Ego's Review

For the first viewing of Ratatouille (and second following closely afterwards) I was amazed and inspired. Not only by the spectacular animation, but by the exceptional writing which has differentiated Pixar above Disney.
The wrap-up is particularly noteworthy, as it not only speaks truth to creatives, but to bloggers who bitch about crap but never seem to produce anything of their own. It hit close to home:

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new... needs friends. [...] Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

raise 3D roof -or- 3Dreams

I can't afford a 3D program and I have wanted one ever since I lost my irretrievable copy of Studiomax in a hard-drive crash nearly a decade ago. (Has it really been that long?)
Since then, It's been like riding a bike, apparently. I discovered Google's free download of Sketchup, a fairly nice and easy-to-use 3D drawing program. I found it in response to my recent interview with the OKC Chamber and the discovery that downtown OKC only has 4 buildings in 3d on Google Earth. One was from Google itself, and the other 3 are from some guy in Austin, which is something I will rectify.
Of course Sketchup is extremely limited, even compared to my 2000 copy of StudioMax. There's no rendering. No lights (except the sun). No bells or whistles. Not even a lathe tool or basic booleans, which seems a little counter-intuitive for a 3D program.
But it was free and in the 24 hours since learning of it's existence and downloading it, I built my house.

It isn't exact-exact, but it's close. I didn't have my blueprints to work from so I had to physically measure with a tape, which took more time than actually building it. Despite Sketchup's for-free shortcomings, it's super fun and just gave me more of an itch to get back into 3D modeling and animation. Guess a big-ol flat-screen HD will have to wait.
In the mean-time, I will begin building downtown with Google's foresighted help to get the public to add to their content, which is our content too. Whether the credit goes to me or to the OKC Chamber is up to them at the moment, as I feel the interview for the position of Interactive Media Manager went very well... but you don't know how well until you know.

Hot Sawesome

Woots for guys my age!
First, new Beasties soon... Sept 15th to be exact.


Then, Green Day.
Green Day - "21 Guns" - HD

I recently re-met someone who(m?) was in my graduating class. The only thing she said to me that stuck was "Slippery When Wet was the greatest album of all time." Now I don't really have a leg to stand on when telling people to stop living in the past, but stop living in the past. And no, it isn't. Never was. Not even close.

The Brave Wierdo, The Spark and the Tipper

A video of social interaction via:
Pixelmaverick.com's blogpost
and
Funnel Design's tweet.

Air Conditioning makes you weak.

Get a swamp cooler.

Got a vintage one for $20 last year and it's great. It's a 1.5 feet tall and moves with me. While not as cool as an air conditioner, it uses about 1/10th the energy (and 1/2 a gallon of water an hour) to operate. It's literally green. Army green in fact. You will have to put a cap-full of bleach in it every couple of days to keep the algae down, but easy to do. No compressor to break down and no expensive freon to destroy the ozone.
Ah, simplicity.

Animator Spotlight - Pete Docter

Director of Pixar's Up and Monsters Inc. This time I will let him speak for himself. Apparently, Every animator's roots are Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Not that I would argue, but I've only seen Chaplin's movies. The only eyes I've looked at Buster Keaton with are the eyes of a Jackie Chan connoisseur, being that Jackie is a Keaton devotee. Guess I will have to see them again with animation in mind instead of mindless entertainment.
He does give props to Miyazaki, who is my favorite animator of all time. Why wouldn't you give props to Miyazaki?
Here is the hour long interview with Terri Gross on NPR. Be warned. Almost the entire interview is one big spoiler. I did wait to see the movie before I listened, but if you haven't see it, go see it first. If you listen or not, go see it.

More life-sized giant Robots

This time, Autobot Bumblebee, made from a real Volkswagen.

Via: Dailystab.com

What I'm up against.

Being a freelance designer, the salesman stuff really gets me down. I love to design. I hate to sell. I guess you have to do both if you're a ronin.



via: Bryan Clark

Elements of the past...

elements of the fewcha!
I know it's early summer, but man this gives me the Halloween itch.
The Mighty Boosh

or if you want to slow things down a little...

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh my ribs!

laugh not cry.
via: AIGA

On animation.

So I've had an animated short stuck in limbo for a good long while now. It's a bit of crazy to talk about, but I feel I need to cast off the demons.
And that's just it. There shouldn't be demons, yet there are. It's always: "What if it isn't good enough?" or "Maybe I should redo this bit." and it stacks up to never getting done. (I've even tried to revisit it in the last few days and now my Flash has gremlins and won't let me publish for reasons currently unresolved.)
There's also the factor of it being a mirror. It's personal, you know? If it isn't great and well received... and it's a reflection of my psyche like art should be, then wham. Not the funnest punch-in-the-face.
I remember a day when I took a old girlfriend to Dallas to meet with the Peace Corps. She was going to go away and I knew I would probably never see her again, no matter our relationship at the time. I wasn't going to stop her from going just because of me. So she went to the interview and I went looking for a bar... at 10am in the morning. By the time she got out at 1pm, I was drunk, trying to drown AND hide my fear. She didn't go. I lost her anyway. The fear was not unjustified. I just didn't look both ways before crossing that street.
So the blind-side hit causes me to not get this short done. Not deciding is a decision. But the indecision is keeping me from finishing it and moving on to bigger things, because I can't move on until I complete it.
The skills need to be honed. They seemed sharp as a razor last winter when I had myself convinced I would finish the short by the deadcenter deadline. I didn't. Not because I couldn't, but because I couldn't face the finished product and what that could possibly mean. It's all me. Nobody did a lick of it. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe I need to find other animators to bounce ideas off of and get some collaboration going.
Meanwhile, I've got 1.2 minutes of a 2.3 minute short in the can. At 30 fps, that's only 4,140 frames to go.
In a paraphrased quote attributed to Chuck Jones, "Everybody has 10,000 bad drawings in them and it's best to get them out as soon as possible."
Since I won't post it if it isn't complete, I can only give this screenshot to offer any proof at all, if it's any proof at all.