Bloggadocio

Scary Overweight Redneck (90 minutes)

2012-01-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

First Model Night speed zsketch of the new year... I'll be continuing to do these on the side from taking an online class, plus pick up a little gesture drawing to loosen up as I roll into starting the Realms Unreel project in mid-February. It's going to be an exciting 2012!

Last Week for Realms Unreel Kickstarter!

2012-01-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

We're so close to reaching our goal! Audrey and I started going over some initial sketches (see above) in starting to explore the main characters, and it's been great fun to play with early impressions of where they will go.

This is the *last week* of our Kickstarter effort to raise interest in a first run of the illustrated book, so if you'd like to be part of Realms Unreel now's the time to make a pledge! As a bonus, expect some very cool new gift additions to show up on the page in the next couple of days.

http://kck.st/vX58t4

Hope you'll consider supporting the project!

Halloween Costume

2012-01-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

A bit late posting this, but I thought it would be fun to share my first ever costume created with the help of 3D modeling software: Dark Helmet! The materials used were very inexpensive (mostly cardboard & duct tape with old black acrylic paint) and the whole thing was done on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning of Halloween weekend. Learned a LOT from the process and looking forward to a more refined surface texture on my next costume. My gal - persevering as I tested her limits of patience on a "last-minute" costume idea - even went as Princess Vespa with an industrial strength hair dryer!

Kickstarter for "Realms Unreel"!

2011-12-14T10:16:00.000-08:00

I recently agreed to illustrate a hardcover version of Audrey Auden's new book! Audrey and I have launched a Kickstarter project to fund the effort; With your support, it'll be produced next year. I'm excited to work with her and take on some larger-scope illustration/zbrush challenges!

Thanks to everyone who considers supporting the project - We hope you'll enjoy the book!
http://kck.st/vX58t4

Model Night ZSketch: Contemplative Pretty Alien

2011-12-09T14:18:00.001-08:00

Playing around a little with Dynamesh in this hour...

Modelnight ZSketch: Confused Anime Churchill

2011-12-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

Not quite as Churchill or Anime as I might like, but hey, it's showing up to practice...

IPhone Drawing

2011-11-20T18:19:00.001-08:00

Made this for my gal's birthday card (she's a big fan):

Modelnight ZSketch: Confident Overweight Superhero

2011-11-18T15:29:00.001-08:00

~90 minutes

IPhone Drawing

2011-11-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

Modelnight ZSketch: Angry Confused Lincoln

2011-11-11T14:01:00.001-08:00

LINCOLN DOES NOT APPROVE OF YOUR DEBATE PERFORMANCE. 90 minutes.

Modelnight ZSketch: "Evil Alien"

2011-11-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

A little rocky getting back into it after a week off... Not my best as it really needed an expression to sell, but it is what it is for the time given...

Model Night ZSketch: "Kick-ass Ninja Turtle"

2011-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

Ran ~90 minutes on this, pretty happy with the results but would have added posing / asymmetry and the headband slack if we had more time... Then again, the point is to focus on finding the character first!

Model Night ZSketch: Scary Villain

2011-10-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

Think this took a little longer, ~105 minutes. Didn't quite get to finish the design I had in mind but had some fun on this guy...

Quick ZSketch: "Glorous Grandma"

2011-10-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

~90 minutes

iphone sketching on BART

2011-10-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Trying to get back into the habit of doing these on the train... Makes the commute go by quick! Really liking the latest features on sketchbook mobile.

"Exhausted Italian" quick zsketch

2011-10-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

Wasn't so happy with my last result, so when this random topic came up I decided to come back like the Stallion... well, except for his hair, since I couldn't figure that part out yet. But it was fun!

Frankenstein ZSketch

2011-10-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Did this in about 80 minutes at Model Night, less the rough hair & stitches which I blocked in a few minutes after the buzzer while we were wrapping up.

Catwoman Sketch

2011-10-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Got here in about an hour and a half in tonight's speed session... so while it still needs work, it's at least attempting some new things.

Wile-E-Coyote quick sculpt

2011-10-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

This week's Modelnight sculpting challenge was "Looney Tunes". Was hoping to take it a little farther (asymmetric pose, some cleaner lines and fur) but had this at the buzzer.

ZBrush sketches

2011-09-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

A captain and a tribute to Stimpy, one of my old favorites. Each of these was done in about 1 1/2 hours for a Monday Model Night challenge at work, so they're lacking refinement but made for great fast-paced exercises.

Beginning ZBrush

2011-09-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been helping to organize a "Model Night" at work where modelers are free to let loose on friendly ~1-hour design challenges while learning some of the newer wave of software out there, like ZBrush, a 3D modeling tool that more closely resembles working with clay than polygons. After getting over the software's quirks I've really come to enjoy using it; here's an early result for a zombie pirate challenge (with maybe a hint of santa claus):

Quick Work & Life Update

2011-09-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

Haven't really posted what I've been up to at work in a while and I've noticed some confusion among my eight readers, so to clarify:

Way back before the Australia trip I was one of the first modelers to come onto Toy Story 3, where I headed up a lot of human rig development, as well as primary ownership of the models Andy and Andy's Mom.

After returning from Australia I tried a new role as Character Rig Lead on Cars 2. It was fun helping guide the team through doing such amazing work designing & modeling beautiful cars for the film, and I was fortunate enough to have done the primary modeling & development articulation for Francesco Bernoulli myself.

Since then, I've taken a huge trip to Spain & Italy, which was particularly enlightening as an opportunity to be introduced to the incredible sculpting work of Bernini. At work I did a very brief stint on Brave and I've now settled into an unnamed future project while starting to dig into newer 3D sculpting software like ZBrush. I've also been starting a new early wake-up sketching/creative hour routine, so I'll surely post some results from both those endeavors here in the coming months.

Hope that helps catch up all of you distant relatives & friends!

Birthday Card

2011-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to enjoy making my own cards - This image is from one I recently made for a relative in Sketchbook Pro.

Latest iphone drawng on BART

2011-08-16T10:36:00.001-07:00

Latest doodling on my iphone during BART commutes. I'm looking to change techniques up soon as I find the painting far more enjoyable than actual line drawing on an iphone.

Brithday Card

2011-05-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

Loving my cintiq... here's a birthday card I did for my sis in Sketchbook Pro:

iPhone Drawing: Shredder

2011-04-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

Liking the Pogo Stylus a lot... Here's this week's project, a homage to my favorite childhood cartoon villain done in Sketchbook Mobile over several BART commutes.

IPhone Drawings

2011-04-03T17:24:00.001-07:00

A robotic nod to a film favorite in Brushes, and my first try at a stylus in Sketchbook Mobile.

Still here...

2011-04-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a while but I'll be getting to this blog thing again every couple of weeks. Got myself a fun new toy from Wacom, on which this was my first drawing (done for my girlfriend on Valentine's Day, in Italian - Thanks Google Translator!)

ipod Finger Painting Doodles

2010-08-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

ipod sketching makes BART easier

2010-06-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

Loosely based on someone who walked onto the train daydreaming.

Last Day at Kirkwood

2010-05-23T22:56:00.001-07:00

Everyone's favorite snowboarder on closing day at Kirkwood inspires another ipod sketch on the BART. Sure I could be more intellectual, but drawing snowboarding bikini girls on the morning commute is so much better than coffee.

More iPod Sketchbook Mobile Drawings

2010-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

iPod sketching over the Great Plains...

2010-04-04T22:55:00.001-07:00

Flew out to Savannah, GA and Chapel Hill, NC this past week for some recruiting at SCAD and time catching up with my Sister at UNC. Feeling inspired by revisiting my old art school on the flight out, I decided to try taking my ipod sketching skills to the next level! This gal was made in Sketchbook Mobile for iPod Touch.

Trickle

2010-03-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

Glad to be starting a year where I should be able to pick back up some side projects again. I've moved across the Bay to San Francisco and in the morning BART commute I've started playing with Sketchbook & Brushes on an ipod Touch; above is a sample of some guy on my commute who seemed very much absorbed in his textbook. The format is kinda nice because "finger painting" kinda lends itself to drawing loosely and gesturally. Maybe I'll post more as I continue to play... Anyhow, good to be back!

First attempt at Contemporary Finger Painting

2009-12-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

Had a nice, quiet weekend up in the Sierras for Joey's birthday a few weeks back. With the down time in nature and an irresistible urge to scramble back at a computer of some sort, I decided to give the "Brushes" app on my iPod Touch a try on our cabin's back porch... Still getting used to the program, but it's fun to think that things like this can be done entirely on your phone!

Portrait Ecorche Final

2009-11-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

Here are some camera phone shots from my sculpt after the last day of class. While I know at least 3 things I'd like to change about the sculpt, I've learned a lot and I'm pretty happy with the in-class result, so this is as far as I'd like to take it. It was a great experience and I hope I can continue to be so productive after work!

Portrait Ecorche Days 6 & 7

2009-11-01T22:25:00.001-08:00

This past week we addressed remaining major flaws to our overall shapes and proportions (my ribcage shape got way off before!) and then had a fantastic live model in class for two days of observation. Spent a lot of time revising the portrait side with the model in class. Last day is tomorrow so this is getting pretty close!

Portrait Ecorche Days 4 & 5

2009-10-21T22:27:00.001-07:00

Day 5

Had a fairly good day catching up and pulling proportions together as we added facial muscles of the mouth and brows. Blocked out the shoulder areas; I'll try to take a pass at the ribcage and upper humerus/clavicle/acromion process before the next class.

Day 4

Had a bit of a rough day when I learned that the absence of caffeine makes my evenings much less productive. We added muscles of the neck and I started to carve out the back, but in a second lesson, I learned that the reductions needed for the shoulder and back bone-skin depth can easily be underestimated!

Portrait Ecorche with Andrew Cawrse

2009-10-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

Just when my dabbling in art on the side from work seemed to be slipping, I've been fortunate enough to have been enrolled in a fantastic anatomy sculpting class taught by the very talented Andrew Cawrse of ILM and Anatomy Tools. With just about half of the character modelers at work enrolled, it's been a shot of energy to learn sculpting and anatomy after work at Andrew's quick pace. Our sculpts are based on a Cirque du Soleil performer, and we'll be doing one half skin, the other half skeleton and overlaying muscle.

Here are some results from the first 3 days!

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1

Sketches from Byron Bay

2009-05-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

A few from the sketchbook in Australia...

Australia, the Complete Enhanced Director's Cut Version (PG)

2009-04-26T16:36:00.001-07:00

It's taken a little while, but piece by piece through small chunks of time I've finally put together this one complete look at my recent Australia trip. Hopefully this will serve to put my vacation behind well-documented and get this blog up and running again!

