Penguins with Jet Packs

Photonegative

2012-01-28T14:07:00.000-06:00

So what do you do when you want to make a hand-drawn animation with a black background, but only have white paper?

Color it in photo-negative. One ctrl + i in photoshop later and you get stuff like this:

In case your wondering how I keep from getting a headache, it's simple really. I made myself a reference sheet of all the drawing materials I have. Nifty stuff.

Earworm of the Day: Dark Horses by Switchfoot

The Nature of Randomness

2012-01-13T13:15:00.000-06:00

First off, I animated a run-cycle for Marvin last month. Here it is:

Secondly, Chicago got lots of snow last night, and more flurries are on the way. I have plans to make a koi fish sculpture if the snow becomes at all packable.

So I've been contemplating the logic of randomness as comedy. When I write out a conversation between two characters, what often gets the most laughs is not what I mulled over for several hours beforehand, but a stray quip that I pulled out of nowhere to fill a hole in the dialogue. It is not Spitfire's reaction to Lisa being Super Gecko's daughter that's funny, it's the offhand mention of "a union of homicidal librarians". It's not Roy's witty comeback to an aggressor that stands out, but Fleet's rhetorical question concerning brooms.

So does randomness always create laughs? I don't believe so. Take the show Adventure Time. That show is crazy-random, but it's an adventure show, not a comedy. I've watched a few episodes and though I was entertained, I don't remember laughing that much. I think it has to do with the concentration of randomness. That is, if a show is random continually, then we begin to accept the unexpected as normal for that world.

I have come upon the theory that in order for randomness to be funny, one must first establish a baseline for "regular". One must have a straight man for the funny guy to play off of, otherwise we'll be unaware that anything's amiss. Animalburg has it's share of absurdities--super powers, crime-fighting ninja warriors, time travel, space aliens--but all this is just the background. This is, in fact, the opposite of random, with rules and narrative continuity holding them in a neat structure. Randomness is found in the one-time gags, the plot-hole fillers, the filler-dialogue, and the moments when I'm stuck for a villain to fight. It takes a split-second to write and a hand-wave to explain. You can't plan random, that's what makes it funny.

Earworm of the Day: Background music to The TV Show. I know I've linked to it before, but the song randomly popped into my head today and it took me a whole 10 minutes to remember where I heard it from (my first guess was a video game).

Blue Fingernails

2012-01-07T12:16:00.000-06:00

I am fully aware that I have not posted in a very, very, very...

--one hour later--

...very, very long time. I am sorry. I was on vacation.

Moving on. Here's the finished Spitfire figurine:

Painting camouflage: requires toothpicks.

I gave Spitfire to a friend for Christmas and was pleased when she proceeded to bounce around the room with joy. I now have a request from another friend to make Beth. I already have a plan sketched out for that, though now I'm at a lack for clay, or an accurate oven to bake it in. Come spring break, an ~6" tall Beth should exist (and I'll have to paint more urban camouflage. Fun!)

In other news: I am officially tired of my fingernails turning blue. Chicago is surprisingly warm for January (mid 40's today) so apparently I need to wear more layers. Or invest in a pair of house shoes. Or maybe wrist warmers, that might help (now where'd I put my knitting book...?)

Earworm of the day: Exit Calypsan (Into The Ice Cave) by Falling Up My uncle got me Discover the Trees Again for Christmas. I had this song stuck in my head for 3 days. Falling Up rocks!

Clay Figure Construction

2011-11-30T20:02:00.001-06:00

Said last time I would post pictures of my clay figure if I could.

Step 0 -- Hamster test: Made a simple clay model of my hamster icon to ensure all the techniques I planned on using would work out. Fishing line can withstand temperatures around 275 degrees Fahrenheit without incident. However, polymer clay cannot withstand the uneven heat of a toaster oven. Hamster came out a little toasted.

Clay hamster with fishing-line whiskers. Looks like the 8-year-old me painted it.

Step 1 -- Wire and Foil Armature: Sculpey clay is not supposed to exceed a thickness of 1/2 inch for baking purposes, so the foil helps bulk out the body. The wire also makes the character more durable. If a limb were to break, the wire would keep the figure together.

Front view of armature

Side view of armature.

Step 2 -- Base and 1st Baking: I wanted the legs to be solid clay so the character would have a heavier base than top. I modeled the feet and put a skeleton of clay on the legs and hips. This gets around the baking thickness issue because Sculpey can be re-baked. This also meant the character could stand while I worked on the top features.

Tin foil critter wearing pants?

Step 3 -- Body, Face, and 2nd Baking: Bulked out the legs, layered on the torso, and sculpted the face and tail in their entirety. I wasn't really happy with the facial expression, I haven't mastered faces in clay. The body was done in white clay so the color could be painted on later. Essential details like nose, teeth, and eyes were done in colored clay. Whiskers were also added.

Side view of armless figure.

Closer look of face w/ fishing line whiskers.

Back view. Spiky tail turned out really well.

Step 4 -- Arm Base, Mask, and 3rd Baking: Finalized the pose for the character's arms (though I wonder now if having the arms down would've been more dynamic). Added the mask.

Spitfire is not amused.

Step 5 -- Tiny Ninja Weapons: Modeled Spitfire's iconic throwing knives, a pair of kunai, and one star. The star was the most fun to make, and the most difficult. All of these are about 1/2 inch long.

Miniature shuriken not recommended for actual use.

Step 6 -- Arms, Clothing, and Final Bake: Layered on jumpsuit and added various gear including the Light Grappling hook Lift System (L.G.L.S.). Fun fact: Spifire wears his LGLS and weapon belt reverse of the other ninja characters because he is left-handed.

Side view of Spitfire.

Front view of Spitfire.

Step 7 -- Painting: In which I am still working on.

Earworm of the day: Mannheim Steamroller's rendition of "Deck The Halls"

Skip

2011-11-28T22:33:00.001-06:00

I totally just went a week without posting. Wow. Shame on me.

I had a great Thanksgiving with my family, and I learned how to make pie crust (successful on first try!) Pie crust isn't hard, but it's a consistency thing that doesn't translate well onto a notecard. You really have to have to learn it from someone who knows what it's supposed to look like.

Can't say I got anything else noteworthy accomplished, but I plan on making a figurine of one of my characters tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. If I'm successful, I shall post the picture on Wednesday.

Earworm of the day: "76 Trombones" from The Music Man. I only had to hear it once to memorize the tune as a kid. It's that infectiously catchy.

Komodo

2011-11-18T18:35:00.001-06:00

Four days until I get to go home. Whee!!!!

Finals week hasn't been so much work as trying to convince myself to work. However I am now down to putting the last tweaks onto "Catch of the Day" so that it'll be really good instead of just sort of good. I meant to work on it today, but after the effort of creating a final draft for my Multiculturalism class, all I wanted to do was play with the computer.

So I made my first attempt at a realistic CG-Eyeball.

Which I forgot to save the render in .jpg format.

Darn.

Well, there's also this:

I was on a lizard kick, so sue me.

I very rarely come up with a truly inspired antagonist for my stories. Komodo just kind of popped out of nowhere (likely from one of the alternate dimensions his companions originated from). He's a tracker/bounty hunter person, and is very persistent in finding his targets. I wouldn't call him evil, just amoral, and just happened to have take a job that puts him up against the ninja. He's a nice enough guy when he's not out to kill you.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, he is a Basilisk lizard, not a Komodo dragon. The two lizard-things with him are actually not "people animals" like my other characters, they're from alternate dimensions and behave more like animals in our world. Komodo technically commands them, but still makes a point to be nice. Jacobson is fond of riding around on his shoulder.

Earworm for the day: "Make a Move" by Royal Tailor

Misplaced Wildlife and Festive Banana Bread

2011-11-15T21:22:00.000-06:00

"Catch of the Day" by myself:

I really must apologize to anyone glancing at my linked-in profile right now. I know it'll be getting double videos in the blog-feed-link-thingy, but having video embedded looks so much better than simply providing a link and saying "go here".

The fall quarter is almost done with, and I'm really, really, incredibly excited to go home for winter break.

I made banana bread today. The recipe was just a basic one pulled from a Better Homes and Gardens cook book. Nothing special at all. Well, ok. I didn't have any plain cinnamon, so I used pumpkin pie spice. All my baked goods have tasted of pumpkin pie as of late because buying more spices is not a necessary item on my to-do list. I also don't own a loaf pan, so I did some quick math to make sure the 10 1/2 x 7 wouldn't overflow and shortened the cook time to 20 minutes instead of 50. Turned out just fine.

Earworm of the Day: "Taken by the Storm" by Article One. Yes, that's a violin. Also, they're Canadian. For more cool stuff from north of the boarder check out the NFB.

3D Modeling Standards

2011-11-11T12:37:00.001-06:00

I've discovered the school library holds a subscription to 3D World. I wish I had discovered this sooner. I became a regular reader back at my community college, and I have missed it since moving to Chicago. The October issue had a description of TurboSquid's new(ish) Checkmate program and included a short list of what it takes to make a computer model to their standards. I quickly jotted these down for future reference. I do not have the skill or the resources to make models for sale at this juncture, but if I establish high-quality habits now it will make things a lot easier further down the line.

Granted, most of the standards are sort of "duh" things. Like no laminate faces, name everything, and orient your model so it's standing in the "up" direction. Others standards do take more know-how. Some I don't understand what they're talking about. It's all part of the learning process.

In other news, drew this yesterday:

Ancient Kenlilian in his natural habitat

I was trying to figure out why my alien characters were crazy colors, could run fast, and had eyes and nose positioned so far up on their heads. This was the best explanation I could figure.

Earworm for the day: (oh you're going to hate me for this...) Keyboard Cat.

Laconic

2011-11-09T13:26:00.003-06:00

Tis best to not procrastinate on homework.

Failing that, tis best to keep the blog post short.

Earworm for the day: Crazy Love by Hawk Nelson (I am shocked I haven't done this one already.)

Catch of the Day

2011-11-07T13:56:00.001-06:00

In other news... there is no news.

Earworm of the Day: "I Refuse" by Josh Wilson Not on my list of favorites, but it's what I got stuck in my head right now.

Quick! Before the Router Dies Again!

