shopping

Desecration of the Holiday – What are Retailers Thinking?

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The definition of ‘holiday’ in most Dictionaries  is a day when there is a suspension of work and a festive attitude.

Apparently some huge corporations have decided to rewrite the meaning. To them, it’s a day to tempt people to spend massive amounts of money on sales and earn a ton of profits. This is not only a different meaning, it’s almost the antithesis of it.
There is no festivity for the employees, who are denied that ‘suspension of work’ and time with their families. There is not a lot of festivity for the shoppers either. Instead of time with family or friends, it triggers a competitive free for all. Everyone is out to grab the bargain price right now. This has been known to cause people to be outright run over, shoved aside and fight for the ‘deals’. Hardly the attitude one intends a holiday to encourage.


 A holiday is usually for a religious observance or a patriotic one. So Thanksgiving is supposed to celebrate ‘thankfulness’ – to count ones blessing. What one already has. Christmas is to celebrate the birth of ‘the Prince of Peace’. Even those who don’t believe in Jesus tend to mark the holiday as a day for family, or have a holiday with similar intention of family, friendship and giving. There are various patriotic holidays meant to celebrate the founding of our nation, the memory of heroes and honoring of those past and present who fought to defend it.

Instead, modern retail stores decide to ignore holidays and their meanings and instead focus on lining their own wallets. They encourage greed instead of thankfulness, anger and impatience over kindness and a free for all atmosphere over time to build relationships. Finally they inspire outright fear in workers who don’t dare risk their job by saying ‘no’ to working on the holiday.

I for one, say no. I’ll sign any petition demanding this attitude cease. Shop small and local and give the business to people who need it. If some people want to work the holiday, that’s fine, so long as it’s not mandatory. And there is no reason these mad sales can’t at least wait until there is no ‘holiday’ to desecrate.  There is an ongoing campaign to stop bullying in schools. Let’s stop it in retail too.

 

Tell Wal-Mart it's NOT okay to Force Employees to Give up their Holiday to work Thanksgiving

Ask Target to save Thanksgiving for it's Employees

Insist Target that it wait until after Thanksgiving to start it's sales (different one)

The Toy Artist Custom Inspiration

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The Limitless Imagination of Childhood Wonder

Most American childhoods are full of toys. Sometimes the toy comes first, sometimes the TV show does. But either way it soon becomes a collectible – whether the kind you play with or the kind that sits on a shelf, reminding you of your favorite characters. A true fan has more in mind than an eventual sale – for one can never know what’ll be worth money later on.
But what about when your favorite just doesn’t strike the fancy of the toy makers? What about when the toy maker’s version of the character just doesn’t match yours?

Making the Toy YOU Want

That’s where the customizers come in. These innovative fans go further. They decide they’ll make their favorite character look the way they want it to look. It may just be a new paint job, like a Breyer horse going from a boring black horse to a splashy pinto.  Or they may go a step further and mash it up, such as taking My Little Pony and decorating it like Yoda or Doctor Who.
How do they do it? Well, I can’t speak from much personal experience: I have done a few Breyer repaints but that’s it. But I can tell you it takes reference material, a vivid imagination and usually the raw figure, maybe more than one if you are going to mix or match parts. This is a time honored tradition, in fact, the original Star Wars….what became a New Hope….owes much of the early starship models to ‘kit bashing’. In other words, they took bits from different model car and airplane kits and mixed them in ways the designers did not intend and certainly didn’t put in the instruction manual!
Of course, some companies have caught wind of this and decided to reward the creativity. Breyer puts out a ‘bare’ paint your own horse kit. Hasbro’s Mighty Muggs: which had Superheroes as well as Star Wars, had a ‘blank’ paint your own version too. And of course, so does My Little Pony. Barbie has a ‘style your own’ on the web site (although that’s not as hands on, obviously.)


Doctor Whooves G4 Custom Pony by ~kd-230692 on deviantART

 

Not surprisingly these ‘bare’ kits aren’t enough for some though. They might be fine starters, but (expect for Mighty Muggs, which are all alike) they usually offer only one model. And you certainly can’t add the furry look of the wookie, the horn of that unicorn or various other features without a bit of tweaking. Surprisingly, some of these use sculpey, judging from my Deviant Art research. This gave me pause. How do you add the Sculpey, which has to be oven baked, to a My Little Pony or other plastic doll, which would melt or burn in an oven? Or do you bake the parts separate (more likely.) Presumably the smaller the toy, the harder it is to ‘customize’. Also not surprisingly, these customs have a following of their own.