In March I wrapped on Toy Story 3 (releasing in 2010), and before going on to my next project I had the opportunity to take a full month off. I threw a full pack over my shoulders and headed out for a half-tour, half-backpacking, very improvised adventure along the East Coast of Oz.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

The 14-hour flight out was a breeze, thanks in part to the plane being half-empty and including a very spirited flight attendant. Five glasses of free wine and a good pair of headphones for my new iPod Touch made the trip go by faster than I could have ever imagined. With no jet lag at all, I was good to go when I hit the ground in Sydney!

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

... And then I got my bag searched by the lovely Erin at the Australia customs desk because I forgot to fill out the back side of my immigration form. Well I couldn't drink that much wine, sleep for ten hours AND be expected to complete some boring form with trick questions just to be sure we didn't go down the whole customs checklist marking the "No" column, could I?

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

I took the rail down to Central Station, proudly finding my way around the airport better than a worker there seemed to be capable. Within a half hour I was downtown, had been called "mate" several times, got used to carrying plastic $50 bills and referring to soccer as "football", was absolutely floored at how good-looking Australian women are, and realized that free Wifi for my iPod might be harder to come by than anticipated (Why else would anyone want to pay $5 for a mediocre iced fruit juice at Starbucks? No wonder they're bombing in Oz). Picked up a sim card and Australian phone number for my borrowed GSM phone (thanks James), checked my bags at the Travelodge, and settled in for a nap in Hyde Park.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

SNAP AWAKE!!! Was that a bug on my leg? Don't stare at me, bird! I know you're inching closer! Is it venomous? Most poisonous continent in the world - Remember to keep sharp, clueless American!

ok, ok... slightly overblown reaction. Back to napping.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

Aaaaaaand I'm awake. Bjorn is here! Had a meat pie and fresh fruit juice with a former co-worker from Pixtown (who also appeared at the "Up" wrap party just 4 weeks later, making the world seem very small). Following lunch I checked in with the hotel and found my tour had been moved to the Chifley at King's Cross, a vibrant nightlife area packed with bars and clubs, as well as a nice quiet line of coffee shops two blocks off. Good news: I would get my own room in a much trendier place. Bad news: I had to hike across town. Good news: My new Osprey pack was exceptionally comfortable!

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

Contiki may have given me a bad impression to start (in addition to the hotel, some of my other vouchers were also obsolete or faulty), but things picked up well when I got to know the small group with which I'd be exploring Sydney. Had some fun exploring some of the bars around King's Cross, a busy nightlife area, and took a full tour of the city. Apparently I have a very easily identifiable American accent, towards which most people were very friendly (although a few thought I was Canadian when I identified myself as being from California). Drank mostly Cooper's and Pure Blonde beer, with some decent wines in restaurants. Found a superb ocean walk near Bondai Beach (which was surprisingly dead between poor weather and a recent shark attack), had a good dinner in Darling Harbor, and took an extremely touristy but beautiful Sydney Harbor boat cruise with a recorded narration that jumped from "... the sailors could do nothing to escape, and in 1914, 120 men lost their lives in that fire." immediately to "... and in 1998, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman bought that gorgeous house over there!".

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

My favorite spot in Sydney - aside from the creepy amusement park on the north harbor - was Manly Bay, at which I took a surfing "lesson" with a pretty worthless surf school whose instructors tried a lot harder to hit on girls than teach surfing in very rough conditions (paraphrasing the Lifeguard on speaker: "Conditions are very dangerous today... Don't enter the water unless you're a strong swimmer with a surfboard... Just... Don't go in. At all." / not a great day to learn), but got in some good rides and a relaxing day exploring the town.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Sydney

The second stop on my Contiki Tour took my group to the Whitsunday Islands. A dramatic series of sharp banking turns landed us on a strip of concrete on a small island. We were walked from the runway to a shack of a terminal, where we picked our bags directly off a trolley and walked across a small lot to a ferry boat. Without any sort of hangar or terminal at which to park, our plane took off again just as we launched from the dock.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

The ferry had a very friendly captain ("Ah yes, it's the stress that gets you... I'm going to try not to hit that sailboat now."), and while it wasn't an entirely smooth ride (still feel sorry for the little old lady who got drenched not 30 seconds after taking a seat in the upper deck's front corner!), the Whitsunday Islands were a strikingly beautiful place to be out on the water, and we soon arrived at Daydream Island, where we were booked for a three day stay.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

Our specific tour group seemed to be something of an experiment, this being the second accommodation which was recently changed from the tour usual and much nicer than I expected. Our new tour guide quickly proved himself pretty worthless (a few texts were sent to our old one telling him he was missed), and over the course of a relaxing day by the pool and wallabies we merged into a much larger, party-minded Contiki tour of about 42. Some really interesting and amusing personalities in that group, which was mostly composed of people from the UK, Canada and Germany, with some odds tossed in. There were six Americans, including myself, so we got used to calling chips "crisps" and ketchup "tom-ah-toe sauce". But damn if I'll ever give in to calling a Jaguar a "Jag-u-ar". Rare instance where the American pronunciation just sounds smoother.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

I spent a full day on Daydream Island itself. It had a very entertaining mini golf course: Anything featuring a giant lobster tending a BBQ has my approval. I got to try scuba diving in the expansive pool, which was much easier than I expected (though I did come to respect the power of the Sun out there after the oxygen tank straps must have rubbed off my shoulder sunscreen).

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

At night the island had a bar open for the Contiki tour and set up a pretty nice outdoor movie theater (playing "Get Smart"... meh). Watching American movies in Australia was extremely interesting for someone who works in the field... I was blown away at how universally watched and discussed American films were. Australians adored their film celebrities, and certainly pushed for a more successful industry at home despite a surprisingly small national population of 22 million. It was amazing to see what comedies bridged the gap and what didn't, as Aussies were very surprised to hear I liked "Flight of the Conchords" and I was surprised to see "Family Guy" a popular show, or anyone outside the US watching "Old School" (though I did have to do some explaining on that one with respect to fraternities).

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

My second full day was spent on a Day Sail around some neighboring islands, with one stop to snorkel at the outer reef (wearing stylish full-body stinger suits to guard from box jellyfish), and another hour-long outing on the stunning Whitehaven Beach. I spent almost all of my time just walking along that iconic span, running my feet through sand that kicked up as almost as light and clean as dry snow, but making a rubbery squeak under the heel that I toyed with in lazy, dragging steps. A meter-long shark swam along the gentle waves. Using a cricket setup as end zones, a few of my tour started up an odd variety of American football using a rugby ball.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

By the time we left the beach, several more boats had pulled up. We weren't actually able to sail as much as motor since winds were very light, but hanging out on the canopy under that sun all day was a great way to go.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Whitsunday Islands

From the Whitsunday Islands, we joined the larger Contiki group and its theme song, "Never Miss a Beat" by the Kaiser Chiefs, on a long bus ride up to Cairns, a town known for its wild pub crawls (go Woolshed! Where else can you find a convenient shelf for your drink just under the ceiling when you're dancing on a table?) as well as its multitude of world heritage sites. I spent a whole day exploring the Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Forest under a French guide, wading into brilliant blue rainforest streams, dodging giant spiders, tasting rainforest fruit ice cream, befriending a cassuary, and stealthily tracking birds through my camera lens in the "Discovery Center" nature sanctuary as the sun went down and the sounds of the rainforest changed. I even got to take the Jungle Cruise ride from Disneyland fo reals, and saw forests with such expansive root systems you couldn't even pass through them.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Cairns

Waking up to the playful sound of The Little Mermaid's "Under the Sea" on an early bus ride, an outing to the Great Barrier Reef presented one of the most stunning things I've ever seen. The water was so clear, and the views just overwhelming: A visual overload of life and color, where everything is alive and fish seem just as curious about us as we are about them.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

I took an intro level scuba dive, which was absolutely divine after a rough start. On a diving prep area beneath the docking platform around which we spent our afternoon, we were grouped into teams of four per one instructor, one by one going through some breathing tests and then descending along cables to the sides (think of the submersible room from The Abyss, but without the dude carrying around a pet rat... I know, I was looking for him). Everything was going well: I went through the breathing, mask recovery and goggle clearing exercises without a problem. However, the other two divers in my group, probably not familiar with our instructor's brand of thick Japanese accent, had a great deal of trouble understanding him as he tried to explain the exercises. I felt incredibly anxious and frustrated as I watched all the other dive groups descend cables into the water, pacing for what seemed like 20 minutes as the two girls in my group returned my instructor's requests to repeat after him with blank stares. We were the only ones left on the platform, lines of light coming through the upper floor boards stretching across an otherwise silent and gentle water, which lapped against shadowed metal stairwells and handrails around us. I couldn't see outside of the diving platform, but I could hear snorkelers preparing nearby. I kept thinking that I was so close... but that this might imply a dive time cut short.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

My instructor was visibly frustrated himself, and the girls now seemed a little too uneasy to pick up even my attempts to help with the language barrier. I might have lost my patience a little here, uncharacteristically maybe swearing a bit under my breath while I watched yet another underwater exchange fail next to me, and even trying to talk my way into another group as a replacement when someone had to abort their dive. Fortunately, and admittedly with encouragement on my part, the girls backed out to wait for a different instructor, and I was taken over to the cables for a one-on-one dive with the instructor!

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

At first I had a very tough time with the pressure on my ears. It took a few stops and small ascents to descend the cable halfway down to our 8-10m depth, as I found that I couldn't pop my ears at all underwater (had never tried!). Yuri ended up taking me on a long loop at half that depth, gradually circling lower until my ears did improve enough to reach the bottom. It was never comfortable, but it didn't matter: Swarms of tropical fish were everywhere, and as I got the hang of kicking and buoyancy to the point where I could swim independently, Yuri pointed out clownfish in an anemone, a tiny translcent crab-like creature on coral, and a giant sea clam that responded to touch. At one point he had me hold onto a bar at the sea floor for the tour photographer, who directed swarms of brilliant and exotic fish around me with offers of food. I couldn't resist buying a $20 picture with Wally, a large Maori Wrasse and friendly favorite of the reef platform. Well worth it, and a misprint even gave me an extra copy!

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

Hitting the surface after 30 minutes or so underwater I threw off my mask and burst with excitement to Yuri, having been restricted to the use of hand signals that can only communicate so much without inadvertently requesting an emergency surface during the dive. My ears were horribly clogged, but there wasn't a moment to lose - I took off my scuba gear and slipped on a snorkel tube, all lined up for a guided snorkel "Adventure Tour" with a resident marine biologist on the platform. To hell with the lunch for which I'd paid in advance - I wasn't about to stay out of the water that long!

