Here are some more of the sketch cards.

Somewhere along the road I forgot to mention that I drew 100 sketch cards for the Empire Strikes Back trading card set.  I’ve stumbled upon the idea of making the card sets a bit more collectible by making a bit of a puzzle out of them.  So I drew a boarder around each card and then drew 9 versions of each characters.  I did 11 characters, making for 99 cards, with 1 little Yoda card left over.  I also have my 6 return cards that I have yet to draw anything on at all!  I’ll probably make a shadow box out of them and have them for sale at the Star Wars Celebration V in August.

What a strange course of events. Last weekend I was in San Francisco attending the WonderCon Comic book festival. At this show as well as previous events I was pleased to speak briefly to actress Erin Gray. I know her best as Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers. At this event Erin was accompanied by her lovely daughter Samantha, who will be starring in … (wait for it)….BUCK ROGERS!The Buck Rogers story began on January 7, 1929 with the debut of the first science fiction comic strip. It the Radio waves in 1932 followed by a ten-minute Buck Rogers film shown at the 1933-1934 World’s Fair in Chicago. A print of the film was discovered donated to UCLA and can be seen below.

To my mind, Buck Roger is most famously known as a 12-part serial film that was produced in 1939. This adventure serial along with the 1979 TV series helped to foster my own sci-fi imagination. Though I’m not sure where to find this information, but it has been said that George Lucas originally conceived Star Wars after deciding he wanted to create a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers film and found the rights too expensive to obtain.XXxSo Back to Erin and Samantha Gray. The Buck Rogers story started as a comic strip, then became a serial film, the a tv series and now it returns as a WEB series. The teaser trailer below was launched late last year.

James Cawley is creating the web series and hopes to produce twenty 40-minute web episodes. He has secured the rights and will focus on how Rogers went from World War I to 25th century Earth. In this version of the story, Anthony “Buck” Rogers is now Lucas “Buck” Rogers. I wonder if that’s a nod to George? You can see some familiar faces in the video below.

Quite ironically, on Valentines day I heard about what Wired magazine called a “Really twisted love letter” to George Lucas.  The People vs. George Lucas is a documentary film about the love/hate relationship between George Lucas and his fans.  It was created by an open internet call to fans to submit their opinions, videos, or images.  Over 600 hours of footage has been narrowed down to 96 minutes for the premiere tomorrow at 6:30PM at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin Texas.

So here’s the root of the controversy.  In 1977 we were ALL introduced to Star Wars.  It had a huge impact on me and help to foster my imagination.  In one scene in particular a rogue smuggler is hired to transport the aged general Obi-Wan Kenobi and his knight-in-training as they seek to return the stolen plans to the princess Organa.  Before they could take off the smuggler was cornered by a bounty hunter.  With a gun pointed in his face, he decided to shoot first and ask questions later.  Well, that’s the way I remember it, but in the 1997 Special Edition re-release we see a version where the bounty hunter Greedo shoots first.  Then in the 2004 the scene is changed again so that the two fire at almost the same time.  These changes to the film really upset a lot of people.  This documentary film seems to be a way for people to express their love for Star Wars and their frustration for the changes made to it.

I first heard about this documentary film from it’s director Alexandre O. Philippe.  He contacted me asking for my permission to use my print depicting the showdown between Han Solo and Greedo.  The print was made for the Star Wars Celebration Japan and as such, Lucasfilm holds the rights to it and I couldn’t authorize him to use it in the film.  I was flattered to have been asked to have my artwork used in association with high-profile industry professionals and George Lucas collaborators, including the legendary Gary Kurtz, Sandy Lieberson (former Head of Production at 20th Century Fox), Dale Pollock (author of SKYWALKING), Producer Anthony Waye (JAMES BOND 007), David Prowse, and the great Neil Gaiman.XXXSo I came up with a solution and I made a new illustration.

Here’s the trailer for the documentary film.

When I was a kid I loved to read the “Choose your own adventure” formatted books.  Like the cliffhanger serial films of my father’s generation, these books would put the main characters into perilous situations and then pose a question to the reader.  Should the hero return to camp?  then turn to page 23.  It created an interactive experience that made me feel that I was part of the story.

I just watched a video advertising an new kind of interactive adventure. I’m not a fan of Horror movies, but this is how the adventure movie works. Audience members upload their phone numbers at the beginning of the movie, then during the movie the on screen character picks up their phone and calls one of them. The audience member then “helps” the person in the film by giving them directions. Watch the video and see how awesome this is!

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief opens in theaters today. Last night at 11:00 I went upstair to wake my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter to take them to the midnight showing (SURPRISE! They were already awake and dressed). The three of us have read all of the books in the series, but were curious about the film adaptation based on the movies trailer seen in the video below.

