In voluntary cooperation with bloggers in your area, this blogger is participation in a test of the free sketch card system.  :D   Jason over at SUPERPUNCH blogs about toys, and games and art and all kinds of fun stuff.  I’ve been reading his blog even before he had mentioned me on it.  When he saw that I had been working on some sketch cards for the Star Wars guys over at RebelScum he asked if I would be willing to offer a sketch for his readers.  You can go over to SUPERPUNCH and leave a comment about his blog post with a suggestion for a character that you would like to see drawn by me.

I’ve had such a wonderfully good time making these shadow boxes that I’ve decided to open them up for commission.  I started making them for as a display case for the various sketch card sets that I work on, but it really can be more than that.  Think of a character or a scene that you like and the shadow box can be made.  Spider-man, Batman, Voltron, My Little Pony whatever it is, a custom commissioned one-or-a-kind work can be created.  Next up on my list will more than likely be some characters from the Twilight book series.

To order the commissioned shadow box as well as buy the last 3 Indiana Jones Shadow boxes that I have you can go over to the Store that I set up.  I’m not really a programer so this is the beta store, I can promise you that it will get better.  I’ve added a STORE! button to the top Navigation or you could just click here.

Sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. Music, and especially jazz, has always been referential, taking a pieces of other performers songs and placing them in new ones. This method of mixing up melodies and sampling was always done through the person playing the instrument. With modern digital technology came a new way to sample.

DJ’s would be live mixing songs in clubs and then making their own CDs from the “NEW” music that they’ve created. This musical art form is AMAZING. My friend Bret posted a link in FaceBook to ThruYou. This website is made to look like a hack or possibly a “Sampling” and re-mixing of YouTube. The artist and creator of the site is Ophir Kutiel. He goes by the name Kutiman and is a solo act from Tel Aviv, Israel. He’s schooled in the funk and fusion of the 1970s, Afrorock and Afrobeat, heavy psych from the 60s, hip-hop and modern R&B, a bit of reggae and dub, a couple decades of electronic music, and the general art of the groove.

He has taken bits and pieces from YouTube and sampled them into brand new songs. If you go to his YouTube channel you can see all of the source videos that he’s used to create his “New” songs.

here’s Kutiman explaining the process

download the mp3s of the YouTube samples here or check out his album

so tommorrow will be the last day that I’m going to be doing the free sketch cards on the rebelscum forum.  It’s been a pretty good practice for me and I appreciate the variety of character suggestions.

Here are some more of the sketch cards that I’ve been doing for the RebelScum forum.

I used to keep a NERF gun in my desk at work for just such an occasion, but I don’t think that I’d ever imagined that it would end in an all out war.  I found this at Geekadephia.

The Great Office War from Runawaybox on Vimeo.

I found this article over at Uncrate.  Killspencer is a new brand of manly fashion bags hand-crafted in Los Angeles. The thing that sets these bags apart from other bags is their material.  Their three different collections are made from “used in combat” military truck tarps, aged coated cotton canvas or bags made from black nylon and white tarpaulin material. All Killspencer bags use military spec hardware, including waterproof zippers and cobra buckles.  It truely is a manly bag.

Art Center product design student Spencer Nikosey unveiled his brand and amazing product line at the senior show on Dec. 12th, 2008. The video below is a pre-curser to a follow up of product shots and details.

Thanks to Susan for helping me start my day off JUST RIGHT!

forward it like it’s HOT!

I realized that it has been a little while since I had posted up some new Star Wars art so I called in a few favors.  I went over to the Star Wars Message boards at RebelScum.com and made a bit of a contest.  I explained that I was in a bit of a rut and then said that the first person to post a character request on the boards AFTER I post the word “GO!” would get the sketch.  I figured that I would do one sketch a day and go on for about a week or so.   On the very first posting I have one person send me a Private Message with their request and then another that posted a request in the discussion thread.  As we’re working through all the rules, I just decided to give them both a sketch for yesterday.  Here they are:

Darth Vader and Jaxxon 

I found this over on fanboy.com.