Cindy Driver! You have won last month’s logo contest by correctly guessing… Disney!!! And what’s in store for us this month? A shiny new logo, well, its not really shiny. Its actually kind of flat. Anyway, the guessing is on!

Here is a brief overview of all the layers involved in manipulating myself into an Avatar in Photoshop.

The original photo.

Removing my eyebrows. First I tried to use the Clone Stamp Tool, but I wasn’t happy with the results.

Then I just used a brush at 30% opacity, sampling my skin tone and gradually giving my brow shape while hiding the eyebrow. I also flattened out the bridge of my nose.

I darkened my lips. The layer is set to “Multiply”.

I enlarged my eyes. First, I cut out the eyes, then reduced the rest of my face (so that I wouldn’t lose quality in the eyes).

Then I made my eyes a light, brighter green. The layer is set to “Vivid Light”.

I gave the image more contrast with a “Levels” adjustment layer.

With a soft, thick brush I added highlights to my eyes to brighten them.

Now for the exciting part, blue! I changed my skin color by adding a solid block of blue, with the layer set to “Hard Light”.

With a similar technique, I darkened my hair to black with a tint of blue. This layer is also wet to “Hard Light”. Oh yeah, the nose shadow is added here too.

And now for the second most fun part, my animal stripes! I drew them with the Lasso Tool, filled them in with a darker blue, blurred the edges and set the layer to “Overlay”.

No Avatar is complete without some big eyelashes. Here I made them much bigger.

Time for some ears (the only thing I borrowed from a real Avatar).

Some fanciful, glowing white dots.

Finally the background, which I chose for mood and lack of light source to match my head. The only thing I did was blur it some. And this completes my Avatar.

The original picture, the background, the inspiration.

Congrats to Dad (that would be my father-in-law) for correctly guessing the December logo – GAP! And now onto a new year and a new logo. What could it be?

I failed miserably at continuing to write about each day of the trip, while the details get fuzzier and fuzzier every day since. So here is the rest of the trip in summary.

Day Three

We did some more sightseeing with Kaori. Went to Asakusa and saw Senso-ji temple, which had a long row of open shops in front of it. The vendors were selling all sorts of things that screamed “Japan”! Like kimonos, nikko cats and other things. After walking around the temple we had sukiyaki for lunch at Saniwa. This would be my third favorite type of Japanese cuisine (sushi is first, okonomiyaki second).

Later we bought cards to give Fumi for her wedding present. You don’t really give gifts at a Japanese wedding, you give money in a gorgeous card. We stopped at a cafe and Kaori taught us how to sign our names. That night we ate dinner at the Kanda meat market and got incredibly drunk. The market has several independent restaurants inside, but its all open. So you can sit at one place and order from another. Each had a different type of meat: chicken, beef, seafood, horse… We settled in at the seafood place, where the serious drinking began. They really loved us, because they kept overfilling our sake glasses and boxes. And we celebrated Andrew’s birthday, which made him blush. Surprisingly, we all made it home safely that night (ie, didn’t get lost).

All pictures from day three

Day Four
The day of Fumi’s wedding. We started off by going to the Ghibli Museum. If you don’t know who Hayao Miyazaki is, you must add Totoro and Spirited Away to your movie queue immediately. I’ll wait while you take care of that… done? Ok, so we went to the museum which was awesome. It felt just like his movies, fun and whimsical – like you’re in his world.

Fumi’s wedding started at 2:30. It was a Catholic wedding and not too long. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the church, but I got some cool shots on the outside – one of Kaori holding rose petals and Fumi walking through them. Then we were off to the reception hall: Ogasawara hakushaku tei, a one-Michelin-star Spanish restaurant. The food was fantastic, served tapas style by wait staff. And we knew enough English-speaking people to stay busy. Though every speech was in Japanese, it didn’t bother me that I didn’t understand. Afterwards there was a party for close friends in the red light district at III B (Three B) at Shinjyuku Kabuki-cho.

All pictures from day four

Day Five
The day began with a trip to the Ramen Museum in Yokohama. The museum had a section inside that was set up to look like Tokyo in the 1950’s. There you could try all sorts of different ramen. We only made it through two bowls. After we walked around Yokohama and took some pictures (like the ferris wheel to the right).

For dinner we met Fumi and Toshi at Torafugu tei, a blow fish restaurant. By this time I had a bit of a stomach ache, from the Ramen Museum I assume. So the food wasn’t very appetizing to me. That very same stomach ache ended up lasting almost two weeks.

All pictures from day five

Day Six
We met up with Steve’s friend/ex-programming budy, Kris Tate. He joined us for sushi at Kagura – really good sushi, I loved it! We had a pretty low-key day because I didn’t feel so well and we were all a little tired of walking around. So we sat in a cafe for a while and talked. (Also discovered just how cute Kaori would look if I could really put her in my pocket). Then went to dinner at an art gallery / okonomiyaki place, Sakura tei.