2011-11-05T21:12:00.000-05:00

So, it turns out that the school library, when it gets to closing time, forgoes any announcement that it's closing time in favor of simply turning out the lights and waiting for students to filter out the door. It also turns out that the Loop campus closes at 6 pm on Saturdays. Closes completely. With red theater barrier across the door and everything. What's up with that?

I must say that I have gotten none of my personal animation or modeling projects done on account of finals week is 14 days away. Not to say I haven't been making up stories, because I'm always doing that. Have I introduced Kesikt yet?

Kesikt the Kenlilian.
Not shown: the fact that she's purple.

Normally I would take a moment to describe Kesikt and what makes her tick (trying to piece together her memory after a traumatic brain injury is a big part of what makes her tick these days), but I should really get back to my homework.

Speaking of which:

Eaglets rejoice. It's raining fish.

That's part of my homework. The animatic will come soon (at least it better. It's due Monday).

Earworm of the day: American Pie by Don McLean (I someday hope to memorize the order of the lyrics on this song. But not yet.)

Webcomics and Pie

2011-11-02T19:56:00.001-05:00

I've found another webcomic to obsess about. It's called Slightly Damned, and it is hilarious. My archive binge was on Friday, which means I'm just about out of the obsessing phase and into the "regular follower" phase. A good thing, since I have lots of homework to do and I really need to focus.

Also on Friday I made that pumpkin pie. I am thankful my roommates were here to help make it. Never before have I seen a pumpkin split open with such swift efficiency... after the three of us got impatient of carving it the normal way that is. Here were the results:

Mmmm...pie.... :)

Earworm of the day: "Me Against the World" by Simple Plan (It was stuck in my head yesterday. No explanation exists as to why.)

Game Critique #2: Hedgehog Launch

2011-10-26T14:38:00.000-05:00

Let me start by saying something's wonky with the view counter. I highly doubt I have a small following in the Ukraine. That would be interesting, but statistically unlikely.

Today I continue critiquing games...

Hedgehog Launch
Made by Armor Games

Premise: You live on a small island nation that looks a lot like suburbia. The government has elected you as the new head of their fledgeling space program. The catch -- they can only give you $50 to start and they want you to use the national mammal, a variety of hedgehog.

The controls are pretty easy to learn as they only use the arrow keys and the mouse. You launch the hedgehog with a slingshot and steer it around the sky with the left and right (and later up) keys and try to collect as many coins as possible to fund your upgrades. Randomly placed platforms are provided to bounce off of and achieve more air-time. Upgrades include better launcher, more efficient/powerful jet pack, secondary rockets to go higher, parachute to slow the hedgehog's decent, a radar to detect platforms, and cute little goggles for the hedgehog to wear as it zooms across the sky.

Which brings me to what I like about this game. First and foremost, it's cute. I was wary at first about the "launching hedgehogs into the air" thing because I don't enjoy seeing small vertebrates getting hurt. However there is no "splat" at the end of this game (though there may be a shooting star) and for all appearances the hedgehog seems to be having as much fun with this adventure as you are. Secondly, the soundtrack rocks out, which turns a relatively silly game into and awesome game. After all, you are playing with jet-packs.

The platform radar is my only real frustration in this game. It is very handy to have, but doesn't always show platform placement accurately, particularly when near the ground. It's also requires taking your eyes off the main playing screen momentarily, effecting one's ability to aim at said platforms. Nonetheless, I found myself missing the platform radar when I replayed the game, so it is a helpful feature.

Hedgehog Launch is also a very short game (takes about 10 - 15 minutes to complete), but that's not really a problem as it lends itself very well to replay and attempts at beating your previous high score.

---

Earworm of the day (provided you don't get the Hedgehog Launch b.g. music stuck first): Save Your Life by Newsboys

Brain Full, Can't Blog

2011-10-24T15:33:00.000-05:00

I have spent part of my morning and most of the afternoon buried in Chemistry homework. Having just gotten caught up, I find myself with nothing noteworthy on my mind whatsoever.

Then again, is anything on my mind ever noteworthy? Probably not.

So in the interest of not loosing my focus and getting burned by acid in today's lab project, I will simply post my usual earworm and leave this post at that.

Earworm of the Day: Shine by Pillar

P.S. I do have an animation currently in the works. Hope to have it done by next week. May take longer. Depends on how much free time I can afford to burn and how fast I can work. Fingers crossed.

In-fossa-ble?

2011-10-21T16:10:00.002-05:00

Screencap of the skull modeling setup in Maya.

I've been busily working on modeling a fossa skull. A fossa is a predatory animal from Madagascar that might be related to the mongoose (citation Wikipedia, so I'm not 100% sure of the mongoose thing, but it's sure not a cat).

The image I got off Wikipedia looked like it was a cued up to model from. I soon discovered it wasn't. I had to do a slight resizing on the separate components in photoshop to ensure all angles were at the same scale. That, And I'm reasonably sure the image is a drawing rather than a photograph, though I'm not positive. It is inarguably in perspective, which means the image of the underside of the skull and the image of the top are hopelessly misaligned.

Thankfully the human brain is not a computer, and is therefore able to make best guesses and fudge things if need be. And who really looks at a fossa skull that often? (Aside from those with a zoology degree and an interest in Madagascan wildlife.)

Earworm for the day: Hold Your Colour by Pendulum (I was coloring something very psychedelic today, so it got stuck.)

Game Critique 1: Elephant Quest

2011-10-19T13:53:00.001-05:00

I recently signed up for a site called Kongregate which has lots of free computer games from various companies and is generally all around fun. It's possible to play games without an account, but having an account allows you to save your games and achievements.

Having had a basic education in game design, I can't help but try to see beyond the graphics and puzzle out what makes these games so darn addictive. So here's my two cents on one:

Elephant Quest:
Made by Armor Games.

This game is adorableness armed with laser cannons. You're a small blue elephant. Your hat got stolen by a big purple woolly mammoth and now you want it back. To do so, you have to brave a maze of levels inhabited by hordes of strange monsters and complete quests from other elephants to get upgrades so you can face Woolly in the final showdown without getting trampled to death.

Though you will get killed repeatedly, you also have an infinite number of lives. The rooms can be visited as many times as needed and the monsters are always there exactly the same as before. This may seem like an annoyance at first, but becomes essential at the end. Just completing the quests and beating all the rooms is not enough to beat Woolly. I'm not familiar with gamer terminology, but I believe this is called "level grinding".

The level map is laid out in a easy-to-navigate spiderweb, if such a thing is possible of existing. The level-up is the real unusual part because it's graphical. You start at the center and collect the increments sequentially through a virtual maze. There are 5 categories for upgrade points: intelligence, agility, endurance, charisma, and HP. Except for HP, the upgrade points can be spent on upgrades like weapons and jump height and little elephant fairies that deal damage to nearby enemies (and they're so very cute). Complicated? Yes. It took me a while to figure out how it all worked.

---

Earworm for the day: Emperata Overture

Mashup

2011-10-14T14:12:00.002-05:00

I am reading a book on animals that went extinct within human history, and it's got me thinking of Twiggy and the Jackalope again. Part of the story involves a Rare/Extinct animal zoo at the north pole. There's also an entire army of vengeful dodos, descended from those who escaped their home island long ago.

Of course the Dodo Army is an equal opportunity employer, and has therefore picked up a few other animals over time. For comedy's sake, one of these is a chicken. (and yes, I didn't look up the spelling of the name "Meredith" until later. Note to self: always spell-check the names.)

DoFranklin, DoMeredith, and DoTreena; members of the Dodo Army.

Character detail of DoMeredith the chicken.

All the dodo names are ["Do"(as in dodo) + Some actual given name] and they earn a second name later in life by doing something unique. For example: DoDonald Cleaver (favors a meat cleaver as a weapon), DoElla Dial-Tone (spent years in the north pole zoo pretending to be empty-headed), DoMaynard The Bard (self explanatory). Oh, and did I mention that the dodos wear hats? It's a cultural thing.

"And now for something completely different!":

EY's Spaghetti-Fish-n-Veggie Meal
--or--
Too-Lazy-To-Go-Buy-Spaghetti-Sauce Meal
Ingredients:

3 to 4 servings spaghetti noodles
A cup or so of frozen mixed vegetables
2 breaded fish sticks (fully cooked)
1 Tbsp butter or margarine (I use butter)
Handful of shredded cheese (two singles slices work ok in a pinch)
Enough water to cook the spaghetti, 1-2 Tbsp for the vegetables, and a 1/4 cup for later.

How To:

Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Use a 2 quart pan (trust me, you'll need the space).
While that's cooking, put vegetables in medium-sized microwave-safe bowl and add a tablespoon or so of water. Cooked covered for about 4 minutes on high.
Remove vegetables with a hot pad or oven mitt. Immediately add butter and cheese and stir until mostly melted.
Reheat fish sticks (0:45 to 1:00 will work fine)
Break fish sticks into smaller pieces. Add to veggie-cheesy mixture. Stir.
Cover and place in microwave for another minute to make sure everything's melted together.
By now the spaghetti should be done. Drain and return to 2 quart pan. Dump in the veggie-cheesy-fish mixture and stir. Add 1/4 cup water and keep stirring.
Serve with a side-dish of fruit to make a meal.

Makes 3-4 servings.

Nutrition Facts: More nutritious than a bowl of ramen, but would never be endorsed by Dr. Oz. Fish and vegetables are good for you generally, but I would not recommend eating this if you have qualms about fat or carbs. The fish, cheese, and butter do add salt. It's college student fare; use your better judgement.

Earworm of the day: Nothing springs to mind. Have a nice day.

A Day for Videos

2011-10-12T13:26:00.000-05:00

So I've gotten into my head that I want to make a pumpkin pie for halloween. I'm talking buying an actual pumpkin. It took a while for me to find a recipe that didn't call for a 15 oz can of Libby's. I don't care if it's "100% pure"; if I don't get orange gunk on my hands and fresh seeds for roasting, it's not pumpkin. I did find a recipe with an actual pumpkin though.

In Storyboarding class we discussed editing and the importance of timing. We also watched The TV Show. I recommend it in full-screen. For my homework assignment, I brought back my character Jimmy and pitted him against a bunch of frog-things. (a better quality video can be found here on Vimeo)

I subscribed to Vimeo for my Storyboarding class. I'm not going to do a compare/contrast between Vimeo and YouTube because I've never joined YouTube, but I've been happy with Vimeo so far. There's a lot of high-quality stuff on there.

