Extra Life Campaign

Hi everyone!

I decided to get together with some of my friends and make a fundraising team for this year’s Extra Life. If you’ve never heard of Extra Life, you can read all about it here.

It’s an amazing fund raising campaign benefiting the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals that culminates on November 5th with a 24 hour game-a-thon! Basically you raise money to help sick kids in need and play all the games your little heart can stand! Any kind of games. Video games. Board games. Card games. Sports games, I suppose? I’ll be sticking mostly with board games. But don’t let that stop you from sportsing it up!

I decided to reach out to my followers on Instagram (@magicJMP), all 480 of you (at the time of this writing) and see if you would help my team and I reach our goal of $600! If each of you gives me $1 then we’ll almost be there!

But I’m going to make things a little more interesting:

• Anyone who reposts this, tags me, and uses the hashtag #ExtraLifeAOGG will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a print from a limited edition 2″x3″ linoleum carving I will be doing. I haven’t decided what the image will be yet, but I’m sure it will be board game related.
• Anyone who donates at least $10 will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a print from a limited edition 5″x7″ linoleum carving I will be doing. Again, it will more than likely be something board game related.
• Anyone who donates  at least $50 will just straight-up get one of the 5″x7″ prints in the mail without having to have their name drawn from a hat.
• And if someone wants to donate $100, I will carve a 5″x7″ linoleum block with whatever art they want, print 10 copies for them, and give them the linoleum block when I’m finished.

HERE is the link to my Extra Life donation page.

So repost this, tag @magicJMP, use the hashtag #ExtraLifeAOGG, and donate if you can! And make sure to include your Instagram handle in the comments section if you donate. That way I’ll know who’s who.

This is going to be a lot of fun and we’re going to do great things for a lot of kids!

Just Another Thesis Update

Last night I finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and I also finished sewing all my thesis text blocks as well. But who’s counting?

I am. It took me around twenty hours spread out over two days to finish sewing all these puppies together. And by “puppies” I mean “books”, not actual “puppies.” (Pictured Below)

 

 

Also, here’s what the outside of my thesis notebook looks like:

 

And here’s a picture of the awesome pens I’ve been using on all my charts and diagrams:

U.S. Space & Rocket Center Bachelor Party – COULD NOT BE MORE SAFE FOR WORK IF I TRIED. (Trust me.)

What a crazy, science-filled two days of bachelor party “action” that was. I thought I’d share some images of my trip to the USSRC that began my “research” for my thesis. Anyone reading this in the Book Arts program, you’ve probably seen these pictures in one of my many presentations, and you’ll probably see them again at my thesis presentation. Just letting you know.

Leaning up against an F-1 engine. The same type that took man to the moon. The engine makes us look slightly cooler.

In the rocket park.

More rocket park.

The majestic Saturn V.

The majestic Saturn V at NIGHT!

And again.

Us waving to the crowds as we board the Space Shot. Four seconds after this photo was taken I would begin screaming my lungs out like a dying rabbit.

Us actually on the Space Shot.
“There are no atheists on the Space Shot” I quipped, seconds before we were dropped three stories.

Self-explanatory.

Me with John Young’s space suit.

 

The Apollo 16 Command Module.

Me inside the Command Module. (Not Really).

A picture of me having my picture taken with some kind of proposed rover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thesis Exhibition Planning (i.e. More Charts!!!)

I believe I mentioned that my thesis exhibition will be held in University of Alabama’s observatory, right? Well just in case I didn’t, now you know for sure just exactly how “cool” I am. Anyway, I went to meet with the observatory director the other day so I could take some measurements and get an idea of how I’m going to hang and light my work. I think I’ve got it all figured out. And how else would you expect me to do this other than by using a lot of colorful charts and graphs? You know me. Come on.

This is how I think I’m going to hang my work. With a lot of clamps and fishing line.

Below are diagrams I drew of the observatory. The first one is in pencil and the second one is in colored pens. Just LOOK at the difference. The first one: YAWN! The second one: WOW!

 

 

 

And here’s a picture of the observatory. The reception (read: food) is going to be on the roof. Unless it rains. Then it will be in the control room below the observatory.

observe THIS!

 

So anyway, I’m trying to get Neil deGrasse Tyson to come to my show opening since it has to do with space and he seems to be into that. So if anyone knows him, just drop him a line. He can always crash on my couch.

 

 

ALSO, I finally finished my first LEGIT mockup complete with slipcase and adhered mission patch. Here’s a picture of it. Pez John Adams makes the whole thing look VERY presidential.

highlights from my thesis notebook

This is what happens when I don’t put a cap on my sticker budget.

 

Overlycomplicated Folding Jig

Why don’t you just fold the papers? Why do you need a folding jig at all? Since when did folding paper become soooo complicated that you need a “jig” to do it?

These are all fair questions.

Well, what happened was that I didn’t exactly center my text or images on the paper while I was printing.  As a result, both sides of each page have a slightly different center-line, which I’ve labeled “B” and “F” for “Back” and “Front”.

It’s made out of .059 binder’s board. There are two lines in the center marked “F” and “B”. These are the center-lines for the two types of pages. The page is placed on the jig and butted up against a second layer of binder’s board running along the bottom and right edge. The two lines on the right side are also marked “F” and “B” and indicate where each page should be folded to.

Here are the first signatures I folded using this complicated jig. I quickly decided to simply use the jig for marking the top and bottom, or head and tail, of each page and  just folding to those lines since the whole thing is going to be trimmed anyway. Oh well. The jig will still look good in the display case at my exhibition, which is in 38 days.

Less making basically useless jigs. More book binding.

But wait! One more thing before you go. Just so you don’t think all my jig ideas are crap, I want to show you one that I made that was actually extremely useful.

This is my Mylar alignment jig, and, as far as I’m concerned, the BEST use of Mylar ever invented.

I would use it by placing it on top of prints to make sure everything lined up. As you can see, all the text pages had at least two colors, the main black text and the red side text. It was very important that these be consistently placed. Also, a couple of the pages didn’t have any text at all , only images, but still needed to line up with the rest of the text in the book. This helped me to judge where to place those images.

FINAL THESIS PRINTING DAY!!!!!!!!!! (whatevs)

Saturday was my final day of thesis printing. (Whatevs.) ((No bigs.))

Don’t worry. I kept track of ALL KINDS of “interesting” statistics, such as: number of press cranks, average precipitation, miles driven, $ spent on ga$oline, temperature on my most efficient day, and MANY MORE! I won’t put those statistics on here until after my public presentation on April 8th. I want everyone to be “surprised”.

My girlfriend got to fly down here from Texas and hang out with me during my final eight print runs. I was so happy to have her there and she even cleaned the press for me a few times because she is so amazing. She also read my thesis text, which is kind of a big deal since it’s partially about her. She was going to wait to read it until I was completely finished printing and binding, but she decided she couldn’t wait anymore.

Here’s me casually posing before printing the very last page of the last print run.

And here’s me celebrating finishing the printing of my thesis with a Cadbury Cream Egg. Delicious.

 

Well, you know it’s true. Even Pez John Adams thinks so. Roll Tide.

Alan Shepard with the fourth and final color layer.

 

Al Shepard – 3 layers

Al Shepard with 3 color layers. One more to go.

Saturn V – One More Layer to Go!

 

I re-watched From the Earth to the Moon this weekend. Is there anything Tom Hanks can’t do? What a class act.

Back in the Saddle Again – The First Color Layers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Alan Shepard color layer.
*Note* I know, I know. He looks like our President.

 

First color layer of the Mercury 7

Old Glory sans stars

These are my color swatches. Picked em up at the Home Depot