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It doesn’t happen often, and heck – it may well never happen again – but at least once more, a Mistigris artist has taken point of pride in having featured as the Sixteencolors “ANSI of the Day”, with a piece from our recently-discharged MIST2000 collection:

I love being surprised with little gems like this.

The artist goes by the name Happyfish, and she represents one of the few textmode pieces in the new Mistigris pack, “Mist2000”. The pack comprises some compiled works by Mist artists circa 1997-2001 - work that was collected but never released.

I have no idea if she ever produced more ANSI work, or if she’s around at all, but if you’re reading this, Happyfish, you really ought to give the ol’ blocks another go. This piece is a definite standout.

I kindly pointed out that while this particular work dates back to approximately the turn of the century, she came out of retirement to take last place in the ANSI category of last year’s NVScene demoparty, and graced MIST1015 with that and one other work of ANSI art (attached), plus the FILE_ID.DIZ actually predating her involvement with Mistigris. So it turns out she’s not 100% retired… just closer to 95%. (And then… I explained our NSFW Eat Poop You Cat work at some great length. Probably it will warrant a blog post here also, eventually.)

In the meantime, however, she has remained creatively busy, chasing a strange new muse as a filk songwriter par excellence. While an early specimen of this work was also included in MIST2000, in a case of serendipitous timing, just as she was being awarded the esteemed AOTD, she also announced the release of a new collection of her songs:

Some people have asked if I’ve been writing fewer songs this year, and the answer is no, but most of them have been D&D songs for a campaign Wesley Crowell has been running at filk cons, and they seemed a bit too… specific… to throw in my regular bandcamp. Which is otherwise a cohesive blend of carefully curated, aestheticall– okay maybe not. But ANYWAY, here in their own little bucket are half a dozen songs by Melinda Vulluvette, the NPC…ish… bard voiced by me in the Abandoned campaign.

Walking to Valspar: The Increasingly Angry Songs of Melinda Vulluvette. There’s even one song the players haven’t heard yet, the national anthem of Melindarokin, a country I now… accidentally kind of… own.

The content involves a LOT of in jokes, because the songs were all written to be performed in-universe to make the players snicker - but I hope they can be enjoyed even if you weren’t there to watch the gaming sessions. :)

So hats off to Happyfish, and her splendidly peculiar artistic achievements past, present and future!

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1243800073/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/

BONUS CONTENT! The AOTD-winning piece resonates with HF-GLEEP (excerpted) from the Mistigris World Tour stop in DARK0597, another negative-space hand, and it’s no coincidence:

In both cases I “traced” my hand help up to the monitor because it seemed fun. I also have a tattoo of my own hand. So I’m er, very handsy? Hands-on! Something like that.

One thing you can say: no one else has ever drawn ANSI like Happyfish, and no one ever will.