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

The snorkel loop took us across some dramatic canyons, anemone patches, and dead spots on the coral, and having such a knowledgeable guide made it well worth the extra fee. We even pursued a sea turtle for a short time as it faded off into the distance Finding Nemo style... Speaking of which, many thanks to that crew for doing such an incredible job! It was a riot to see how people everywhere - even locals - referred to various species by their character names from that film, which speaks volumes.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

The Contiki Tour ended the following day; I wish I could write a little about a lot of people I met on the tour, but hey, this has already taken me several mornings to write! You'll live in pictures.

From 2009 Australia - Contiki - Great Barrier Reef

The impeccably clear weather I'd had on the Contiki Tour was finally balanced out when I began my solo traveling amid storms at Byron Bay. I woke up at the Byron bus stop to solid rain, and checked into my first hostel ever, Aquarius Backpackers. The place was ok, and while my 8-share room was a little uncomfortable at first, everyone was generally friendly and making friends at the hostel bar was easy (though I did also encounter what might be the first unfriendly Canadians ever documented - what a discovery!).

From 2009 Australia - Byron Bay

Woke up on the morning of my first day for the start of a 3-day surf lesson with Mojosurf, which spooked me by showing up a half hour late (I literally had just started back to my room when someone saw the bus). Beach time, I suppose. We drove out to a less crowded beach as the sky stared to open up with rain. The lead instructor reminded me of Patrick Swayze's character "Bodhi" in Point Break; a wise veteran surfer who lived by the waves and never totally grew up, he joked about how much harder it was to recover from a night partying at his age, and with an "Oooh! Me too!" had some English guys vault him up in the air into a backflip dive when we stopped in a freshwater river stained with a rusty color from the oils of local trees.

From 2009 Australia - Byron Bay

The beginning of the lesson was held in distractingly blowing and cold rain. We all sheilded our eyes and shivered a bit as Bodhi handled it in stride, going through the motions of catching a wave on land as we huddled around. Once we hit the water the rain eased off, but the surf was very choppy. I managed to catch white water regularly on the big foam board, and started working my way into green waves. On the second day I improved, but on the third day, trying a short board, I was just too tired to get long rides or keep an acute balance. A nasty wipeout in which I inhaled some salt water secured a weak finale to the camp.

From 2009 Australia - Byron Bay

In Byron I predominantly met people in their early to mid twenties who were on work visas, living in Oz for 6 months to several years. Many take odd jobs in hostels, restaurants or fruit picking to pay, and others were just riding the Pound's exchange ratio. I also learned that hippies are usually lame freeloaders no matter where you are, and that Swedes can make exceptionally sharp turns from friendly to cold! While the Australians and Brits were great, I didn't meet any Americans in Byron Bay aside from a family on the bus ride out.

From 2009 Australia - Byron Bay

While I thought I had developed at least a familiarity with a number of people at the bar, on my last day at Byron I hardly recognized anyone at the hostel - the crowd had completely shifted for the Bluesfest music festival starting up in town, as had the level of traffic. I caught a bus to Surfer's Paradise, appreciative of how easy it had become to meet people, but a little bummed to be leaving them so soon.

From 2009 Australia - Surfers Paradise

My first day in Surfers Paradise was a little brutal: Not only was I back to not knowing anyone and facing another rainy day, but my pocket camera lens had jammed, and in a scene reminiscent of Castaway I had also suffered the loss of my very own "Wilson", my one lasting companion throughout the trek: My ipod touch. It had been working just fine on the bus ride, but today it wouldn't respond to any button pushes or resets: The screen returned just a black nothing. I tried charging on multiple outlets, cleaning it, pretty much everything short of a defibrillator... and I saw no response. I trudged through the day reminded of Wilson everywhere I went: My music, movies, email, all the quality time we had spent together leeching free internet connections outside of McDonald's... The thought of a 14-hour flight home without my little buddy was just depressing, and the realization of my near-instant bond with the device a little astounding.

From 2009 Australia - Surfers Paradise

Surfers was a lot like Miami crossbred with Virginia Beach. Very built up and showy with countless gimmicky amusements, it was referred to as a "Paris Hilton" of cities by my ever-helpful borrowed Lonely Planet guide: all about the beach scene by day, but up for a trashy party every night. I was staying at the Cheers backpacker hostel, which again had a built-in bar that offered cheap beer and some opportunities to meet people. Over the course of a few days I got to know a fun group of English girls on gap years, Australian surfers on a road trip with a decked out van and very cool custom-made Jimi Hendrix board, and an American on spring break. We spent the time chasing small patches of sun to the beach, on a massive backpacker pub crawl, writing improv stories in a club with a nice "bedroom" layout but too much ego for its mediocre and painfully loud techno music, getting caught in rip tides (ok, that was just me - thanks for the help, fellas!), and chilling on the beach at night with a case of Hahn's Super Dry and a box of goon. Wilson finally reset and accepted a charge, and with my headphones playing a comforting Illinoise once more, I set an alarm for 5am to catch a bus up to Fraser Island.

From 2009 Australia - Surfers Paradise

I have a page in my Moleskine book that describes the 5-hour ride to Fraser on 2 hours' sleep in jagged, illegible scrawlings. Instead of a normal coach bus, I was riding up in a raised, big-wheeled Buszilla 4x4 vehicle that was about as comfortable and quiet as the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story, but with loose clanking pieces of metal, loud knobby off-roading tires, and blasting 90s alternative rock music. I swore the thing would tip over and kill us all. The other passengers were looking grimly antisocial or demographically incompatible until the very last pickup stop, at which some twentysomething, like-minded travelers finally turned things around and made the trip fun. Have to give a shout out to Devan, the automotive engineer on the trip, for his photography advice and the similarities we found in his essentially being the real-life version of what I'm now trying to do at work in some abstract animated form.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

Fraser Island itself was a sort of four-wheeling paradise, a huge playground of flat beaches, sand dunes, beautiful freshwater lakes, and winding, bumpy jungle trails dominated by packs of Toyota Land Cruisers (if I may continue the movie references, think of a busy Isla Nubar in Jurassic Park. And yes, there were probably more than a few deadly creatures in there). Our tour guide was an affable goofball/gearhead, proud of his own Godzilla bus and the challenges it tackled in going where no other bus and most 4x4s could not. We drove along the beach in light rain for the entire first afternoon, stopping to wade into a picturesque rainforest creek and a canyon of red rocks, driving into shallow water to traverse a particularly rough, meter-high set of beach rocks in front of a captivated crowd of onlookers ("Is he really... Whoa!"), and wandering about the remains of an old shipwreck.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

When we checked into our rooms at the island hotel the rain was coming down harder. Our tour guide fumbled the key handoff, and I was beginning to catch a cold that would stay with me for the next 3 weeks, but in the end we had a healthy sprint to the hotel bar through a thick, flooding rain (at one point we waded through a good foot of water) and enjoyed a happy hour of rum and cokes.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

A few of us decided to wake early the next morning to catch the sunrise, and dragged out of bed through the debris and road damage done by the storm to find a few too many clouds obscuring the view. Fortunately, our morning was not lost: A trio of dingos was making its way up the beach in search of prey, or maybe a squeaky toy... it was damned tough to say; they look a lot like domesticated dogs! Bearing in mind the stories our guide told us about how dingos were known to herd horses and humans into the ocean with aggressive barks to slowly drown them (impressively bright trick for the pack hunters, I have to say), we enjoyed snapping pictures until they got a little too close, and then scared them off.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

The second day was devoted to the rainforest, and we started off with a rainforest hike that proved much more enjoyable if you were willing to quietly break from the pack to enjoy the small sights and sounds of the forest. As an added bonus, such wanderers are much more capable of seeing Drop Bears - fearsome rainforest carnivorous koalas! At least one tour member recognized my disheveled state and attack story as fact. Watch out for those things, kids. Vicious. The only defense is to hold a hand to your head with a finger in the air as you make your way through the forest.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

We ended the tour by stopping by a large lake in which a few of us dared a swim despite the overcast conditions. The ride home was an extended beach road due to road floodings, and the bus played the simply structured and unfulfilling "You, Me and Dupree" followed by the much better "Cinderella Man". For some reason I seemed to connect a lot with that second film: It seemed to relate to my trip in an odd way. The last leg of the drive back to Surfers was thankfully done by car, and I checked into the Surf 'n Sun hostel to the familiar sound of a Texan accent. I passed out with a full-blown cold.

From 2009 Australia - Fraser Island

My last full day in Oz was a warm and sunny one. I took a slow, 4-5km walk along the beach, trying to keep my senses clear. I stopped by Cheers for their $7 bbq and saw some familiar faces, but was too exhausted to make another run at the backpacker pub crawl. My run of "single-serving friends" had its fill.

From 2009 Australia - Surfers Paradise

Getting back to Sydney for the flight home involved a very close call! The bus system at Surfers Paradise clearly runs on "beach time", and after two absurdly late bus rides I made it to the Gold Coast airport with just minutes to spare before the cutoff check-in time. The flight home wasn't enjoyable, but I can say confidently that I've finally learned how to get sleep on a flight: Ipod, wine, mask, pillow, earplugs, and you're out.

From 2009 Coachella

My trip ended at Manhattan Beach, where the culture shock was softened by a cool Australian racing journalist sharing my hotel shuttle. A full hotel room with microwave popcorn and a Target next door was now a luxury, and within an hour I'd shaved my travel scruff and passed out. One of the things that struck me most was turning on the TV news and realizing just how idiotic it all was: "Check out our tweets! We're on Twitter! Make us your Facebook friend! Swine flu is going to kill you! The same stupid political arguments are still being made because we can't all just friggin' collectively notice that abortion and gay marriage have absolutley no place in government law other than to polarize you! The stock market is a disaster! Now's the time to BUYBUYBUY stocks and ride a whole new bubble! Check us out on Twitter - we're with it! Okay, now go get yourself some drugs!"

From 2009 Coachella

From Manhattan Beach I met up with friends for the desert drive to Coachella, and then home for the Up Wrap Party and a return to reality. A solo trip like this one definitely helps you sort out the people and priorities in your life, and while I'm not 100% back just yet, I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to travel like this when I did.

(This post took three weeks of small time blocks to write - Wow!)

2009!

2009-01-05T01:16:00.001-08:00

Happy 2009! Just got back from a nice trip home to NY and walked straight into the fire of homework for an online Digital Painting class I've joined, taught by Bobby Chiu. You can see the class results and IP work as we go along right here.

2009 should be a good year; looking forward to the class, drawing, writing, and animating more (no idea how it will all happen), and bringing back the weekend road trip. Will let you know how it goes.

