comical score that was playing in the background while these characters beat the shit out of each other.

Yes, I understand it was Kung Fu Panda and what did I expect? When I saw it the first time around, apparently the fighting didn't leave an impression on me because I didn't remember seeing any of it before. But this time I had just read a book that, from pretty much cover to cover, found new and inventive ways to kill tons of other human beings.

This time I saw the scene with new eyes and I couldn't help but wonder how we got to this place. Is violence the only way we know how to solve problems now? I'm afraid it is, at least in our entertainment. Video games, movies and books aimed at the part of the population who will some day lead a country that I will still be living in. That's where the creative thinking of the future will plant its roots.

And I don't think there's anything any of us can do to stop it.

Leonard the Clown

I just ran across a couple drafts for blog posts this morning, and realized they've been sitting around for over a year waiting to be posted. They each included a sketch of a clown without any other explanation. The first sketch hasn't gone anywhere. I wasn't very satisfied with it for some reason. I had planned on making a painting out of it, but it never materialized.

Once I wasn't satisfied with the first sketch, I tried another clown, and this one I ended up completing as a full-blown drawing, and he's hanging in an exhibit as we speak.

Here's the finished drawing.

And here's the exhibit.

Sketchbook Project 2012—End papers #sketchbookproject

Ooh. I do have one more page to show you from my Sketchbook Project sketchbook, and here it is. It's what you might consider the end papers.

Also, they've digitized my book, and you can flip through the whole thing on the Art House Co-op site: http://www.arthousecoop.com/library/6123. Or, if you're in the Brooklyn area, you can see it for real and in person at the Brooklyn Art Library at 103A N. 3rd St., Brooklyn, NY 11211 with the call number 153.3-3.
O.K. Now I'm all finished.

Sketchbook Project 2012—Scarecrow in color #sketchbookproject

And here's the last drawing my Sketchbook Project sketchbook.

The quote is the title of the song by The Hives (who happen to have a really cool website, by the way). I loved the song when I heard it on the Cartoon Network (see the embedded video), but it was really hard to find a copy at first since it was a bonus track only on the UK version of their Black and White album. Eventually iTunes caught on that I was looking for it, and finally made it available for me. Thanks, iTunes.

Five impossible things before breakfast

The last thing I saw before I went to bed Saturday night was the very end of Alice in Wonderland. I found it on ABC Family just as the White Queen and Hatter were standing outside the queen's castle waiting and hoping Alice would show up to battle the Jabberwocky.

That last paragraph doesn't really matter much except that, when Alice first gets a look at the Jabberwocky, she tells Hatter that sometimes she "believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast." So I'm sitting here before breakfast thinking of the things that, until yesterday, I would have thought were impossible, and I'd like to share five of them (I'm lazy, it's early, and I'm pushing it to find five).

1. I am (apparently) a writer

Growing up a reluctant reader makes this one all the more impossible. I guess now I've become what might be considered a "reluctant writer."

2. I would write a book

I did write the Twisted book so I would have something to illustrate, but in the end there were words involved and I did write them. That, and they were bound in a book.

3. I would be reviewed in Publishers Weekly

I'd like to think that only happens to real writers.

4. Writers would accept me as one of their own

I spent the weekend at a writer's retreat trying to convince everyone there that I was actually just an illustrator, not a writer, and that I didn't really like to write. They convinced me otherwise.

5. Editors wouldn't laugh and point when I read them my manuscript

At that writer's retreat over the weekend? Yeah. I got to read to two different editors from Scholastic; Grace Kendall and Mallory Kass. I personally witnessed them laughing over the weekend, and they both seemed to have complete control over their index fingers, and neither of those things were directed at me as far as I could tell.

And I believed all of these impossible things before breakfast.

But you know the thing I'm thinking about as I'm writing this? Not only am I going to have to accept all of the above, but I'm also going to have to update my website.

Oh, and 6. Slay the Jabberwocky.

Nickelodeon cartoons on acid (!)

How exciting!

Publishers Weekly, the book industry's leading news magazine since 1872, has taken time out of their busy schedule to review my book, Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1! Just getting a review from them is outstanding, but it gets better: They actually liked it!

Here's a little bit of what they had to say:

"In stories that last only a few pages and comics that resemble Nickelodeon cartoons on acid, Thompson riffs on zombie, werewolf, and other ghoulish genres, while also finding the horrific in unexpected places...Just the thing for readers who aren't scared of the dark--or for those who are and like it."

Crazy, huh?

Here's a link to the complete review so you can see for yourself: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9836699-0-6.

You can grab your own copy at Amazon by following the link above. It's available in hardcover, paperback and completely digitized for your Kindle. And then maybe you can write a little review of your own?

Sketchbook Project 2012—Scarecrow sketch #sketchbookproject

Here's the final sketch from my Sketchbook Project sketchbook. I think I'd like to paint him biggie-size some day. Maybe add a crow somewhere and a corn field all around him. And a yellow brick road around front. Scarecrows can't exist without yellow brick roads, can they?

Moving from GoDaddy

Last December I had had about enough.

When I built my first Web site, it was 2001 and getting up and running on the Internet wasn't the easiest thing to do. I chose GoDaddy to host because, at the time, they were the easiest thing I could find. For some reason I thought their name and logo meant they would be pretty cool to work with. I'm such a sucker.

Since the beginning, I've done my best to make sense of their site. It's hard to figure out what you're doing on it. It's just way too hard to navigate. Not only that, at every turn they try to get you to buy more of their products. When you buy a new domain name, when you re-up your hosting, or just when you bring up the site, everywhere you turn they're pushing more product. Once, when I called their support number, what I really got was a sales person who spent most of our time on the phone getting me to renew my hosting plan.

Still, I learned to ignore it all and stayed with the company.

For most of the past 10 years, I have endured GoDaddy's unfemale-friendly commercials during every Super Bowl. I put up with the same attitude on their site where they tease you to "see the rest" of what they couldn't show on T.V. And I did it knowing my money was paying for it, and I stuck with them anyway.

Last spring I put up with GoDaddy's CEO, Bob Parsons, hunting elephants and then posting the graphic videos of it.

And still I stayed.

Until last December. That's when I heard about GoDaddy's support of SOPA. That's when I decided it was time to jump ship. Turns out a lot of people felt the same way.

Up until last December I was a little frightened of moving away. I had been there for 10 years, my sites worked, my email worked and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to figure out another company's technology.

I did a little research, and I found a local company based right in Pittsburgh that was started just for me. Their name is pair Networks, and they had me at "we have an environmental policy." It took a little trial and error, but all my sites were up and running smoothly within a couple of days, all my emails are in working order, and I haven't noticed any down time since I started hosting with them.

Now I know my money is going somewhere I can be proud to say I support. I don't have to pay for scantily clad women during my Super Bowls anymore.