This past weekend was the 24th Annual AM-JAM TATTOO EXPO in Syracuse/Liverpool NY, where Winky Dink Ink’s Bobby Ciffone and Matt Truiano participated in the festivities. It was an impressive convention that I expect to attend every year from now on. So many talented artists from all over set up shop at the Holiday Inn with tattoo enthusiasts mingling and getting tattooed everywhere you turned.
Light paintings have been around for years, people create long exposures and paint their own picture using LED’s, flashlights and other illuminating tools. There are numerous amounts of videos out now showing light animations that would blow your mind. Plus I love some stop animation as you already know.
These are some self initiated projects I have been doing to practice working faster with my goal to improve turn around time while still practicing good design sense. I call them 10 minute blitz projects.
Basically, I give myself 10 minutes to start with nothing and create a digital promotional flier for Variety Studios with the dimensions of 640 by 480 pixels.
Here are some other practice projects I have also been experimenting with, just to keep the skills sharp and always experimenting with ways to communicate visually.
Nothing like simulating being the world champ riding aero bicycles through the snow Syracuse nightscapes.
Gotta keep at it.
Good luck with all of you endeavors in the new year.
Last year I was watching some TV and apparently it was shark week; they had documentaries, shows dedicated to learning about sharks, MythBusters even had back to back episodes on different shark myths and we’ve all seen Jaws. There was a Shark Week: 30th Anniversary show,at the end of the week following Mike Rutzen aka Sharkman around while he tries to achieve his goal of putting a great white shark under a hypnotic state called Tonic Immobility, from just a touch of their snout.
I was invited to Jazz Central in Syracuse yesterday night to sit in on some music played by a few professors at Syracuse University and the featured artist of the night Mickey Powell. He’s a singer/songwriter raised in Carthage New York and travels the country booking gigs and enjoying the gift he’s been given. I was floored by his performance, as we sat to the right of the stage if facing the crowd, in a studio sized room that holds close to 100 people.
I think it’s amazing to hear talented individuals really know how to sing without any gimmicks and tricks and this is definitely someone you need to hear in person. Listening to it anywhere else doesn’t give him justice, but since the show has past I think its necessary to share his work.
You can learn more about Mickey, where he came from, inspirations and motivation from his site The Polite Rebel. Also check out where his upcoming shows will be and try to get to one, it’s definitely worth it!
Ever see The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride or the new Coraline ? All were created in stop motion, you may be thinking, what is stop animation? Stop animation is frame by frame actions of miniature sculptures. Artists and animators physically maneuver these characters into their desired position, and each time moved a photograph is taken. These billions of photographs are then stitched together in order to make each movement seem as fluid as possible.
These are by far the best animation movies I enjoy watching. Don’t get me wrong, the realistic integration of computer generated imagery (CGI) like in transformers is amazing and incredibly impressive, but there is something about watching a movie such as Coraline, knowing each character is actually tangible.
If you get a chance to watch one of these movies I highly recommend it. Here are a couple “Making of…” videos on Coraline and The Corpse Bride which dive into what it takes to build these amazing films.
My smoke comes from incense sticks burning throughout my house down in Nanuet. For some reason ever since I as a kid my parents burned incense everyday, I guess they like the smell, who knows. They went a little overboard with them recently and you would think they were smoking out the house at times. I’d go around blowing all of them out trying to keep things a little reasonable. But a few months back I saw one burning with a trail of smoke behind it and was curious on what type of pictures I can capture.
Fresh food is always the best when you’re starving, and when it’s breakfast time it’s even better because everyone knows breakfast is pretty much the best meal of the day. Mother’s Cupboard is the place to be to satisfy that void in your stomach when you’ve been craving a good breakfast. Make sure you get there early, they close at 1:00pm and are usually packed with people looking to literally roll out the door after their done.
