Squirrel Skins for All!

Well, for one squirrel at least....


I got Mr. Squirrely's texture done and started needlessly playing with some mental ray subsurface scattering and ambient occlusion. I gave fur an attempt but it just takes too long and I don't wanna mess with it. So there.

Little more progress on the little Squirrel that could...

Pretty much all that's left is giving him a tongue and figuring how I'm gonna do a bushy tail. I'd prefer not to go the fur route...we'll see....

Chip off the old block...of polys...

Started blocking out Squirrely a couple of days ago and put some more time into him tonight in ole' Silo. That's not his real name, but it works for now. My modeling skills needed some exercise anyway while I wait on some crits from Bokser for my latest blocking on a shot.

I'm sleepy and it's midnight. That is all.

Something neat from an old teacher...

Larry Lauria was my first traditional animation teacher at SCAD and grounded me in the basics. He's just releasing a new set of classes partnering with Digicel Flipbook (which still finds a place on my desktop). It looks like the basis of the Introduction to Animation I had with him back in the day and it was a great class then. Check it out if it floats your boat (not too pricey either).

Squirrels...

....I like them. :)

Flash drawing with substance...

Dan Paladin (what a sweet name, eh?) is an amazing illustrator and animator for that matter and I can't wait for Castle Crasher's to release. In the meantime here's some great workflow vid from him. Comic-Con 2008 Flag Design from The Behemoth on Vimeo.

Scripts, Podcasts and MacGuffins!

Been working some on Bokser's film and enjoying that. I can't wait to get past blocking and into animating after the assets are finaled. In the meantime, I think it's time to get some back to the basics exercises going.

• Updated jbExportQss - Got some insight from a poster on Cgtalk and adds some new abilities and squashed some bugs. Still available here. After this one, I think I'm done mel scripting for a while...my brain hurts.
• Andrew Stanton Podcast - A nice long interview with the director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo.
• Big MacGuffins - I had never heard this term but this was a great introduction to it and an insightful pose. My meager education in storytelling continues.
• Another Episode of Simon's Cat - I love these.
• Some amazing concepts - Check out the work of Harald Siepermann.

jbExportQSS

Quick selection sets are something I use a lot. And I got tired of setting the same ones up repeatedly for work and home projects. There's lots of scripts out there to make working with selection sets easier but I couldn't find one that exported them to use in other scenes, so I rolled up my sleeves...

Download here

TITLE: jbExportQSS
VERSION: 1.5
AUTHOR:Josh Burton
www.joshburton.com

DESCRIPTION:
Script to aid in the redundancy of setting up quick selection sets all the time
for the same assets but in different files. Exports a mel script that will set up
the identical quick selection set in another scene.

Exporting:
1) Select a quick selection sets in the outliner to be exported
2) Run script - it will export a mel file to recreate the sets

Importing:
1) Run the mel in your new file you want to set up the quick selection sets in
2) It will ask you want to add a prefix. If you're using a referenced asset
put in the prefix. If not, leave it blank:)

Features:
1) Checks for referencing data and removes it in the exported selection set
2) Can do multiple selection sets at once
3) Will account for prefixes on import if desired
4) Reports if set members aren't found in imported sets

Thanks:
To David Bokser for answering my many questions and Scott Englert for my picking apart some of his scripts

History
v1.5 - July 14, 2008 - Added the ability to export multiple sets at once into a single mel file, making importing easier. Also,
little quick selection window doesnt' pop up any more due to a flag on the "sets" command I hadn't known about. Several bug fixes
as well
v1.0 - July 3, 2008 - Initial realease

Bolt Trailer!

Not sure what to think yet, but it's looking promising. Some of the animation looks great and I dig the little hamster (giving me some inspiration for a character I've been thinking about). Part of my still prefers the old character design (aka American Dog) by Chris Sanders, but it looks like the story has gone through several re-evolutions since then... New link, embed link was removed. Thanks Ale!

Keane, Koch and... K..adobe?

• Glen Keane is my hero - The title has little to do with this vid, but just thought you should know. Watch it anyway - great stuff. A buddy at work pointed it out. It's Glen talking about Ollie -
• Another great animation blog - Kevin Koch has some great experience working in both traditional and cg animation. He also has a great animation blog. Thanks to Kyle for my finding it.
• More flash goodness - Here's a great little piece done for some sort of Adobe competition. The animation in particular is a good example of seemingly simple design handled exceptionally well. Oh, and here's some behind the scenes stuff on it.

Out of this world pictures...

...get it? :)

Here are some absolutely amazing pictures of and from our little sister planet- Check em out!

Pixar and Snipers!

• Not sure how long this one will last on the net, so enjoy it while you can. Fantastic animation there - the texture of the swift against the still is magical. Can't wait to see the whole thing!
• Here comes the sniper - yet another fantastic little shot into the life of a character of the insanely popular Team Fortress by Valve.

He can write too!?