In case you need to get Zorba's Dance out of your head...
Earworm of the Day: "Faking My Own Suicide" by Relient K

Unexpected Guest

2011-10-10T21:01:00.002-05:00

I occasionally have weekends that make Mondays seem like no big deal. This was one of those weekends. On Saturday I was nearing melt-down point when in came a small blue parakeet.

Yes. A parakeet.

I was just finishing my laundry when a bird waddled up to me, chirping for attention. I'm pretty certain our apartment doesn't allow pets other than fish, so a parakeet was the last thing I expected to find in the laundry room.

After informing the manager of our strange visitor, I took her back to my room and constructed a cage out of a milk crate, a mesh laundry hamper, and a handful of knitting needles. Having no money for birdseed I decided to feed her Cheerios, which took her a minute to figure out how to eat (I'd imagine it's like eating a bagel with your hands tied at your sides).

I have never owned a bird, and only once had a chance to play with one. I'm more used to rodents, cats, and dogs. The parakeet, which I quickly dubbed Headpet (for her affinity for perching on my head) flitted about my room and tested the perching potential of each piece of furniture and the window shades; experimented with the noise-making potential of my house keys; stood on my laptop and tried to make sense of my homework; and generally never held still.

Fortunately parakeets are diurnal. As soon as I got Headpet in her makeshift cage and turned off the lights, she quieted down and went to sleep.

On Sunday I made a few phone calls and found an animal shelter to take Headpet off my hands, get her some proper birdseed, and hopefully find her owner. In some sense, having to babysit a bird should've been another stress on top of a big pile of stresses, yet somehow it came off as a refreshing change of pace. At the very least it makes for an amusing story. Sometimes getting knocked off our game gives us a chance to start playing something different.

Earworm of the day: Why Should I Worry from Disney's Oliver and Company

Alien Slang and Cartoon Eyes

2011-10-07T17:52:00.000-05:00

So I was inventing some slang for my alien characters today, specifically the ones that have some involvement with their planet's military. This was way more fun than it should've been. For example, book rookie: a person who claims they know how to do something solely on the grounds that they read it in the manuel. Or drilled: to have removed through a process, such as one runs practice drills to replace blind instinct with useful training.

Then it occurred to me that "drill" in the military sense might itself have originated from slang or metaphor, though I'm only speculating. A quick google search provided an explanation of why the Marines do drills (the marching kind) and a couple of ads for power tools. Clearly I need more research.

My Design Interfaces class has started using a new mockup tool called HotGloo. It's a new experience having a tool that can design and test out website functions without being tied to any particular computer, or wait for a hundred libraries to load like an Adobe product. Not that I have issue with Adobe. It's how I make things like this:

I'm currently working on the rest of the picture. Points for guessing who's eye it is (hint: he has been pictured on this blog before). It occurred to me that I could do a short tutorial on cartoon eyes, but I don't have a screen-cap program to make a video with. Any ideas for a solution?

Earworm of the day: Please Don't Let Me Go by Group 1 Crew

Beth Redesign

2011-10-05T14:00:00.001-05:00

Character expression sheet for Beth's redesign.

As artistic skill improves, so occasionally must the design of one's cartoon characters.

I've pretty much drawn Beth the same way since the day I finally figured out the significance of construction drawing (a very nice tutorial on that here by the way). For a while I drew her head as an egg-shape, but the trouble was always how long to make her nose. It was never consistent.

I've changed Beth's head to be two separate circles for the head and the muzzle, which has several benefits:

A circle looks the same from all directions, so it's much easier to think of it in 3D.
It helps establish the placement and boundaries of her mouth and prevents me from drawing her nose too big (which has been an issue in the past).
Beth's a hamster. Have you seen a hamster's muzzle? Hold that thought...

Pocket-sized adorableness.

They got the round nose thing going on, so it fits with her species. (btw, the hamster in the photo is the real-life Beth the hamster.)

The final bit of the redesign is her hair (er... headfur?). I've always drawn her with no hairstyle whatsoever, but most of my other important characters had some suggestion of a hairstyle. Beth looked like an extra in her own cartoon.

I decided on a half-way point between her parents' hairstyles with a lot of extra bed-head thrown in. Three lines facing forward and two facing back over the base of the closest ear. This lends itself to more expressiveness, like standing on end when scared or drooping when tired.

Earworm of the day: have we done Raver's Fantasy yet? We have now.

Head in the Clouds

2011-10-03T15:19:00.005-05:00

I have finally picked up a Discworld novel. This is a surprising development, not because it isn't something I would do (I totally would), but because I'm only getting around to it now. I started with book one, The Color of Magic. Thus far it is a very funny, and slightly hard to put down.

Having figured out Harold Washington Library's system for categorizing fiction, I hunted down another two books by another author, Richard Bach, who's apparently obsessed with aviation, but that's ok because his novels are nice short reads filled with a child-like imagination. The only word I can describe them with is "charming". Charming in the completely serious, un-ironic sense. Pure day-dream like flights of fancy. The series I picked up is called The Ferret Chronicles and it sounds exactly like something I would've written in middle school, with the big exception that Bach actually knows how to write novel and my middle-school self didn't (not that I didn't try).

In other news: a friend of mine shared this video with me. Post-its are versatile little things.

Earworm of the day: Take Me Into The Beautiful by Cloverton
(They also have a free download of the song at their website, just a note. Free stuff is always neat.)

Easy Cheesy Potatoes

2011-09-30T18:40:00.000-05:00

Have you ever bought a pack of that "easy melt" cheese? It's the stuff that comes in wrapped slices like American cheese, but it's especially made for making grilled-cheese sandwiches (aka it's probably mutant Velveeta). It makes a fine grilled-cheese sandwich, but ever tried to eat that stuff plain? It's nasty. It's not real cheese.

So a year or so ago I bought a pack of the easy melt stuff, not knowing what I was getting myself into. Several months later it was still in my fridge, and it hadn't grown any mold yet. This could be proof that it's an orange, hydrogenated dead-zone similar to the ones found in the ocean, only it was in my fridge which is almost as disturbing.

So, getting to the point: one day, faced with a 2 month old half-pack of undead easy melt slices and some very much alive potatoes (they always sprout eyes by the time I use them), I created this recipe:

EY's Easy Cheesy Potatoes

Need:

washed potatoes (doesn't matter what kind they are, or if you peel them. I buy what's on sale and keep the peels on.)
6-8 (or maybe 10) slices of single-slice cheese product of your choice
water
oven-safe casserole dish or baking pan large enough to hold everything without overflow
aluminum foil
knife

How to:

Preheat oven to 350 deg Fahrenheit (176 Celsius)
Cut up the potatoes into slices about 1/4 -- 1/2 inch thick.
Lay potatoes in bottom of dish/pan, layering to 2 slices deep.
Add enough water to surround but not cover the potatoes. Tops of potatoes should be sticking out of the water.
Unwrap singles-slices and lay a single layer on top of potatoes like a big cheesy blanket.
Cover pan with aluminum foil. Place in oven. Place on top of cookie sheet if using a small or shallow dish. There's a chance it will boil over.
Cook for about 45 minutes, or until potatoes split in half when you stick a fork in them.
Remove pan from oven. Remove foil. Serve with vegetables and/or meat of your choice.

Servings:

Creates as much as you put into it, or about 1 person per potato if we're talking russets. Smaller potatoes and you're on your own.

Nutrition facts:

How should I know? The nutrition info for an unpeeled potato can be found here. Read the package on your chosen cheese product and do the math.

Earworm of the day: Can't Shut Up by Anthem Lights

Jimmy!

2011-09-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

At risk of becoming captain obvious, I have changed the background color of Penguins With Jet Packs from black to graphite. I had a comment that the white-on-black was a little hard on the eyes. I can't complain; graphite is very in right now for animation software and it's reasonable to believe they're on to something.

It's been very wet up here in Chicago, and the rain only stopped an hour ago. Luckily it hasn't been too windy for umbrellas. I finally invested in a set of register pegs so I can utilize the light tables in the 4th floor lab. I have a short animation I want to make, but drawing in the computer is so tedious. I wonder if good ol' pencil and paper will be better or worse.

Today I had a mini-animatic due in Storyboarding. We were given a 12 second soundclip from the TV show South Park and asked to make an animatic with it. The visuals were up to us.

I have never watched an episode of South Park (though cultural osmosis has taught me it has something to do with satire, vulgarity, annoying voices, and the repeated slaughter of a particularly unfortunate character named Kenny.) My unfamiliarity with the show meant I was free to make up whatever explanation I wanted for what I heard in the soundtrack. This was incredibly fun. Here is the result:

New thing to note: it's always best to create a mobile version of an animation in iMovie before attempting to upload to blogger. The original copy was apparently too large.

And yes. I did look up who this "Jimmy" character was after I was done with the project. No, I do not have an interest in watching South Park any time soon.

Earworm for the day: The Russian folk song "Korobeiniki" (old-school gamers, you're welcome)

Error Some Place

2011-09-26T14:22:00.000-05:00

One day I decided to re-create one of my favorite art projects in Maya. The image is of a radio-active dinosaur:

The original is color-aid paper on matte-board. The assignment was vibrating color (yes, it's fully intended to seer your retinas, and the digital scan doesn't do it justice.)

So I went into Maya, modeled a 3D version (only took two tries! I'm improving!), created and exported the UV map and did some preliminary coloring and lighting just to start getting the feel of how to re-compose the picture for 3D space.

I hit the render button...

...and I hit a brick wall titled "//Error: setParent: object 'renderView' not found."

Apparently it's a bug in the latest Maya. A horribly frustrating bug. Luckily a short google search yielded great results. Found the fix here.

Hooray for the internet.

Earworm of the day: Animaniac's Ballad of Magellan Staying historically (semi)accurate through off-screen violence!

Turtles, Arowanas, Pirhanas

2011-09-23T18:31:00.000-05:00

Went to the Shedd Aquarium today for the first time since I was... 4? 5? Well, it's been over 12 years so it was time to go back. We went out for brunch first though at this amazing place called Yolk. The food was very good and Dad loved the coffee. The aquarium was fun. They had an exhibit about the amazon, which included some of the biggest freshwater fish I'd ever seen. Forget trying to catch one with a fishing pole; they'd pull you under before you could reel them in. There were also a lot of turtles. We saw an aquatic show that featured white-sided dolphins and a talented sea-lion. It was surprisingly short, but I guess it's best not to tire out the animals.

