rough

A sketch I made thinking about Bumpus H-D in Murfreesboro, TN. Bumpus H-D sits on the site of Stones River, a Civil War battleground.

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Puff the Magic Dragon

This is a little funny...and sad...

And kind of embarassing, but I figure there aren't but a few people I know personally who read my blog, and they're not going to think less of me for this, so here you go.

And it relates to animation in that there's a cartoon out there somewhere to go with this.

My son got another bunch of books from Scholastic through his preschool, including Puff the Magic Dragon. I didn't think it'd be anywhere near as cool as some of his books, like The Great Gracie Chase, or Bear Stays Up, or Courderoy. Apparently I'd forgotten all about it.

So there we are, singing along. No record, no CD, just me, the book, the boy, and my voice. Which itself is amazing, considering he never lets me sing any of his stories. "It's not a singing book!" he'll insist. He knew this was a singing book and still protested. I got away with it anyway.

Until...

Until I turned the page and realized what was next. Little Jackie Paper was growing up and getting too big for fanciful dreams and imaginary stuff like a magic dragon. My old orange and green LP cover from 1970 crept up out of nowhere and took on meaning I never heard in it as a kid.

I had to stop singing.

I tried to flip through the rest of the pictures and move along, but the boy insist we finish the story. I have no idea if he was hip to the old man's emotional flashback moment, but I managed to read, not sing, the rest of the story.

As always, I lay on the floor next to him until he fell asleep. I wasn't sobbing or anything, but there were some tears rolling down into my ears. Can't really explain what was going on, but why fight it?

After only a few minutes, he woke up and told me, "I just had a sad little dream."

I started to explain how being sad means we also get to feel happy, about all our feelings being cool and groovy and God-given. He wasn't interested.

"I'm not going to cry about it, dad."

So back he went to sleep, and off I went to share my little story with my wife, who digs these little moments her six foot five tough guy has on occassion.

No idea why I put it here, but it's a great story. Just don't tell anyone else.

The craft fair season is upon us...

Early, I think, but I'm starting with a new one this year--new to me, that is.

I'll be at three fairs I know of this year:

• Saturday October 18 at Hollister Presbyterian Church on Cienega Road, 9-3. My friend Jimmy will be running the booth until I get out of detention. At this event, I'll be donating $5 of every shirt I sell to the benefit, which is for Emmaus House women's shelter. While the booth fee is a set amount, there is no limit to the amount I'll forward to the benefit.
• Saturday November 8 at the Rancho Maze Band Booster deal at Rancho Middle School in Hollister
• Saturday December 6 at the Hollister Vet's Building, put on by VFW Ladies Auxiliary Post.

You can find my shirts, cards, and goods at these events. Hope to see you there! In fact, if you mention this blog entry, I'll give you a buck off on a shirt. Mebbe I'll get slick and put up a coupon on my site for the rare reader from Hollister.

Triker Travel Logo

Stick a fork in it and turn it over, I think it's done!

Rupert at Spyglass Hill Golf Course

Naturally, I could be absolutely full of it here, but there were witnesses. And it ain't like I have some spiffy score to brag up.

But I got to play Spyglass Hill golf course at Pebble Beach today.

The client I drew Big Truck Chuck for invited me to play a round with some folks he does business with, all of whom are involved in commercial trucks.

We'd been there for maybe five minutes and watched some guy just nail a drive from the first tee box, right down the middle. I don't think he'd have gotten straighter or farther with a rifle and a scope.

Had a great caddy named Johnny V. who had some great jokes, terrific reads on the greens, and lotsa patience while ol' Rupert plays hockey with the dang ball.

It was like a huge, extremely well kept garden, though, and I was jazzed to be there at all. The fairways were nicer than most greens I've played on. The weather was stunning. Wind maybe two miles per hour, no clouds, decent temperature.

I did manage to get the ball in the air a few times and get back to a swing that works once in a while. The eighteenth hold was my best. I think I got on the green in about three or four.

Our hosts were lots of fun and very nice. And terrific golfers. These two guys could smack that ball down the middle about the way the guy we saw at the first hole did--far and straight.

At one point a very official looking guy pulls up in an official looking cart and strides over. "Crap," I thought. "He's gonna ask me to leave." Intead, he welcomed us to Spyglass and made me promise to come back and play again. Very nice gentleman and very encouraging.

Lunch afterwards at the Pebble Beach Lodge's Tap Room was equally terrific. Legendary burger and fries, and probably the best iced tee I've ever had.

Thanks to Dudely for having us, and to Ralph and Paul for a fun game.

Looking for Cartoon Thunder?

Maybe I should un-capitalize that.

I've been catching a fair amount of traffic lately from other parts of the globe. My Analytics shows hits from India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia. Am I an Al Quesadilla target because my cartoons represent freedom? Could be.

