DREWspective

http://www.betweenlines.co.uk

One of my real friends from uni had the idea of starting an e-zine. Wanting to be part of something grassroots, authentic and underground, I offered my support and skills; the above link is the result.

Let me tell you guys: the whole process—idea to implementation—took almost a year. Along with my other projects, like The Ignored Board, my own portfolio site and the long-awaited return of BadSoft Inc., it was, quite frankly, a nightmare to design and build.

Note that I’d said in the introduction that my friend had the idea for an e-zine. Initially I was aware that it was a music e-zine, but I had always been confused about the direction of the proposed site.

• What kind of music would it focus on?
• Was it going to be a hobby or commercial site?
• What kind of content would the site have?
• Who would be writing on it?
• What kind of audience?
• What kind of "feel" would the site have?
• What would the site be called?

Nobody knew the answers to these questions, until the bullshit was finally cut after months of talking. I’d decided enough was enough, and started to build a potential site. That’s when the answers came flooding in. (Some of you web developers, and probably even people outside new media, probably have an idea of what happened next.)

After a few months of designing then redesigning the site, with no blueprint or concrete idea of what direction the site would take (and for a while, not even a name for the site), I finally came up with what you see here:

Luckily, this design went down well with other people interested in the site.

If I’m honest, I’m not too keen on the name Between The Lines; a quick search on Google, or your favourite search engine, reveals a number of different sites with the same name, and very similar domain names, which would make it near impossible to gain a good search engine ranking. We were very lucky to find betweenlines.co.uk, which was probably the only combination left for sale.
I have a dislike for cheesy web site names: you know those ones where they pick two words out of the dictionary at random, stick them together and you have a name like moonfruit, facebook, gymgit, lemonsquid etc. Instead, I would have gone for a long, one-word site name for a music e-zine, which would be more memorable and hard-hitting.

There’s yet more work to do on the site: I eventually found out that the site will focus on art as well, as evident by the links for art and a gallery, as well as a music player and reviews section. Fortunately the site runs on WordPress, which is highly customisable and will hopefully be up to the challenge.

This project could have been less painful if it began with a clear direction.  Even when working on my own projects, I fall into the trap of not having a direction to move in.

But how many people, groups and companies embark on directionless projects every day?

How many project "leaders", managers and bosses order people around, when they have no idea what’s going on themselves?

Some very exciting news about the project has surfaced in the last couple of days. Unfortunately none of it involves receiving any money as yet.

First of all, the bad news: because of copyright issues on my part, I will not be posting any more photos of the work in progress until after they’re complete. (I know nobody who reads DREWspective has ever stolen an idea from anyone, ever.)

Now the good news, and there’s plenty of it. The first bit of good news goes as follows…

Remember that decal paper I bought a while back? Well, I’ve had the idea of using it to transfer designs for the chibiMon’s faces, instead of risking drawing them in pencil, painting over the outlines and getting it wrong.

I’ve done a trial run with one model and it’s worked. The only drawback is that the decal didn’t stick down as well as I’d liked, so you can still see pockets of air. It might have something to do with the head being made out of low density (LD) polystyrene.

The second bit of good news is that I may have figured out how to make the legs.

Last week I bought some 12mm balsa wood dowel, and have begun cutting it into 3cm lengths. Fortunately balsa wood can be cut using an ordinary craft knife, so there was arguably no real need to buy that rotary tool.

(However, a trip to Hobbycraft yesterday revealed that the exact same kit was selling for £120 - four times the price I bought it for! It turns out that, for most items, Hobbycraft is actually more expensive than smaller art shops.)

Now it’s just the feet I’m concerned about; though I plan to cut some tiny polystyrene egg shapes in half, they may not be big enough to accommodate the dowel. If I had access to a lathe, things might be simpler.

The third bit of good news is to do with the arms. Yesterday I was at Hobbycraft, yet again, to get some art straws (necessary for sticking material onto). Having hovered around the polystyrene shapes section yet again, I came across packs of compressed cotton balls. These were perfect for making the hands: not only were they not perfect spheres, soft and flexible, and the right size, but they had holes in them already. To boot, they probably don’t need a coat of primer either.
Unfortunately I also have more polystyrene balls in the post, as I had gotten far too impatient with making the arms. Not a problem, because I could always sell them.

The fourth bit is quite a groundbreaking discovery: it turns out that funky foam can be moulded using an embossing heat tool. After a trial run last night while dressing one of the chibiMon, it appears to work; I was able to stretch the foam to size, though it took some work to get it in place.
This means that it might be possible to make the weird and interesting hairdos without using copious amounts of Fimo or some other material. We shall see.

So the shapes have arrived, and we’ve hit a snag as we’ve found out the shapes that were ordered were too small for the existing head pieces.

It also turns out that most of the ordered pieces, which were bought from a shop in the US, could have been ordered over here in the UK! However, these shops had kept themselves very well hidden.
For future reference, a search for pin craft in your favourite search engine should take you to the right place to buy polystyrene shapes. In most cases, you’ll be able to get the parts you’re after.

Where are we up to now? I’ll show you:

I initially made a start on the first three models, painting the head separately from the bodies.

Everything went well, until I had trouble getting the right flesh tone for the white characters. I have a formula for creating a good flesh tone, but unfortunately I didn’t have the right colour paints. In the meantime, I stuck the heads to the bodies.

A trip yesterday to both the London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden, and Cass Art in Leicester Square, turned up six more tubes of acrylic paint and some white gesso primer. As the head shapes were low density (LD) polystyrene, I applied a couple of coats of primer to them, as well as the top part of the body.

You might or might not be able to see it, but there are five different skin colours in the photo: brown, white, olive, pale white and a kind of orange tan white.

Next question is: what is the next step?

I might have solved the problem of how to make the legs: along with the paints, I bought some 12mm balsa wood dowel, which might or might not work as is. I decided on balsa wood as nowhere seems to sell ordinary polystyrene rods, and a request to a company that makes custom polystyrene shapes turned out to be fruitless.

I still have next to no clue as to how to make the arms. Right now I’m toying with the idea of using art straws as a base, and it’s a matter of getting hold of some. Due to my job, I can’t get to any art and crafts store during the week whatsoever.

Chadwarden combined with Iron Mike Tyson.

Following a top story in newspapers last week, about a girl who had supposedly slept with 50 different men before she turned 18.

I found out eventually that the girl had actually waited until she was 16, which is the UK’s age of consent. (An impossible feat for most of our young girls these days, regardless of their country.)