Centro di gravità permanente

I was watching a TV report and doodling without a plan. Then the speaker stopped talking and the background music got louder. It was Franco Battiato's 1981 song "Centro di gravità permanente", unforgettable at least in Spain and obviously in Italy. It seemed like if everything started making sense. Or maybe everything was getting a center of gravity.

En español en De vuelta con el cuaderno

Paganello 2010

Paganello is an international event for frisbee lovers. I takes place over the Easter weekend at Rimini beach. Since my nephew played in one of the teams we dropped in on saturday to take a look at the competition and spend the day by the sea.

The sport they play is called beach ultimate, which is the beach variant of ultimate (I've learnt all this things that saturday, and now on the wikipedia). It's some kind of a light version of american football played with a frisbee instead of a ball. I was very funny when the wind was soft and they could make long and precise passes but about noon the wind became strong and the play became very difficult.

Rimini is the city of Fellini's film Amarcord and its because of this that every time the organization made some announce on the PA system it started with the legendary yell "I want a woman!!" taken from the soundtrack.

En español en Urban Sketchers Spain

Mini hard work

I've talked about my work just one time on this blog (actually, I didn't tell anything). I work as illustrator, mainly for advertising and web agencies. I do 95% of my work on a Wacom Cintiq, this means I almost never draw on paper (and maybe can explain how I miss the touch and why I draw sketchbooks).

A couple of weeks ago Leif Peng invited me to Storyboard Central, one of those clubs you're immediately proud to join since you are a fan of almost all the members.

This was my first contribution:

I don't like to work fast. Or since drawing storyboards is always hasty, I'd better say I don't like to work this fast.

I made this job on january 2009. The client was an agency in Milan and the product was Mini. The first call came about 6 hours pm. It was the desperate call from a new client (the very first call, when you know that he's calling you of course because his favorite artist is not available and you say yes to everything).

The brief came in ten minutes and I sent this rough scribbles (everything was made with photoshop on a cintiq):

In half an hour I received an ok with no big corrections and made this clean-up.

I sent it again to the client that answered immediately: no changes!

As I finished a couple of frames I sent them to the client to allow him to work on the presentation. The last two frames were sent about 6 am, about 12 hours after the first contact.

The client was very satisfied of the job (mainly because the idea was approved).

About one month after it was on tv. This is the video:

Blogged also at Storyboard Central

Some grandma's fruit bowl

A quick still life taken in the kitchen some weeks ago. As usual, it was the accidental composition that took my attention and inspired me to draw. Then I fixed my attention on the fruit bowl (a humble, simple but beautiful porcelain piece that's been with me for many years, I love it so much) and some fuzzy memories of my childhood came to my mind. I was a child, the fruit bowl was there, over the table, and grandma was around but I didn't see her or recognize the house. I know this is grandma's fruit bowl, one of my grandma's fruit bowl, but I realized that I don't remember which one of my two grandmas.

So it goes.