Frame by Frame

More Digital Paintings

2011-11-12T03:14:00.000-08:00

I've started to get kind of into doing these digital drawings/paintings on the ipad now. The next ones have been quite a progression in workflow. The first one here was done all with my finger and in Sketchbook Express so there were a limited number of layers and types of brushes and settings I could use.It's actually still one of my favorites though. I like how the jeans look, and I felt like I really got a sense of the colors overall. There were still some things I wasn't happy with, but oh well.

This next one was also done with my finger, but now in Sketchbook Pro. It's nicer because there are new tools and menus which help with workflow, as well as a bunch of new brushes and settings, so I got to experiment with some of those. I was developing my taste in brushes on this one. I also tried doing some less realistic skin tones but still trying to maintain the integrity of the shading. I've never tried it before, but I've listened to my life drawing teacher talk to some of the people who use pastels and paints during class. Hopefully I picked up some tips.

This one I did after I got a stylus. Since I like drawing on the tablet a lot now I thought I'd invest in one. I actually wanted the Wacom Bamboo Stylus since it has the best reviews online pretty much everywhere. The local Best Buy didn't have any in stock though so I picked up a cheaper one I thought looked pretty nice. I opened it up and right away I wasn't very happy with it. It seems pretty well made, but for the purposes of drawing, its not nearly sensitive enough. I know the ipad has a very sensitive screen, so it was surprising to me that a very light touch with the pen I got either didn't register or would be very on/off through the stroke. I decided to order the Wacom one online for instore pickup at a different Best Buy location for tomorrow. Hopefully it'll resolve this issue. But for now, the one below was my first painting with a stylus. It's definitely WAY easier to draw with a stylus, and would be even better with a better stylus. (and hopefully pressure sensitivity..come on Apple...)

I think I'll be taking this in to class on Monday :)

Digital Paintings

2011-11-09T22:24:00.000-08:00

A while ago I downloaded the "Brushes" painting app on my first gen iPod touch. I was able to paint a pretty good Remy and Eve from Ratatouille and Wall-E. That was before I took life drawing and since then I never really touched the app again. My mom recently got an iPad 2 and was able to download the free version of Sketchbook Express which is ok, but I don't like it as much as Brushes, which I haven't bought for it yet.

Anyways, last night I decided to try doing another piece on there with what I know now. I ended up drawing a Tardis on my iPod, and a figure on the iPad. Here they are.

I think I can start to get a little better at this...

Sketchdump - 10.22.11

2011-10-23T00:35:00.000-07:00

Had a pretty productive day today artwise. I decided to go out to the city today with my mom and sister for the weekend farmer's market at the Ferry Building. Originally I planned to just take BART back home after that while they went to the Cal football game at ATT Park, but since it was such a nice day and I had my sketchbook I decided to stick around and wander for a few hours while they were at the game.

We grabbed some sandwiches at the farmer's market and went up to the 2nd floor of a pier were there were some free benches for us to sit on while we ate. I took the opportunity to do a couple of sketches. The first one was of the Ferry Building Clocktower from where we were sitting. I hadn't really gotten my hand warmed up yet so the top of the tower got kind of jacked up in perspective. Tried to fix it, but its still messed up.

This one was a quick sketch of the terminal building from where we were sitting as well. I don't usually draw buildings or architecture so I thought it would be a nice opportunity to practice. Nothing detailed or anything, just quick gesture like stuff.

Out at the end of the pier was a nice view of the Coit Tower in north beach. It looked like a nice composition so I sketched that out real quick.

The western span of the Bay Bridge also from the pier. A nice mix of practice with landscape, architecture, and perspective. Again, nothing detailed just gesture like just to get the feel of the scenery.

We walked all the way around Embarcadero St. from the Ferry Building, under the bridge, to ATT Park. After I left my mom and sister at the gate, I took a stroll around the outside of the stadium which I'd never done before. It's really nice. Surrounded by water, and with a marina full of sailboats around the backside. I thought that looked pretty cool so I captured that.

Further around there's a nice walkway, grass, and park benches. I wanted to get a drawing of the stadium since I was there, but since most of the time you're so close to it you can never get a good enough view or angle to draw it. This is from behind left field where the giant Coke bottle and glove are.

After that I walked back up to the Yerba Buena Gardens park near the Moscone Center, the Metreon, and the YB Center of the Arts where my graduation was held. Getting back to sketching people I caught a few people taking a nap on a shady hill right near where I was sitting.

I drew this from the same spot, and for some reason I really like it. Not just because it's the cleanest of my drawings so far today, but the composition and the hatching just seem to work for me when I look at it. It's probably one of my favorites of the day.

My other favorite was probably this one. I walked further into the park and parked myself at one end of the grass over looking the field towards the back entrance of the Metreon. I thought this would be another good opportunity to work on some landscape and perspective, along with some simple figures. I'm not entirely sure how successful I was at getting this down since I have the real life snapshot up in my head and know what it's supposed to be.

Walking to a different part of the park I decided to get some more perspective practice in and drew part of a walkway with some people sitting on the benches nearby.

Another shot at doing some perspective stuff in landscape gesture.

Across the street from the park was this nice looking brick built church. The drawing looks ok, but I think I was starting to get out of the zone a little. Tried to draw some detail too fast whereas other parts of the drawing have no detail at all. Looks inconsistent to me. Oh well.

Finally left the park and decided to go up to Union Square to see if I could find anything interesting to draw. I couldn't really so I just plopped myself down on the corner of the park and drew the Neiman Marcus department store building. Again, this one feels inconsistent to me.

Not finding anything else interesting at Union Square I headed back towards the park, and saw this pretty mindbending building, which is part of the Jewish Contemporary Museum. It's like a weird distorted cube. The actual building has somewhat non-linear lines making a grid on the surface with windows in some of the holes. Putting that in along with hatching to show the shadows really messed with my head since I'm not too experienced in drawing this type of stuff so it ended up looking pretty weird.

At least I ended on a higher note. Across the street from the park I was at before (and next to the church), I had a pretty cool view of the SF MOMA and the backside of the YBCA. The buildings in the background I also drew in to even out the composition of the sketch.

And that's it! Headed back over to the BART station to meet my mom and sister right after. I really enjoyed just wandering around parts of the city and doing random sketches. It was great practice and a lot of fun to do. Hopefully I'll be able to go back soon and maybe with a group of people. That would be pretty awesome.

Sketchdump - 10.8.11

2011-10-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

It's fleet week again here in the bay, which means the Blue Angels are in town. I got to go up to a pretty nice balcony in the city that overlooked the water right near Ghiradelli and Fisherman's Wharf. Great 180 degree view of the bay looking out towards Alcatraz and Angel Island. Below is a video I took on my phone of the Blue Angels initial approach and flyover, and a couple of doodles I did on BART, from the balcony, and at a coffee shop afterwards.

Sketchdump 09.15.11

2011-09-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

I'm on a roll! Been doing some sketches all week, mostly of some more faces. Some of them are okay, some are pretty good, and some are pretty terrible. But hey, I'm still learning so that's okay. You might recognize some of them, and others probably should be recognizable if I drew them right heh. My bad.

