Hey everyone! For today’s #WerewolfWednesday I thought I’d show you the process of designing the Murder Puppy enamel pin, which you can get as a reward by pledging to the WEREWOLVES VERSUS: Volume 1 Kickstarter at the “CHOMP” tier, or higher.
I’d known for a long time before the campaign that I wanted to make an enamel pin as part of the reward offerings. I’m a big fan of pins – I have a denim vest that’s got what feels like 40 pounds of badges and enamel pins on it, and I love adding new and weird pins to the collection.
The idea for the design came from the same place where so many of my creative notions take root: a dumb throw-away Twitter post in which I referred to werewolves as being “murder puppies”. I like the juxtaposition of cute and monstrous, so the idea of a ravening lycanthrope being presented as something superficially cuddly was very appealing. I knew for certain that the artwork would need to be done in the 1920s “rubber hose” character style recently popularized by the beautiful game Cuphead. Then, as with many of my ideas, I did nothing with it for a few months.
In June, with all of the other reward art assets ready and the campaign launch fast approaching, I knew it was time to actually design the pin. At the time, I was at Layers, a design conference in San Jose, and I’d received a nice little notebook and pen as part of the conference swag. Inspired in part by Andy McNally, a prolific taker of sketch notes who sat near me during the conference, I closed my laptop and began to doodle some ideas in my notebook.
The first even remotely successful design.
A little more refined, with the right balance of cute and dangerous, but still working out the teeth.
Refining the nose shape. My previous “mushroom-shape” noses were all too
cat-like. Side note: image searching for “wolf noses” gives some
wonderful results.
Figuring out the pin background. The pin needed to have a less jagged
shape than the wolf head alone, and the text needed a place to sit. A
full moon was the obvious choice.
Once I had a concept I liked, it was time to turn it into a digital image. Given the roughness of my sketches, I knew I couldn’t simply use Photoshop and Illustrator to extract the lines. I needed someone who could Actually Draw to create a digital illustration that I could then manipulate, so I turned to my wife, Tandye Rowe (whose art is also on the Werewolf Jaws bandana and one of the stickers offered as rewards). In short order she delivered a hi-res PNG file for me to work with.
No more sketchy pen lines!
From this crisp image I was able to create a vector file in Illustrator, and then work on refining the details and joining some of the lines – a requirement for the way colours work in enamel pin production. The result is a pin design that fulfills my original “cute/deadly” concept and which will look awesome on my vest – or yours!
You may be tempted to pet him. Do not.
To get this pin for yourself (plus so much more, including a massive book of werewolf art, comics, stories, and other content very much in line with the “murder puppy” ethos, check out the WEREWOLVES VERSUS: Volume 1 Kickstarter.
So this week it was revealed in Germany a group of neo-Nazi militants had been working with members of the police to compile a list of left-wing and pro-refugee opponents to murder. They also ordered hundreds of body bags and quicklime along with over 10k bullets with a variety of long and short range weapons.
Centrists and people on the right say Nazism isn’t a threat because they’ve never seen a Nazi. They say theres no war going on the Nazis haven’t been a threat since 1940. Neo-Nazis are literally fucking begging for an opportunity to start a race war, attack political opponents, and commit mass murder.
It takes a special kind of blindness to see dozens of photos of hundreds of neo-Nazis openly marching in the street and say “They’re just joking”. This deliberately dismissive stance is incredibly helpful for white supremacists because they can be comforted in the knowledge they won’t be opposed by people politically closer to them.
So THIS week neo-Nazis in Italy were caught with rifles, handguns, explosives, and a fucking missile. On Saturday outside Belmarsh Prison members of fascist Generation Identity staged a mock execution of “(((globalists)))” while dressed in balaclavas and body armour. Another cell of neo-Nazis revealed to be plotting a violent race war, another week people on the right pretend Nazis haven’t excisted since the 30s.
How many weeks ago was it the National Socialist Movement armed up and attacked a Pride event in Drayton? Does it even matter? Is one neo-Nazi terrorist cell too much? Should we be making excuses when the most extreme of the far right fringes plan terrorist activity? What will it take for white conservatives to start seeing what is screaming in front of them? Find out next week
“Originally Isis was connected with royalty and not with any part of the cosmos but her role in the Osiris myths linked her to events which were of cosmic significance. As the cult of Isis and Osiris grew so did her importance and her aspects started to diversify. The Greco-Roman Isis kept all of her Egyptian powers and added more from the strong Greek influence in Egypt, particularly in the Delta region. She eventually becomes a beneficial Goddess of nature, a Saviour and, to many, the sole Goddess. There is a danger of being ‘all things to all men’ and through that losing uniqueness and individuality. Did this happen to Isis? Have we lost the character and essence of Isis as she transforms into the generic All-Goddess? How much of the Egyptian Isis was present for her followers in the Classical Period? From about 500 BCE Isis develops from an Egyptian Goddess into a pan-Mediterranean Goddess that virtually everyone could find a connection to. What was behind this meteoric rise? Was it Isis or the aspects attached to her which were so important and how much was manufactured for political reasons?”
A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified.
