For some time now I’ve been looking for a way to better display the shadow boxes that I’ve been making.  The photos I’ve been taking makes them look too flat.  After experimenting with various lighting rigs and backgrounds etc. I’ve shot a series of photos and put them in flash so that you can control the image.  Go ahead and check out the animation and grab the scrub bar move it around.  This is better than the photos, but still not as good as seeing it in person.

I really wanted to use that pun to let you all know that I won the Olivia Munn contest, but alas I didn’t.  boo who.  Olivia is the co-host of the G4 show called Attack of the Show.  It would appear that she has picked a pitch that would essentially be re-creating her show in the Star Wars Universe.  I thought it was supposed to be a Fan Film that was made for Star Wars Fans and not just for Olivia Munn fans?  Oh well.

Last year at the Star Wars Fan Days II convention in Plano Texas I made a give-away print to show my appreciation for being invited to attend the show.  It’s an 8.5″x5.5″ Jumbo postcard with some of my original art on it.  I only made 100 of them, and seeing how they’ve invited me back again, I HAD to do a new one.  The convention is Oct. 24-25th and I’m going to be giving these away there.  If anyone would like to commission some art to be picked up at the convention, send me an email and tell me what you’re interested in.

So the winner is supposed to be announced tomorrow, but Olivia has narrowed the selection down to her top 6 choices.  They’ve only revealed 3 of the top 6 on the eve of the final announcement, so I’m thinking that I didn’t win even though I’M ONE OF THE TOP SIX.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.  :D

Livi A’Munn: True Hero of the Rebel Alliance

So guess what I learned today?  In our new house (well, newer than our last house) all these fancy fire alarms are linked together.  Without any warning at all, the battery failed in one of the alarms.  Do you know what happens when all of the alarms are linked and one of them goes off?  THEY ALL GO OFF!  I searched the house for smoke, I sniffed for gas, I climbed in the attack.  I started to make a list of all the things I needed to get out of the house if there really was a fire.  The family photo albums go first, then my computer, what about my art work?  OR MY STAR WARS TOYS!?!?!?!  I came to the conclusion that I would be kicking the window out of the office and then just chucking stuff out to save it.

So, I couldn’t figure out why the alarms were going off and we ended up evacuating the house and calling the non-emergency line for the fire dept.  I am thankful and grateful that the firemen respond to all calls at the same speed (even though it was the non-emergency line).  They searched through the house, found the smoke detector with the red light, and replaced the battery.  WHEW!  (I hope I don’t get a bill for that!  wait, I already paid with my taxes right?)  The kids had fun, and my nephew slept through the whole thing.  I’m going to suggest that we trade him in for a watch dog.

As I’ve been writing and thinking about video on the internet, I came across a dusty CD case in my office.  Within this case I found a CD I had burned and marked simply “BMW Films”.  You see, way back in 2001 I didn’t have high-speed internet at my house.  I was working for an online training company and I would use my work access to learn all about what was going on on-line.  When I found something marvelous, I would save it and store it.  *shrugs* Yeah, I’m a bit nerdy.

In 2002, BMW teamed up with 8 different filmmakers to produce a series of 10 minute long “Branded Content” entertainment.  The idea was a HUGE hit.  More often than not, the idea behind creating a viral video is to somehow hid the sponsorship or message in the video (just like the MegaWoosh).  BMW didn’t need to hide their message in their video, they FLAUNTED it, and the message was simple, “Our Cars can DRIVE”.

These films introduced me to Clive Owen as the BMW driver.  He’s hired on various jobs to get people from point A to B, but he does it with flair.  Later when Clive showed up in The Bourne Identity I elbowed my wife and said, “HEY! It’s the guy from BMW films!”  In my mind, it made him more of a star because I had already seen him.

This form of online video marketing was super successful.  It’s sure does say something when people are keeping a copy of your advertising.  You can learn more about The Hire here and see more videos like the one below on YouTube.

Here is a work in progress of a new Star Wars image I’m making.  I started out with a rough gesture pose, then made a clean pencil drawing.  I used a light table to make the inked drawing which I scanned and colored in Flash.  I’m using Flash so that I can scale the image to what ever size I need to with out losing any image quality.

