I had a chance to chat over email with Jackalgirl about her design and this is what she said....
ELTADA: First off, can you just confirm the specs for the coin that I have listed here?
2D design with 3D elements (the central sun disk is recessed 3D)
2" diameter
Thickness: 5mm
Versions:
Aten (Gold with red/blue/green)
Set (Copper with yellow/red)
Osiris (Gold with brown/green)
Nepthys (Silver with purple/blue/black)
Anubis (Satin Gold with blue/black) -- Artist's Edition (36 total)
Meh (Mint Error Coins - 36 total)
Jackalgirl: Confirmed (with annotations)! Sorry I don't know any of the other minting numbers; GCC doesn't generally give those out.
EL: The Lotus Compass is a stunning design - full of symbolism and rich colours - is this the type of design you enjoy working on the most?
JG: Thank you! I do very much enjoy this type of design. I suffer from the same "horror vacuui" (fear of open spaces) that the Ancient Egyptians did, so I tend to want to cram my designs full of stuff if I can get away with it. When the design just falls together like this one did, it is incredibly satisfying.
EL: In regards to the symbolism...are all of the details pretty much from history or did you add any of your own creative whimsy?
JG: The design elements are pretty much all lifted from classic Egyptian art. The lotus buds and flowers are classic and have been in use throughout the entire span of Ancient Egyptian history. The zig-zag lines in the background of the front of the coin represent the actual hieroglyph for "water" (and which has been the symbol for "water" since hieroglyphs were standardized way, way, way back in the Old Kingdom). The sun-with-hands motif (the Aten) is from the New Kingdom -- it was most widely in use during the dynasty of Ankhenaten and his son, Tutankhaten (later renamed Tutankhamun during the backlash against Ankhenaten's religious reforms). Of course, I did have to add the ammo can and the GPSr in there!
EL: Judging by your Project Log, is it safe to say the Lotus Compass was plagued with complications from the beginning? From your perspective, why do you think the mint had so much trouble with it?
JG: It's a really complicated design, for one thing, especially since there are several levels of 2D meant to be under the enamel. I think that the mint originally had no way of knowing the kinds of difficulties they'd run into with the design; I don't think they'd ever done anything quite like this before. Nor had Pete at the Geocoin Store, nor I. So none of us really knew how the enamel would behave, especially on the back. I still don't understand all of the technical aspects of coin minting (in particular, why this design gave the enamel so much problem). For example, the two sides of the coin are remarkably different, even though they use the same enamel. Look in particular at the central circle: on the front of the Aten, it's bright red and clear. On the back, though, the red seems darker and the 3D shape of the metal under the enamel is harder to discern. But the actual physical structure of the circle (with the recessed 3D carving) is exactly the same on both sides of the coin. I think, maybe, that something happens to the enamel when it's baked a second time: I suspect that the back of the coin was filled first, then baked to harden the enamel, and then the front of the coin was done, and the double-baking darkened the red. But I'm not sure if that's actually how it's done. The technical process of how the coins are produced is really interesting; I've been learning a lot about it lately, but clearly there's still a lot more for me to learn.
EL: How long was the "Lotus Compass" journey (from design idea to sale date)? Do you think that was a pretty typical timeline?
JG: I first did the design for this way back in July of 2009. It was finally available for in July of 2010. Wow, I never realized it, but that was a whole year! This is an incredibly atypical time frame and I think it happened for a number of reasons: first, the design problems I mentioned above caused us to have to have the die recut when we realized that we weren't getting adequate enamel coverage. I added some delay to the timeline when I realized I'd inadvertently made errors with regards to the wording ("EAST" and "WEST" were on the wrong sides). Then, the "Meh" issue -- that the mint did not produce the Artist's Edition coins properly) have delayed the actual Anubis LEs (as of this writing, I still don't have them). So it was a really, really long process.
Most of the time, the process takes about two months from start to coins in hand. It all depends on the complexity of the design and whether I'm asking for something unusual. But for regular, not-weird coins, I usually have to correct and comment the blueprints about three times, on average.
EL: This particular design is very colourful - many of your coins are - how do you go about selecting colour schemes?
JG: I actually have a terrible time with color; it's always the hardest part of coming up with any design or illustration. It's a little easier with geocoins because I like to work with translucent imitation hard enamel, and most mints limit you to about 24 translucent colors for IHE. In this particular case, though, I had a lot of inspiration: for the Aten version, I had only to look at New Kingdom art (in particular, the jewelry and decorative furniture of Tutankhamun). For the other versions, I had a look at the Wepwawet Wiki (http://www.wepwawet.org/), which has a lot of color correspondences for the Egyptian gods and which helped me limit the palette.
EL: It's probably no surprise that the Osiris is hands-down my most favourite colour scheme (though I hope I am lucky enough to see the Anubis version up close to see if I change my mind!) - which one is your personal favourite now that you have seen them all?
JG: Oh, I'd have to say that the Anubis version is my favorite, still -- I really like how the "enamel wipe" (it's a wash of enamel) brings out the background detail. It's a really unusual technique that I haven't seen before and it just makes the design pop. I agree with you, though: the Osiris version turned out very handsomely and as a big fan of green, I love how it turned out. I've got another version coming out that I can't talk about yet (sorry!) that I think is going to knock people's socks off and which may pop to the top of the stack of favorites, depending on how it turns out.
It's funny how coins can end up looking so incredibly different from the blueprint, even if you take a lot of care trying to match up the colors on the screen with the colors of enamel. For example, I thought that the Nepthys version would look differently than it turned out; the whole color feel is very different from the blueprint. Whereas I didn't think the Osiris would be very interesting, and it turned out to be vastly more beautiful than I expected. Go figure.
EL:You have created a cool Project Log (for those of you who haven't seen it, you can take a peek at it here) with lots of information about the design as it was produced. Is there anything else you think people would like to know?
JG: Well, I'd like folks to know that I'm really happy about the response to the Lotus -- I'm very glad that folks like them so much. They seem to have struck a cord in many people's geocoin hearts and that is wonderful inspiration to do more. I also look forward to seeing more of other people's designs: as addicting as it is to design, it's even more addicting to collect other designer's designs, and there are lots of people out there designing right now whom I really admire. My wallet cries on an almost daily basis.
EL: Thank you for taking the time to answer a few of my questions. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go figure out a way to save up for your future versions! :)
