Time to reach into the slightly suspicious bag that is Friday and pull random things out to subject them to the cold harsh light of blogging.
– A lot of the eye blanks I normally use have been sourced, until now, from Puppet Pelts; but as the future of PP is uncertain and they’re not restocking I’ve been trying to think of quick and easy alternatives (note: for my purposes ping pong balls only work for some applications). As this was a “play around and see what you come up with” week, I messed around with some of the lovely EVA foam spheres from Puppet Pie. I’ve used them before and love their look, but this was the first time I tried cutting them in half and I love the results (as pictured in today’s logo). It’s easy to embed a bead and glue a doll joint to the underside for quick snap-on safety eyes, so I’m going to be placing another order with Stacey Gordon quite soon.
– The good folks at Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod have spun up their own Mastodon instance, and my application was accepted so I’ll be migrating over there soon. Mastodon.art has been great and the admin/mod team is the best, so it wasn’t an easy decision, but there’s some overlap with Tech Pod peeps and Operation: Puppet peeps so I’d like to nestle in there. Stay tuned.
– The week’s experimental monster build was a roaring success (thanks largely to aforementioned eyes) and I’ll be putting this critter up on the shop today. I like it so much and with the new way of using foam eyes I came up with I immediately want to do another, so I think that’s on the top of the list for next week. The next one will probably have a pointy head and full sphere eye, which should look nicely alien.
– Mulling over doing some weekend Discord-only streams while I work on the Neverwinter server. I think doing that kind of thing on Twitch/YouTube is casting the net a little too wide but keeping it to just the Discord family makes sense. We just hangin’ out. No firm plans but it’s likely to happen. Weekends are for Neverwinter.
And as I’ve just reached into the Friday grab bag and pulled out a very attractive mug with some beguiling scented hot liquid in it, I guess it’s time for coffee.