Buy it if you like

"Oh, yes, the people of Skree were quite free, as long as they were in their homes by midnight. And as long as they bore no weapons, and they didn't complain when their fellow Skreeans were occasionally taken away across the sea, never to be seen again. But other than the cruel Fangs and the constant threat of death and torture, there wasn't much to fear in Skree." -excerpt from above book:)

So Andrew Peterson is one of my favorite musicians mainly cause I think his lyrics are fantastic. So much so that I've quoted them more than once in my blog here. Couple of weeks ago I was looking to see if his new album was out yet and it was not, but my search uncovered a book he'd written. So, I went on Amazon and took a look and it got some pretty good reviews so I ordered it.

And consumed it.

It was a fantastic tale for the young and young at heart. Witty, humorous and with more than a twist or two along they road- A wacky ex-pirate grandfather, dangerous Toothy Cows, the Fangs of Dang, Peet the Sock Man and three kids bound for mischief. I was impressed on all fronts and can't wait for the next installment.

My nephews will be getting a copy.

And, my friends over at Portland Studios did the art and cover design for it. Nice job, guys:)

Some Great Video Game Cinemas...

One of my favorite series of games is the Oddworld series. Fantastic art, comedic, good gameplay. The last outing in the series, Stranger's Wrath, had some particularly beautiful cinemas. I wouldn't mind playing through it again but I don't have my original Xbox anymore and its sadly not on the backwards compatibility list for the 360. You lose a little context just watching them back to back but you can surely appreciate the cinematography and design seeing them. Don't watch them if you might get a chance to play through it as you don't wanna ruin the surprise.



I hear they're working on a game again and I can't wait to see what they brew up. The First 10 Years Art of book has a special place in my collection.

Grats Scott!

A buddy of mine from college, Scott Spencer, apparently wrote a book on Zbrush. He's a gifted sculptor and instructor and I imagine it's a good book so give it a look:)

Master Classes and 2d Animation...

• Richard Williams Master Class - This is the guy that wrote the animation textbook that most animators, that I know of at least, cut their teeth on. Turns out he's releasing a DVD masterclass that looks to be pretty amazing. When I first saw the price, I gasped a little. Then I thought about how I'd thought about Animation Mentor and how little traditional animation training I actually got at college (2 classes). Thinking about what those cost put the price into perspective. Listening to The Animation Podcast and hearing how all of these animation greats trained under greats of their own days makes one yearn for those days. I do believe that Animation Mentor is trying to capture some of that magic again but I'm thinking a seminar that I can watch repeatedly might be a better investment. That's not to knock Animation Mentor - I think it's a great program and I wish it had been around when I was starting out. However trying to work it in with a full time job, home life and working on short films in the spare time doesn't leave a whole lot of extra.
• Kung - Fu Panda - Here's a sweet traditional animation credits sequence for it. Ben's name is in there too! No I haven't seen the movie yet. I was in Arkansas last weekend hanging with my wife's fam. However, we're gonna catch it this weekend and I'm super excited. Gonna push Wall-E till next week or so for the crowds to thin a bit.
• Art of Books - Picked up The Art of Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E. Can't wait to dig into them but holding off until I see the movies...alas....
• Irma's Car - Nice bit of work combining 2d and 3d by Crew 972 out of Tel Aviv.
• Great bit of 2d animation - A great take on the 11 second club by Ivan Oviedo. He's got great other stuff too, check him out. CATS FINISH from ivan oviedo on Vimeo.

Cool little short made with open source cg software...

Not bad at all. Nice lighting, impressive fur (especially for free stuff). Take a look at what some folks did with Blender. Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

This one's for Matt...

Man, I keep getting called out by my friends. Gotta work on being more on top of things. And speaking of things... Things are going well, been adjusting to working from home which can be a challenge. I have to say I miss working with folk face to face. For now, this will be just fine. Mainly working on The Wheelman now for work which is coming along well and the short film project is a lot of fun in what spare time I can carve out. Need to shoot some video reference of a "flowery dance" as Dave called it. Worked on a little number this weekend and need to get his approval before spending time in the computer. Been trying to plan shots better to work most efficiently with the little animating time I have. Houston is warming up as is the box office - ton of promising movies coming out. The soonest being Iron Man which I'm hoping to catch in the next week. What else...

• Orphaned Works Act - I've been reading about this bill for awhile on different sites with differing opinions. If you're an artist and don't know about it. Educate yourself.
• Mac jump - I'm pretty sure now that I'm gonna make the shift to macs for my personal work. I just can't seem to decide whether a desktop or a laptop. It doesn't help that I'm such a scrooge that the idea of spending that amount of money causes me to hide my wallet from myself - quite a feat mind you - made possible by my horrible memory.
• Work flow- Yet another informative animation work flow article.
• Animation notes - From a seminal with John Lasseter. Where have I heard that name before...it's on the tip of my renderman rendered mind...
• Wall-e Stuff! - Four minute featurette! Wow...
• Avatar is back - Again...they really need to be able to schedule their shows so they can show more than a couple of new episodes every few months...

Don't forget Mother's day, peeps!

For Ben and other Bits...

What's good from the net this week...