Leading off is an update to a page below of the Walt/Heisenberg drawings. I finished off that page to have some more Breaking Bad characters that night.

The next few are just random faces from different things I've been watching.

And this last page was a run/jump cycle study for a cheetah that I was going to try and apply to my latest animation test. Trying out my first quadruped :\

*Edit*
So I went crazy with my scanner today and I scanned a bunch of back pages that I never got to before. (If I remember) I will post them over a few days on here. Here's a sample!

TARDIS!

Sketchdump 09.12.11

2011-09-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, about time for some more sketchbook posts. Besides life drawing I haven't really been keeping up with my sketching until pretty recently. We haven't had class in a couple weeks and I've been wanting to do some drawing.

This first page is just a couple random drawings of sushi. I was kind of hungry for sushi at the time so I decided to draw it since I couldn't go get some to eat. My goal here was to both improve my line and to try and get a sense of texture and perspective with the rendering. Some is more successful than others. Not bad for my first sketches in a couple weeks.

From here I was trying to start to draw some more faces and heads since I never really do that anymore. It was too much of a challenge for me during life drawing to get the heads and faces up to the same level of the body. So here I tried to only draw heads. And not even realistically...I was going for more caricaturish or cartoonish drawings here. Some are decent, some are horrible but here ya go. They are all based on people in the LOTR extra features.

The next page is more of the same, except the sword obviously. The one at the top was too close to "real", the middle two are terrible, and the last three I can start to feel myself getting into a certain groove. More of a nailed down workflow. Still needs a lot of work, but I'm starting to feel more confident of myself. These are also based on people form the LOTR extra features.

The last page are a couple of sketches I did during today's episode of Breaking Bad. Unfortunately I probably missed out on a couple of things during the show, but on the bright side, I think the drawings are pretty decent looking. Again, trying to be more cartoonish/caricaturish and not realistic.

New Demo Reel

2011-08-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

Demo Reel Summer 2011 from Daniel Wong on Vimeo.

Harry Potter Kids

2011-06-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

Less than a month to go until the last Harry Potter film! Thought I'd draw all three of the characters to fill in some space in my sketchbook. It's funny if you compare this to some of my first drawing attempts at Harry and Hermione 7 years ago. You can check those out here and here.

Zooey Deschanel

2011-06-22T22:55:00.001-07:00

RIP Lord Stark

2011-06-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

Sketch dump - 06.19.11

2011-06-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Bought a new sketchbook yesterday. I decided I wanted to draw on tinted/non-white paper, but also wanted it in a sketchbook format. It's a lot harder to find than I thought. Four art stores later I got an ecru colored sketchbook. I would have liked something a little bit darker so that white shows up better, but it still works better than pure white paper. I could have gotten a paper shopping bag colored sketchbook as well, but for some reason I went with the ecru. Now though I'm thinking I should have bought the other.

Anyways, here is part of the first page on the sketchbook breaking it in. Yes, I'm aware that the 2nd drawing of the woman's torso is messed up....for some reason I completely failed at even keeping things in the same proportion next to each other haha. But oh well, I was just trying out a few different methods to get the best results.

Owed Some Sketches

2011-06-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

As usual, ol' bloggie here gets neglected a lot. But I promised some Disney World sketches, and Disney World sketches you shall get. I posted them on my facebook a while ago, but never got around to posting them on here because I'm lazy. Didn't draw too many people, still too slow for that, but animals were a really good practice. Some turned out a lot better than others, and some are so bad I didn't even scan them. None the less, enjoy.

Last Assignment Completed!

2011-03-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

And so ends my long journey through AM, but my education is FAR from being complete. The last 12 weeks I think I've made some big strides, but I still need tons of practice.

The reel that I ended up with isn't really that complete. My final shot isn't finished, and only have two other pantomime shots with the simpler rig. I definitely need to do a lot more acting and dialog shots for myself and get those as good as I can get them. As of now though, I'm pretty tired of looking at the work that I've done, and I'm not sure if I'll carry on polishing those shots.

I need at least one more reel worthy acting shot for my reel before I even want to think about applying anywhere for a job. There's some really tough competition out there from both pros and my classmates, and I need to get myself up to that level.

For now though...some much needed rest.

Sketch dump - 03.18.11

2011-03-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

My first post back at blogger is something I've never done before. My very first sketch dump.

I've been working through some different tools to see what I like the best, and I've settled on a couple of pens. Not being a real confident drawer, and pretty slow I used to gravitate towards just a regular pencil....but I've since started using and enjoying pens. I've gotten a lot more confident with my lines, and have even improved my speed.

These first few sketches were done with a Japanese fude (foo-deh) brush pen that I used to use to write kana back in my college Japanese class. I had a black Tombow brush pen, but the felt tip on it wore out entirely too quickly and wasn't able to make fine marks anymore. The fude pen, even though still felt, holds up much better.

The next few were done with a 0.3mm pen and were done while I was riding the BART train into the city the other day. Usually people move too fast for me to sketch in public, but people sitting down on public transport tend to stay pretty still. Here are a few of my successful ones.

These last few were done with what is now my favorite drawing tool, the Pentel pocket brush. I ordered one last week, and just received it yesterday. Took a little bit of time to get used to it, but I'm liking the results so far. It's much more sensitive than my fude pen, and it actually has real bristles instead of felt. Even just through 3 pages of sketches, I can see myself improving!

That's it for today. I plan to bring my sketchbook on my next trip in a couple of weeks instead of a camera, so look forward to those!

Playing Catch Up

2010-08-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a whole half of the class since I've updated the blog last. I'm glad to say that since then I've learned A LOT. Physicality is only the beginning. Just when you start getting kind of OK with mechanics, we're thrown into intro to acting. Starting to get to the real meat of animation. And man, you've gotta think about a lot. Giving the shot a context, and giving reason for movement. Making the poses read clear for the attitude you want to convey. Clarity is the key.

Here is my first pantomime shot. We were supposed to make our character go from one emotion to another or "changing gears." I think I did a fairly decent job on my first try, but it still needs a lot of work.

Right now we're working on our first dialog shot, and holy crap its different from anything we've done so far. We're given the full body rig (Bishop) but only with a simple face. This is so we do most of the acting through the body. Now in our shots we are bound to the cadence of the vocal track. We have to really get into the track and try to get the subtext of the dialog down in creative, entertaining, and clear poses timed out to the audio. Its a lot harder than it sounds because you have to be picky about exactly where you want your accents to be, and where to just milk a pose.

We're only in the blocking stage right now, and I'm not done with it yet so no video. If I remember when I finish I might upload it in stages of progress over the next.....I guess 2 months we're working on this shot :\

John Locke Drawing

2010-06-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I drew something outside of life drawing and animation classes. I had a hard time picking between 4 pictures to draw, and ended up with Locke (the other 3 choices were girls). I'm probably going to end up drawing at least one of those other pictures as well.