The sad thing was, most of the fish I knew the names of, I learned from facebook's Fish World game. Well, you can't say I haven't learned anything.

On another topic: When one is creating stuff, it's always good to check if it's been done before. I can't say yet whether or not someone else is developing a tv-show with ninja hamsters, but I did find the game Ninja Hamsters vs Robots. Now if only I can get past the 3rd level.

Earworm of the day: Wake Up by The Arcade Fire (because the Shedd uses it in their aquatic show).

The Importance of Having Backstory

2011-09-21T20:54:00.000-05:00

I love making up wacky characters of various kinds. It's one of my favorite things about writing. Usually though a good character is something that springs to my mind by accident. Most of my characters, when I first write them, are incredibly flat and it may take months or years to flesh them out into a person I'd want to write dialogue for.

This holds especially true for my character Beth, who is meant to be the protagonist of the story Animalburg. I decided that in-story she was 12 years old (my Animalburg characters have human-esque life-spans) so I assumed that she would start the story a little flat, and gain characterization as I wrote. But I could never put pen to paper. The character bored me, and one can't write with a boring character.

The other day I got off task and created a truly out-there character named Cylee. She's an 7 1/2 ft tall space alien with bright green fur. She was born during a pivotal battle of a revolutionary uprising on her home planet. She grew up in a world of cultural turmoil. As an adult she took a job as a grunt on a space cargo-ship. She's traveled all over the galaxy, picking up snatches of other languages, fashion ideas from other cultures, and married a space-age gunsmith. Her best friend is an alien that looks like a porcupine dragon. She has an attitude, shows affection shoving people around (getting various results depending on the size of the recipient), and she knows how to curse in 10 different languages (though she's only conversationally fluent in Kenlilia and Trade-standard). Needless to say, she's very fun to write, especially when paired against my character Owl who is much smaller than her. She tends to treat him like a child, much to his annoyance.

Cylee yanking Owl into a stairwell, and out of danger.

And then it hit me what was wrong with Beth: I had never given her a back-story. So, to start the thought process, I drew Beth as a three year old.

Now I have to figure out how she went from wearing pink and dragging around a blanket to wearing cargo shorts and aspiring to be a ninja. This will indeed be fun.

Earworm for the day: Halo by Manic Drive

Rodent in Motion

2011-09-19T14:17:00.001-05:00

The above is a short project I worked on over the weekend, trying to animate the walk-cycle of a cartoon mouse. By no means is it a life-like walk; it's really very simplified and I think a mouse would have a much faster gait. I'd imagine it almost like a quick trot. Or perhaps the front legs trot while the back legs bounce like a rabbit. It's impossible to find a good reference video. I typed in "mouse walk" on YouTube. I got 20 ways to sync sound effects to foot-falls. I tried "mouse slow-motion". I got 100 videos of small toys and lightbulbs being decimated by mousetraps in epic slow-mo. (Why lightbulbs? I'll never know.)

Between Mickey-mousing and shattered filaments, I did find this very talented rodent. Unfortunately he is too quick, and the video is too poor quality, to actually get a reference from.

Speaking of references, I found a fascinating book with detailed drawings of various animal skulls from all angles. The skull is the underlying reason (quite literally) to why heads of all vertebrates look the way they do. The book was made for biology students, but it practically begs the 3D modeler to put a page in the scanner and create an bison or lion skull to add to their portfolio. I'm debating weather to do so, and if so what animal to pick. Decisions, decisions...

Earworm for the day: I've got nothing. Enjoy an annoying-song-free day.

The Battle to Keep On-Task

2011-09-16T11:19:00.002-05:00

Woman walks in on a rat's birthday party.

Happy Friday everyone. So far so good on my goal to keep this blog updated.

My plan is to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from now until who knows when. I want to have at least one link to an interesting web page in every post. This does not count the earworm link. That's just there because my brain is like an iPod shuffle. In addition, I would like to post a picture or drawing once a week and an original video (aka made by me, not just swiped off YouTube) once a month.

We'll see how that goes.

I don't have any insightful musings for the day, but while digging through my bookmarks for a link to post I found Murphy's Rules of Combat. Enjoy.

Earworm for the day: Chris August - Battle

Warning: science inside!

2011-09-14T21:01:00.001-05:00

I am determined now. I really must update this blog more regularly. I've said it a billion times (well, maybe more like 3). Anyway, this time I'm armed with a checklist. Maybe that'll keep me motivated. Praying about it too will probably help.

So anyway, a new school year has arrived and I'm back in the wild and windy city of Chicago. I am adjusting to living on the 13th floor of a building. This is one floor higher than the highest classroom I've ever been in (Business Ethics last winter). The upside is there's always a breeze and a good view of the sunrise/sunset. The downside is getting up and down efficiently. Today, just for kicks, I took the stairs. Going up. I made it, but had to sit down and gasp for air upon arrival. Never doing that again. Well, unless I really want to get in shape...

One of my classes this quarter is Environmental Chemistry. Awesome thing about college: My teacher works for the EPA. Scary thing about college: there's a door down the hall that says "WARNING: Radioactive Material Inside!" Yeah. There are actual bona-fide scientists doing relevant research in DePaul's facilities. Just as long as no mutant animals go charging around the building, I'm all for it.

So back to chemistry class. We're learning about air pollutants: where they come from, what they're made of, and how specifically they damage our bodies and our stuff. Being a college course, this involves some actual chemistry stuff, like Lewis structures and balancing reaction formulas and knowing that pure oxygen is typically diatomic and why it's typically diatomic. And what "diatomic" means.

It occurred to me, while playing pyramid solitaire, that it would be really cool (and really educational) if all this chemical reaction stuff could be turned into a card game. It would be simple really. Turn the periodic groups into stats, be able to trade in element cards for compound cards, and vice-versa. I almost mentioned it to my teacher today. I'm kind of glad I didn't. I went online first and googled "chemistry card game".

I found Elemento. I totally want this for Christmas now.

And now I can put aside my idea for a card game and rest easy knowing that it's been done. But not before I send this link to my teacher.

Earworm of the day-- Forget and not Slow Down: Relient K

Place Holder

2011-06-29T16:02:00.001-05:00

Haven't posted because I've nothing interesting to say. Here's a silly picture.

Beginner Japanese, Courtesy of Styx

2011-03-12T19:59:00.004-06:00

Screenwriting has been both my favorite, and my hardest class this quarter. Today, I got the first complete draft of my assigned screenplay done! And it's about time too. It's due Tuesday. No time like the last minute. But really, I'm happy mostly because it's one of only 2 stories I've completed, front to back. The first one has yet to be edited (and it really needs an overhaul, but that's a project for next month).

Animation History is my next crisis to face. I have a list of names a mile long that I really need to know. Or at least have notes on. The names range from as easy (Walt Disney), to easy to anime-fans (Osamu Tazuka), to "who the heck is that?" (Ralph Bakshi anyone?). My roommate is Japanese (her home was not in the path of Friday's Tsunami thank goodness). So after the lesson topic of anime, I came home and started trying to pronounce the names I learned correctly. She thought this was funny, not because I was mispronouncing things, but because an American was trying to speak Japanese. She also flipped when she discovered I knew what "arigato" meant (Styx songs can be educational. Who knew?).

One more week, and spring break will be here. I can't wait.

Catchy song of the day: Francesca Battistelli's "This is the Stuff"

Chicago

2011-03-07T15:33:00.003-06:00

Life has been interesting.

I am now at DePaul University in Chicago. A quick Wiki-search will tell you that the name Chicago derives from an native-american word for "wild onion". The building with the most square-footage in the city is Merchandise Mart, which is so large it has it's own El station, and it's own zip-code. The two tallest buildings in the US can be found here: The famous Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and the Trump International Hotel and Tower. In fact, Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper, but you probably already knew that.

It snows and/or rains every other day here. Typically I go bananas over snow, but now it's lost it's charm. I really prefer the rain. I want spring to come. I'm tired of iced-over sidewalks in the morning.

Public transportation has been a blessing. I've yet to ride the bus, but the el/subway are so convenient that I really can't complain. When we were hit with a foot of snow earlier this year, I was still perfectly mobile. Others had to dig out their cars and drive through slush. I just had to walk and hop on a train like always.

The other blessing is the stores. There's a reasonably close Trader Joe's, and an Aldi right underneath (turns out they're owned by the same company!) It's a bit of a hike, 4 blocks maybe, but I need the exercise. Even more convenient is the Borders store, which unfortunately is closing due to bankruptcy. On the up side, their closing sale was the best excuse to get a really huge book on animals, a really cute greeting card with a frog, and a copy of Mouse Guard (which is becoming one of my favorite graphic novels).

I think I like Chicago.

Meadow Mouse

2010-10-29T13:32:00.005-05:00

All classes leave an impression, even the ones I didn't like. If I learned anything from Game Design last year, it's that game creation is not my thing. I give up too easily when faced with puzzles I don't know how to solve. I am generally a non-aggressive person, and most games are warlike to the point that I'm afraid of playing after a couple of levels. Yes, I am actually afraid of continuing to play Spore because I angered the Grox (and the game practically requires that you do so, what's up with that?) Furthermore, they are a big time-drain. I can't play a video game for less than 2 hours (I know this from experience). Where, between work, school, and communicating with DePaul, and doing housework, and doing more schoolwork, do I have the time to play video games?
The answer is: None. Nada. Zip. I'm cutting into my schoolwork just to write this blog entry.

As I said before though, the class left an impression on me, and thus I've begun coming up with a game. (I must be out of my mind.) Here's the concept:

You play as a young field mouse. You start out in a meadow, but as you explore and collect items three opportunities to win the level will present themselves. Which one to go for is completely up to you, but ultimately you can only successfully complete one.

Your decision leads you to a new area where you explore and acquaint yourself with the local resources and hazards. Two ways to win the level are given. Once again, which way you go is totally your choice.

This format continues to the next level, with three chances to move forward. The last level has three chances to ultimately win the game.

There are, in total, 10 worlds in the game, but the player will only visit four. The method you win each level determines which one you go to next. The general three ways to win are building something, defeating an enemy, or solving a puzzle.

