October Events!!!

 October will be a very busy and fun month for me! I am showing my art at three different festivals around LA and will be doing several free Anime drawing workshops at libraries around town. I am particularly excited because for the first time in my life, I am making prints of my work  to sell at these festivals!

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Sunday, October 9th

The first event I will be a part of is the 4th annual Mole festival at historic Olvera Street on the border between Chinatown and Downtown LA. There will be an abundance of Mole dishes served, beautiful art shown and authentic mexican music played, this is a great family event!

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Sunday, October 16th

On Sunday, I will have my own booth at the 6th annual Dia De Los Muertos art and music festival in uptown Whittier. This huge street festival is sure to be a great one! I will be showing art and selling prints of my work thanks to Yolanda at Casita Del Pueblo  at which I will be having my solo show "Grullas de Papel" (Paper Cranes) in early 2012, stay tuned for that!! 

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Monday, October 17th

I'll be at the Sun Valley branch of the LA public library on Monday to do a FREE Anime drawing workshop

 from 4pm - 5pm. I will be teaching step by step techniques on drawing your very own Anime character including  face, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, hands, feet, body proportions and character posing! Free to all!!



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Wednesday, October 19th
I will be doing a FREE 1 hour Anime Workshop at the Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune Branch of the LA public library, come out and learn the basics of how to draw a Japanese Anime character from scratch!!

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Saturday, October 22nd

I have two events on Saturday!! I'll be displaying my art at the 12th Annual Dia De Los Muertos celebration at the historic Hollywood Forever Cemetery!! my artwork will be displayed towards the East end of the cemetery in the mausoleum. My original paintings well as prints of them will be available for sale

(I do accept credit cards) 



Photo by Rob Sheridan

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Saturday October 22nd

Also, i will be doing an Anime drawing workshop at the Mar Vista Branch of the LA public library that same day at 2 pm!! Again this will be a FREE workshop! All ages welcome, I will provide all materials.

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Thursday, October 27th

This will be my last library Anime workshop in October and will be at the Vernon branch of the LA public library, This is a FREE 1 hour step by step instruction on how to create your own Anime character from scratch, no previous drawing experience needed!! I have two more library workshops scheduled in November, will update closer to those dates!

Thanks every one! hope to see y'all out and about on the town in October!!!!!

~CNIII

Why I hate the poster for "Abduction"

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the film "Abduction" or it's marketing.

The first time i saw the billboard for the New Taylor Lautner film "Abduction", the one of him sliding down the side of a building with a gun in hand, something really bothered me about it. No, it wasn't that Taylor Lautner was allowed to act again after Twilight, it was something about the design of the poster itself.

Having had been a background layout artist on "The Simpsons" for 3 years, i worked with 1, 2 and 3 point perspectives on a daily basis. I know perspective like the back of my hand. I had a firm grasp of  and was reproducing M.C. Escher concepts at 14 years old. Some people KNOW baseball...I KNOW perspective. The problem is that it's hard to explain concepts of perspective without visuals. Luckily  I am self taught in Photoshop and also know it like the back of my hand. There are a few things that are wrong with this poster from the standpoint of...oh i don't know..... elementary physics. Either the poster designer didn't know what he/she was doing or the design department didn't care about portraying the real physical in this poster.  Let me explain-
   The poster is very dramatic, Jacob is sliding down the side of a high rise with a gun, three buildings tower over him and at the very top of the image a helicopter seems to be chasing him. He is facing the viewer, as he should for he is the star of the film. Through the magic of photoshop, i went ahead and de-constructed this composition so that I may walk you through my thought process. First, I removed everything in the composition except the 3 buildings and the helicopter:

The buildings are all pointing upwards, in perspective this is called "1 point perspective" meaning that all  the lines seem to vanish into one point, creating the effect on the viewer looking at a three dimensional scene in ONE direction only (1 point perspective). In this case that one direction is UP.

Think of it as if you were lying down on the floor looking up at the sky, you are looking only up, not at any side or angle. Second,  I added a figure, a body falling downwards through the sky, if this body were falling straight down it would be facing the viewer, in essence the body would be parallel to the ground like so:

Third, I added Taylor Lautner into the composition with out the building in the foreground that he's sliding on. Check out the similarities between the previous and this next picture:

You'll notice that Jacob is Facing the viewer and is in essence falling straight down! Following is a diagram of what it would look like if you were looking at the scene from a building across the way:

If  you wee looking at this from another building, you would see this werewolf in human form falling  from the sky, straight down. Now, thank goodness, he is sliding down a building, we know this because we can see that his hand and both feet are in contact with a building surface:

 But here's the problem, if you were lying down on the floor, looking straight up, any surface that you would see would either be the bottom or the sides. It's impossible to see the top of a building from the ground,  think of a box suspended above you, the only surfaces you'd be able to see are the bottom and sides but not the top. So with that reasoning, the surface of the building that Jacob is sliding down must   be either the side, a 90 degree angle, or the bottom, because if it is the top, that means that the whole building is toppling over while he's surfing it...not likely, unless this is an Inception/Matrix film. If its one of the sides or the bottom, then he's Spiderman, again, not likely. More likely, the poster designer(s) may have wanted to put his sliding down a 45 degree angle of a building, like so, which make sense:

but again, it's impossible to see any surface, even 45 degrees, if you the viewer are looking up from the ground, as the composition is set up. So here's my solution if i were to have worked on this poster. I would have used a 2 point perspective composition, meaning that the viewer can see the corners of buildings and had them at an angle, so as to give a more realistic effect that the 45 degree angled surface belonged there:

BEFORE

AFTER

This, to me, looks a bit more believable and look, i brightened up Jacob's face for the enjoyment of all his loyal tween fans!! I hope you enjoyed this practical journey through the world of perspective!

