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A very Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday to everyone no matter how/what/where you celebrate.

Every year I have illustrated an original Christmas card for my family to send to family and friends. The earliest Christmas cards we would make were silk screened and my father took my art and cut it by hand into the screen. Latter we would xerox the cards in black and white and hand color a few small elements to enhance them. And now I can scan, edit, color and prep the files on the computer and have them printed in vivid color, but no matter what form the cards take they are a continuing tradition I am proud to be part of. This year I decided to show you the illustrations I have created since 2000 in the video above.

I hope you enjoy the video and have a wonderful season.

note: Music “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons “Attribution 3.0″

Continue reading »]]> I just started a new workshop at the youth center I work at featuring one of my favorite applications, Adobe After Effects (as well as Photoshop and Illustrator too). I love After Effects since there is so much versatility in what you can do. The program is also great since it can accommodate huge differences in artistic styles and accepts lots of  different digital media (even flash movies) which is perfect for a wide range of young artists.

The goal is for the students to plan short scenes or sequences and work towards having them in some final form. But I feel it’s important to take on the same challenges I give the students myself, so I gave myself the goal of doing a short project in the last few weeks. It’s important to do since it can help me to understand what they are attempting better and I can trouble shoot better ways to teach different techniques.

So the first week we learned the very basics of the software and drew short sequences as storyboards. We then scanned and placed the art in After Effects as an animatic (can also be called a story reel). A lot of our techniques are very low tech in part due to the equipment is not always available to the students. For my project I decided to do a sort of an animated holiday card.

Here is the first test with some minimal animation in it. This test is the first pass to see if it will actually work as a story in real time. I could have added some sound on top of it too, but decided that could wait for now due to a tight schedule.

After letting this Animatic sit in my mind for a while, I decided to add some rough animation in the ‘Sketchbook’ style into my animatic that I experimented earlier this year. The style is really fun to do and can be very expressive and fast to do. I scanned in the drawings and timed it out, mixing it into the original Animatic to get a stronger look of what it might look like. Here is what I came up with.

Here are some of the animation drawings I used for the test in the animatic.

While the drawings are less then perfect, it’s amazing how much life you can easily throw into your project. But now I had to decided what techniques to use for the final animation. I could create sequences of drawings like classic ‘cel’ animation or I could use less art and just manipulate the drawings in more of a limited cut out style or even do a mix of both.

I decided that I would explore how I could use a fairly new feature of After Effects, the Puppet Tool. The tool allows you to take an image and add ‘pins’ to it and then bend the figures where those are placed.

Here you can see above the yellow ‘pins’ on the neck of the bear. The empty square are null objects that control each pin and allow them to be parented to each other.

Here is my first attempt with the bear character in the story, mind you I was only testing technique and not going for giving an actual animated performance. To help set-up the animation I used a great After Effects script called GG_PuppetTools, which saved me a lot of time.

The character is made up of 3 layers of art, the neck, head and arm/hand. There is also two different faces to give the bear a change in expression.

Below is my second attempt at the technique with 4 layers of art, but no changes in the bears expressions. Here I attempted to give the bear a ‘bone’ structure and set up ways for the different parts to move together. Here the body, neck and arm are all using the Puppet Tool and the head is static for now.

The head is a bit off, but I decided to leave it as-is for now.

I have a feeling that I might use the ‘sketchbook’ technique that I mentioned above since it’s actually a bit more fun for me to do and very expressive, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Stay tuned to see the final results in the next two weeks!

Continue reading »]]> As mentioned in my trip report from the Dickens Fair this past weekend I attended the Pre-Raphaelite Artist Salon at the Adventures Club at the event. Here we were transported to a period drawing session with models recreating a religious scene while live harp music was played and poetry recited. It was a pretty awesome experience that I would recommend all artist visit when at the fair. The salon was at 3:30pm and ran about 45 min.

Warm up sketches while the event was getting set-up…

My drawing from the posed models… (note: the club seal was actually on the back of the drawing paper, but I photoshoped it on front so you could see it)

And some photos from the session…

Continue reading »]]> I have been wanting to go to the Great Dickens Fair in San Francisco for at least have of my life and this year I took the plunge and went today, Sunday November 27, 2011 with a friend of mine. This is just some highlights and not every detail.

I apologize that the photos are pretty ‘ghostly’ with the dark environments being hard to capture on my camera. I will posting more photos on my FLICKR page later this week.

I started off taking BART to the Glen Park station and took the FREE shuttle to the Cow Palace in South San Francisco. The fair starts at 11 am and the first shuttle did not arrive till 11:15 am, but the trip takes about 10 minuets and we had per-bought are ticket and were able to get in fairly fast.