Most of the traffic registers an Average Time on Site from these places at 0:00--likely a spam-bot of some kind. Still, I was curious.

With my special forces team in tow, I ventured deeper into the recesses of my analytics pages to figure out why I'm being targeted. Know what I found? They were looking for a "cartoon thunder effect"...

For that, I'd recommend Cartoon Solutions animated effects page. Better still, for the animation handy-man or -woman*, read Whittaker and Halas book Timing for Animation. Fun, informative, and easy to follow.

* I don't normally get all politically correct, but when I think of animated effects, I think of two people, one being Kathleen Quaife, the other being Michel Gagne. Both of these folks are geniuses of untold proportion with amazing resumes of experience and excellence, representing both ends of the gender scale.

Triker Travel

A few months ago I got to sell some shirts at a Monterey Bay Hog event held at Monterey County H-D in Salinas. While there I met Molly Knight of Triker Travel. Molly is working on some cool biker/travel video pieces. Molly asked if I do logos and illustrations. Next thing I know, I'm working on a logo. Hopefully I'll be done some time this weekend.

For now, here's work in progress:
I think initially I was trying to come up with a really clean illustrative style on this, but I was having a hard time working the trike into it that way. I feel good about this version because it matches the fun style of Molly's character and video work. Some details need to be worked out still, like the sort of clunky looking stroke on the text, which I did to separat the text from the map beneath. I'll probably just mask the section below somehow and loose the stroke.

Big Truck Chuck

Motocross!!

I'm trying to stretch my skills so I can market my content to a broader audience. I've taken a shot at this before, but right now I'm hoping to get some motocross christmas cards out for this season.

Last year Faultline Motorsports here in Hollister had me put their logo on the gas tank of my Santa on a Harley card, but they work mainly on dirt bikes and street bikes, so I thought I'd see what I could put together. If I get it together in time I'll have some to sell at the holiday craft fairs I'll be at this year.

In the course of working this out, I've again noticed some of the stark differences between drawing Harley cartoons and drawing motocross cartoons:

• While the axle line may be roughly similar in both, the bottom of the chassis is way higher on a dirt bike. Pretty obvious, I guess, but worth mentioning.


• Dirt bikes have a neat look, but they're more designed for function.


• Harleys and choppers have aesthetic appeal based on the outline and on the sheet metal, where dirt bikes (in my opinion) look way cooler when there is someone on them doing something extreme.


• I'm not sure about this, but it looks like the forks are a lot longer on a dirt bike. This is clearly because they have a lot more travel in the course of a ride--they hit bigger bumps, and they do it on purpose.


• The thing that contributes to the visual appeal of a dirt bike is all the interior lines--the lines that make up the curve of the exhaust, the crank case, and the various covers.


• There's a lot more negative space on a dirt bike than there is on a chopper. That is, unless the chopper is extremely raked and stretched.

While a lot of my work this year has been done in Photoshop and Toon Boom, I'm likely to get back to some of the more traditional methods for this set of images--paper and layers of tracing to refine the image. It really gets me a lot more careful about my work and disciplines me. One danger of drawing in Photoshop is I can easily loose track of true image size and wind up with poor line quality. If I draw big I'll get better quality because I'll be shrinking it down and coloring it in the computer later.

I suspect I'm in for a whole new level of fun and development...

At long last...

Boy it's been a while since I even took a look at my own blog. In my own defense, I have to say I'm having the best time I've had in years with the start of the school year and my return to the classroom. I feel great about the work I'm doing and the people I get to work with. I'm also getting some fresh training that is revitalizing how I approach my profession. Life is good.

On other fronts, I have had some small success in business. Big Truck Chuck here is finished. I handed the client twelve images this week. Turns out I still need to make them in to .png format as he's using them in Publisher, but that's a relatively simple matter.

You can now find Cartoon Thunder gear in several locations: Just Leathers in San Jose, Napa Valley Classics in Napa, and Cycle Imagery in Santa Cruz. So far it's a small start, but if things go well with these vendors, more orders will follow.

I've been calling shops all across this great country of ours and often sending samples. I expect to be turned down most of the time, but once in a while I get someone who sounds interested. In spite of a lot of folks whose shops don't carry non-HD apparel, I've had a great time talking to people everywhere, learning how to do my pitch, and getting to know a few folks.

I have to say that my favorite accents are in the south, New Orleans (spoke to Capri at Hurricane HD), Little Rock, and Birmingham. California has no flavor after hearing that.

I'm also starting to work on a rebuild of the Cartoon Thunder website in hopes of getting away from the appearance akin to "look what I done with my crayons, ma!" Working on a more commercial look and function as well as some new pages to represent the folks who are carrying my gear.