In short, I'm trying to fix what I don't like about Spore.

Preparing

2010-10-27T09:25:00.009-05:00

I am preparing to attend DePaul University in Chicago this winter.

Yikes.

Every time I check my e-mail, I realize how much paperwork I still have to do, the orientation I must attend, and the room clean-out that needs doing before I leave. I'm not sure how on earth I'm going to get all of this done. I am considering quitting my cashiering job just to have the time. The thought scares me a bit, mostly because I have never written a letter of resignation before and I'm a little unsure on how to go about it. Also, I have gotten very used to having a paycheck handed to me every 2 weeks. Minimum wage or no, it's a nice thing to not have to hit up your parents for money to fuel up the car and buy art supplies.

Sure, I have a savings account, but I don't like dipping into it much. I guess my hope is that it will grow enough that when I'm in my thirty's and some emergency happens, I will have cash stored away to deal with it and not go bankrupt. Or at least that's my logic for now. Give it a year or two, and I may use some of it to buy a copy of Maya, or a new computer.

I am in the middle of a major transition, but I must take a moment to congratulate a friend for making it through her own . My buddy Maria shipped off to basic training at Fort Jackson on Monday. She now has the rank "Private" officially attached to her name. I'm proud of her. She'll do great things.

Additive Color

2010-08-29T16:22:00.002-05:00

Because I work with computers all the time, the concept of additive color has been explained to me before. Subtractive color is what we learn in school. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue (or magenta, yellow, cyan if you're using a printer). Mixing these colors give you new colors (red + yellow = orange) but as you add more colors, the more the colors turn to black. Additive colors work in reverse. The primary colors are red, green, and blue (as in an RGB computer monitor). As you mix the primary colors of light, the color fades closer to white.

I just came to understand this last night. I was so excited about this, that I made a color-wheel in Photoshop to illustrate the concept.

Then I realized it looks like a beach ball.

But anyway, there are several things that became clear. One, if I intend to make an unusual shader that appears yellow with green undertones, throwing red into the mix might create some interesting colors. Two, what my art teacher was saying the other day about blue and red being complements (rather than red and green) now makes a whole lot more sense. On an additive color wheel, red and cyan are indeed complementary (and will also create a wild vibrating edge when put next to each other).

Catch-Up

2010-08-28T11:59:00.002-05:00

So I haven't posted for a while. Journals and logs have never been my forte. I like to keep moving on to the next activity. Nonetheless, I have been asked to return to Penguins with Jet Packs for the sake of my future career. How can I refuse?

First things first. Animation 3 is long over and here are the results:

In other news, I am having loads of fun playing with Maya again. Parkland has recently obtained Maya 2011, and it is slick. Takes some getting used to, yes, but the new graphite color-scheme was a good design choice, and the new button defaults are nice too. I don't remember if there was a "select camera" button on the window before, but it's there now, and I will be using it.

Using this new version of Maya, I have begun to model a tiger-swallowtail butterfly. Yes, a butterfly. They're actually quite fluffy, and I'm excited to learn about the fur tool later in the semester. A classmate also suggested modifying the colors on the butterfly to create The Butterfly Of Doom. I'm thinking red eyes and a black body and wings with white, red, yellow-green, and purples thrown in. I'll need to try a few designs first.

Practice Makes Perfect

2010-05-02T13:48:00.003-05:00

The human body is a complicated thing; one of the many reasons why I hesitate about drawing people. Nothing illustrates the amazing functionality of ourselves like trying to make a CG short with a human character, even a cartoony one. For the last half a semester, I've been working on a character named "Banjo Guy". Yes, that's what he's called, so says I. He's a 10-year-old-ish kid with a floppy cowboy hat, red Converse, and a banjo that he's still learning how to play. Through the creation and animation of Banjo Guy, I've learned a few things:

Thumbs are really hard to re-create.
The hip joint, likewise hard to animate so that it doesn't collapse on itself.
Oh, and shoulders, shoulders are hard to make too.
Arms are a lot longer than you might think. My finger-tips reach to mid-thigh, but Banjo Guy's only make it to his hip joints. This creates problems with posing (he looks like he has his hands on his hips when he shouldn't) and also makes it difficult to perform motions like getting up from the ground (he has to lean waaaayyyy back to lean on his hands).
A character's just a statue until you rig up the eye controls. When you do, you'll suddenly have a living character on your hands. Possibly the most thrilling moment in the rigging process.
Eyebrows can only do three or four different things (up, down, or one of each); mouths are a little more mobile, but still limited. It's the pairings between what the mouth's doing and what the eyebrows are doing that give us the fantastic range of facial expressions. Good news for CG characters like Banjo Guy.

At the moment, the best I have to show for my several months of work is this video:

I'm looking forward to summer. It can't come soon enough.

Time Travel: A Problematic Activity

2010-04-03T16:35:00.003-05:00

Time travel has been so overdone in animation. But really now, what writer hasn't fantasized about a character being able to tell his younger self that something is a bad idea, or go back in time to meet a character who is dead in their own time, or see their parents when they were their age. The potential for comedy and/or heartwarming moments is almost irresistible.

But time travel always has it's set of risks. The potential for risk changes with author interpretation, and I think that stems from the author's personal tolerance for serious brain cramps. If you change something in the past it will effect the future, this is agreed upon; question is, have the results manifested already or haven't they? Will you return to find that what you thought you were trying to change was directly caused by your meddling in the first place (ex: the scenario in Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox), or will you return to find Nazi Germany busting down your door? (incredibly unlikely, but this does seem to be a trope)

Though it's sometimes fun to speculate about the time stream, I think a major source of glitches would come from the time-travel hardware itself. My own time-traveling character uses a wrist mounted device called the Crono-Drive Series 3. It is a pretty standard concept of a time machine, able to jump back and forth over several centuries and little more than that, but it has a few issues. Longer jumps through time are inaccurate, with as much as a two year margin of error. Shorter jumps are better on the accuracy, but the corrections drain the battery. The battery takes about ten hours of recharge time (a process needing no electric cords thank goodness).

The character's father has the newest model, series 5, which is able to speed up or slow down time for the user. Useful in combat if you're likely to run into that kind of thing, but it too is a battery drainer. My character counts himself lucky with the Series 3 though. The Series 1 was a backpack with a 50 year jump range, and the Series 2... Well... let's hope you aren't very attached to that hamster shirt...

No Cookies for Me

2010-03-22T09:33:00.005-05:00

Have I been putting off posting for three weeks? Oh yes. Yes I have.

To be completely honest, though my life is far from boring right now, I have come to the realization that most people don't understand animation jargon enough to find an account of my day at all interesting.

Just about the only interesting thing I can think of right now is Lent. No, I am not catholic, but my home church decided that every member of the church should fast in some way for the 21 days before Easter Sunday. In comparison to the people who started on Fat Tuesday, we probably have it easy. Relatively.

So, for my fast I gave up facebook and TV Tropes. Oh yes, the internet is suddenly so much more boring without the two. Bright side is, I've had time to do some actual writing. Now If only I'd utilize that time to actually write things down instead of just watching TV... I have had to bend on one detail though. My friends have been arranging to get together using the message feature on facebook. For the sake of keeping up with the conversation, I've had to log on a few times to use that. But that's really more like lazy e-mail. Right?

In addition to this fast-of-the-mind, my parents and I are doing a thing called a Daniel Fast. Referencing a passage in the bible concerning Daniel and his friends, the Daniel Fast is like a vegan diet... only stricter. I'm pretty sure vegans eat leavening (yeast, baking soda, baking powder) and sugar. People on the Daniel fast don't. It's not all that bad because I really like fruit and nuts. I can't keep my hands out of the almond jar. But try working at a grocery store while you're on one of these fasts.

"Hey look! The bakery left all the past-date St. Pattie's day cookies on the break room table for us to eat! Whoo hoo!

"...oh. wait. I can't have any..."

The whole point of this, in case you were wondering, is to remind ourselves that God is more important than food. Really, think about it. How many more times do you think about bread, juice, or chicken nuggets in a day than you think about God? When you be honest with yourself, it's sad. Life is more than just satisfying our physical needs and doing whatever feels good. Life is meant to be an adventure, and God is the guy with the map in is head leading us down the mountain pass. And adventures sometimes require you to skip a few meals so you can get to the next stop sooner. Or at the very least eat a lot of trail mix while your hiking.

Trail mix minus the M&Ms...

Twiggy and the Jackalope

2010-02-05T17:11:00.007-06:00

I've been kicking around the idea of putting my long dormant 50Webs account to good use and creating a web comic. Granted, I'd probably need some help and a new graphics tablet. Mine broke recently. Sigh. You can't really do drawing with a mouse. It just doesn't work that way.

So the comic in question would be Twiggy and the Jackalope, a silly adventure story about a Christmas reindeer-in-training (Twiggy) and a tribe of mythical antlered jackrabbits (jackalope) who need some assistance reclaiming their homeland (an inter-dimensional patch of land that fills in the Grand Canyon). The adventure rambles along on a few twists and turns and includes evil Christmas elves, a guy in a hot-air balloon, skeptical white-tailed deer, a female bigfoot, and a tasmanian tiger.

Oh, and did I mention the army of blood thirsty chupacabres?

I need to play with the style a little and see what works. I might do a little mixed-media to save drawing time. I'll have to see how it goes.

Simple as Algorithm, Bird, Calculus

2010-01-29T09:55:00.005-06:00

I call it a drip bird. It is made entirely of NURBs shapes for those who know the needed bravery that entails. I don't understand the NURBs fear. Didn't give me any problems.

Well... except for the one thing with the feet, and the seams... and merging the body and neck... and...

Coloring, interestingly enough, is done entirely by ramp shaders. Yup. That's it. Lots and lots of ramp shaders. The feathers are all duplicates. It really was a lot more ctrl + D and scaling than actual modeling with CV points.

Am I talking CG babble? Sorry. I'll stop.

Suffice to say it's still a work-in-progress because, though it's cute, it can certainly be better. Maybe I'll make a family scene with them when I'm done.