• Karate Kats...er...somethin - Having been called to the carpet by my buddy Ben....YES, I am excited about Kung Fu Panda. The art looks awesome and from what I've seen and read, it's shaping up quite nicely. I know I'm buying the artbook at least. :)
• Animation Workflow - Seeing how other animators work is a great way to keep growing as an animator. Here are some fantastic insightful reads:
• Mike Walling Workflow - Animator at Bluesky and worked on Horton (which had some fantastic
• Cameron Fielding's Dinosaurs aren't nice Workflow - Animator at Propaganda Games on workflow for some sweet human vs dinosaur animation
• Castle Crashers is still very much going to be Awesome - There's a blog to chronicle its awesomeness and the art is beautiful. And speaking of workflow... Marsh Land Construction from The Behemoth on Vimeo.
• The Batman Animation Law - Dictates that Batman in pretty much any animated form will rock. I'm definitely looking forward to this incarnation. I will say the original animated series from the mid 90's is still my favorite and I think the Justice League version lost some cool factor (way too big of ears...)
• Some GREAT Disney Art - LINK

Major Changes and TOONs!

Lots of stuff been going on. Got married to an amazing woman, a bit of snowboarding and snow shoeing in Vail, getting set up to work from home via VPN AND I ate a huge turkey leg at a rodeo last night! Oh, and chuck wagon races rock. Lots of great animations burning up the internets lately:

• New Wall-E trailer. This film looks better every time I see a trailer. I cannot wait for it to come out. Watch it!
• Horton Hears a Who is coming out to play this weekend and I'm going! Hope the who is fun. Thanks to Ray for the link to this vid.
• Cat Shorts - Simple design, brilliantly executed, especially humorous for anyone who's ever had a cat. And there's another!

Gallerific Update

Found a cool little flash content management system for images and vids. So I updated the Gallerific section of my site. Added a bunch of Potter concept images and all the boards as well which I don't know if if I've put up before come to think of it. It's HIGHLY customizable. Neato.

Can't wait to play with the vid feature once I have some time to export some movies to put in there. It'll have to wait till after the wedding/move/vacation.

Gotta run and get an oil change before work. Lata!

Testing a new Autorigging system...

A classical pose...for a troll...?

Note - This'll prolly be the last update on Olaf for a bit. Some major forks in the road are quickly approaching - 1) I'm getting married in a couple of weeks , 2) Moving to Houston, 3) Transitioning to a freelance/contractor from being an employee so it's gonna be a "wee" crazy. Crazy good that is!

I've been playing with John Doublestein's autorigging system the last two nights and I have to say it's pretty awesome. John works with my buddy Dave and we're using his rig for Dave's film. I hadn't realized a bunch of the neat little features workin so far on the film. He's got some great little right click menus that get built when you rig a character that snap between fk and ik.

You can play with the rig on a character by downloading the Andy Rig on that same page. Some neat stuff I noticed on that version that aren't in the autorigger that I'm planning on implementing to Olaf:

• Squash and stretch through the spine using scale. Prolly will do that in other places too
• An extra curl on the hand that allows that pinky and ring finger base bones in the hand bend for a proper fist.
  

Couple of things I noticed with the rig:

• Some of the systems don't work properly in Maya 2008 - namely the right click menu
• Speaking of Maya 2008, the new smooth skin weights feature is awesome. I saw it in a Austin 3d user group meeting a couple months back and had been dying to play with it.
  
• Joint placement and orientation is critical but this matters regardless of what rig you're using. Having the ability to quickly try out joint placement by quickly adding an arm rig and a default skinning is a great boon to the work flow.
• That workflow allowed me to identify problem areas - I updated Olaf's tail and made major adjustments to the hands
  

What's next for Olaf?

• Facial Rig - This is where I wanna spend some time over the next...well while...got a bunch of things I wanna try. I'm planning on blogging that process pretty well so tune back in if you're interested.
  
• Tail Rig - at some point I'll have to rig his tail, but it'll be a bit
• Animation - That's really the whole point....:)
  

Also....
Fingers are a pain in the rear to model well so that the proportions work to "roll the finger" on itself. If anyone knows a good tutorial or book on the subject, by all means let me know.

This week in fantastic animationy goodness...

• Wall-E Spot - much of it animated by the ever talented Victor Navone.
• George Grows - A fantastic walking cycle short. Watch it.

Pivot points...

• "Locating Your Center" - No this isn't a philosophical rant. Having such a hard time keeping my own in check hardly would afford me a seat of authority on that matter. Pivot points matter in more than life changes; they have a good deal to do with proper rigging. Some examples might be wheels, orbs and the like. If you start spinning one in 3d and it's pivot point isn't dead center you're gonna get wobble. Like a flat tire.....more on that in my next post.
  
  Today I was rigging a car and for reasons unbenonced to me, the joint for the steering wheel had a pivot that didn't align with the tilt of the wheel. For various reasons I create a separate skeletal hierarchy for the rig and bake the animation down to the skinned hierarchy. Not having the luxury to fix the underlying issue I was looking for a good method to find the exact orientation of a pivot that would allow that wheel to spin properly on the steering column.
  
  To do so, I wanted a script that would find a center pivot based on a selection of verts and place a locator there so that I might snap things to it. I don't like reinventing the wheel, so my first stop was highend3d where a quick search revealed a handy script that did just what I was looking for.
  
