Hello everyone~!

We are pleased to announce OOP Press is making an appearance at Alternative Press Expo San Francisco this coming weekend!  OOP Press is our proud indy publisher of Art of Totoro Forest Project book.  We are looking to unload about 100 copies Saturday and Sunday. (probably 50 copies each day)

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Here is the info

Alternative Press Expo San Francisco

SATURDAY
November 1
11:00am-7:00pm

SUNDAY
November 2
11:00am-6:00pm

The Concourse
620 7th Street
San Francisco

The table # is 315 and 316.(we share the table from Scott Morse so our name is not listed)

Hope you can find us!

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There you will also see Enrico’s new book Venice Chronicle which will come with a special original drawing!

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Our proud publisher OOP Press is selling their Out of Picture comics as well as Art of Totoro Forest Project!

Hi everyone!

So we started to hear lots of people finally receiving the Totoro book package.  We don’t know why it is taking so long to reach all these people.   All I can say is that shipping international is VERY unreliable..  I hope hope those who ordered the book will get the actual book pretty soon.

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Meanwhile, I’d like to introduce another artist community project that has become a worldwide phenomena.

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It is called Sketchcrawl!

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This is an incredible bi-monthly event created by one of our own Totoro committee members Enrico Casarosa! Basically, people get together on the same day in their respective cities and crawl around the city with their sketch pads.  Very simple.  Enrico has been doing this for years now and now it has attracted hundreds of devotees all around the world.  I think the last sketchcrawl was organized more than 60 cities in 30 or so countries including various cities in the U.S., Japan, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Serbia, Australia, Russia, Brazil, UK, Sweden…and the list goes on!

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Anyone can participate.  No experience necessary.  Just get together with fellow artists in your city and enjoy sketching all day, get to know new artists/art lover friends.  And if you want, you can share your sketches with thousands of other crawlers on the Sketchcrawl Forum!

As you can see, it’s simple but quite a brilliant idea!

Now you want to participate huh?

How about this Saturday 10/25?  There will be Worldwide 20th Sketchcrawl!   You don’t know if your city has one?  Go to this web page and find out! Maybe there’s one already or you can start one!

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Ps.  Let me go on and introduce my buddy Enrico a bit more.  This guy is an incredible artist with incredible ideas.  What he did with Sketchcrawil was quite something as you can guess.  While he’s one of the top story artists at Pixar, he continues to impress the world with his comics and other personal projects.  His new book Venice Chronicle is no different.  It is his visual diary when he took a trip to Italy beauuuutifully illustrating his love endovor!

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I know lots of you couldn’t get Totoro book.  Don’t wait too long on this either.  This could be another independent publication only available for a limited amount of time!

Ok,

So we are finally finished shipping ALL the book orders Yesterday.  Phew… It was only two of us.  Every lunch break in the past few weeks and some late night/weekend to pack/print/ship all orders. I did not think it was this much work….

We really really apologize for the huge delay.   Those who ordered books online have been very patient.(you guys are the best!)  Thank you and hope you receive your books soon!

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Meanwhile, 50 copies of the book at Cartoon Art Museum are sold out.  Wow.. we really are out of this first edition…very fast..  Those who saw what the book looks like know that this book is a work of art by itself.  The choice of paper/biding is pretty exquisite and some of the publishers we have talked to said it’d be very difficult to duplicate the same quality book at the same cost.

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And I know this is sold at different prices at various places.  Personally, I don’t mind it.  The book itself isn’t really for a fund raising product.  The book was mainly made to be used to thank artists and supporters.  If people are re-selling at the higher value, as long as it is reasonable, I think it is ok.  One of the most respected book sellers, Stuart NG is selling it too for higher prices and I totally think it’s ok.  We, artists need them to survive to keep feeding us with great books from all over the world.  Besides, they are still contributing to spread the words out.

My lunch hours have been nothing but these yellow packages…..aaghhhhhH!

We went to see the show at Cartoon Art this past weekend.  Wow.  They did a good job.  Beautifully set up.  Wish lighting was a bit better.  Some of the art work looked really dark..  Can’t wait to see the second show to be up in December when we have both shows up at the same time for a month!

Lots of SF locals enjoy What is Your Totoro exhibition.

2 geeky fans eagerly drool over the beautiful paintings on the wall.  Oh wait a second, they are the famous Daniel Lopez and Bob, the Giant, MacKenzie!

Hi everyone,

We are working on the final phase of the budget/expense this week and meeting Give2Asia on Friday to discuss our final donation numbers.  It is a lot of paperwork and the part not as exciting as the event itself…but is one of the most important parts of charity project like this.

