Watching Lilo and Stitch

Posted on by Thor

I used to teach at Full Sail University. I had to leave since they didn’t pay me enough to cover the cost of gas to get there.

Kathy Blackmore and Sam Ewing were in charge of the class that taught traditional animation with pencil and paper instead of computers. I helped student as they shot their scenes and answered their questions.

For the last class we always showed a movie. It was the final day students had to work on their animation assignments and you could tell who was serious about animation because they could focus in this last class to keep improving the scenes they ha created. True artists use every moment available to keep tweaking their scene since no scene and no sketch is ever perfect. I also would use the class to sketch, always hoping to catch a few students at work.

I now teach virtually for Elite Animation Academy and the great thing about that is that I get to animate right alongside of the student. Getting to animate so often let me break out of my usual illustration routine and bring a character to life. Students get to see ever step taken in creating a scene which is rare when dealing with a larger group.

WWEssential

Posted on by Thor

While Legitimate sports franchises are closing stadiums for at least a year, a Florida Man who struggled to put on a single blue medical glove declares the WWE an essential business.

On April 1, 2020 Blue Glove (DeSantis) issued a Stay At Home Order due to the thread of Covid-19 and wrestling was not listed as an essential business.  On April 9, 2020 he issued an amended executive order that says “employees at a professional sports and media production
with a national audience are exempt from a stay-at-home order as long
as the location is closed to the general public.”  On that same day, April 9, The America First Action Committee chaired by the WWE owner Vince McMahon‘s
wife Linda, a former member of Donald Trump’s cabinet,  donated 18.5
million dollars in television ad spending in Orlando and Tampa for
Trumps political campaign. This glut of political ads will appear
between Labor Day and Election day. The McMahon’s are among the Trump’s
top political donors, so it was little wonder that wrestling was
suddenly considered an essential business by Florida Governor Blue
Glove.

At a press conference, Blue Glove tried to justify his decision, saying, “Obviously, WWE, there’s no crowd of anything, so it’s a very small amount of people,”  He went on, “I think people are chomping at the bit. I mean, if you think
about it, we’ve never had a period like this in modern American history
where you’ve had such little new content, particularly in the sporting
realm. I mean, people are watching, we’re watching, like, reruns from
the early 2000s, watching Tom Brady do the Super Bowl then, which is
neat because he’s gonna be in Tampa and I think they have a chance to
win a Super Bowl this year. But I think people, to be able to have some
light at the tunnel, see that things may get back on a better course. I
think from just a psychological perspective I think is a good thing.”

On Monday April 13, 2020 WWE began broadcasting live in the midst of the pandemic.

Two of WWE’s Orlando staff tested positive for Covid-19. In a statement, WWE said, “We believe this matter is
low risk to WWE talent and staff, as the individual and a roommate
became symptomatic in the days following exposure to two people working
in acute health care on the evening of March 26, after WWE’s TV
production on a closed set was already complete.”

Like the staff at the meat packing plants in the Midwest, it seems more important to keep the wrestling live rather than to consider staff health in the face of a pandemic. Taping sessions are at Full Sail University, which is where I used to teach animation. It would be a real travesty if the virus were allowed to spread among the student population.

The 74-year-old billionaire and WWE circus ring leader Vince McMahon seems only concerned with the bottom line when it comes to his organization which is reported to have 500 million in its reserve and stands to make a sizable profit this year. He needed to maintain live programing to get paid in lucrative contracts with USA and Fox networks.

What happens in the ring is scripted and false, but the threat of the virus is very real. McMahon’s concern over staff health has been dicey through the years with deaths of performers due to drugs, murder, suicide, and one in-ring disaster involving a wrestler falling 78 feet during his staged entrance to the ring.

On April 15, 2020 to further pad the bottom line, the organization is firing on air staff even though the taping continues. The reductions include:

  • Reducing executive and board member compensation,
  • Decreasing operating expenses,
  • Cutting talent expenses, third party staffing and consulting,
  • Deferring spending on the build-out of the Company’s new headquarters for at least six months.

“Given the uncertainty of the situation, the Company also identified headcount reductions and made the decision to furlough a portion of its workforce effective immediately,” according to a WWE statement.

Little known fact, I used to art direct a Wrestling Magazine when I was going to school in New York City.  That job helped put me through college. I used to love designing those loud boisterous spreads but seeing how this business is run today, I look back with dread at the idea that I helped promote this circus that does not value human life.

This is a clear and simple case of Quid Quo Pro. “You can have 18.5 million in ads, but I’d like you to do me a favor though.” It is business as usual in Central Florida. Add to this the caveat that Vince McMahon has been appointed to the council that will decide when it is safe to reopen the economy. He hardly seems an expert on what is safe.

FAVO Blackmore Studio

Posted on by Thor

Set in a former motel, Faith Arts Village Orlando (FAVO) at 221 E Colonial Dr, Orlando, Florida 32801 features 36 Studios of amazing original art. On the first Friday of each month the artists open their studios to the public for an open house. I stop out periodically to see what is new in the Orlando visual arts scene.

