MOME has a door to heaven!

... it was locked... I did try to open it :P

Do you recognize this???

It was in an exhibition about character and background concept for animation.
And I am pretty sure where the illustrator got the inspiration from...

link to the real one ;)

(oh, and these are really old pictures, from the design week, but I completely forgot about them..)

Torsten Posselt at MOME

A post about a presentation that I saw, here:

Arte Por Toda A Parte

(in portuguese)

Paper Mask

We saw this advertising in a magazine about a masquerade party in a local bar, Instant...
And since I didn't feel like wasting money, I decided to "make something quickly"...
of course, as usual, I got carried away and took 3 hours and something to complete it!
And when we arrived at the party... me and theresa (who had some cat ears made by herself and a cute cat-like-painting on the face) realized we were the only ones wearing something.
Lol, how embarrassing. Me, someone who looooves being in the spotlight...
Oh well.
At least I like it and a lot of people complimented it (including people I did not know..)
And we got free beers by the barman. We asked him if it was a masquerade party, he had no ideia... he then asked 2 other guys, they did not have a clue... checked in the poster "oh yeah, apparently it's true!". And Theresa had the nerve to ask if people in a costume had the right to a free drink. Lol.
(We spent the rest of the night hearing "meows" from guys and explaining to random curious people that "yes, we are in a costume because it was supposed to be a masquerade party here today!")
Sigh..





(yes, I know that I look serious... but you know how my cheeks and eye masks work, lol!)

The Royal Turkey

While we are still dealing with details (trying to improve it, there are a few things that may be done differently) but in the meantime... here is our animation:

The Royal Turkey

Click it to go to a private link on YouTube!
(and sorry for the lousy quality... I'm still doing some tests, trying to get a better image without the video ending up around 100MB...)

I hope you enjoy it ;)

(hugs to you all, I miss you!)

Illustration Friday: Muddy

This time, Illustration Friday was a good excuse to try a different technique...
Paper collage and acrylics on paper.

Romania

creepy "hollywood-style" Deva sign... in front of Deva's castle (not the one we visited, we visited a castle in the nearby village Hunedoara, where the Dracula was held prisoner for several years before being deported). Picture by Anja

We took the train from Hortobagy to Romania, early in the morning (because the trip takes 7 hours)... and I must say that the first impression of this country, from what we could see from the window, was not the best... quite "abandoned", with houses in ruins, a lot of factories and houses made out of anything and everything people could find. Of course, the weather also contributed to this creepy feeling, for it was cloudy and gray...




these pipes you can see at the bottom ran through the city we were passing by, exposed to the weather and full of rust... I would never trust those things...

We arrived at Deva and we just could not find the hostel! We didn't have a reservation (none of us has a credit card..) but we had the name that anja found through hostel world and a map from google that she took from a link that was there.
We were walking and walking around, people were looking at us, and two gypsy women tried to ask us something and teased us... it was not comfortable at all!
Well, I called João to try and find out if we were in the right place (poor guy, lol...) and he could not find the hostel on the website! but, if he searched on google, he could get to the page anja saw (probably it was taken down from Hostel World but the link was still up) and find the right location, which apparently was not where we were.
We asked some policemen for directions and headed to the newly indicated street...
...and again, nothing! We just could not find it!
We saw a "villa alex" nearby and we decided, ok, let's just try this one, it doesn't matter if it's more expensive or not, it's just one night and we cannot find a hostel here...
we knocked on the door.
nothing.
again...
nothing.
we started screaming "hellooooooooo! is anyone there????"
and nothing.
we found a phone number on a paper near the door, we decided to call them (anja was the victim), and someone on the other side "hello, welcome to Romania! I hope you enjoy your stay, bla bla bla..." and anja managed to explain to the lady we were at the door. But apparently, she did not understand english that well. Anja started screaming "WE ARE AT THE DOOR! DOOOOOR! HERE! DEVA! VILLA ALEX!" but apparently it was not working... and then the lady called her son because he could speak german, and literally put the cellphones (one with anja's call, the other with her son) in front of each other so that anja could speak to him! lol!
Of course, the sound was terrible and Anja was struggling to understand and be understood, but eventually (not sure how) they realized we were there and wanted to stay there for the night. Uff! The man opened us the door (finally!) and we found out we were in a really really nice house, well furnished and with big rooms.
We were able to pay in Forints...we had no Lei because the intention was to drop the bags in the hostel and go to a place to change money. The german girls pay 6 euros each time they use an ATM, and I did not want to use my card in Romania because, well, my bank could think that my card got stolen again, so we had a lot of forints to change. (ah, the lady in Debrecen's train station information office told us that in Deva we would be able to find a place to change money almost everywhere, which proved to be false).
The lady was actually kind enough to cook us dinner (it was already 22h, if I'm not mistaken?)
... of course, we later found out they took way too much money compared to the average price of the food! Oh well, not a big problem...


our exquisite bathroom!