In other news, my MEL Scripting teacher is out to get us! No, really. He has a thing for trick questions. It's really annoying. And the Pythagorean theorem? It's everywhere. Maya practically runs off the Pythagorean theorem. So, if you want to be a successful CG artist, start memorizing: a^2 + b^2 = c^2 OR c = sqroot (a^2 + b^2) . Life will be easier if you don't have to relearn this concept once every year.

Game design isn't much better. Game characters move in algorithms. *head-desk*

Grandma Jo

2010-01-22T17:10:00.006-06:00

If Heaven has a bookstore (which I'm sure it does because many authors have gone there, and I can't imagine there wouldn't be a use for books), then my Grandma Jo is probably helping an angel find a good read right now. Or maybe she's catching up with Grandpa George and her parents. Maybe she'll even run into Grandma and Grandpa Young (I hear they were always friendly to each other, despite the in-law trope.)

Grandma passed away this Wednesday after a battle with cancer the lasted about a year. I've been living at her house half the week because she's closer to my school, so she has probably become my closest grandparent. She showed me that a lot of my quirks are genetic. Like the love of everything Beanie Baby. Or the dislike of carbonated beverages. Or the need to talk loud when we get excited. Other things I just had to scratch my head at. Like worrying about the dishwasher running properly. Or never having ice in a drink. Or washing her hair in the sink. Grandma was a little odd at times, but in a way that always made you smile.

Grandma was the queen of customer service. She worked at Berean Bookstore for a very long time (I want to say 17 years?). When the store was going to cut her benefits, she relocated to Family Christian Bookstore in Urbana. Her loyal customers followed her. It wasn't the store they liked, it was my Grandma's attention to other's needs. They knew that Grandma would try her best to find exactly what they wanted. Grandma was also a talker. She couldn't always figure out how to use her cellphone, but she maxed out her minutes in maybe the third month after getting it.

I'll miss my grandma, but I know that I will see her again. God did not create us to end at physical death. He created us to live eternally for him.

How to Make Ramen (for computers maybe)

2010-01-16T21:36:00.003-06:00

Yes. This is a homework assignment for scripting class.

If anyone is actually reading the blog, sorry for not posting yesterday. I was stuck in a house with no internet connection. My homework for Game Design is to play a video game for 9 hours. Yes, you read that right, nine hours. The game I picked is Viewtiful Joe. Nicely challenging. No, it is frustrating. I've been playing it for maybe 5 hours. I'm on level two.

I'd go on, but it's 9:45 at night, and I'm about ready to drop. More on Monday.

Puppy Board

2010-01-11T21:20:00.005-06:00

Have you ever been bored out of your skull with only a cheap, back-flipping wind-up toy for entertainment? Neither have I, but Parkland's Monday Game Design class is now prepared for such a scenario, for we have invented a game and have dubbed it Puppy Board!

Now how do you play Puppy Board? The setup and rules are simple. Find a piece of paper and pencil (standard notebook size) and draw a target that fills the width of the page that looks like so:

The number 1 is always placed in the center, and the number 10 is always outside the target. The placement of 2 through 9 is up for interpretation as long as all numbers are represented in the spaces without repeating.

After drawing the board, find a second piece of paper to keep score on. Find some friends to play with (2-4 players recommended), then wind up the back-flipping wind-up toy, place it in the center, and let it go. When it finally runs out of boing, take note of which space the tail of the critter has landed in (assuming it has a tail), and that is the number of points you get.

If the wind-up's tail lands on a line, the score on the outer part of the line (farthest from center) is given. If the wind-up falls over mid-flip, no points are earned. This happens quite frequently, so don't feel bad if it occurs.

Take turns winding up the toy and add up total scores after each round. If someone has 20 pts after a round is completed, they are the winner. If two people are tied for the 20 pts. They take one last turn for a tie-breaker.

This game was our first group assignment in Game Design, and is named Puppy Board because the original wind-up was... well... a yellow puppy dog.

Lots of Snow

2010-01-08T08:41:00.003-06:00

We've got about 6-8 inches of snow accumulation on the ground right now. It is the second snow-day in a row for my brother. I'm glad my own classes haven't started yet. I have a feeling that Parkland wouldn't stop for a snow-day. Parkland doesn't stop for anything.

I want to hope, though, that the UPS truck doesn't stop for much either. This year to save money, I ordered my textbooks online through Barnes & Nobel. That was Tuesday. No books yet, but I'm crossing my fingers that the first might come today, if road conditions don't stop them that is. I just want my books before I have to use them. Maybe I should've ordered them on Monday... Have to say though, used books on the internet are dirt cheap, if you jump quick enough.

I've started reading another series called Warriors by Erin Hunter. It's a little below my reading level (Ok, so I should've picked this book up in 6th grade if I wanted it at reading level) but a good book is a good book. It's about feral cats who live in their own tribes. I won't ramble about the details. If you have any 6th or 7th graders you need to keep occupied (or a really bright 5th grader for that matter) Pick up this series. If the rest of the books are like the first one, then they're going to be good.

I was also poking around on hulu.com the other day and found a clip on the making of Avatar. If you know anything about motion capture and computer animation, or simply get as excited as I do about seeing what raw footage looks like before all the computer stuff is added, then watch this. Warning: it is 10 minutes long. What struck me as really cool... Well, they have these alien beasts-of-burden in the movie that are kind of like horses. People ride them and stuff, but one would assume that the animators completely added them in from scratch. Nope. The actors, decked out in their motion capture suits, were riding real live horses on set. Which is, by the way, inside a warehouse. With lots of expensive camera equipment. It's a wonder the horses didn't break something, but it makes for a believable performance so kudos to them.

One more weekend till school. I don't know whether to be happy or sigh in disappointment.

Post-it's, Dragons, and Tropes

2010-01-04T17:23:00.003-06:00

Beth: What's with all the Post-it notes?

B.E.: It's for an experiment. I'm seeing how many ways you can disrupt class.

Beth: Post-it's?

B.E.: You'd be surprised.

Today I finally checked out the second book of the Temeraire series. It's a series that I've recently gotten hooked on (because anything with talking dragons catches my interest frankly). It's an alternate history of the Napoleonic wars where the "what if dragons were real" question is answered with "The air force would've been invented sooner, and it wouldn't have involved airplanes." It's a good read, and I'd recommend it for anyone who likes fantasy or can easily imagine a British accent on all the dialogue. Written by Naomi Novik if your interested. First book's called His Majesty's Dragon.

Another bit of reading that I've found wildly entertaining is the website TVTropes. A trope is something in fiction writing that generally goes unquestioned by an audience, whether or not it applies to the real world. The website utilizes it's own terms such as...

Fridge Logic: Errors and fallacies that a viewer may never recognize, except for maybe after the show while they're en-route to grab a cold soda.
Jumping the Shark: The point at which a good movie suddenly turns into a lousy one.
Chekhov's Gun: If a weapon is briefly mentioned in the beginning of the book, odds are it will be used later by the hero in the final showdown.

Check this website out if you're into fiction writing (not just books, but movies and games too) or if you just want a really good laugh. Warning though, if you read too many of these, you'll be recognizing them in every movie/show/book/videogame that you see.

New Year and the Expected Resolution

2010-01-02T08:41:00.005-06:00

I have never been very good at keeping a journal. Unless there's a grade to be had, all diaries, logs, and records usually fall into neglect when they're in my hands.

This has happened with my blog, and though I'm not sure anyone is currently reading Penguins With Jet Packs, I know that no one will read it if I don't update it more regularly. Sort of the "build it, and they will come"? The inverse is "neglect it, and they won't".

Posts on Mondays and Fridays with random doodles posted as much as possible. That sounds reasonable for a blog, right? At least, I know if I were following something online, a weekly update is appreciated. This Blog began as a Graphic Design assignment. I want it to continue as a timeline-portfolio so to speak. Where as in a real portfolio you toss the old and never label the dates on the new, this blog should begin to show continuing improvements in my work. If improvement does not occur, than clearly I have a problem.

Happy New Year to all who read this.

--EY

One vending machine...

Three pennies...

And one very clueless dollar bill.

Hilarity ensues.

Countdown Till Christmas

2009-12-14T09:50:00.006-06:00

So much to do and so little time. I've got a lot of my gifts for people either made, bought, or decided on but I have no idea how I'll get them all done in the amount of time given to me. Finals are this week, and in a way that's a blessing. Having only one class to show up to each day is much nicer than showing up for three and allows for a lot more spare time. It shouldn't be too difficult.

In other news, I finally got a chance to watch Bolt. My review: The story is cute framed by super cool over-the-top action, and dotted with more believable action that really isn't all that actiony in comparison. I liked the animation best, and by that I mean the way the animals moved. Bolt's smooth run makes him look like he's flying at any speed. And that kind of is how dog's (and wolves) run, with long bounding strides. (This is why wolves can pursue their prey over miles. The stride covers lots of ground with minimal effort, saving energy.)

So enough with the animator babble. Merry Christmas! And have a happy whatever-other-festival/holiday you may celebrate around this time of year!

Work, School, facebook, etc.

2009-11-26T09:59:00.004-06:00

Life right now has consisted mostly of school, work, and facebook. Not much of a life really. Obviously I haven't bothered updating "Penguins" for a while. It's hard to know if anybody is actually reading this stuff at all.

That's not to say there hasn't been some interesting things happening. My new trademark appears to be a very brightly colored hat. I keep getting asked, "did you make that?" My response is continually, "No, but my friend Kristen did. She's the crochet person, not me." In fact, last time I tried crochet I ended up with a big knot. The hat is terrific though. I wear it every day. Random people around parkland have started recognizing me just because of the headgear. Is that normal?

Between the endless school and work, there is the occasional down-time when I get a little bored. The following is a product of a few hours free-time:

I am thrilled that thanksgiving is finally here! I really needed a break from school, not to say I don't have more homework than I can get done by next week. I am glad to finally have time to work on some story writing. Maybe a little cross-stitch even.

Only a few more weeks of school! Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Rigid Squash

2009-10-30T09:17:00.003-05:00

This is my very first Animated 3D project. Yay!

