Napkin + Sharpie.

I went on a family trip to California for a weekend this month. We stayed at a KOA, went to Knott’s Berry Farm, and went to a beach.

I had the most pleasure riding the Calico Mine Ride [YouTube], [O.C. History].

Me & the gang.

We were in the back of the train, so we couldn’t hear the conductor telling us all about the miners &c, but I had fun nonetheless. It made me wonder how close this ride comes to the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland [yesterland.com], which was replaced by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad [wikipedia] in 1979.

Turns out, with a little imagination you can still ride the rails that roll through Rainbow Ridge, courtesy of a rare full-ride audio track on Sorcerer’s Workshop (http://sorcerersworkshop.org).

There are still bits of the ride serving as theming at Disneyland to this day. Here’s a photo I took a few years back:

Click for full-size.

Feel free to use it for your desktop picture, all the cool kids are doing it.

Killer lego Disneyland project – micechat link.

New tracks from my friend Ginger Cube. Wish I could show you my other friend Brandon’s music, but without a myspace account I won’t be able to. Que sera sera.

Bone up: common errors in English – link.

Sexy late 60′s electric car. How come I’ve never seen that on a gift registry – retrothing.com link.

In the book Disneyland Paris: From Sketch to Reality (by Alain Littaye, Didier Ghez), there is a small image of a great piece of concept art for Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I really like the energy in the shot, so I thought I would try see if I could capture a little myself.

Click for full size - if you dare

While I’m happy with the way it turned out I’m not happy with the way it scanned. I did this on vellum; with inking on the front and marker color applied to the back. This method gives it a certain luminosity which is hard to capture with the scanner. It’s this color effect that really is the point of the exercise, and in the full-size (click the above image) you can see some spots of unfortunate inking.

Hope you like it.

You have received an intergalactic transmission from a friend who has just completed a mission on the new Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster interactive experience at Disneyland® Park in California.

Click for full-size! These are some intense astro fighters.

…The DMV! Yay!

Just kidding, Wombat & I are going to Disneyland after suffering park withdrawals for 7 months. For annual passholders within driving distance (4hrs away), that’s a long time. We’re making up for it by visiting the park for at least 2 days. I’ve taken the day off also – have to use up that comp/vacation eventually.

Care of CreepyLA: