Luis’ Illustrated Blog

GREET

Merry Christmas!

I was planning on drawing a Christmas card this year. Specially since I’m broke and couldn’t buy anyone anything for  Christmas. Then my friend Andy commissioned me to draw him one of a gag he came up with.  Since it was going to take me a long time to do, which meant I couldn’t do what I was planning, I asked if I could use his.  He gave me permission.  So I signed some prints as Christmas cards and gave them out.

If you want some unsigned cards, Andy will be putting up the “official” card up at Cafe Press soon.  I’ll let you know. Hopefully they’ll be up just in time for Three Kings Day (a.k.a Feast of The Epiphany).

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Why did I think that I’d have a relaxing Holiday?  I should have known something would come up. Our bosses at Fox wanted to redo the opening of the show now that the show is going to be shown in HD widescreen.  Problem is that they procrastinated for so long that it now has to be done in four weeks.  Four weeks beginning THIS week. Guess who got put on the project.  Yup, us.  All of Lance’s crew.

On the one hand, it’s exciting because  it’s the opening of the show. On the other hand, we need to keep it looking like the original opening so we can’t mess with it too much.  At the same time, we are putting in new little “Easter eggs” for the fans.  It’s going to be, pretty much the same opening though.  It will just look prettier.  Problem is, we’ve got no time to do it.  Looks like I’m going to be coming into work during the Holidays.  At least we’re getting paid double time which will come in handy.  The one bright side.

I just finished the first rough pass of the revised “Bart chalkboard” scene.  How cool is that?  That’s a pretty iconic opening thing.  On the other hand, if I screw it up…

RANDOM THING

Feel like playing a Youtube, Time traveling, choose you own adventure game?  Click below to begin.

First became aware of this thing at purple pawn.
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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Remember the show I asked you all to help out on a few months back?  Well, the final colored version of it finally came back from Korea.  It still needs to go through retakes but it’s basically done.  I got a chance to see it late last week.  It turned out great.  Unfortunately the version of the show I saw didn’t have the clips you guys all contributed to.  They still had to be put in, so I won’t get to see what clips were up in until it airs just like you guys.

When will it air? February 16th.

MY WEEK

This is the way I’ve been feeling this week.  In fact, this is the way I’ve been feeling for the last four months.  I don’t know why but we haven’t been able to save any money for the last four months. If anything, every month we LOSE money.  The thing is, we haven’t been buying ANYTHING.  It’s all going to bills and food.  We don’t eat out, we don’t buy ourselves things, we just pay the bills and we don’t have any money.  Why?  I don’t get it.  Earlier in the year we used to spend money, pay the bills and we STILL had money left over to put away in our savings.  What’s different besides the fact that we aren’t spending money?  You would think that we would have money left over to put away by the end of the month.

I talked to a friend of mine at work that told me he’s having a similar problem.  It’s just really weird.

BOARD GAMES

Last week a wrote about the new Cosmic Encounter, well, if your curious, here is a twenty minute long video from Board games with Scott, showing you what the game is all about:

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Man, this is a really stressful week.  I got into work Monday expecting to go back and work on Lance’s show.  When Lance showed up I found out what I was going to be working on once I got on his show, namely, I was going to be in charge of some storyboard revisions. It was going to be a lot of work.  Before I could start though, I had to pick up more work from the Halloween show because they really needed help.  I would start work on Lance’s show on Wednesday. Thing is, the work I got from the Halloween show is a crazy amount of work.  I didn’t think there was a way to finish it by Wednesday.  Not only that, but I have to be gone on Friday because we can’t leave the kids in daycare that day, so I have to take care of them.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, I was planning to work 12 hour days to make up for the time I was going to be off.  I did on Tuesday but not on Wednesday.  Wednesday night around 3 I was told I needed to be done with what I had by 6.  No one had told me I had to be done Wednesday until that moment.  I’m glad I had put in the extra hours.  I managed to finish the sequence of scenes with the bare minimum of work needed for it to be watchable. Had I had more time I would have made it look better.  At least I managed to finish.

Today, I get to start on Lance’s show.  I’ll stay late to try to finish as much as I can. The holidays are going to make our weeks shorter,  meaning we don’t have much time to do the revisions on the show before the next board-a-matic.

I’m so stressed out.

BOARD GAMES

On lighter news, last Friday I played yet another two games of Dreamblade against Andy.  Man, I love that game.  I have officially rated the game a 10 on Board Game Geek. It’s my first 10 rating.

BOARD GAMES

Oh yeah, and the Cosmic Encounter reprint from Fantasy Flight is finally out.  Woo Hoo!  I’ve been wanting that game for a while now and it’s finally out. Can’t wait to get it.

Now, if I only had the money to buy it…

RANDOM THING

Saw this video on Purple Pawn and thought it was great.

What happens when you invite three D&D “live action role-players” (a.k.a LARPers) to play the Magi in your Nativity play?  Take a look:

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I still have a job.  I got put on a show that needed help for the week.   We managed to finish Lance’s show on Monday.  He told us that we are going to be back on his show next Monday to work on any revisions the show has after the Board-a-matic screening.  Afterwards, he thinks we’ll be on the layout crew as well.  This means that I’ll have work, at least until the first week of February.  After that, I don’t know.  Hopefully I can stay on, helping other crews.

The show I’m currently helping out on is the Halloween special for next year.  Yeah, we start it this early.  Looks like it will be a fun show.

FAMILY

Thanksgiving was good.  We celebrated it at our house. My in-laws came early in the day and we played a game of Ticket to Ride: Europe. They left about as early as they came though.  My cousin Carolina came over with her kids and they actually stayed the longest.  It was nice to have the girls over, although I felt bad because it was obvious they wanted to play a game or something and it just didn’t work out.

Alesha cooked her first turkey and it turned out awesome.  Everyone liked it.

My parents came by late and my brother and his wife came by even later.  By that point, everyone seemed real tired and no one wanted to do anything.  It was a nice day anyway.  Munchkin and Dante seemed to have had a great day.

FAMILY

Saturday, Alesha wanted to take the kids to The Science Center and the Natural History Museum, at Exposition Park in  LA.  It turned out to be a bigger hassle than we expected because there was an “American Football” game going on in the stadium at Exposition Park.  Parking cost us more and the place was ridiculously crowded. We managed as best we could and got to go in.

Munchkin loved The Science Center.  Just about everything there, was interactive, so she got to pull, grab, and play with buttons, instruments, blocks, sticks, wires, nobs, and doodads.  She even got to go in a simulation ride where you swam along with dolphins as if you were one of them. She did a lot there.  She had a blast.

After that we went to the Natural History Museum and looked at Dinosaur bones, and the animal Habitat Halls. The highlight of the Museum was, by far, the Dinosaur presentation with the Dinosaur puppet.

It was really cool.  I think I enjoyed the thing more than Munchkin did (especially since she was afraid of it).  I wanted to see more.  When we left the museum I left wanting to see the next presentation.  It was fun. Here’s a video I found that shows what it really looks like:

It was an interesting weekend.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

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I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.