hand farters of the world, unite.

It's apparently called "manualism." I need to practice more. This guy is pretty good, but he needs to work on his pitch control.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8258651219221373365

Even God doesn't like George W. Bush

"Bush met with the Starr family for about twenty minutes at the King County Airport. At about 12:40 p.m., he bypassed a waiting limousine and walked the tarmac to Air Force One, accompanied by a small group of aides and security. Before he got to the plane, rain began to fall in sheets, soaking the president as he continued to wave to well-wishers."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003066167_webbush16.html

Getting a little creepy

Checking Zillow.com, they now have planes, helicopter and satellites circling our house, so we can see what we look like from different angles. Mowrers, please bring in your trash can. And yes, I'll take care of the moss problem on the roof.

Pirates of Penzance: The last post

...And finally a couple variations on the theme, now that the project has come to an end. Mostly. Here's the tshirt and an ad for "Where Seattle". This project, as usual, has also included the Libretto cover, program cover, Seattle Times ad, internal magazine cover, XL poster for Barnes and Noble display, and mini 13x19" posters printed on my printer for "grassroots" advertising. I kind of like the logo type treatment on the ad. Mike the producer asked me to do a logo a couple years ago, and I should probably work on that next...

Tshirt:
Y'know, I kinda like the design of the tshirt better than the poster now. I shrunk the border to go inside more and it's a bit more dynamic. Can I start over?



1/3 page ad:


The only thing left really, is the actual decorating of the downtown Barnes and Noble display window. Last year I festooned it in flowers for Patience and put a couple old instruments in the window, along with the requisite jumbo poster. The year before was an historical retrospective of cool posters from plays-past (celebrating 50 years) featuring one of my heroes Art Chantry. This year not sure, but maybe I could be like that guy on Real People that was a professional dummy, and stood stock-still in window displays all day. That would be kind of fun I think. At first anyway.

House Painting

We WILL paint our house this summer, if it kills us. The planning has begun. Witness the glorious bricky-ness that it will be (quick photoshop hack job):

Notice also the new garage. Except there'll be lots of knee braces everywhere. Glorious kneebraces.

Hmmm...or maybe yellow:


And as an extra-added bonus, my new plan as presented to Suzy. She didn't go for it though:

Latest Shot Put News

This will affect my training plans and shot weights going forward, since I'll probably put 'til I die. Suzy can hardly wait until I'm of the age relevant to this notice, resplendant in a little red vest and shorts. 3k is about 6.6 lbs, a comparative feather to the 16 pounder I'm heaving around now. I will blow the 80 y.o. record out of the water at this rate!

"MASTERS ATHLETES: There was a change adopted by the World Masters Association at San Sebastian in the implements to be used by the 80+ Master men for 2006 and beyond. Although the change is not yet show on the WMA website due to the death of their president who controlled the website, the change was approved and therefore is in effect start in WMA on May, 2006 according to Rex Harvey, WMA Stadia Group Vice President. That change should have automatically been approved in Jacksonville. It is the opinion of the Rule Committee Chair, John Blackburn that the rule should therefore be in effect starting on January 1, 2006. Therefore as of 1/1/06 the 80+ men will throw the 3kg shot and discus instead of the listed 4 kg implements as listed in the 2005 and will be listed in the 2006 USATF book."

Pirates Poster12

Closer...Stay on Target...
Still have a couple small nits from the Producer, but this is basically it. I don't like the small text typography as much like this, may change back to the way it was before. I added some shading to the ribbons on top, and fleshed out the pirate's face a bit.

Next up is the postcard back, and the tshirt, all to be delivered Friday...So very tired. Back hurting.

pirates Poster11

In the home stretch...

Pirates Poster10

Center "SGSS" ribbon added. I was originally going to have the printer scan the artwork, but turns out I can scan each of the three major areas in myself, moving the artwork around on the scanner.

Also have started to lay the color in as blocks behind the 1-bit artwork in Illustrator, and dumped in the type. Don't worry, I'll nicefy it all up. Also need to make a rough border around the edges.

