adventures on the animation rollercoaster: June 2006

27 Years Ago, Something Happened...

It's my birthday today. Here's what I looked like at the beginning of time:

Laugh it up, chuckles...

Tiger Puppet of Love

So... I have no good explanation for this, 'cept that I like this song, and I like puppets... And I have free time lately:

I've been wanting to do a puppet video to this song for the longest time, so I decided to do a test. I edited in iMovie, which was fun for a little bit, and then got to be majorly frustrating because every time I applied a transition between clips, it was moving them a little and screwing up the lip sync... Anyway, this was just for fun, and I wanna do a much better one soon- I hope you enjoy watching my test.

Yokoso Kyoto!

Here are the sketch book pages from my short exploits in Kyoto... We went there for a day, and stayed overnight. It rained a lot. We walked a lot, which was really fun, but tiring. It was an awesome and beautiful place to visit. It feels quite a bit more laid back than Tokyo. Sorry for the lack of actual photos, but I'm waiting to get together with my Japan Trip clique to exchange photos, and secret messages to decode on our special Japan Trip® decoder rings...

(click on the images to get a bigger, all-up-in-yo-face version)

I've made some headway in the job-finding game... a lot of headway... After July you might not see me for a while unless you work with me, are a member of my immediate family, or play the Where's Elizabeth game - like Where's Waldo, without the obnoxious outfit.. ok ok... maybe with a different sort of obnoxious outfit.

Japanese Businessmen

There were a lot of business men on the trains in Japan. Most of these were fast caricatures, since business men don't tend to stand still for long, especially getting in and out of the trains...

Japanese TV

This is generally what children's TV shows looked like in Japan. The drawing that looks like a simplified marshmallow man was friends with the grey, fuzzy thing, that looks like he's made out of dryer lint. The characters on the bottom right are post boxes with faces and were on late at night on a Japanese gameshow. On the upper left-hand corner is a drawing of a sign I saw while on the Shinkansen (bullet) train, going from Tokyo to Kyoto.

People in Japan I

Sketches of people from the JR train, and airport. The trains are crowded, but everyone somehow manages to fit. There were very few disasterous collisions in the train stations, despite the one million people per square inch...

Kikuchan, Back in Action

I just got back from Japan yesterday. Here's a video of some of my trip:

Thanks for that, Scott-

Seriously, though, here is a picture of one of my most last minute, but most favorite purchases:

I bought the one that looks like a tiger, all the way in the back, one in from the left. The best addition to the cuteness is that when you squeeze a device inside the puppet, he makes a realistic, big-cat growling noise.