#desert bus for hope

These are going to be my contribution to charity auction at this year’s Desert Bus for Hope coming up in November, which raises money to buy toys for children’s hospitals. These are needle felted versions of the plastic toys that three D&D monsters are based on. However, you’ll notice I’m missing the plastic version of the Owlbear, which looks like this: 

If anyone has one of these toys they’d be willing to part with, please message me! I’d love to be able to send it to the auction as a completed set.

[image description: 7 photos of a combination letterpress and hand-drawn print of Zagreus from the game Hades, and the formes of lead type used to print it. it’s a 5.375x10 inch piece, black pen drawing illustrating Zagreus sitting in a seat full of laurel leaves, one foot resting on a decorative skull and the other dipping in the blood pool. The frame above his head has his name between floral wreaths, and wraps around a water jar pouring blood into the pool as the left-hand frame of the illustration. The letterpress elements are his name, the red of the pool, and a red & gold of his armbands and outer garment, rendered in geometric and floral patterns. individual photo IDs under the cut.]

part of a set of Hades prints i donated to Desert Bus 2021, which are scheduled for giveaway in the noon-6 pm slot Thursday the 18th!

i tell you what i looked at the environmental details around the blood pool exactly once and said okay, this is the floral pattern we’re using, and that’s the water jug frame we’re putting around his name, and everything else just has to fit somewhere in between those two things. and then at some point i also said sure, that seems like a fine amount of laurel to commit to drawing. GOD laurel is a boring plant to draw a bunch of times. but ok ok ok the texture was Worth It.

really maxed out the coverage i have of these flowers!! it does not help that i have an uneven amount of left- and right-facing pieces, so keeping the pattern sufficiently random when i had to use every piece and couldn’t be picky about how many right-facing pieces there are was, fussy. still! i love putting together a mix n match bunch of 6 pt. florals to augment this set, and i wanted to hold up Zag’s relatively small cloth object with something extra, another color.

name set in Delphin II.

more wip:Thanatos:Megaera

1: a photo of the complete print, where Zagreus lounges in a seat full of laurel leaves. he’s sitting above the blood pool where he revives after each run, with one foot resting on a skull and the other dipping into the pool. His foot, always on fire, heats the blood until it steams around his ankle. above his head there’s a frame around his name, bordered in a wave pattern. At one end the wave border transitions into the decoration around a water jug, tipped over and spilling more blood down the left side into the pool. The ripples of the pool and the steam are printed letterpress with radomized decorative borders, mostly lines, some wavy, some extra thick, a few helix-patterned. Zagreus’ red armbands and outer garment are printed in a pattern of red, twisting flowers, with a scattering of more small flowers picked out in gold.

2-4: closeups of the finished print, focusing on things like the jug & border arrangement, the shape of the steam around his ankle, and the red & gold pattern of his clothing.

5-7: photos of the handset formes used to print all the color elements of the print. There are separate formes each for his name, the red pass of flowers, and the scattered gold flowers. these formes need to be lifted up, carried, and held vertically in the bed of the clamshell press, so all negative space around the individual letters and decorative pieces are filled with shorter pieces, too low to ink or print. then pressure is applied by wedges to two sides of the forme, inside a rectangular cast iron frame, so that the whole frame and all the assembled pieces inside it can be lifted up. for the red and gold floral formes, the positions of each flower had to match exactly, so that the red flowers left room for the gold, and the gold dropped into place in the gaps between red flowers.

[image description: 6 photos of a combination letterpress and hand-drawn print of Megaera from the game Hades, and the formes of lead type used to print it. it’s a 5.375x10 inch piece, black pen drawing illustrating Megaera wielding her whip inside a loose & lightweight frame of sharp black rods, climbing roses, and a podium-like base featuring small elements from her chamber in Tartarus. The letterpress elements are her name, bordered with a Greek key pattern, and the blue color of her chiton, pants, and wrapped forearms, rendered in a relief-printed repeating geometric pattern. individual photo IDs under the cut.]

part of a set of Hades prints i donated to Desert Bus 2021, which are scheduled for giveaway in the noon-6 pm slot Thursday the 18th!

I can’t quite put my finger yet on when i feel it’s beneficial for the printed pattern to be very regular and flat, vs. this kind, which is a bit more randomized and almost pretends to be morphed by 3D folds. The printing on it was pretty straightforward, but i did do this one in multiple passes as well, tilting different parts of her outfit at different angles so her pants and tunic patterns didn’t align across the barrier of her skirt trim. I also needed to be pretty careful to get printed color coverage in a whole bunch of corners, otherwise the tunic especially is missing some important information to parse it.

picking elements from her boss fight chamber to put in the frame was super fun :) there’s so much Good Geometry in Hades’ environment design!! sadly i don’t have nearly enough of the Greek keys to cover the clothing area, so i put it in her titling block and made her a whole podium about it. Name set in Invitation.

more wip:Thanatos:Zagreus

1: a photo of the complete print, where Megaera stands with her whip looping around her, wing out and preparing to grasp the hilt tighter. the bottom of the frame implies a pedestal, decorated with hooded heads and and geometric shapes like the statues and floor tiles of Megaera’s boss fight chamber. The iron rods implying the sides of the border end in twisting helixes, also like the tiles on her floor, and are covered in thorny rose vines. Hanging from the roses are her Skull Earring keepsake and Companion Battie.

