pantagruel

Comic-con

As regular readers of my blog have guessed by the sudden decline in posts, it's that wonderful time of year known as Nerd Prom, aka San Diego Comic-Con.

Every year, I battle through a massive anxiety attack to get my work together enough to show and get feedback on. This year's anxiety is compounded by the stress of having had my day job at Saltmine U. be in peril. I have less staff, and slightly more work than I did last year. I've been so busy spending the last few months proving I was useful, that all my spare time (such as it is) was spoken for. That doesn't leave much for doing illustrations. Being an art director has had to be my primary focus; being a student came second; and any socializing, either online or in person, was rare. I worked Faire to fulfill a commitment I'd made to help two good friends, and while I don't regret it, it meant I spent two months with no days off at all.

Not surprisingly, my immune system pitched an armed revolt a month ago, and I succumbed to the plague that's been sweeping the West Side. Only in the last two weeks have I been able to get through an hour without coughing, or had anything resembling energy.

Which is all to say: I'm not as prepared as I'd prefer to be for the major industry event of the year. I've done a lot of good work, and I'm proud of it. I just wish I were further along with my current projects, so that I could show them. But hey, I'll bring them down to Comic-Con!

This year will be my very first as an exhibitor, and I'm beyond thrilled to have this chance. I'm going to be with the studio I'm at every Saturday: Studio 2nd Street. We're booth #5361. I'll be doing painting demos in the booth all four days, and will also be part of this panel:

Thursday, July 23
4:30-5:30 Drawing Upon Reference— Ron Lemen (ImagineFX magazine) and Studio 2nd Street Group will cover the subject of photo reference and how to use it when you have to use it. This lecture will briefly cover the do's and dont's of copying photos for your illustration work and some basic guidelines for drawing an effective image. Room 30CDE

Yeah, guess who's going to be showing you all how not to use photo reference.

As if that weren't enough, I'll also be modeling corsets for Alter Ego while I'm there. Hopefully that will generate a lot of business for Alter Ego. It'll be a challenge to not get upstaged by the corsets, but I think I can manage.

If you're going to be at Comic-Con, please come by and say hello!

we'll all be guilted into watching it

Saltmine U. is waiting with bated breath to discover just how bad the layoffs and furloughs will be. The state's issuing IOUs, and the City of Los Angeles is dealing with Michael Jackson's $4 million memorial service. Because it's a great plan to host this goat rodeo when city workers are being laid off.

This particular take on Michael Jackon's death is 31 flavors of wrong, but it cracked me up:

Yom Hashoah

Don't forget.

(I should add: The art's a piece I did that ended up being the inside front cover of the brochure for the Holocaust Center at Chapman University.)

Coffee in space

And I can barely manage to drink it here on Earth without spilling it on myself. Reason I'm not an astronaut, #723.

Technorati Tags: coffee

Graphic designer test, and a thank you

From the 5th Annual World Graphic Design Foosball Championship at Pentagram:

Paul Sahre challenges suspected non-designers Big Spaceship (2) with the 'Are you a graphic designer?' test. They passed.

You know, that graphic designer test needs to be in pocket form, to deploy when needed with clients and random people who think they're a designer. Paul Sahre, I'm looking at you.

----

As you might have guessed from the lack of fire-related information, the evacuation's been lifted, and I'm fine. Well, I haven't gotten any phone calls saying that the wind changed drastically, so I'm supposing my place is still as intact as it was when I left this morning at 5:30.

It's interesting to see who's there for you and who isn't, when things like this happen. An acquaintance of some renown managed to find 10 seconds to wish me luck and safety while being horribly busy in Africa, while people I'd known for years, who lived less than 25 miles away, were totally silent. One friend's efforts resulted in offers of help from total strangers pouring in.

As I said to that friend this morning:

There were people I'd known well for years, decades, even, who didn't bother to call and see how I was, because, they said, they knew I'd handle it and I'd call them if I needed anything. Well, while that's all true, and while I am rather good in a crisis -- it wasn't logistical support I needed, but emotional support. And you were totally there with it, even though I didn't ask. I'm very touched. Thank you.

And those of you who couldn't be bothered? Thank you, too. Thank you for helping me make the decision about where to put my time, energy, and love.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have minions to flog.

Technorati Tags: art direction, design

Smoke Signals

At 2:30 last night, I finally called it quits and went to bed, after a night of refreshing the news, to try to see if the mandatory evacuation area was moving northwest at all.

Checked the LA Times site this morning, and their map shows a new, larger evacuation area:


View Larger Map

But I don't see anything different from my place. Looks like it's going to be another day of waiting,

fire update

Well, this has been a fun 24 hours.

Most importantly: at the moment, I'm safe; my car is packed, and I'm ready to evacuate if I need to. So here's my place in relation to the fires -- I'm the A.

Now, for the story so far...

So yesterday, I was trying to get out and go south 90 miles to the studio, in Encinitas, on the coast. This was, as you read in the previous post, quite an endeavor. If I'd known that there was going to be absolutely no way I could've gotten home once I left, I wouldn't have left at all. But once I was done being herded eastward by the Highway Patrol, it was easier to just head south, where I knew I at least had friends to stay with and art to focus on as a distraction. Ron and Vanessa totally put me up after class, and were awesome.

Some photos from that slog:

The view from the gas station at the bottom of the hill from my house, when I first realized there was actually a fire going on.

Taking the first of two alternate routes to the freeway south, checking out the clouds of smoke -- this is looking toward Brea.

We all had our lights on so we could see through the smoke.

Something you never see in LA: an empty freeway offramp. This offramp is a northbound one -- no one had been allowed on the road, as that would put them in the middle of the fire.