Ok, so you get the Star Wars reference, and no, I don’t really think that Obama is my only hope, I just wanted to let you all know that I DO need some help. I don’t know how the blog stats work, but last month I had over 25,000 unique visits to this site. So I want to hear from some of you on the work that you’re doing and whether or not you have openings for me at your job. If that doesn’t work, I’d like you all to send me my $2.00!

So here I am now looking for a job again that will support me and my family while allowing me to continue to grow as an artist. I sometimes have a hard time describing what I do because I really do a wide variety of things. I illustrate, animate, shoot and edit video, market, advertise, problem solve, sculpt, and in short, I create. I’ve got 10 years of experience building online training courses in Flash. I can effectively communicate my ideas even if I need to do so in Japanese. I’m a quick wit and a pleasure to have around the office.

Even with all this going for me, I’m having a hard time finding employment. Without a steady job, I’m not making what I used to, but my expenses are all the same. I’d like to save some money with President Obama’s Mortgage refinance plan, but I need to prove that I have steady income to do it. We’ve never been late on our mortgage, we have super credit, but that doesn’t seem to matter. So help me Obama-Wan Kenobi! Bail me out long enough to restructure my business and get back on the path to profitability. Just Kidding, I know that I can’t sit around and wait for a stimulus package to save me. I’ve got to do something about it myself. So, I’m asking you all to let me know of job openings that you’ve heard of that you think I would be perfect for. Tell your friends and family. thank you for reading, and thank you for your help.

“give me my two dollars.”

So I went over the Old Navy to get some new shirts (I left some hanging up in my last Hotel room and SURPRISE! the can’t be found by the hotel staff).  While I was there I notices some really fun t-shirts with Marvel characters printed on them.  I’ve been looking into obtaining the license to create some new art work from a movie, so I found myself wondering how much Old Navy paid Marvel to be able to make the shirts.  I haven’t found anything about the amount for the deal, but I was surprised by the comic book that they gave me.

So, there is a promotion going on that coincides with Marvel’s 70th anniversary.  From Aug. 8-17 shoppers who purchase a Marvel T-shirt will receive a limited-edition reprint of the first appearance of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15.  (I actually got the book without the Marvel purchase.)  Here’s the comic reprinted exclusively for Old Navy.

So I’m reading through the story, remembering how in the original story Peter Parker made his own webslinging equipment and then I see it.  Peter Parker in his room working on his costume, just hanging out in his OLD NAVY T-SHIRT!!!!  I always thought that Petey was a bit geeky and wore a lot of button up shirts with pocket protectors, but there it was starring me in the face.  The revisionist history of Spider-man clearly shows that Pete was a fan of Old Navy.

It reminds me of this subtle bit of Product Placement from the 1992 film Wayne’s World.

As I’m working to try and figure out how to be self employed and try to make money from the internet, here’s another example of viral marketing that really didn’t mean to be viral marketing.  The difference between this one and the one I wrote about earlier is that this video was not created to market anything, it was a fun video that caught fire on the internet.

In the above video, a Minnesota couple enter the church dancing to the Chris Brown song “Forever”. They just did it for fun.  They posted it on YouTube, and the video got VERY popular.  It was passed all over the internet.  So YouTube posted links to buy the Chris Brown song on iTunes and Amazon and they started to advertise on the video page. The song was originally released on April 22, 2008 and had, for all intents and purposes, completed it’s life cycle.  With the 24 million views in just a few weeks on YouTube, Chris Brown’s song went to #4 on iTunes and this video revitalized the market for the song.  What about copyright?  Well, YouTube doesn’t have to pull the video under safe harbor until the owner of the content says to pull it.  Chris Brown’s managers were smart enough to ride this successful video and they had a surge of profits.  The downside is that the video creator gets no benefit from it, BUT, if they were a partner with YouTube, they could have taken advantage of some profit sharing.

The moral of the story is to put things up on YouTube with a plan in mind.  The comedy site College Humor has made a sequel video called the “Divorce Video”, but it’s just not the original.  I need to start working up some ideas of my own.