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We had quite a few not-fun things to do this day, the first being changing out flight. Originally we would fly SAN-LAX-MCO, but we wanted to depart from LAX. After being stuck in traffic jam for about an hour, spending some time to find the right desk and waiting another 10 minutes we had the luck of having a very friendly women and changing the flight was no problem at all.
Since we had nothing better to do and needed some groceries anyway, we went to Wal-Mart. There really was nothing exciting today to write about, so I’ll save my letters for more exciting posts.

We didn’t have any plans at all, so we decided to see the famous fabric district. Dani wanted to join too, so we picked her up from Burbank and went to downtown LA. The fabric district was sure impressive, endless piles of fabric and some were even useful to us.
We only had a quick lunch at Subway since in total we only had 3 hours at all. We all got some costume supplies and had to get our car at 5:30, since all the stores and also the parking lot closed at that time.

It was like this times 100.

Downtown LA from a rooftop parking lot.

Nothing special here, I just like the composition.

Only the finest fabrics in the fabric district.

Delicioso!

Unsure what to do, we went to the beach and took some long-exposure shots and enjoyed the fresh breeze.

Since Rob Klein wanted to meet up for dinner, we picked him up at his place and went to a mexican place, which turned out to be closed. The place we went to instead was pretty nice too! Dani and Henrieke sketched a bit and we chatted about cartoons. Also cornbread is cake, not bread.
Afterwards Rob invited us to his place, where we got to see lots of amazing storyboards for released and unreleased Disney comics.

Dani, Henrieke and Rob in their element.

Since it got pretty late already, we had to bring Dani back to Burbank. When we arrived at her place, I noticed alot of smoke coming out of the car, which kinda made me panick, but then again she lives on a hill and we drove up slowly, which made the motor run too hot and the cooling liquid boil. And since that wasn’t enough to make me nervous, we got held up by the sheriff, who told us the registration for this car was expired. After handing her our IDs and the obviously not-expired registration, we had to wait and were asked some questions, and everything was fine. They were really nice too so that wasn’t a big issue at all.
We finally arrived at Tobis place at about 1:00.

At 11:30 Steve picked us up and we went to the Cartoon Colour Company and picked up Cels and Cel ink. The store exists since 1947 and offers a wide variety of traditional animation supplies.

On our way to the ASIFA headquarters we made a stop at Coral Cafe (a place where apparently alot of animators eat) to have some very good lunch. In fact that was the first time we ate in a resaurant that wasn’t a chain.
At the ASIFA we got to meet Stephen Worth who introduced us to everything there. We browsed through the archive and watched cartoons, later more people including Antran Manoogian (the president of ASIFA Hollywood) joined for a meeting.

Me, Henrieke, Steve and ASIFA board members.

Later we went to Rob Kleins place and looked through his giant collection of comics and model sheets. We got to talk alot about disney comics and cartoons in general, had dinner at Subway and got home past midnight. Also we got some fresh oranges from Robs own orange tree!

We needed a day to rest, so we ended up doing pretty much nothing except meeting up with Jason in the Beverly Center for dinner and getting some food from CVS.

We left our room in the Planet Hollywood and checked out at 11, then drove to the “New York, New York” and walked around there. The exterior aswell as the interior of this hotel were pretty nice, they even had a rollercoaster which was sadly too expensive for us. We found an arcade and I ended up placing ITG and a round of House of the dead 4 with Chris while Henrieke and Sandro tried their luck on the biggest slot-machine we ever saw.

Next stop was the Luxor, a huge pyramid. Sadly they removed the interior theming, no more egyptian waitresses. They had the “Bodies” exhibition and one about the Titanic. Sadly they were quite overpriced. Across the street was the MGM Grand, where we got to see some lions and people trying to sell us time-share apartments.
The Golden Nugget Hotel in downtown was our last stop in LA, and the most familar looking part. They put this huge LED screen over the entire street, which probably looks really nice at night but sadly ruins the view at daytime.

There’s a waterslide going through this.

The famous cowboy in the old city part.

In  the Golden Nugget Hotel we got to see the biggest gold nugget in the world, then we wandered around the casinos there and had some deep fried oreos and a shrimp cocktail.
After looking through some gift stores but failing to find anything good, it was time to bring Sandro to the airport and make our way to LA. We stopped at the “Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas” sign to make some original (ha-ha) photos and also at a popular planespotting place to take photos of landing planes.

The drive back was nice, sadly Chris got pulled over by the cops for some minor speeding. We were all pretty tired and very thankful for Chris, who made all of this possible!

Breakfast at Holiday Inn was pretty nice, then we went to the grand canyon again to enjoy some nice views, also to the visitor center in order to get postcards. Credits for the photos go mostly to Henrieke since my battery was empty.

On the way back we discovered Bedrock City, a bizarre attraction we read about in John K’s blog. the gifts in the gift shop looked like noone touched them for 30 years.

