It seems to be a wonderful time to help people in need and to play boring games that will melt your brain.

The Desert Bus for Hope just finished, gathering a bit more than US$ 130k. The deal is simple: people give donations to Child’s Play, a charitable organization founded by the good people at Penny Arcade, and the folks from LoadingReadyRun play Desert Bus. What is desert bus you ask? Well, it’s a game where you drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time. The thing is: the maximum speed is 45 mph so the trip takes around 8 hours.

You can’t pause the game and the bus veers slightly to the right, so you can’t tape the controller and go do something more adequate for a human being.  Anyways, the guys play Desert Bus while they are still getting donations, the more donations, the more mind numbing trips to Nevada. These guys also an art auction, and a friend of mine and painter I admire, Chelsea Conlin, colaborated with 3 pieces of artwork. The paintings managed to raise US$ 920! That’s some great contribution, really. Chelsea, you are awesome.

On a related note, Daarken, concept artist at Mythic Entertainment, and Lief Jeffers, animator at Dreamworks, are organizing an art auction fundraiser, Beautiful Grim. Earlier this year, Daarken’s girlfriend, Cat, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 25. As you all know, cancer is a fucking bitch and this has been very hard for her, not only mentally and physically, but also financially.

So, Lief and Daarken decided to throw an art auction to help her with medical bills. After her bills have been paid, the money left will be donated to a breast cancer related charity organization, to be determined by the artists in a few weeks. There are people from all areas of the industry: concept art, animation, photography, illustrations, fine art and much more. The theme of the pieces is “Beautiful Grim”, and the interpretation is up to the artists. They are still researching venues to hold the event, but will probably be in either San Francisco or New York. Check their FAQ and contribute (:

And about contests, there are a few going around on the interwebs. First, Jon Schindehette from ArtOrder is putting together a 2010 calender, so he’s asking for some good art to illustrate it. Go ahead and send the man some goodness, the deadline is this wednesday, December 2nd.

Another one going on is being organized by DeviantArt and Wacom. It’s the second coming of the Bring your Visions to Life contest, and this time the theme is Dreams and what do you aspire for the future. It’s open to all artists that have an account at DeviantArt, so that makes pretty much everyone ellegible. So, what are your dreams?

As an ending note, loveandasandwich organized a neat Secret Santa at ConceptArt. I’m hoping this will become another tradition in the community. I already started mine, yeah!

That’s it folks. I think I wrote a bit too much but bear with me as I get used to blogging and stuff. Here’s a few study pics, just to show I’m not slacking around, hahaha. Oh and I also configured my portfolio, so please, check it out on the menu up there (:

Cya.

André.