LINE Stickers!!!

Hello friends, Panda here! Let's see what's cooking!

Firstly, work's been a wild ride, so I took a trip abroad. While I was out, I decided to break out the laptop and actually concentrate on my drawings. They seemed a bit antiquated. I'd been using the same style for so long, kinda just recycling it because it was easier, but now I think it's time to break out of that habit.

Behold, the fruits of my labor. I have created a set of stickers for the LINE chat app! You may get them here:  https://store.line.me/stickershop/product/32034733/en

To come up with all these different expressions wasn't easy. I'm one of those people who gets a terrible case of artist's block for years on end. There's tons of creators out there who just pick up a pen and doodle away with ease, I envy them so much ToT

So how do I draw? What is my technique? I'll tell ya one thing, I do NOT freehand my drawings, never, I can't do it lol. Behold, the amazing bendy line tool from Adobe Animate, a tool that does not exist in any art program, period, except for Animate (formerly Flash).

The line tool is a lot like clay, which is a weird analogy for me to make because I don't sculpt, but I'd imagine it's quite the same. Draw, bend and manipulate. That's all there is to it. Think coloring book.

She's coming along real nice. I also work in layers. I can skip a lot of detail by just not drawing the stuff under objects, heck, look what's behind her bow.

Now that I have sped up my process of production, I think I'll finally be able to get some real work done here very soon.

I decided to change the mouth. I thought maybe it would be her blowing against steaming ramen, but I wasn't satisfied, so I'll play it cool and give her a familiar smile x)

There you have it! Guess I'll have to go back and replace all the older bit of my site with the updated visuals. Panda out!

SHOP UPDATE 2025 - ETSY

 Greetings all, this is a past midnight post after working on a few tidbits here and there... to the point:

I have decided to finally go with Etsy for hosting my shop items. Paypal, Stripe etc etc.. no longer support the shopping cart feature, which means you cannot combine shipping. Etsy will allow you to create a shopping cart and combine shipping.

I'm glad I went with this, I will no longer worry about fans having to create separate purchases and having to report individual shipping per item just to clear my funds on paypal. *wipes sweat away*

Don't forget, all items are made to order!

New products and PayPal update!

Hi friends. Here's some details on what's going on with the products and the new checkout procedure.

T-Shirts:
I was originally using heat transfers like 3G Jet Opaque and JPSS, no more... I now have access to Heat Transfer Vinyl, this is the good stuff! I know you folks will enjoy the quality because this is the real deal.

Stickers:
I am now using water proof stickers with laminate. These stickers are also resistant to abrasion (if you stick them on your phone case and put the phone in your pocket, or back of a laptop and into a bag, they will not scratch off). You can also put them on tumblers and water bottles.

Made To Order:
I have decided to adopt the made to order policy, which means if you order, I will start building the product and ship. A doll usually takes about 4 hours to craft, stickers take a few minutes to print and cut, and the keychains can be made in an afternoon etc... Trust me, they don't take long. If I have to make 5 dolls, it might take about 2-3 days depending on my schedule.

The big PayPal Update:
PayPal no longer supports "add to cart", in fact, all merchant tools out there, like Stripe, also seem to have discontinued the add to cart function. This is an unfortunate turn of events for all independent merchants out there. For the moment, you will have to buy each item separately with no combined shipping. I will get to the bottom of this ASAP. Someone out there knows...

That's all for now, stay tuned!

Episode 2 is in the works!

Hello all! It's been a while since the last update. I've been hard at work, but finally got my spirits up to get back to the drawing board. I'm finally getting to work on some more e-cards and even the second episode I had stashed away for so long.

What are they making? Who is it for? Will all go as planned? Stay tuned, in Bunny and Panda - Let's Get Cookin! 

I'm about 1/3 of the way through, each episode are approximately 3 minutes long. Soundtracks are all Scott Joplin rags and other pieces. Hope you all enjoy!

Old HugClub Images

Hi all, Panda here! While cleaning some old directories, I found some old drawings from years back (around 2006). While not the original 90s illustration (a far cry from it as I was not good at drawing on PC vs Pen/Markers) I'd say the 90s version is more along the lines of balloon basket panda as seen below.. Otherwise, these were early PC illustrations. The funny chonky panda (top middle) was an experimental design that didn't go anywhere, but I kept it just because..

These are some images that I used to post on a social network called Hi5. The social network was unique as you had complete control of the HTML on your profile. So what did I do? I completely erased my profile page's HTML and replaced it with a flash animated profile that instead acted as an interactive webpage. 

At the very bottom are some badges I used to send friends on a Hi5 (with CSS, one could display this badge on their profile).

A small, but fun piece of history of HugClub.

SHIRTS AND POSTERS ARE COMING!!!

Welcome back, Panda here!

The store is finally being stocked with the variety of goods I had imagined. I've also got an experimental item on the table.

First up is Shirts! I've got a nice variety of shirts for all folks, Ladies and Gents, couple shirts, etc.. Materials may be subject to change. I'm working with 3G Opaque and JPSS (same stuff Mall kiosks use), however I'm gunning for a BN-20 which does vinyl prints. This machine can also handle posters and stickers, which I currently do with my Epson at the moment, but so far so good.

Next up is Posters. These are 13x19 matte sheets, vector art, and they look great! Here's a small sample, I'm sure you'll enjoy the selection soon to be updated.

This'ol blog doesn't do it justice, to actually see the brilliant inks must be experienced in person.

Finally, I've got some framed embroidery work. I'm using a Brother SE600. So far I've been doing some side projects (unrelated to HugClub). These are embroidery patterns that came from a Game Boy cart called Mario Family, but I'd like to show off what this machine is capable of. I'll have to see about designing some HugClub related embroideries and framing them the way I have done with this little side project. Observe....

That's all for now. Hope you're all excited for what's to come!

Maintenance 2

A slight service interruption has been fixed.

For those interested: I use Adobe Animate CC 2019, 2020 AND 2021 to publish my site. The reason is because each version has bugs and bug fixes... I publish index.html through 2019 because of an iframes bug that appeared in 2020 and 2021. I publish ecards.html through 2020 because the formatting of 2019 became incompatible with the most recent versions of browsers, and in 2021, the console spams errors.

Today's bug was ecards.html. I tried publishing through CC2021, but it gave me a non-stop garbling list of complaints in the console. I backed up to CC2020 and it stopped complaining.

The ultimate solution will be to build the site from scratch in CC2021, by HAND TYPING EVERY LINE OF CODE!!!! Because... I tested something.... saving the old document in a new version seems to break things. Even worse, copying and pasting code from the old document to a newly created document seems to paste over an unseen corruption that breaks everything. Instead, I hand typed the code and it worked... This is going to be a long and grueling process, but hey, at least things work for now.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program...