This should be good.

If you are familiar at all with the work of Ken Burns, you know that he is a master of the historical documentary. His greatest and most well-known film is an award-winning series on the Civil War. You can wait for the 9-episode series to pop up on PBS, which it does from time to time, or you can buy it on DVD. It’s not exactly cheap, but well worth the investment.

I hated history in high school. It was a dull and tedious journey from one meaningless event to another. That’s why I appreciate the work of Ken Burns. In “The Civil War” he draws you in to the issues and events of the day, making the war feel less like a list of dates and battles and more like a dramatic personal event. He places the war against the backdrop of human stories, quoting actual letters and journal entries from the people who lived through it — both slave and free. It’s a cliche, but he truly makes the history come alive. If only we could have watched videos like this when I was in high school, I wouldn’t have dreaded going to class.

Burns has also created documentaries titled Baseball, Jazz, and Ken Burns’ America, and you can buy them on iTunes. The ones I have seen are fairly entertaining, but “The Civil War” is still his crowning achievement.

Now, Burns has completed a series on World War II called “The War”, which will begin airing on PBS Sept. 23. If it is even half as good as his Civil War series, it will be worth watching. Burns tries to be as objective as possible, steering away from any politics and propoganda. I find that refreshing in today’s heated social climate where so many topics are fiercly debated and everybody has an agenda. Burns says about his new series, “We wanted to tell the real stories, from the bottom up. No experts, no Monday-morning quarterbacking. You had to be in this war, or be at home waiting for somebody who was in the war, in order to be in this film.”

Visit the official website to watch video clips from “The War” and get more info.

Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning a nasty storm ripped through our neighborhood. My neighbor on the left had a tree fall into her back yard, my neighbor kitty corner from me also had a tree knocked over, and the neighbor on my right had a giant branch take out his telephone and TV cable lines before smashing into his fence. Another branch fell into the power lines, caught fire, and then the line snapped.

Fortunately I dodged the bullet. I had one branch down in my front yard, and in my back yard my gas grill was blown ten feet across the yard and then knocked over by the wind, snapping the handle off. Considering the gas tank was nearly full, that gives you an idea of how strong the wind was.

I’ve been swamped with projects lately, so I was up working on a deadline at 2am when the storm knocked out our power (our second power outage in two weeks). It would really mess things up for my client if I turned the project in late, so I had to pack up my computer and Cintiq and drive over to my mother-in-law’s house across town to keep working. The power is back on now and I’ll be heading back home later today.

All that to say…I’m behind on my blog posting. I usually write posts ahead of time when possible and then schedule them to publish one a day. I’ll have new content tomorrow, something actually worth reading, but for now I invite you to visit some of the excellent links listed over on the right side of this page (“Art Blogs”, “Fun Stuff”, and “Podcasts”).

Advertising is everywhere. You can’t escape it…even at 30,000 feet.

According to the New York Times, airlines such as US Airways and AirTran are getting ready to plaster ads all over the interior of their planes. The overhead compartment doors, the tray tables, even the napkins are all for sale to any advertiser who wants to shove their message in front of your travel-weary eyeballs…and keep it there for the length of your flight.

After all, buses do it. Subways do it. I guess it was only a matter of time before the airlines got into the act.

I understand that many airlines are running low on cash, and advertising brings in the bucks. But this is too much. Flying is already a hassle, and slapping ads all over the interior of the plane will only make the experience even less enjoyable.

It would be nice to find a public place where you could turn your head and not get smacked with an advertisement. These days you can’t even go to the bathroom without staring at an ad. Even my daughter’s diapers are stamped with licensed characters. An airplane was one of the few places where I thought I could give my eyes a rest. America is running out of blank surfaces. What’s next? The Amaco logo painted directly on the freeway pavement?

Maybe its time to start an anti-ad campaign. Hmm….now how would I get the word out?

Today’s word over at IllustrationFriday.com is “Captain”. It’s been a long time since I was able to take part, so I’m going to throw this against the wall and see if it sticks.

Here’s some early concept sketches I did for a publisher a while back. The project eventually evolved into something else and the character changed, so these sketches disappeared into my files. The superhero rabbit never got a name, so let’s call him Captain Carrot. There, now I’ve got something for Illustration Friday.

As I mentioned last week, I’m taking a character design class online from Stephen Silver at Schoolism.com. Last week’s lesson was on silhouettes. A strong character design will have a clear silhouette that is visually interesting, making the character instantly recognizable. To illustrate, I’ve taken Jafar from Aladdin and shaded him in. Notice how clearly everything reads:

Our assignment was to take Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and fill a page with little thumbnail silhouettes. We were told to play with shapes, trying to find a simple and clear design for the character. The good thing about doing fast little thumbnails is it forces you to think in broad, general terms and not get hung up on the details. When you are just concerned with the overall shape, your thought process can flow and brainstorm. The goal isn’t to do terrific sketches, its to get a lot of ideas onto the paper so that later you can develop the best ones. It’s a great exercise and I highly recommend it. In the future I hope to make it part of my process when designing characters for clients projects.

Here’s what I turned in:

Here’s a tip for all you Mac users with .Mac accounts. Apple charges $99 per year for the service, but you can get it at Amazon.com for only $79. I just renewed my .Mac account through Amazon and it worked. Saved twenty bucks.

Not a .Mac user? You might want to consider it. .Mac (pronounced “dot-mac”) is 10GB of storage on Apple’s servers that you can use in a wide variety of ways with simple Apple software that you probably already have on your Mac. It’s great for backing up data, publishing online (i.e. a website or your vacation photos), or syncing data on computers, for example.

I have a desktop mac and a laptop, and .Mac allows me to sync both computers so that iCal, Safari, and Address Book are the same on both machines (you can also sync Mail and Keychains if you want).

The service is not always stellar. I have my computers set to sync with each other every day automatically, but on my MacBook Pro there’s a glitch. I have to sync it manually. Apparantly this is a common problem. But at least I know my info is the same on both computers, especially iCal, which I use to manage all my projects and deadlines.

.Mac is also good for backup, storage, and sharing media. Each customer now gets 10GB of storage space online. Way more than I need for syncing, but great if you are publishing your own website through Apple, share photos and movies online, or want to back up a decent amount of data. (10GB isn’t even close to enough for me to back up all my computer graphics work, so I use external hard drives for that which I keep in rotation at a safe deposit box). But I do backup my Quicken files to .Mac, in an effort to help keep my business and personal life separate.

Give .Mac a looksee.