About Mistletoe’s Night

You can find everything you want to know about this book right here.

What

Mistletoe’s Night is a story about a teddy bear whose sole purpose in life is to be a Christmas decoration… until one December day, he is thrown out with the trash and has to find a new home.

Get the Mistletoe’s Night on Lulu

Why

A number of years ago I created a short 3D animated movie titled Mischievous Bears that starred two bears similar to Mistletoe. Shortly thereafter, I came up with another story with this character but was uncertain as to how I was going to present it. I really wanted to make another more elaborate movie, but to tell the story I wanted to tell would have required an incredible amount of time and resources on my part.

Ultimately, I settled on telling the story in print form for one of two reasons: One, it would be much easier for me to create the visual material required for it, and two, it was a new medium for me to try out.

How

Mistletoe’s Night was created using open-source software almost exclusively. All of the applications that were used to create this book can be freely downloaded by anyone (see below).

The illustrations were originally created using a 3D modeling application called Blender. Once they were final, the resulting 2D rendering was touched-up with the Gimp to adjust for lighting, color, shadows, etc. Once the individual illustrations were completed, they were laid out page-by-page in Scribus with the final draft of the text.

See also: Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, OpenOffice.org, Scribus

Who

Ted Balmer is a web developer, graphic designer, animator, and published illustrator. He spent years refining his skills in various visual arts ranging from designing websites to 3D animation. Recently, he designed the illustrations for a college-level engineering textbook, which is used across the country.

He currently resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.