Anyways, here it is (click for larger):

New Practice Test

2010-06-25T01:07:00.001-07:00

We had a week off of AM, so I took this opportunity to do a simple practice shot. Just a jump, purely mechanical. I wanted to accomplish a few goals with this:

1. See how quickly I can work a shot through polish

2. Try new methods for animation controls.

a. IK spine

b. Follow enabled on both head and shoulders

c. Block in plateaued splines instead of stepped

3. Achieve a better subtle settle

4. Keep the body loose

The settling and having a stiff body was probably my weakness last session. I went in and tried to apply as much of the advice I'd gotten from my mentors. For the stiffness, the IK spine really helps me with that, as well as using some nice squashing and stretching on the body. Before now, I hadn't touched the translate controls on the IK spine, shoulders, or head; but this time I decided to try them out. I liked the results. Anyways, here is the shot. I worked on it for about 3 days.

Post Class 3 Progress Reel

2010-06-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

Here's a reel of all my work so far for the first 3 classes.

Jedi Stewie

2010-04-03T23:37:00.001-07:00

Remember that pose I promised a while back? Just did it today, enjoy.

Review: How To Train Your Dragon

2010-03-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Awesome. Just awesome. Dreamworks has definitely taken a big step forward with How To Train Your Dragon. Everything on it was way beyond anything I've ever seen come out of Dreamworks. All the technical stuff seems a lot further along, in terms of hair, skin, textures, and effects.

The animation was amazing. Toothless (the dragon) was especially really beautifully done. I find it hard to discuss that without going too nerdy on you so I'll just leave it at that.

But most importantly, the humor works, and it had a great story. The characters were very well executed and you really felt for everyone. I couldn't have hoped for a better movie. Watch out Pixar.

Almost Forgot

2010-03-24T01:04:00.001-07:00

Here's the final version of my latest and last shot for Class 2.

My first 3D Model

2010-03-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

So going into my next class at AM, we get the decision of doing our 3 assignments of different themes, or do all 3 with the same theme. It's all body mechanics stuff, and I was thinking about what I could do that would be cool and fun to animate. After some thought I came up with "Stewie's Jedi Academy" (Stewie is what we call the rig). I thought I could do some cool physical stuff with a lightsaber, the force (flying objects), and other fun things. I tried to look on the net for some lightsaber models that I could use, but nothing was free. Not wanting to pay anything for one, I decided that in our downtime this week I would try my hand at modeling.

I had to read through my Digital Art book, and watch some tutorials on youtube to figure out what to do, but I mustered through it, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. It is a direct model of Luke's lightsaber from Return of the Jedi. For a couple of reasons, it's one of my favorite designs, and it's technically pretty easy to build compared to something like his blade in episodes 4 and 5.

Anyways here is my result, just in a side view with no color.

And here it is colored and with a blade. I have it so the blade is parented to the handle, and can be turned on and off (visibility on/off). Also with some glow attribute added to it.

I think I did a pretty good job for a first try :) Next up, creating a badass pose with Stewie holding the lightsaber. Sweet.

6 Months In: Self-Assessment

2010-03-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

So the last shot of class 2 has been finaled, which means I'm now pretty much done with Class 2. One more goodbye Q&A with my awesome mentor Martin Hopkins, and a progress reel and I'm done!......for 2 days until class 3.

Anyways, it's been about 6 months since I've started AM and I've come a long way. I figured that I would sit down and give myself a self-assessment on my skills and what I think my current weaknesses and skills are.

Overall, I think I'm doing pretty well. Not to sound braggy, but my work tends to feel better than most of my class. But maybe that's just me. I can achieve a pretty high level of polish with my shots pretty easily, although I'm not sure if thats not smoothness more than polish. But my arcs are pretty good, my spacing feels nice, and I have pretty good weight. I think I have a pretty good understanding of mechanics so far, but I took a look at next quarter's syllabus and it looks like we're going to learn a lot of stuff I think we need. I seemed to overcome the spine and arm additions semi-quickly. They were both very daunting at first, pretty much doubling and tripling the amount of controls....but like someone said in the lecture today, think about it in poses instead of controls, and you don't worry about it as much.

But from what I have, I'm lacking even more. So far I've been pretty much working straight ahead on 2s or 4s depending on the action. I picked pretty action oriented shots so it was more appropriate anyways. Which is another one of my weaknesses. Where other students had stories or little jokes in their assignments, mine were just straight forward mechanics. It's not really a problem right now, because it's much easier to learn the mechanics first, and then learn to bend the rules to your will. Next class we have the option of making all 3 of our assignments of the same theme, or continuous shots so I think I might do that. It would give me a chance to really develop a character's movement style and make it a bit more personal.

Instead of doing the straight ahead blocking, I think I want to try moving into a pose to pose. I'll design my shots more to have it be appropriate for blocking, and should make it easier to get a more snappy and organic cartoon feel. The splines should be easier to manage as well, and being able to have editability, and overlap easily added in. I also need to add a bit of acting into the shots, even though we haven't gotten there yet.

There's also much more that I can't think of right now. I'm going to leave you with the final shot of class 3 (when I get around to uploading it on my other computer).

Parkour Shot Finaled

2010-02-21T00:21:00.000-08:00

Viola, final product. Much much better than last week I think.

Mission Accomplished

2010-02-14T00:49:00.000-08:00

Tackled those splines for the first pass, and this was the result. A bunch of stuff got changed when I was editing the curves, but it was definitely for the better. Now everything seems to be working properly. Only a few troubled parts, but I've got another week until the final is due. Definitely ahead of schedule this time.

Now That's Scary

2010-02-12T01:18:00.001-08:00

Yea....a lot more difficult than ol Ballie.

Holy Crap

2010-02-07T14:26:00.001-08:00

Man, adding a freaking spine and head into a character really starts to complicate things. I was doin fine on a ball with legs so I felt fairly confident doing a series of Parkour actions for my next shot. Not only is just doing a run challenging for the first time with a spine, but transitioning into and out of runs from rolls and slides is quite challenging. Even though there were no arms on this character, it probably would have helped a little to maintain balance and to create momentum for certain moves. I was left to create it with the legs or the bend in the spine.

Anyways, here's my rough blocking pass. I think it was pulled off rather well after a long late night of working on it.

Class 2 Shot 1

2010-01-30T00:35:00.000-08:00

Hey what's up minimal readership?

I'm finally done with my first animation for my second class. But first, I'll rewind a bit. My new mentor for this class is Martin Hopkins. He is trained in classical animation from Sheridan College and has transitioned into 3D, with his entire professional career pretty much at Dreamworks Animation for the last 13 or so years. He is currently working on Shrek 4, which he claims isn't as bad as you would think and is better than Shrek 3; which I haven't seen.

So far he has been pretty great. He sometimes gets out of his chair and acts out something on the camera for you to see instead of just relying on drawing over our frames. His inputs have gotten me from my initial blocking pass up to the polish of the final (although he hasn't seen that yet). Anyways, here is my progress from blocking to final:

You might also find this pretty interesting. After we set some keyframes, this is what we use to refine and polish our animations. It's called the 'graph editor' and all those curves represent all the different animation controls on the rig. Good times ;)

Close:

Fit:

My next shot should be pretty fun to do. I'm doing between 120-200 frames of parkour. This time we will be upgrading to a full body rig with no arms. So it's got all the controls of the Ballie rig, plus some spine joints, neck, head, eye blinks, and shoulders. Still got nothin on the thousands of controls the pros have to use :P

Hey Guess What?

