Most Important Post of the Year

Yesterday I neglected to post the most important post of the year to wish my girl, Raelene a happy birthday. Happy Birthday babe.

Vintage Toons

My cartoon collection has been growing quite nicely. The most recent aquisition was a 12 DVD, 600 episode boxset, made up of 60 hours of, (I think), 12 different vintage cartoon titles. The DVDs include Betty Boop, Heckle and Jeckle, The Three Stooges, one of my favorites, Popeye the sailor man, and many more. Some of these old Fleischer Studios cartoons have so much character to the animation and are so well done, it's amazing to see what they were capable of back in the 40s and 50s.
Here is one of the Popeyes that I watched last night. Olive Oyl was a nut case in these early ones.



Watching all of this Popeye takes me back to the 1980 live action film. This film had some of the best casting, IMO, of any movie I've seen to date. Robin Williams (in his first film role no less) and Shelly Duvall (right after her role in The Shining) are the only people I can picture actually pulling off the roles of Popeye and Olive.


Enjoy

Chained To A Bunkbed With A Velociraptor

I missed blogging yesterday, but I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the pace that I have been. I knew between German class starting, some fun side projects that I am involved with, work and just general me time (I bought Madden 2009 for the Xbox 360), that I wouldn't blog each weekday for long. Also I didn't want this to become a pointless blog for blogging sake blog. Too many blogs in that last sentence. This blog started out as an alternative to smoking for me. So far it seems to have helped. I quit the gum sometime last week. Anyway I found this today from Creative pro's "Wacky Website of the Week". I lasted 1 minute and 3 seconds., how long can you survive, chained to a bunkbed with a velociraptor?

I could survive for 1 minute, 3 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

A Little Pirate Humor

A pirate walks into a bar with a ships wheel down his pants.
The bartender says, "Did you know that you have a ships wheel down the front of yer pants?"
To which the pirate replied, "Aye, it's drivin' me nuts."

YARRR!

Avast YE, in honour of International Talk Like A pirate Day, I did up this very quick sketch of Capn' Red Beard.


Check out this video to learn the five A's of "Talk Like A Pirate Day".

One of John Kricfalusi's early works

One of my favorite animators of all times is Jonhn Kricafalusi of Ren and Stimpy fame. I stumbled across this eighties movie intro for that terrible movie "Troop Beverly Hills" starring Shelley Long. I have vague memories of watching this movie on VHS (wikipedia link for those of you who might not remember this format) in 1989. I remember how I lost interest in the film shortly after the opening credits. It wasn't until recent that I learned that it was done by the great John K. Now when I see it, it's kinda obvious by the rendering of the dogs, busty ladies and his trademark animation style. Check out more of his great stuff on youtube here. The Björk video is great and, his take on Yogi Bear and The Jetsons is a little disturbing.
Enjoy,
YOU EEEDIOTS!

Been a While Since I Looked Like This

Yesterday marked a month since I had a smoke in my mouth. I'd be lying if I said that I haven't had the urge and I know that I've been at this point before. I gotta say though, that the blogging has helped. To have something to divert your attention to and just taking a pause to post something or work on something to blog about helps to get past the cravings. I,m still waiting to receive my first month reward in the mail. So far I've ordered about three months of rewards so I guess I'll just have to keep it up.

Deutchkurs beginnt wieder

Yesterday, Rae and I began our Level III German class. Most of our class members are coming back as well as a few new faces. It seems that most of the new students who just jumped into level three are way more advanced than us but it seemed like that was the case at the beginning of level two. In honor of the start of level III, here is some squirrel porn put to Faith No More's "Das Schützenfest".
Enjoy.

Housewarming party

This past Saturday I was invited to attend my brother's housewarming party. I decided that I wanted to paint a canvas for his new pad. The hardest part was deciding what to paint. I tried to force myself to come up with something classy and music inspired. After passing on a bunch of ideas I decided to get the drunk clowns out of my system and came up with these quick sketches.


After sketching the final picture on the 24"x30" canvas I lined it in blue acrylic.


Then I built up the shadows in washes of the blue acrylic.


Then I started knocking in some colour.


Finally, I filled in the rest of the colour and built up the shadows.



I think it went over pretty well. I also like how the subject of clowns yields a wide range of reactions. My brother said he couldn't help but smile when looking at it while others found it quite disturbing.

Yearbook Photo

Here is a photo of me when I graduated in 1978. Actually I was only 4 in 1978 and this is a picture generated from a clever site called Yearbook Yourself. There you can see how you would look through the ages by superimposing your face over old school yearbook pictures. It spans from the 50s' right up to the year 2000. I thought that this one turned out the best for me. Try it out and send me a link so I can see how silly you would look in a different era.

Freecycling

Here is an interesting concept that a friend from Vancouver turned me on to. She was telling me about one that was in Vancouver and was wondering if someone was doing it in Winnipeg and wouldn't you know, someone was. It's called Winnipeg Freecycle and it is a Yahoo group that offers a place to post stuff that you don't want anymore and find stuff you may need, that other people are throwing out. You know what they say, "One man's junk is another man's treasure." Anyway you got to be quick to call for items you may want because people just post things and it's first come first serve. It seems to me that it's a win, win situation in that you can get rid of your junk and it's not going to some landfill. Best of all, everything is free.
You can see more details and sign up for it here.

