First, thank you very much, Sherman Gill. I really enjoy your gift. In my opinion, the creator can try as hard as he wants, there's no way he can make an epic picture - the picture is made epic by the viewer. And that's definately the case with your picture. Thanks a lot for making a picture I can enjoy so much!
I spot Lady Eboshi, San, Nausicaa and her Mehve and Howl. And in the clouds I interpret Castle in the Sky and in the bottom I see shapes from Ponyo - even if it maybe wasn't intented.
Then congratulation to everybody who contributed this year, I enjoyed looking through all these gifts. I see some which put some real effort into it, thank you very much.
Mush, maybe I have to explain my gift a bit. I saw a series about
Shinto, and I thought that every gift you make has it's own spirit, even if you can't see them. Here I wanted to depict the spirits of the things you wished, red and yellow metal spirits, jelly spirit and chicken spirit (with leaf on it's head). The jetpack spirit is not yet there, always late. The spirit of the big-thick guns is already hiding in the box, because it's so shy. All over the world they use the guns to commit crimes, so the humans detest this spirit - but that's how the world is. They detest other spirits too, the poverty god for example, but they forget that we live in a world of contradictions, the one thing would not exist if there would be no counterpart, no joy without pain. So there it hides itself from the view of the world, but it's still there.
The text says "present spirits" which means, these are the spirits of presents/gifts and the are there/present even if we don't see them. - I hope you enjoy it.