Also, we are sending books little by little. Remember we can only do it during lunch time with one or two people! I know those of you who ordered are anxious to receive your copies..  please be patient.  and feel free to contact admin@totoroforestproject.org for your order status.

Meanwhile, let me introduce another fun charity project I launched with my illustrator friend Gerald Guerlais 2 years ago, Sketchtravel Project!

I have to say, I felt comfortable with Totoro Forest Project idea when I first started talking to Enrico and Ronnie because of my experience with Sketchtravel.  This is also a dream like project where artists from all over the world meet through one inspiration.

Each artist gets one page and can do any art work on it.  The rule is that the book must be hand-delivered to the artist by one of the participating artists.  There’s no re-do.  There is only one book.  If the book gets lost, that’s the end of it.  That’s why it is so precious.  IF we have all 60 pages filled without any accident, we will auction off the book for a charity cause of which the participating artists vote to choose.

This book consists of all star line up of artists just like Totoro Forest Project.  Many of them were generous bunch to do both such as Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie Del Carmen,Dice Tsutsumi, Robert MacKenzie, Vincent Nguyen, Peter de Seve, Rebecca Dautremer,Lou Romano, Tadahiro Uesugi, James Jean, Yoko Tanji etc..

Some of the other big names worth mentioning are Bill Plympton, Francois Rocca, Robert Valley, Jerome Opena….

We have some exciting artists that are coming up such as Nicloas de Crecy, Carlos Nine, Enrique Fernandez, Katsuya Terada, Nicolas Uribe, and Tomer Hanuka….etc..

In 2007, a French documentary film maker Chaterine Bonvalot with her Owls Productions started following this exciting journey on film.  Yes!  There will be a documentary film of this project!  Another exciting addition to this book.

Check out all the sketches done so far!  A whole bunch of quite amazing original sketches all in one book!

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Check out Sketchtravel Teaser Trailer!

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Documentary Film “Sketchtravel” has started filming!

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Some artists like Nash Dunnigan and Robert MacKenzie always find the way to goof off…..

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This project, since its launch in 2006, inspired many artists around the world.  One of them is Tim Sale’s Sketchbook Project! And they did it a lot more efficiently than us!  What an achievement Tim!  Congratulations!

I think there are so much fun stuff we can do with artists community around the world via internet.  And the power of art can give quite an impact to the cause you believe in.  Maybe it’ll make something better.  I hope many of you do your own “Totoro Forest Project!!”

Hello everyone.

We are simply mesmerized by the huge response for the Totoro Forest Project book.
We are now seriously looking into the second printing.

50 copies of TFP books are available as of Today at Cartoon Art Museum! They are charging $50 because they have to make some money to pay for running the store.  Of course, $40 comes to OOP Press and they will donate the entire “net proceeds” to the Totoro no Furusato fund.—–though the production cost of this book was so high that it will be a while before we break even.  Anyhow, hope you can go to the museum to purchase the books!

If you are one of the lucky ones who were able to order your copy, please give us some more time.  It is only a few of us who all have full time jobs to take care of hundreds of orders and some of them have been shipped out this week but most will go out next week.  Thanks for your patience and that’s another form of support we ask for.  We really appreciate it!

Meanwhile, I’d like to share this beautiful watercolor master piece from Mr. Miyazaki sent to us in response to this project. With a big Arigato–Thank You from him.  You can imagine this 12″ x 12″ painting made all the hard work by so many people pay off.  This piece is quite incredible in peron….the way the brushstrokes work effortlessly……

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I hope you can see this amazing painting along with “What is Your Totoro?” exhibit at Cartoon Art Museum.  This is exhibited as well!

Art by Peter Nguyen   Animation by Jeremy McCracken  Score by Zach Johnston

It’s been only a few hours… and it was gone… just like that!

Hope those who wanted the book got their orders in.  Also, we apologize our technical difficulties earlier.  People who made double orders because of it, please email admin@totoroforestproject.org.

Once again, thank you all for your tremendous support for this project.  We will process your order as soon as we can but please be patient since it’s only a few volunteer workers taking your orders.  We will have some more books available at Cartoon Art Museum as well as APE festival in San Francisco in November!

Sorry about the technical difficulties!  That’s what happens when artists handle this stuff!

it should be good now!

http://totoroforestproject.org/tfp_blog/?page_id=561

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sorry…

after testing soo many many times over the weekend, now it’s not working!

stay tuned! 

we will be back ASAP!

sorry…

Hi everyone!  So here it is!  It is finally set up!!  Don’t wait too long!  It will not last too long!  We only have a few people handling this….  So please be patient if this doesn’t go as smooth as Amazon.com but I assure you this is all worth it!  Enjoy the book!

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