(based on a design by Bobby Chiu; texture/painting class assignment)

Sketchcrawl

2008-10-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

Great weather for an afternoon of sketching with Germans in the Mission... wish it was an easier option for me to live near Dolores Park!

Sketchbook

2008-10-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Another couple of months go by, and look at that: I've gone ahead and smashed up another pinky! For those counting since college, that's three of my four, leaving only one pinky toe unharmed... no surprise I swiftly opted out of an open-bottom shark cage dive, huh?

Fortunately, this being my left hand it's easy to find a bright side to the recovery time. While I'm coming to terms with ending my pro football and basketball aspirations in favor of less self-destructive outlets for a 5'8" guy, it's also been a chance for me to reflect on what's important and consider putting a little more time into areas where I seem to have room to grow, like writing and drawing. Here are some samples from a recent sketchbook session, elaborating on some scribbles from past gesture classes:

Drawing Sessions

2008-07-29T23:01:00.001-07:00

Anyone miss me? As seems to always be the case, the summer's a busy time and drawing hasn't been priority #1, though I still try learn a little when I can. Here's a quick take on a soccer player:

WALL-E and Presto Opening this Weekend!

2008-06-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

(publicity image from Disney/Pixar)

It's an exciting weekend as the third Feature film and second Short I've worked on with Pixar make their wide release in the US. Both of these offer very unique stories, visuals, and sounds that truly push the boundaries of animation... I hope you'll check them out!

Here are some quick notes on where I contributed:

Presto

Working with absurdly talented director/animator Doug Sweetland, this was a great opportunity to switch gears with a fantastic small team in creating what is - in my opinion - easily one of the best Pixar shorts to date. The smaller crew experience implied making more calls and interacting with the director much more, which made for a very rewarding process. I was responsible for: Head/Facial articulation of Alec the Rabbit, an extremely loose, pliable character by Pixar standards (body articulation inventively done by a minefield-navigating Mark Piretti)... Full articulation of Presto the magician. Modeling topology design/advisement roles on both models (final modeling carried out by Modo guru Rich Hurrey). As a bonus, if you listen reaaaaaaally carefully maybe you can hear me among the audience sounds. I'm toward the back ;)

WALL-E

I was "only" on this show for something like 6-7 months since I was on Ratatouille for so long, so I took on a number of relatively small assignments before jettisoning to Presto. My role generally focused on modeling/articulating secondary robot characters, modeling a number of background humans, and spinning off a rig and support scripts for the background human pipeline. Among the recognizable robots I worked on are the VacuumBot, NannyBot (teaching the babies), and the Big Gulp-ish Cups with accompanying Cup Holder Bots. Please don't suppress any inner screams of joy if you catch Vacuum Bot unfolding from a collapsed form, since it took a lot of planning and rigging to make that happen! The background human bodies were initially modeled and (extremely) rough rigged by me, and were designed by the very talented Jason Deamer.

Meanwhile, back in the quiet residential community of Oakland, present day:

My drawing time has been minimal lately as I've been focusing more on Animation side projects and a handful of weekend trips (Vegas, Karen & Joey's wedding). Keep subscribed to this feed and I'll pick it up again when I can!

Drawing Sessions

2008-05-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

It's been an interesting few weeks since my last post, with more than a few ups and downs... I finished my Story Skills class with a fairly developed idea based on my some experiences I had as a basketball-obsessed teenager in New York. We did some storyboard beats in the final few classes, and the suggestion that I could tell it as a visual story in graphic novel form seemed to float well. I'll have a lot of work ahead of me if I want to take on sequential illustrations, but I did have two roommates in Savannah that studied just that (Josh? Elvin? You out there?) as well as several co-workers... so who knows, maybe it's time to start building something more polished above all these drawing sessions! :)

Getting back to attending & posting regularly, this week's class (taught by Louis Gonzalez) had an alternative approach involving drawing TWO models interacting, which implied an even greater emphasis on interpreting and adjusting forms and negative spaces to help tell a story. I struggled a lot with the 2-3 minute pose times at first, but it was a great challenge and I started to draw much more freely towards the end of the session.

What Lies Beyond the Final BART Stop

2008-04-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

Foreman and I woke up early on Saturday for a 7am trip out beyond the final BART station in Antioch, to a remote RV campground where, for one special week every year, the all-American/all-Australian desire to blow stuff up leads a collection of potentially dangerous but unquestionably dedicated hobbyists to gather and cruise around in their very own fleet of restored tanks and military jeeps.

Let me help you get there: Imagine an 8-year old boy riding shotgun in the passenger side of a flawless Vietnam-era jeep, holding an M-16 machine gun while his dad, in full camo gear, drives a few loops around the campground to show her off. They pass a camp worker haggling another camo enthusiast for driving a treaded vehicle at unsafe speeds for the grounds. The smell of bacon seems to fill the air everywhere. Wearing an orange Banana Republic shirt among so much green, beige and brown, I become concerned that I might easily be picked off by a sniper, and take cover at a surplus tent.

Getting the idea? Here are a few pictures:

But how could I let this go by without sharing some Favorite Quotes from the event?

- [Possible cast member from King of the Hill, wearing camo vest & hat, holding mug next to campfire]: "Yep, I thought I recognized those rubber seals you're carryin' right there... You must have an early March 1941 model jeep. I have a late February 1941 model myself. Yep, but you know there's a few differences between the two..."

[Older guy selling some parts]: "Well you know California law makes them put screws through the grenades and orange caps on all the guns now? Just takes all the fun right out of it."

- [Imagine the voice of Lawrence from Office Space coming out of an older, big guy kind of like R Lee Ermey (Mail Call, Full Metal Jacket) in full gear] "You like Dodges? Well I outfitted her with this here extra battery. This way when I'm out in the wilderness and shit, this shit will back me up. You know some of the guys here don't like it: They say it's not authentic to the vehicle. Bullshit. Fuck 'em. This is my truck, I built it how I wanted. But this engine here is fuckin' cherry, I'll tell you that."

At the end of the day, a little over-obsession is forgivable to people who love their hobby... and who doesn't think riding around in a WWII jeep is cool? Yo Joe!

Drawing Sessions

2008-04-16T22:48:00.001-07:00

Time's still been a little slim as I work on an animation test and take some story classes (even tried improv!), but I managed to get in a few minutes of a drawing session today.

Also would like to recommend a comic called "The Chemist" put out by a co-worker of mine, Jay Boose. I'm hardly a comics enthusiast, but it's cool to see how Jay applies an animation-backed drawing style to that format - the characters' attitudes read far better than most comics I've seen, so it's easier for their personalities to fall into place. Check out his site!

Sketchcrawl

2008-03-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

Finally made it to a full sketchcrawl yesterday! It was a little chilly out there but it was a lot of fun to see the great variety of stuff artists came up with in this Ghiradelli Square meetup... think we had the street caricaturists beat pretty handily :)

I had a fairly average day, nothing I'm crazy over, but it was relaxing to be outside and drawing/laughing at shivering tourists (Will they ever learn that Fisherman's Wharf is not an ideal place to break out the shorts?). Here are a few sample pages:

Drawing Sessions

2008-03-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Whew, it's been a busy month! I haven't been attending Gesture Drawing lately in favor of a fantastic storytelling class I've been taking through work, taught by Joel Ben Izzy. Not sure if I'll post any stories here, but I've been learning so much; it's certainly been an inspiration to do more writing... I've also been working on an animation test in the mornings and even got in a snowboarding/ski trip to Park City, Utah, for my friend Joey's bachelor party.

Anyhow, I made it to today's Life Drawing session and we got to play by Gesture Drawing rules, so here are a few results from a sequence:

Sketchbook

2008-02-14T22:41:00.001-08:00

Just drew this play on Jack Black while watching "School of Rock", thought it was a promising lead:

... and I got out for a couple of hours last Sunday to do some sketching around the Embarcadero:

Drawing Sessions

2008-02-14T22:28:00.001-08:00

One of the tougher things about sticking to a plan of learning to draw from model sessions is how the poses and models tend to fall into repetitive patterns or otherwise grow tired - especially on an uninstructed, prop-free and open Wednesday life drawing session, where things are a little more restricted than in a relatively fast-paced Gesture session. To have some fun with an old game, I've decided to start working on characters, using the model only for pose inspiration. Here's a caricatured IT guy loosely based on someone from my past:

Drawing Sessions

2008-02-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

Made it to Wednesday but not Tuesday this week, felt surprisingly loose considering how I've been getting limited practice at home lately.

Question of the day: How is it that cell phone providers like Verizon can get away with charging so much for batteries? The Verizon store wanted to give me a "deal" by "giving" me 25% off their regular price for a phone battery... which was $40! 5 minutes on Amazon, and I found a well-rated replacement for just $7 + shipping. Accessories must be to Cell phone providers what cables are for Best Buy.

Obama 2008!

Drawing Sessions

2008-01-30T22:41:00.000-08:00

Recent storms brought in the best snow I've ever seen at Lake Tahoe this past weekend (lots of tree riding at Squaw!); unfortunately it also brought blinding 120mph gusts of wind, which closed the roads out of the mountains and stranded Mark, Mahyar and I for an unexpected Sunday night at the Cal Neva bar. We woke up at 4am Monday morning to chase a small window of potential freeway re-openings, and made it back to Oakland in time for work.

As for drawing: I got a pretty good note in class to look more for the abstract shape of a pose before committing to even the limbs of a character. Will try to push for that more in the next session...

Gesture Drawing

2008-01-22T22:27:00.001-08:00

Coachella's lineup was announced today... I'm thinking about it, but leaning away this year. Roger Waters would be cool, but for the $500 it takes for me to make the trip, this new lineup just seems to fall a little short. Keeping me in the game is a review of some of my favorite 2007 shows streaming fresh off the 'nano: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Of Montreal, Hot Chip, Metric, and Gotan Project.

Meanwhile, back at gesture drawing:

Do it Yourself: Cloverfield

2008-01-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I saw the new film Cloverfield, a sci-fi/action/horror release shot entirely with handheld cameras (similar to Blair Witch) which was apparently a big hit with U.S. audiences. I came away disappointed by my experience with the film, particularly because I was startled by its gross production inefficiency. While some might laud the film's $25 million production budget, the same experience could have easily been achieved without leaving home, for less than $20. Please allow me to explain this as a simple four-step process:

To reproduce the movie, you'll first need to acquire a bottle of cheap vodka, a shot glass, and a copy of Godzilla (1998 version starring Matthew Broderick). For some viewers, these will be ordinary household items, making for an even smaller production budget.

First, power on your television and DVD player. Set the sleep timer on your television to a random time within the span of 1 - 1.5 hours. This step will make sense later.

