Month: July 2008

I'll be watching "The Watchmen"

Entertainment, Movies

Mark this date. This is the date that the Watchmen trailer came out.

This is definitely going to be my “Dark Night” next year. I’m not sure that it has the following that Batman has so I’m not counting on the box office. Actually I’m sure that it doesn’t but It is definitely the graphic novel that got me into comic books. My friend Brian was always into comics (Spiderman, Spawn, and X-men mostly) and I liked them too, but I was never really a fanboy.

Then I found “Watchmen“.

It was the first time I realized that there were comics out there that were written for adults (not talking Fritz the Cat here). Comics that delt with real issues. I mean what would happen if people really started taking to the streets and dealing out beatdowns vigalante style? Who would be in control of them?

Who’s watching the Watchmen?

I hope this is the movie that makes Alan Moore proud. Moore has been vocal about his hatred of the other movies based on his properties (V for Vendetta, League of Extrordinary Gentlemen) and he’s actually taken his name off of them. The artist, Dave Gibbons, has been involved in the process from day one, which I hope bodes well for the production. I’ve heard that the director, Zack Snyder (300, Day of the Dead) is taking everything very seriously, which is how I think you have to do it with this subject matter.  What I really want is for this film to be so bad ass and frame by frame accurate that Moore will shrug his shoulders, stroke his giant beard and say “Not Bad Guys”

Screen Printing is Harder than I thought

Projects, Stuff and Things

It’s almost Cardboard Boat time. Which means it’s also time to make the annual cardboard boat tshirts. I’ve moved up in complexity and quantity every year. For the first year I just got red shirts and drew on them with a black sharpie. Not a bad idea when you’re only making 2 shirts. The next year I did black shirts with a white skull and cross-swords on the back with the word “CarRrRdboard” on the front. I used poster board for the stencil and bought letter stencils for the front. Worked pretty well, I made 4 shirts. Last year I got a little ambitous with the stenciling. I simplified the design and created a SCYC logo and cut it out of hard plastic for the stencil. I did dark green shirts with white (or yellow) paint. I think I made about 10 shirts total.

So that brings me to this year. The boat is bigger, but with less riders, but the shirts are both more complicated and more numerous. Making the design was easy, just threw together some things that I had lying around. I bought a screen printing kit online and followed the directions. I actually thought this was going to be the hard part with the photo emulsions and stuff. But it turned out to be really easy. So i’d been putting off printing the shirts because I thought it was going to be hard and messy. Plus I was waiting for the tshirts to go on sale at Michaels. I printed one test shirt and it didn’t come out very well. I was getting a little nervous. But I tried a couple more times on some scrap fabric, it really is an artform what you have to do with the squegee and it’s hard to tell when you’ve put on enough ink. I think it’s one of those skills that you just have to experiment with. So I bought a bunch of new shirts and set up the sweatshop to print all the shirts in one night ( I have to because the damn race is on Saturday)

Mistakes were made. I didn’t even notice until I’d done about 7 or 8 shirts but apparently I hadn’t cleaned the screen out enough from the test prints so I had lost a few details here and there. Like whole letters and stuff. But I kept on going, but no matter how hard I pressed I couldn’t get the print to be as good as I wanted. The best I could come up with was some kind of “American Eagle” faux vintage look. I SHOULD have left it like that, but that wouldn’t be my style. I have to take things one step too far. I always do this. So I took out a paintbrush and tried to fix a few of the worse parts in the shirts, mostly on the front breast pocket logo. The mistake was not thinking that there would be a texture difference in the screen printed ink and the brushed on ink, especially with silver ink. So now the brushed on parts still look like they’re wet. But I’m sure everyone will think they look fine and they’ll age well anyway.

This year I think I did 7 XLs dark blue, 1 L dark blue, 2 small dark blue, 1 large dark green, 1 kids large dark blue, 1 kids small hunter green, and 2 large special edition lime green. All have silver ink (it’s the hotness) 15 shirts. not bad.

