#shirozora's pop up shop

[shirozora-draws]

So here we are after a month and a half of sketching out the kind of merch I want to feed my hyperfixation. Not every initial thought survived and I won't touch acrylic standees until a later round, but right now I want to get these done and in my hands by fall of this year.

This is a Brand New Horizon and only intended to be a side project, so bear with me while I figure out how this shit works.

If interested in anything, please fill out this form I slapped together on Google in an hour.

(We'll, uh, revisit art prints at a later date, maybe after I finish Gravity Well and update The Stars)

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

I am intrigued by the thought of the lanyards. I have been trying to find subtle-ish fandom merch, so that sounds right up my alley.

When (roughly) and where is the presale gonna be? I don't want to miss it :)

I hope the design will be up your alley! If not, I have a few other lanyard ideas simmering in the back of my mind (along with a bunch of other things).

I want to say the presale will take place towards the send of September/early October for two weeks. I just need to finish the lanyard design and a replacement Clan Of Three sticker, and that's when the fun begins. I hope. Fingers crossed!

[shirozora-draws]

I needed an excuse to get myself back on track for all things The Stars and what better way to do it than to answer this art prompt from a comment on the 3rd chapter? The man needs more color in his wardrobe, so let's do that.

Color scheme is heavily inspired by Andor's Mon Mothma & family. My reasoning is that I see their clothes to be a blend of Coruscant and Chandrila, and since Leia and the NR government are both located in Chandrila post-OT I imagine that some of Luke's clothes also come from Chandrila. The man can't wear all-black all the time post-OT, I'm just saying.

That little bit of gray/silver under the collar is the silver chain the mythosaur pendant is hanging from. And as an Asian person I will exploit Star Wars' obsession with E. Asian clothing as much as I want.

[shirozora-draws]

I am so late but I am finally done with the first round of merch that I am satisfied with. I am satisfied and we are rolling forward with this set. Now to send off all of my final sample orders so that I know these are absolutely working and are worth posting to a shop site as pre-orders.

Clan of Three lanyards. I recognize that I could easily turn these into washi tapes if I wanted to. We'll see.

Grogu Baby Crimes. Sticker & acrylic shaker charm. Completely revamped after carrying around the old version as an acrylic shaker charm and deciding it was too unwieldy and, more importantly, not cute enough. This will be a sticker option and an acrylic shaker charm option.

Keldabe kiss - Interstellar version. Matte & holographic sticker.

Keldabe kiss - Tatooine version. Matte & holographic sticker.

Live Cheen Reaction. Sticker. For all the fans of Cheen Yofree, the unluckiest third-wheeling Rodian OC.

Need A Hero. Sticker & acrylic charm. The only thing I'm putting forward with Din's face for now. I wanted something cute.

Clan of Two. Sticker. A straightforward general sticker.

The Battle Couple. Sticker (for now). This was actually designed to be an embroidered patch, but I'm not really there yet. The sticker shape is odd so I might present this as a kiss cut sticker.

Luke on Ossus - no scars. Sticker. For people who don't want scars?

Luke on Ossus - scars. Sticker. I just wanted to doodle a thirst trap, thassit.

The Storm. Sticker (for now). I wanted to make more merch for my fics and might use this template for the other fics in the Dangerous Dreams series.

The Clan of Three. Sticker. This motherfucker held me up for MONTHS. I didn't like the previous full-body version especially after getting several sample stickers so I started over... and then got stuck. For months. But here we are. The final piece of the puzzle.

Limited - Tron. Sticker & acrylic charm. I wanted to make a little Tron merch. The acrylic charm will be double-sided with Tron on one side and Rinzler on the other. Thank god this guy is more or less symmetrical.

Limited - Rinzler. Sticker & acrylic charm. For people who like Rinzler. This will be double-sided with Rinzler on one side and Tron on the other side.

I'm sending off a final round of sample sticker and charm orders so that I can get a feel for the revamped and new designs, and once I'm happy I'll get the pop-up shop up and running.

Round 2, I'm looking at small prints, possibly the embroidered patch, and maybe a Tron|Rinzler standee. Also a sticker for The Suns maybe, possibly also The Stars. What if I did a WarGreymon|BlackWarGreymon charm?????

And now.... we write.

[shirozora-draws]

Making the kind of merch I couldn't even dream about making/having because I wasn't at that level of Arting yet and I also didn't know shit about fuck when it came to fan merch existing. Also I was a mostly broke college kid back then with a lot less power and confidence. Might've taken over a decade to get to this point, but better late than never!

Thinking of offering this sticker/acrylic charm design as a limited thing but I guess we'll see what happens once i finish hammering out the final Dinluke sticker design, getting my final test prints/charms in, and setting up shop for pre-orders. I'm terribly slow but at least something is happening.... right?

[shirozora-draws]

Y'ALL.

LOOK WHAT ARRIVED IN THE MAIL TODAY. SPARKLY STICKER SAMPLE, CHARM SAMPLES, LANYARD SAMPLES.

HOWEVER.

ALL THAT AND THEY FUCKED UP THE LANYARDS. I HAVE 10 EACH OF THESE FUCKERS. THEY'RE ALL PRINTED LIKE THIS. ARE YOU SERIOUS. AFTER FOLLOWING THE TEMPLATE AND EVERYTHING, THEY STITCHED THE SIDE THAT SHOULD BE UPSIDE DOWN.

BUT LOOK AT THIS SHIT. THEY'RE SO CUTE. THEY'RE ALL SO CUTE. I LOVE THEM. OMIGOD.

Can't wait to get an explanation from Vograce and can't wait to put the finishing touches on the pop-up shop project.