Now, quickly drink about 5-10 shots of the vodka. After a brief wait, the room should be spinning and you should feel somewhat nauseous - perfect viewing conditions! Not a moment to be wasted - find that DVD player remote!

Play your copy of Godzilla. Note the explosions, large invincible reptilian creature destroying New York City (again), as well as the entirely forgettable plot and characters. Note how the spinning room adds to your viewing experience. Occasionally look down at your feet for a few minutes, and try to focus on them. Think about the last time you went to Disneyland. Think about how courteous it was of Disneyland cast members to discreetly place those small vomit receptacles by your feet on turbulent rides. Try not to dwell on this, just appreciate it.

If you followed the above steps correctly, your television should turn off unpredictably, at a random point in the movie: Just what you need to complete your Do-it-Yourself Cloverfield experience!

Drawing Sessions (From the Stack)

2008-01-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

I usually bring all my drawings home from class and toss them in a growing stack of newsprint paper. When I have time, I take a few pages from the top of the stack, re-drawing poses in a sketchbook and taking a second look at successes and failures. Here are a few interesting ones from December that had been buried...

Drawing Sessions

2008-01-16T22:03:00.001-08:00

Drawing Sessions

2008-01-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

While I've spent most of my weeknights lately battling a major outbreak of buzzing flies in my house, I have to admit there's a strange satisfaction once you reach a letter of flyswatter aptitude where you can take down the little pests in mid-air, on their own turf. Anyhow, here are a few drawings from class in my first week back:

Google Reader & Homepage

2008-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

This might not be news to everyone, but just a quick shout out for everyone else: I've only recently been able to sit down and fully explore the cool new Google Web apps available, and I have to recommend that you Google users out there at home give Reader and Homepage a spin (available through the menus at the top of Gmail and Google search). As a pair these have largely streamlined my daily web browsing: I get RSS summaries of all the websites, blogs, and columns I read as they're updated, and my homepage lists my email, chat, weather, stocks, and news. The new and evolving Reader sharing feature, by which you can see your friends' favorite articles and web findings, is a lot more fun than Digg.com - so get on there, Google friends! You can also see my shared items to the right on this blog if you use a different reader.

Only downside is that I've already subscribed to too many things! That, and the fact that Google now knows far too much about me and could probably replace me entirely by 2021 when it releases "Google Replicant".

Comic: Family Tech Support

2008-01-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Do you live far from your parents, finding yourself doing a little tech support regularly on your visits? Usually it isn't anything impossibly complex, but the generational gap when it comes to computers is always amusing, so when I found my afternoon free yesterday I decided to draw up a quick comic:

It was fun to try this, though the process was glacially slow since I'm not used to doing it! I used a generic Dad caricature for the sake of getting the drawings done quickly.

Sketchbook

2007-12-30T13:52:00.000-08:00

In lieu of a shiny 3G iphone from the future, I'm trying to get in the habit of carrying a sketchbook... here are a few quick pages I threw down while waiting on planes/trains on the way to New York. Riding the Hudson Line opened up this whole train of thought on Yetis, Sewer Rats and Demons... a little odd, yes, but I'm going somewhere with it. Really.

Gesture Drawing (Rudy Giuliani)

2007-12-29T12:43:00.001-08:00

Just got back from a nice 10-day trip home to New York. On the return flight, I recalled a Gesture Drawing session from a few months back where I tried cartooning "Mr. 9/11" himself into the model's poses. The model was not informed of this insult. Here are a couple of painted results:

Drawing - subtle photoshop textures

2007-12-16T12:36:00.001-08:00

One more from that last model, where she moved away from the dancer poses and into a series that reminded of catching and releasing an insect. Just playing with Photoshop a little... maybe too conservatively. Got to start somewhere, right?

Drawing - "Dancer" (Continued)

2007-12-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

Keeping with the same painting technique and set of drawings as the previous post.

Drawing - "Dancer"

2007-12-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

One of my goals for the new year is to make drawing more of a habit, hopefully finding a more entertaining purpose for keeping at it than class alone. A co-worker of mine suggested that a good way to improve after a drawing session is to revisit the day's work, and re-draw everything with a fresh critical eye. So this series of drawings is an attempt to breathe some life into what was originally a particularly lousy day of gesture drawing class for me, using the original drawings from class as inspiration for fresh ones that pushed the poses further and had a little more detail.

One Month Off

2007-12-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

For the next four weeks, I'll be free from work, unimpeded from writing, reading and sketching all day, working on my pro basketball career, or busting some dewey decimals at the local library. Though I'll be in New York between December 18-28, my real intention is not to travel or rest, but to take some time to focus on defining new goals and enabling more satisfaction in everyday life. Look for a much-needed resurgence in Art posts coming this way!

For now, check out this TEDTalk on creativity and education; A fringe product of very intense academia myself, I'm inclined to agree with much of what the speaker has to say. Most notably, I do now realize that the biggest challenge I face in every day is not only accepting but embracing and enjoying the idea of screwing up in the interest of trying new things... This sort of perfectionism - which I think a lot of former strong students experience - is exactly what our education system too often demands.

The Custodian

2007-11-20T23:03:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to a great Thanksgiving weekend here in the Bay Area, I'm reminded that I will unfortunately miss my 10-year high school re-union in New York. As a retrospective in my absence, here's an uncensored version of the DFHS-Academy Award-winning short film Nisheet and I put together as a nod to our graduation-bound class (and, secretly, the great Steven Segal). For all the embarrassment, it was worth taking the role of goofy sidekick for this one... ok, maybe I was that goofy in high school. Golly Gompers!

Reflecting on this barely pre-Columbine, pre-digital video (note classy dual-VCR edits), completely adolescent high school film, it occurred to me that the generation of kids graduating high school today, despite their far more advanced diversions and life-long exposure to Computer Animation, must be remarkably softer in character as a result of all the overprotective measures put up over the last 10 years... Just think, those entering college today may have their smooth facebook instead of our ghetto-code ICQ, but as children they never had waterguns that were actively marketed for their likeness to the real thing, did they? No overprotective relegation to orange water gun barrel tips to cloud our violent imaginations, we are one bad-ass class, '97.

Hold the Phone: CNN posts a Worthwhile Article!

2007-11-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

What the... there was actually something worth reading on CNN! Or at least something optimistic - albeit terse, unsubstantiated and distant - that I found encouraging to see coming from a major news source.

With Hillary Clinton emitting all the whir of a political drone programmed to win 51% of the vote, Obama apparently stumped by arguably ridiculous "not enough experience" accusations, and Rudy Giuliani spearheading a party whose quick endorsement of his candidacy only underscores just how comically hypocritical of its "values" and "security" positions it has become, Lou Dobbs argues that the time is right for a populist movement:

More Americans than ever before are now identifying themselves as independents, and I hope millions of Americans in the day and weeks ahead will drop their party affiliation and become independents, refusing to be taken for granted by these two political parties and refusing to be taken for fools by the candidates they're putting forward.
(link to full story)

Personally, I think if Americans could be convinced to vote for Bush in 2004, it's a tough sell to say they're ready to embrace outsiders and challenge two-party politics (never mind that side note to the Constitution, right?). But let's take a long shot hope that the Democrats' legislative air-ball in Congress alongside Bush's disastrous presidency has been enough to get people to realize that there are more options than the left and right, red and blue.... Thanks for the lift, Lou Dobbs!

Ninja Parade

2007-10-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

James Jordan Photography

2007-10-16T21:22:00.001-07:00

PIMP
Originally uploaded by JamesJordan

My friend James has clearly been hard at work over the past couple of months exploring his photography interests. He has some incredible portraits (see Cathy's in particular, and the newer ones with Eric are pretty funny), but I'm curious to see where he's going with this new, playful angle...

www.jjordanphotography.com

Drawing Inspiration

2007-10-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

An amusing nod to animation history from the depths of the internets...

I have been doing a fair amount of drawing lately, but haven't been home much to scan & post... will get something up later this week!

William & Mary Alumni Magazine Interview

2007-09-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Look Mom, I'm almost as cool as Patton Oswalt!

The Fall edition of William & Mary Alumni Magazine includes brief interviews with comedian Patton Oswalt and myself regarding Ratatouille and our common background at the school. A related article covers Jen Becker, of my same class. This is such a step up from that time the AP interviewed the 1999-2000 W&M SIN directors but never even mentioned me in the article! :)

Dan Rather's CBS Lawsuit

2007-09-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

"Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news."

story with video from Larry King interview

Gesture Drawing - Now in Glorious Technicolor!

2007-09-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a nice, quiet weekend at home for once, so I've started scanning in some unused Gesture Drawings and experimenting with some painting techniques in photoshop. I think the textured patterns (shirt, background) are something I'll be exploring a lot more in figuring out what I like. For now, here's a start!

Drawing Inspiration

2007-09-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

As I've been re-learning how to draw over the past two years, moving from a more clean, precise architectural approach to something more organic and gestural, I've hit a point where I need to figure out exactly where I want to go with it all. Aside from knowing that I need to draw more, I'm really not sure... so I'm going to start collecting inspiration on this blog as I come across it, and see where it leads.

I know next to nothing about painting in photoshop. Traditional painting was never that appealing to me, since it seemed to clash with my more obsessive-compuslive habits. Seeing artists using photoshop at work, however, certainly has me curious about its versatility... even if I just try to apply something much simpler and cartoony to my own drawings.

Here's a video from MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond where he describes his painting technique as part of a series on digital coloring:

Though the subject matter of a bikini octopus woman might seem a little juvenile to some, here's a pretty cool time-lapse video of a surprisingly simple photoshop painting technique:

Amazing that people are out there sharing stuff like this!

Life Update

2007-09-07T22:33:00.001-07:00

My blog will live! This post is intended mostly as a friends & family update on where I've been all this time...

Over the past month I took a trip to San Diego for the SIGGRAPH Conference and a little exploring with friends, and I backpacked Half Dome at Yosemite. It was on the latter trip that I met a superhero, who demonstrated that people can, in fact, fly.

If you've never heard of "Birdman", take a look at this video. With a winged suit and parachute, Birdman (let's just say there's only one) can take an extended glide down mountains and across the sky before deploying a parachute for a soft landing. I thought this was strictly the stuff of Warren Miller films and insane Austrians, but little did I know...

Exhausted from the hike to our campground atop Vernal and Nevada Falls in Yosemite National Park, my camping group (Karen, Joey, Jenn, Troy, Mahyar, Andy and myself) decided to call it an early night on Saturday evening in preparation for a 3am night hike up the side of Half Dome. The timing would allow us to avoid the infamous summer crowds on that route, and arrive in time for sunrise over Yosemite Valley below.

