March 31

This day in sketchtory, in a mashup of two events, both the Eiffel Tower was opened and the Matrix was released in theatres. The structure was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Three hundred workers joined together 18,038 pieces of puddled iron (a very pure form of structural iron), using two and a half million rivets, in a structural design by Maurice Koechlin. The tower was much criticised by the public when it was built, with many calling it an eyesore. Newspapers of the day were filled with angry letters from the arts community of Paris. One is quoted extensively in William Watson's US Government Printing Office publication of 1892 Paris Universal Exposition: Civil Engineering, Public Works, and Architecture: "And during twenty years we shall see, stretching over the entire city, still thrilling with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see stretching out like a black blot the odious shadow of the odious column built up of riveted iron plates."

And on this day in 1997, what I still hold to be the best science fiction movie ever made, The Matrix was released. Often in sci-fi, the technology tends to overshadow the story, or worse, be used in place of a story. It rarely happens, and even less often recently, that a strong story is supported and enhanced by the sci-fi aspect of the film. In other words, the basic concept could exist in real life, but is strengthened and is more interesting with the unique with the futuristic ingredients. What I love about the Matrix is that as shocking as the concept is, as what if out world only exists in our minds, everything that follows it conceptually is completely believable. It combines the elements of human responsibility and respecting our limits of Jurassic Park, with the human resistance of Terminator, with the philosophy of exploitive overseers of Dark City.

March 30

This day in sketchtory, anesthesia was used for the first time, in an operation to remove a tumour. The doctor was Crawford Williamson Long, who After observing the same physiological effects with diethyl ether that Humphry Davy had described for nitrous oxide in 1800, Long used ether for the first time on March 30, 1842 to remove a tumor from the neck of a patient, James M. Venable, in Jefferson, Georgia. Long subsequently removed a second tumor from Venable and used ether as an anesthetic in amputations and childbirth.

The odd thing is that he held on to the knowledge for 7 years before releasing it publicly and obtaining a patent. Its interesting to me that even back in 1842 the medical community was just as selfish and financially driven as it is today. Just recently, a company called KV Pharmaceutical which created a drug called Makena (with public funding), a drug that prevents prenatal births, hiked the price from $5-$15 per injection, to $1500 per injection. They claim that they are simply trying to recoup researching costs, but as its been pointed out, if the currnt rate of use of the drug continued, they would gross over $30 million, more then ten times what the original funding totalled.

Als I'm trying to speed up these sketches, trying to get them out in about 5-10 minutes now unless I have an idea that really strikes me.

March 29

This day in sketchtory, the US withdrew its remaining troops from Vietnam, officially ending the Vietnam war. It was a horrible, deadly, waste of human life, and theres nothing really interesting that would be fun to draw about it, so I went to the world of the Watchmen and pumped this one out in about 5 minutes.

March 28

This day in sketchtory, Lagy Gaga, or Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, turns 25 years old. I don't follow popular music, but it would appear that she has been labelled as this generations Madonna or Michael Jackson, and her image, to me, is one of the complete anti-pop star. She's advertised as a much more artistic, creative, and much more positive as a role model than the average pop star, like Britney Spears or any of the American Idol winners, or any generic boy band. To me, that they have perfectly manufactured and sold that image is the most interesting thing about her. While her songs are indeed catchier than most pop songs, the content and 95% of the performance are identical to every generic artist she is apparently the antithesis of.

The fact that people believe that a tall, impossibly skinny blonde dancing in her underwear and singing songs she didn't write about her relationships is somehow breaking new ground in music amazes me. The theatricality of wearing a meat dress, bubbles or giant spikes on your head strikes me as that kind of art for arts sake kind of thing, with no deeper meaning or purpose beyond making people believe you're weird and creative.

Either that, or they're just trying to distract people from noticing that she looks like Marilyn Manson in a blonde wig.