On the next day I went to an atm and took money for all of us, because it was sunday and nothing else was open, and we needed money to pay the entrance in the castle.
Actually, we just saw a van (with ten seats, or something like that) that had a label saying "hunedoara" and we just pointed to the driver, who stopped and allowed us to get in. (definitely a weird system!).
In Hunedoara, we found a taxi and just took it (we were 4 and it cost around one euro to each one, quite cheap indeed) and finally, we were at the castle!





aaaaand...
...it was not that creepy, lol.



The weather was fine, sometimes even sunny, and I believe Romania itself, the surroundings of the castle, were far more scary that the castle itself.


view from the castle... such a chaos! I think "urban planning" hasn't arrived to Romania yet..


the entrance, over a river (like a real castle! hah!)


inside...


Theresa and Anja trying to warm up in the sun... they were so cute, trying to fit into that sun frame!


picture by Anja, while she was in the "warming-up spot"


view from the castle.




detail of the painting covering the main tower.




the sun was almost setting when we decided to have lunch... (a picture by Juliana)


picture by Anja. They had these "pops" of color everywhere... it's strange, you would see old, ruined gray/muddy houses, next to colorful (and I mean reaaaally colorful) facades, popping out from the gloomy atmosphere.


another colorful house, picture by me

After lunch, we decided to walk all the way down to Hunedoara... and on the way there was this cute animation for the people crossing the street, and Juliana filmed it.




...and an ice-cream house. (picture by Juliana)

We then bought some food in a supermarket for the night, and took the bus back to Deva, grabbed our bags from Villa Alex and headed to the bus terminal... we were going to take the "Orange Ways bus", that would take us the whole night from Deva to Budapest... we were searching for the terminal, and searching, and searching... the only thing that said on our ticket was that it was next do mac donalds, but the whole bus terminal was next to it! we asked a guy, that sent us to a building... but the lady in there sent us back to the place near mac donalds... we were getting a little bit desperate when we finally realized that a big orange bus had just stopped next to it, on the street!
Uff!
It was time to go back to Budapest, to rest for 3 days before our second part of the trip...

Focused

For Illustration Friday... Seems that I just cannot stay away from the greens... (I think I will choose a pallete from color lovers next time!)

Done in Photoshop, aproximately 1 hour

Hortobagy

Hortobagy did not have much to offer in the Winter...


looking tired, and still on the trip...



picture by Juliana

It was freeeeeezing outside, and the only thing to see in Hortobagy is... well, the outdoors. The landscapes. The horses running free and all of the fauna that is supposed to be quite unique, specially when it comes to birds. Oh, and horseman...
But we saw almost nothing.
Ok, wait, my mistake, we did see horses...



...but this was the closest we could get! Obviously, we gave up when we buried our feet in that muddy path. (I still haven't washed my boots... but shhhh, don't tell my mom!)



just... hmmm... walking around... trying to warm up the legs...
picture by Juliana


...and this is supposed to be a very unique stone bridge, according to our guide books.





strange strange church...



...and in the restaurant, finally warm! but still looking tired, as you can see by the faint smiles.
The food was quite good, but the restaurant closed at 15h, and we had our train around 17h or 18h, I cannot recall right now. So we went for (yet another) walk in the village... and we saw this little girl with two leashes on her hand... one had a dog, and on the other was a goat! Lol, that must be quite of a unique pet. (at least for me, city girl..)


(i'm sorry for the poor quality of the picture... I had been experimenting in manual mode, and I didn't realise it had a really low exposure setting, when I just pointed and shot a picture as soon as I saw the girl. I kind of tried to save it in Photoshop...)

As soon as the sun vanished from the sky, we decided to wait inside the train station.. which was just a room with heaters all around and a strangely abandoned cashier... we were alone there, when a strange man in a long black jacket entered and sat down. He looked suspicious (poor guy, victim of our fertile imagination, probably) and Anja said that the whole scene was becoming quite like a suspense movie...
a few minutes later, the door opens again...
and comes in a guy with an electric chainsaw on his hand! Lol, now that was way too much, almost like someone was making fun of us. We laughed, of course... but you never know...

Of course, we survived, and we headed to Debrecen one last time, for in the next morning we would have to wake up early to go to Deva (Romenia) by train...