Over at Chris Brogan’s blog entitled “Your Blog This Weekend“, he takes a break during the weekend and lets his reader post a blog post in the comments section of this post (how many times have I written “post”?).

What a great idea!

I’d do that too if I had lots of readers :) Sometimes it takes time to build an audience/community. In the meantime, I posted a post (there’s that word again). To my delight, someone had previously posted (can’t help it) about a funny story in his animation class.

Did someone say animation? You can read Chris’ post and all his readers submissions by clicking this fantastic link.

Happy Blog Day!

Coincidentally (as far as I know), today is also Blog Day. I found out about it through Sean McGaughey’s twitter. The occasion calls for bloggers to list 5 blogs for the purpose of introducing them to their readers.

1. A Catholic Canadian
I’ll start off by listing Sean’s blog since that’s where I heard about Blog Day today. It is also my first time finding out that he’s blogging now! Also known as the Duct Tape Guy, Sean has a podcast about songwriting called For The Sake of the Song.

2. Atomic Suburbia
One of the best Canadian podcasts out there because the host, Daryl Cognito, also known as the PodDog, really makes you think– particularly about what it means to be Canadian as he himself is searching his place in this wonderful country of ours. Chime in on his blog with your thoughts of Canada.

3. Generation Exploitation
I seem to be on a Canadian kick here because this is another Canadian blog (avec accompanying podcast). Aside from comedy records, the host plays his collection of unintentionally funny vinyl from yesteryear. They’re hilarious!

4. MammaSteph’s Musings
Ok, the pattern has been set. This is the 4th Canadian blog I’ve listed :) The musings of a mamma… named Steph. Ok, she’s a good friend of mine who blogs about being a mother in this day and age. Her posts are really funny.

5. Media Network Weblog
Breaking the Canadian pattern is a blog from the Netherlands, the country that each year, sends tulips to our capital city as a thank you for helping liberate the Dutch in World War 2 (a great moment in Canadian history which sadly is pretty silent) and also sheltering the Dutch Royal Family (read about it here). Media Network was a terrific show on Radio Netherlands Worldwide about shortwave radio programs. It’s in blog format now so everything you ever needed to know about radio and tv in the world will be found on the Media Network Blog.

Technorati Tags: blogs, Blog Day, Chris Brogan

The epic conclusion to the Looney Tunes Duel is up for your enjoyment! Me and my friend, Mark, try to outdo each other by quoting Looney Tunes. Mark cheats by the way. Click this looney link to listen (or subscribe in iTunes).

Technorati Tags: SpudCast, Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, Warner Brothers, animation

My first submission to Illustration Friday. A new topic to draw is announced each week on the site and artists worldwide can submit their drawing about that topic.

The creativity is amazing. So I thought I’d give it a try. This week’s topic is “Visitors” and I immediately thought of ABBA’s “The Visitors” album. Yes, I am a fan and if I may go off on a tangent here, take a listen to this album if you only know ABBA from the usual Dancing Queen and Take A Chance On Me.

I decided to do a bit of a parody of their album cover but using the dragonfly cartoons I recently invented. My submission didn’t turn out as I had expected– I am still learning how to work with markers (LetraSet in case you were wondering) and I don’t have a wide palette.

The results I was aiming for is what I had achieved on my previous post. Mental note: buy thin black markers for outlines.

A bit about the album

The Visitors ended up being ABBA’s last studio album (if you don’t include the  follow-up greatest hits LP with a few new songs).  The cover itself is in a spooky, shadowy reddish gloom with the ABBA members facing in different directions. Perhaps it was a symbol of their divorces, desire to try something new? Despite being pop, the songs on the album sound like they belong in a musical.

May I recommend…

A definite toe-tapper and my favourite is the title track. Especially the chorus. Head Over Heels has an infectious chorus with Angetha and Frida’s harmonies bouncing along with Benny’s music.  When All Is Said And Done was almost another #1 for ABBA and I can’t recommend this song enough. Especially if you’ve ever gone throgh a break up which you know was for the best.

And if you do decide to buy the album, be sure to get the one with the bonus tracks. I can never get tired of Should I Laugh Or Cry; a new wave sounding song with a bit of ital-disco sound to it.

You can’t go wrong with this album.

Technorati Tags: Illustration Friday, ABBA, visitors

SpudCast #7 is up and it’s called “Show and Tell“.

Following up from show #5’s topic of how reading the Harry Potter books inspired me to follow revisit the fundamentals of character design, today I will talk about how I noticed that book 7 is a fantastic example of how important it is to show the reader what is going on as opposed to telling. I’ll also use a few examples from what I think is the greatest sitcom ever, I Love Lucy.

Telling what’s going on makes your story boring. When you show the reader, you let them deduce what is happening. That’s what made reading the Potter books so much fun. And I’m sure any fan of Lost will also attest to that.

The 7th Potter book used all the elements from the first 6. Everything we learned about the wizarding universe she created was put to use in book 7. Rowling did not have to explain the wizarding world. She had already showed us how cool that universe was in the previous books.

We experienced Harry’s lessons in apparating and disapparating, flying a broomstick, learning which spells to use for certain situations and even what magic can and cannot do. By the time book 7 came out, we were already familiar with the language and physics Rowling created and it made her story incredibly enjoyable.

I am a huge fan of I Love Lucy and I’m slowly collecting the box sets. After watching a few shows, I noticed there’s a pattern, perhaps you can go as far as calling it a formula, done on some episodes. Act 2 would show the audience something hilarious that went wrong. That was hilarious only because the proper way was previously demonstrated in Act 1 without the audience knowing.

For example, The Operetta… in Act1, we learn that Lucy borrows money from the women’s club bank account to pay for her household items when her own bank account is at zero. She pays back at a later date. But at this point, both accounts have no money and she instead of telling her club, she convinces them to put on an operetta to raise money. Without letting them know, Lucy plans on paying by post-dated cheque since they’ll have money after the tickets are sold.

In Act 2, we see the result of that scheme. The cheque bounces. Imagine if the operetta was the only thing on the show and Lucy had to tell the viewer everything in the end. Not as funny as seeing Lucy building up her own trouble!

Technorati Tags: storytelling, Harry Potter, I Love Lucy, SpudCast

Show #6 of SpudCast is up. It’s what I call a Looney Tunes Duel; my friend and I take turns reciting quotes from Looney Tunes cartoons. The object of the game is to stump each other. Except Mark cheats by printing out quotes from the Internet.

As someone who stutters, I am aware of the irony so don’t bother pointing it out :) First 5 minutes is an intro.

Technorati Tags: SpudCast, Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers, Warner Bros, podcast

This is my latest drawing in my moleskine sketchbook. I’ve been playing around with character designing a dragonfly (mental note to myself: research how many wings dragonflies actually have) then drew this.

I coloured it in with some Japanese ‘anime markers’ I found in Paris and a few Letraset markers. I left the dragonfly in pencil.

This was one of those instances where everything went right. The colours, no mess ups and the outcome looks like it came right out of a children’s book.

Of course, until one of you points out the drawing’s weakness (which I would appreciate receiving–leave comments below).

Technorati Tags: illustration, moleskine, letraset, deleter

I read a blog post on drawn.ca today talking about an illustrator who also thought of drawing on Ustream.tv like me. Except he actually has viewers.

That illustrator is Len Peralta of Jawbone Radio fame– the podcaster who went on a mission to find Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes.

Technorati Tags: Drawn, Len Peralta, Jawbone Radio, Ustream.tv

I wrote about writing the final tweets for the current story on my Twitter Spud blog today.

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitterspud, spud, superspud