March 27

This day in sketchtory, Andrew Rankin patented the urinal. "He was not however the actual inventor of the device. No one seems to know its actual origin, but the stories go back all the way to the Roman Empire. There is a story of an unfortunate Roman soldier on his way home after a campaign abroad who stumbled upon a newly built aquifer. This device that brings water from the hills down into Rome was not there when he left for war many many months ago. Upon finding this trough filled with running water he was amazed and delighted, but as anyone knows, the sound of cool running water causes the urge to urinate to increase dramatically. Not knowing that the water was being sent to the cities baths and even to the palace, he though this would be a fine place to relieve this urge. Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by an extremely offended city engineer who had him hauled before the council. This poor Roman soldier was found guilty, castrated, and used as a eunuch slave for the rest of his days. So begins the story of mans desire to pee standing up into a trough of running water, so begins the sordid tale of the urinal." - Normal Chaos Blog

March 26

This day in sketchtory, the UK introduced driving tests for the first time. Previously, all you had to do to be allowed to drive was to purchase a license, and thus, road fatalities were very high (almost 6,000 in 1934). The minister of transportation at the time, who introduced an actual set of driving rules a year earlier, instituted both driving tests and a national speed limit. There was an immediate impact and within a few years the number of deadly accidents was cut almost in half. This would have been cut even further if the test mandate had not been grandfathered in and those who had already purchased licenses were exempt from the test.

March 25

This day in sketchtory, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 10, or Vostok-3KA No.2 in 1961. This was the final test before they would send a man into space for the first time in history later that year in April. Again, the only life form they sent was a dog, and on this mission it was "Zvezdochka" or "Little Star."

Along with dogs they would send a wooden mannequin, always named Ivan Ivanovic, which I learned is the Russian equivalent of John Doe. Ivan was ejected from the capsule, but Little Star made a successful landing. You'd have to imagine a dog would get pretty bored on such a mission, and it must be rough when your only company is a wooden mannequin. Can't play fetch all that well.

March 24

This day in sketchtory, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and spilled between 260,000 and 750,000 barrels of oil into the ocean. There were several identified possible causes, the one I lean towards is "The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload." But I believe that unidentified third mate was actually the captain's kid, on board due to it being "bring your kid to work day."

On the heels of BP essentially getting off scot free after the largest oil spill in human history, I was curious if the treatment of Exxon was any different. The original ruling ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages, which they of course fought and appealed over and over and over and over and over and over until that number was reduced to just over $500 million, or the equivalent to their net profits they would make in roughly 38 days. They fought every political movement to prevent future oil spills. Today their company is worth roughly $400 billion. They pay no federal income tax. What the....

Also, this sketch sucks.

March 23

This day in sketchtory, in 1983, the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan created the "Strategic Defense Initiative," better known as Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative. It's purpose was to use ground and space-based systems to protect the US from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. What this involved was a variety of methods to destroy Russian nukes on their way to blow up Ron and his buddies, including lasers and mirrors in space.

It wasn't technologically possible at the time, and still might not be, yet the cost of the now mostly defunct program was at least $100 billion. Who can think about health care and unemployment and social security when there are godless commie bastards with their fingers on big red buttons?

And because of Reagan's sons comments in his recent book citing that his father may have had early stages of alzheimer's while in office, I like to believe he was just excited about the release of Return of the Jedi, which was released in theatres just a couple months later in May of 83.

March 22

This day in sketchtory, The Beatles released their debut studio album, "Please, Please Me" in 1963. The album was on top of the UK charts for 30 weeks, only to be knocked off by their second album, "With the Beatles."

So the interesting thing to me about this event is that with their first step into mainstream music, they were an instant success, and were really destined to never turn back. So it made me wonder what they were like as kids, and if pop icons were really their childhood dreams.

Who What When Where Why

The day to day job of working in CG animation does not afford for nearly enough drawing. Planning out a scene with thumbnails here and there are not enough to keep up the talent to draw well and communicate with those drawings. Now that I've discovered this, I've come up with a plan to defeat the inevitable rustiness that was already creeping in (as you can clearly see).

I've decided to take on the task of doing a new sketch every day. I've seen this put into practice often, my favourite example being the books of Chris Ayers' "The Daily Zoo: Keeping the Doctor at Bay with a Drawing a Day." While clearly not having the same motivation as an artist who suffers from cancer, I appreciated the dedication it must have taken. Its a great plan in theory, but there have to be those days in there that you just really don't feel like it. But I don't think my hurdle is the motivation to draw, but rather what to draw. I knew I would need help finding "the thing" to draw each day. I also know I would get bored too easily if I stuck to a limited topic like animals, and I'm not creative enough to invent a new topic every day, especially after a long day of making fairies and unicorns dance around on screen.

So my idea, which has the side benefit of learning attached, is to read through lists of human history from that particular day, and create a sketch out of it. While some very interesting topics have too much detail and backstory to convey in a single quick sketch, I think instead I'll aim to just make the event/person kind of funny, or just have my own take on a particular aspect.

Lets see how long this lasts.