Can You Do Make Your Own Custom Toy Or Can You Buy One?

Those who can’t make, buy. And they pay a good deal too. Are they worth it? Probably. Someone thinks so. It took the cost of materials, plus whatever someone felt their time and creativity were worth. I would guess most of these ‘special’ toys, are not going to young kids. They are going to the grown up kind: whether they are over eighteen or just young collectors.  


Wonder Woman Custom by ~n3gative-0 on deviantART

Of course, there is always that ‘iffy’ realm between selling fan art and a violating copyright. Okay. Where does the line come in between “My Little Pony”, “Star Wars” or “Doctor Who” and the creativity of the person who made it come in? For most, fan art stays fan art if it’s ‘at most’ one piece. Forget merchandising. It’s a bit risky even selling one, but it largely depends on the owner of the copyright. I like the think many of these copyright holders recognize their own danger in overzealousness at pursuing a single one of a kind fan custom figure. One doesn’t want to alienate their own fans. That might stop hem from buying. And odds are, that custom figure has base parts from regular figures which…ahem…they still want to sell. So they must balance this fine line with care.

And they don’t stop with toys. They continue into the dioramas and playsets to put the toys into show off.


Hoth Echo Rebel Base by ~GalerieMoreau on deviantART

And why do we do it? Why do apparent adults and kids of an age when hanging out with friends are normally taking up the time suddenly getting involved with this stuff?

I think it’s that emotional, sentimental memory of their fandom. Combined with the need of the arts and craftsman to create, it expresses itself through collecting and customizing. It recaptures a little of childhood’s joyous wonder and refuses to let it go forever. Some people keep their fandom in the closet (perhaps literally). Others are more open. But when you walk down the street, taking with friends, even hearing some bully put another down, let the thought come. The most grown up grown up might, in fact…be hiding a pony in the closet. Or that cool custom hotrod, hand painted and paid a fortune for. Don’t let them fool you. They are everywhere!
 


Captain Amerihorse by ~Epona142 on deviantART

Many Custom Star Wars Whiphids

Custom Star Wars Whiphid Action Figures Posted on Photobucket by lugo_matapollos

Do you Judge a Book by it’s Cover?

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I do. I admit it. Let’s face reality, even the most avid reader can’t read all the books, or even their covers. So if you aren’t familiar with an author or series, and don’t have anyone advising you then what do you go by?
Personally, I still enjoy real paper books. I know e books are becoming more popular, but I dislike the notion of the books all vanishing if the device failed. You can’t even back them up, or if you can it doesn’t do you any good if it’s in a one brand format. I like even less the idea that they aren’t transferable to different devices i.e. a Nookbook to Kindle to laptop etc. I grant you, if you could do those things they’d be great and much more portable. But I can’t help but note, online at least, they still have a cover shown.

Clockwork Teddy coverThe most obvious lure I ever got from a book cover was the image of a murdered teddy bear. Yes, a teddy bear, stabbed in the back. I had no time to browse in the late, lamented book store, Borders, and had gone in for one thing only. I was hurrying out when I saw the book cover and froze, mid stride. What the….? I rarely looked in the mystery aisle, being more a sci fi and fantasy fan. But I had to. It turned out to be a robot, but treachery and murder were involved. I ended up with the whole series, all because I was grabbed by that cover. Obviously it helped that it was showing the cover and not just crammed into the bookshelf with only the spine showing. Sadly they’ve since switched to more photographic versions even for this series. I guarantee it wouldn’t have grabbed me the way that illustration did.

I often find myself studying cover illustrations for my favorite books and even the different versions of newer covers. You can sometimes see the changes in the companies preferences right on the front. Pure illustration gives way to photos and adds into digital combinations of the two. Impressive. How do they do that? More importantly, how does one find time to learn that? Once upon a time you just had to learn art skills. Now with digital art so common one not only has to learn the time consuming art skills, one has to keep learning all the changes between programs and the software updates and changes to computers. And money. I wrestle with how to afford the art supplies I already use, never mind the ones I want to learn. And that’s not counting keeping up on the computer which is nearly is demanding on upkeep as a car.

As an artist, I already knew I could learn a lot from book covers. I used to trace and try and copy those old horse book covers like art students did the old masters. At least I got the horses down. Now though if it isn’t a photo cover it’s much, much more.

I stare at the Star Wars books like the Jedi Apprentice series and wonder at Cliff Nielson’s designs mixing models with background art and textures. The cool art of Drew Struzan that first had me salivating at the “Heir to the Empire” heralding the return of Star Wars books and fascinated by the coloring. There are so many artists rotating through the Star Wars books I admire I can’t keep track. The Dinotopia books have me awestruck at their imagination and use of color and light. So much so that I just bought Gurney’s Color and Light, a Guide for the Realist Painter.

