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...

Evening Doodle...

Quick doodle last night of my "special someone"...

:)

Flash Drawing...

Work of the very talented, always goofy - Jared Chapman

A good buddy of mine is a phenomenal illustrator who uses flash for lots (if not most) of his drawing. I love his style and tried giving it a go yesterday and discovered that drawing in flash is...well...

Weird.

Coming from doing vector illustrating in Freehand (and not particularly enjoying that - pen tool, you are my nemesis!), it's just different. So, I asked him if he had any guidance and he did!

Eventually I wanna play with animating in flash. But for now, baby steps.

Carried Away

Check out this sweet little short coming out of Savannah College of Art and Design (I think I might know some folk from there). The film is a great example of strong concept, good design, nice animation and excellent execution. Nice work Zach. Wish you the best in your job hunt. I imagine it will be rather short;)

Google Reader...

I know I'm probably late to the party on this but I have a new favorite toy and its name is Google Reader. No longer do I have go to 33 1/2 sites every morning to see if there's updates. I go to one and can see all of the updates from news, blogs, articles, everything... Not only that, but I can share (plug) articles I like and they show up on the side of my blog here. Sweet! Google freakin' rocks - I now use them for my blog, email, maps, web photo albums for fam and friends, and now my rss aggregtor (Reader). How is it possible they don't charge for any of this? No, that's not a suggestion, Google.

Couple of days of doodles...

Been doodling a little at work while playblasting some stuff. Nothing too amazing, just feels good to get the drawing hand stretching a little. Lots of late nights at work lately, but it's coming down to the end of the project I'm working on so that's the way it goes. Most of these doodles were sketches for a drawing club that I've been wanting to get in on but me thinks this week I won't have time to do anything final really, ah well...

Adobe Updateage!

The new photoshop and other items on the adobe buffet have been updated. Some of the new features look pretty darn slick, the new pricing...not so much:(

Check it out!

Ratatastic!

Yet another weight on the scales of why Pixar is so freakin awesome...inspired design, fantastic animation, intelligent humor, perfect timing...le sigh....

Check out the images AND the trailer!

Useful Gardening info...

So yeah, I'm in to all kinds of stuff. Anywho, my friend posted a fun blog entry I can't specifically link to so I'll just reprint it here. Learned something new today. Thanks, Bean:)

Yesterday, I was trying to water the lawn, but there were all these bees and wasps flying around, so I was nervous, but I know that bees can smell fear and so I tried to NOT be nervous. Then I came inside and looked up wasp repellent and found the most useful piece of gardening data to date. Wasps and bees are allergic of mint. They are DEATHLY allergic to it. Birds can't smell it and it isn't harmful to them anyway, but mint kills wasps and bees. The author of the website I found recommended using mint extract to ward off the nasty creatures, but I had no mint extract no time to run to the store and purchase some. But they smell it and stay as far away as possible from it, so as to preserve their lives. Knowing this, I threw a mint candy into the garden and today -- NO WASPS OR BEES! Completely remarkable.

"Secret of Pixar Storytelling" Article

Good article on the fine craft of storytelling from the perspective of some of the best in the business.
If you wanna say "the best", you won't get an argument from me:)

elasti......IK!

My same buddy who pointed me on the script yesterday, dropped another in my lap today. This one looks sweet as well and I shall check it out as soons as I have a few minutes to spare.

ELASTIK is a suite of plug-in IK solvers for Maya. Delivering squash-and-stretch functionality at the touch of a button, ELASTIK makes it simple to create dynamic, versatile, and extensible rigs. elastikSolver

• Auto-stretch
• Adjustable smooth stretch
• Interactive elbow/knee manipulation
• Hyper extension

elastikSplineSolver

• Auto-stretch
• Dependable twist
• Curve sliding