If you look just above the car in the mid-ground, you can see the 57 freeway, completely empty. This is as I began my trip on the batcave road, which is the locals' alternate route to the freeway. We got turned back around and sent home, though.

Undeterred, I went east, through Chino Hills -- this view is looking south, from Grand avenue, at the north side of the fire.

From Chino Hills, I went south on the 71, thinking I'd just take the 91 west, and pick up the 57 from there. So did everyone else.

But the Highway Patrol had other, wiser plans for us. They routed us many, many miles east, to the next southbound freeway, the 15. At that point I realized that there was no point in spending six hours trying to turn around and go home to a barricaded-off house.

Coming home this morning, I was worried about even being able to get within 20 miles of my house. The Fabulous Lorraine called me as I was driving, to see how I was, and kept me distracted until my cel phone ran out of battery, and I had to put it in the iPod cradle, mounted behind my steering wheel -- where I put her on speaker, and leaned into the steering wheel to make myself heard. I told her that there was some seriously Scary Driving going on here and she'd be properly traumatized.

Heading north on the 55 freeway, facing the south side of the hills where the fire is -- the hills are between me and my place.

Going northeast on the 91, the hills are now obscured by smoke.

An evacuation center off the 91 freeway, for all the Anaheim Hills folks.

The 241 freeway onramps and overpass from the 91 -- this is the freeway where, last night, people were getting out of their stopped cars and running as the smoke and fire came toward them.

Charred.

Remember the photo of the Highway Patrol car a bit earlier in the post? This is the other side of the freeway, in the same place as yesterday's photo. Notice the hill is now blackened and smoking.

Coming northwest on the 71; this is looking at the hills east of my house. The hills are black.

Just gotten off the 60 freeway, driving up the hill toward my place, looking west. The cloud of smoke from the fire is massive, hanging over Walnut, Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights, and Whittier.

This is the view from my place, looking east toward Chino Hills -- that hill is the blue evacuation area, and the west side of the hills that were smoking in the previous photo.

From my place, looking south toward Brea. Same hill (well, series of hills, it's a long bunch of them) as in the previous picture.

So, good times. Will the wind shift? Will the fire come down the hills and jump the valley? Stay tuned, true believers!

Technorati Tags: fires, neighborhood, fireblogging, excitement

Wildfire fun

Oh, the fun and excitement of fire season.

After being up at 2 am to put out a work fire, I decided at 9:30 to go to bed and nap until 1, then head down to the studio for the afternoon and night classes. Sensible, right?

Not when wildfires are raging in the hills south of you!

First, the only freeway that leads south was blocked off. Then, the batcave road that parallels the freeway south was also barricaded. No problem, I thought: just head east a bit and go around the hills on the east side of the canyon, then south, then west, and pick up the road south again. That was also barricaded, I discovered. Awesome. Got herded by the highway patrol onto the 15, a freeway MUCH further inland than I want to be for my destination being a studio 3 blocks from the beach.

I would turn around, but traffic's stopped in both directions.

Been driving for 2.5 hours. Hurrah. Will I make the night class? Stay tuned, true believers. Traffic's moving again; must go.

the Prop. 8 protest

Taken from my office window, early in the afternoon -- the protesters had just finished walking past the office, and were on the opposite corner of the block, a few yards to the east. Quite a contrast to photos taken later on in the evening:

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The protest started at the Mormon temple in Santa Monica, then went to the Federal building a couple of blocks west of my office, then everyone camped right outside my office! So naturally, all of the office's 18 floors went outside to cheer them on, except for the few who stayed because they were either doing Important Things... or bigoted asshats. There were a lot of rather ugly altercations, as it became clear who had and had not supported the proposition. Today at the office is going to be quite interesting.

Outside, the police were actually being quite polite, except to the people who were insisting on sitting down in the middle of the street (for those of you not from LA, this was a move tantamount to suicide until the police could get traffic blocked off; about two pedestrians a month get struck by cars outside my office), which I thought was reasonable of the cops. [Apparently, later on in the evening, that reasonableness disappeared entirely.]

The chanting reverberated off the glass and concrete of the corridor of high-rises; helicopters swarmed overhead, and it was deafening. It was awesome.

Until I had to leave to go home. That was not so awesome. The other vanpool driver was so scared of the protest that he refused to drive up on campus and pick up the other riders. This guy is... Well, we're really different people, and that's about as polite as I can be. So after making my disgust plain, I drove us up, collected the other riders, and set about working my way through West LA's surface streets to get to the freeway, and then back home. Had to tell two riders that if they were going to be whiny bigots, they could walk home. If they agreed with the protest, they'd have been taking it in stride.

The traffic gods were angry, so I didn't get back home until very late last night.

Pissed off about Prop. 8 and want to do something?

• The ACLU could use your help. They're spearheading the fight to get Prop. 8 overturned.
• For a $5 donation to Invalidate Prop. 8, they'll send the president of the Mormon Church a postcard with the following message:

Dear President Monson:

A donation has been made in your name by _________________ to “invalidateprop8.org” to overturn California's Proposition 8 and restore fundamental civil rights to all citizens of California. The money will be donated to legal organizations fighting the case and to support grass-roots activities in support of full marriage equality. Although we decry the reprehensible role the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leadership played in denying all Californians equal rights under the law, we are pleased a donation has been made on your behalf in the effort to overturn the discrimination your church members helped enshrine in the California Constitution. Given that throughout its history the Mormon Church has been subjected to bigotry, we hope you appreciate the donation in your name to fight religious bigotry here in California.

I'm especially fond of that last sentence.

• The Vote No on Prop. 8 folks are still fighting it, and still need help.

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

-- Anne Lamott

Technorati Tags: bigotry, inspiration, Prop 8, politics, smackdown

on the election

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks."

--John Milton, "Areopagitica"

Technorati Tags: voting