Society of Awesome

(aka. Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators)

Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and went to the bi-annual international SCBWI Confernce at the Hyatt steps from Grand Central.

society banner artwork by David Ercolini

With the cost of the conference and the illustrator's intensive (which I also sprung for) the bill came to a whopping $500. I can usually justify things like this by negotiating the fact that I'm a Brooklynite and that unlike people who travel for this sort of thing I am without housing or travel cost. The commute took me 16 minutes longer than it usually takes me to get to work. HOWEVER, the second I pushed the "purchase" button on the site I had instant buyers remorse.

HOW IN THE WORLD COULD ANYTHING HAPPEN OVER
3 DAYS THAT COULD BE WORTH THIS KIND OF MONEY?!

flash forward to the end of day two - where I realized that if Sunday's half day of lectures resulted in not one single nugget of knowledge that I would totally feel like I got my money's worth. Wild, huh?
So while this was my first conference it is most definitely not my last.

I'll be blogging about it over the next week or so, and while I realize I missed my FOB blogging experience, I needed time to process. I wanted to start at the very beginning:

The Illustrator's Intensive

I wish I could talk to you about the keynote on Friday morning. But I cannot. Why? Because it started at 8am. I am an artist, not a scientist, so I cannot tell you how it is scientifically possible to get into Manhattan prior to 8am. So with everything going on I only caught the tail end of the keynote. Everyone in the room seemed very fired up when I got there so I'magona assume it was great.

The day was broken into three main sections.

We started the morning off with a workshop given by Lisa Desimini.

I was really intrigued by Lisa's journey because she like most author/illustrators started as an illustrator and slowly transitioned into writing her own books. So big deal, right?

Well that's what you think until you read some of these books. My personal aesthetic is so very different from the style that Lisa uses in her work. At first, I didn't feel like I got so much from her discussion that focused heavily on her artistic process. During a break I found myself out in the 'SCBWI bookstore' where I picked up a few of her titles and wandered through them. Her writing blew me away. It is sensitive but honest and poetic but practical. I readjusted my attitude and eased back into the session.

Here are my main take aways from her lecture:

• Always do personal work
  
• When it comes to the way you work and what you do don't be afraid to break rules
• Brainstorm with words

We were to bring a rough sketch of a birthday party for a character from snow white and the seven dwarfs.

During the second half of the workshop we showed our work and then brainstormed words. We made charts of descriptions that we associate with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We brainstormed about birthday parties too. It was an odd experience for me because I NEVER work that way.

Afterward, Lisa had us brainstorm words by ourselves about the Wicked Queen. Instead of sharing those words with the group, we were told to take 10 minutes to create a new illustration using our brainstorming to show what would happen if a party for one of the characters was crashed by Snow White's evil step mother.

Here's what I came up with:

The words I mind-stormed were:
Apples, Poison, Deceit, Mean, Hidden, Hide, Costumed, Mean, Selfish, Conniving.

The things I thought my blog readers would really appreciate that I heard during Lisa's discussion were:

• Your style is like your handwriting, as long as you draw daily and work diligently, it'll present itself.
• Ask yourself about your art. Wonder if it should be curved, on a diagonal, if the perspective should be extreme or if the book can best be served with a simplistic line.
• Put yourself into a book as much as you can.
• A manuscript is like going to a party, enhance it without hijacking it.
  

And then she said one of my favorite things I heard over the weekend.
"If you don't realize that every book needs a little bit of humor, you're kidding yourself."

By lunchtime my brain was swimming with inspiration and new ideas and now it's a bit too much to blog about the rest of the day. In true Scarlet O'Hara fashion, I'll think about that tomorrow. Check back to hear about Kevin Hawkes' perspective later this week.

Stop the Presses! Hold Everything!

So, remember when I told you that it was OK to make mistakes? You must have thought to yourself, "Really Amber? You are pure perfection! you never have a flaw to accept as a mistake." I'm going to let you in on my secret. I messed up, Etsy Style. After recent events came to light, it became clear that Amberbop Shop was not going to be able to hold all the product that I want to make available for the public. I'll explain why below, but I've had to start over with a new Etsy Store and my old little shop front is now a thing of the very recent past. ;)

So with no further ado: Get the horns ready... Man the drum line.....
Tah Tah Da Dah!!!

It's hot - It's cute - It's Sassy...Sexy...Sweet...
It's Amber Ink.