  With that in hand, it was as easy as finding the center of two edge loops worth of verts snapping a couple of joints and reorienting the joint to the correct orientation.
  

Quick example with some dummy geometry....

Good edge loops and this little script have aiding the placing of Olaf's finger bones quite nicely.

If you know a faster way of accomplishing the same, by all means let me know.

• Rig for Olaf - I think I'm gonna give John's tools a try for the body. He works with my buddy Dave (speaking of, looks like he has a new site in progress) and we're using the rig on Dave's film. It's pretty darn good.
  

A Deflated Day...

In the grand tradition of lessons at my expense, yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. It started as a beautiful Austin day - slightly overcast and mid 60's. Great day for a bike ride. So I went out to grab my bike from the patio to find the back tire was empty. I rode about a month ago and found this puzzling. However not enough so to not air up my tire and call it good to go. I headed out into the glorious day. After a bit, the riding got tougher than normal. I hadn't ridden in a while so chalked it up to my wussyness. When I was about 8 or 9 miles out and was going down this hill on some trails at a park and something just really felt wrong. So, I hopped off my bike and took a look. My back tire was 3/4 flat. I had forgotten an extra tube. My bike pump. Or my phone to call a friend. Needless to say, I was quite pleased with myself. Jolly even. I asked around the parking lot for a few to see if anyone had a pump to no avail. There was a gas station a 1/4 mile away, but their air pump was out of service. Bracing myself for an afternoon of walking I set out. A couple miles down the road a kind employee of Apple was kind enough to stop and give me a lift. Apparently they have a call center here in town and it's literally across the road from my apartments. Thanks Don for the saved time. That's one more notch on my list of why I am probably gonna make the switch. Oh, I washed my wallet too. :)

Olaf is approved for Rigging...

Can you believe how different this looks from the last?

Heard back from Cory this morning and Olaf has been approved for a dose of skelegro. The main difference from the last one is a head shrinkage surgery that Olaf came marching through like a champ. I actually did a first pass on modeling his teeth last night. Don't they look great!?

Hey, if you don't have X-ray vision don't blame me.

Been working some renders for a side project at night which detracted me from much Olaf progress. It's been a fun little project. Hope to wrap that up tonight.

Waiting on a rig from Dave to get started on my next shot for his film. Can't wait till he announces it and I can stop referring to it as "Dave's film" or "Dave's Project." Get on it, Dave!

"1.#QO" - the value of DOOM!

Working in games and getting things to play nice in a game engine can be "fun." By fun I mean hey-kid's-let's-play-rake-the-leaves-on-a-windy-day kinda fun. This week's mind bender had to do with a crash every time I tried to do a pretty basic function of bringing in animation. What's especially endearing is not having error messages to have any idea what happened. So you start trying things. Fast forward multiple hours later and it turns out my Maya sim mentioned several previous posts past had sent an object into a quantum singularity known with translation and rotation values of "1.#QO." Now, I can't really fault Unreal for not knowing what to do with that. I didn't have a clue what to make of it either. Frankly I'm impressed Maya can still chug along will no mention of an apparent black hole in a scene. A couple of curves deleted later and things went swimmingly. Weird. Note - A quick google search informed me that this is the default value Visual C++ uses when a division by zero occurs.

Olaf, Come FORTH!

So, I finally got off my keyster, put down the video games and books and am working on Olaf again.

One of the things that has frustrated me personally so much in CG is that it takes sooooooooo long to get a fully realized character ready to animate on. Lately I've been looking at quite a few available rigs on which to animate on. There's some great ones out there, but I've been wanting to animate Olaf for quite some time AND I need to get some reel stuff ready. As animation is what I wanna work on right now and not cloth dynamics nor the fat jiggle settings for the rear end of a troll, I came up with a temp idea on Olaf - throw a low res animation body on him, rig up his face, and voila!

I really don't know why I didn't think of this before. It makes a lot of sense, especially in cg where proportion of the arms, fingers and all are so vital. Dumb it way down on a simple structure to see if it's working.

When I started this time, I made some mods to the proportions to make him a little closer to the young and spry versions of the character my buddy drew. I'll see what he says and go from there.

Side note - it's amazing how good one feels when doing those things which one is passionate about...almost like putting high octane in a sports car. Like we're doing something we're made for. Not that I consider myself a sports car...more like a Civic. LX, not EX - I'm not that flashy.

jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute

Last fall I wrote this script cause I was sick and tired of having to manually filter the graph editor with the curves I wanted to edit when tweaking set driven keys on a facial rig. It was useful for me, maybe it will be for you. Eventually I'll add a section of the site for the few scripts I write. And cause I love icons....

/*
TITLE: jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute
VERSION: 1.0
AUTHOR:Josh Burton
DATE: October 26, 2007

DESCRIPTION:
Script for use with setting up set driven key poses. Sometimes you wanna see all the curves
of one attribute in the graph editor and not manually select them.

