Tobiyokogeri graffiti

For this kick I started from a couple of pictures of Elena, I wanted to work from a model (with some trick to make her fly...).
I made 3 versions of this drawing: the paintbrush and Indian ink sketch, a Photoshop colored line art, and this digital graffiti. I am posting the latter because I think it looks better, and it is also another attempt to use digital painting in a non-canonical way.

Photoshop digital painting
Click on image to enlarge

The tiger in the background is the classic logo of shotokan karate, painted by Japanese artist Hoan Kosugi.

Martial arts Resume

I am putting this together to recap what I did so far with martial arts - quite a back and forth journey, and still far away from destination.

1981-1984: Shotokan Karate (with Fesika - Hiroshi Shirai's Italian federation)

These 4 years were ground-setting for my technique. In this period I learnt the building how-to blocks: how to use hips, how to breath, how to shift weight, how to get the timing right.

Then in 1984 I was disqualified during a national kumite tournament because - apparently - I did not control enough my techniques. I did not find this correct, blaming the referees, thus I decided to quit traditional karate for kickboxing, which in those years was becoming popular.

1984-1989 Kick Boxing (Yamato Damashii, WAKO)

The best kickboxing club in my town, Yamato Damashii, was directed by Federico Milani, a world-class athlet and since then the technical director of the Italian kickboxing federation. A wonderful opportunity to train with many great athlets. A bit difficult in the beginning, for example because I was not used to hooks and I did not know how to slip or bob punches.
I stopped a full year in 1986 because of my military services, then when I came back I trained another 2 years with decreasing motivation. For some reason I felt unsatisfied with pure kickboxing, also in 1989 I moved to Milano and decided to stay quiet for a while and concentrate on my "real" studies - computer science.

1990-1997 Wushu and (from 1996 until now) Sanda, PWKA

In 1990 I joined almost by luck PWKA (I was going to buy my contact lenses, when I saw the gym door while walking in a street and decided to have a look). PWKA was practically just created by Walter and Paolo Lorini, who after many years of karate - Paolo has been the youngest Italian black belt - moved to Chinese kung fu. They were then among the handful of Italian masters who had been in China to learn martial arts, and brought to their club from Shanghai master Cao Wei Ming. Master Cao taught wushu and sanda in fashion quite close to the Chinese way, in terms of intensity of training, skills, techniques and body conditionings.

Indeed compared to my previous experiences, I consider training with PWKA the equivalent of a university.

I decided to learn wushu with Paolo Lorini, after the long period where I trained only on fighting, I wanted to concentrate exclusively on forms. And this time the step on the ladder was really high. The first year was quite frustrating because I could not stretch enough, I was not fast enough, not coordinated enough, and in general everybody was better than me. In 1990 I also completed my studies and I begun to work, with less and less time for training.
Paolo occasionally made us spar a half hour of sanda after the Wushu class, to get the proper feeling of wushu movements. I had a full year of stop in 1994 - a job abroad - and in 1996, thanks to a new job which was less demanding on the personal time, I decided to couple wushu with sanda. Actually I liked sanda so much that in 1997 I quit wushu (you can't really jump or stretch that much when your are over 30s).
Again sanda is really for me the university of full-contact combat sports, with an unbeaten variety of strategies and tactics that can be adjusted to the height, weight and age. Compared to my kickboxing years today I am 20 years older and 20 kilos heavier, but I still train and have fun - I just tuned my weaponry to my current conditions.
Also in this period Elena and I went to China (Beijing and Shaolin) to train there.

2005 - today: Shotokan karate again (with FEIKA)
In 2005 Elena discovered that in our street lives a karate master (Oscar Scaglioni, 7th dan) and convinced me to go back to step one: shotokan karate. She was curious about karate - Elena begun martial arts from judo - while I was doubtful, I did not think that karate could be fun or that I could learn something new.

I was wrong: in fact now I am training in both karate and sanda, which I feel can be combined quite well. I think that sanda experience brings energy to my karate, and karate's crisp, exact techniques are refining my sanda toolbox.

But what I find really amazing is the number of things I still have to learn, after these many years.

1 Nov postscriptum: in 2005 I also trained Taijiquan, Yang style (the Cheng Man Ching variant). I quitted after the first year. I acknowledge the value of internal martial arts but I am probably not ready for them: I need to sweat and I need to feel the burn of lactic acid the day after training.

The fun of drawing

Hats off, this is the most creative game of the year!

Line Rider is a little Flash game, created by fsk as a project for an illustration class.

It is a magical balance between semplicity and cleverness, and it is a great fun to play. I showed it to the kids, and I could not get hold of my laptop for almost the whole weekend, while they were playing it again and again and laughing almost to fall off their chairs.

The game, like fsk says, is really "all about drawing", which is way I wanted to write a post about it instead showing my stuff as usual.

Just draw a line with a pencil and click the start button: a tiny man on a sledge, complete with a hat and a red scarf, starts sliding on the line, following the peaks and troughs, accelerating and decelerating and jumping over the moguls when he is fast enough.

Carefully, though, because riding the line is riskful, and it takes the slightest glitch of the track to crash dramatically.

But you can change the slope drawing a landing ramp to accompany the jump, adjusting the trough to make it shallower, so that the crash is avoided and then the ride can continue adding a new line to the track. And then add a new line, and then another one. Then start over again, testing the idea you just got about a new slope or a new jump (all right - Line Rider is really addictive - try it yourself).