Star Wars Taco-Nacho Baby Shower!

I was "commissioned" to make the decor and favors for my sister-in-law's baby shower. First things first, my other sisters-in-law and my brother helped come up with "punny" names for the taco/nacho bar. So we had a list going without even knowing what exactly was on the menu. It was fun to come up with, but as soon as we got a finalized list of the food, some proved to be hard to think of a pun.

Some names needed some visuals to help it, some just conjured up some funny images in my head that inspired me to break out the pencil and draw again.

Here are some lovely snapshots from Sandy Wu:

One of the crowd favorites and my favorite to draw was "Han Pollo."

My personal favorite because I layered in actual photo texture of tortillas...mmm...

Most names provided by Teri and Dano Garcia. Teri did the lettering and did a better job on creating the star background on the welcome banner.

There's a "Jedi Salsa" with a green lightsaber for the salsa verde and "Jar Jar Chips" in the back. "Chewbacca-mole" was a crowd favorite and "Leia of Lettuce" was my sister-in-law's favorite. "TaunTaun Guts" is actually a modified and cropped version of "Dead Tauntaun" by beackadoodles/DeviantArt. 

I thought it was cute when one of the little kids was asking his dad if he could have some "Berry BB-8", a real kid-pleaser.

I did the background as well, all done with regular scissors and a blade, which was harder to do than I thought. No cricut used here.

We used the Star Wars font provided by Boba Fonts. Some cutouts are from a font set provided by Tom Mouat.

In addition to the decor, I also did the party favors. They were chocolate Han Solos with black M&M's and gold candy-coated pearl chocolates.

Labels by Teri Garcia

Han Solo black chocolate

Star Wars and tacos into the night

What I'll be working on all night long...cutting, taping, and making chocolates

These are the finished product of my sketches.
Materials: blue highlighter, India ink, scanner, Photoshop

Inked Star Wars Tacos

Inked versions of the Star Wars sketches

Admiral Tacobar

Some sketches for my brother's baby shower. It has a super awesome theme, Star Wars and TACOS!!!!

Hitgirl: from start to finish

Final:



DONE! now just playing with the final image with background and text.

Summer so far in Yoshi Island

Finally got Yoshi Island to look pretty sweet. I took a break from my internship to allow the computer to render out a spiffy camera shot of the island. Got about three seconds...too bad. And I'm still fidgeting with the light and render settings so there's no flicker in the tree leaves. No matter what I do it's always there. I try to look up what causes it and most agree that the solution is boosting up the quality and using a HUGE render farm. The problem is I have time to deal with.
Well this is what I got:

So, what have I been doing while away from the computer? Touring the Bay Area with my Dutch "sister" and COMIC CON!!! I also walked the walk at my graduation! and Comic Con! Went to a free Flogging Molly concert in downtown San Jose! and.....did I mention Comic Con? I got to see DJ Lance Rock with Plex and Brobee from "Yo Gabba Gabba!", MC Lars and the Aquabats in concert! I danced, screamed, sang, moshed, and skanked like there was no tomorrow. I got trampled on once while trying to pick up my new Aquabats shirt I dropped while moshing to a Yo Gabba Gabba song. It was crazy! I was able to take a pic and get an autograph from DJ Lance Rock and the human Brobee on my "There's a party in my tummy" shirt! It would be so fun working on that show. Saw a few panels; some really good(Watchmen, Wolverine- Hugh Jackman came in as a surprise after another panel and had the audience go crazy when he personally thanked the cretor of Wolverine who was sitting in the audience), and some I could care less about (The Day the Earth Stood Still and Max Payne). Alot more Comic Con exclusives being sold. Had to wait in line to get a ticket to wait in another line for Hasbro Toys. Lines for freebies got ridiculousulous. Had to play a scavenger hunt for getting a Batman and Joker Lego. Sign up, take surveys, play a video game, etc. for freebies. And of course the occasional chaotic crowds when they just hand out or throw the freebies. Nerds killing nerds....sad....but fun! Definitely going next year. Pre-registered at the con to avoid procrastinating until 4-day passes are sold out again. There's too much to share and pictures are worth a thousand words. So click for pics.

Yoshi Island

So, I've been learning to use Vue 6, which is a pretty cool program. I'm thinking of using it to make a better looking background to one of my old renders from my Texture and Lighting 2 class. Anyways, I was just playing around with it and one noise option for the procedural terrain made mountains that reminded me of the backgrounds in the Yoshi games and probably in the Mario games.

Above, is my first render. I thought the trees were too big. I wanted it to feel like a bigger island. And it seems a bit too bright.

This is a render of the other side of the mountain, which is why it's darker. Just edited the material/texture a little bit. I really like using Vue cause it's node-based and it takes me back to the days of Maya's Hypershade and Shake. Changed the trees to evergreen/fir, but it's still too big. It's hard to tell the scale of the trees when different types aren't consistent. And I'll put back the palm trees on the edges of the island. These are just high-quality test renders.
Well, there's a free Personal Learning edition of Vue on their site. Check it out here!