All pictures from day six

Day Seven
Met up with Kris before we left. We were supposed to get giyoza, but had some confusion about the time we needed to catch teh train, so we had burgers instead. They were actually perfect for my sore tummy. We walked around a little, went to another temple where we saw a traditional Japanese wedding procession. Then we were off to home!

All pictures from day seven

In Conclusion
I can now add Tokyo to the list of places I wouldn’t mind living. For a year or two. (The other place on the small list is Paris).

The entire photo set

The original goal was to be at the fish market at 6am, which meant we had to wake up at 4:30am. We adjusted our target time to 6:30am and agreed on a meeting place. We all arrived on time, but didn’t get there until 7am. When we got to our sushi destination the line was around the corner and the wait was two hours! On top of that, it was cold and rainy.

I was really hungry, so I decided to find a snack while we waited. There was a booth nearby that looked like it had some sweets, so I wandered over. The woman didn’t speak English, but she figured out what I wanted. She pointed to some white doughy balls and said, “sweet. yum.” Exactly what I was looking for! They were filled with red bean and were, in fact, sweet yum.

The two hours it took to get inside felt like forever. Once inside it took a good ten minutes for my hands to thaw out. The sushi that stood out the most was salmon roe. Steve couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful it was. After filling up we headed to a place called “Decks” – an indoor complex (more info). It was a neat place, there was an old section with a lot of toys and crazy fun things, including a photo booth where Fumi and I spent about half an hour decorating ourselves.

We walked around for a while then stopped at a coffee shop to rest. Later we had okonomiyaki for lunch. Another delicious meal. I really wish we could get some good okonomiyaki in San Francisco. We were so tired from waking up early that we all decided to go back to our apartments and take a nap before dinner. Fumi had some things to get done before the wedding, so we were just going to meet up with Kaori for dinner – hot pots.

Second Day Photos

A little background first. The reason we went to Tokyo was that our friend, Fumi, was getting married. We met Fumi at our favorite sushi restaurant in San Mateo, Yuzu. She moved back to Japan this past September and planned her wedding in about three months – crazy, I know! Two of her other US friends (which she met through Yuzu) were also in town for the wedding, Robert and Andrew. They arrived three or four days ahead of us. By the time we arrived, they had already done some serious sight seeing with Fumi as their guide and were tired from all the walking around.

And now onto our arrival…

As usual with international travel, we were exhausted when we arrived. Luckily Fumi met us at the airport. I think we would have gotten lost several times if we had to find our way to the apartment ourselves. Most of the signs have English translations, but not all of them. And unlike the other three countries I’ve been to, not everyone speaks English.

The differences in culture hit us right away. If you’re standing still on the escalator, you stand on the left, not the right and in general you walk on the left (and drive on the left). We took the express train to the heart of Tokyo and from their we switched trains to a local train, which gave way to our second totally Japanese experience – human sardines. The local train was completely packed. And the third thing, our tiny apartment. It was about size of our living room. It had a bedroom, bathroom and “kitchen”. Oh, and there was no sink in the bathroom! (I found out later that this is not the norm). The only source of heat was a small unit on the wall in the bedroom. So we closed the door every night and only heated that one room. It really sucked waking up in the morning and stepping into a freezing bathroom to shower.

After dropping off our stuff and brushing our teeth we headed to the Korean BBQ restaurant to meet everyone else for dinner. In addition to me, Steve, Fumi, Robert and Andrew, we also ate with Kaori and one of Robert or Andrew’s friends (I don’t remember his name).

Kaori also worked at Yuzu back in the day. She moved back to Japan about two years ago. We only knew her a little bit. Kaori was very generous though, she took off two days of work to be our (including Robert and Andrew) personal guides when Fumi could not. We truly appreciated that from someone who barely knew us!

Dinner was absolutely delicious. We were pretty tired so we didn’t stay out too late. We also had to wake up really early the next morning in order to get sushi at the fish market – a sure-fire cure for jet lag.

Day One Pictures

Let’s give a big old ‘congrats’ to Lance Jonn Romanoff for correctly guessing Zenith last month! And now on to December, how’d we get here so fast? Anyway, take a guess…

As some of you may know, the awesome birthday present Steve gave me was studio space. With this new studio space, comes studio shows. The first show I will be participating in is the Holiday Art Show – one night only. If you can’t think of a gift for that special someone, this is a great place to find some unique stuff. I hope you can make it out, I’m at the Alabama studios:
744 Alabama St @ 19th St, studio space #222
Dec. 11th, 7p – 11p
Stop by and say hello