I'm also going to let you in on a 'top secret' kind of secret. I've been dying to get back into the scrapbook and stamping world. For a long time I've wanted my own little piece of scrapping turf. I've had my eye on the domain http://www.amberink.com/ for more than a year now. I've been stalking it non-stop. When the user who had it let it expire two months ago I had my fingers crossed. I just hoped the owner wouldn't snatch it up again (after it expires it goes into a holding spot where they can still get it back). Then a few days ago, wonder of wonders, it was released to the public and I bought it! So I'll be slowly building a real live business with tangible product. I'll be starting the company with downloadable scrapbook papers that you can print at home. I'm excited as pie!
They'll be showing up at Etsy soon!

Ok, run don't walk!

They're at it Again! Stop Orphan Works Bill!

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP
According to our sources THE HOUSE WILL TRY TO PASS THE ORPHAN WORKS BILL TODAY 10.3.08

**If this Bill is only meant to help libraries and museums, why did they draft it behind closed doors?

**Why have the doors been opened wide for commercial infringement of the work of living authors actively licensing their work?
**Why do they want to pass it when nobody is looking?
**Why do they want to re-write copyright law without an open debate?

Stop this effort to give content to Big Internet firms by under mining copyright law. Get the word out!

Light up Washington and home offices of your Congressman.
Contact the media.· Deny them cover. Do not let them hide.
Tell them we will hold each of them accountable.
Here is the message to communicate to your Congressman, Key Leaders,

Aides and Media:

** The "Dark Archive" - where infringers can register their paperwork in secret - will not protect our copyrights.

**An "Open Archive" - with orphaned work exposed to to the public -would be a come-and-get-it bank for plagiarists and infringers.

**Artists cannot monitor tens or hundreds of thousands of images everyday to see if somebody somewhere has infringed their work.

**There are more than a trillion images subject to orphaning each day.

**If someone can't find me, that doesn't mean I've orphaned my work.
An unsuccessful search for a property owner should not be a license to steal.

**Artists should not have to digitize their life's work at their own expense to comply with a law they don't want or need.

**The high cost compliance would make compliance prohibitive.

**The loss of exclusive rights would undermine contractual agreements with clients.

**We cannot sell exclusive rights to clients if others can publish our work without our knowledge or consent.

**The loss of exclusive rights would devalue our entire inventories of work.

**Small business owners should not be forced to subsidize the business models of Big Internet firms.

**No rational business owner should have to give access to their inventory, meta data, client contact information, etc. to outside business interests.

**Tell lawmakers to prevent passage of this bill until it can be subjected to an open, informed and transparent public examination.

**Tell them this is no way to re-write copyright law.

**Tell them it will affect millions of rights holders worldwide.

**Tell them you would support a true orphan works bill, but this is not it.

**Tell them to to consider the amendments presented by the Illustrator's Partnership, Artists Rights Society and Advertising Photographers of America

Phone, fax, email these Congress people immediately:
DELAHUNT Phone: (202) 225-3111
Fax (202) 225-5658
CONYERS Phone: (202) 225-5126
Fax: (202) 225-0072
Phone: (313) 961-5670
Fax: (313) 226-2085
NADLER Phone: (202) 225-5635
Fax: (202) 225-6923
Phone: (212) 367-7350
Fax: (212) 367-7356
BERMAN Phone: (202) 225-4695
Fax: (202) 225-3196
Phone: (818) 994-7200
Fax: (818) 994-1050
PELOSI :AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov
Phone: (202) 225-4965
Fax: (202) 225-8259
Phone: (415) 556-4862
Fax: (415) 861-1670
HOYER steny.hoyer@mail.house.gov
Phone: (202) 225-4131
Fax: (202) 225-4300
Phone: (301) 474-0119
Fax: (301) 474-4697

YOUR REPRESENTATIVE
To find Washington and District Office phone, fax and web forms for your Representative http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/dbq/officials/ and enter your zip code

YOUR LOCAL MEDIA
To find the contacts for your Local Media go to http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/dbq/media/
and enter your zip code

This release was written by Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner,
for the Board of the Illustrators' Partnership
Please post or forward this message immediately to any interested party.
For news and information:
Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works Blog:http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/
Over 75 organizations oppose this bill, representing over half a million creators.

Get the Horns Ready... Man The Drumline....