The movie was great. I would recommend going to see it. My 9 year old jumped a bit at the monsters, but it was rated PG so they didn’t have any gore. After reading the books and knowing the characters, the movie felt a bit rushed, and the plot-line from the books just wasn’t the same. Here’s the thing, you can’t really pack 375 pages into a 2 hour movie.

Chris Columbus the director of the Harry Potter movies took the helm on this project and sifted through all those pages and distilled them down to a 120 page movie script. To do that, he took elements of the original story and repurposed them for HIS story. Some things were left out, and some things were added. Don’t spend too much time thinking about the color of Anabeth’s hair or the type of pen that Percy has because there are much bigger issues to think about. Disney has bought the rights to the property, but that doesn’t mean that they have to make a carbon copy of the book. Interestingly enough, if they did make a 100% faithful film version of the book, the fans would probably pick out all of the little details that they left out. I may have been easier to just make a new version.

As the heroic tale is re-told throughout time, it tends to adapt and change and become a different story than the way it started. So, in my opinion, this movie is a re-telling of the book, it is not the book. It’s the Legend of Percy Jackson. I enjoyed the book enough to go see the movie, but I wasn’t so married to the book that I couldn’t enjoy the film adaptation.

I noticed my son and daughter were checking out books from the library about the Greek gods and ancients myths. This new found fascination with the ancient heroic tales of the gods and their offspring was a direct result of the book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

The book series is about a twelve year old boy diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, who is constantly getting into trouble and has been expelled from several schools. I started reading the series and was instantly hooked by author Rick Riordan’s wonderful characters, clever titles, and good humor. Here’s how the book starts.

chapter 1: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My name is Percy Jackson.

I have often thought about using the Hero’s Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell to create my own stories, but I’d never thought about bringing the gods into a modern setting. I really enjoyed all of the books and was excited to hear that a movie was being made.

Here’s another shadow box commission that I did before Christmas.  A break from my Star Wars art and into another movie that I love “The Princess Bride.”  Here is Wesley and Buttercup leaving the Fire Swamp.

On December 21st, 1937 my world changed.  Hmmm, well, now that I think of it, it wasn’t really my world yet!  This day marks the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full color, the first to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first in the Walt Disney Animated Classics canon.  I knew that it was I wanted to do.  I grew up watching these animated features and explaining to everyone that I knew that my life’s ambition was to be a Disney animator.  Well, I went to college for a semester, then spent 2 years as a missionary in Japan, returned home, finished another semester of college, changed majors, changed schools, changed majors, got married, and then graduated with a Fine Arts Degree from Arizona State University.

I interviewed and has a portfolio review at Disney but it didn’t go anywhere.  Fox Animation Studios set up shop in Phoenix and I met with people, toured and tested for positions, but I never made it there either.  I settled into a job working to create graphics and illustrations for online training courses, but it was NOT traditional animation.  I’ve worked to at this job for 10 years now, and I’m slowly starting to work my way into doing my original dream.  It’s not quite traditional animation, but I’m having a blast drawing Star Wars!

On a side note, after Snow White was released, Walt Disney saw a need to expand the studio and he used the profits from Snow White to build this studio in Burbank.  The success of Disney animation is built upon the Seven dwarfs so they are shown holding up the roof on the main administration building. Thanks Uncle Walt!

photo by Loren Javier

When Netflix was established in 1997, it was venturing into some uncharted waters. Instead of running down to Blockbuster or your local Video Shack, a Netflick subscriber creates a list on the company website, called a rental queue. Then, for a flat monthly fee, the movies are delivered to the subscriber’s home. It’s pretty cool stuff. After spending nearly $300 million a year on postage, the company seemed ready to make another leap forward in technology and truly put the NET in Netflixs by offering streaming video.

I have a Playstation 3 and I’ve been very happy with it. I was thrilled to learn that through the wireless connection I could watch YouTube videos, and for a little while, Hulu was available on the PS3. However, it seemed that whenever I went tried to use these services the connection was always slow and would be constantly buffering the video. We would connect my wife’s laptop to the tv and watch Hulu wirelessly as a test and that seemed to work just fine. I decided to use the Playstation Store to rent a movie to see if their own service worked better.  I started the download and walked away for 30 minutes so that enough of the movie could download for me to watch it.

So when I first heard that Netflix would be streaming video to the PS3 I was skeptical.  They don’t have the same number of shows available streaming as they do in the regular delivery service but 17,000 movies and recorded television shows isn’t bad. I put the Netflix disk in the system and in just over a minute I was watching Legend of the Seeker without a hitch. Well done Netflix, well done.