Later!

All Good 2008

Life, Trips

I’m going to try and avoid the obvious phrase… All Good 2008 was the sweetness. I’m not sure if it was really bigger than last year, we didn’t camp in the same area, but it felt big. The people we camped with and around were the kind of people that I expect to be there, good people.

The Line:

We got the early admission tickets for Thursday and I’m glad we did. We got into the line around 4:30 and then hit traffic, it actually turned into a moving party. We would all jump in our cars, move 20 feet, then get back out and open up the coolers. It was fun to walk up the liine and back to see what kind of music the different folks were listening to. Four hours later we reached our parking space (side of a hill) there were still people in that line at 2am. The Stage seemed to be about a 20 minute walk (at least) from where our car was packed so we decided to hike our camp closer to the stage.

The Spot:

We had planned for this event by bringing a wagon this year. But we also brought about 10 times more stuff. We’re good planners, not good packers. We took only the essentials on the first trip, tent, bookbags and “The Spot Claimer”. When we got up there we found that it was pretty packed in. We spent a couple minutes looking for a spot big enough to plant the shade tent when a nice bearded guy said that there was some room by his group. They seemed like nice enough people and they were really excited by all the crap we brought (who wouldn’t be!). They seemed to be running the “We’re in college and all we brought was beer” Camp. The spot was in the Dogwood neighborhood, pretty close to the stage, About as close as last year without the giant hill (good). The neighbors were good people, the “Boy Scouts”, the “Really prepared Sisters”, the “Jam Band Junkies”, and the “Nice people who brought games”. No trouble from any of them, just good vibes.

The Music:

Like every year, I really wish I had seen more music. But waking up after a long night and then it’s hot outside the shade tent… I really didn’t want to go sit in a hot field. So we only saw a couple of daytime shows. We heard them from the camp, but that’s not really the same. My favorite show was by far Michael Franti and Spearhead (Last show of the Fest) I thought they really rocked it out and I really didn’t want it to end. Second would probably have to be the Widespread Panic set. I’ve been listening to them a lot before the fest so I was really excited to see them live. Phil Lesh was surprisingly good (I’m not really a Dead follower and didn’t like Ratdog last year) That Bassnectar guy ripped the place down, AWESOME! BOOOOM! and then BOOM! The crowd was so intense during that set and the glowstick rain was killer. Laurel loved the Dark Star Orchestra late night set on Saturday (Even though I’ve been trying to tell her that she would like it since last year). The music at the campsite was really awesome too, we had some guys that could really play the guitar and drums. Plus random “Mandolin Man” who came by on the last day. My plan for next year “See More Music”.

The Vibe:

Half the fun of All Good is the people. This year I think I heard that 18,000+ people were there. There were some sketchballs but not any more than last year. I only saw a few people that I know were not there for the music (there to make money). Laurel and I tried to make the fest fun for anybody and everybody around us. I think it makes us both happy to care for others. I wish I could find some other people like us before we go next time, I want to bring a little bit of the Burning Man art vibe out to the mountian next year. I think I’ll try to hang out on the Jambase forums and spread the vibe out for next year.

Next Year:

We’ll definatley be there, hope we can bring out some of our friends instead of just making new ones (that we may never see again) Laurel and I have already started thinking about what to do for next year. I have one plan… PERSONAL PARTY DOME.

If our new friends from VA TECH ever search for all good online I hope this post brings us back together.

Thanks for a GREAT time. (I’m not good with names)

Annie, Scotty, Matt, Jager, Coco, Desi, Jess… There are a couple more, but my mind is blank now.

Later!

The eye's have it

Art, Projects

I must have made this Jenn illustration 4 years ago now. But I still love how the eyes turned out. I printed a big version of it our for Art-o-matic, I think it would also look good if it were about 11 x 3 with a nice matted frame around it. I’ll have to get on that when we get back from All Good.

Jenn’s eyes