Tah Tah Da Dah!!!

It's hot - It's cute - It's Sassy...Sexy...Sweet...

It's an Amberbop Shop!!!

That's right lovelies! After years of buying handmade I decided it was time to jump on board and get my own shop. You can pick up my art and use it as it's intended.

Get it up on your walls!

Ok, run don't walk!

PS. In other exciting news: I had the best hair day of the year today :) I had three strangers ask me about it, one even asked where I "had it done."

Why I'm feeling Icky...

Last night, while the nation was distracted by the bailout plan, the Senate passed the Orphan Works Bill. I've been working at opposing this bill for six months now. It is oh so obvious that congress is trying to slip it in under the radar. This act will affect all artists, writers, choreographers, photographers etc. it is important that we act now to stop it becoming law. Over 70 creators organizations are opposed to this bill and working hard to stop its passage.
Please write your congress rep by clicking below. You'll find a simple form letter that will seriously only take two minutes to complete.
Please help!
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321
xo,
Amber

If you'd like to read more about it:
For more info: http://ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/

This is overview of how this bill will affect the art world: excerpts from:
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?billid=11320236

**The Orphan Works Act defines an "orphan work" as any copyrighted
work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search."In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use thework for any purpose, including commercial usage. In the case of visual art, the word "author" means "artist."

** This proposal goes far beyond current concepts of fair use.
As acknowledged by the Register of Copyrights it is not designed to deal with the special situations of non profit museums, libraries and archives. It is written so broadly that it will expose new works to infringement, even where the author is alive, in business, and licensing the work.

** The bill would substantially limit the copyright holder's ability to recover financially or protect the work, even if the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to infringement.

**The bill has a disproportionate impact on visual artists because it
is common for an artist's work to be published without credit lines or because credit lines can be removed by others for feckless or unscrupulous reasons. This is especially true of art published in the Internet Age.Coerced Registration

**The Orphan Works Act would force artists to risk their lives' work to subsidize the start-up ventures of private, profit making registries, using untested image recognition technology and untried business models. These models would inevitably favor the aggregation of images into corporate databases over the licensing of copyrights by the lone artists who create the art.

**The most common scenario of orphaning in visual art is the unmarked image. There is only one way to identify the artist belonging to an unmarked image. That would be to match the art against an image-recognition database where the art resides with intact authorship information.

**These databases would become one-stop shopping centers for infringers to search for royalty-free art. Any images not found in the registries could be considered orphans.

**There is no limit to the number of these registries nor the prices they would charge artists for the coerced registration of their work.

**The artist would bear the financial burden of paying for digitizing and depositing the digitized copy with the commercial registries.

**Almost all visual artists such as painters, illustrators and photographers are self employed. The number of works created by the average visual artist far exceeds the volume of the most prolific creators of literary, musical and cinematographic works. The cost and time-consumption to individual artists of registering tens of thousands of visual works, at even a low fee, would be prohibitive;therefore countless working artists would find countless existing works orphaned from the moment they create them.

**The Copyright Office has stated explicitly that failure of the artist to meet this nightmarish bureaucratic burden would result in his work automatically becoming an "orphan" and subject to legal infringement.

Surtex is OVER baby!!!

I'm almost recovered from the thing that was Surtex 2008! I'm still sleeping more than I've ever slept in my life. I think my body is trying to make up for the days prior to the show where I slept an hour or two, went to eight or more hours of my day job, came home and worked on my own art until the wee hours where I snuck in a nap for an hour and then tiptoed out the door to my day job again. Luckily I managed to take off a full week of work, giving me two days before the show and one day after to try and get my sea legs again.

My mom was the lady of the hour and flew up from Hawaii to take care of me and to help out with the show. I'm very lucky to be blessed with the most supportive family on the planet. It's so nice to have parents that don't say stupid stuff like, "You really have to go to sleep, this is just crazy," or "Are you sure you really want to do this show, it seems like a pretty big expense? I mean can you afford all this?" It's a relief because that's what I was saying to myself in the mirror often enough. Haha. The last thing I needed was for someone to reinforce my fears. In life I tend to fluctuate between alarmingly self conscious and worried to overly confident and cocky. This whole Surtex ordeal brought out both sides of my introverted-extrovert personality.