I still love the illustrations and wonder why in the world so many people are abandoning it for straight photography. Sure you can Photoshop them in and all but still. There is a creative imagination to illustrated covers I rarely see in the straight photo covers. The same holds true for posters: I have the Star Wars poster book and it’s astounding to see the difference. Some early posters for the original trilogy are unrecognizable as being related to the movie. On the other end the prequels are pretty homogenous. I think that’s sad. I can understand the desire for consistency but the differences in style on those early ones were fascinating.

That’s the advantage of science fiction and fantasy in regard to cover art: they can’t go all photo unless they are made into a movie, TV or a video game. You have to make them up because they aren’t real. You can look at animals and bring them together to make a dragon or an alien. But you can’t just take a photo of a real fire breathing dragon. But while a professional photographer might get some emotion from a scene, I can’t help believe it’s being over used. Part of the joy of books is imagining the characters and scenes in your own mind. When you see a ‘photo cover’ you already have a template in your head before you read a word.

This may seem contrary to my love for, say, Star Wars books. After all, I know what the characters looked like. But then again, knowing what they looked like in the movies isn’t quite the same thing. One has to imagine the whole aging process of Luke, Leia and Han, or how Anakin looked between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. One has to imagine ships and worlds one has never seen. In fact, in the newer Star Wars one is influencing the other. The name ‘Coruscant’ for the city planet came from the books. And some of the latest ‘Clone Wars’ episodes were originally from the Dark Horse comics series. Yes…they were illustrated first. And going backward the whole saga might have been still born were it not for Ralph McQuarrie’s convincing illustrations.

Star Wars Heir to the Empire cover by Struzan  Jedi Trial cover art by Steven D. Anderson  Star Wars New Jedi Order cover art by Cliff Nielson

Images Left to Right: Heir to the Empire cover by Drew Struzan – the same artist who did so many  movie covers.  Jedi Trial cover by Steven D. Anderson – note the creative license with Anakin: though set before he became a full Knight he doesn’t have the short padawan haircut of episode 2, and Ventress bears only superficial resemblance to TV or comic versions. Vector Prime cover by Cliff Nielson – it’s not pretty but Luke is aged and that bizarre alien give a hint of ugly things ahead.

So if a juggernaut like Star Wars needed the art to take off, what gives? Where is the illustration, the artwork or even the photography combined with artwork in modern book covers, posters and the like? I don’t know, but I miss it. Some of it was cheesy. But now I can go online and find modern illustrations that are downright spectacular. Yet they don’t end up on book covers or movie posters. Those just get photos. Some are great, don’t get me wrong. But there is just something missing. Maybe it’s just the sense that if the illustration is that creative, the story must be too.

Christmas Inspirations

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Getting Them and Giving Them

When it comes to Christmas, one almost get’s overloaded on Inspiration. Christmas carols, symbols and holiday lights are all around. Snowmen pop up where there is no snow, usually in plastic of inflatable form. And I’ve yet to encounter a retail store without some version of a Christmas Teddy Bear. For me, having a Christmas tree is one of the big things. It needn’t be a big tree. But there is something about the smell and the lights and pretty decorations that says “Christmas”. It somehow reminds me of the beauty of a star filled sky and a winter landscape with snowy trees even if it’s 60 degrees outside and the tree is on a table in the house.

I love the challenge of coming up with holiday horses and teddy bear designs. And I love admiring the ones I see, special made from Breyer Animal Creations, The Trail of the Painted Ponies, Vermont teddy bears, artist teddy bears and all sorts of others. I can’t often afford to buy, but I can admire them nonetheless.

But the greatest challenge of the season comes from wondering how to give that gift of inspiration to others. The relatives with doom and gloom in their hearts due to bills threaten to dampen my own spirit. In fact, however many bills we have and however difficult it is with a new job and limited funds to pay them, we are well off. Some people have nothing but a cardboard box. Some people don’t even have their freedom or their health.

And I  must say I do get mad at people who stomp on the spirit. Not the ones who are just feeling low and worried, mind you.  It’s why I don’t like black Friday or shopping Christmas Eve. It has nothing to do with how I feel about sales, or the commercial apsects. It’s because instead of inspiring the spirit of giving, it inspires greed. People trample each other just to buy a toy. They rob each other. They block traffic intersections even though they can’t go anywhere and gridlock a whole neighborhood. No. To me that is not what Christmas is about. That takes a sacred holiday (and I mean sacred to most of us, even non Christians) about giving and turns it into a ‘who got the most gifts cheapest and fastest’ festival.