HOW TO USE:
1. Select an attribute
2. Run script

LIMITATIONS:
- Select an attribute with set driven keys connected

HISTORY:
10.26.07 - BIRTH!
*/

global proc jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute() {
global string $gChannelBoxName;
string $selected[] = `ls -sl`;
string $selAttr[] = `channelBox -q -sma $gChannelBoxName`;
string $fullAttr = $selected[0] + "." + $selAttr[0];
select `listConnections -p true $fullAttr`;
}
jbGraphSetDrivenAttribute;
GraphEditor;

Happy New Year!

It's a new year and I accomplished about 2 of my resolutions from last year. Let's see, what did I do this year? Hmm...

• Got engaged to my amazing fiance
  
• Taught a semester of college
  
• Finished working on 3 games at work (Stranglehold, Blacksite, and the next Ballers)
• Learned to write some mel scripts
  
• Grew my beard back
• Read a copious amount of books
• Visited Yosemite
• Moved to Austin
  

I guess that's not too shabby. I've got some resolutions for this year, but I'm not writing them on my blog so I can't see them a year from now glaring at me having not accomplished them.

What else is going on...

• Glumpers - Amazing sound, beautiful animation. Just watch it.
  
  
• Project No Name. Still chugging along on my buddy Dave's film. I'm really excited to be working on full body stuff again. I've blocked a couple of scenes and am looking forward to digging in. I think it's gonna be a great piece.
  
• Share the Potion! - Check out an Animated short/commercial by my buddy Cory.
• Dynamics - I hate thee. I've been working on some dynamics at work and it's about to eat my lunch. I hear Maya's rigid bodies aren't well suited for what I'm making them do, but I don't have any other options at present. A work flow of move this, run 5 minute simulation, move that, 5 minute simulation isn't the most efficient. I'm sure there's better ways of working, but I did find this heartening read that let me know even the big budget movie guys have the same frustrations.

Today in Animation goodness

Who wouldn't love this??

• I am inspired - This guy is absolutely amazing. Pocoyo is one of my favoritily (yes that is now a word) animated children's shows. I know I've posted it before. It's my blog and I'll do it again if I please;)
  
• Yet another cool film from across the pond - Jungle Jail - I dig some of the cinematography choices. Watch it here
  
• I have finished Mass Effect - I shall be animating again. No more games for a while. On the game in particular, the combat takes a while to get used to. I had many hours in it before really understanding how best to use my abilities. The other party members aren't that great at combat, so bear in mind that playing as a mainly support class wouldn't be such a grand plan. Some elements get a little repetitive at times (i.e. the planet scouring game design). However, the story was fantastic and the world better realized that I thought it would be from early observations during the game's development. The auto generated facial runs the gamut from pretty good to just bad in sections. However, the idea of trying to hand key that much facial animation is laughable. That last hour and a half of it was one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while. I salute their efforts and eagerly look forward to what they have in store for the next chapter.
  

Merry Christmas!

This is my first Christmas card I've drawn (at least as an adult). I seem to recall drawing some with my grandmother way back when with foxes, rabbits and maybe a dragon around baby Jesus. I finished it a week or so ago and I'm waiting for the printed cards to come in the mail to send out. For those that care, the original sketch was done pencil on paper an the coloring was done all in Photoshop. It was a lot of fun doing it and I look forward to repeating the exercise next year.

Minor updates and more lessons in the life of Josh....

• Life Lessons - "That don't wash" - This morning I threw my laundry in the wash as I was heading out the door for work. Went home for lunch to throw them in the dryer and noticed something resting in the bottom of the wash as I was transferring the clothes. Apparently, cell phones don't like to be submerged in water. Who knew!? No, letting it dry didn't work. So I ordered a new phone (cheaper than the store - the guy at the store even told me as such. 2 points for honesty) but it won't be here till Monday or so. So, if I know you and you try calling, that's why I don't answer.
• An actual site update! - Yeah, I finally got around to updating my age and location, and adding some stuff on my most recent "published" game project at work - Blacksite: Area 51. It ships next week and a new demo will be on live in a couple of weeks. Check it out:)
• Started working on a new project - I'm very excited to be working on another of my good friend David Bokser's Personal Film Project. Looking forward to seeing it continue to take form. I first read the script a long time back and I'm pumped he's in production. AND it means I get to do some full body hand key animation. YAY!
• Recent games -
• Jade Empire - Fantastic ride. Great story, fun combat, though I'd have preferred a few more styles. Ready for some Mass Effect now!
• Halo 3 - Ton of fun playing with my cousins, brother and friends online. Team based combat is just a ton of fun. Discovered I have an odd propensity to finish people off with a melee attack rather than shooting them. Seriously, it's my highest killing weapon - at one point doubling any other weapon. Who needs guns?
• Orange Box - Portal is one of the best games I've played. Period. Episode one and Two were good, Two was better than One but they were both great. Team Fortress 2 has some of the best character animation and design I've seen in a game. However, I think I'd prefer to play it on the PC.

It's that time...

Liz and I carved some pumpkins this weekend. The intricate one is hers and the two characters are mine. It was a lot of fun. However, pumpkin innards do very funky things to my skin. It was like I had scales or something....strange...

