A word on Starbucks

I go to Starbucks sometimes and feed the corporate monster because they have free wireless and no TV and there's nothing to do but sit there and do your work.
But I think that I saw 3 Starbucks within 2 blocks. I'm not exaggerating people. It's out of control here! It makes the Omnipresence of Starbucks in Ann Arbor look like mere ubiquity.

Also I'm adding a e-mail links to these blogs so anyone reading this can send a message more easily.

right here at the bottom. -----> e-mail me

This way when Starbucks sends me a cease and desist order, they won't have to fish around through their worldwide database for my e-mail address. :)

Presentations

Presentation day went pretty well for me, except for a few frantic moments where a group of us students, thinking that we had plenty of time waltzed up to the copier on the 4th floor and then found out that it had run out of toner, then ran downstairs to the 3rd floor copier only to find out that we needed our student pin numbers to make the copies, then ran to the computer to check our e-mail for said pin... you get the idea.
There were some really good stories in there. I hope that everyone who pitched today has the opportunity to bring their projects to fruition. It will be an impressive array of final films if we do. Either way it will be fun to watch them all evolve from the seed of a concept in a brainstorming session all the way to the final product.
We have stories about animals playing checkers. Super heroes, robots, a superstitious man and his lottery ticket, a couch potato, a thirsty man in the dessert, a bowl full of vegetables, and so many more. It was really a great time seeing everyone's vision. It seems to say so much about who they are and what their interests are. Like watching a 6-4, 200 plus pound dude from Brazil act out his animation concept to the tune of Stevie Wonder's very superstitious. That one was a showstopper!
Now comes the hard part, we just have to model (sculpt in virtual space) rig (apply skeletons so they move properly) light, build props, animate, edit, add sound, and of course the biggie render (the time consuming process of waiting for the computer to turn all the information into an actual picture 24 times to give you a second of animation, looking at it, seeing how its still not quite right, fixing it and waiting all over again.)
But for now I think I'll just breathe a sigh of relief that, for the moment, public speaking is over. Tomorrow it's nose back to grindstone/monitor and we'll see what we can do.

Hope everyone out there is doing well. Hopefully soon I'll have some screen caps of some props for my story.

e-mail me

-Davinci

So this is the protagonist to my short story.
A robot who has become obsolete. In the story he
tries to reenter the work force but finds himself incapable
of doing the job that was once his reason for existence.
But when he meets another impaired robot his fortune's change.



Below are a bunch of other characters that didn't make the cut.
One was a kid outside a toy store. A basketball playing frog. And my
personal favorite, of the rejected characters, a cookie stealing ninja.
That one would have been fun to animate.








































So today was a pretty good day. I learned some quick and dirty Maya tricks that I didn't know and we got to watch our instructor work on the projector. I've seen it before but I forgot how quickly and efficiently things can be created by someone who really knows what their doing. I need to really focus on getting that comfortable with the program. You can do some pretty amazing things pretty quickly when you work with it all the time.

Presentations are tomorrow. I have to show my concept and storyboards for what will eventually become my final project. So I guess I better get used to my robot character. I will be seeing alot of him for the next five months.

Ramping up

Things are heating up now. We're lighting rooms and bouncing balls. You always start off bouncing balls. Don't ask me why, it's quintessential like that.
Pretty simple stuff all in all, but not as simple as actually bouncing a ball. There are Translate, Rotate, and Scale/squash nodes, and your XYZ coordinates, keyframes and frames per second settings to juggle. All so you can take a sphere and move it across the screen, and distort it in a fashion exaggerated enough to make it look like it's really moving.
It's exciting to be getting to the point of really making things happen again, but I seriously need to spend some time brainstorming. Next week we have to have an idea of what our final project will be. So that means what ever I decide on I'm stuck with it for the next 5 months so I better either love it, or learn to.
No pictures today, but maybe next time. I should have something worth showing next week.

The prettiest thing

Yesterday we decided to check out the beach here. From the street it didn't look like anything special but as we got closer there was this incredible green water, and a distant shore on the other side where homes that swept up the mountainside were partially obscured by a looming fog.
There was a wind driven marrionette of a swimmer perched on a high pole, her legs working in an ungainly cadence, trying to make her way through the deep clouds that surrounded her.
While we were standing there, looking out at the sea a great wind rose up and the gulls took to the air crying out. It felt like the opening of new doors, like the beginning of new possibilities. It felt like the absence of worry, like the absence of thought itself. But the wind died down, and the siren's song fell silent.
And I thought, we are all of us, living through the hours and days and years to get to moments like that.
Tomorrow we focus on the new day's tasks. And sunlight on the treetops, and wind blown snow glittering like diamond dust goes unnoticed as we pass through the throngs of rush hour traffic. Gray skies may fill us with gloom, rather than hope and cold winds may shake us shivering in our winter coats. But within those experiences lies the dormant seed of flowers unbloomed and springs unblossomed. The trick is not to let the gloom of today obscure the gift of hope that each tomorrow brings.

