Hi World,
I thought I'd give you an update, since I haven't blogged in a long time and haven't been able to spend much time on MySpace lately:

I'm in art-hibernation mode, especially since the time I have available for my personal art projects is so limited right now. In my mind, that's what the winter months are for anyway, so if I don't respond to online nudgings, please don't take it too personally. I'll re-emerge at some point. Besides, I'm working on something cool. Eventually, you guys will hear about it. For now though, no-- I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, just into my winter cocoon for a while.

The Artful Dodger,
Ratna

For those of you who pay attention to such things, you may notice that I have a new friend in my top two. You may further notice that this person looks a lot like me. Hey! Good job! It is my alter ego who sings stuff.

When I was a kid, I always told everyone that I wanted to be an artist, an actor or a singer when I grew up. I don't want to be an actor anymore, but obviously the art stuff has remained very important to me. My musical commitment has been sort of in the closet and I've tended to blame the fact that I haven't done anything with my music on not having other people to make music with. With the computer technology in a Macintosh iBook, however, I've been given the keys to the kingdom, it seems. Now I can drive my housemates mad by singing the same snippets of song over and over as I cobble together songs and present them for your amusement and amazement.

Come on over to my music page and check 'em out:

Come on, I wouldn't send you there unless I thought they were good. More clicky, less looky.

Hallo people,
I've not posted in far too long. Most of my work lately has been in Flash, but it's high time I posted some of my drawings.
I contributed to a comic on Indie Spinner Rack. I am (or will be) the second or third from the end, though it's not too long so go ahead and check out the cool stuff other people posted as well:

Indie Spinner Rack Quickies: "Fear the Robot"

I'm gonna go and look for stuff to post.

-Robotna

Hey Folks, I've had many, many conversations concerning the notion that an artist must review his/her rights before committing to do any freelance projects for others. I wrote these as a reminder for myself to be smart and assertive. Perhaps these will be helpful for those of you who, like me often forget how to charge appropriately:

THE ARTIST'S MIRANDA RIGHTS

1.) YOU HAVE THE RIGHT [and the RESPONSIBILITY] --before signing up for a project-- to create
a detailed, itemized, written proposal which includes appropriately high fees for each segment of the project. Be clear about limiting the number of "free" revisions included in your initial fee. Beyond this point, any agreed-upon changes, whether suggested by the artist or by the client, will result in additional fees.
CONSIDER:What attractive benefits will you receive as a result of entering into a relationship with this
client?

2.) YOU HAVE THE RIGHT [and the RESPONSIBILITY] to leave, decline to work on (or renegotiate
the terms of) ANY project which does not meet all of the following criteria:
I. The project must pay *very* well (it must be more than equal to your living expenses).
II. The project must present a creative challenge.
III. The project must be beneficial to you, both as a person and as an artist.

3.) YOU HAVE THE RIGHT [and the RESPONSIBILITY] to let your clients know that they are paying
for quality work. It is therefore imperative that you charge an appropriately high fee for your services, even
(and especially) if:
A. You are doing them a favor [REMEMBER: They are LUCKY that you are setting aside time to work on
their project!!].
B. You are trying to get a foot in the door [REMEMBER: You are a professional. YOU HAVE ALREADY
PROVEN YOURSELF!].

Copyright Ratna Pappert 2007. Feel free to use/share this to prevent bad work situations. I'll update this copyright with a creative commons license when I get the chance.

Ok World,
Most of you who know me personally know that I have been working on the "artwork and paper-engineering for the pop-up-book-style opening credits of a short film" for a many, many months.

The scope of the project shifted a lot as I was working on it, with the end result being that the many-layered illustrations I created will be animated in AfterEffects instead of being an actual pop-up book filmed in stop-motion-animation. On the one hand, I feel embarrassed and a little less fancy than I did when I told everyone the end result would be actual physical pop-ups of the artwork I created. On the other hand, I am so relieved to have completed my commitment to this project that I am willing to put my pride off to the side for now and save all my dummy pop-ups and R&D for use on a future pop-up book project.

So. Send me congratulations. I need it.

Wow! I got a very nice review by Fanboy Radio!
There was a contest to win a free Artists' Alley table at LA Wizard World, March 16th-18th 2007.

Scott Hinze and the talented Jon Landry reviewed each one of the contest submissions on the air (during the last quarter of the show).


I used to have a link up so you could go see my stuff, but apparently it's no longer working. Sorry!

Hi Folks,

Some of you have expressed an interest in purchasing some of the stuff I've created. I've put some of my artwork onto pillows, journals and other neat stuff. Check it out by clicking below.

Come visit my store on CafePress!

Ratna

P.S. (Sorry this blog entry is so boring. Maybe the thrill of being a part of our consumer culture will entertain you).

P.P.S. I still like my old cell phone better.

I'm mad at my new cell phone for not being my old cell phone. It's an upgrade. I wanted it to keep all the features I liked about my old phone plus have the dubious benefits of enhanced technology at my fingertips. I'm low tech. I am. Look. What's that I'm drawing with? A pencil. A number two pencil. Not a fancy Wacom Stylus or a magical laser from the future. I just want the things I'm used to...
"Wait a minute, it's stopped hailing. Guys are swimming, guys are sailing. Playing baseball, gee, dat's better. Muddah, Faddah, kindly disregard dis lettah."

...I mean, I figure that's going to be the punchline eventually. It just hasn't happened yet.

Fooey.

I'll probably post a drawing about this before too long so that this blog post becomes an entertaining anecdote rather than just me grousing about how things sure aren't like they were in the "good old days". But they aren't.

Hi Folks,
Sorry it's been a while. Here's some stuff I've been working on, along with some stuff y'all may have already seen (I'll probably remove duplicates from earlier posts).
Thanks for lookin',

Ratna
(as usual, everything here is Copyright 2005-2006 Ratna Pappert. Don't steal it or you'll be in big trouble... Do I really have to say that? Be cool.)

Ok, so I'm what I think of as a stereotypical girl in that I don't draw cars a lot. But I was reading about this automobile designer with a cartoony style who said that instead of "carving" his cars out of shoebox shapes, he starts by drawing a mango shape instead and then "carves" his vehicles out of that to get them nicely wonky and in perspective. Somehow that helped. I drew these based on characters from Pixar's latest movie; I'm still not good enough at wonky that I could modify existing cars to make them kinder and gentler,  but maybe I'll get there. I sure do like mangoes.