The hike went very well: On time and with no bear encounters to stop us, we caught our first glimpse of Half Dome as a huge, monochromatic, arching shape reaching upward into the starred sky, with a short line of headlamps from other early risers slowly working their way up the steep cable climb. Sunrise at the top was beautiful (see pics linked above), and we relaxed up there for over an hour with a dozen or so other people, who gradually trickled off after sticking their heads out over the 5,000 foot tall cliff edge over the valley floor and braving up for the cable hike back down.

Eventually, only four from my group and a couple remained on the rock, finishing our packed breakfasts and preparing to make our own descents. The only person looking towards the valley at a time where everyone else just happened to be turning their SLRs to the sun, I was startled when, out of nowhere (my first thought: A climber?), a man in a helmet, goggles, and a bright red and yellow suit calmly walked to the outermost extreme of the cliff edge, about 25 yards away with a rock outcropping somewhat between us. He seemed perfectly at home standing at the edge, and as he turned to adjust his suit I caught the sight of his backpack. "A base Jumper!" I whispered and signaled to everyone else, keeping quiet such as not to startle the guy before he was all set. "He's going to jump!"

All six of us on the Dome got on our stomachs and crawled towards the cliff edge, holding our cameras out to get sight of the jumper as he made his final preparations. He didn't seem to mind us at all while he adjusted his goggles and some sort of camera on his helmet, and as we watched him we began to realize that this brightly colored suit was nothing ordinary at all: it had wings connecting his legs and armpits!

After a number of goggle tweaks, the man, who seemed about 40, turned to us for the first time and, with a thick European accent, said:

"Hey guys! Don't tell anyone about this, okay? It's a very severe penalty!"

I'm going to assume he was talking about the Park Rangers or Police so I can continue the story here. We all gave Birdman a flurry of support in reply, and he turned back to the cliff, toes to the edge. Then a one bounce, two, three, and... THE GUY JUMPED HEAD-FIRST OFF THE SIDE OF HALF DOME! WOW! He quickly fell out of sight, but that was immediately followed by a loud fluttering sound... at which point the Birdman absolutely soared out across Yosemite Valley, wings opened, flying far away from us before making a broad turn around a central rock face. He disappeared from view behind that face for a few anxious seconds, but re-appeared with parachute opened just in time to land in a small clearing in the forest at the opposite side. Within seconds, he was packed up and gone. His route expertly planned and executed, the Birdman showed off the closest thing I've ever seen to superpowers.

The four of us who witnessed this stunt wouldn't shut up about this for the rest of the day. Hopefully this explains why I questioned what actually caused the lunar eclipse that night...

Back on Earth (err...), I've also wrapped on my third (!) feature film assignment at work. My time on WALL-E's Characters Team felt extremely brief after spending two and a half years on Ratatouille (just a half year or so in this case) and it's too early to get into details, but it was great to be a part of something so unique. WALL-E will be a stunning film and I'm very curious to see how people will react as they learn more! Since wrapping on that project two weeks ago, I've joined the very small crew of the short film that will accompany it. It's been a while since I was in shorts (JackJack Attack on the Incredibles DVD, where my role was fairly small) so I haven't yet decided whether I should be terrified or excited over my very intense production schedule there now. Fortunately I do know that the film is gonna be sweet! :)

There's a small stack of drawings sitting on my desk that I'll try to scan in and share this weekend. If you know of any good getting-started web references for photoshop painting on top of drawings, I'd love to see them!

This post brought to you by the Buy n Large Corporation.

Hang in there: Blogging will continue soon!

2007-08-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

Until then, here's something awesome:
http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/

Still Here

2007-07-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

It's been an insanely busy month: working late, setting up my new place, July birthdays (including my own), Modono's wedding, wine country goodness, inspiring books, planning a San Diego trip... but finally, I'm at now now. Everything that's happening now, is happening now.... and that's refreshing!

Mahyar's done a nice job of covering a backpacking trip the Costa Rica gang took to Lake Tahoe National Forest, as well as this weekend's absolutely mind-blowing Daft Punk performance at the Berkeley Greek Theater. Many thanks to Dono and Eric for buying a block of tickets way back at the start of AD2007; this was easily the best electronic music show I've ever seen and I would highly recommend you catch it if you have the chance. Our favorite French Robots opened with the call-response of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and we may as well have been on another planet from that point on... made us all wonder what Pink Floyd shows must have been like, and how this would compare. Here's a grainy glimpse at the "Human" encore of this tour as performed in Amsterdam; unfortunately a lot of the detail is lost, but check out Mahyar's site for higher-quality still representations:

UHaul, I Heave

2007-07-03T16:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally moved into my new apartment, which was a very smooth process thanks to the help of a number of friends. Their efforts were impeccable, so UHaul naturally had to step in and provide some moving day stress.

Three weeks ago, I reserved a UHaul from an Oakland office through their website, and confirmed a pickup time of 9am on 6/30. I was sent a confirmation email that stated only that I had a truck reserved on 6/30, but didn't think much of it at the time. So at 8:45am on 6/30 I'm at the UHaul office, which is packed with people waiting for trucks. The employees answering phones are turning everyone without a reservation away. After a 15-minute wait in line, I'm all set to check in. I hand my printout to the woman at the counter, who seems friendly enough and proceeds to punch some numbers into a computer.

UHaul Employee: "Well Mr. Steplooski, I see you have a reservation for a 17' truck. Would you be ok with using a 14' truck today instead?"
Me: "No, I will need that 17' truck, please."
UHaul Employee: "Well, we don't have any 17' trucks in our lot right now, and my reservation system has you listed for a 6pm pickup, keeping the truck overnight and returning tomorrow morning."
Me: "What? No, that's not my reservation. I booked a 17' truck for 8 hours with a 9am pickup three weeks ago. I talked to someone here on the phone to confirm it."
UHaul Employee: "I'm sorry sir, that's just what our system says."
[I look at my reservation paper and it occurs to me there might be a premeditated reason why UHaul didn't include an actual time for the reservation on my printout: This left me with no evidence of their "error"!]
Me: "I have a dozen people waiting for me to bring this truck to them at 10am to get started on this move. I was under the impression that making a reservation would get me a truck... Alright, for the sake of getting things rolling here, how about those 14' trucks you mentioned? Can I just take one of those?"
UHaul Employee: [clacking away on her keyboard] "Hmm... well, we have four trucks in our lot right now... and five reservations for them today. If you'd like to wait, we can see if any of them don't show up..."

#P$Y#{*Y#${*Y**#$$#!@!!! I couldn't believe the lack of professionalism at this place! This woman was telling me, with a smile on her face, that reservations - which cost $5 to make and $50 to cancel, by the way - were completely meaningless! I asked for a list of phone numbers for other places I could call, and told her to hold onto my 6pm reservation for the moment. What else could I do? It was the end of the month and nobody seemed to have anything available. As I was making futile, half-hearted calls to other UHaul locations, the same conversation seemed to be taking place with a couple who had just showed up at the counter behind me.

Kristi gave me a ride back from the UHaul dealership, and I nearly called off the morning move in frustration. Fortunately, friends came to the rescue by volunteering jeeps and SUVs, and Arvind miraculously found the last full-size rental truck left in the Bay Area: a 17' Budget sitting in an odd lot under the 980/880 interchange in Oakland. I canceled my UHaul reservation and now I'm just waiting for those jackasses to charge me a $50 cancellation fee so I can refute it.

Moral of the story is: When you have to move, don't use UHaul. I heard so many nightmare stories talking to people at the Budget pick-up desk and elsewhere last weekend that I'm convinced UHaul runs an unacceptably unprofessional booking system, where your $5 reservation fee really doesn't guarantee anything, and any technical problem or late return from one customer will slap another customer in the face. The most puzzling part of all this was how cheery everyone at the UHaul office seemed to be in telling me that they'd essentially screwed up: Were they just that accustomed to these problems?

Anyway, here's a link that you may one day find interesting, with absolutely no explanation as to when or why. I'll be posting more drawings as soon as my desk and computer are up and running in my new place. Go Ratatouille!

Who cooked the Ratatouille?

2007-06-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've been too busy to post much lately as I prepare to move into a new apartment, but with sneak previews and reviews of Ratatouille now pouring in, I'm happy to say that I can finally - finally! - tell my family and friends just what I've been doing over the past two and half years!

I can't think of any other studio out there as committed to pushing the Art of Animation as much as Pixar. Having worked fairly early in the production pipeline for well over two years, it's been a wonder to see so many talents come together to create what might be one of the most beautiful animated films ever produced.

Most of my time on this film was spent Modeling and Articulating the film's human characters. Those are some fairly esoteric terms, so to explain: "Modeling" refers to the sculpting of the static three-dimentional polygonal "Model" representation of a character inside of a computer program. "Articulation" refers to the process of giving that static Character Model animation controls; Much like puppet strings would give a puppeteer the ability to manipulate an otherwise lifeless doll, the process of Articulation is the technical preface to a Character Model's animation, giving Animators the "strings" they will need to make our characters act. Working with Artists and Animators, Articulators figure out what a Character Model will look like in motion - how its skeleton will move the skin, what its range of facial expessions will look like - and create animation controls to accomplish every sort of subtle movement animators will need to get those Models acting convincingly in scene.

Rat does a wonderful job of pushing human caricature, so I feel very fortunate to have played a significant part in tackling the Articulation and Modeling challenges behind its villains: Chef Skinner (voiced by Ian Holm) and Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole). Watching animators push those models as far as they did was both thrilling and frightening ("We need the left nostril to do what?!?"), but an incredible sense of energy and life was pumped into the characters in the end. Responsibilities toward each character's model development on this film were highly shared among Articulators, but I also provided many months' worth of work towards Horst, Lalo, Mustafa, Lawyer, AdMan, Health Inspector, Colette, and numerous other background humans, background and pre-production rats, and character props. My last few months on the film were spent on animation fixes and cloth simulations.

I'm very proud of the job my friends and co-workers did on this film, and can't wait to see it in a public theater on opening weekend among a completely fresh crowd! Please get out and support Rat in theaters if you can; skip the latest inevitably disappointing big-budget Sequel* and try something fresh! If you can stay for the film's very entertaining credits, you'll see my name under 'Characters' and 'Additional Simulation Support'. Enjoy!

*ok, well see Transformers after Rat :)

Pura Vida! Stories from the Costa Rica Trip

2007-06-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, last week was a blast... Costa Rica was easily the most adventure-packed vacation I've ever taken, and thanks to some some crafty bribery of Costa Rican police by Melissa and Joey, I even made it to the Ratatouille Wrap Party on time!

