'The Hoppening'

Last summer, after a very interesting night at the movies with two of my cousins, I submitted this illustration in answer to a job post on the Killer Bunnies web site looking for a "bunny artist." Never heard back from them, but I've always thought my idea would have made a neat new card for the game, and I was pretty pleased with myself at having mimicked their style so well.

So, I've finally decided to post it here along with the letter. Neither seemed to do any good for me anyplace else.

Enjoy.

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GREETINGS KILLER BUNNY GENIUSES.

A cousin of mine introduced our extended family to Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot at a reunion in Nebraska a few years ago. We were instantly hooked (you had me at Green Gelatin with Evil Pineapple Chunks) and played a giant throwdown match every night of the reunion, with some of us obtaining our own Killer Bunny decks shortly thereafter.

I would love the chance to become one of you. Ecstatic to find a job listing on your web site a few days ago, I worked through the night tonight developing an idea I had at work yesterday.

Please find my drawing for "The Hoppening" — which I envision as a RUN or a SPECIAL card — attached to this e-mail. The description I had in mind goes something like this: Kills all of one player's bunnies, but does so one round at a time. (They cannot be saved; however, other players may contribute or speed up the offing by providing weaponry, which cannot be spread past this player.) Adjacent players have until that player's last bunny is dead to reduce their bunnies by half or their bunnies suffer the same fate, and so on.

I have a few other ideas that I haven't been able to fully develop or sketch out yet, but hopefully this gives you an idea of my abilities and enthusiasm for your product. If you would like to know more about me or discuss my ideas further, feel free to reply to this e-mail or call the number below. Thank you for your time and consideration.

— Gina Dvorak
(blah blah blah... contact info...)

Celebrating black history

"Can we make a collage to use for the Perspectives page CP this weekend?" a hopeful pair of opinion editors each asked me separately on Tuesday. "No problem. Get me a list..." I responded both times.

I always think those things are going to be easy. Slap some photos onto other photos. Voila! Instant centerpiece.

Of course, now that the whole thing is behind me, I can think of at least three ways I could have done it "simpler." A bunch of stacked black-and-photos with IDs in red boxes on top of them, a la Vanity Fair and the like. A checkerboard of photo/ID pairs. A combination of the two ... sorta.

But you know, when you're on your 13th consecutive hour at the office — and even the morning after a semi-decent night's sleep after said long work day — it can be difficult to see your way out of the tunnel you created for yourself at the beginning of the project.

So I ended up with this collage. I, personally, like the glowing red super-hero-esque Muhammed Ali. I'm sure others will wonder what I was thinking. I tried turning him other colors, especially after I put a stylized photo of Rosa Parks, in her red shirt, very nearby. But he just didn't look quite so magnificent unless he was red.

And why is Frederick Douglass blue, you might wonder? Well, you'd be a little sad, too, if you were dead before it was cool to be black. ... Did I go too far? Forgive me. I tend to get punchy after a few very long days jammed between some less-than-appealing hour-long-plus commutes in the rain.

In hindsight, since I had to rap up quick and things weren't ending exactly right, I really should have had the desk tone the thing b/w. It probably would have been better, and I wouldn't have to explain why I made Ali the ani-Hulk. Grrrr.


Original phots from Getty Images, wire services, and web

Bottom row, from left: Rosa Parks, Muhammed Ali and Richard Pryor. Middle row: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Back row: George Washington Carver, President Barrack Obama, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass (in blue) and Ruby Bridges (in white).

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Follow-up note: No one gave me even an ounce of flack for the red Ali. As a matter of fact, I got quite a few compliments on the illustration. I guess you just never can tell what's going to strike people as odd — or not.

Buried treasure

Deep in "the closet" of my hard drive, I found this gem. It's a web banner that is still used at the top of a coworker's blog about movies (recent and not, mainstream and less-than), and even some "Battlestar Gallactica" postings.

Granted, there's a few things I would have done a little differently with the banner, and I definitely wish I could have redone it or helped with the color swatching when they widened the format, but given that I made this banner when my knowledge of Photoshop was still a bit on the beginners' side of the fence, I'm pretty happy that I still like it.

The coworker must have liked it all right as well; she and another coworker later sought me out to do illustrations for their e-zine, "The Dead Protagonists Society."