(also I need a better setup for taking photos fml)

[shirozora-draws]

Options/offerings for the pop-up shop have expanded dramatically and I still have 3 more ideas to walk through to completion (or the trash bin, who knows). They are going on the backburners for now, though, because I need a break from drawing dinluke by... writing dinluke. Makes sense.

[shirozora-draws]

So, uh, it took me all week to finally get the brainstorm machine going. I redrew the Grogu Baby Crimes sticker/shaker charm because I wanted a cuter Grogu and a charm that was easier to hold, easier to read, and easier to shake.

And then I decided to design a dinluke embroidered patch that I can put on my LACC cosplay. I can see about selling some if there's interest. THEN CAME THE NEW STICKER DESIGNS. I wanted a nice simple Din & Grogu one for General Audiences. And then I thought, "We need some very dinluke and Clan of Three stickers". And then I thought, "We need more Luke merch in general." And then I thought, "Maybe I can sneak in something from The Storm."

If there's a design in particular that piques your interest, feel free to mention it in a reply, reblog comment, or tags.

[shirozora-draws]

So. l have sample stickers from two different sticker makers. I'm not sure which maker makes the better stickers though one maker has a faster turnaround time than the other. Several of these are going to have additional tweaks and I may do a second test with the ones I'm editing to make sure they're coming out the way I want them to before I move forward with pre-orders.

But seriously, those two keldabe kiss stickers came out SO GODDAMN NICE.

The interest check form has closed, if anyone was wondering. I have a pretty good idea what people who want to buy merch from me wants which is Cheen Yofree being fed up with this Jedi/Mando holodrama haunting his Rodian ass.

[shirozora-draws]

Second round of samples are in! Funkos and holocron are not included. I like the feel of the epoxy charms better but I'm also absolutely enamored with the holographic stars on the dinluke charm. The lanyard? Now I'm pleased with the results, though I feel a little bad for having that stitching run across Luke's face lol.

I'll start working on the shop in earnest after NaNoWriMo and L.A. Comic Con are over, I swear, this project is still moving forward.

[shirozora-draws]

Pop-up shop update - despite my best efforts, one of the sticker designs is not moving forward for this initial shop launch. I'm not happy with the way it's printing so I'm saving the design for next year's acrylic standees project and also designing a brand new Clan of Three sticker. It won't be part of the initial launch because quite frankly I am tired and out of time. I need to get pre-orders going and I also need to make a small initial purchase first to 1) know how to even order acrylic charms and 2) have a new different item available for the shop, myself, or both. I'll be at this year's LA Comic Con and I just think it'll be neat to have a DinLuke Clan of Three lanyard to attach my badge to. If this interests you, I'll include it when I launch preorders.

Now that that's done, I can get back to writing the next chapter of my giant-ass slow burning fic.

[shirozora-draws]

Burned out while designing/test-printing merch while working on two fics, but I FINALLY got off my ass to tweak things and do a final test run. Have a second batch of stickers in transit but some prints have arrived and they look great! I think they look great. I have no idea what I'm looking for.

The actual point of this test print batch is see how well my "thank you" postcard will print so that I can mass-print it elsewhere but damn, some of these turned out really great. I'll have to go back over them once I'm no longer distracted by this other thing I'm hoping to post this week and I don't know if I'm also going to do prints when I do my stickers and charms run, but these are definitely going to join the pop-up shop lineup.

Just need those stickers to show up and I can start finalizing the shop stuff. And maybe spin out a couple quick lanyard designs because I think it'll be cool to wear one to this year's LA Comic Con.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

Should this go in the art side blog or do I just tag it that way? Who knows, I don't. Anyway, small(?) pop-up shop project update - I did a second test print for a few stickers and all but one was successful. The one that failed is the Clan of Three sticker design because I don't want the sticker to be too big but printing 3" and 4" condenses the details and makes everything real dark and scrunched up. I need to scrap it and redesign it in a way that reads for stickies. I can redo the full body version for the acrylic standee idea next year.

Also working on a real simple dinluke lanyard design because I want to wear it to LACC this December. I'll include it when the pre-orders go live.

So many things to do and so little time to do them all.

[shirozora-draws]

Leap Year Day update, because I thought that would be a neat date to have on this fic.

Very extremely recommend reading the chapter before looking at the art.

Tmw you finally fulfill your years' old desire to paint some fucking fantasy deer.

I sketched the original idea for this scene and posted it a whiiiiiiiile back, and now that idea is part of the story.

Now that the chapter is out, I can get back to finalizing the final pop-up shop stuff and, uh, stopping neglecting the hella expensive figure invention for character animation I'm taking for the spring semester.

[shirozora-draws]

Finally! Here it is, the next update to The Stars and the first post of 2024.

You would not believe the absolutely intense desire I had to paint some trees in a forest. My only critique would be that I wish I was more daring about drawing a messy forest floor but for what I'm trying to get across, this absolutely works. Has an interesting storybook/fairytale feel to it.

I may have also lost my mind and gone a bit bonkers with this one. I mentioned before that these illustrations function as concept art and keyframe art more than direct illustrations, and this is one such instance where the choices I made deviate from the text for the sake of a better illustration.

Had a great time with these, and I really can't wait to tackle the next chapter's set of illustrations... after I work on the pop-up shop project. The LA Comic Con trip last December was a real big inspiration and I'm itching to design more dinluke stickers.

[shirozora-draws]

Shirozora.

We👏(fans)👏need👏a👏update👏

You're in luck! Just finished drafting the 5th chapter of the 3quelfic. It now needs the aggressive editing treatment and then I'll reacquaint myself with the drawing side of things.

As for the pop-up shop project... waiting on some acrylic samples to get here first. In the meantime, feel free to hit up my main blog @trashquisitor-shirozora where the reblog train is occasionally interrupted by my grousing about how hard writing is and how much I suffer for art.

Thanks for stopping by!