The continuing sketchbook saga...

I have actually been doing much better about keeping my sketchbook, but at the moment, I have no scanner. It's all packed away. However, I saw this cartoon on Core77, and it was perfect for my continuing sketchbook tribulations.

Currently, I'm in the DIY camp. But when that one is filled (about 75% through it now) I think I'm going back to a moleskin proper. I don't know though. Something about the disposable nature of the DIY version is liberating. And easier to scan.

Sketching is good though. Helps a lot. Just in general. :D

Laid Off!! How cool is that?

You know, I've always tried to keep this bloggy thing abstract and not personal. But for just one post I'm going to break that rule. Here it is:

I got laid off. That pretty much sucks. Or so I thought at first.

But, being laid off forces me to face the big questions: what do I want do do (professionally), where do I want to do it, who do I want to work for and how hard do I want to work?

I think those are critical questions I've never really asked. Things are rough economically right now, personally (duh, I just got laid off, and right before xmas!) and nationally (double duh, am I living in a cave?). Hmm. I better focus on bringing home some bacon.

So how does writing this self aggrandizing post get me to the cash? For two reasons really. I'm forcing my self to state the Problem. And by publishing it in the interweboogles, I'm showing all two of you what I'm working on. You are now my bosses. Keep me honest.

First Question: What Do I Want To Do: I am a designer, and I want to design. Simple. My focus has been on exhibit design, but that is by no means all I enjoy designing. I DO enjoy exhibit design, I also enjoy production design, concept design, industrial design... is there a reason I have to limit myself right now to just what I have oodles of experience with? HELL NO. Now is the time to think big, to take this situation and turn it into pure Awesome. And believe it or not, I have the Skills to do it. No, it's not my nunchuck skills or ninja skills, but my design skills. I have mad crazy design skills.

Second Question: Where Do I Want To Do It: Now, since I'm married with children (natch, watch the pun kids!), this really should be plural: where do we want to do it... but this is my friggin' blog so, here's my personal answer. It'll help me talk it over with the spouse. I want to be around cool people who I can be comfortable around. I want to be with my friends, and dear god dare I say it, my family. We all know where that is. If I'm more clear the creepy internet stalkers will be able to find me. But the two of you know what I'm talking about.

Third Question: Who Do I Want To Work For? This question is binary: Me or Someone Else. The worst part is I'm not sure. Which generally means Someone Else, except in this case I don't think it does. I think it's just I'm scared of the real answer: Me. Is that really true? Well over the next couple months we'll see how it goes. In other words, this answer subject to change with out notice. (Kind of like one's employment in a right to work state. How bass ackwards is that title for a rule that allows termination for no cause and with no notice? Oops. I'm trying to stay positive.)

Fourth Question: How Hard Do I Want To Work: Another scary one. I want to see my family. I want to be with them and enjoy them. When they are sick, I want to be there. When there is something silly like preschool graduation, I want to be there. So, I will bust my ass, but I damn well want to be there for my family. They are NOT I say again, NOT exclusive. You can have both. It just requires more... work. I'm willing to work HARD. I will put in long days and nights to succeed. But I will be succeeding on my terms now, thank you very much.

So there. That's my road map. There are a few turns undecided, but the general course is set. So is it I-90 and straight through the Rockies, or is it Route 66 and taking my time? That is yet to be seen.

So yeah, just like Captain Max, I'm ready to fly!

Funky Stuff! Sketchup + Photoshop CS4

And my first youtube post! It stars Max, but you can barely tell.


I made a bunch of different renders in Sketchup and some spinny animations, layered them all up in Photoshop CS4, added a short vid of Max. Voila! Crazy funky animation test!

I was also testing out the Sketchup rendering plugin Podium. I think it's pretty cool.

Zounds! Content creation is calling me...

I'll watch anything...

It's true. For reasons best left unsaid I'm stuck at home today watching Disney Channel. I got totally sucked into Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior!!



Now to make it worse, I didn't think it was THAT bad. It has the "Jolly Good" kid from Last Samurai. Funny a Thai/Vietnamese chick and Japanese dude playing a pair of Chinese relatives!! There's a joke in there somewhere.

I even learned a new term: DCOM. Can you guess what it stands for?

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS!!!

Wow. So I had to close an unused bank account last week which left me with almost $80 in cash. I spent some on pho, but the rest I blew on books!!!

I spent about $20 at Borders and got some great stuff of the discount rack:
- A pair of books from Popular Mechanics: The Boy Mechanic and The Boy Mechanic Makes Toys, these cost $1 -- FOR BOTH!! What a deal!! They've got great illustrations and lots of fabulous projects.


- Another pair, this time of aircraft cutaways, Modern Military Aircraft Anatomy and Aircraft Anatomy of World War II. I love aircraft, and these were only $6 each. The illustrations are pretty clean with lots and lots of annotations. In other words awesome!

- The big spend was a hardback, $10 or so, Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor. Now this is a total nerd book, full of pictures of, you guessed it weapons and armor throughout history. Almost all are photos, and there are lots of notes, descriptions, stories, and other fluff to go along with the neato pictures.

Then because Borders didn't have the one book I was really looking for I went online... a big
- A surprisingly excellent book, one which I bought for pretty pictures, but actually had a good bit of how-to information. Doug Chiang's book Mechanika looks pretty sweet, promising lots of pictures and sketches, but it also is chock full of Chiang's process, tools and techniques. Actually each one of the "projects" in the book is a simple step by step, some marker renderings others finished in Photoshop. It's a great book.

