What to do if You Chew a Lot of Gum

 I feel like this is the kind of thing I would think of doing when I was a kid, but I'd give up at around the 5th or 6th wrapper.

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Making Treats and Beasts - The Cover

The other piece of art and design I had to think about when I decided to make this a book was the cover. While working on the animal drawings I had zero thought about if this was going to be a book, and less about details like covers. When I started working on colouring the drawings I realized that this book is probably going to need a cover. I'll admit that my first thought was just to collage a few of the drawings together and see if that worked out.

Then I was doodling in a my sketchbook and I decided to start with a circle. I thought that maybe I could make a circle (which is a common shape themed in this book) and randomly scatter a few drawings around it. I thought maybe the drawings could be held up using trees. Then I started thinking about decorating those trees with candy. Finally I thought that maybe instead of just reusing a few of the animal drawings, I could put some nice text in the trees.

Next thing I knew I had a rough concept for the cover. I used some pencil crayons to see how it might work in colour. I made a few mistakes on my rough attempt, but I feel like the overall concept worked. Now that I knew I was going this direction, I knew I had to ink it up and get it under the camera to shoot.

It took a few attempts to ink it up. I'm actually not very confident with my inking, particularly when it comes to letters. I feel like this worked pretty well, and the next phase was to colour it up. Fortunately that wasn't too hard as I already had a rough drawing in colour to reference. I probably should have done that with all the animal drawings, but live and learn.

Next, some of the challenges I had with this book.

If you want to have your own copy of Treats and Beasts, be sure to pick up a copy on Amazon right now.

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Junk Fud Drive Around Two Lakes

 In this episode Chris and Allison talk about a drive around two of the great lakes.

Check out all the episode of Junk Fud on the Road right here.

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Don't forget to pick up our amazing new book called Treats and Beasts too.

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Quick, Get This Q T-Shirt!

Quinn the Quail T-Shirt
by candycritic

 If you've never had quints candy, I highly recommend it.

Check out all the other fun t-shirts and posters in my Zazzle store.

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A Lesson About Heat

 

Throughout my candy and snack eating life, I've tried to expand my horizons. There are two way I feel that people can expand their food horizons. One is to try new foods that they would have never tried before. A great example for me is spiders. I decided to try eating spiders because other people eat them, and it turns out I kind of like them. The second way to expand your horizons is to take a food you don't really like, and try it in different ways over and over again, to see if you can gain a taste for it. That's exactly how I feel about spicy food. Ten years ago I couldn't handle any kind of spice at all, today I'm getting much better and starting to figure out what people love about spicy foods. This new review would have been very different tens years ago, maybe an episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

Check out this spicy review and marvel at the fact that I didn't cry.

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If you want me to be happy, pick up my newest book, Treats and Beasts, it will not make you cry at all.

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An Interesting Opinion of Classic Candy Treats

 I do often watch other people review candy, but I've never been so interested in someone else's opinion on the subject than I was watching this video.

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Making Treats and Beasts - The Inks Turn Into A Book

As I mentioned before, I really had no direct plan to turn this collection of drawings into a book. In fact I wasn't even sure that I would finish all of the drawings. I figured I might loose interest at some point and just move onto something else. The thing is, I didn't. I really wanted to try and finish each and every drawing in the collection, and near the last few drawings I realized that I think it would make a really fun collection, maybe in a book format.

After deciding this, my next phase was to figure out how the book should look. I decided that I would use a few electronic fonts, however I wanted the letter that was showcased to be my own design. Since I had designed the animals and snacks using a rough circle template, I figured the letters should also fit into this template. I found lots of reference online and starting sketching out some font ideas. Eventually I had each letter drawn and inked.

The other choice I made once I decided to make a book was that I wanted the illustrations to be in colour. I don't own a scanner and I didn't want to buy one for this project. I still wasn't convinced it would actually pan out. Since I am a photographer, I decided that I would photograph each drawing. This turned out to be fairly challenging, particularly getting the light just right. I built a setup and had to shoot each and every drawing on the same day. I wanted to make sure they all matched perfectly.

After that I brough everything into various Adobe editing tools and after a few drawings were done I had a system that worked fairly well. The good thing about taking the photos of the art was the fact that many of the sketchy lines and even the texture of the paper came through just a little bit. I feel it gave the art a really nice natural feeling.

The colouring was probably the hardest part of the process for me. I'm not a great expert on colours, and I found parts of this process to be very hard on the eyes. I do however feel that it worked out fairly well and I'm glad I went beyond black and white.

Next the cover idea.

Make sure to get your very own copy of Treats and Beast right now on Amazon.

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Kit Kat Done 5 Ways

In this experiment I taste a Kit Kat bar done 5 ways, room temperature, refrigerated, frozen, microwaved and baked. Find out which one tasted best, and which one changed entirely.

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This Is A Perfect T-Shirt... with Capital P

Pete the Penguin T-Shirt
by candycritic

 I wonder if the popcorn would get cold?

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My Favourite Candy Of All Times... Only Not

The number 1 candy review of candycritic.org is a milk chocolate Kit Kat bar. The thing is, it's not this milk chocolate Kit Kat bar. When I first started to review candy, people would often ask me if I was worried about running out of candies to review. I never really thought that far in advance, but maybe a sign that I'm starting to run thin on candy ideas is the fact that I've reviewed at least 5 different version of the milk chocolate Kit Kat bar. I guess it would seem pointless, except for the fact that each one of the milk chocolate Kit Kat bars is actually fairly different.

