Merry Christmas Eve

Nowadays it seems like Christmas Eve is almost a bigger deal than Christmas. For little ones especially, since Christmas Eve is when Santa comes to visit.

To me, Christmas Eve is the fun leading up to Christmas, with Christmas still being fun, just more laid back than the hoopla of the night before.

With that said, I had planned on posting this Christmas day; but decided it fits in more with the frivolity of Christmas Eve. Once again, my brain has mashed together various things in my head, and come up with something somewhat odd.

It started with the caricatures I did awhile back of the KUPL air staff; I was wondering how I could do something for the holidays with them.

Then, at the Colt Ford concert, I saw the KUPL blinkie stars. I have at least three of them, though for the first time I looked at them and thought, "that would make a great tree topper".

That idea lead to a Christmas tree I created from scratch with Paint Shop Pro about four years ago; with ornaments using photos.

That dot connected to the dot, of "I have a blog and want to write about Christmas"; so to work I went!

In between all this, I had come up with a way to do a holiday theme for the caricatures; though I did say Rudolph was unavailable because he had a stuffy nose, and Vixen didn't want to participate, because she thought Lola would "out bling" her. This was in explanation of why there are only seven reindeer in the picture.

Originally there were also two elves, KUPL Producer Sputnik, and KUPL webmaster, Kelsie. Since I was only using on air staff for my latest idea, Kelsie wasn't added to that creation, though I did make an ornament for her. This is her Christmas elf costume, and photo ornament.

When everything was the way I wanted it to be, I placed the tree in the middle of the picture; put some presents in front of it; added the photo ornaments to it, then placed the KUPL air staff on either side of the tree. (On a side note, the bells aren't really on the reindeer's scarves; they're supposed to be under them a bit. They're what I call their "jingle belly buttons". Just another odd twist my brain presented me with!) This is the result:

Before I had this done, KUPL played a version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", that they made. When I heard it, I thought it was great and would go great with the picture I was creating, (even though not everyone in the song or pic is represented in both), so here's the KUPL Christmas Carol also:

http://www.kupl.com/2011/12/20/have-yourself-a-merry-little-christmas/

Merry Christmas Eve to everyone, and don't forget to leave Santa some cookies!

Never Thought It Would Go This Far...

It's been about a month since the "Simon in the Morning" team had a discussion about cartoons, cartoon voices and the Muppets. At the time the whole thing got jumbled around in my head, until I finally did something about it; I created caricatures of Scott, Jolynn and Jake.

From the beginning, (jokingly), Scott has always commented on how his caricature is shorter and wider than Jolynn or Jake.  At one point, I decided to "give in" to Scott and make him taller and thinner.  So, I wrote another blog and introduced readers to the "taller, thinner Scott Simon".  Basically, I put the head of Scott's caricature on the body of Jake's caricature, thus making Scott taller and thinner.  I didn't stop there however.  I also noticed that Jolynn and Jake have hair, and Scott doesn't.  So I took the hair from Jolynn's caricature and added it to the taller, thinner Scott Simon.

Thought that was the end of it, until I was talking to B-Dub at the Kenny Chesney pre-party.  He asked my name, and when I told him, he said, "you're the one that created the caricatures; where's mine?"  I told B-Dub I'd see what I could do, which I did, and sent it to him.

I'd also created a caricature for Eduard, the new producer of "Simon in the Morning".

After that, I decided I definitely needed to create caricatures of Lola and TicTak; didn't want to leave them out when the other on air staff had caricatures.  Got those done, and sent them off to Lola, TicTak and the morning team.

Of course, the first thing Scott noticed is that he was still the widest, (actually, he said shortest and widest; however, he and Lola's caricatures are the same height).

At that point, I figured that was the end of it; not quite.  The morning team posted the pics of Lola and TicTak on the KUPL Facebook page; and Lola also posted hers on her page.

Because of all this, now is the time to post what I've been working on since Scott first mentioned being wider and shorter.  I'd told him, if I did my caricature, it would definitely be shorter and wider than his, because I *am* shorter and wider than Scott!

With that said, here it is, the caricature of ME!

The Taller, Thinner Scott Simon

Little did I know that creating caricatures of people would go so far.

In a previous blog I'd written how the idea for "Muppet" characters for the "Simon in the Morning" team got stuck in my head.  Wouldn't go away until I did something about it.  The "something" was to create the caricatures, using Paint Shop Pro 7.

Once they were done, I sent the caricatures to Scott, Jolynn and Jake.  That's when Scott noticed that his caricature was shorter and wider than the other two. 

It's been kind of a running joke since then about Scott being shorter and wider.  Well, last Saturday I decided to do justice to Scott, and make his caricature taller and thinner.  While I was at it, I decided to throw in a bonus for Scott, a little something that I noticed he didn't have; but Jolynn and Jake did; HAIR!

Take a look and see what you think of the "new" Scott Simon.