Now for me, I believe in the Christmas story. The whole miracle of God’s son coming down as a tiny baby and being born in a stable is wonderful. Maybe it appeals to me more because it was a stable. Animals are somehow more open and honest than people. I’ve sure never had one lie to me. So it doesn’t seem like a bad place to be born. I would think it would be a quiet place. It’s the theme of the undeserved, unexpected and easily taken for granted special gift. A gift that arrived unlooked for. t’s easy to overlook such things in our modern world. We are busier, noisier and needier than ever before. Face it. Back then they didn’t need cars, or computers. But the modern American economy wish crash flat if they all ceased to function, and a sizable chunk of the rest of the world would too. Of course, I doubt Mary and Joseph thought of it as peaceful to begin with. Traveling by donkey and finding noisy crowds,  then realizing she was about to give birth probably seemed pretty chaotic to them. Imagine Joseph’s reaction when she said the baby was coming. I can imagine him holding the donkey’s rope and going “NOW?” in dismay, whilst looking frantically around for somewhere, anywhere, for her to have the child. He was probably silently pleading with the promised ‘Son of God’ in her womb to stay there for just awhile longer.

Others may just enjoy Christmas as a time of giving gifts and being with family. I believe in Santa Claus too. Look him up you’ll find there really was a Santa Claus. Legend often starts as a grain of truth. It’s often seen in cheesy holiday movies these days that the kid realizes the Santa in the suit at the mall isn’t the ‘real’ Santa. But I’m not so sure of that. He may not be the original Santa. But I think Santa Claus comes back to the purest most basic form of the Christmas story: a giver of gifts, which contrary to the naughty and nice idea may not even be deserved or asked for. If they hold a generous heart every mall Santa is Santa. And so is every Dad assembling a new bike at two AM.  Every Mom is Santa or Mrs. Santa even if she’s a single mom juggling two jobs trying desperately to feed the kid, let alone give them a gift.

Now for  me, money is kind of tight. New job, old bills and the usual woes. But I know there are many people far worse off and this is my prayer: That they should all be given that gift of the unexpected kindness this Christmas. An unexpected dinner from a friend, a bill paid they weren’t sure how to cover, the hug of true friendship and an unexpected bonus of a special toy or music or other inspirational gift.

And I will believe, I have to, both on Christmas and off that we have to have faith in more than just our own little selves. If I only had that, I’d be a wreck. How could I hope to pay these bills? To earn enough money? On my own, I couldn’t. Because it takes more than one person to support one person. It takes an employer to hire, customers who want whatever your offering, family and friends to support when your low or when the first two aren’t available. It takes agencies to help with bills, or job seeking. It takes doctors and nurses to help one stay healthy. Not a one of us really truly functions alone. And when you see someone homeless on the street, they may not have gotten there alone either. Are they really too lazy to work, or do they have health or mental issues? Do they have family? Would they take help if it was offered? Sometimes it only takes one act of kindness to make a difference. And to give that you have to have that Christmas faith that it will help, even if you can’t see the results in the short term or perhaps ever at all. Call it ‘Do unto others’ or even Karma, but in the end the kindness comes back in unexpected ways.

The most important thing about Christmas inspirations is, it has to hold for more than just a day. The power of giving an unexpected kindness is just as strong throughout the year. It has to be because the rest of the year there are no Christmas trees or bright holiday lights to remind us.

New Online Advent Calendar

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Get in the Christmas Spirit!

Check here: Starhorsepax.com each day for new surprises behind the doors. Freebies, Inspirational items, stuff I made and things I found to be of interest. But don’t wait too long…it won’t be there forever!

Also keep watching the my Zazzle pages. New items are being added all the time and Zazzle has sales on every day this month! Remember most designs are customizable! That means you can add the recipient’s name or a special message to the design. Check out the ornaments that you can add a ‘to and from’ on the back. They make great gifts or will even double as gift tags.

Cafepress also has items on sale, including Christmas stockings.

Finally, don’t forget your Christmas Cards. For your horse loving friends or for those who love teddy bear, remember my  store at Greeting Card Universe . Expect sales there too. You can also customize the message in these cards. If you want special customizations – a name on front or like a design and would like to see it with a specific message or customization on front,  contact me. It can probably be done. There is a button right in each card page for contacting the artist (namely  me!)

Christmas Teddy Bear and Horse