Thomas, of course, wasn’t the only one to blame for the decision to replace the entire cast with digitally animated models.  Tensions rose between cast-mates when Gordon threatened to leave the show after the introduction of a faster and newer engine named Spencer.  Suspicious of the upstart’s motives and jealous of losing the title of “the fastest engine on Sodor” Gordon fell into bouts of depression, fearing that he had lost his one role on the show and soon his pompous arrogance would no longer be tolerated. After two seasons of that mopefest, the producers had had enough and the entire cast was unceremoniously canned. After suddenly being terminated after so many years of faithful service, many of the actors have sought honest work at railways around the world, but have found it difficult to find gainful employment during an economic recession.  As it turns out, most of the world is not as accepting as Sir Topham Hatt of their freakish, inexplicable faces that only change expression when you aren’t looking.  Even Thomas himself has had a hard time finding acting work since his disastrous casting in 1990′s Back the Future 3 in which he played the steam locomotive converted into a time machine by “Doc” Brown.

Criticized for smiling like an idiot during filming, no matter how intense the scene, Thomas has not been cast in a feature-length film outside of the Thomas & Friends franchise since.

It’s not all been bad news. Thomas and several of his more recognizable friends have found fairly steady work at zoos, theme parks, and various attractions in which kids can enjoy a day out with Thomas.  It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep coal in the tender.  Perhaps the best success story to date has been the casting of “Devious” Diesel in the 2010 blockbuster action-thriller Unstoppable.  Cast as the lead role, runaway freight train #777, along with supporting actors Chris Pine and Denzel Washington, Diesel gleefully wrought lots of carnage and kept audiences nervously nibbling fingernails throughout the romp.

Drawing encouragement from Diesel’s box-office success, several of the other trains are auditioning with renewed vigor.  However veteran Edward has been much more accepting of the improbability of a comeback, saying “Let’s face it: we’re all just one shunt from the scrap yard.  At least we had a good run of it.”

Diesel merrilying smashing a truck out of his way in Unstoppable.

Related articles

• Day Out With Thomas (makingtimeformommy.com)
• All Aboard Thomas The Tank Engine! (kymx.radio.com)

Alrighty so here’s the shtick. I was in a digital imaging class, which was basically Photoshop 101 (Which was a little lame because I’ve been using Photoshop for about a decade). And one of the assignments was to cut out an image of a rubber ducky and then composite the duck with another image or images. So what else could I do? I made the duck look like Princess Leia in R2D2′s recorded distress message.

First, I found a screenshot from Star Wars IV: A New Hope of Luke listening to the distress message from the Princess Leia hologram.

I then imported it to Photoshop and removed Leia from the picture using the Healing Brush & Clone Stamp Tools.

Then I cut out my ducky. For the assignment I had to cut it out using the pen tool, which was way more complicated than necessary. A simple lasso tool would have been sufficient (or even better in this case, since the background was all white – a magic wand to select the background and then invert the selection to get just the duck).

Then I pasted my duck onto my Star Wars image and re-sized him to be about the size of the Leia hologoram.
Then I found a picture of the signature cinnamon bun hairstyle and copied and pasted it onto the duck, rotating and resizing as needed. Then I merged the hair layer down onto the duck.

Then I picked a blue color swatch to match the projection haze, and turned down the opacity a bit and sprayed some more haze onto the background to extend past the duck’s backside (he being somewhat wider than Carrie Fisher after all).

Next I selected my ducky layer and created a new layer over him and painted it blue. Once that was done I changed the blend mode of the blue… ness to “color”. Which cast my ducky in a nice blue shade.

To add the scan-lines to the holo-ducky, I followed this simple tutorial at ehow.
For the assignment I needed to use an opacity mask, so I selected the duck layer and made an opacity mask with a linear gradient going to the back of the duck. In retrospect, looking at the original, Leia’s feet kind of fade-out (not her back) so I should have faded to the duck’s belly. Oh well.