Pirates Poster9

A nice shot of my glorious, starting-to-bald head:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fritz: "Achtung Pierre! I'm bored. Christian's had us on his shoulder for hours. Watch me distract him and make him mess up."
Pierre: "Ho Ho, you are ze jokester, you are"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fritz: "SQUACK"!
Christian: "Bedwuah!" (brushes birds off shoulder)

Pirates Poster8

The pirate, further futzed over.
- Sherry glass enlarged for more impact
- Pierre and Fritz added
- Dagger added in title
- more shading on hat
- sword added
- shading of shoes, more modeling of forms via lots and lots of white triangles
- Eyes put on somewhat the same plane, face smoothed out, chin smaller, radical rhinoplasty
scritch scritch scritch...

Pirates Poster7

The pirate himself added! Unfortunately I'll have to fight with the arch of the artwork now, or basically take a better photo so there's not a big washed out area from the flash...

Hand getting tired. scritch scritch scritch...

pirates Poster6

The head foreman inspects the work thus far.
update: Sorry, Suzy reminds me that it would be forewoman, or foreperson, since this is Persephone, our lovely she-snake.

Pirates Poster5

The "Pirates" part is done, and a shoulder model reference shot, all in one:

Pirates Poster4

The scratching begins! My right ear is excited. The all-important title of the operetta is first on the agenda. Legibility is just as important as style here. We'll see if the producer goes for it, since the legibility is a little poorer than the original sketch.

One challenge that's surfaced already is that once I transfered the sketch's title to the scratchboard and scratched it out, I realized it'll be pretty small relative to the poster. So I used the "Golden Mean" trick to size down the poster area on a diagonal. So now the artwork is around 10x16" (and will be blown up). But the upside is that it'll be easier to scan into the computer for coloring, and I think I can do that rather than have the printer do it.

Pirates Poster3

A close-up of the face change on the sketch, while the superintendant looks on.

Pirates Poster2

a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, grasshopper. Below is the actual scratchboard, cut from the 18x24" parent sheet. Unfortunately it tends to warp at first, before I tame it with a layer of ink. For fun I've squeezed all of our pets under the scratchboard in this shot. But I think one ate another one, oops:





















The finished poster! (except for the art part):

Scratchboard art really needs to have the ink applied by the artist, and the only stuff that comes un-inked is from Esdee in England. Everything else is pre-inked crap: The ink is so old that it flakes off. And don't worry, the strokes show up here from the reflection of the flash, it'll show up as nothing but inky, inky blackness. Like looking back into the infiniteness of the universe, in a world before time. A blackhole of creativity.

Pirates Poster1

I'm doing a poster for "Pirates of Penzance" for the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society this year and am going to attempt to post a running update of the creation of the poster, like I want to every year but then lame out.

I've already created the initial comp with colored pencils that the client signed off on, and here I'm tracing the outlines onto tracing paper so I can transfer it to the scratchboard. (no this photo is not sideways, I create most hand-drawn artwork at a 90 degree angle.)

Scratchboard is basically heavy paper covered with a thick layer of white clay, then painted with a layer of black ink, so you can "scratch" off the ink revealing the white clay underneath. You get cool "negative" artwork this way and get lots of cool little scratchy lines for a nice grungy look that we in Seattle love.

This year's artwork is inspired by the little pirate portraits in the queue at Pirates of the Caribbean Ride in Disneyland.

I went to the University Bookstore to buy a big sheet as I do every year, only to find that they recently discontinued it! In shock, I staggered over to the "clearance" table, and found that they put their whole kitty on the table, for half off! So I scored something like 7 giant 18"x24" sheets for only $7 a sheet! So I can do seven more posters before I retire.

Below: My art director (and future shoulder decoration of the pirate) inspects the work thus far. You'll also notice the pirate's face has been modified a bit. I'm using a certain next-door-neighbor's likeness, especially his waxen moustache.

Aspartame

It's pronounced "Ass-part-ah-may" people!

Geez.

A new post

My boss is reading my blog, so I figger I better start posting again!
Here's a funny headline from Yahoo yesterday. Can't believe they got away with it!