Bend yourself!

My buddy Steve challenged some of us guys at work to draw Avatar-portrait fan art of ourselves. I'm a geek and I accepted the gauntlet. Besides I gotta get my drawing muscles stretched for making Liz and I's Christmas card. My grandma used to draw hers and I've decided to continue the tradition. It was a quick one, but I had fun

Waterbending and I'd play with otters all day long...:)

Matt, to answer your question. Yes, it is all that. Track down the Blind Bandit episode and I'm confident you'll be sold;)

Books Beautified by Buddies

So my friends at Portland have once again let loose their talent infused digital brushes. First comes a book illustrated by Justin Gerard.


Not to be outdone, Cory has one already out written (and sung) by one of my absolute favorite musicians - the infamously talented Andrew Peterson. If my nephews were on the internet, they'd know one of their presents.


What else is new.....hmmm...

• 5k's - I'm running a 5k tomorrow with my beautiful fiance in Houston. Should be fun. Hopefully the Houston humidity takes a day off...
  
• It's Fall - The Office, Heroes and Avatar are back...nough said...:)
  
• Halo 3 - Lots of fun fraggin it up with my cousins, brother and buddies from Chitown

That is all.

Lovely little film...

...about things you might think about at work when there's nothing to do. Kinda like now. For me. Some of the best student animation I've seen has come out of this Gobelins (an animation school in France) and this piece only goes to uphold that idea.

Ryan...

I've been wanting to see this film for years...thanks to my buddy Steve for stumbling upon it. I've never seen anything like it...what an amazing visualization of "seeing" ourselves...

Ryan Uploaded by superchomeur

More game animation goodness...

And if you can't wait for this to launch on the 360 next month. You could always get in on the beta...:) I'm going to try to be strong...

Portland Studios releases some more fantastic shirts...

My buddies over at Portland are some fantastic artists and they just opened their new store. I already had two of their shirts from their last release a while back in my closet and three more will be joining their brethren shortly. Buy one and support some talented artists (and nice folk to boot) :)

Another Round of TF Goodness!

I can't wait to see this game when it's done! If the animation carries over in game play as well as it does in the cut scenes it's going to be phenomenal. Great stuff!

Some more sweet flash animation...(this time with swords!)

I ran across these three videos today. They comprise the pre-story behind Heavenly Sword (a game coming out for the PS3 soon). There may be more of them coming, I'm not sure. I have to say the art direction of the actual game looks run-of-the-mill compared to this. Maybe I'm just tired of "realistic" representation. How amazing would a game with this look be? Awesome indeed. At least it would be amazing looking...:)

Stranglehold Demo is up on XBox Live!

(Dislaimer - VERY violent video, lots of blood and stuff, if you're squimish...move along) So, the Stranglehold demo released last night on XBOX live. IGN did a quick write up on it and the comments I've been seeing for the most part show people enjoying it. If you're into shooting stuff up, give it a look. I hadn't really seen the multiplayer in a very long time. Prolly a year ago. It's actually looking pretty fun.

Radomlings...

• FANTASTIC "simple" animation - I love this thing. Makes me wanna get back to "traditional" animation even more.
• Great animation blogs - I've stumbled across some great animation relate blogs recently I need to add to the side of my site, in the meantime, here's some of them:
• Animation Treasures
• Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner
• The Cartoon Cave
• The Art of Glen Keane
• Free Dog Rig to good home - The guy who did package man (a rig I cut some animation teeth on) just released a free dog rig. One of the guy's blogs I follow did a test animation with it along with a little write up on it. Fun stuff!
• Great Dialogue - Keith Lango puts better into words much of what I've been thinking about the last year along with some great insights - part 1, part 2, part 3.

And another one...and another one...

...Yes, another one bites the dust. My friends who know my history with computers can be amazed - Josh has had yet another hard drive die on him. I really don't know how I do it. :(

New things, new days...

