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Totoro Forest Project Auction at PIXAR
In case you are wondering if the Totoro Forest Project Benefit Auction at PIXAR was an evening to remember, let me tell you… it was!!!!
Both my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the event and it was a great opportunity to view in person all the wonderful art that was donated. I spend a lot of time looking at the 200+ pieces of art that I didn’t have much time to socialize or meet artists that I admire and may have been present there.
Wow, what an amazing experience, as I have mentioned to some people my wife and I are recent Studio Ghibli admirers. I came across the name Hayao Miyazaki while researching / reading artists blogs. Many many artist talk about him being an influence (the donated art is proof of that). The first movie I rented via Netflix was My Neighbor Totoro.
It was such a great innocent story, with a very positive message… I couldn’t help to love the background images as well as the various characters of the film, then I came across this book Master of Japanese Animation
Does this happen to you? you saw cartoons when you were a kid and now after many years you bump into the movie / clips on a rental store or online and then you decide to watch the whole story again, because you dont remember it or you missed the beginning or never knew how the story ended? lol.
I am in that situation, I dont fully remember the story of Heidi, nor how it began or ended, just got to see a couple of minutes of the beginning a week or so ago. Another Japanese program I used to watch was Ultraman, which I did have the opportunity to rent via Netflix about a year ago, got the opportunity to watch Ultraman fight Godzilla once more 🙂 yeah back then those were cool spaceships, now they look so silly.
Anyways, getting back on topic, it was an evening / night to remember, absolutely loved the art.. wish I had had more time to talk to the artists about their pieces (will have to do it online). Live auction was great, a lot of money was raised that night (close to $200 K so I hear).
My thanks to Enrico Casarosa and Dice Tsutsumi for the invite to help them with website maintenance and allowing me to be participate and donate my time for this historical event, can’t wait to hear what may be next 😉
Oh, by the way.. the date for the 20th SketchCrawl event has been selected, it will be on October 25th.
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Save Totoro Forest !!!
The Totoro Forest Project Benefit auction day is approaching, and everybody involved has been working hard to get everything ready.
I was recently asked to assist and for the past couple of weeks I have been helping Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa and Andy Wang with some web maintenance duties, analytics / SEO. I also help them set up the new Totoro Forest Project blog, so I have been busy some of the evenings/weekends as well.
If you have not had a chance to visit the new Totoro Forest Project blog, you are missing quite a lot of cool information, they said they will be posting all kinds of interesting information as the date for benefit auction approaches.
Needless to say the techie side has taken over the artistic side (I have not sketched anything lately) and with Sketchcrawl 20th approaching (date to be determined), I know I need to get into shape. I have however been reading that book I mentioned a couple of posts ago and I can say it looks very good, now I just need to try the exercises.
I also took a few pictures I wanted to share with you, unfortunately my wife’s computer experienced a glitch and I had to deal with that (her computer is hooked up to the scanner, the printer and the digital camera), lucky person uh? 🙂 By the way if you have not had a chance please visit her blog, she is constantly posting all kinds of goodies as well that I am sure you would appreciate and she would also love to hear from you.
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Totoro Forest Project
What is the Totoro Forest Project?
It is an international fundraising exhibition/auction event to support the non-profit Totoro no Furusato Foundation (Home of Totoro) established by Hayao Miyazaki.
What is exactly the Totoro no Furusato Foundation?
Well, it is a non-profit foundation as mentioned above created with the purpose to preserve the beautiful natural habitat of Sayama Hills which is located about 24 miles from the Tokyo Japan metropolitan area. Sayama Hills is the location that inspired Hayao Miyazaki to write/create “Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro)” in 1988. If you have not seen this movie, you must see it.
The Auction / Exhibition
Over 200 top international artists that work in different mediums have donated work specially created for this event.
The benefit auction will be held at Pixar Animation Studios on September 6th, 2008, a book will be available at this event as well that contains all the work that was donated. There will also be a special exhibition of selected artwork from the auction at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California from September 20th to December 7th 2008.
I already spotted a couple of pieces that would be nice to have in my room, who knows maybe I will get to own a piece of artwork, or maybe I wont be so lucky and will have to just donate some money to the cause.
Please share this info with everyone you know, and if you live locally maybe we will run into each other at one of these events.
More information found at: Totoro Forest Project and Enrico Casarosa’s blog announcement.
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