To finish it off, I added the caption text at the bottom, and my name at the top.

The real point of this post is that I am in an art school taking classes online for a BFA in Game Design and along with my books for the classes I’m taking this term, they sent me a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection! A legit copy of CS4!!!  Everything – Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Soundbooth, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and the rest of that junk that no one cares about – the whole shebang! Now, I’m not exactly sure how much it’s worth because the current version being sold by Adobe is CS5 – but the CS5 master collection retails for $2500 at the time of posting. I opened the box expecting to find some lame tome detailing in 45 chapters the fine art of downloading pictures from a memory card onto your computer, but no! There were some vageuly useful looking reference books on color theory and how to use Photoshop. And then I lifted them out and underneath was a beautiful little DVD case labelled “Master Collection”. After my eyes popped and my jaw went slack I raised the box over my head and heard the Zelda music play in my head:

da da Da DA! “You got Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. This may come in handy in your quest to save the princess and defeat Ganandorf!”

What’s really funny is that all of about 12 seconds later I was like “Hey! Why didn’t those chumps send me CS5! I really want that nifty content-aware fill feature in the newest Photoshop” … not that I knew what it was like first-hand or anything, cause that would imply that I had been was using a pirated copy or something…*ahem*

Have you ever taken time to learn about a different culture and discovered something you thought was really cool? It’s usually something like an awesome story, a painting, a style of clothing, a song, building, or sculpture. The point is that it’s art that makes a culture rich and vibrant. In a perfect world the creative people who make the world cool, beautiful, and interesting would always get showered with cash with nary a care in the world, allowing them to focus all their time on being awesome. And sometimes they do! Unfortunately… the reality is that even though there is a massive demand for art, you are likely to get some oohs and ahhs but not necessarily a whole lot in the way of greenbacks. So, if you want to contribute to the cultural wealth of the world you have two options.

1. get a real job and work on your art as just a hobby, accepting that you will never see a red cent for your efforts. In fact you will also lose loads of cash buying expensive art supplies
2. apply your creativity to finding art and design jobs to fill your coffers and pursue them relentlessly!

If you insist on this “being a professional artist” thing, you’ll soon find that finding enough work can be a pain. And if you are like me (ie you like food too much to go without), you’ll probably want to start with some sort of compromise. Go get a job doing… whatever really. Work at a gas station, or a restaurant, or a factory – anything that pays the bills. Then use every waking moment outside of work to figure out a plan that will let you dump your job and still keep your apartment and a stocked refrigerator . Below is my master plan (Note: It remains in development):

1. Create a professional website to showcase skills: √
2. Create a  wildly successful blog: √ (ok… I receive more than 5 hits a day! If that’s not successful, I don’t know what is!)
3. Find cool jobs on craigslist and other freelance sites like freelancer: √
4. Land said cool jobs found online and get paid!: … still working on this one

In the meantime I’ll lean on my backup plan which is, of course, to wow the blogosphere with my witty banter so much that someone donates vast sums of money in honor of my awesomeness. If you happen to be said  amazing benefactor, kindly note my shiny new PayPal donation button in the sidebar to the right.

And just like that, you’ve dedicated your life to doing what you love. Making statements, speaking the truth, changing the world! Plus, you’ve got more sway with important people, like producers, private collectors, hippies, fanboys at ComicCon, and most importantly, college chicks. Cuz let’s face it, everybody knows it’s all about the ladies.

Actually making a living from professional art jobs, on the other hand…isn’t that simple.  People suddenly expect you to be, like, talented, and, uh, know stuff about your craft.  And all sorts of ridiculous things.  But who said you needed to get caught up in the details, anyway?  What artist does that?  What matters is that now, you are a professional artist, baby!

So go, and print yourself some business cards with your name and “Professional Artist” in big, bold letters underneath, and you’re good to go.  And if you can’t afford business cards, come back and read “confession #2: confession #1 was slightly misleading.”