You enter the Cow Palace through a switchback and find your self on a ‘movie set’ with false front buildings filling the space to create Victorian London. At first it seems odd as you enter a world of perpetual ‘twilight’, but that helps mentally to help hide the limits of a show like buildings with no roofs. Here the characters from Charles Dickens’ books wander the streets with the people of London on Christmas Eve and go about their business whether they have an audience or not.

I did not wear a costume per-say, but tried to be in spirit at least with a dress shirt, vest and cap. I think it is a good way to feel part of the fair’s story if you can accommodate it. When I was younger they actually gave away a poster that had tips on simple costumes for guests to wear. I have not seen that for a long while, but I bet you can find something online to give you some ideas.

Our first stop was to the Victoria and Albert theater to see a classic Christmas Pantomime ‘Cinderella and Aladdin meet the Monkey King’ with a mixture of music hall spirit in a family friendly production. Here fairy tale characters are mixed together with all rules thrown out and some men are played by women and some women are played by men. There is a happy ending followed by sing-alongs and slap stick fun. Next time I would like to also catch their production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Mikado’ that plays once a day.

Next we headed to food and I tried Haggis for the first time and maybe the last. It actually tasted good, but there are other things I prefer. I also had some Chocolate EggNog that was really really tasty.

While sitting down to eat we found a flyer for a life drawing art salon and 3:30 pm at the Adventures Club and we both agreed we wanted to go. We learned how to play the harp and wandered the streets looking into specialty stores. San Francisco’s Dark Garden had a store front selling period corsets and had live ‘manikins’ in the windows. The store always had a male heavy crowd gaping at the lovely girls in the windows and I noticed that there were service men in dress uniforms that seemed to always be there gazing as we passed by, but as a guy I can see why.

A procession of carolers passed by with Father Christmas in tow shouting ‘Happy Christmas’ and the temperance society stopped to tell me about their cause and at the nearby Adventures Club some officers were having some naughty fun with some lovely ladies till they fled their revelry when a high ranking general confronted them. The adventures club was an area that I would have liked to have experienced more with lots of tableaux and presentations throughout the day. For example, near the end of the day we found Prince Albert presenting a model of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

On a friend recommendation who was working one of the booths we tried the Hard Black Cherry Cider which was really good and really relaxes you and puts you in a holiday spirit. There was a royal precision of Queen Victoria and her husband Albert that marched by on their way to Fezziwig’s Dance Party. Next time I would like to learn some of the period dances as well, the dancers were still going at closing time with a large crowd.

Along the way we stopped by the steam-punk inspired La Legion Fantastique, but sadly seemed to miss most of their presentations. Next time I would make an effort to see some of them from a steam powered robot to giant squid feeding. Another thing is to keep an eye open for characters like Scrooge walking with the Ghost of Christmas Future as the stories of Charles Dickens play out thorough out the day.

After doing some shopping we headed back for the Artist Salon at the Adventures Club where they provided paper and pencils to draw from costumed models while live music is played and poetry is read. I would have loved for them to have their own space and have events going all day cause it was lots of fun and the models were very good. The life drawing session was at 3:30 pm if you are going, but be early enough to get a good seat.

(I will post my drawing later this week when I have some more time.)

As we got closer to the end of the day we sat down for some dinner where I had Yorkshire Pudding which was tasty, but I should have purchased a side dish to go with it. I also got some rich roasted chestnuts. While a few of the food items at the fair can be pricy, they are mostly all unique items and at full range of different prices. If you are worried about diet or on a budget, I would make sure to eat a hearty breakfast/brunch before coming and then enjoy the special food/treats knowing that you had something substantial before coming. Next time I want to get one of the small meat pies run that about $6.50 and looked really good.

While my friend shopped I headed back to the La Legion Fantastique and found an impromptu boxing match in progress first with street ladies and then with Gorgeous George vs Charles the Chap who had posters announcing the fight throughout the streets. I was impressed that they had gone to the detail of the posters announcing the fight.

At the Legion Fantastique I chatted with Professor Phineas J. Flockmocker III F.H.S.C about his new discovery: electricity (he claims it might catch on some day a little) and his plans to harpoon his way to the moon. The gent was really in character and was surrounded with props to help tell his story. Definitely worth a visit.

As we neared the end of the fair’s day (the events run till 7:00 pm with the last shuttle at 7:15 pm) we headed to the 6 pm performance of Mad Sal’s Music Hall Extravaganza (featuring the Le Can Can Bijou) which featured all the performers from that day coming together for a bit naughty, raunchy fun. The most adult material in the show was sexual innuendo and lyrics about booze. The other big night time show was the 18 and over only Saucy French Postcard Tableaux Review at the Albert and Victoria Music Hall, but you have to get a FREE ticket to get in due to popularity. Tickets were gone when we check, so go early in the day to get one if you want to see it.

