A couple of weeks ago I talked about the personal time spent over the year. I also noted last week that I was going to write about Elves vs Snowmen. It has been over 5 years since I left MPI Architects in Dallas. While I was there the office had a tradition of sending out a New Year’s card in lieu of a Christmas card. There was some sound logic for this, but out of respect to my former employer, I will keep it to myself. Now let’s jump into some fun.

Well, it was fun for me. Prior to my digital art renderings of Elves vs Snowmen. David Marsee, one of the Principals at MPI, would do a hand sketch of Elves moving into the new year. He would have fun with it and show them caught in different situations. One year, while playing with some new rendering software, I did a funny image for myself. David saw it and suggested I develop it for the News Years’ card.

I did the first one in 2007, over 11 years ago. The concept was to have the elves building the New Year, in some form. Or better put, they are moving in the new year. As each progressed, I would try to show the previous year being used. I end up doing seven of these. The last year I did one was 2013, I moved from Dallas to Tucson in November. I don’t believe MPI used the image for their 2014 card. Dennis did ask me to update it for 2017. I did some material tweaks and you saw another update for 2019.

These were fun to do, and I hope you get a chuckle out of them. If I get bored, I may do another one for 2020. Just because it is time to stretch the mind and dig into the gray matter. Cheers!

the one that started it all

technical note, the elves now have feet. in 2007, I couldn't get AutoCAD to model an elf foot.

Welcome penguins, play on the year 10 and an X for a strike in bowling

Building the 11, yes a little construction

The year our office moved, so elves moved to an island.

MPI planned on an Open House.

The house is done, and everyone tries to get along.

Some technical notes. All of the images are original 3D models created in AutoCAD. The rendering software is Accurender nXt. At the time, these would take about 30 days to model and another 12 to 24 hours to render. To give you an idea how quick the rendering process has become. The redone image for 2019 in my News years Blog took 15 minutes.

…and now for something completely different.
If you were to stretch a Slinky out until it’s flat, it would measure 87 feet long.