2: a closeup of the finished print, showing details like the line texture of her hair and whip, and large areas where the pattern was relief-printed in blue.

3: a photo of the handset forme used to print the blue pattern on her clothes. It’s a slightly random arrangement of geometric pieces intended to be a decorative border, looping over and under itself sort of like a blocky Celtic knot pattern. The pieces are in this case set to turn corners and double back on themselves to cover more of the area.

4: a photo of a proof of the printed pattern, and the mylar mask positioned on top of it that will allow the pattern to print only in the desired, irregular area of the shape of Meg’s chiton. the decorative pieces cover a larger, rectangular area, and the print is protected from printing in the negative space by a hand-cut mask made from mylar. The print will be put underneath the mylar mask, and printed only through the hole in the mylar.

5: a closeup of the finished print, focusing on the lower half, her wide stance, the pedestal, and the impression where Megaera’s name is printed with the Greek key border.

6: a photo of the handset formes used to print Meg’s name. these formes need to be lifted up, carried, and held vertically in the bed of the clamshell press, so all negative space around the individual letters and decorative pieces are filled with shorter pieces, too low to ink or print. then pressure is applied by wedges to two sides of the forme, inside a rectangular cast iron frame, so that the whole frame and all the assembled pieces inside it can be lifted up.

[image description: 9 photos of a combination letterpress and hand-drawn print of Thanatos from the game Hades, process photos, and the formes of lead type used to print it. it’s a 5.375x10 inch piece, black pen drawing illustrating Thanatos inside a loose & lightweight frame of broken stone railings, burning candles, and bleeding heart flowers. The letterpress elements are his name, and the color of his cloak, rendered in a relief-printed repeating geometric pattern in greyish purple. The pattern doesn’t contour to folds of the fabric, but it is half the depth of color where, in context of the illustration, it shows the back side of the fabric, like the inside of his hood. individual photo IDs under the cut.]

HELLO,Desert Bus 2021 starts streaming tomorrow (Nov. 12th), playing the worst game of all time to raise money for Child’s Play! They do a lot of other fun stuff on stream as well since, you know, the worst game of all time, including auctions and giveaways, and i donated a set of three Hades prints that are scheduled for giveaway in the noon-6 pm slot Thursday the 18th!

honestly i debated mmmm quite a bit, which 3 characters to do, there’s some tempting element to every single design in the game—but my boy. my guy Thanatos. this enormous, swoopy swathe of fabric, the cavernous hood!! had to do it.

of course then i sketched it and one solid print of the pattern was going to be too much, too hard to read as a 3d object. i had to distinguish parts of the cloak from each other somehow, didn’t want to change the angle of the pattern for a couple reasons, didn’t think i could get the registration i needed between two different masks, SO. treated it like pressure printing! made one single big mask. cut my ink in half with transparent. printed the whole area of fabric once (3 passes, i don’t have all that much of the decoratives i wanted to use :[ ) in pale purple. cut away the tympan backer in all the areas that needed to stay pale, as the back side of the fabric. went back and hit the whole print a second time, with the formes and mylar in the same positions, but there’s not enough pressure anymore to imprint those lighter areas. tadaaaaaa

gosh bleeding hearts are fun to draw. they’re such weird little alien creatures. Name set in Torino.

more wip:Megaera:Zagreus

1: a photo of the complete print, where Thanatos hovers above his name, framed by crumbling stone railings. the bottom left and top right corners are covered in clusters of bleeding heart flowers, and in nestled in the flower clusters are his Pierced Butterfly keepsake and Companion Mort. the right side of the frame is implied by tall candles and their smoke wisps.

2-5: closeups of the finished print, showing details like the smoke wisps, the impression of the relief printing on his name, and places where the letterpress-printed pattern changes from deep purple to pale purple, where fabric in the illustration folds over to show its reverse side.

6 & 7: process photos of the masking process used to print the letterpress material in the irregular area of illustrated fabric. the decorative pieces cover a larger, rectangular area, and the print is protected from printing in the negative space by a hand-cut mask from mylar. to bring the positive space up to printing pressure, a matching set of tympan paper packing is cut to match the mylar mask, and pasted into the press so that the print is sandwiched between paper packing and mylar mask, and printed through the hole in the mylar. the second photo shows the mask in place, and the backer behind reduced to only the pieces that were double-hit for extra color depth.

8 & 9: photos of the handset formes used to print the pattern and Thanatos’ name. these formes need to be lifted up, carried, and held vertically in the bed of the clamshell press, so all negative space around the individual letters and decorative pieces are filled with shorter pieces, too low to ink or print. then pressure is applied by wedges to two sides of the forme, inside a rectangular cast iron frame, so that the whole frame and all the assembled pieces inside it can be lifted up.