Here is my customary end-of-year emptying of the memory card. 2011: strong in marmalade and chickens.

For my part I’m anti-resolutions, but I do promise to start emailing people back tomorrow since I’ve been avoiding logging-in for the past two weeks (which is to say, the past two months). 2011: weak in timely correspondence. All those other years, too. Also weak in that.

I’m spending my New Year’s Eve alone in my island fastness, as I like to do, complete with fire and onesie and a plentiful selection of bread items. Pretty pleased with myself, I have to say.

Happy New Year, guys!

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I think stockings are the best part of Christmas. Certainly they are in my family – the finest and most extensive care package of the year. There are a few specific traditions that I didn’t need to list here. For instance, we always get a small box of Space Lego to put together before breakfast (to keep us occupied, so my parents can have time to wake up before getting to the bigger stuff – is it bad that we still need that?).  But we are sort of reasonable now. At least, we’ve taken up the practice of putting together stockings for our parents, too.

Anyway, mum, here is my list of specific ideas (most of which hardly need reiterating, but I like talking about them anyway).

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So look, my mum needs me to make her a Christmas list, and I happen to have this website which is all about things that I want, conveniently in need of an update. So here goes nothing. (I must warn you, mum, this list is not particularly practical – nonetheless, it’s the best I can seem to manage…)

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My Skryim hype, boundless though it may be, lingers particularly on certain features of the game. So to please myself, and because it’s International Skyrim Week, I’m going to list them.

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There’s something about a robust videogame character creation system that unhinges 13-year-old Marian from my brain and sets her flailing for control. Though really my tastes at 13 were pretty dismally similar to what they are at present (at least secretly, underneath my careful shellac of coolness. What, you haven’t noticed my careful shellac of coolness?) Anyway, here is a sheet for the character I’d like to make, more or less, depending on what I’m working with. I even gave her a birthday, because you know my feelings about birthdays.

Also, note my implementation of the proprietary “When Dealing With Stuff” system (I came up with the name all by myself). The standard alignments never quite do it for me, so this is my version, with less emphasis on good and evil, and more emphasis on, uh, dealing with stuff.

And some more translation, for anybody who doesn’t care about Skyrim, but is nonetheless good-naturedly reading through these posts: “Bosmer”, for comparison, are sort of like the Wood Elves of Tolkien. And “Evening Star” is the Elder Scrolls iteration of December. Oh, and “Argonians” are lizard guys. They look like this and I LOVE THEM.

Finally, for anybody who (like me) doesn’t care at all about their public image (or their shellac), and wants to fill out a totally unironic Skyrim character sheet, here is a blank version.

Skyrim comes out in six days, and it’s all that I can think about – so much so, that I thought I’d better declare SKYRIM WEEK and have done. Why fight a losing battle?

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Skyrim is a videogame which sets you loose in an enormous and exactingly detailed fantasy world, within which you can do very nearly anything (here is the trailer). It’s the fifth game in a long-spanning series, and its predecessors were largely what I had in mind when I was writing my posts about The Crossing.

Guys, I’ve been waiting for this game a long time.

So for my first SKYRIM WEEK post I’m planning my larder – both imaginary and realistic. On the 10th of November, to kill time and suppress anxiety before the midnight launch, I mean to make a serious larder pilgrimage, and collect enough tasty things to allay starvation while I play the game for roughly a week straight uninterrupted.

The ideal larder would be, you know, ideal. Even though I couldn’t actually consume all of that food before it went bad. But the realistic variation is nothing to damn well sneeze at. A comic artist’s budget means a nearly meatless existence (at least for me), but I have this $20 gift certificate to Oyama Sausage – a gift from my BFF – which I’ve been saving for a rainy Skyrim. I’ve been thinking about those roast beef sandwiches for weeks.

Tomorrow night I’ll dive further yet into murky nerddom, and post a (speculative) character sheet. Just you wait.

Thank you very much to everyone who ordered a package, and also to everyone who hawked them around for me. The gnomes and the big packs are all sold, but I’ll offer Northlanders pages and small packs until the end of October for anybody who wants to get in late.

And since I’m up to my nose in sketches and package-making, here are some of the various tasty things that I found on my camera’s memory card. I blew my whole food allowance for the month (don’t worry, it wasn’t much) on the opals above, so I’m looking at those summer muffins with more than usual yearning. You know I never regret a good shiny, though.

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I’ve put together some packs for sale, which you can browse below. I wanted these to be as much like art care packages as possible, because receiving a nice package in the mail is the coziest thing ever.

I’m also selling Northlanders pages on the cheap. I put more-than-usual energy into these pages, I think – I could draw rustic medieval subject matter forever and not get tired of it (plus, I was feeding off of my bottomless Skyrim hysteria, Viking-wise).

There are three gnomes available. I might have gone a little overboard with the gnomes (like for instance,  inventing a runic gnome alphabet… )

This month feels timely for an art sale. Brandon and I have both been trying to work as much as possible on our personal projects this year (and next year as well, we hope), so I’m trying to get some bills paid, and ensure our survival in general. How that ended with me sewing gnomes for a week straight, I’m still not entirely certain…

Also, our friend Robin McConnell runs a website where he sells Brandon’s work and my larger, fancier stuff – Beast pages and comic covers. If you buy something from him during October, I will happily include a coloured sketch of whatever you like.

The selection isn’t definitive, so if you have a specific request for a Beast page or King City page, or anything like that, feel free to ask!

If you have a question, or would like to buy something, send me an email at:

I should add: I’m taking payment via paypal, if that works for people. Canadian funds are ideal, but I’ll also accept US dollars.

I’ve added a couple new models this time around. Some time or other, I’ll make an expanded creature list for the goblin world – but here, besides my goblin self, we have a lady nymph, and a gangly male troll to whom I’ve relegated all the dresses.

If I could have one item from this lot, I would probably opt for the survival onesie, designed with a certain videogame in mind. Plus, you know, my apartment is just really cold.

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Here is my Autumn/Winter ’11 collection for the imaginary Hchom line. Arriving, now, as if it were just making its way into imaginary stores.

I actually decided to do this very much at the last minute, but I figure that I need to post something non-videogame-related before the Skyrim hysteria begins to mount past containment. October and the first ten days of November will have, ahem, something of a fantasy videogame flavour. And the second half of November will be crickets chirping.

As usual, I’ll put the “runway” drawings up tomorrow.

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