Check out my latest milk chocolate Kit Kat bar review coming from the USA.

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Jaw Killer Is Killed

I feel like they're cheating a little, but I also love looking at a jaw breaker cut in half.

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Making Treats and Beasts - Rough, Design and Finished Inks

After finally coming up with a concept for an alphabet book, treats and beasts, I had to draw each and every creature and snack. I started each drawing with a very rough pencil sketch. I referenced the animals a great deal from photos online. I never traced anything, but I would have pages on a Google search open throughout most of the sketching process. I would fixate on a few particular images, but I tried to take bits and pieces from each.

Rather than have to erase all my rough pencil lines, I used animation paper and I would then trace out a cleaner version of my sketch onto another piece of paper. The animation paper would allow me to trace the other image easily since I had animation pegs to keep both drawings lined up. Next I would use a few inking tools, mostly sharpy pens and fine liners, and I would start inking my drawings.

I probably worked on the first two or three drawings at the same time when it came to inking. As I progressed I would add a new detail to one drawing and then go back to the others and add the same kind of detail. I love this stage of making art because it allows me to watch television and movies while working. Eventually I discovered the amount of detail I wanted to add without overworking the drawing.

This was probably the longest process of making this book. It was also the most Zen of them of them all. I could just sit and doodle away while watching television. I should also mention that at this point I had not actually decided that this was going to be an actual printed book. My thoughts were that I would just post these pictures online and share them with my friends.

The next phase is when that changed.

Pick up your own copy of the book Treats and Beasts right now on Amazon.

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It's Specifically Orange Taffy

Olga the Opossum T-Shirt
by candycritic

 We all have our favourite flavours of taffy, even opossums.

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Is It Candy?

Every so often I come across a candy that tries to defy reality. It's not rare for candies to play pretend, gummy worms, cream eggs, and many other treats pretend to be other things. The thing is that many of these candies pretend to be other things in a cartoonish way. I don't think one would mistake the average gummy worm for a real worm (although there was one time where that might be different). This week's new review is a treat that pushes the envelope a little bit and tries very hard to too like it might actually be the real thing. I'm kind of glad that not every candy strives for this excellence, but I'm also happy that some candy companies do.

Check out this week's fairly realistic candy treat.

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If you don't mind, consider picking up my new book called Treats and Beasts.

A Kinder To Remember

I don't think I'll ever forget this Kinder Egg commercial, it will haunt me till the day I die.

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Making Treats and Beasts - Early Sketches and Concept

 

I've always wanted to draw an alphabet book. I've thought about it for a while, but I've never been able to figure out a theme that would work for me. Monsters where always an early thought, but while I really enjoy the look of monsters, I don't really know much about monster history, or at least not enough to find a monster for each letter of the alphabet. That's the first big problem you get when you're coming up with an alphabet book, figuring out a character or idea for the most obscure letters of the alphabet.

Then one day I was sketching in my sketchbook and a thought crossed my mind, I drew a walrus eating wine gums. The idea suddenly crossed my mind, I love animals and I obviously love candy. While I do care for the wellbeing of animals, my main interest is learning about different kinds of animals, this is why the alphabet concept worked well for me in this case. Candy is also an obsession of mine, and once again it's about the variety of candy that I love.

So after sketching out the walrus eating wine gums, I started to sketch and write out animals and candy for each letter of the alphabet. Fairly quickly I had all the animals and treats sorted out. There were a few challenging letters to deal with, but not as many as I was expecting. The bigger problem I had was trying to find treats for each letter. I didn't want to use brand names in this book, so the challenge was to find non brand names for certain letters of the alphabet. Fortunately I've traveled a fair bit and had treats from many places around the world, so in some cases I used more obscure foreign treats to fill in some of the harder letters of the alphabet.

The next step was to design the book and start the rough drawings.

You can pick up your own copy of Treats and Beast right now on Amazon.

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I Love Narwals

Nancy the Narwhal T-Shirt
by candycritic

 I might even love narwals more than I love nougat.

Check out all the other cool Treats and Beasts designs in our store.

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Christmas In July? Nope.

You might think it's a little weird to post a review featuring sugar cookies in July. While I could go with the general idea that I wanted to celebrate Christmas in July, it's just not true. Around Christmas time last year I decided to try and plan out my reviews a little better, and at that time I had many treats to review for Christmas. I decided that I would look at one of those national day calendars and that's when I learned that July 9th is National Sugar Cookie Day. I thought it would be fun to save this review for this week, so you can not only remember Christmas, but also celebrate National Sugar Cookie Day.

Check out this sweet sugar cookie treat review.

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If you're thinking of giving someone a gift to celebrate National Sugar Cookie Day, maybe consider picking them up a copy of Treats and Beasts.

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Happy Canada Day!

 

May all your candy be red and white and maple flavoured!

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Canada Day Candy Commercial

 While Canada has had some amazing commercials for candy, I feel like for me, this is the ultimate piece of Canadian nostalgia. No kid my age could ever forget this song.

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