Exciting new link added!

A co-worker turned me onto this new site from San Fransisco called Fecal Face. It features art and artists of the bay area. This weeks Free Fridayz prize on their website is a copy of "The Animation Show" (of which I own the first two volumes) presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. I've always been a fan of Mr. Judge, from Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space, and Mr. Hertzfeldt (even before I knew who he was) from Liquid Television's "Stick Figure Theater", Rejected Cartoons and his many commercials.
Below is the intro to "The Animation Show" found on youtube.

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Cruise Night Book

I've recently uploaded some pictures from a book I made for an assignment in third year graphic design. The assignment was to create a photographic book on the subject of collections. Having worked in autobody, I appreciate a well restored car so I collected a bunch of photos of classic cars for my book titled "Cruise Night".
Check kout my Flickr page to see some of the photos in the book.

Drunk Clown #2

Yesterday while tidying up I found a sketch book that I thought was lost forever. There wasn't a lot of pages filled which was all the more reason to find it. It did have this sketch done in it, another drunk clown. You can see the first drunk clown I sketched here.
Friend and fellow designer Paul Kietke has started a blog to document his adventures as he gives living over seas a shot. He departed yesterday so he should be arriving in England today. Good Luck Paul and keep us posted.

3 Smokefree Weeks

Well it's been three weeks and with the advice of most of the "quit smoking" I've read, I plan to reward myself each month. No plans for this month but on the 16th of October, I have already bought my reward, Neil Young tickets. You can hear some of Neils new stuff and see clips of a new Neil young video at his home site, Neil's Garage. Not the best made website in my opinion but still worth checking out.
Otherwise this weekend was pretty uneventful. Had friends visiting from up north, watched the Bombers loose to rival Saskatchewan, and saw Spain's Rafa Nadal get eliminated from the US Open by the Scottish player, Andy Murray. So tonight it will be Swiss tennis phenom, Roger Federer.

More pictures from Sombrio

One of my most memorable moments on Sombrio was the first morning I spent there. We had arrived the night before in total darkness and made our way through a hard to follow path, even in the daylight, to a makeshift tent made by my friend Mike in an earlier visit. The next morning I woke up earlier than my friends and walked down the rock beach where I found a large piece of driftwood. There I sat front of the Pacific Ocean, for the first time in my life, and enjoyed the sounds of the surf. Then I heard the sound of some kind of bell. I turned my head to find Nina, the goat pictured above. I thought that a little strange until about half a minute later , when a crow landed on the driftwood beside me and then hopped on to my lap. This was when I met Crowie, the crow that I am sharing a Drum cigarette with in the picture below.


See these pictures and more on my Flickr page here.

Sombrio Documentary

Today I finally did something that I've been meaning to do for a few months now. I sent away for my "Sombrio" documentary, made by Canadian film maker Paul Manly. What seems like a lifetime ago, I made three trips to Sombrio Beach in the summers of 94' and 95'. I met the residents and lived for short periods on the beach, so I greatly anticipate watching Mr. Manly's film. Sombrio was a popular surf spot on the west coast of Vancouver Island and home to many people including the Oke family who had been there for around 20 years (at the time that I visited). There is some debate as to whether the peacefull families that called Sombrio there home were treated fairly in their eviction to make way for the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park, so I am eager to hear what the film has to say.
Above is a photo of my fishing buddy Isaiah Oke and Crowie (on the table) on Sombrio beach, Summer 1995.
More on the Oke family here.
I will be uploading more pictures to my Flickr page here, as I scan them in.

The Hockey Song

I haven't been using this blog to rant but something about this Hockey Night In Canada song contest isn't sitting right with me. In case you don't know, the CBC is judging a contest they are holding for the new HNIC theme song.On one hand I think that these competitions are entertaining by the good and especially bad songs produced. In the same way that I can handle watching the first week of those Idol shows, I like to watch the train wrecks. On the other hand I feel that there are many musicians out there that do this for a living and this competition are taking a livelyhood away from them just so the CBC can save a dime. As a graphic designer, I had these same feelings toward the 2010 Vancouver Olympic committee for holding a similar logo contest. If the CBC is so concerned about saving money, why then did they use some of the most sought after commercial air time, during the 2008 Bejing Olympics, to promote the CBC National News, Sophie, Little Mosque on the Prairie, and other CBC shows? I guess its because they know that the Canadian taxpayer will pay top dollar for these commercial spots to promote shows that nobody really watches anyway. In my oppinion they should have just given Stompin' Tom Connors a bag full of money for permission to use "The Good Ol' Hockey Game".

September Long

I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy the long Weekend. Rae and I took in the Assiniboine Park Zoo on Saturday.


On Sunday, we went to the to the Leo Mol Sculpture garden. Surrounding the Leo Mol sculpture garden is a large variety of flowers and a pond that was home to this guy...


You can see more photos of my weekend on my Flickr page here.