2009-12-14T00:52:00.000-08:00

An Update!!!

It's been a while, and decided that I should post something on here. I was going to do a post a couple of weeks back, and upload most of my assignments, but decided to hold off a bit.

Now that our first class is done (yay!), we had to create a progress reel of all the final assignments, so I figured I would save myself the trouble of uploading everything individually, and just post that video.

Not the greatest work on the planet, but hey, it's only been 12 weeks. I've learned a lot from my first mentor, Jon Collins (of Pixar), and I have enjoyed his critiques. He is very honest with your work, and doesn't sugar coat things which I appreciate. After all, that is what you have to learn to take in order to work professionally.

That being said, I've got the next couple of weeks off and start back up with Class 2 (Psychology of Body Mechanics) the first week of January. Should be a pretty big step forward in our curriculum and I can't wait to start learning that stuff.

Until next time.

Peace.

UP!

2009-11-10T19:45:00.001-08:00

Dropped by Fenton's today to check out the launch party for "Up" on blu-ray and dvd. I got to meet Ricky Nierva, the production designer. I'd listened to his splinecast a few times, so it was cool to meet him. He knows my mentor Jon Collins, and said AM was an awesome program and to keep at it. Anyways, to round it off, I got a nice drawing of Carl and his signature.

Life Drawing 10.26.09

2009-10-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted any of my life drawing in a while, so I decided to take pics of a couple that I did tonight.

I've come a long way from that first class I took down in Irvine. I'm now using materials and methods that I haven't used before and its pretty cool. I now have a collection of charcoals which I use now instead of graphite which I used to use. The instructor is also way better since he actually gives some instruction every week. He also gives some pretty good critiquing while you're working so you can improve your drawings while your working on it to produce a better result.

The top one was done in 20 minutes, and the bottom in an hour. I like the gesture better of the first, but the shading of the second.

2 Ball Bounce

2009-10-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

Week 4 down. Our assignment this week was to do a heavy and a light ball bounce. I chose to do a beach ball and a depleted uranium ball. My final results.

FYI, here is my 1 ball bounce. It's supposed to feel like a basketball or soccerball

Uncharted 2

2009-10-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

Uncharted 2 is officially the best game ever made. It's a perfect blend of action and puzzles with jaw dropping graphics.

The first thing you notice, is that this game is absolutely beautiful. The game opens on you in a train car hanging of a cliff, and you need to climb back up (this is a third person game). While the path is pretty "linear", it has you going around all 4 sides of the outside, as well as the interior of the train. With each step you take the environment around you changes. Seats fall, poles bend, wheels and rocks, and trains fall. This is a very nice introduction to this game's awesome movement mechanics. You can climb up walls much like in Price of Persia or Assassin's Creed, but it feels much more spontaneous and integrated better than those two. Even around the battles you can scale walls and signs to get a vertical advantage on your enemy.

Climbing is also mixed with stealth. Uncharted 2 has an almost perfect cover system. It feels kind of like Gears of War, but much smoother and tons more stuff to let you hide behind. It's actually closer to feeling like GTA4 in that regard. From cover you can take out enemies like a ninja, snapping their necks or throwing them off a cliff. When stealth won't do, the weapons system is very good as well. You can switch perspectives, and change weapons on the fly in aiming mode. You can also throw grenades quickly from the aim mode. Best of all, there is blind firing from cover, as well as firing while hanging from a wall/etc.

For all you multi player nuts, online mode is just as cool. All the mechanics are intact, including the stealth attacks and climbing. Yup. Drool.

The game's story is as good as it's gameplay. In my opinion it bests even the latest Metal Gear Solid games in story, acting, and animation. Some of the best parts of the game are so intense, it literally puts you right in the cinematic. There is one level where you are running towards the camera through an alley, firing your gun at a truck chasing you down on your heels. Mess up, and you get crushed. It's very intense. The very best parts of the game action-wise, put you in really dynamic locales. Below is a video of a fraction of one such level. It puts you on top of a moving train, trying to get to the front. It speeds through the jungle, and then when it opens up, you are pursued by a helicopter as well as soldiers.

I won't spoil the surprise on the 2nd video.

If you have a PS3, you need to buy this game now, if you don't already have it.

This Should Put a Smile On your Face

2009-10-12T02:11:00.000-07:00

And just to brighten up everyone's day, I went to Fenton's (as seen in UP, and yes, it is a real place if you didn't know) and I found this hanging on the wall.

Yup, that's Carl, Russel, and Dug sitting in front of Pixar's rendition of Fenton's in their "UP" world. If that picture doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't know what will.

Hooray for Posts

2009-10-12T01:59:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while and I thought I'd drop by with some progress. The first couple of weeks of AM are over, and this week we get to start our first animation. A simple ball bounce with the weight of a basketball or soccerball.

What we did last week was do some live sketches in a public place, just simple gestures. Mine are crappy stick figures. But we picked out best, and posed it out in Maya with our "Stu" rig. Here is what I came up with.

Since then, I've done a few more live sketches, with more....stationary people. At a restaurant, and at a wedding.

The first ones I did at a buffet, and found there were a lot of round shapes, if you know what I mean. Pocket sized sketchbook.

Then earlier today I was at a wedding and brought my sketchbook with me. Got a couple good ones.

Sketchbook 10.05.09

2009-10-05T15:43:00.001-07:00

Sketchbook 10.03.09

2009-10-03T17:33:00.001-07:00

So I've kind of taken to this whole pen sketching/gesturing thing. I kind of enjoy how dynamic it all looks and how this is teaching me a lot about how to keep things more simple.

The first couple of pages I did last night after I posted the previous blog entry. I have to say I'm very pleased with the results I got from the axe holder sketches. Most of the following female ones I'm pretty pleased with as well. The one with the cowboy hat stands out as being the least strong of the bunch.

Drawn to Life

2009-10-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

After about half a year or so of wanting to get this book (and the second volume as well) I finally got it ordered through Amazon as a birthday gift (thanks Mom!). Man, I totally should have gotten this book sooner. It is seriously filled with typed gold. Not only was I really engaged by the book, I learned A LOT about drawing, gestures, and how to see than I've learned in.....well just about ever. I mean, I've never had a formal training session other than a few weeks of life drawing so I can't compare it to anything...but the way it's changed my style and how I approach drawing in like 3 days is pretty amazing.

(Note: this could also just be because I suck at drawing and I would have known this had I taken a formal class in school =P )

But anyways. I've scanned in a couple pages of PEN sketches that I just did. I've for some reason fallen in love with drawing dresses/cloth at the moment so there's a lot of that going on. Most of the them I'm satisfied with except for two. But as this is my first application of my knew found knowledge, it ain't bad. Just getting those 10,000 bad drawings out of my system (or however many they say it is).

Animation Mentor has Begun

2009-10-01T00:03:00.000-07:00

So my Animation Mentor journey has finally officially begun. On Monday I got to access the full campus, and got to see who my mentor would be, as well as my classmates. I spoke to a couple of them that day. There are actually 5 people in my class from around me, so that's pretty cool.