Stuff I Never Knew About Web Pages

2009-10-15T11:45:00.002-05:00

I am taking Intro to Web Design this semester, and it's been fairly interesting so far. It's also been fairly easy because I learned html basics back in high school, so it's not entirely new. Not to say I'm not learning. Here's some highlights of things I have learned:

The best way to make all pages in a website look like they belong to the same website is to use a separate document called a external CSS sheet. (I really wish my high school teacher had told us about this. It would've saved me a lot of cut and paste.)
A simple thing like leaving out a semi-colon can ruin an attempt at formating something.
According to a Google search, there are 27,700,000 pages on the web with the title "Untitled Document".
Web browsers like text. And keywords. And titles other than "untitled document".
The web-safe color chart with the hexadecimal numbers has a pattern. I have figured out the pattern. It's clearly time for me to get out of the computer lab more.
Whoever wrote our textbook for Dreamweaver has a real nutty sense of humor.
Old cartoon theme songs were very corny, but at least they gave some idea on what the show was about.

Web Design is a great class, but maybe I'm just turning into a complete computer nerd. Next thing you know, I'll actually be understanding my dad's electrical engineering jargon.

... on second thought, no. I will never be able to understand electrical engineering jargon. But I might be able to guess a web color when given a hexadecimal number.

Framed

2009-09-25T08:05:00.005-05:00

I recently finished writing the actual story for Episode 1 of my cartoon stories. In that I am estatic. The problem is I wrote it in two forms: half script, half sketch. To bring the story into one format for easy viewing, I made my own storyboard template and have been redrawing the whole thing. This might sound like a lot of effort, and it kind of is, but once I start drawing all sense of time goes out the window and it's really not so bad.

This is the original sketch of a sequence where a dragonfly swoops past Beth's head and lands on a shop awning. As you can see, it was drawn in a spare notebook. Nothing fancy. No borders. I'm pretty sure I was making it up as I went along too. Still, it got the point across.

I drew that one, maybe two, semesters ago. This semester I'm taking 3D Animation II, which is really more "Cinematography Using Maya Instead of Cameras" class. It's got me thinking more about the visual side of the storytelling. Camera angles, timing, hints at what a character's thinking without having them say anything. When I make a second draft of a story, stuff gets tweeked just based on what I've learned since the first draft.

Surprisingly, the thing that really makes a storyboard (or rather the sketches in the story board) pop is the border. Just like paint is only as bright as its contrast with the canvas underneath, a drawing is only as dynamic as its interaction with the boring rectangle that houses it. A rectangle gives you a point of reference, something to base the diagonals off of, something to give you the feeling of distance from the subject.

So here's the same sequence in storyboard.

Amazing what a tweek in timing, camera angle, and framing can do.

(insert gourd joke)

2009-09-13T16:10:00.002-05:00

School is a lot like working at County Market. You have your rush hours, those days when 24 hours just doesn't seem like enough for a day. Times when you're rushing here there and everywhere and social life and fun stuff gets pushed off to the side. Work (or homework) demands your full and undivided attention.

And then there's times, like right now for instance, when there's absolutely nothing to do but pull those last three carts from the parking lot. You can kick back and chit-chat or whatever. At times you are so bored out of your....well.... gourd.... that you just can't wait to hit the next rush hour.

I'm at that point. I'm up to date on all my homework, including my first Animation II project (shown above). I've been in a lull for long enough that I'm actually excited for the critique on Monday. Excited for a critique? What is wrong with me!? I'll tell you what's wrong: Animation (and possibly County Market) has made my brain look like an acorn squash; nut-shaped with a soft interior. But if this is what it's like to go crazy, I'll take it.

Now if only I can think of another gourd joke.........

Piggerton Walk Cycle

2009-09-07T10:45:00.003-05:00

Having fun with Piggerton and Anime Studio 6. The walk cycle can be the most important part of a character's movement, and one of the most complicated. It's so much more than moving the legs. When Piggerton walks, his whole body moves up and down with his hips. His tail moves counter to his hips to maintain balance, his head and neck move to keep his eyes steadily on wherever he's going, and finally his ears bob through passive movement.

At least Piggerton doesn't have any arms. I would've had to animate those too!

Wish I had something to say

2009-09-05T09:29:00.002-05:00

I wish I had a clever picture to post this week, but I got nothing. Not to say that I haven't been creating. In animation class I made a gourd in a garden. In drawing class I've been drawing a still life. It is amazing how the position of three different gourds in a still life from one day to the next can wreak havoc with the composition drawn around it. In programming the other day I had fun making an application reminiscent of Mad-Libs. Hmm... a Mad-Lib application might not be such a bad idea...

Paying attention...?

2009-08-29T16:50:00.004-05:00

Classes have started anew and so far it hasn't been too bad. I have 3D Animation II (digital cinematography), Intro to Web Design, Drawing, and Intro to programming. Right now it's a lot of explaining the basics stuff, nothing too hard. I usually catch on pretty quick to the basics. In web design, I already know the basics from high school. Not to say I wasn't paying attention...

...okay...maybe I wasn't so much. I've gotten into a really bad habit of doodling in my notebook, but my notes for Web Design are by far the worst. I know I won't be able to get away with this for too long. With two studio classes and two computer courses I know my homework load is going to be massive. I tried to set my availability schedule for work accordingly, yet somehow they still manage to schedule 21 hours per week for me. One one hand, money and some apparent job security if they need me that much; on the other, I'd really rather be doing homework.

Why would I rather be doing homework? Well simple. When you're completing classes for your chosen field of study, homework can be fun. It can also be a nightmare, but one you get to tell horror stories about later with co-workers who know what you're talking about. In Animation I had to relearn how to use Maya, the modeling program we use. It all came back pretty fast, but I still had to do a little tinkering. What comes out of my brain the minute I start playing with an animation program? An animal. What animal? Uh....

This is piggerton. He doesn't look exactly like this in Maya (he's missing his feet) but I hope to end up with something similar to this eventually.

So that's the random wanderings of my brain this past week. Enjoy.

Super Bunny Lives!

2009-08-22T15:24:00.003-05:00

A few months ago I posted a sketch for a bunny with a baby blanket cape. Well, the cape is going to be a bib instead, but I finally made the bunny. I ditched my initial idea of green and blue and went with different colors, but how it ended up is cute as a button. Of course, the rabbit itself doesn't have any buttons. The eyes, nose, and mouth are all embroidery thread to make it safer for the baby it will eventually go to.

Faster than a race horse! Cuter than a koala! Able to leap tall cabbages in a single bound! It's Super Bunny!

Kenlilians

2009-08-20T14:48:00.004-05:00

I've had a lot of free time lately, and I haven't been as productive as I should be, but at least I have gotten something done. I've been meaning to design some outfits for some of my extraterrestrial characters, the Kenlilians. Their clothing presents some challenges because their legs are built for jumping and running, and therefore pants become a bit of a mobility issue. They get around this by wearing shorts or leaving the knees out. The rest of their clothing is determined by personal preferences and occupation.

Zorkedian is a soldier stationed on an intergalactic war ship. His uniform is pretty basic with the knees and elbows left open for mobility. The gold patch on the shoulder displays his rank of foot soldier (in Kenlilian culture, gold is a pretty average color, like blue for us). He carries a blaster with him at all times. His boots are steel-toed and divided like most kenlilian footwear.

Gen is a mechanic on a cargo ship. He's usually seen wearing a vest that acts as armor against mechanical accidents and has lots of pockets for stashing tools in. His shirt is made of a simple coarse fabric and has a few stains here and there, but it fits well and has more pockets. Arm guards protect his fore-arms while digging around in the interiors of ships and machinery. His pants have an extra flexible patch on the knees that doubles as a knee pad. His boots don't have two lobes (it's difficult for him to find good kenlilian boots) but they're steel-toed and well worn.

Dige is Gen's son. He's small and round in comparison to the adults. He's his father's shadow, always helping him in the shop. He has his own vest like his dad, but everything else on him is a size too big. Sometimes his clothes don't match because he's blind, he just grabs the first shirt and shorts he lays hands on and calls it good. He wears kneepads to protect his knees while crawling inside ships and machinery, and can sometimes be convinced to wear arm guards, but he absolutely refuses to wear shoes. Being able to feel the floor is essential for navigating the corridors of the ship.

Anke is Zorkedian's older brother. He's a cook in the war ship's galley. Over his shirt he wears a smock that is slightly big for him. The smock has pockets for kitchen ware and an extra fold of fabric at the color, used to wipe food splatters off the face. The green name tag and trim labels him as the head chef (kenlilian blood is green, so green is used to denote high rank, much like red for us). His pants have the knees left out and his shoes only cover his toes, held on by straps that wrap around his foot and ankle.

Tough as Nails

2009-08-18T18:42:00.003-05:00

I love using goofy quirky characters in my stories. Then again, who doesn't. The other night I was fleshing out my Ninja Order of Animalburg and ended up with the character Nails. Nails got his name because he can seemingly live through anything. He's a master at taking a hit so that it generates the least amount of damage. This skill didn't come naturally or easily though. Nails is missing a finger, about 40% of his tail, a piece of his ear, six teeth, and his appendix (though that had nothing to do with ninja work). All the same, Nails comes off as a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow who at once accepts that he has bits of himself missing and seems to have no notion that it should affect him in any way.

In Animalburg, the ninja all strive to be as tough as Nails.

The Monster of Rudard Pond

2009-08-12T19:41:00.003-05:00

Lately I've been trying to flesh out the imaginary world of my ninja characters. In the biggest park in the city, there's a lake called Rudard Pond (they call it pond, but I'm pretty sure if it has an inlet and an outlet, it's a lake). Lurking in the "pond" is a lake monster known as Rudy. The civilians of Animalburg don't really know what the monster looks like, so they make cute little salamander and sea dragon-like figurines of him for souvenirs. The people never get a good look at their monster because Rudy only hunts at night. Turns out Rudy's nocturnal and reclusive nature is for everyone's own good.

The ninja of the city are perfectly aware of what the monster looks like. Their unnofficial list of rules has "don't feed the lake monster" as #12 on the list. In reality, Rudy is a ten foot tall cross between a salamander, a sea monster, and a mutated experiment. It has no teeth, and it's completely blind from injuries and cataracts on its eyes, but anything that floats in the waters of Rudard Pond after dark has a good chance of being eaten. The monster brings along a trail of pondweed stuck to useless extra limbs caused by pollution. The end of its tail is missing from when it tried to eat a ninja that strayed too close to shore.

I had way too much fun inventing this thing. Can you tell?