The show runs about 50 min which gave us enough time to stroll to the exit and catch the shuttle back to the BART station. Note: the last shuttle is 7:15 pm by-the-way.

So, was it worth it?

Heck ya. It really was a great way to celebrate the holidays and it feels very organic and alive. The tickets run $25 per-person (unless you have a 2-for-1 coupon to use at the door or buy your ticket early) but you really get your money’s worth with just the entertainment alone. There were so many events/productions that I would have loved to have seen that I would think of trying to get discount tickets early next year and even planning to go more than once. We went on a Sunday and the crowds were never to crazy, so if you don’t like crowds that might be helpful since they say they get more busy as we get near to Christmas. The biggest cost beyond your entrance ticket is transportation and food and drink, but if you are on a budget you can still do a lot with some careful planning. I definitely plan to go back next year and maybe even with more of a costume.

So…

- If you want to see the Saucy French Postcard Tableaux Review, make sure to get a ticket early in the day (tickets are free, ages 18+), if you can’t, don’t worry and go to Mad Sal’s.
- Eat a hearty, nutritious meal before you come and then explore some of the unique food and treats at the fair with out fear.
- Interact with the characters and be part of the story. Feel free to pretend you are from the Victorian era yourself.
- Get there early in the day to get your moneys worth and avoid the crowds.
- Dress the part, even if it’s just a hint of Victorian London to make you feel part of the story.
- The Adventures Club hosted an artist salon with costume models which was a blast. 3:30pm this year when I went.
- Be open to follow your ‘bliss’ and to not feel guilty missing something cause there is a lot going on.
- Use this as a chance to recharge your adventurist spirit and get ready for the holidays and don’t forget to try something new.
- Sunday early in their season might be a great day to go.

Continue reading »]]> I have written in the past in my Motion Comic Magic posts where I talk about re-purposing artwork from comics and books into animation, but today’s post is about re-purposing architecture with animation using video/architectural mapping. Basically a high-tech technique in which video is seamlessly projected on unusual surfaces to wrap it in animation and visuals.They have been using this technique in the last decade years for planetariums and for theme park shows like this one at Disneyland in Anaheim CA…

Even some home holiday light shows are using this technique since it allows you to do a lot more then just flashing a string of lights on and off. So…

Last night I headed into San Francisco not to shop, but to experience all the holiday decorations, spirit and displays. By chance I saw a sign for a new holiday show: Illuminique  at Westfield Mall a.k.a San Francisco Center. The mall was open late for Black Friday and so I headed up to the top floor to check it out.

When I arrived at 9:10 pm there was Christmas music playing and a ‘screen saver’ of video outlined the architecture of the historical Emporium dome that was re-built after the 1908 earthquake from the previous 1896 one. There were a few variations of visuals that changed every few songs.

The schedule for Illuminique is 6pm to 8:30pm (running on the half hour), but I guessed that since the mall was open late they would just keep running the show as well. So I walked around a bit then found a nice chair to sit in and waited to see what would happen at 9:30pm.

Sure enough the 4 min show started as I expected. The show transforms the dome into a whimsical mechanical music box with the architectural elements open and close like a coo coo clock. The animation was done with CGI 3D images.
when projected CGI animation transforms the historic dome into a whimsical mechanical musicbox.

Some of my photos had the flash on and so the actual show will look a bit darker and richer.

Pretty neat stuff and a great way for them to re-purpose  the classic space in a new way. It might not be worth a special trip just for this holiday show, but there are museums (Cartoon Art Museum, Moma, MoAD, Jewish Contemporary, CA history society), Yerba Buena Gardens, shopping and restaurants all right off the BART line to make the day special and meaningful along with this unique show.

The show was created by: obscuradigital.com

Continue reading »]]> I will be teaching a parent-child cartooning class at the Cartoon Art Museum on Tuesday December 27, 2011.

December 27th (Thursday) Heroes and Villains
Ages: Parents/Guardians and Children (7 to 12 years old) recommended
Time: 11am – 1pm
Cost: $10 per person (all children must be accompanied by an adult, ideally no more than two children for each parent)
About: In this Adult/Kid combo class we will learn how to create our own Hero and Villain characters while learning some of the basics of cartooning.

Celebrate the end of 2012 with fun classed that will have adults and kids teaming up to cartoon at the Cartoon Art Museum over the winter holiday break December 27th and 28th. All classes includes materials and admission to the museum.

(((SIGN-UP ONLINE HERE)))

Continue reading »]]> Hello everyone,

just wanted to wish everyone reading my blog a very Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas. I know not everyone celebrates the same holidays, but I hope everyone is having a wonderful day no matter what your doing and that the spirit of love, kindness and generosity are in abundance.