My mentor is Jon Collins, an animator at Pixar :) There are actually a lot of Pixar animators teaching the Basic Foundations class, including Victor Navone. We got to meet him formally last night in the Q&A. He seems like a pretty cool guy and was encouraging to us over the camera not to be shy our first time. I was a bit scared before I went up, but it's not so bad. I think I'll get used to it pretty quick.

No homework really, just set up our profiles and introduce ourselves to our mentor. Done and done. I've since watched the whole lecture, which was basically just an introduction, and the Maya training videos. I installed the AM tools, which is pretty cool. I never realized how customizable Maya was until I watched the training videos. Shame those kinds of tutorials aren't floating around the net, I learned more in 5 minutes from that, than from anything I read online. So with the first character, and a pretty basic knowledge of Maya I went and created a pose based off a stick figure I had in my sketch book. Practice for next week's assignment ;)

Tada!

I have to say, I think I prefer FK over IK just a little. I find that I can get more control over the position of the arm quicker, than in FK. I can get it in a general position pretty quick with IK, but to make finer adjustments to it, I find that FK is better for me. I also like how the arm follows the body as well when you translate the whole body, where in IK the hand stays stationary and the arm bends to conform to this. I can see some applications for that though, but I still prefer FK.

Well, I'll let you know how it goes from here.

Random Sketching 09.27.09

2009-09-27T23:47:00.001-07:00

It is the eve of my Animation Mentor beginning, and I did a few more sketches today.

I realized I hadn't practiced in a while and decided that I should get some of that in today. Seeing as I have another life drawing class tomorrow, as well as starting out in AM, it was as good a time as any to draw.

I suppose I get some inspiration from my cousin's kids. I drew a couple portraits (kinda crappy ones) back a while ago, probably 3 years, maybe 4. Either way, 1 of the 3 kids was not born yet, and she happens to be the subject of most of my drawings today. I'm not nearly fast enough yet to do some real world action sketches, so these are just some random pictures we took last week at a birthday party.

You might notice that there are no faces on them. I need to learn how to do faces in this style before I try or else they'll just look stupid. For some reason I can only do faces when I do them all realistic and rendered. I can't sketch a face for crap. Weird huh?

Wallace and Gromit

2009-09-27T00:07:00.001-07:00

Just picked up the Blu-ray of the entire collection yesterday. It contains the films "A Grand Day Out", "The Wrong Trousers", "A Close Shave", and "A Matter of Loaf and Death". I've definitely seen the first two, and I think I've seen the third as well. It also contains a whole bunch of "Cracking Contraptions" shorts and behind-the-scenes documentaries.

I hadn't seen any of these in a while, and saw that there was a Blu-ray released this week a couple of days ago. I then watched a few of those "Cracking Contraptions" shorts on youtube and was instantly reminded how amazing these guys are. They all excel in story, humor, and animation. The ridiculousness of Wallace and the emotion you get out of Gromit is something to admire.

If you haven't seen any of their stuff before I really really recommend watching them. It's something everyone should have in their lives.

Back to Basics

2009-09-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

So yesterday before that mantis fiasco, I had my first life drawing session up here. I kind of liked this one better. The instructor gave some pretty good instructions. He had us start by drawing the body as just boxes in 2 min gestures. I kind of got the hang of that, but I sent a step back further today and played with stick figures. On some of them I drew the boxes over the basic ovals, and even drew in the body on a couple. For the rest of them I was just trying to convey the poses in as simple a stick form as I could. I think it was pretty successful for a first off.

WTF THIS WAS IN MY ROOM?!

2009-09-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

So I was going to go downstairs to get some milk and something by the door caught my eye. Some tiny movement.

I inspected.

It was a fucking praying matnis! How the hell did that thing get in my room? How long has it been in here? WTF?!!

Took me a good 15 mins of collective bravery to try to catch it. But the thing looked like it knew what I was doing. I saw it anticipating my moves so it could fly around. I didn't even know that dam thing could fly!

After hiding on top of my tall bookshelf for a minute or so (sneaky bastard), I starting shifting some stuff around with a rolled up magazine, and I saw him hiding there. He didn't even budge when I was disturbing stuff that was touching him, or even moving him.

Then eventually I just smashed the bastard under a picture frame it was hiding under. It didn't kill him though, still kind of trying to move. After another light smash (didn't want to smear the thing on my shelf) it calmed down more, and then I scooped it into a jar and tossed it outside still partially alive.

Look at him...sneaky bastard.

Movie Review: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

2009-09-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

When I first saw a trailer for this movie attached to "Up" I thought it looked pretty entertaining. The trailer for it certainly stood out over anything else I saw a preview for that day.

Anyways, I wasn't really planning on seeing the movie in the theater until a week or so ago. I started seeing a few clip of the movie online and I thought the animation looked really well done and entertaining so I said I'd give it a shot. After asking a couple people to no avail, I ended up going with my neighbor after lunch today.

We saw the 3D version of the film, and I have to say that I thought the 3D element of it was much better than for "Up" (although with that said, I was pretty far up front for "Up" and a good distance back for this movie. The effect felt the same, but for me at least, it was much sharper and produced less strain on my eyes. Again, that could have just been due to my different seating positions (although with the "Avatar" preview on IMAX-3D I got the same minor eye strain as I did with "Up").

I actually don't really know the source material that well, but the world that was created in the film was very cool. The characters all felt fully fleshed out and you cared for them. Moreso than in the recent '9' that I saw in my opinion. Flint was an adorable nerd hero, and Sam was a surprisingly fun heroine. Voice talents all around were spot on. Mr. T's character almost stole the show for me. His character was animated so well to his voice it's kind of hard to explain.

"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is definitely one of my favorite animated films that have come out recently, but we shall see if it is still as entertaining a second time around. B+

Movie Review: 9

2009-09-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a while since I first saw the preview. Not only did the trailer look pretty interesting and original, but I loved the look of it.

After having seen the movie earlier tonight, I am still very impressed by the production design of the movie. I very much like the sort of futuristic robots as would be imagined from around the WW2 era or so. The animation was pretty top notch as well. I loved the movements they made, and how their eyes were animated. The robots were also very cool and intricately animated.

The movie as a whole however I thought was a bit disappointing. It seemed to jump into the story a little too fast, introducing characters and then taking them away too quickly before you get a sense of where the story is even going. It probably took about 1/3 of the film to even see where the whole thing was headed, and even maybe the last 15 minutes to mostly know how it was supposed to go.

It might have been me, but I didn't really feel for the characters as much as I think I should have (my sister said she did, so maybe something is wrong with me?). Even though it took a while to get to the point like I said before, it also felt just like the characters were shuffled around to hit various story points at certain times. The whole flow of it just felt weird to me.

I'll probably see it again when it is out on video, but for now I'm probably going to give it about a B-.

AM is Gearing Up

2009-09-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

My Animation Mentor experience is staring to gear up!

I've now created my username/password for the campus, and got to watch a whole bunch of introductory videos. Most of the stuff is pretty easy to figure out on your own, but there are a few helpful tips here and there.

I've also set up my profile now too, although we haven't been given access to be able to see other people yet. So I guess this is more just like getting my profile ready for when class is ready.