Blizzard

Yesterday was Taffy's last night here. We got off the bus and walked through a dark night and a bit of a hailstorm to get to the museum of Anthropology. The art in there was amazing. There were old steins and ceramics and porcelain that has somehow survived for hundreds of years. There was a canoe and totem poles, and African masks. It was a pretty amazing place. I'm glad we got to see it before she went.

So now its just me. The place sure is quiet now. I guess its a great studying environment anyway. It has been cold and gray lately, but the task ahead keeps me focused. They say that spring comes in February around here though. I'll be looking forward to the change.

Animation

Today in class our instructor was talking about some of the better animation and animators out there. He was giving us an overview of animation in general, in Maya, and books we should read and clips we could watch, and it started to reignite my passion for animation. It started to change the way that I think about it.
When I was younger I was always thinking about action and special effects and the fantastic voyages and vistas you could create. Today I was thinking about simplicity. A man picking up a ball or a rock, a glance from one person to another, walking, a smile, these are some of the easiest things to do in real life. Yet, I think they are, perhaps, the greatest challenges in animation.
I suddenly felt excited to try these simple things. I felt like a child, like the whole world was new and the simplest things could be entertain me endlessly. Maybe that’s why we do art, because it makes us feel like a kid again, because it makes us feel like anything can happen, like we can make it happen.
Some of you will know this already but when I was a child it was my fondest wish to emulate the old Walt Disney films. All these years later, between wanting to make comic books and be a great author, do graphic design, or photography or web design, I have come full circle, back to animation but with a new tool. Its funny how things come back around like that. How you find yourself back at the beginning again, and how comfortable and good it can feel to meet an old love and still realize that the thrill’s still there.
So we sit at computers knowing little or nothing of what is to come, watering our dreams and trying to make them grow. We’re at the very beginning with no telling what the end result will be. We’re trying to become illusionists, trying to become world builders and story tellers, we’re trying to bring life to sculptures made of ether. We’re trying to become Zen masters who see the beauty and complexity in small simple things, see the joy of life, in the first steps of our own creations. We’re trying to become animators.

Orientation

For the past two days we’ve had orientation. We’re learning the rules of the school. Don’t plagiarize, don’t use school computers to rip Cds, the usual stuff. We also got to see some demo reels from former students that were pretty impressive.
I made a few friends. The cool thing about VFS is that people come from all over to go there. I ate lunch the other day with people from Sacramento, Toronto, and Argentina. We also have people from Mexico and India, Japan, China and Korea. It was an amazing thing walking into the theatre where we all were gathered on that first day. It was like walking into a UN meeting, I saw so many faces from so many nations all gathered in one place to pursue a common goal. Vancouver on the whole seems like that. You never know what accents or languages you might hear on the train or on the street. You see and pass people on the street that you can just tell by their dress and demeanor come from far away places.
We got our school kit today. A VFS backpack full of bottles and umbrellas and other things with Vancouver Film School written on it. They gave us cards to get into the building and we are supposed to get our student Ids soon. I can’t wait to get my hands on that, and see what kind of picture they took of me. The guy had to adjust the camera and bring it way up when it was time to take my picture so we’ll see how it looks.
Next week we should get into a little more of the Maya program itself. I’m hoping to get some screen captures on here once we start the actual projects. They say that some pretty interesting people will be coming through the school. People who work at Industrial light and magic and Pixar. It will be a great opportunity to be able to talk to industry professionals and get their input on my work.
I hope everyone is doing well in their respective cities, and their respective lives. I will report back next week when we get our first real projects.

The Saddest Day

It's checkout time. The Residence Inn in Vancouver has been good to us. They were courteous and friendly and kept the rooms neat and nice, but most of all they fed us breakfast. A complimentary breakfast buffet. And for those in the know that means free. All the food you can eat for breakfast, for free, every morning right there like the sun rising in the east, except sometimes the sky is overcast and you can't see the sun, but I saw that breakfast buffet every morning. They had eggs and sausage, pancakes and waffles. They had pastries and coffee and orange, grapefruit, and apple juices. They had muffins and hash browns, oatmeal and cold cereal. They had several kinds of yogurt and you could even make yourself a breakfast burrito if you wanted, although I'm not sure why anyone would.
But today it's raining, the skies are gray and it seems fitting. Because tomorrow I have find and make my own breakfast. I guess its true what they say, that all good things come to an end.

So adios Marriot residence inn, adios free all you can eat breakfast buffet every morning. Adios yogurt with strawberry sauce on it and lemon filled pastries. You will be missed, and won't soon be forgotten.