On this trip I was so pleased to find that Kathy and Eric Blackmore had a studio set up. Kathy uses the space as a classroom for her private art lessons with young students. She is a children’s book illustrator and creates gorgeous delicate watercolor paintings for the books. She began this career when I worked with her at Full Sail University. Her husband Eric is a wildlife and environmental photographer and some of his landscapes were on the studio walls. He is also an amazing woodworker who creates custom furniture. Because of this the small studio space is magnificently designed with storage spaces and modular shelving and table tops that can be folded into place.

It is a sweet little set up and it must bustle when Kathy’s students are busy creating. Eric is also a professor and each year he escorts students to exotic locations around the world. He and Kathy therefor get to explore and be inspired by someplace new each year. While Pam and Eric talked, I scribbled as fast as I could to document and memorialize the studio. We explored the rest of the studios, but spent most of our time in the Blackmore studio which exemplifies what is great about FAVO.

Everyone Can Code at Full Sail

Posted on by Thor

This free workshop at Full Sail University was based on the premise that coding is an essential skill for helping students thrive in a technology-driven future. Learning to code unlocks creativity, develops problem-solving skills, and opens career paths.

Everyone Can Code, is a free comprehensive curriculum that makes it easy to teach coding to students from kindergarten to college. With teacher guides and lessons, you can introduce coding concepts visually on iPad in elementary school, move to writing code with the Swift Playgrounds app in middle school, and support students in building iOS apps on Mac with Xcode in high school and beyond.

Whether your students are first-time coders or aspiring app developers, youʼll have all the tools you need to teach coding in your classroom.

In the workshop, we learned why Swift is the best language for teaching and learning coding, as well as for developing powerful apps.
Swift Playgrounds, is a revolutionary app for iPad that makes getting started with coding fun and interactive.
Hear about App Development with Swift, a high school and college curriculum for Mac that shows students how to create apps from start to finish. I seemed a bit like the odd duck in the room since I didn’t have an open laptop in front of me.

After the seminar I returned to my studio and played the Swift Playgrounds game and actually found I was  learning coding skills fast. After several weeks of coding to solve puzzles I hit a road block that I could not solve. The coding was put on the back burner as I focused on my main passion which is creating art. Perhaps there is a middle ground and I may start playing with code again. Even in the workshop they said that learning code on your own is a real challenge. But after this workshop I realized I could get young students started on learning code. I would be a fun course to teach if I stayed ahead of the learning curve of the students.

Blog Con 2019

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I stopped by Full Sail University to see the opening of this year’s Blog Con. Ford sponsored the event and several vehicles were parked outside the entrance. In the parking lot a woman had her arm stretched out in front of her holding her phone which she was  talking to. She was clearly recording a video of herself reporting about Blog Con. I have tried to sketch at Blog Con every year since 2009. It is a chance to see what is happening in this relatively new field of digital communication. This year’s theme was “Tell Your Story.” The Full Sail Live auditorium was packed. Blog Con had sold out.



Rachelle Lucas a Freelance Spokesperson, Writer, and Videographer was giving the key note talk. I sketched her as she waited to go on stage. She spoke about getting a trip to Dubai and being nervous about going to the Middle East. With world tensions so high she feared that she and the people with her might be dragged out into that desert to be shot. The trip however was lovely. She showed an Instagram photo of herself in a bathrobe sipping a cup of champagne. It looked like the ideal relaxing vacation. However the reality behind that image was something else. She had welts all over her arms and legs from mosquito bites. That was why she was in the bathrobe. 

Rachelle talked about walking through the lobby of the hotel with several gentleman carrying the campaign. Two older gentlemen seated in the lobby, I imagine them looking like the two guys in the balcony of the Muppets show, winked and nodded their heads. Had they seen the cameras set up in the hotel suite their imaginations would have gone wild.


Rachelle’s primary point was that social media like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are platforms to help drive traffic to the place where the WHOLE story can be  told which is her blog. It was rewarding to hear that for once I might be doing something right since I use those media in the same way. 

She pointed out that telling stories is as important in society as the basics of survival. Stories have been passed down through the generations, filling history books, offering insights into our culture. They are central to humans communicate. We engage
with others through stories, and storytelling is a lot more than just a
recitation of facts and events. As human beings, we are automatically drawn to stories because we see ourselves reflected in them. We inevitably interpret the meaning in stories and understand ourselves better. It was helpful to be reminded that the simple act of sharing ideas every day has meaning and value.


After her Key Note, the  crowd was divided up into different groups. Someone would hold up a sign saying something like, Foodies and all the foodies would gather around the sign. I always feel like the odd duck out since what I do does not fit neatly into any of those categories. I’m not a mommy blogger, a foodie or a lifestyle blogger. Though I am starting to use digital sketch tablets, I’m not a tech blogger. I feel too old school to fit into the modern digital categories. I have so much to learn and Blog Con was a fire hose of information. Someday I hope to master the business of telling stories.