Melissa, Karen, Joey, Mahyar and I flew into Costa Rica overnight last Friday, surprisingly well-rested thanks to a combination of earplugs and Tylenol PM. It wasn't long before Melissa's bilingual superpowers came into play, as United Airlines left our group's checked luggage behind in LA. Crisis mitigated, we soon filled our wallets with Colones and set off for the Cloud Forests of Monte Verde in an inconspicuous new 2008 Toyota Rav4.

A few things were obvious off the bat: The roads in Costa Rica are an adventure in themselves: credit Joey for not blowing a tire or axle like so many cars and Turismo buses pulled aside along the way. There are no highways or sidewalks in Costa Rica, so the roads are shared with people, chickens, dogs, horses, and anything else that cares to roam free. A portable GPS navigation system is well worth packing to alleviate route guesswork, though we managed to get by without one. I'm now very thankful that we have at least some emissions standards on vehicles in the US. The expression "Pura Vida" can apparently never be used too often in Costa Rica. Costa Ricans call themselves "Ticos", and they are for the most part extraordinarily friendly. Ticos are very fond of rice, beans, and Christina Aguilera. A handful of Spanish nouns and verbs learned in high school came to mind soon after landing, and were dutifully fumbled while ordering value meal #4 from a fast food counter at a mall.

Monte Verde was well worth the prerequisite off-roading experience. Late May falling well within the wet/off season, we arrived just after a major storm system cleared and settled into the sounds of the cloud forest over a few card games in our fortuitously upgraded cabin. The next morning we found ourselves zip-lining along suspended cables through the canopy, an experience which was surprisingly serene once you got used to landing on tiny treehouse-styled platforms precariously bolted to trees 100 feet above the ground.

The cloud forest was teeming with life, so Mahyar and I followed up the flying bit with a short hike out into the zip line area trails at sunset. This was something I would recommend, as the sounds of the transition (birds yielding to insects) were very intense: just remember that swinging on vines can be very abrasive to the hands, and that you'll need those flashlights sooner than you'd think! At one point on the hike, we heard a low-pitched, fluttering purrrrrrr coming from just off the trail but out of sight - was it just a large-winged bird settling in for the night, or a rare encounter with a Jaguar? We chose to believe the latter over a sampling of Imperial, the omnipresent, mediocre beer of the country.

On Monday morning, we toured a nature reserve featuring a suspended walking bridge over the forest canopy. We weren't particularly adept at spotting tropical birds outside of one that repeatedly sang the first few notes of Star Wars' "Imperial March", but we were amazed to find how lizards and exotic insects could literally be hiding under any leaf.

After Melissa earned her second guava cookie for asking for directions when we found ourselves lost in the unmarked roads around Tilaran, we spotted our first Toucan just outside of Arenal, at the base of the continuously active Arenal Volcano. The experience played out during an ordinary stop at the side of the road with much similarity to that scene from Jurassic Park where that 'Newman' guy from Sienfeld is attacked by a poinson-spitting dinosaur; in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the filmmakers borrowed the sound the Toucan seemed to make before we managed to spot it. Tropical bird sighting requirement satisfied, we checked into the Arenal Paraiso Hotel and soon found ourselves sipping Pina Coladas at its otherwise nearly deserted bar, conveniently located in the center of one of its hot spring pools.

But enough with the rest! At 7am on Tuesday, we found ourselves stepping over a 165-foot cliff edge on a canyoning outing, rappelling alongside and through waterfalls as we found our way down a deep ravine. At lunchtime we indulged our now well-versed appreciation for Salsa Lizano, the standout among otherwise somewhat nondescript Costa Rican meals alongside their tasty fresh fruit drinks. ("Guanabana"!)

Putting all other guava cookie hopefuls to shame, Melissa once again called upon her superpowers, hiring one of our half-dozen rappel guides, Eric, to lead our group on an evening excursion to the Volcano in what would become one of my favorite parts of the trip. Having had a few hours too many to think the outing over, it had become slightly unnerving for all of us to trust an impromptu guide who spoke little English to lead us into such an unknown, dangerous environment. The atmosphere that night was literally electric with tension - a storm was rolling in and the sky was overcast as we notified the hotel of our outing, packed ourselves, Eric and Stephanie (a fellow Savannahian from the rappel tour) into the Rav4 with flashlights and rain jackets in hand, and crossed our fingers for the lluevo to hold off.

Eric directed us to a more active side of the volcano from our hotel around 7pm, and deep into a park where a handful of people were struggling to get glimpses of the mountain's peak through the clouds that now flirted with it. Starting on a trailhead to an observation point, we had to hike about 20 minutes in the dark through a tunnel of young but very dense vegetation. About halfway in, we suddenly heard a series of deep, extended rumbling - much lower in tone than the thunder - coming from the direction of the mountain. We couldn't see a thing through the walls of jungle at either side of the path, but it sounded so close! A shot of adrenaline took hold as we realized we were hearing the crumbling rocks of active lava flows nearby, and with a quickened pace we cleared the tree line at the trail's end for a better look.

We were standing on the uneven, crumbled igneous rock debris left by the volcano's last major eruption in 1992. That event had destroyed an entire town in its wake, the ruins of which now sat below Lake Arenal below us. Eric informed Melissa that we were about a kilometer from the flows, and we took a seat in front of the dark, monochrome shape of the volcano, which reached up into the clouds but was, for the moment, disappointingly silent of activity.

For about 15 minutes we squinted in near silence at the shape where it met the clouds, some glancing incredulously over to others who claimed to see tiny flickers of red. Finally, that familiar rumbling sound gave a hint of life, and our wait was rewarded by a clean line of red stretching down out of the clouds, bringing up a little applause from us before it slowed and faded into the black. For about an hour we sat in the dark and listened to the volcano with the thunder behind us, squinting at flickers in between sporadic shows of bright red lava traces and occasionally glancing back to make sure Eric hadn't left us for dead in his search for a better vantage point.

Convinced that the storm clouds were intensifying at the top of the volcano, we eventually decided we'd seen a good show, and set up for a group picture just as the sound of rain started to creep up on us. It was exactly then - probably by the force of the cool rain hitting the hot rocks we were watching moments before it got to us - that a huge patch of the mountain suddenly sliced open in bright flows of red, sending us off with an incredible finale and the strongest rumbling we heard all evening just before the edge of the downpour eclipsed our perch and sent us scrambling back down the trail.

Eric seemed happy with the tip we gave him :)

Of course there was still plenty to do: We spent the next day on a three-hour excursion on horseback, including an hour rest at the middle to cross a delicate canyon bridge (evoking memories of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - I'm just going to believe that I saw crocodiles in the stream below between the gaps in the floor boards!) and swim around the base of one of those lush, 100-foot waterfalls you might see in tour brochures.

The Hotel Las Tortugas at Playa Grande was the last stop on my trip, and came a sharp change in attitude. About 80% of coastal Costa Rican land is now owned by foreigners, and while this surfer's choice hotel seemed to maintain a respect for the local population and nature, it was more than obvious that the coast is being quickly developed and Americanized. Put it this way: My American neighbors on the flight home were returning from a real estate scouting vacation, spoke very little to no Spanish and hadn't a clue when I asked them about Salsa Lizano. For a country that never had a rich cultural history like Peru or a stable economic center (a non-native coffee business gave way to American Fruit Company-run bananas, giving way to heavily foreign-owned eco-tourism in just the past 100 years), this exemplified a feeling of identity crisis which might have been the one low point to such a broad visit.

Not to be deterred, the sun managed to peek out just enough for me to sneak in my first ever attempt at surfing, an inexpensive lesson through the hotel by a genuine American surfer dude. I managed to stand up on my first three tries and had a great time. Can't wait to do it again.

Tamarindo served up our final overpriced souvenier needs, and we were soon rushing back across the country to San Jose International Airport on its main (one-lane) road... and cutting it close. Sure enough, we got caught in some sort of speed trap and were pulled over by a Costa Rican police officer.

Yet again, Melissa came to the rescue as translator. The officer seemed to take on a tone of intimidation - trying to tell us that we were speeding so egregiously that we really should be put in a judge or fined so many tens of thousands of colones - but he curiously never motioned to write a ticket, arrest anyone, or even read Joey's driver's license. Sure enough, it was only a matter of time before he let out something along the lines of "Well, I suppose we could just forget about this if you give me something now...". The guy even coached us on how to properly fold the money before discretely slipping it to him.

Mahyar and I made it back to the Bay Area with plenty of time to rest up for our wrap party, which would be a huge culture shock and adventure in itself. Melissa, Karen and Joey continued on to Manuel Antonio, where they saw many monos locos. Thanks so much to all of them for handling the bulk of planning this trip; as it was put in the car: "You were the wind beneath my... feet."

Off to Costa Rica!

2007-05-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

It's been tough to post lately - there's been so much going on! Tonight, some friends and I are flying out to Costa Rica for a week of hiking, canyoneering, zip lines and surfing. I'll be returning just in time for the Ratatouille Wrap Party on June 2, and will get you all the latest stories and drawnigs at that point. Hasta luego!

Point Reyes

2007-05-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

Fueled by tasty breakfast tacos, Vicki, Chris, Kevin, Frank and myself hiked about 11.5 mountainous miles through Point Reyes this past Sunday, conquering Mount Wittenberg, crossing rolling hills overlooking the Pacific, exploring rocky beach caves, and even taking home a new insect friend along the way. My feet are still recovering two days later, but the time outdoors proved a much better alternative to watching the Warriors chuck 3s and collect technical fouls!

A rough start of 2 miles uphill led to some rewarding views:

A well-deserved rest at Sculptured Beach:

Coachella Follow-up: Videos

2007-05-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

How rude of me not to have included video with the original post... here are some very poor quality clips of the crowds/shows, taken between Jason and myself.

Teddybears:

Arcade Fire:

The Coup:

Mike Relm ("O-Face"; check out how he mixes video!):

Rage Against the Machine:

Tiesto:

Coachella!!!

2007-05-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

For the third straight year, the Coachella Music and Arts Festival delivered an unparalleled lineup of bands in the scorching hot SoCal desert. Six of us made the trek from Oakland to Indio...

... and each of us came back with a half dozen new favorite bands. Here were my personal favorites:

--- Best Performances ---

- The Arcade Fire - amazing show with a desert sunset backdrop.
- Teddybears - this year's Gnarls Barkley; party music that turned the Gobi tent wild. If you need some energizing sounds for the gym or car, check them out!
- The Arctic Monkeys - alongside Of Montreal, these guys got the festival rolling

--- Best Random Discovery ---

- Mike Relm - a kickass DJ with a great sense of humor who mixes movies alongside beats.

