I’m alive and still in Asia. At this point, I’m fully recovered from my ilness while in Sydney, but it took a while. It was quite remarkable how long it took me to feel better though understandable because I was down for the count for three days and it took a lot out of my body.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently in Asia, touring teaching flame masterclass sessions for Autodesk. My first stop outside of Sydney was in Bangkok, where we had a great turnout of flame and smoke artists. I’m doing the tour with smoke specialist CE Raum who has done a couple of NAB sessions in the past. CE is currently doing a freelance gig in Mumbai at Famous Pictures, so for our last stop of the tour he’ll actually be going home. I’ll be heading off to the states via Germany on a 22 hour travel day…so I can make it to Siggraph.

It’s been a great tour and and outstanding experience to meet other artists in countries around the world. We’ll actually be highlighting these artists on fxguidetv — the best part has been to learn that we all share fairly common goals, aspirations, as well as roadblocks in our craft. In Bangkok, I met with artists Telly Fung and Derick Wong…they couldn’t make it to the masterclass the day before so I went by for a tour and then we jammed on the flame for about an hour until I got yanked out to make it to a dinner appointment. It was just so enjoyable to run things by each other — and show them some cool expression tricks from the fxphd course.

One of the fun parts has been spending an hour or two at night wandering the streets whenever possible. CE and I dove fully into the Bangkok experience and had dinner on a major avenue near the hotel — under a blue tent in a driving rainstorm. The tent made up about a city block and was filled with small stalls each serving different food. As the only westerners there we basically flew blindly and ordered some stuff on the menu — we knew enough to point at the roasted whole fish as well as order some Tom Yum seafood soup and some cold beer for the hot and humid night. And was it ever humid. But the best meal so far we’ve had…really enjoyed it tremendously. It even came to having a brush with a baby elephant, as some teenagers brought one through attempting to get people to feed it.

Anyway…more soon….as I get things prepped for siggraph….