Animation is a Pain

2009-08-09T15:37:00.002-05:00

I already mentioned something about singing puffballs in my last post. Meet Rodger, Omar, Yolanda, Gary, Celia, and Benny (listed from right to left). They are to be my first characters capable of vocalization. In their case singing. This is mostly a practice in lip-sync and reading waveforms, but also in patience. As of now, I have only the first 8 seconds done. That is only after sitting in front of a computer for approximately ten hours total with a graphics tablet in hand. Sure I haven't been animating all at once, but it's a lot of work. Especially for one person.

Animation takes tons of imagination. The ability to hear a character talk and see them move, even when all you're doing is drawing one frame after another, after another, after another....

Free Time

2009-08-06T22:26:00.003-05:00

Two weeks vacation and my imagination's already running wild. I'm launching back into my favorite things: cartoons, animation, and hopefully some movies. But I also love creating bizarre photo collages. The one above is made from three photos. I think it needs something though. Hmm....

I also figured out how to make an animation using Pencil, iMovie, and Garage Band. It involves lip-synced characers and a 6 part sound track of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on comb kazoo. Hope it flies. If I does, I'm posting it.

Enjoy the two weeks vacation fellow Parkland people!

Onward and Upward

2009-08-03T10:08:00.002-05:00

Last week of summer class. I can't even tell you the relief. Fall class starts on the 24th, and with it a whole new set of worries, but for two weeks I'll have my freedom. What do I plan to do? Maybe catch up with friends, see a movie or two, sew a bunny rabbit for my co-worker's baby, and write, and draw, and write some more. I think that's all I have time for actually.

So as for this blog... well it just so happens blogging is fun, even if no one is reading. But for the sake of those who are, I think I'll keep posting here, though I am so changing the title. How does "EY Productions" sound? Or, oh! I know! "Penguins With Jet Packs"!

Anywho. Onward and upward...

Paying Off

2009-07-31T11:28:00.002-05:00

This class has been frustrating, I'm not going to lie. Being shoved into a box of grids, squares, and rules for everything really irritates me after a while. Yet through all the nerve hitting, graphic design class is really starting to pay off. Well maybe not pay per se... but it's handy. Like take this flier for instance. Mom asked me to make one up on Monday. I had it for her by Tuesday. Sure I spelled some things wrong (They really need to add some spell-check on Adobe products) but at least it worked. Now I realize how handy a vector drawing program really is.

My dad has been pestering me to use vector drawing programs for years. He's never going to let me here the end of it after this.

Flights of Fancy

2009-07-29T11:57:00.003-05:00

I admit it. I doodle in class. Usually it happens when I'm not interested in what's being said, which causing problems when the teacher says something in the middle of a review that is actually new information. I'm just ready for this summer semester to be over with. I wish I could have a vacation and just not have any deadlines for a while. Ah, but real life isn't like that.

To be like a bird, and fly where ever I wanted. Even if I was a big scraggly crow it would be heaven.

Chicken!

2009-07-27T08:54:00.002-05:00

I'm not entirely sure why I drew a chicken.

When reading a book, I often get an image in my head that just won't go away. Usually it has something to do with the cover art of the book, but sometimes it doesn't. Like when I was reading Pride & Prejudice I had the image of a peacock in my head, which wasn't unusual because a peacock was on the cover. I was just trying to attach a meaning to the cover art. Now I'm reading Les Meserables (spelled wrong I'm certain). For some bizzare reason I keep coming up with the image of a chicken. I think it's a warp of the peacock. Pride and Prejudice is about english high society, and Les Mes is about the struggles of the french lower class, so the pompus peacock turned into the humble chicken. (or maybe it's something to do with french hens...?)

Anyway, I did draw this entirely from memory. How'd I do?

Toby and Daniel

2009-07-20T11:22:00.003-05:00

I have a lot of different stories bouncing around in my head at any one time, maybe I've already mentioned that. One that I've been working on recently is called Nut Job. It's about a mouse named Toby who is a science major. He lands an internship with Dr. Pistachio Harve Vester (thus the title of the story). It turns out Dr. Vester is a bit of a mad scientist, and everything goes downhill for Toby from there. Toby's best friend is his roommate Daniel. Daniel is a graphic design major (yes this class has effected my story writing). Daniel is a little more confident than Toby. He doen't get freaked out about minor crazyness.

Happiness is Like a Box of Cookies

2009-07-15T08:14:00.002-05:00

One of my earliest childhood memories is eating Nilla Wafers at my grandparents house. Nilla Wafers and milk before bedtime. So good. I usually pass up simplistic cookies like that these days, but once you get me to eat one the memories come back. They are kind of addictive. I drew this picture the other day when I was munching a handful for lunch.

Happiness is like a box of cookies: It doesn't have to be complicated. It runs out eventually and we have to find a new box. We may even forget what it taste like at times. But for the brief time you have the cookies, they are so good.

Father and Son

2009-07-14T08:15:00.002-05:00

One of the things I find the most entertaining when writing stories is showing the passage of time. No Hi and Lois/Blondie/Bugs Bunny time loop for me. My characters change. They have childhoods, college memories, get married, have kids, grow old and play with their grandchildren. It's also interesting getting parents and children to look similar but different. The child has to be a combination of the two parents, or more often I have to work in reverse and create parents for an existing character, which is harder.

So the picture above is two 8-year-old ferrets, but they come from different time-zones. The one on the right is one of my adult characters Greg as he was as a child. The one on the left is his son Cody at the same age. Getting them to look related yet distinctly different was the fun part. The clothing helps.

Cell Phone in the Silent Zone

2009-07-10T10:46:00.002-05:00

I love the silent zone of the library. No distractions but the scratching of pencils. When I have peace and quiet, my brain can run at full speed. What takes me an hour in a noisy classroom takes me thirty minutes in the silent zone. It's so nice. Until of course someone's cell phone goes off.

From my experience, when a cell phone goes off in the silent zone it's like, I don't even know. Imagine a guy in a devil costume running down the center isle in the middle of a Sunday church service. There is nothing in the world that can stand out more. Then, who ever has the cell phone let's it ring loud and clear for three to four rings before picking it up and then--and I'm not being racist here, I am just stating an observation--half the time the person starts talking on the phone in some language besides English. In a normal conversation volume I might add. Normal conversation volume in the silent zone is almost as bad as a cell phone ringing in the silent zone. Maybe they need to translate the "quiet please" signs into mandarine chinese. Then again, the other half of the time it is an english speaker talking, so maybe people just need to stop and read. (Reading in a library, what a concept!)

So please, for the sake of the silent zone, if your cell phone goes off, catch it early, reject the call, go down stairs, then call them back. Us studious types would really appreciate it.

StarJumper

2009-07-07T08:37:00.002-05:00

You know you're an animation student when you have a trailer running through your head for a movie that doesn't even exist yet. This happened after working on a Graphic Design assignment involving making a title sequence. I'm relatively familiar with storyboards, so it was only a hop-skip off topic to sketch out a movie trailer. The story is one I call StarJumper. The characters Squiggles (a lizard from earth) and Dige (a dog-like space alien) are riding through the streets of an alien planet on the back of a horse-dinosaur thing called a rodeon. Even being blind doesn't stop Dige from being a back-seat driver.

Nagging Doubts

2009-07-07T08:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I tried to do an exercise involving goals. Bad idea. Goal setting has never worked for me. It's like being attacked by crows nagging me for being a bad student. My grades are consistent A's and B's, but I'm always fighting a battle between nagging self-doubts.

2009-07-03T09:02:00.002-05:00

Someone in class was wondering if organizational lines (the "skeleton" of a picture) could communicate motion. This is my example of organizational lines doing just that. I started this picture with only the two lines shown in heavy black marker, then drew the characters around them. Using organizational lines as character backbones is a fast way to make dynamic character interactions in cartooning and animation.

Da-dada-DA! Super Bunny!

2009-07-01T08:58:00.003-05:00

One of my coworkers at County Market is having a baby in October, so I thought I'd make a stuffed animal for the kid. I think it'll be green with a yellow poke-a-dot belly and blue feet and ear insides. I also think I'll add a cape held on with Velcro so it can be detached and used as a blanket. I'll have to see it in color first, but whatever happens, it's sure to be cute.

Blade in a video game

2009-06-29T10:11:00.002-05:00

I almost forgot about decorating the cover for my process book in Graphic Design. Almost. I remembered in time to start drawing thumbnail sketches for it. I think I'll do what looks like a level to an old Donkey Kong game (not that I'm into video games, I just think color on a black background looks cool). The game is filled with geometric and sharp cornered shapes and primary colors. The player, however, is a hamster in a ninja costume. I'm using several emphasis tricks for him. Though he's the same size as the other elements in the game, he's orange with a purple costume, and he's made mostly with organic shapes. This should make him stick out enough to establish him as the hero of the game. I'm planning on making this scene with paper cut outs on black gel pen paper.

Revelations 5:6

2009-06-25T09:36:00.003-05:00

The book of Revelations is filled with some pretty vivid imagery. One of the best described is the appearance of Jesus in the form of a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns representing the sevenfold spirit of God. I have never seen a depiction of this scene, so I've made an attempt at drawing it. Around him are two of the twelve elders that are described to be sitting around God's throne. The Bible also mentioned four creatures with bodies like animals found on earth but with eyes front and back, but I decided not to draw them. My imagination does have its limits.

Stress Mode

2009-06-23T08:29:00.003-05:00

It's funny, when I told others I was taking summer courses, their responses were usually, "Good luck. You'll need it." I kind of ignored them because I figured that summer courses couldn't be any worse than classes during any other time of the year. But that was because I have no sense of time. Now I'm in student stress mode, always having three things due within 24 hours it seems. Graphic design defiantly has me worried. I mean, at least for English class I know how to write a report. I hate writing research papers, but I can handle it. Design class however... like the dragon in the picture, I'm a little overwhelmed.

Bugs

2009-06-18T09:04:00.002-05:00

Most of what I draw consists of animals. I usually do vertebrates but I occasionally deviate from the normal. Maybe it's because I've been helping Mom with her garden, but I've been taking notice of bugs a lot more than usual.

Dragon on the brain

2009-06-18T09:01:00.003-05:00

I must admit, I'm a little worried about project 1. I'm not used to thinking in boxes and lines when drawing. I've got a few layout ideas down on paper, but I tend to get distracted...