- The next splurge is a book I've been wanting a long time: Cosmic Motors. It's a sweet design/art book jam packed with sweet sketches and even more amazing renderings. Though it's got a few more, uh, cheesecake images than I normally buy, the combo of photo-real renderings (Alias Studio Tools natch) and the real life models is absolutely amazing. Each different ship has a series of sketches and process images, along with several sweet full color renderings complete with pilots, mechanics and other people and props. This is an amazing book.

- The final book, and the one that started this whole reckless spending spree: Operation Storm City by Joshua Mowell is the final installment in the Guild of Specialists trilogy. It lives up to the first two, both in terms of the art and the story. But, the story is good and enjoyable, not great literature. It follows the adventures of the two teens through India and the deserts of central China. It's got all sorts of good stuff: ancient warriors, crazy Russian mercenaries, super high tech lost societies, conspiracies, in other words, all the good stuff!! But what makes the series so awesome, is the illustrations, diagrams and "photos" of artifacts. It's all a very well built little fantasy, complete with artifact numbers on all the illustrations. I'm glad he wrapped up the series, but I actually hope there's more to come.

Anyway... thanks for listening to me ramble. I was so excited to get these books, it's been a long time since I went on a rampage like this. Well worth it though. But maybe I should have saved some cash-money for jellab!

Music music music!

After a looooooong couple of drives late last night and this afternoon, I've been thinking a lot about music. So, here I am to share those thoughts! Enjoy!!

Radio stations. We all know KEXP is the best radio station ever. But if you are like me and get REALLY PISSED OFF when they play crap, as in Morrisey or The Smiths, or worse, both back to back followed by Depressed Mode or similar whiney garbage, you change the station. Well what do you change it too? I change it to KGRG! It's the "today's rock" station out of Green River Community College. Production value and professionalism, not so much, but ass-kicking rock and roll music, HELL YEAH! KGRG also has an "oldies" station that plays punk standards from the 70s and early 80s, good for nostalgic days. But, the main station, KGRG plays new stuff. They tend to play 15-20 songs frequently, but not so much you get annoyed. I actually like hearing the songs more than once, especially if I dig the song. Unfortunately, the DJs are pretty much horrible at telling what the songs are that just played. And there is no playlist available online. I've been listening to it a lot lately. Partly because I'm an angry angry man! GRRRRRRRR!!!

So here's where to check KGRG out in the interwebs: kgrg.com

Segue... I also recently bought an album from a band I heard on KGRG, a New York hardcore band called H2O. Pretty damn good stuff, wish I'd know about this back in the 90s! But their latest album "Nothing to Prove" has one single getting airtime on KGRG at least, "What Happened" that is a friggin' awesome punk anthem. I could listen to it over and over. In fact I do. The album is solid, but it's a little short. Only 10 songs, and punk songs really aren't that long either. But it came with a free digital version with my CD order -- plus a bunch of stickers! Gotta love stickers! My biggest beef though, is the track interludes: too much friggin' talking! And the "hidden" track, all talking! Stop! Less talk, more rock. Hey, a radio station should use that!

Check them out here: H2O website

Speaking of radio stations (common theme with me I guess!); the Metro DC area is a vast wasteland of broadcast radio. The NPR station is solid for news, but hey, it's NPR right? There's one station that plays killer tracks from time to time though, WPFW. It's a public station, with a very mixed format. One morning I was listening to it when an awesome song, "Reparations on My Soul" by Gil Scott Heron. Awesome song. Really. Listen/watch here:


And finally, another radio tie in, this time regarding commercial (!) radio and a main stream band! Can you believe it? The one almost listenable station out here, DC 101, a rock'n'roll station. I listened to it pretty regularly for about 9 months before getting fed up with all the commercials, promotions and general commercial nastiness. But during that period I heard three or four songs off the (then) new Linkin Park album, Minutes to Midnight, which apparently was a huge departure from their normal style. But starting with "Shadow of the Day" which got tons of airplay, a mellow and sorrowful track, followed by "Bleed it Out" and "Given Up" and I was hooked. "Bleed it Out" especially had a sing along quality and fist-pumping beat that really appealed to me. So... I bought the album online through Amazon. I like buying music
with Amazon, but when I get the chance, I buy it directly from the artist.

Anyway! Hope the two of you find some enjoyment here!

I bought a CD! How old school is that?

I just ordered a CD, the album "Loud Wars" by So Many Dynamos.

It was 10 cents cheaper to buy it through iTunes, but I didn't want it rights managed, I guess I'm old school that way too. But the disc itself was only 10 dollars, plus $4.00 shipping. I hope that the band and label get more of a cut from a CD than they do from an iTunes purchase.

Whatever, the album is darn good. I heard their live set on KEXP yesterday and have been thinking about it since then. So Many Dynamos is like the cool step children to Man or Astroman! and that is a very good thing. So Many Dynamos has some of the retro sci-fi influence of Man or, but in a slicker, more conventional prog rock package. It works too.

Check them out! So Many Dynamos - The Loud Wars, http://www.somanydynamos.biz/

Oh yeah, and their name is a palindrome! How cool is that?




It's way cool. That's how cool it is.