Anyways, I've also added my Animation Mentor Student badge over in the right. Look at it all nice and shiny :) I was going to put a fan one up earlier, but I figured I'd just wait until I was able to get my student badge to put up. Good times.

HOME!

2009-08-31T23:53:00.001-07:00

Yup, so I'm officially up in Northern California again. Back under the parent's nest for what is sure to be a very long 18 months at minimum. I'm guessing more like 2 years to be realistic, maybe even more. *Sigh*

But good news, is that I've gotten most of my stuff unpacked. Got a nice workstation going with two monitors. I still had my old 17" laying around, so I said "what the hell", and dualed it up with my 24" widescreen. It's pretty awesome so far I have to say.

*In real blogging time, I actually just re-adjusted the position of my seat/keyboard/moust, and the angle of the larger monitor. The smaller screen felt too far away, like i'd have to turn my head too far to the right, as compared to turning my head to the left of the larger. Now it feels all good.*

I saw someone that had the same 24" I have on sale for $179 on craigslist the other day. I was tempted....would be nice to have two monitors of the same size and make. But nah, I can live with this for now.

So for my coming home present, I'm going to present to you my two most favorited deviations on my DeviantArt profile. Neither of them have anything to do with animation or drawing though.

Click to go to devart page with larger images

Ford GT Vector

Lamborghini Reventon

Twitter Feed

2009-08-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry not a real update, in the process of moving all of my stuff back home to norcal. Fun times....not really. Moving is hard.

But anyways, just a minor cosmetic change, I put my twitter feed over on the right side of the page now. Just for fun, since I update that more than the blog. You can click on the link to follow me on twitter as well.

Avatar

2009-08-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

All I have to say is....Holy. Shit.

I actually avoided temptation to watch the trailer that was posted on youtube and apple yesterday, to not spoil my viewing of it today on IMAX in 3D.

It started out a bit meh in the 3D department. Some of the shots looked pretty darn convincing with a convincing depth of field. But the preview started to really take off when we saw some of the CG. The level of detail and realism that is created and the imersion is pretty mindblowing. The imersion not so much, there are a few points where it really shines, but others where it's a bit off.

But if you've seen the apple trailer think about this. All of the Na'Vi and the wildlife on the planet (Pandorum?) are completely computer generated. The forest looks like a forest that was filmed with a real camera, with a real, 10 foot tall actor with blue paint and prosthetics on his face running. I mean, I know that the Na'Vi we see on screen are completely from the computer through some sort of "e-motion" capture system that is somehow brought literally to life. It has none of that weird "too" real look that often happens with motion capture or roto scoping live action. It actually looks.....real.

I know this because they actors have said that they just wear those motion capture suits, and run through "forests" of pool noodles on a special soundstage. Then through some magic, James Cameron is able to see on his monitor what they look like on the planet in a what I would guess, pretty rough render. But then he can go back and change camera angles and almost everything in post, without having to re-shoot scenes.

On top of that, the movie looked like it has a pretty good story behind it. The action was pretty decent as well. A montage they played at the end which is comprised of basically the trailer footage shows a bit more frenetic action than we saw.

Dam, I can't wait for this movie.

New(er) Logo

2009-08-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

Updated the logo again. I was just looking at it and thought there should be something in the upper left/center filling the space, so I decided to add a sort of subtitle or description to the logo. Then for some reason I wanted to draw a guy hanging from the g by an umbrella, so I drew him. I couldn't leave it there, so I drew a small army of stick men just doing random things.

I might make this a tradition and keep adding stuff to the logo when I see fit.

Moved!

2009-08-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

I doubt that many people actually read my blog in the first place, so I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't get linked here from my old location on wordpress.

I had some customization issues on wordpress, and you know what, I don't feel like paying to do custom stuff I should be able to do for free. So I ended up here. Within 20 minutes I got the page to look more or less how I want it to (well, I'm gonna tweak it some more when I get home later), and I can fit my custom drawn logo on it! None of the stupid wordpress free layouts had a big enough banner area for it to fit, nor did it let me tweak the CSS code to make it fit. Bastards.

Anyways, I hope from this point on in, the blog flows smoothly. I plan on keeping it up throughout my time in Animation Mentor and hopefully after as well. Peace.

Hey guess what?

2009-08-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

More life drawings!

Yea, I'm gettin pretty boring, but you know what, I can't really think of anything to write about. At least not a serious blog post. I could write a rant about something if I wanted to, but I should probably do best to keep my swearing rants to myself and free from here. Some might slip, but hopefully not soon.

Anywho, had my last life drawing session today. The first two are 20 min poses, the last one was a 40. I dunno, I think I'm getting better....

This one I like. The teacher had some brown paper and colored pencils since he uses those, so I tried doing a figure shaded with a white pencil. I think this method was actually a little easier to get the hang of after a few mins. Might try some more stuff like this later.

Moving Home and More Life Drawings

2009-08-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

So today I've told work I'm leaving on the 21st. I was planning on not telling them until next week, but on friday at the end of the day, my boss was talking about me leaving for school and was asking me questions about it. I decided not to ruin his weekend and just tell him today instead.

Anyways, I haven't posted any more life drawings since a couple weeks ago. It's a little hard because the paper I use is larger than my scanner, and it is also inside a hard-bound sketch book.

I'll post them chronologically from top down. I think I've gotten better since the batch below don't you?

Animation Mentor

2009-07-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Woohoo! Got in for the fall session. I start Sept 28th. Until then, think I'm going to just work on my life drawing. I'll post some more in a bit

*Update*
Ok, so the first two are a couple more longer poses that we worked on. The paper is too big to scan so these are just kinda crappy pictures

This last set I didn't have a model for. I was actually just trying to copy the style and poses of some drawings I found online just to draw more. I actually prefer poses like this instead of the ones we get in my class. I've gotten kind of decent doing it this way.

CG Con Tomorrow!

2009-07-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

About to get to bed because I have to wake up early. I need to wake up bright and early, and get my ass to the LA Convention center before 8:30am to attend CG Con.

I've never been before (obviously), and I'm really looking forward to it. I signed up to take some digital animation classes taught by some industry animators, most of which are also mentor's at Animation Mentor :) Hopefully I'll get the chance to talk to at least one of them and ask them about the program. As far as I can tell, it is pretty highly thought of among the industry. Some still are in the view that you need a traditional art college education for it, while others praise the concentration on only character animation and love the results they produce.

Anyways, should be going now. Need my sleep!

Back from the dead...

2009-07-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

With some Life Drawings! Haha...yea that was lame.

Anyways, just got back from my first life drawing session ever. It was pretty cool actually. There are only three other people in my class, all dudes. One is an art teacher at a catholic school in a nearby town. One of them was actually my statistics professor back in college. Talk about a small world eh? The other dude was pretty quiet, but I think he's an animator at a gaming company. Hopefully he'll start talkin more as the weeks go on. Maybe I can get a connection out of him or something...

I've tried drawing some nude models from pics off the net, but I found it hard to find a proper pose anywhere besides finished products. So this was a pretty good experience. I like the "3D-ness" of it. Having a model actually there makes it a bit easier actually. When you move your head, you get a different view instead of the same picture. My first attempts of the night sucked pretty hard, but I eventually got better. I produced a couple respectable ones I think.

