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...

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!