Photo by Carlos Baena

Wow, what an incredible event!  This past Saturday night we saw over 200 beautiful artworks get sold at the Totoro Forest Project auction that took place at Pixar.  Every single piece sold!  Now that is a resounding success!  The estimated final tally for the Sayama Forest charity is $201,236!  Wow, that’s double what they were hoping for!  I was salivating myself over all the incredibly beautiful art, and getting the chance to meet so many artists that I deeply admire and am truly inspired by.

Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to bring cameras inside, but a select few photographers were there to document the event.  You can see some photos here at AWN’s blog.

There’s more to come!  All of the artwork will be exhibiting at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco from Sept 20th through February of 2009.  On a rotating basis I believe though, because of space constraints at the museum.  Opening reception will be held sometime in early December.

Also the Totoro Forest Project book will be available soon for purchase online.  Keep checking the blog for details.

A special thanks to all the hard work of Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie del Carmen, and Yukino Pang who worked so tirelessly to make this entire thing possible!

My fourth sculpt from some time back. I always liked how this one turned out. Since she’s reclining there was no need for an armature, and it gave a lot of freedom to move things around a bit to play with the composition.

Our group lost our regular sculpting space a couple months ago, and although another space was just found, it’s difficult for me to make it Monday nights. I’m hoping to tweak my schedule and make it back in again.

Here are a couple things I discovered this weekend while visiting home for Christmas. I found my very first record album I ever owned! My parents bought me this It’s a Small World folk song album when I was probably about three years old. I remember listening to this incessantly, and as you can see it’s pretty well worn. A children’s choir sings various folk songs, and of course the theme song is thrown in there. The words to the songs are on the back, so when I was old enough to read, I would sing along with the record.

I also adored the album art as a kid. I loved all the different costumes on all the children, and I remember trying to guess and figure out where each child was from based on what they were wearing. And what do I discover now? This fun and striking art was done by none other than Mary Blair. Signed by her on the lower right corner. Fitting, since she designed the ride at Disneyland!

Also, I came across my maquette for Julius, my character from my animated short Elegy. This was the first sculpture/maquette I ever created, not counting a bust I had to make for a class ages ago. I made this about four years ago with sculpey and painted him with acrylics as part of my pre-production for my animation. There are supposed to be puppets on strings hanging from his hands, but I never had the chance to attach them. I actually had sculpted the little puppets too, but they were reeeaaally clumsy. As is this maquette, but I still find it charming.

Julius holds a special place for me. His character pops up for me now and then, in some form or another. I’m sure you’ve noticed that in his most recent incarnation he’s been enjoying the snow with his red umbrella. He’s become a bit shorter since the making of this maquette and the animation. I liked the soft warm glow of the Christmas tree lights that bathes him here.

This is my fifth figure sculpt, a standing woman. Working with clay is still very new to me and a real challenge. A whole new way of trying to get anatomy, proportion, and gesture feeling right. I’m trying to learn to push gesture more, and I feel it could have been nudged quite farther here. But it depends on what feeling you’re trying to capture. Depending on your vantage, she can look demure or quite haughty.