I have been a big fan of the master French comic artist Mobius (aka Jean Giraud) since my college days where I was inspired by his style, technique and color use. With his recent passing I thought I would, like so many around the world, draw a tribute to the master.
My piece is based on Mobius 1985 “Starwatcher II” which many have been doing their version of in the last few years. To read more I would recommend the Tumbler Blog ‘Quenched Consciousness’ which has been my favorite place to follow the work of Mobius.
So here is the second chunk of photos from the first day of the Cartoon Art Museum Sketch-a-Thon at the San Diego Comic-Con 2011. We were doing a fundraiser to help the museum by having artist rotate ever hour and create original art pieces for donation of $10 or more. As you can tell that most folks got their money’s worth.
I will be teaching again this Summer at Chabot College in Hayward CA for the Kids on Campus summer program.
Cartooning: Monsters & Critters
Whether it’s a graceful unicorn, a slithering dragon or a more modern beast, we have been telling stories of fanciful creatures of all sorts since the beginning of time. This class will feature lessons on drawing classic beasties, the structure and construction of four- legged animals, and designing original creatures as well as a technique for presenting a final drawing.
Kids on Campus – Summer Camp 2011
Weeks of June 20-24 and June 27-July 1
Last year on October 24, 2010 I helped organize a Halloween Comic/Art Jam at the Cartoon Art Museum 11-4. We like to call them CAM-JAM’s and they have been going on since 2009. We had called it the Ghoultide Gathering, but we were told at the last minuet that someone else clams the trade mark on that name. It was really fun.
Artist who participated were asked to draw on of the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot fortune telling card deck. It was a really fun challenge and everyone did a great job. Sadly life got in the way of preparing the work to be presented. But now the world can see the final results…
Click above for a bigger image at Flickr.com
Here are the artist and their websites (when available)…
Fool – Caryl Foote
Magician – David Mann
High Priestess – Brian Kolm – www.atomicbearpress.com
Well, what a week it’s been. I can’t believe how great Cartoon Boot Camp at the Cartoon Art Museum is this year. Lots of new things happening and lots of new faces too. I am amazed at the skill that these young folks have.
This week was drawings Mystical Mythical Magical Beasts and it was a big challenge since we were drawing more realistic style animals.
A big shout out has to go to my support: Chris Conroy, Benjy Wachter and Nomi Kane as well as the director of the museums educational program and the staff.
I decided that the best way to show off the work of the students is a video slide show. The 11 kids did so much work and this was the best way to show it off.
I also got to create an animated intro for the slide show too, which was done with Chris Conroy. I did the 3D model, animation and compositing and Chris did a series of pencil drawings that I used as texture maps and 2D ‘cut-outs.’ The 3D work was done in Blender 3D, using the export plug-in to bring it into After Effects where the other elements were added. I am really pleased at how it came out.
The music is by Kevin MacLeod who licenses’ it for free through the Creative Commons. by http://incompetech.com/
The examples on the slide-show feature drawing exercises and challenges as well as the students final drawing of creature they invented themselves.
as a bonus here is a better version of the intro animation I produced for the slide show.
I will be at the Fremont Comic Arts and Anime Teen Expo (CAAT-X) this Saturday April 25, 2009 from 10-4pm. There is more info HERE.
I will be trying out something new (thanks to some electricity from the City of Fremont) to bring a small TV and playing a video loop of my animation and artwork. When I got my iPod Touch this December one of my hopes was to play slide shows and videos from it. But to make a video that will constantly loop over and over seemed impossible. But I figured it out and wanted to share it with you all in case someone else wanted to use the same technique. I am guessing it would work on the iPhone too.
YOU WILL NEED: Movie video loop in iTunes, Garage Band or other sound editor, Small TV or Monitor with RCA input, iPod Touch (I have version 2.0+), and the Apple Composite AV Cable (RCA imput)
NOTE: I will not cover making video in this post, but will cover it if folks want me too.
SOULTION: (as far as I know) the only way to loop a video is to have it be part of a PlayList in iTunes. But the problem I found is that Movies (i.e. videos) will not show up on the iPod Touch in a PlayList unless there is an audio track as part of the PlayList as well. Once you have an audio file the PlayList in iTunes can be set to loop.
Heres how I did it:
a) Open garage band or another audio editor and create a TINY audio clip that is about 1 second long and is silent. If your clip imported is longer then you want you can shorten it in iTunes’s INFO for that track. The file should be an MP3, WAVE or other compatible format.
b) Import the TINY audio track into iTunes as well as the video loop if you have not done it yet.
c) Create a PlayList with the TINY audio track as well as the video track(s) you want. You can put as many copies of the movies into the play list as you want so you can have it play the TINY blank audio track very little.
d) Go to the iTunes settings for your iPod Touch and make sure that your play list is selected in both the MOVIES and MUSIC sections.
e) Sync and update your iPod Touch
f) Plug you iPod Touch into the TV with the RCA Video cables that you can purchase sepertly. (Apple Composite AV Cable)
g) Select PlayList under MUSIC and make sure it’s set to LOOP (the icon of arrows going in a circle under the title and to the left).
NOTE on playing video and slide-shows from an iPod Touch. Nothing will show up on the screen unless you have hit the play button. In the case of a ‘photo’ slide-show (another option for conventions) you can press play to have the images show up on screen and then pause if you are giving a presentation.
RESULT: The Movie(s) will now loop forever or as long as the batteries lasts all from your iPod Touch! Yay! There will be a black screen ‘pop’ when it plays the TINY audio clip, but you can make a PlayList of the same movie over and over again that playes for hours. If this is helpfull, please let me know. If there is a better way to do it too, then post a comment and let me know. To see some video work I have done for conventions, check out my samples:
Click here to see a bigger image at Flickr.com
