I'm back, and with a bang!

Ho ho! So, all of you who thought I had dropped off the face of the planet (all one and a half of you!), I am here to set the record straight!

Today marks my first day back without having a massively hugely impossibly time-crunching job on my hands.

For the past couple of weeks, I was literally pulling all-nighters (fitting a few hours in to sleep once in a while) to get a major project done by deadline for the company I work for. (For those of you who don't know, I'm the head artist for an inflatable company owned by my uncle. :)

We only had a few weeks to go from concept to finished product, and a job like this would normally take about about 3-6 MONTHS.

In a nutshell, the job was an inflatable dome, designed (including the artwork) by an artist who sent us vector art to work with. Normally that is awesome. It's perfect. I have to do nothing more than scale it to the right size.

HOWEVER... the vector art was a flat image. Very long, VERY detailed and complicated, and we had to adapt that into a dome shape. Not only THAT, this was no ordinary dome with slice-like gore-shaped patterns. No! This dome had the most complicated ring-like pattern. Every pattern piece was different and had to perfectly match up all of the artwork when it was sewn together, which meant many, many, MANY revisions and printed prototypes before sending the final artwork off for printing!

What this spells out to an artist and staff of seamstresses who have three weeks to put it together: NIGHTMARE.

Somehow though, after pulling double duty, working until 3:30AM and back at it bright an early the next morning, SOMEhow, our team pulled it off. Because THAT'S what we do! :D

(Fortunately for me, my aunt--married to the boss--is also an artist and was able to lend a hand with some of the revisions!)

Here's a few photos of the finished piece: