Heading down to Florida for a little holiday vacation and another adventure on a flight. I love flights for sketching, as folks are stuck to walking down the same isle and stay in front of my face.
Another lovely lady making her way through the plane.
This guy kept making his way from first class to visit a "friend" of his.
The lovely couple together. So lovely that he didn't get her a first class seat, but spent the whole flight back in steerage with us losers. That was money well spent...
Oh yes, I had the little girl in front of me who thought she was being cute, but rather was giving me nightmare and panic attacks each time she peeked above the chair in front of her. Breath deep...we are almost there.
And Oliver, our beloved drink man-bitch, I mean, stewardess, I mean, steward, I mean, flight attendant, I mean...screw hit, I am hitting the little button and getting another Jack and Coke...and another...and another.
Today's lookout mountain ride. My crank arm came loose about half way through and that was no, good. I did hit over 51 mph on 70 frontage road, which was nice.
The Couch and Potato and Mr. Bun is back and recently submitted to the NYTVF. A story of a beer drinking, TV watching Couch Potato and his radiated rabbit slipper, Mr. Bun.
On Board
The Mammoth Extinction
written by Kate Duffy and Patrick van den Broek
Drawn and Animated by Patrick van den Broek
Music by Ben Harris
Created by Kate Duffy
The animated short is out. As with everything that I have worked on for too long, I dislike it and think it is a collection of errors and shoddy work. I feel shame...
That being said, I am very happy with the learning process from this. Technically, I am armed with the full Adobe CS suite, and the full page Wacom Intious tablet. I have a strong 4-monitor studio setup, but I need to go mobile with this digital creative setup. Big, strong, light lap top is on the horizon, with a few backup batteries. One bag and I have lap top and tablet anywhere with 10 hours of power. Boom!
The most surprising thing was working with Ben Harris on music. Remember that name, because this kid is talented. He is a music director for Second City in Chicago. I think music is so powerful, but especially in my rougher, childlike animation style. I have always just copied and credited band for music for my shorts. But we can't do that now. And creating music is a "comfortable impossibility" of my life. I do not know how to create music from silence. I do not know where to start. I find it amazing.
Kate and I send Ben an email to request his services. We showed him a rougher version of the short and I gave my vague, convoluted, disorganized "directions". The moral of the story was that I think there are three kinds of music for my animation style.:
Classical - Warner Brothers
Jazz - Pink Panther
"Cartoon" music - Hanna Barbara
"Can you blend all the styles, but make it more contemporary?" That's all.
And then in our shared Dropbox folder appeared a set of tracks of music. He kills it. He writes a "Let's Get Procreating" jam that is timed perfectly with my animation and it fantastic. He found the musical flavor of the short and the series. He brought something that Kate and I had not imagined. I am excited to work with him again.
My task was to create the small sea side town of Ararat, for an animation project I am working on. This is a depressed, failing town, with corrupt leadership and an apathetic collection of citizens.
So I started with a town by the seaside, with the hills.
But Ararat sucks.
I mean, this town really sucks.
It is the ass crack of towns to live in.
So I thought, why not just make the town an actual ass crack...
And so...
I think we have found ourselves an Ararat!
On Board. The Animated Series.
Coming soon. Don't miss the boat.
A comfortable impossibility is something I am comfortable with it being truly impossible for me to accomplish.
The most obvious example is athletic. I will never play in the NBA. That is and has always been truly "impossible" for me. There is a much better chance of me winning Mega Millions. And I don't play lotto. So there we are. Impossible.
But there are things that I might say are "impossible", but are they? Are they really impossible? There would be sacrifices to be made, but there is a chance. There are many things in this category that also share the odds with Mega Millions, but the difference is that this category bought a ticket. Some bought thousands, increasing the odds, and there are some that bought just one.
My son's school has an annual auction to raise money. Each classroom creates and submits their own projects, to be part of a live auction for all the parents. Last year, our class broke the single item sales record with "The Space Puppet Theater" and puppets.
The challenge was on to raise the bar, yet again.
His teacher, another father and myself sat down to brainstorm this year's ideas. The goal was to create something that could be used by the school. As part of the Jefferson County Junior Ranger program, my son and I stripped a pine trunk and made a bench, to be used at a campsite as part of the forest service restoration program. (Check out the of the bench at White Ranch campsite 19.) The production costs were low and the school needs benches at the student pick up and drop off area. We had an idea.
The construction of a log bench is quite easy. Use a longer bench, split in half, and two smaller logs as the legs of the bench.
We had a resource for logs - pine beetle killed lodge pole pines - and place to store and build it.
We now left the naming the job to the class. The finalists were Miss Missy's Bench, Funny Bench and Love Bench. After a the final vote was placed to the class, Funny Bench was voted as the name.
It was now time for the class to help strip the log of the bark. Everyone in the class got a scraper or sander, rolled up their sleeves and stripped and sanded the log to a smooth finish. These kids worked hard, smart and proud. It was inspiring to see.
Rus went to work and created a masterpiece, adding cedar boards as the legs. After adding the varnish, the discolorations in the pine that the beetle caused in the pine turned into a variety of colors. The plaques were laser etched and Funny Bench was ready for auction.
We were going to personalize Funny Bench by engraving the bench name, event info and the signatures from the entire class onto bench plaques.
My son and I created a short introduction movie, to get the crowd ready to start bidding.
It went over great to get everyone ready.
Thanks to a great auctioneer and a record, generous crowd, Funny Bench broke last years single item record by over 25%.
A fun night and some great money raised for the school and class.
Grace Skis was contacted by Something Independent about participating in the 2012 Art of Winter Celebration, in downtown Denver in conjunction with the SIA Snow Show. We were presented with the challenge to create unique top sheet art, while staying in the Art of Winter theme.
Nothing says winter in Colorado to me like the serenity of the snowfall through a lodge pole forest, with the jagged edge of the continental divide peering through. The subject of the image was set.
To begin, I made a number of sketches, defining the composition of the art and how it will lay across the tails.
Once the sketch is approved, I scan it into the computer, clean it up. With the digital art approved, I run tests with the settings for the Epilogue laser etcher with bamboo scraps. It is a fine balance between the Power and Speed, to get the right richness of burn.
With the settings ready, we take our pre-cut Kylie 196 Bamboo veneers and burn the custom tail art.
The top sheets ready, we are ready to press the Art of Winter Kylie 196, with a special 3" carbon strip. As part of the Art of Winter brand auction, they were on exhibit at Row 14 Bistro & Wine Bar across the street from the SIA Snow Show.
The winner of the auction will receive a custom pair of Grace Kylies, and so the Kylie 196 Art of Winter skis are being taken down, mounted and will be out on the snow soon.