The new year will soon be upon us and more adventures, I hope for all.

Here is a music video with one of my favorite cultural heroes, Kermit the Frog singing ‘I Believe’. To me Kermit represents a lot of great qualities and the current performer Steve Whitmire as well as his predecessor/creator Jim Hennson both helped to make the frog a real, living, breathing being who you can’t help but admire for his positive attitude.

Continue reading »]]> I have not posted in a while and thought it was high-time to do, especially with the Christmas Holiday upon us later this week and the very end of the year a week later.

I always do a bunch of Christmas Card designs every year and this year was no different and I was thinking it would be fun to post some of them as we lead up to the start of the New Year. So come back every day and see whats been posted.

So we’ll start with some humor and whimsy…

pen and ink drawing with digital color

Continue reading »]]> I will be in the Cartoon Art Museum tomorrow Tuesday December 6th as well as a week later on Tuesday December 14th from 4pm to 7pm while the bookstore is open later for holiday shopping. I will be joined by artists Kraig Rasmussen, George Webber and Michael Capozzola. We will have all sorts of cool stuff for gift giving for sale so come on down an say HI. The bookstore is also open till 7pm so you can get some of the most unique gifts imaginable.

The Cartoon Art Museum is at 655 Mission St. in San Francisco CA. LINK

Continue reading »]]> 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:

Continue reading »]]> So, this is not a fancy digital multimedia presentation, but a version of it from days past.

Posted by Prof. Grewbeard at the blog Magic Carpet Burn, a comic and record based on the movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1965):

At the top of today’s extra-special post is the Santa Claus Conquers The Martians Read-Along lp that accompanies the Dell comic of the same name below it. They were packaged together, you know. Just click on the first track, enjoy the whimsical Theme Song, then listen to the instructions. You will have to open pages in a new window to avoid interrupting the record. Parts Two & Three will follow on Monday & Tuesday. Really, I couldn’t think of a better way to say Merry Xmas to all my new friends here in Blogland than inflict, i mean impart this one-of-a-kind aural experience on you. I dare you to have the patience to Read-Along with the whole comic.
You’re Welcome!

The comic is goofy in a retro way and a lot of fun. Check it out.

PART ONE • PART TWO • PART THREE

Continue reading »]]> I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very Happy Holidays.

Right now I am together with my Mom and Dad, my sister and her husband and we are all having a good time. We still have to get the house ready since my Mom’s side of the family (Hi to Nadine, Jim,  Judy, Chris and the whole gang) will be here tomorrow night and then the next day, after a quite morning of gifts and a tasty breakfast we are heading up to my cousin’s place in Saratoga.

A big shout out goes to all my friends and colleges. I hope you have a great time the next couple of days no matter where you are.

Continue reading »]]> Yesterday, Saturday December 8th, 2007 was really long…and really fun.

The day started off in Fremont CA at a book signing at SeaWolf Trading Co, a great store that is all pirate stuff. Richard Becker was signing his Graphic Novel Blackbeard along with singer/songwriter Skip Henderson. Richard had some of his Oil Paintings with him as well as a stunning portfolio of watercolors and pen and ink drawings. I sadly could not stay as late as I would have liked, but snapped a few pictures.

Captain Kristofer Nicklaus, Pirate Lord of the Arctic Sea – my kind of Santa. Captain, how about some rum?

Here is Richard Becker (on right) with the arch-pirate Blackbeard himself. Watch out for the burning hemp rope under his hat.

Next I scurried off to BART and into San Francisco to teach a cartooning class at the Cartoon Art Museum. Here my assistant Toni watches over as the kids create mini-comics.

Then a bit later I got to see the 5th Annual Parol Lantern Festival & Parade 2007 at Yerba Buena Gardens, which was beautiful.

The Parol is the quintessential Filipino symbol of hope, blessings, luck, peace and light during the holiday season. The annual Parol Lantern Festival and Parade, was started by the Filipino American Development Foundation (FADF) in 2003…It has become a must-see event during the holiday season.

I hope it gets bigger and better every year since it is something to see. Maybe in the future the park will be filled with people from all walks of life sharing a magical moment under magical light up stars.

Then it was off to the gallery show Graphic Novel which features the work of my fellow Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco members. The show was at Tree Frog Treks on Hayes St and featured cages of reptiles along with the original art. The show features original comic book art by the talented Mike Hales, Kraig Rasmussen, and Daniel Salcido.

Mike signs a comic book.

A long roll of butcher paper was on a table so people could add to a giant Jam Comic that will be published in book for for a future show.

Doc Popular adds to the Jam Comic.