I feel like I should explain what happened to "soon"...

If you could see my work over the past couple of months, it'd be a clean, renovated, empty house. My mom is moving from the house where I grew up, that she's lived in for over 28 years. She's adjusting well, and my brothers and I are each finding neat odds and ends that I thought were gone, but my big brother, especially, and I have been neck-deep and using up all our free time on this.

My younger brother is back in town now, and the last part of the work is to sort through the garage. My big brother is literally the only living man on Earth who can tell what's trash and what's treasure in there. Which basically lets me off the hook until it's time to mop.

Ikasucon wraps up this weekend, and I'm getting that familiar "Oh $#!%, Sugoi Con needs to be pulled together" itch. Every department usually works on their own stuff up until this point, and from now till the con is when we need to start coordinating each others' efforts and filling in the gaps. I'm usually the communication hub that makes sure the right people don't just wait for each other to call, and several people told me they missed me doing that last year, when I didn't join the staff.

I took some pictures of the second Kaylee costume, but my camera lens had fingerprints on it and they looked hazy. I plan to take more before she outgrows the costume. I promise, it looks so much cuter on the baby now that she's got hair!

I'll have a couple of new entries up soon - one for costuming and a new drawing. I've been learning to draw again lately and I know I need to post something besides baby photos, or else I might as well just have a Flickr site. I plan to make her more costumes in the future, so you may still see her!

A special edition DVD of "The Last Unicorn" is coming out in February, and you can help the author of the original book profit from it by buying the DVD through his website.

Here's the details:

[link]

- World Wide SketchCrawl -
Drawing Marathons from Around the World

To all interested. The 11th World Wide SketchCrawl is September 23rd 2006 !

But what is a "SketchCrawl"?
In short, roughly every 3 months we put a call out to people around the world to join in, put pen to paper on a given day for as long as they can (be it 20 minutes or 8 hours) drawing, sketching, journaling about their day and what's around them. For a day, slow down, look around you, see ... and draw or write. Record your day. No specific level of skill is expected ! Anyone is welcome.

How to participate.
We set up a forum where to seek and organize meetings with artists from your area. You can participate in SketchCrawl on your own or with a group of friends. I usually meet groups of artists in San Francisco, where I live. The forums and the Flickr SketchCrawl group also serve as gathering and sharing place after the drawing marathon day. The idea behind this is to get the great feeling of drawing with and at the same time as peoples from all walks of life and from all corners of the world; and ultimately by sharing the day's sketches and photos on Flickr and the SketchCrawl forums, to see places and details from corners of the world we might not see at all in our life time !

The history of it.
We put out a call for the first World Wide SkethCrawl on November 21st 2004, we've done 10 drawing marathons since and people from all over the world have joined in and shared their drawings. On one occasion we also raised funds for the Pakistani Earthquake relief effort. And we plan to seek more of this kind of opportunities in the future. There's nothing like sharing drawing and also make a small difference in the world.

The SketchCrawl blog.
We have a communal SketchCrawl blog for which we are looking for contributors. We are very happy to accept posts from anyone who might want to contribute sketches or thoughts about drawing, materials and inspiration. One more space to share.
[link]

The organizers.
I (Enrico Casarosa) started SketchCrawl in 2004 and have organized and spread the word about SketchCrawling since. I am currently a storyboard artist at Pixar Animation Studios. I've worked in the industry for more than ten years and been publishing comics and artbooks in my spare time. Ronnie del Carmen is a legend in the animation industry, currently a Head of Story at Pixar, in his prestigious career he has worked for the Batman Animated show, Dreamworks animation and many others amazing projects. Ronnie is my partner in crime in publishing books and now also in SketchCrawling around the world.

So take this chance to dust off that old sketchbook of yours or take out of the wrapper that nice new Moleskine you bought. Saturday September 23rd is around the corner, obviously the more the merrier. So feel free to spread the word in any way you can. That's what is amazing about the internet. We've also tried and spread the word in another few ways: we have made t-shirts and stickers.
[link]
If you plan to have a big group of "crawlers" shoot me an email, I'll be happy to send some stickers.

Many thanks for your time !

Enrico Casarosa



Here's a few Links to SketchCrawl information on the web.

Sketchawhat ?
[link]

The first SketchCrawl I tried in the summer of 2004.
[link]

The first World Wide SketchCrawl on November 2004.
[link]

The Flickr SketchCrawl group
[link]

The SketchCrawl forums where you can see past and current SketchCrawls.
[link]

My blog
[link]

I'm copying this from Mark Evanier's blog, newsfromme.com.

Gail Simone wrote this letter. If you are or know any of Lea's fans, please spread the word:

Early this morning, the Texas home of award-winning writer/artist Lea Hernandez, my friend and co-creator of the graphic novel Killer Princesses, caught fire and burned. Half her house is now gone, and the rest is smoke-damaged. In addition, she lost at least six of her family's beloved pets, two dogs and four cats. If you knew Lea, you'd know how devastating that is.

She's lost a great deal of her family's possessions, including irreplaceable art. She doesn't yet know the full accounting of what's been lost at this time.

Most know Lea as the brilliant creator of such works as Rumble Girls and Cathedral Child. She drew the Marvel Mangaverse Punisher book, and has drawn for Transmetropolitan, among many other accomplishments. She is also the co-founder and original editor for Girl-a-Matic, one of the most important venues for female-friendly comics created to date.

She's also my friend, and it's entirely possible I wouldn't have a career in comics if she hadn't asked me to write Killer Princesses for her to draw.

And finally, Lea is one of the last great firebrand hellraisers in comics.

Lea has two (wonderful, amazing) special needs children and right now they need a place to stay and some clothes to wear. More than that, they need some help, and fast, in the form of donations to her PayPal account. Lea's a proud person so I'm going to ask for her. This is important, and a great chance to do a wonderful thing for a creator who has consistently enriched this industry we all love so much. Please, take a moment and send whatever you can to Lea's PayPal account and help make this time a little bit less painful for someone who would do the same for you if the positions were reversed.

If you're a retailer, I ask that you set up a donations jar. If you're a creator, I ask you to think of how devastating this would be to your career and donate what you can. If you're a reader, I'm asking you to take a moment and hit the PayPal link. You'll be doing something heroic and you'll feel great about it, I promise.

Read what Lea had to post on a neighbor's computer while wearing her pajamas at Livejournal.com/users/divalea.

Donate (PLEASE) to her PayPal account at divalea@gmail.com.

Finally, if I understand the story correctly (as told to me by Lea's good friend and current Girl-a-matic editor), it was Lea's daughter hearing the smoke alarm that allowed the family to get out in time, so for God's sake, do everyone you love a favor and CHECK YOUR SMOKE ALARMS.

Thank you so much for helping. Really, any amount you can send will make a difference. That's all I can say.

And also, if you have a blog or a myspace account, please spread this around as best you can. Every little bit will help and every eye that sees this might be someone who donates.

Sincerely and gratefully,
Gail Simone