Now it's time to go read some Harry Potter :)

UPdates

2009-06-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

There I go again, ignoring the blog for a couple of weeks. Don't worry I have a good excuse though!

Ok maybe it's not that good. So what happened was that I went and saw "Up" in 3D the day it opened in theaters. I was pretty blown away by the movie and was meaning to blog about it. But then I got lazy, and decided that I would do it after I saw the movie during the next weekend with my friend. We ended up not seeing it until today though, so now I'm finally here.

Unfortunately I don't actually have that much to say about the movie. I've never written a review before, and there are tons more out there to read, so on the off chance you haven't seen the movie yet (if you haven't, go NOW), or read a review, I'll just say this. Brilliant. Pixar movies always seem to improve upon themselves on multiple viewings. At least for me anyways. You get a chance for your eyes to wander the screen a bit more, and you often find some deeper meanings in the story than you saw before. As always, the animation is superb and the visuals are astonishing. With the previews for the next Ice Age movie, and a couple other CG animated movies, you really can tell that Pixar is above and beyond the look of their competition. But that is enough gushing for now.

I have also recently upgraded my computer. Previously I was running a 6 year old desktop, and supported by 4 year old G4 Powerbook, and my netbook. Neither of those machines are particularly good in the power department and hard drive space was dwindling (except on the netbook....500gbs in that sucker hehe).

I build a machine with a nice 2.33ghz Intel Core 2 Quad, a good helping of ram, a smattering of video card, and a large dose of 1tb hard drive, all in a smaller HTPC sized case. I mainly built the machine to run Maya for when I hopefully get into Animation Mentor in September. But for now, alongside trying out Maya, I'm using it to store all my media and for light gaming. And by light gaming, I mean games that are at least 4 years old.

So that's enough incoherent rambling for now. Hopefully my next update will actually have some good content. Peace.

Heavy Block Lift

2009-05-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

So I decided yesterday that my first full body animation test is going to be a dude lifting a heavy block.

Our network was out for like 6 hours at work yesterday, and all the work I do is off network drives, so I was sketching out some thumbnails of a block lift, and pushing a block up an incline. I kind of got a feel for how to bend the spine and stuff.

Since yesterday I've done a bit of a pencil test. Up until my last iteration I actually hadn't looked up any information in my 'Animator's Survival Kit' book. After consulting the book, all I did was edit the beginning frames with the U-shaped arched back. Beforehand, they were going the same direction as the other frames. Here is my progress so far with some blocking for timing.
http://megaswf.com/view/c1b8f87058d9e4304084d2c5ff65ba3f.html

I haven't decided yet if I actually want him to put the block on the other block, or just to fall over backwards from the weight.

Some Character Design

2009-05-23T15:14:00.000-07:00

So I was super bored at work yesterday and I just started sketching out a random character so at some point I could animate him, instead of my ball with stick legs.

I've never really tried to design a character before, but I was keeping some things in mind when I sketched this out. I wanted to keep the body a pretty simple shape, so I settled on something thats pretty round. I also wanted to make sure that his eyes are able to express different emotions, as well as having something on top of his head to also help me express emotion, and for motion overlap.

So this is what I came up with as my first version. I only did the head and the body at work. The legs, arms, and entire side view I completed after I got home.
[caption id="attachment_72" align="aligncenter" width="499" caption="Version 1.0"][/caption]

After completing that, I decided that I didn't like the shape of his head anymore, so I worked on a second version today. The height of the head and body remained the same. The head was made skinnier, as well as an addition to the sides of his head. The body was made more rounded so he has more of a belly instead of just being wide.
[caption id="attachment_73" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Version 2.0"][/caption]

I'm currently doing some hand drawings. I've settled on 3 fingers to keep it simple. I haven't had a chance to scan these yet.

*Edit 2*
Drew a couple of facial expressions and scanned along with the hands. Here it is.
Here

Added some more faces:
[caption id="attachment_78" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Version 2.2"][/caption]

Couple of Pencil Tests

2009-05-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of days, I've taken it upon myself to take the practice I got at work doing thumbnails and stuff, and put it to practical use. A while ago I downloaded this program called "Pencil". I also had a drawing pad that I haven't used in a few weeks.

So then I set to work putting my ball with legs on a walk across the screen. On paper I'd only ever penciled out 3 steps. The walk across the screen was 12...quite a bit more than I'd done before. Needless to say, by the end I got kind of decent, although I do have to say that the size of my dude changes a little over time. I can't figure out how to actually put the file on here, so I guess a link will have to do...http://megaswf.com/view/f3a9a29c06a80d98f5fb68931653a08b.html

Next I thought I'd change it up a bit. Used the same beginning, but added a surprise. A quick practice in some physics. Not really as good as it can be...http://megaswf.com/view/9831171cf009b1722fbe60f8a59488cc.html

Lastly, this is the one I'm most proud of. I thumbnailed this one out at work today. It's a slight variation on the video above.http://megaswf.com/view/e62a18f02b7fe9cff152e8ec6dcb1bc9.htm

And thats about it.

Neglected

2009-05-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Yea, so that's the funny thing about me having a blog. I can neglect it.

I was never that much of a writer in school. Both academically and for fun. This is something I really should do though. Would do well for me to brush up on some writing skills, and by association, my communication skills.

Nothing much has happened since my last entry other than me getting mad at some more drivers, doing some more practice animations, and oh yea...not moving home anymore. Whatever, it's probably for the better. Having not lived at home for almost a quarter of my life, it would be just too weird to move back inside those walls.

I should go now, I'm still on a high from the "LOST" finale and just having gotten back from seeing "Star Trek" in IMAX. Pretty awesome.

Homeward Bound

2009-04-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yup, I'm moving back home in about a month and a half. That's all

The Incredibles

2009-04-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

Been watching the movie since about an hour ago. I still love this movie everytime I see it. It was hard for me to choose Ratatouille as my #1 favorite Pixar film over The Incredibles, but Bird will have directed both. Oh well. Back to watching....Mr Incredible is about to get owned by the expanding sticky ball things.

Walkcycle

2009-04-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Well before Lost, I completed my 2nd go at a basical walk cycle. It's missing some in-betweens but I just wanted to get those steps down first before I tried anything else. It's in the gallery. But here it is anyways.

[caption id="attachment_56" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Walkcycle #2"][/caption]

Based off the guide from the Animator's Survival Kit.

Rant of the Day (April Fool's Edition)

2009-04-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well it's not really an "April Fool's Edition," it just happens to be written today.

But I digress...today's rant will be about drivers who leave too much space in front of them. Not really on the freeway, thats fine, I can pass you. I'm talking about the people who leave more than 1/2 a car's length between them and the car in front at a traffic light.

This didn't really piss me off today, but I was just entertained. So on my way back from work, almost the whole way down the long street I take there was this white VW Beetle that consistantly would stop a good 1.5 car lengths behind the car in front (me for the most part). I get leaving space for that whole "in case someone rear ends you, you don't hit the car in front" thing, but you don't need that much space. Especially when there are more than 3 cars behind you. You ain't gonna be pushed that far.