~CNIII

  

The Roxy; Quite possibly the best club on the Strip

I was passing out flyers at the Roxy last night, (my night job) and ran into Stephanie, who works the door to "on the Rox" an upstairs lounge above the Roxy. She and I go way back, mainly because my band has played there a number of times: Our CD release party, opening shows and being direct support on many, not to mention all the KROQ Locals Only shows we've been part of. Between that and me passing out flyers there like every other weekend, we've gotten to talk alot and to know each other.

 Stephanie is a sweet heart but DO NOT get on her bad side, especially when she's working, she'll mop the floor with you lol. When i arrived last night the show was in full swing and it was crazy!! Hank Williams III was playing there and it was PACKED! Rockabillies and punkers as far as the eye could see. Stephanie was in action, doing crowd control and keeping the sidewalk clear of smoking and inebriated fans. I took this opportunity to give out some flyers and take photos (to prove I was working). After a moment or two I spotted Nick, the owner of Roxy, keeping watch over the crowd. Now, I had met Nick in passing and had seen him at different events around hollywood as I am constantly doing flyer gigs out there but had never really introduced myself one on one to him. I wasn't sure if he'd remember who i was, or if he'd even have time to speak to me. I took a chance and walked up to him, hand outstretched and said "Hi Nick, my name is Carlos, from Harmful if Swallowed" and without missing a beat, he said "Oh yeah! how you doin?", i said "good" and began to rap with him, man he's just an all around cool cat. I took this opportunity to tell him this: My band has played alot around town in small venues as well as large ones, and one thing has held true, one of the best live sounding places our band has performed at is the Roxy.

 Not only that but EVERYONE there is professional and courteous from the ticket ladies to the security and as if to reinforce this, in the midst of all the craziness, Nick just stood there like a friend I hadn't seen in a while and talked with me. I told him that we had played at a large venue recently and it didn't come close to comparing to the sound and courtesy that we always get there. He seemed to get a kick out of that. but it's true!

The Roxy really seems to care about making sure all the bands that perform there sound good whether they're the headliners or the opening act. They seem to understand that along with the touring acts, alot of bands who play there are local bands that have 9-5 jobs and thus, have reasonable sound check times like 6 or 7pm, unlike other places that expect all bands to be in the club with all their equiptment set up at 2pm! Ummm if you work till 4pm, it's impossible. All in all, I'd say that the Roxy is one of the best places to play on the Sunset Strip, They haven't been legendary for nothing!
Cheers to the Roxy, Cheers to Nick.

My Wednesday

I was up late working on a blog on what I dislike about the poster for the new film "Abducted"I had gone bar hopping with a lovely lady earlier in the evening, worked on the blog when i got home and fell asleep about 4am. This morning at 8:30am, i awoke to the sound of a tow truck taking my car away. It was on the wrong side of the street today for the street cleaning; I ran outside in a futile attempt to talk reason into the guys cuffing my car. I took some needed things out of my car and walked inside. I was angry for about a minute then, being a Buddhist, I just let it go and thought why am I so angry? It wasn't the money i would have to pay because i was already saving that up to pay the DMVand it wasn't the lack of having a car because I have a scooter. Then I realized that it was my Ego, I was ashamed, humilitated before any neighbors that might have been watching, it echoed back to when I was 8 yrs old and asked to leave the class and go to the principal's office. The walk of shame. i knew that my Ego was behind this anger because when the tow truck left, i breathed a sigh of relief and was calm. I had made plans with my friend Kengikat for him to come over today and photograph my art in order that i could make prints to sell at future art shows.

Kengi is one of the most talented photographers that i know, (Tuanya, Carlos and Paul being some of the others) he is very wise yet humble charismatic yet soft spoken, you'll never know of the hundreds of amazing things that he's done in his life because he doesn't brag. I decided to just pick him up on my Lance Milan scooter, yes it's a cheap chinese brand but it still runs as well if not better than any Vespa out there! When it wants to... I picked up kengi from the corner of Vermont and hollywood where we had some delicious Macho Tacos. When we got to the house there was the regular greeting at the door by my roommate's dogs which I will call "my" dogs. Mia, the Boxer with Asbergers jumping up to try and lick Kengi's face and Oscar de la Hoya, the Pug, Miniature Pincsher, chihuahua mix  quietly smelling his shoes. after he had gotten their approval we got to work photographing my paintings,

Kengi has a great eye. I was amazed at how great the pictures were coming out on his camera's view finder, he experimented with flash, with no flash, different angles, at one point he was sprawed out on the floor like a soldier in the mud, getting that perfect shot! He took the time to go through each photo and compare it to the last looking for all the differences and changing positioning and settings providing me with a full range of options for when i do make prints of the paintings.
 We took a break and got Pizza from Giamelas on los Feliz which "My" puppies were all to anxious to taste..

 I looked over some of his pics. The colors were soooo rich! The darks were amazingly dark! every detail in my paintings were represented, i was in artistic heaven! a pretty crappy morning turned into a great afternoon. Thanks so much Kengi!!!!! I zoomed through hollywood traffic and dopped him off..

What about the car? The one that was towed... I'll take care of that later, hell i have my awesome scooter! lets see $2.00 to fill a tank vs. $60.00, yep, I'll take the scooter.

 Next blog: Why i hate the poster for the newAbducted movie.