Love is all you need frens! This week’s cover is a lovey-dovey cover from Redlion to spread love, peace, and joy worldwide and in the metaverse. Also, we have a newlywed couple on the block!

This week we had to decide early on what the cover will be about, and of course, there was nothing more fitting than to pay respects to the Pride month. We had to decide early because this past Saturday was Dudly’s wedding! Yippie wooh! Yes, Dudly is officially off the market, and undertaken by a brilliant lady! 

To have things run smoothly in his absence we started the work on the cover early. I need a few more points to level up to that Saturday-Sunday draw and animate marathon that Dudly did for 50+ covers. We got thumbs up for a vector-style illustration that I’ve been really digging for the past few months and had in the back of my mind to use for Dudly’s wedding week. I made a rough sketch to map out what goes where and then set out to create the illustration. 

Once the illustration was done, I took on the animation part with a few ideas to execute. After those were done, I knew I could add more “glance” to the animation as there was plenty of time, so I tried a few other ones that I believe came out decent. The trickiest part of animating was timing all these, looping back properly, and to have a general rhythm since all of the parts were moving. In the end, I was quite happy with the result and so was the team! 

The thoughts gone behind the elements were as follows( starting from top left): Dyno, uncle to my recurring character and pfp Vaga. Dyno is a furious lover of all beings and even went to the extent of getting plastic surgery for a unicorn horn with LEDs. Then we have two rings joining to represent the wedding; a doorway to the love zone where we all should ideally be at all times; “learn, love, respect” in motion; a love meter trying to max out all the time; an ardent reader that we should all be in order to understand and respect different orientations; a block with dots moving straight representing how things are assumed to be black and white but where there is a heart involved love can be of all sorts of colors. Finally, we have the famous track “All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles, with a bouncy eye (for no good reason). Surprisingly this was the track Dudly proposed to, which I had no idea about! Maybe the eye represents my magical powers after all!

For the past two months, I had been looking forward to this week’s Gazette and wanted to perform without any hiccups and make Dudly proud and happy that his lessons didn’t all drain away. I’m so glad I could do that, and so will my gf and mother who have had to put up with me constantly reminding them that this week is Dudly’s wedding and that I’ve to try and hold the fort. 

Wishing Mr & Mrs Dudly a bright, bright future filled with beautiful moments and the strength to tackle all the lemons that life throws at them. See y’all loving folks next week with another cover and story! 

1. small loose particles of stone or sand.
2. accept that (something) is true, especially without proof.
3. grasp or seize suddenly and roughly.
4. grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate.
5. show shyness, embarrassment, or shame by becoming red in the face.
6. the distance from the top or surface to the bottom of something.
7. a small model of a human figure, typically one of a baby or girl, used as a child's toy.
8. pass over or refer only fleetingly to (a subject or problem).
9. a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
10. a long, narrow aperture or slit in a machine for something to be inserted.
11. a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole.
12. a ship or large boat.