I have been looking for some time for new posters to add to my room walls, and move some of the existing posters / art around.
A few weeks ago I managed to get a Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea movie poster.
Also just a few days ago I managed to secure another addition to the collection (it arrived today), I think I got lucky on this one… an original movie poster of Howl’s Moving Castle
What is the Totoro Forest Project?
It is an international fundraising exhibition/auction event to support the non-profit Totoro no Furusato Foundation (Home of Totoro) established by Hayao Miyazaki.
What is exactly the Totoro no Furusato Foundation?
Well, it is a non-profit foundation as mentioned above created with the purpose to preserve the beautiful natural habitat of Sayama Hills which is located about 24 miles from the Tokyo Japan metropolitan area. Sayama Hills is the location that inspired Hayao Miyazaki to write/create “Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro)” in 1988. If you have not seen this movie, you must see it.
The Auction / Exhibition
Over 200 top international artists that work in different mediums have donated work specially created for this event.
The benefit auction will be held at Pixar Animation Studios on September 6th, 2008, a book will be available at this event as well that contains all the work that was donated. There will also be a special exhibition of selected artwork from the auction at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California from September 20th to December 7th 2008.
I already spotted a couple of pieces that would be nice to have in my room, who knows maybe I will get to own a piece of artwork, or maybe I wont be so lucky and will have to just donate some money to the cause.
Please share this info with everyone you know, and if you live locally maybe we will run into each other at one of these events.
More information found at: Totoro Forest Project and Enrico Casarosa’s blog announcement.
Well we got the chance to go see WALL-E, but not until around 2:45pm due to issues that came up.
How was it? It was Excellent!!!, but don’t take my word go see for yourself. Love the graphics, the story, etc. Sometimes you see movies and you can tell what will happen next, at least for me that was not the case, the story hook me and at some point I even forgot I was watching an animated film. Not many animated films do that for me, actually now that I think about it I don’t think it has ever happened. Each character was animated beautiful. I can’t wait to see it again, I think it would be really cool if there was an Imax theater close to home.
The widget below is pretty cool, it allows you to view the trailer without leaving the page 
The vignette’s are pretty cool as well, more animation to enjoy.
I officially started my vacation on SketchCrawl day (Saturday June 21st), and so far it has been very nice.
We live in beautiful Northern California therefore there are quite a lot of places to visit. We visit towns around us on weekends but it is nice to be able to spend more time and/or visit during the early morning on a weekday. The idea was also to sketch here and there, maybe we will get to that too
Today I had the opportunity to drink my favorite drink “Mocha Milkshake” 
yum…
I also decided to purchase advance tickets for WALL-E for my wife and I, just in case there is a long line early Friday morning, who knows…
Last Saturday, June 21st was SketchCrawl #19
This time the location was decided to be Fort Point, San Francisco CA. (right under the Golden Gate bridge).
It was great as always, really a time to remove oneself from the rush of every day life, and instead just enjoy the experience of being alive, an appreciation of everything around ourselves.
I got to the location around noon and was surprised to find a parking spot close to the fort (where I typically park) and off I went.. venture into the Fort itself. Once I got in I saw Enrico Casarosa and a few seconds later Ronnie del Carmen. Finally got to meet Enrico in person we have been communicating via email/chat for quite some time even though we both live and work close by.
Since It was the first time I had the opportunity to go inside the Fort, off I went to explore. I was surprised about the weather, just some 20mins before I was sweating in Novato, CA. and now I was enjoying the cool weather in this other location.
Made it to the top of the Fort and decided to get started. Below are the results:
Quick watercolor of the outer bay
This time in addition to using the Niji watercolor brushes, I also brought with me a little water spray bottle, so I could get the watercolor to flow more freely. Quite a change between the way the water looks in this sketch as opposed to the previous one I did last SketchCrawl.
While still standing in the same location, just turning around towards the right the next subject was found.
This is actually a minuature cannon that was inside of a case display within the Fort, all of the cannons apparently had the ability to be rotated in various different ways, something that never occurred to me. I wonder how many people took to move one of those around from side to side.
Then I got hungry, time to visit the Warming Hut, I thought that maybe this location would also be somewhat cold but it was the opposite, it was actually a lot warmer (quite frankly it felt nice after freezing at the Fort). They were quite a lot of groups engaged in their individual picnic’s and even a wedding was about to start or had already taken place.
I actually spent time going back and forth between the Warming Hut and the Fort, and while moving back and forth noticed a trail that went from the Warming Hut to the parking found next to the toll booths above. This sketch was done midway of that trail. There were a lot more trees visible but I didnt include them.
The top portion of the Golden Gate was actually all I could see from where I was standing (still midway on that trail). There were a lot of plants (possibly rose bushes) on the side of the hill and on the background was the bridge.
The second sketch on this page, was my last trip to the Fort rooftop, this time wearing a jacket. I wanted to do a quick sketch of San Francisco from that location.
As mentioned before this was a lot of fun, I actually lined up my vacation with SketchCrawl and it was very nice way to launch it
I expect to do more sketches here and there as I move thru the week. I also cannot wait (well I can actually) for Friday to come so we can go see Pixar’s new animation film WALL-E