I'm going to be blogging about Surtex off and on over the next couple of weeks. Today I'm going to touch on preparatory materials. At twenty-six I'm very lucky to have a couple of distinct and set styles. Growing up in an artistic household and then attending Pratt Institute where I got my BFA taught me one very important thing:

**As an artist it's imperative that you create work in a style that becomes you.**

If you do artwork that's all over the place and that doesn't have a look that can be traced to you, you can forget ever finding steady work. For this year's show I saw my art being divided in three ways that really stood out to me:

1. Fashionista East - consisting of feminine but bold vectorized black line and highly saturated flat color
2. Baby Mermaids - bright watercolors based on always sweet and often funny sketchy line art

3. No Ka Oi - vectorized artwork without a solid line, driven by shape and a set Pantone color palette

--a look that a lot of my surface design is taking lately--

As an artist when you interview for a job it's not uncommon for you to have three or four resumes. If I were interviewing for an animation position it's likely that my background in apparel would have no place on my resume. If I was looking to work as a graphic designer it's doubtful that an interviewer would want to know about my experience working as an oil painting instructor at Interlochen's summer art program. I went into Surtex knowing that it was important to take this concept to heart. The last thing I wanted was for a potential contact to fall in love with my baby mermaids and get home and not be able to remember where they saw them.

I designed three separate business cards so that people could take whichever card was going to remind them of what they were interested in my art for. It turns out that this idea was pure gold and I got a huge response from people who would methodically look through the three cards and then take one for their ever growing packet of artist materials.

Here are the three business cards that I pulled together for the show:

I also had over sized postcards printed with lots of writing space and with artwork similar to the business card above that matches my blog design. That ways potential clients could write notes to themselves so that they had stuff to talk about with me later.

Since this was my first show I came into it a tad blind and a bit not knowing to expect. It turns out all the print collateral stuff was right on the money. When I do the show next year I'll create stuff with the same design principles and sensibilities. However, I will make Hella sure that they are not sent to me via DHL shipping. I think I would have had more luck with a carrier pigeon. I actually didn't get stuff delivered on time the way it was supposed to go. I ended up printing the first day's print collateral on my HP 5150 - AKA 'The Little Engine that Could.' My mom actually had to go to the DHL warehouse to pick up the cards and everything in the wee hours of the morning on Monday the 9th, the second day of the show. It was OK because Sunday turned out to be pretty sleepy and the stuff from my printer was just fine. I was upset but everything worked out A-OK no thanks to the shipping service from hell. Seriously, never use them. Never. Ever. Never. Well you can use them if you don't care about ever getting your stuff. At one point they had no idea where on the continent my stuff was. Just a word to the wise, Fed Ex has none of these crazy problems. DHL was the only major glitch for this mission. Surtex turned out to be very NASA-like to me and I talk about it in a kind of scientific way now that I have this first show under my belt.

Next time I blog about Surtex I'll be talking about my booth. Rah Rah Rah! It's nice to be back :)

Surtex Count Down!!

I'll be at Surtex in Less than two weeks, much less than two weeks. Ok, let's be honest. I'm kind of freaking out. Ok, I'm really freaking out. My problem is that when I truly freak out I give myself a migraine forcing me to take a full ten hour time-out. Thus, I have to monitor my freak out levels so as to stay functioning. SO EXASPERATING!

I'm wandering into the slightly unknown when it comes to Surtex. Luckily I have a ton of experience with large shows and I'll be drawing on that. My mom has been defying child labor laws since 1987 when she used to dress me and my younger sister up in matching dresses and take us to gigantic craft fairs huge conference centers. We would work ten hour days as her "special sales girls." A lot has changed since the days when I used to work in exchange for pretty stickers and crayola crayons . . . I now work to buy Winsor & Newton inks... I'm ever so thankful for the sales experience. You should check her stuff out over at
Betty Tags.
She pretty much rocks.

I also have a unique situation at my job. I animate for a company that is smart enough to send their artists away on business trips to conferences now and again. That way we can talk with the people buying product and see how things are being received. These are done in pure convention style very similar to Surtex. I'm sure my experience with the shows that I go to for work in Chicago and Florida will be slightly different than my upcoming show in Manhattan. I'm afraid there won't be Hilton Hotel rooms, 600 thread count sheets and five course meals in the cards. . . sigh. . .