The reason that it pisses me off is because countless times I have been behind these idiots and have been prevented from getting into left turn lanes, or making it through intersections, and so on. The other week I saw this lady in a Corolla a good whole car length back, with a dude in a Tahoe behind her with his left signal on, waiting to get into the left turn lane, only Corolla lady is blocking his way. Is this a valid reason to get pissed off at these people? Hell yes.

It is pretty amazing how absent minded (or spacially blind) people can be while behind the wheel of a car. So many people drive like they are the only car on the road and don't yield to or really notice anything around them. Another great example are when you are on two lane road, and are stuck behind two douchebags going the same speed (always below the speed limit) right next to each other. Impossible to pass, and very annoying. It usually takes these idiots a good minute or so to have one pass the other at a painfully slow rate. And keep in mind, you have to wait for them to pass them enough for you to get by BOTH cars because the "faster" one sure isn't going to notice the backup that they caused and not change lanes to let you pass.

That seems like enough ranting for now....april fools?...no.

Work gets exciting (not)

2009-03-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

So I've hit the point at work where I've pretty much run out of anything meaningful to do, or anything that really involves me being at my computer that long. Basically I have to scan a whole bunch of papers and compile them into digital versions of themselves. It's not oging to be a fun process. At least I have my podcasts and my music to keep me entertained.

Meanwhile, I just planned out a shot on my first X-Sheet (exposure sheet). It's just a scene of a ball bouncing across the screen and off the side of the wall, but hey I'm just gettin started! No idea if I have the timing right of anything but I'll see how it turns out.

Actually I never wrote about it, but last Friday I got the two animation books I ordered from Amazon in the mail. The Animator's Survival Kit and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. I"ve only read the Survival Kit so far, well about 1/3 of it. The author is talking about walks and such, but I'm going to stick with my ball before I even touch that stuff. Illusion of Life lookspretty beefy. I think I'm going to end up reading both of these books before I'm even required to read them heh. It's ok, I need to read them again anyways.

Well, off to get some sleep for my week (or few) of scanning. At least I'm taking Friday off to go home. Yay 4 day weeks.

Progress and Failure

2009-03-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

So I guess my life plan has taken a sharp turn for the better. While I was previously planning on staying down here in ol' Southern California, the rejection (I guess you can call it that) from CSUF put a bit of a halt on my progress. After some thinking and planning (and hopefully some more thinking and planning next weekend with my parents), I am hopefully going to be moving back up to the SF Bay Area with my family and saving up money to attend school up there.

This provides me with the opportunity to save A LOT more money for school than I would have just staying down here. I'll save on rent, utilities, and most of my food every month. That's at least a good $1000 a month or so back in my pocket. This makes the tuition for school very easy to pay, as well as giving me some more money to play with if I need it.

It also puts me in close proximity to the top two studios I probably want to seek employment at. Pixar is close by in Emeryville, and ILM is across the bay in SF. I know I'm going to have to work really really hard to get there, but I'm already looking forward to the journey.

It feels pretty good right now actually, knowing that I am going to have the opportunity to pursue my dream and hopefully one day get to work at Pixar.

It also feels pretty good knowing that most likely I won't be stuck in this hell (job) for more than another 4 or 5 weeks. Which brings me to the "failure" part of the post. Another little short anecdote about my technologically retarded superiors...

So in my department we need to send these things we call "EU Dossiers" to the EU (who couldn't see that coming?). Originally we had everything in paper form, and it took 8 months of convincing and a move to a smaller office to make my bosses make the conversion to keeping the files digitally. Actually I lied, we haven't converted to digital, we just now have digital in addition to the paper files. Although to my credit, the papers aren't in gigantic 3" binders anymore, and are in nice and small presentation folders.

Back to the story though, so I'm almost complete compiling a completely digital version of the EU Dossiers and we are going to burn them onto CDs. First off, neither of my bosses realized you could fit a shitload more than 14 pdf files (less than 1mb each) onto a CD. Second, my department director didn't buy a cd spindle at costco because she thought that those particular CD-Rs were only for burning music. Third, same person asked me what side of the CD-R you put the label on (WTF?!), and if that was enough to identify because she was somehow in awe at how small CDs are in size. The dam things have been around for more than 20 years and you still don't know how big it is!? And the kicker, is that she requested that I make the pdf files on the CD "read-only" so people can't change the files on the CD. Yea. Good times....

Well until next time, peace.

Face/Palm

2009-03-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

So now I'm more fairly convinced I work with a bunch of idiots. I lied, I was convinced of that a LONG time ago.

Today, my department director was looking through her SENT e-mail box looking for an e-mail that I sent her......yea....

And then there's that time our department SVP asked me how to access his flash drive through Windows Vista. He said it used to pop up automatically in XP. I guess he never really clicked on the "My Computer" button in his life.

I'll save some stories for later. Right now I have to go watch The Office after the UCLA Basketball game is over.

Speed Bump...

2009-03-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, bit of a problem. Not that bad though I guess....

I called up the prospective school today and they aren't accepting people for second bachelors degrees. Not that the CSU website, as well as the department's own website said there was such a thing.

But I shall not give up so easily! I am off to try some rudimentry animation on my own. The simple bouncing ball. Yup, starting there. Let's see how this works out heh.

To Add or Not to Add...

2009-03-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well I couldn't think of a real good topic for a second post quite yet, so this is going to be pretty boring. I know no one has read my blog yet at this point, which is fine considering it's been up for like a day. I haven't really even told anyone about it. Stealthily put the link up on my various profiles. I'm sure someone will stubmble upon it at some point.

Anyways, I was pondering whether or not I wanted to add another page. It would be somewhat of a portolio, but not formal or anything. Just some drawings or pictures that I might want to share. But at the same time, I've got my DeviantART page linked over on the side, so having a gallery on here would be kind of redundant. Eh, I might as well anyways. It never hurts to give myself a little more exposure.

It's settled then! A new page will be added....at some point. I need to gather a few pictures that I think might be cool to put up here, and find a decent free host to put them up on. I guess for the time being I can use the wordpress space, but I want to have a separate place still. Oh well, I'm off to watch the latest episode of Jon and Kate plus 8. Too bad Jon and Kate aren't really together anymore. Or so I've heard.

Update: The Gallery is now active

The View From Down Here

2009-03-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess that's an appropriate title for the introduction post. Not only is it the title, and the overall theme (if this had to have one) of this blog, but I'm also kind of short, and local to Southern California.

I'm a total nerd and actually thought of all of those meanings before I decided on a name. I'm just a total nerd anyways. I spent my middle-school and high school days watching Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and playing Magic Cards. I won't go into too much detail about myself, I'll leave that for me to fill out in the 'who am i?' section.

So I've basically started this as a way to write, and vent, and just as a way to get my voice out there I guess. Since I've gotten out of college I have been working as a low-level, boring, cubicle-imprisoned employee at a moderately failing skin care / cosmetics company. I am totally out of my element, and want out as soon as I can. I want to go back to school to get a B.F.A. in Media Art/Animation, so hopefully I can tell you how that journey goes, starting from the ground up (see, there's another one of those word plays on the title). But overall, this blog is just a place for me to write about anything I want.

That's all I have for now. Peace.

-Dan