• New(ish) job - Monday was my first day in Midway Austin. Things are going well and most importantly, my one way commute has gone from 38 miles to a fraction of that - 3.8miles. My small part toward driving less and stopping the world from blowing up because of mankind (see Al Gore's film for more information on that).
• Apartment living - Finding an apartment in a new place can be an absolute nightmare especially if you've never been to a town and have a day and a half in which to find one. I used a service called apartmentsnow.com which cost me nothing and I was very happy with. However, my new landlords are not starting off with a very good record. First of all, when I was looking here and they showed me the model, it looked great - nice new appliances, great color and great layout. What I didn't know and I discovered my first night here was that there is a rail line running directly behind the complex (far from the rental office or model I saw). My apartment just so happens to be about the closest in the whole complex to said railroad. Imagine my delight when trying to sleep. I reckon I'll get used to it. Sure will help me find a new place with my 6 month lease is up. Secondly, I got in a week ago Monday, dropped off the stuff from my car and went to the grocery store and got some milk and some Frosted Mini Wheats. My stuff wasn't to come until this past Saturday so on Tuesday I headed to Houston to hang out with my girlfriend. When I got back on Saturday and was waiting for the movers, I noticed some ants on the counter. I made a note of it and went down the rental office to request them have someone come out. I only thought it was a few ants and didn't think much of it. Further investigation found that the ants had quite a little conga line going. Right to my Frosted Mini Wheats. Flustered, I started calling the rental office as obviously the apartment had not been treated before I moved in. Wow. I have to hand it to them - they know how to give bad service. The first time I called and said that it needed to be dealt with that day as I couldn't unpack or buy any food till that ant problem was fixed. They said there was nothing at all they could do as the pest people only came on Friday. I explained that they could call their manager and said I expected to be called back with an answer in the next couple of hours. Nothing. I tried calling and I heard the line pick up, background chatter and noise, and then be hung up on. Confused, I tried again, same reaction (with new background noise). Now I've never really had any company I'm paying for service do that, so I was three parts surprised and one part irritated. Finally the phone went to an answering service which I left a message with them and was called back a little later. The girl said the same thing. My response was that either they were going to send someone out or I was going to buy the stuff to do it myself. Guess who won that one, eh? A trip to Lowes later, my ants are gone. I will say this - I didn't know they had it, but if you Google an apartment complex, you can see comments from tenants. If only I had known. Ah well, builds character, right?
• Josh the Car Body Banger! - In other news, I fixed my bumper. When I was in Houston last week, I grabbed a rubber mallet from my girlfriend's tool box and banged that puppy right out. Doesn't look too shabby, either. Well, actually, that's exactly what it looks like....:)

Oh the places you go...

Wow, it's been a busy, well, month or so.

• Moving to Austin - the biggest current news is I'm moving to Austin. I transferred with my company down to our Austin Studio and am very excited about it. It's a lot closer to family and my significant other so, it's good all around. I finished up my work on Stranglehold and am hopping on a couple of other projects at work so that should keep me busy. Hopefully I'll have a bit of time to do some personal work as well:)
  
  Last week I was in town finding a place to live and found a new favorite restaurant - Rudy's. I'll be visiting there often. If you go and they ask if you've been there before, tell them, "No, I haven't." It's well worth it.
  
  Trust me.
  
  Disclaimer - if they don't do something special, maybe it was something they only do every now and then...:)
  
  
• Arkansas - Three weeks ago I was in Arkansas for my girlfriend's family reunion of sorts. We had a lot of fun hiking, meeting/hanging with her family and checking out the sweet cave art. The name "bob" painted on the rock surface wasn't nearly as impressive as the Native American's work. I also learned that I suck (and I mean SUCK) at the card game "Mafia." It involves being sneaky and lying with a straight face if you're the Mafia so you can "kill" people between rounds and not get killed off by the townsfolk. The one time I was something other that a meager townsfolk and got opportunity to try my hand as a something else it didn't last too long. After the FIRST round, my girlfriend looks me in the face and somehow "sees" something amiss. She says, "You're the mafia, aren't you?" I muster my best lying face and tell her of course I'm not. Her response was to promptly get the rest of the townsfolk to agree to my early demise. The nerve...
  
  She was right of course, but still....:)
  
  
  Waited for a bit on this one:)
  
  

• Fairytale land (also known as Yosemite) - last week I was in Yosemite for a family vacation and it was amazing. Pictures do better than words.
  
  
  One of the falls from Glacier Point
  
  
  
  Half Dome at Sunset from Glacier Point
  
  Yosemite Valley
  
  Me and a tree nowhere near as big as the biggest we saw
  
  
• Torrential Downpours - Yesterday, I got back from my week of vacation, apartment hunting and what not. An hour after I got to work a small portion of Lake Michigan, which had miraculously enough been lifted in the air over Chicago, decided to fall. I heard there was a sight to see in the other building and so ran between buildings through 4 inches of water and was amazed by this view:
  
  
  Midway Geyser
  
  
• Not very nice people - I got out to my car this morning and discovered that in my absence, someone had decided to so lovingly hit my car with their own - crumpling my rear right bumper. The apartment complex doesn't keep records well enough to know who might have a white car that could have done it and the police won't do anything for non injury related accidents taking place in private parking lots, so....guess I'll be heading to the junkyard to find me a new bumper since it's not worth it to pay the deductible. You'd think someone would leave a note....you'd think that...
  

Gonna have some moving time next week, hope to get some doodling and reading done:)

George Lucas in Love...

Been a little bit and there's TONS going on, but as there's so much going on, I really don't have time to tell it. Life is good, very good. And busy...:) In the meantime, enjoy this fun little film (if you're a Star Wars fan). Edit - I got the link from a blog a peruse from time to time.

Some fantastic game animation...

Ah....yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaah....

Been busy...

I've not posted in a while and, alas, I have no drawings to post at present. Doesn't mean I haven't been drawing though. Just that there's these little NDA things. I post em when I can:)

Life has been trucking along quite nicely. Work is busy trying to finish up the project and every other weekend have been splendid little breaks seeing a particular person/special someone/whatever non-specific term you'd care to think of for the one who reminds you what figurative "spring time" is about...:)

This weekend was another adventure. Saturday we headed downtown to see some of Chicago, hit the Navy Pier, walked Michigan Ave, saw the giant reflective bean at Millennium park and saw a fantastic exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago - Cezanne to Picasso. It was an amazing collection with more than a few paintings of their patron (one Ambroise Vollard) whose face and name I think I'll remember for some time - having seen it painted and drawn umpteen times. Here's a couple of them so you might see a taste of Mr. Vollard's portraiture. Pretty much every famous artist of the Nabis circles painted him many...many...times.

