So glad you enjoyed everything!
I’m really happy you liked the Torchic picture — I had fun drawing that and hoped it’d be recognizable once you opened the puzzle! The progress looks awesome already, even if the colors are a pain 
Hopefully those chocolates eased the pain a bit, haha.
I’m really glad to see you pulled the illustrator art Chansey and that it fits right into one of your collections!
Thanks for the kind words, and enjoy finishing the puzzle (Maybe frame it if its frame worthy!) 
Oh no, i think the praxinoscope lost a leg! I can upload a small video i made of it running if you are alright with me sharing, its your gift afterall.
Also the fliposcope pages flip downward.
Since i was in a rush trying to get things sent and really stink at explaining unless ive taken my time and i know its all kinda strange I wanted to give my thought process. I also forgot to add a signed card so that will be headed your way shortly.
First, sorry it was late. I couldnt make up my mind on what to do for a gift but i knew it had to be film related. There are very few pokemon objects that are actually showcasing film. The sleeves were one of the few things i found. So i continued looking through your history and knew of your interest in film but also knew that finding some cards that would match your collection that you didnt already have was going to be tough. The binder just looks great in purple with the gengar design and you cant have a new binder without some cards to fill it with, obviously, so packs were a must. I decided on some modern gengar arts in 10s to match your collection standards since i had a good idea that youd hadnt gotten them yet but while i waited for those to arrive i dove into the crafty side of things.
I read about your views and thoughts around ai as a filmmaker. It would be easy to get an extended art case for a gengar card but it wouldnt feel right because so many are made through generative processes. So i decided to go early film history with no possibility of ai and make some simple animations (which ive never done) to link pokemon to your love of filmmaking. I couldnt decide how best to get the scenes i wanted, a zoetrope was too limiting at about 8 frames and poor lighting, a flip book would take dozens of images… so i found a praxinoscope with 12 frames and decided to do a fliposcope at 24frames of a totally different scene.
The fliposcope: I made so many scenes of gengar through his day with the concept of “your work (being spooky in this case) does not define your whole life (enjoying life outside of work)” but couldnt get it animated smoothly in the flip concept. More of a comic format. So i decided that based on your more sparse posting to the forum this past year, that maybe a focus on why you would like gengar was what needed to be the focus. I decided to center around gengar being the start of everything, the first thing that sucked so many people in, the iconic beginning at the start of an entire franchise. Part of the idea was also that no matter how things are going, you can reset to the beginning and start again. The really interesting part to me is the perspective, its not from a neutral perspective but framed more from Gengars side of things, that really gave me the feel that we are on gengars side. Anyways, lots of breaking down the intro frame by frame to get the right amount of movement while trying to not lose the action in 23 frames but who cares about gamefreak as the title card, this is a gift for Gengarbrigade and i wanted to make sure that was clear. Some slight editing later, voila.
Also, i dont know if you know written music but my “title” of this piece is the music notes written on top, its the begining of the battle intro you hear when that scene plays.
The praxinoscope: Similar struggles, i was torn how to make an interesting scene with so few frames but also how to add a custom flair to it. I found a kit with 12 frames and buildable but only shipping from Lithuania. Once it arrived i wanted to make sure everything worked and tested correctly before sending. As i built and tested it, I made several scenes trying to depict a Gengar dancing like in a circus show with haunter and gastly flying around with an idea of the center of attention entertaining others but it didnt feel right. My skills for animation also failed me at this point and the space i had was less than expected so i reconfigured the plan to a gastly doing a looping fly around with the same idea, you can always start again on your path (Doing a simple gengar scene of him looking menacing just didnt feel like it had much meaning to it). At least that was the intent.
So there you have it, no ai was used in the making of this gift and lots of sketches were made to give you hopefully an unexpected and unique gift. The signed drawing was one of the more final sketches that i used to pull all the frames that went onto the praxinoscopes ribbon. All the drawing made me run really late in sending, which i feel terrible for, but I hope your holidays went well. Youll get another envelope in the future with my signed card that i hope you like.
Merry Christmas!
The conkers bad fur day image just mainlined nostalgia into my veins. Time to bust out the N64 
@TorterraSimp nails it again!
The creativity on this forum never ceases to amaze me. That rolodex(?) is so cool @lyleberr
Its like an animation rolodex. Its essentially a 24 page flipbook.
Super cool gift with nice personal touches @lyleberr—and two craft things, at that! (I’d love to see the animation, but we’ll leave it to @gengarbrigade, as it is their gift to share or not share 
)
I bought 2 F4F statues from Conkers. That multiplayer was top notch!
Agreed! Now that I think about it I don’t think I even played the campaign 
Thank you for that incredibly detailed explanation! Please don’t feel bad. I’m honored with what you sent me. Yes, you have my blessing to share!
Lets see if this upload works…
My gift got delivered a few days ago and the wait to see them post is killing me! Hopefully they liked it.
Just want to let my secret Santa know that I received your package this week…but I am out of town until the 16th so I got a family member to grab it for me. So my post will be delayed but I am pumped to get home now haha!!
this is so ridiculously cool oh my god
This is one of the coolest items that I have seen on e4 SS! 
I apologize for not posting this sooner, but my Secret Santa appeared last week and Im only now getting around to posting about it. My Santa this year was the great @DeekBoy and I’m so impressed by all of it!
I started off with his letter, may have spoiled myself a bit, but I always read these first.
I love your daughter’s work, certsinly better than anything I could do! Also, the photo is amazing! Did you take it yourself? I havent gone hunting online yet to see anything about it. Its almost like a Yuka Morii piece!
Next, I was just blown away by this 3D printed Dragapult. It is so detailed! First 3D printed anything I have, so cool!!
After that was TWO whole stacks of FA trainers and some other cards as well. I love FA trainers, ESPECIALLY the team grunt cards. They are always so fun. My year last year wasnt so great and I ended up selling a large portion of my non-Greninja collection, including almost all my FA trainers I had in binders. The cards in these stacks are a lot of the ones I loved and let go. Thank you so much for these, it really has meant a lot to me.
The last package was clearly a slab, but Inwasnt expecting a 10! Friends In X are some of my absolute favorites, getting my hands on a Friends In Alola card is a bucket list goal.
Last but certainly not least, some local meat rub! My wife was certainly the most excited about this! I will be using this a lot!
All I can say, is thank you! Thank you so much! I have been pretty removed from the hobby since I lost my job last March. Things have been hard, but they are better now. New, better job now. Family is generally happier, and I am a lot healthier as well. Everything worked out so far, but it was a struggle. Starting the new year off with such a great gift really hit me hard.
I dont think I’ve quite realized how much I have missed E4 and all the great people here till exactly right now, writing this.
No worries on opening it late! I was nervous that I shipped it to the wrong house. Stoked that you love the FA cards I picked out. Some of my favorites for sure.
I did take the toy photo! It’s a huge passion of mine that I rarely get to do. He reminded me of the dilophosaurus after I took the picture
Hopefully the 3Dprint arrived in one piece. He was super fragile and broke when boxing him up so I had to repair him.
enjoy the meat rub! I put it on EVERYTHING!!!
glad to hear things are getting better for you! Happy new year and hope to see you around the fourums more!
Jesus my hand writing is bad. My apologies lol