I have tons to do to get ready so my posting here at 'She Sure is Sketchy' may be sporadic. I've discovered that if I take a cold shower at one in the morning I can keep drawing for another hour or two :) I was supposed to get a new website up in time for the event. I'm on an illustration roll and I don't really want to stop to program stuff in html. It's a tough call. I'm still swamped creating intellectual property and filing art for copyright.

Okay, since I despise posting stuff that's just text, here's another peek at my Baby Mermaids. They're scheduled to make their official debut in ten days. . . but who's counting?
Ps. Come say 'Hi' at Surtex 2008!!! I'm in booth 2518 in Hall 1E. Come pick up a temporary tattoo and a smile :)

Fashion Sketches and Looming Deadlines

I'm really excited about this project, because it's pushing me out of my normal zone. I'm creating a line of characters with fuller, luscious figures. My girls tend to be glorified sweethearts of the toothpick variety. These new illustrations are different. Here are a few of the very early development sketches I did a month or so ago. As I've been sketching it's become clear that the end result will be very serious. I like bubbly and happy, but it's a seriously sexy world. My client wants a clean pout. I guess it's OK to be brooding and cute at the same time, right?


I'm learning about myself on this project. One of the main things I've learned is that I'm totally a deadline oriented kind of girl. If something is due on Saturday morning I'll stay up Thursday and Friday night and work myself into the ground in order to deliver on time. This client is by far the most laid back of any I've ever had. Surprisingly it's thrown me off! I've always known that I'm comfortable with deadlines and high stress situations, but I didn't think that working without them would be so hard! I thought working without them would be nice! Instead of relaxing I fell off the wagon. I'm back on track now. I hadn't made a date sheet for this client, now that I have one everything can keep rolling smoothly. I keep date sheets for my own good. I have one for each gig or client and I put them all on the wall in my studio next to my computers. Here's a peek at an old one I created for a client that I had last winter-
For starters I block out any vacation I'm giving myself. In December I scheduled a week off from the 21st to the 26th for days that I would in no way lift a pencil. Of course I lifted a pencil for my own projects, but that's because I can't go a day without doodling. I get to be selfish with that time. I color code the boxes with the start date, the sketch deadline and the box with the final line art deadline so they all work together. Sometimes I actually deliver calendars to my clients. Other times I only use date sheets for myself. When they're only for me I make them a few days ahead of the delivery date. That's the most comfortable way for me to work. That way when I've promised something it's already sitting in a clean pile in my outbox and I'm not sweating trying to get it finished. I create a date sheet for every client who has a deadline. I have a template I've created for every month of the year. The deadline calendars live in a comfy place on my desktop. As things change or bulk up I print out a current HC of a client calendar to replace the other. I have these great little square document hangers on my wall that I picked up at the Container Store.
check them out here:
Cute Little Document Hangers
If I'm working with six clients in a month, I have six calendars in a vertical row next to my computer. If a client's project bleeds into the next month I place that date sheet behind the month we're in and hang them together, one on top of the other, that way I can just lift a page to see where I'm going. The color coding helps me extremely, if I see a blue preliminary box and can't find the blue final art box, I know that I've got to think ahead. I also try to hang the most recent version of the artwork up near the calendar it belongs to, that way my brain keeps thinking about it, even if a final deadline isn't coming up for a week or two.

Hanna Stamps! Tis the Season Set hits the Market!

I'm loving my freelance work lately. Above you'll find the new Hanna Stamps! 'Tis the Season' set. I loved creating the artwork for this Hanna Stamps! set. I actually like this more than the 'But I need it' shopping set artwork, although at the time I thought that the shopping set was tops. This set goes public today, October 26th, and you can buy it at Kristi Ferro's blog, www.KreationsbyKrissy.com

I'm thrilled to be the Hanna Stamps! artist because it's allowed me to bring two of my talents together. As a character developer and a product designer I couldn't be happier.

Kristi is the greatest client to work for because not only are we friends but she allows me almost complete creative freedom. Very early on she sent me about a million rubber stamps to try to bridge the gap in my knowledge of the medium. That package of stamps influenced my creative process in one very important way. I realised that all I personally wanted to do with stamps was make infinite repeating patterns. I loved stamping an entire sheet of paper by twisting and turning the stamps to make full pages of a repeat. It became really important to me for every set to have one stamp that really lent itself to that process. We call the repeat pattern stamp a 'cluster stamp' and every set has one. In this set the cluster is a smattering of stars and swirls under the mistletoe. Does it make you want to kiss it ?!