Cezanne

Picasso

Sunday, we drove to Michigan to hear an author we both rather enjoy who has a church in Grand Rapids. Google maps had said the trip would take three and a half hours or so. With that in mind, we left at 6:45am to make sure we'd get there in time. So we roll in about 9:30am wishing we'd left a little later as we were now, we though, a bit early. We pulled into the parking lot and I asked the parking attendant guy if we were in the right place as they don't use signs. I also asked if the service was still at 11. He said it was and it is and I began to pull out of the parking lot so we could drive around a little while we waited. He came trotting over and motioned for me to roll down the window and asked, "You do know it's eastern time here, right?"

"Oh."

It hadn't even dawned on me that we could be changing time zones. So, being right on time, we parked and went in. It was a good service and Mr. Bell is a very talented orator.

After that and a trip to Pizza Hut for lunch, we headed on down the road. With a bit of time to spare, we explored a little and wound up at Holland State Park laying on a lake side on a beautiful day. Great way to whittle away a couple of hours.

Took her back to the airport and headed home to get some much needed shuteye. Monday morning finds me back at work, nose to the grind and counting the days once more.

11.

:)

Talk about your interesting jobs...

I've never heard nor imagined such a job a this. Be thankful for cubicles :)

French Filmtastic..ness...

Well worth the viewing. The style reminds me of Team Fortress 2 (which I'm very much looking forward to checking out...whenever it comes out). I'd love to animate those guys :)

Yet another...

if you can find the thread of continuity...please let me know:)

Late night doodle...

Quick flash self portraiture working late and waiting for my carpoolin-pal:)

Squirrelly...

A little flash doodle

Doodles from the blue...

Been swamped with work in crunch mode. However, last weekend I was in Houston...it was another wonderful time. Monday was wild, I woke up in Houston, was at work in Chicago by eleven and got home about eleven that night. That's a full day. The short summary of the weekend is that it was fantastic. The long of it happens to be more than I have time to tell. So for now these airport sketches will have to do :)

Another fantastic weekend...

Life is good.

Very.

It's been a bit crazy the past few weeks putting in long hours trying to finish up the project I'm on at work. So it's especially nice having weekends like this one.

This weekend, my special someone was in town. Friday, she got in and we headed to Hot Doug's to get a couple of Chicago dogs and a small order of cheese fries which only Andre the Giant would have considered small. Quite tasty though. Then we headed to my office (Midway Games) so she could meet a few of my friends at work and see what it's like in a game studio. I think she was most amazed by our impressive arsenal of Nerf Guns - a grand tradition began by the talented Mr. Vanoost I believe (who incidentally began Animation Mentor this week, check his progress on his page).

Much of the remainder of the weekend involved our first attempts at canning and producing the first batch of that which would be "canned." I'm not sure why it's called canning when it pretty much always entails using mason jars, but what do I know? Perhaps "jarring" has negative connotations...Anywho, we decided to make Apple Butter. So, in order to make said appley spread, our recipe called for the best batch of apple sauce we could get our hands on.

We decided to make our own.

A trip to whole foods found us with about nine pounds of apples (Pink lady, red delicious, golden delicious, and Fuji), a bottle of the best natural apple cider we could find (though the real stuff is out of season...next time), and a jar of raw honey (which I've rather taken a fancy to in cooking). We also picked up some pint sized mason jars from Jewel Osco as neither Whole Foods nor Linens and Things had them.

Friday night we sliced and cored our nine pounds of apples (sampled a few bites), stewed em and then mashed them into a chunky pot of apple sauce. After being cinnamon'd to taste we had our seven cups of apple sauce. We threw the rest of the ingredients in a pot and called it a night.

Next morning, after some tasty pancakes and a trip to the mall for some Easter shoes, our apple butter was done. We prepped our jars and canned it up according to the directions in copy of Ball's Blue book from my home canning kit. Close to nine pounds of apples condensed to 4 pints of applebutter and some change - that "change" sitting in some tupperware in my fridge and rapidly being depleted atop leftover whole wheat muffins we made Sunday mornin.

Looks nice, don't it? :)

The rest of the weekend was hangin' out, an introductory animation "lesson" (bouncing ball of course), making labels for our jars, going to the Easter service and then brunch at some friend's place. Sunday night, we got a wild hair and ran to the store to get some cup cake mix and made some devil's food cupcakes with vanilla icing which the guys at work enjoyed the bounty of come Monday mornin.

Early Monday mornin I dropped her off at the airport and got into work extra early with enough happy thoughts to fly to Neverland and back.

If they could get me to Houston, I'd be happier:)

New Surf's Up Trailer...

I want to see this. A lot. And that water looks amazing...