--- Best Discovery by a Friend ---

MSTRKRFT - some of the best new club music I've heard in a while

--- "Where Were You When the Revolution Began?" ---

- Rage Against the Machine - "What better place than THIS / What better time than NOW? UGH!!!!!!!"

--- "I Finally Saw Them!" ---

- Faithless - avid insomniac for over a decade!

--- Best Celebrity Cameo ---

- Ron Jeremy introduces Peaches
(note that I missed Scarlett Johanssen at The Jesus and Mary Chain)

----- Music Highlights -----

--- Friday ---

- Silversun Pickups - Good albeit sophomoric band, promising if not quite ready for the main stage. After one flat-landing joke from the band, credit the guy in the crowd who screamed "Humor!"
- Of Montreal - Fun! Must see more...
- Amy Winehouse - if you're into soulful stuff and hotties who can pull off beehive haircuts, this is for you.
- Arctic Monkeys - first great full set I saw. "I _ bet _ that _ you _ look good on the dance floor..."
- Peaches - (R: potty-mouthed, but funny)
- Peeping Tom - Who knew that girls could beatbox, too! "Okay - How many of you just peed your pants?"
- Faithless - I was right up front when they opened with "Insomniac" and the place went berserk! Crowd was absoutely wild for the first 3 tracks.
- DJ Shadow - Right up front again, great beats but the set was cut short as the Outdoor Stage was running a half hour late.

--- Saturday ---

- Hot Chip - (during hands-in-the-air, jumping-up-and-down-clapping climax in 107 degree tent) "Wow, thanks to whoever is spraying the crowd with that cool water! ... wait... that's sweat... ah screw it: 'LIKE A MONKEY WITH A MINIATURE CYMBAL!!!'..."
- The New Pornographers - "Keep it down, Travis!"
- Kings of Leon - much better than I expected, I had to skip the Decemberists to get postition for...
- The Arcade Fire - Eric and I fought off a literally suffocating crowd with elbows and hand grenades to get close to the main stage, and man it was worth it! This set just got better and better as it went on.
- Girl Talk - I missed the part where people threw empty water bottles at Paris Hilton on her cameo, but this was a fun 10 minutes from MTV's Spring Break Beach House.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers - from a distance, they were what they are.
- Mike Relm - laughing and dancing for an hour, everyone in our group will be looking for this SF native again...
- Tiesto - a cool beer before a huge dance party on the mainstage

--- Sunday ---

- Tapes 'n Tapes - one of my favorite discoveries of the weekend
- The Coup - Oaktown brings the funk! Eric and I were 3 people back, center stage
- Explosions in the Sky - didn't see nearly enough
- Rodrigo and Gabriella - another amazing discovery - this acoustic Mexican duo drew a huge crowd singing to their take on Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"
- Kaiser Chiefs - I for one had a great time in the middle of this crowd :)
- Cut Chemist - wasn't getting off the ground in the dome, left quickly
- Richie Hawtin - meh. Felt like typical Sahara.
- Paul Van Dyk - good, but got kind of repetitive... I found myself freeing up memory on my camera.
- Teddybears - How can you not go nuts over a party band led by DJs and guitarists rocking out in suits with oversized bear mascot heads? I got to this one early for a spectacular spot, and was extremely glad I came. One of my new favorites.
- Rage Against the Machine - What better place than this, what better time than now to witness 50,000 people jumping up and down and screaming "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT'CHA TELL ME!!!" at the top of their lungs??? Rage's first show in 7 years was a blast. Paraphriasing: "If they were judged by the same standards we held against Nazi war criminals, every president since Truman would be tried, and hung, and shot ....... But the challenges we face go beyond the current administration. It’s not a system that changes every four years. It’s a system we have to tear down, generation after generation......... [breaks out] WAKE UUUUUUP!!!"

Expect to see all of us back in the desert next April... we've become extremely efficient at hydration.

'cause I'm a punk rocker / yes I am.

Almost time to dump that cable subscription...

2007-04-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

... and pick up a Slingbox to feed your TV from your computer. The new ABC Media Player is a pretty amazing compliment to the Itunes downloads they already offer... you can watch all of their major shows on demand in very good quality, with less commercials. Check it out!

Now if only they could broadcast the Mavs-Warriors series live this way...

Gesture Drawing (Madam Mim)

2007-04-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

Instead of drawing the model this week, I drew Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone using the model's poses only for inspiration. I practiced for about an hour the night before class, getting a feel for the character ahead of time so I wouldn't have to turn to reference much. I think the archery pose was my favorite from this batch, but if I drew Madam Mim again I would definitely loosen up on the dress... Any way you look at it, this was a fun experiment!

The Power of Green

2007-04-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

The New York Times Magazine is running an excellent article this weekend over how today's very divided and internationally rocky America is ripe for a galvanizing, cross-party Green Revolution... even given the economic realities of the challenge. This makes a lot of sense to me: former U.S. Military leaders, Democratic candidates, and even the leading Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, agree that energy independence (and clean energy) is absolutely crucial to national security, but none of the candidates seem to volunteer a real plan. If we really wanted to "support our troops" and promote democracy, why wouldn't we work to reduce our involvement in an oil trade that will almost surely grow more tense, authoritarian and destructive over time? Sure there's a lot of money and existing economic and political structure in the way of change, but democracy tends to work pretty well when people are captivated, pay attention, and make demands.

Some quotes from the article:

"A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism."

"You can illustrate the First Law of Petropolitics with a simple graph. On one line chart the price of oil from 1979 to the present; on another line chart the Freedom House or Fraser Institute freedom indexes for Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela for the same years. When you put these two lines on the same graph you see something striking: the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated. As oil prices went down in the early 1990s, competition, transparency, political participation and accountability of those in office all tended to go up in these countries — as measured by free elections held, newspapers opened, reformers elected, economic reform projects started and companies privatized. That’s because their petroauthoritarian regimes had to open themselves to foreign investment and educate and empower their people more in order to earn income. But as oil prices went up around 2000, free speech, free press, fair elections and freedom to form political parties and NGOs all eroded in these countries."

"Up to now, said Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, we as a society “have been behaving just like Enron the company at the height of its folly.” We rack up stunning profits and G.D.P. numbers every year, and they look great on paper “because we’ve been hiding some of the costs off the books.” If we don’t put a price on the CO2 we’re building up or on our addiction to oil, we’ll never nurture the innovation we need."

"President Bush claims he’s protecting American companies by not imposing tough mileage, conservation or clean power standards, but he’s actually helping them lose the race for the next great global industry. Japan has some of the world’s highest gasoline taxes and stringent energy efficiency standards for vehicles — and it has the world’s most profitable and innovative car company, Toyota. That’s no accident."

Gesture Drawing

2007-04-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Tried to push character a little today, though it needs to go farther! Included is an example of a train wreck salvaged by our instructor, Tom... the lesson being that we can be pretty liberal when interpreting a gesture to emphasize an action.

Today's Walt Stanchfield notes included some great pointers on how to overcome learning plateaus by breaking down problems into smaller, more easily overcome elements. A sense of progress would be very welcome right now, so I'll try to keep the sketchbook rolling...

Dave Chappelle @ Cobb's

2007-04-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Friday morning held a surprise twist when Jason sent out word of tickets going on sale for an unannounced Chappelle stand-up show in San Francisco the same night. Evidently his word branched out so quickly that it reached about 30 people we knew before the club sold out, leading to a somewhat awkward waiting line-packing scene which I still feel a bit guilty over. Fortunately, everything kind of worked itself out and we all got great seats.

Chappelle put on a pretty good show; it didn't really compare to the DVD release from the Fillmore a few years back, but the guy was on stage for over two hours! A lanky, gawkish sort of dude in person, he went through about 45 minutes worth of hatin' material to start, shared a phone call from some rapper named Qui-gon (or something like that ;), and then let the audience shout out topics for comment until the coffee and cigarettes could no longer keep him going. There was still a lot of vocalized bitterness towards Comedy Central, but as long as Chappelle can keep filling comedy clubs at $50/person, he doesn't seem inclined to do much else.

Gesture Drawing

2007-04-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

So today wasn't the day to take up the goal from the last post (cartooning a character) since this model didn't have props, but she did bring some fun poses. I tried to emphasize her hips with varying success... Tom also had some great advice on dedicating focused time to address specific problems in a sketchbook at home, and using old disney model sheets to interpret poses into an existing character... on that latter point, guess we'll see how brave I'm feeling in the next class :)

Gesture Drawing

2007-03-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Man, I can't believe someone else out there was using the same blog name... all seven seconds of word-mashing cleverness rendered useless! So bummed.... so tired is the term that some geeky sort even attempted to define the term "bloggadocio" with a note of actual seriousness, though I myself intended only a nod to the great MC Frontalot. That said, I'm trying out a new title: Prepare for "Ludicrous Speed"!

... aaaaand here are some drawings. Think I need to just throw away the details of what I'm seeing, keeping only the pose and drawing whatever character I comes to mind in these sessions. It throws me off to fumble for a different theme per pose, but maybe if I decide the model looks kinda like a waitress, gangster, spartan, etc....

Gesture Drawing

2007-03-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

(from last Tuesday)

New Ratatouille Trailer

2007-03-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, this movie looks pretty good... ;)

Japanese Incredibles Workout

2007-03-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Bizarre.

Sketchbook

2007-03-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

Before getting caught up with St. Patrick's Day or the NCAA Tournament, I took a couple of hours yesterday afternoon to sketch in San Francisco between the Embarcadero and Union Square. Always such an entertaining variety of characters in this city when you stop to look, half-drunk on this particular day... Here are some examples to share, along with an older sketch from December which I thought was a successful caricature. All are done with ballpoint pen, which I'm getting the hang of but may be moving away from on my next outing since it tends to keep me slow and careful.

Demand Congressional Action on Climate Change

2007-03-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

In just five days (March 21st), Al Gore will be testify before Congress for immediate action on the growing Global Warming crisis. To show that Americans feel this needs to become a legistlative priority now, before it's too late, Gore is organizing a web-based postcard-writing campaign to accompany his testimony.

This is the world's warmest winter on record. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1995. We are at a point where permafrost is melting. This isn't some tree-hugging bullshit over which you vote with a political party; this is real science that has horrible implications for future generations, and it's a moral imperative that we act. Please take just a few seconds of your day to tell your congressional representatives that we need to take action now towards a more sustainable way of life.

Gesture Drawing

2007-03-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday wasn't a particularly strong day of Gesture Drawing. I had trouble focusing and feeling the poses as my mind was distracted by work, pondering the self-desctructive nature of the human race, and other such nonsense. Still, I'd like to think that my uninspired days now are worlds better than they used to be!