It seems like me and Hanna Stamps! are a perfect fit. I can't wait to see what those fab stamping ladies come up with for this set. I was blown away by the cards made with the last set and I simply cannot wait to see where they take the artwork this time around!

P.S. If you love this set. . . . you're going to go nuts for the next one! It's my favorite! Haha.

You Know You Want It.

Today's the day! Last night at 12am EST. the project I've been working on for the last few months went public! So I can FINALLY share what's been going on! Man, this secret has been hard to keep. I am the exclusive artist for Hanna Stamps! My new creations can now be bought at www.HannaStamps.com !!! Kristi Ferro and I have been working together to create Kristi's new rubber stamp company. She's done a dream at promoting and pimping and now they're out there for all the world to see. There has been such a frenzy for their actual release, I was afraid people were going to start banging down doors.

I've learned a lot about stampers in the last couple of months, they're a whole breed unto themselves. My mom says it's like Nascar for women. Ha. She's just about right. These women are so talented. It's such a strange experience to see artwork created with rubber stamps I've designed. They're using my art to create new art. It's like collaborating with dozens of artists and wow, is it fun to see what they come up with! More than anything I'm amazed at the versatility. These stamping ladies are doing things with Hanna Stamps! that I would never even think to do, and they're doing them beautifully. It's such fun to see what they'll come up with next! The links below will take you to their frantically fantastic cards. You'll be shocked at their sublime talent. I know I was :)
http://splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/showgallery.php?si=hanna+stamps&limit=&x=10&y=7

You can read all about Hanna Stamps! at Kristi Ferro's Kreations, right here:
http://www.kreationsbykrissy.com/

I'm so excited! Go Hanna Stamps! Go!

Surtex or bust!

For the last few weeks I've been afraid my life might be on a turn down to 'a slightly better life than the average 25 year old' phase. In a very exciting turn of events - my life has just become more fabulous then it already was!

It's official, I'll be showing at Surtex 2008 at Manhattan's Javitz center!!

I'll be in booth 405** and the design frenzy starts today. . .

It's my goal to have 5 designs a week to add to my portfolio while I'm redesigning my website. I've decided to keep a Surtex folder on my desktop to upload five new designs to every Thursday night. I've promised myself I won't sleep on Thursdays until there's a new batch in there. Most of the designs have to have a 'top secret' air to them, but I think it will be fun to document my journey by posting at least one inspirational object or sketch that's fueling my week's stockpile.

As some of you know, I get fan mail from kids ages 5-10 at my job. As an artist the personal letters we get from the babes really help to fuel the projects I work on. My favorite is tacked next to my lightbox in my studio and it simply reads:

Hay people,

You better Draw mor pictchers in 3. . . 2. . . 1. . . NOWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!S

Your friend,

Alex P.

I feel like it was written especially for this grand occasion.

**Hi Everyone! There's been a change of plans. This year I'll be calling Surtex Booth #2518 "Home." Booth 2518 is in Hall 1E. Stop by for a temporary tattoo and a smile :)**

Return of the Cute Girls

Okay! I know, I know. I haven't posted in a stupidly long amount of time. I have an excuse though, honest! I'm actually so busy with freelance work at the moment. As I'm freelancing I really strive to keep my client's confidentiality. That way they're allowed to use a trade secret approach to any product or design I make for them. That client confidentiality goes right out the door the minute I flaunt the nuts and bolts on my blog while we're building stuff. So when there's not a lot of new work on my blog it usually means I'm busy working but that everything is under wraps.

However, one of my favorite projects I'm working on right now is just too fun for complete secrecy. These are a couple of the drawings that we decided to discard recently. I loved them too much to completely toss them aside. The products for this new client are going to be soooooooooo spiffy! I love my other freelance clients too. I've been really lucky lately, all my freelance clients have great stuff for me to do and work is totally exciting development-wise. Juggling it is hard sometimes, but it's more than worth it.

Since I'm such a nerd, in addition to my freelance work I'm chipping away at my independent stuff. I'm still working on my children's book. Hopefully I will have some pages to show off before too long. My biggest goal for the late summer and early fall is to redesign that website we all know and love so much, that's right - we'll be creating a new face for www.AmberAlvarez.com. Please contain your excitement.