Work Update

My last post was a dip into talking about my work that I’ve been doing, and as I type this I’m listening to a Red Hat meeting on how to support your Black Associates. In the past two weeks the Black Lives Matter movement has extended even more across the globe, sparked this time by the unjust murder of George Floyd. The movement was initially created in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. I suggest if you haven’t looked around their website that you take advantage of the resources provided, as well as the lists of important texts and books by black authors being shared around the internet. There are no shortage of podcasts as well (I’m currently listening to Fanti). Black lives have always mattered, they are beloved, and needed. Every time I as a white person feel the need to speak on the current situation, I need to take a step back and ask, “Is this going to drain black people emotionally? Am I going to unintentionally add to the trauma that they are going through? Am I in my lane?” Don’t talk about the racist conversations you try to shut down to your black friends, just so that they can give you a medal, because no ones giving them a medal for all the racist encounters they experience. Sit in your discomfort but don’t stop learning, continue to sign petitions, donate, and if you can go to protests then do so safely.

Black lives matter.

And now I provide a sneaky peak of one of the pages I’ve been working on this week, which I hope that you will enjoy as you take time to take care of yourself.

I save all my files and jpegs of the coloring book here on github, so if you’re curious about what else is getting wrapped up it’s all out in the open before I even create my blog post.

Right now I have a few several pages created and formatted that I’ve been jumping back and forth from, so I guess you’ll just have to wait until they’re done, or download my saved files for krita on github haha.

Stay safe out there!

First Week of my Affair with Fedora

Hello! So perhaps I should introduce myself really quickly.

I'm Madeline, I'm 21 years old, I've lived in the same house my entire life, I'm the oldest of three (I used to be able to pin my two younger brothers at the same time, and then they kept growing *sad resigned face*. They remind me that's in the past now [but really we love each other!]) I've wanted to be an illustrator ever since I heard that it was a proper job at the beginning of high school, and I adore drawing. Since it'll be awhile before any of us actually meet imagine me at 5'8" so you really get the tall energy through the computer screen.

I am developing a new, openly-licensed coloring book in the style of the SELinux Coloring Book and the Containers Coloring Book, in order to help explain kubernetes technical concepts and open source technology to a wide audience. I am going to be developing storyboards for the next two weeks, which I will then clean up to produce a final, print-ready coloring book for the end of the summer.

This doodle like page was after I downloaded Krita (which by the way is amazing? My dad said to our family, "Madeline has been drinking the open source cool aide a lot this week" but honestly I think kids who want a digital program that's way cheaper than Adobe would love Krita) and was trying to set up my tablet, figure out what brushes were speaking to me, and how the characters for the story should look.

Everyone really likes the huge mustache-y dwarf apparently. Which makes me extremely glad.

This is the storyboard/rough version of the cover.

And the back cover.

These below, are my first pass at creating a layout for all the pages at once while looking at the script.

I don't expect many to understand what is happening, but I wanted to have a clearer idea of how many pages I needed to be working on in a day. Also it's interesting because Mo said 12-20 pages, and I really hit the limit with 20 pages exactly lol.

And having the general overview will help me make these more clearer, and in the style of the cover and back cover, to present to the technical advisors on the project.

Have a wonderful start to your week!

- Madeline