Bedrock city, the biggest attraction in Arizona.

We took the route 66 and stopped at a restaurant called Crackerbarrel for dinner. It had an awesome theming aswell as good food and a nice store that sold retro stuff attached to it.
Just before sunset we made it to the Hoover dam, parked the car and walked across the border to Nevada on the dam. The view was spectacular!

After a short drive we arrived at out hotel, the Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Blvd.
Everything was nice and big and the view from the room wasn’t bad either. We just got our stuff up and went to see the fountains of Bellagio, which were across the street. Fabulous!

Fountains of the Bellagio with the Paris hotel in the background.

Saw the inside of the Bellagio, the Paris, the Venecian, Caesars Palace, had dinner at a McDonalds since everything else was too expensive. I found a Peter Lik gallery, awesome! I love this guy’s photography! Too bad it’s not quite in my budget.

The inside of the Venecian.

Aquarium in Caesars Palace.

I won 1$ at the slot machine, yay!
Saw the volcano of the Mirage and went back to the hotel since Henrieke wanted to go to bed, so Chris, Sandro and me went downstairs. We played some video blackjack in the PH casino, where I won another dollar, then roulette, where it took them 10 minutes to validate my austrian drivers license. I put 10 dollars on red and won, yay!
At the Bellagio I spent about 2$ on slot machines, which resulted in 2 free Mojitos and a coke. That was by the way where they filmed Oceans 11.
At 3am I finally went to bed after this quite eventful day.

Got up at 9:20 in the motel, then met up with Skuff, Lucky and Tally for breakfast at a bagel place. Went to wal-mart and got a universal charger for my sony camcorder which sadly turned out to be not working.

Saw lots of cacti…

…and later lots of snow. Had lunch at McDonalds at a rest station.

We first checked in at the hotel and then went to see the sunset at the canyon, amazing!

Took lots of photos and stayed until it was dark. Got some dinner at Wendys and ate it at out hotel room (salad this time, we can’t handle any more burgers), also watched Mythbusters all evening.

We (me, Henrieke, Chris, Sandro) got up at 9 I guess, had a minimal breakfast in our motel in yucca valley and started our drive to the Joshua tree national park. We climbed on lots of rocks and enjoyed amazing views, here are some photos:

Tyler was also there! We got some funny reactions from other people.

At 1pm we started driving to phoenix, had a quick lunch break near George S. Patton museum (which had lots of tanks).
We picked up Mark at a truck stop, then went to a friends place in phoenix and had fun with her dogs. Went to pizza hut where we played with the toy trains while waiting for the not-bad-at all pizza.
We had a loooong artjam. Watched UP and Ratatoille as background noise. At 3am we went to our motel (after chris drove Mark back to his truck).

We kind of catched up on all the sleep we missed the last 2 weeks today, then went to the pharmacy, Ihop, Radioshack, a T-Shirt store that sold John K T-Shirts, a huge mall, Target, Disney store, etc…

This is one of 2 supercute cats that live in Tobis apartment!

The “small” mall a woman pointed us to. Looked more like an airport.

Chris and Sandro arrived at about 10, I had a quick shower and we started our drive to yucca valley.

Nothing but exitement found on US roadsides.

Bizarre.

We had a quick dinner at Jack in the Box, then went to the motel and to bed.

Chris gave us a ride to Disneyland in the morning, where we met up with Steve and Greg (who works there). Did Indiana Jones, Haunted mansion, Jungle Cruise and many other rides. We enjoyed alot of random trivia from Greg.

Steven, Henrieke, Greg

Continue reading ‘Disneyland (27.01.)’

Got up, watched some weird american TV shows and ate Cheerios for breakfast. We went to Downtown Disney with Steve and met Mark, Blake and Chris.
Looked around in a bookstore, Henrieke got an aviator helmet and we complained about bad drawings in the Disney store.

Henrieke got this typically american meal: Marshmallow, covered with caramel, dipped in chocolate and covered with sugar hearts.

We found a Sam Eagle drawing we didn’t know yet!

Then went to “Tonys Pizza Place” and had 2 deep-dish pizzas.

Cheese!

Mark joined us to Chris’ place and brought his ferrets, which were supercute (Only took videos but can’t edit them yet sadly)

After the Computer History Museum Jimmy took us to the Fairmont Hotel for the convention. The theme of the convention was “California gold rush” and the hotel was really classy. It was awesome and tons of fun, we did get to meet amazing cartoon artists and got to draw (not as much as we wanted though). Since pictures say more than words, here are a few. Credits for most go to Henrieke.

Hotel Lobby

Continue reading ‘The convention (20.01. – 25.01.)’

Before we went to the Convention Hotel, Jimmy gave us a ride to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
We saw awesome things, for example:

The first mouse!

Weird Kitchen PC that only had binary output and was 10000$

The first Google Server

Sorry for the delay, things about convention and our adventures in LA coming tomorrow. And yes we’re fine.