I Don't Remember Watching Annie

The sun will come out, tomorrow.(You can)bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow they'll be sun. Just thinkin' about tomorrow, clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow, 'till there's none.

When I'm stuck with a day, that's greay and lonely, I just stick up my chin, and grin and say...

O...

The sun'll come out tomorrow, so you gotta hang on 'till tomorrow, come what may. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love 'ya, tomorrow, you're only a day away.

Epi didn't fix the drive, but he's still wokring on it so I might write him a haiku instead of a full poem at the end of the week. A thank-you Haiku. I have to look up the format again 'cause it has to be at least several years since my last haiku... in fact, I can't even remember what the occasion might have been.

Incidentally I found a file with Gretel's mesh on the desktop with which I have been able to go ahead with the Annie muscial animation. It's going well and I like animating. It's much better thaìn modelling cause you can see the character come to life. I gave her a pig/bear thing to play with, but she's so busy being inspirational that she' doesn't pay it much attention. I still ahven0t decided if I'm going to cut her off at the bridge or take her into the full reprise (with dancing). Emotionally, I'm thinking reprise, logically, one verse is all she needs. Let's be honest though... It's Wednsday and the exam is Monday.

I should get back to her.

Lacie has Betrayed Me!

Alas, the time has come for that fateful day when my external hard drive finally tells me to piss off and just stopps running. I'm a firm believer that every computer has a life of about 2 years before it starts to betray its owner and I guess I should have thought the same for an external hard-drive no? Lacie won't run. We went to school today and she didn't show up on my desktop so I took her back home and no joy here either. I have no back ups.

Let me make a list of what is lost, both for you ti see how foolish I am and for me to learn even more from my haorrible mistake:

- Chud
- Sal
- Gretel
- The Tassi Americani (Raccoons Playing Poker)
- Cheech's film (at least the working files)
- Lofty Pines Motel Room
- Sky Fishing
- Surrealistic Silver Girl
- Everything from my portfolio before IED
- XSI Exam (yes, the whole exam a.k.a. 125 hours of work)
- Work for Matt in London (eeeesh! Che pale!)
- Character Animation Exam

Now I know you're asking yourself.-.. why didn't she have copies? Yes, indeed... why didn't I have copies.

Today I learn once again to never ever trust a computer (they're all whores, whores I tell you!!) and at the sme time... never to trust myself.

Let's see if Epi can fix it. If he does, I'll take an hour out of my dat tomorrow to write him a poem. An ode to Episcopo. Stay tuned.

Corruptions, Losses and bits of Coloured Paper

I lost Chud. Chud is lost. Turns out some time last week while working and getting a usual error followed by a swift shut-down of XSI, his file was corrupted permanently. Instead of learning then what I know now, I repeatedly reopened the file, worked a bit more (till the next crash) and saved the progressive files. Little did I know however (cause I'm stupid) that the file itself was growing and cultivating an error, which, a week later would allow me to reach a point in my work where Chud was almost complete, but where the file would refuse to save, rotate in viewports and remain open for more than 3 minutes. I reinstalled the software 3 times in a vain hope that in fact it was some other problem, but alas, no. Chud is gone.

Ah, learning is fun!

Sal, on the other hand, having been abandoned from my workload before the forementioned error was salvageable. I'm still trying to decide whether to take him further for my final presentation for Progettazione (and we all know about that) or to drop him, as well as Chud (they were after all a team) and drag Gretel into another project. I just think it's such a cop out though... to just abandon everything. I'm pretty sure regardless of what I choose I'll get the same grade as they're pretty much arbitrary, but I now have to decide whether doing more work is worth it. The exam is Tuesday.

Coloured paper you ask? This is the other exam in the next few weeks. Motion Graphic. It's meant to teach us (I think) about the relation between music and images, but it's really just teaching me to be angry, and wound-up. Alice and I are working in a team and that seems to be going well. She came by on Friday and we spend 3 hours of out lives stop-motion animating bits of paper making different images and moving around the screen. The project is for a track by this electronic musician named Gak Sato and our 5 seconds or so is quite country, so at least I'm happy about that. Really though... I don't think I'll be knocking this one into my portfolio any time soon. Oh, and did I mention that the teacher just didn't bother to turn up for class last week? Really slick.

Chud Has a Little Elton John Going On

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Now it's just getting silly. I'm trying to get Chud and Sal ready for rendering and I just keep adding weirdness. These are Chud's new Goggles. I think he has issues.

This morning I got up early 6am to go renew my Permesso di Soggiorno (like a visa). There were about 100 people ahead of me in line at via Montenapoleone and by 730 I found out that I was in the wrong place... apparently they don't do the PDS for Canadians there anymore. Luck had it that Roni was also out and about at the break of dawn trying to do hers and correctly directed to the same one I was now on my way to. We got appointments to actually do the paperwork at the end of June. She leaves the country 10 days afterwards.

I'm going to egt my hair cut later.

Where are we going? To GARDAAAAAA!!!!

Yesterday we got up at stupid AM after the 70's party at Frida. We piled into a very small caravan and head out to GARDAAAAA!!! Apparently, after all this time Andrea suddenly thinks to mention that his parents have an apartment on the beautiful and also famous lake in Northern Italy, and that he has a set of keys. Epi, Denise, Carolina, Ricardo, Fabri and I were off.

We stopped for lunch upon hitting the lake then went for a stroll in Sirmione. It's a penninsula that juts out into the lake (well, an island really, connected to the mainland by a castle) and boasts the home of Maria Callas and giant hotels hidden by trees as well as thermal baths, pebble beaches and an impressive and frightening Gelato (ice-cream) district. I had Mela and Lampone.

After Sirmione we drove past Gardaland (Italy's #1 theme park), Movieland (Italy's #18 theme park) and finally arrived at Andrea's apartment on the water. It was overcast, but we still headed down to the pebble beach and all got our legs in the water. It was 17degrees, but I reckon I could have had a swim if I had thought to change into my bathing suit. We practiced skipping stones and had fun throwing pebbles at Ricardo while he slept on the dock. It was about 15 minutes before he woke up. In all this time Michele was "trying" to get to come meet us and we finally realised he was actually on the west side of the lake as opposed to the east side where we were enjoying the sunset and the horrible neighbor's' leaf burning. We decided it was best to meet him in Cola'.

At Cola' we debated for a long time whether or not to spend the 18euros to enter the Thermal park. In the end, Fabri and I grabbed a pizza with the others then our bathing suits and decided to try it out. It was amazing. They've built a false lake over the thermal spring with pebble bottom, grotto,waterfalls and massage point. Really, it was the most fantastic 'pool' I've ever been to. Did I mention that it's around 34degrees? Oh, and that within the lake there are 2 hottubs, one at 37degress and the other at 39?? It was WONDERFUL. I'm so going back there. Check it out here: www.parcotermaledelgarda.it If I can managae to organise it maybe I'll force everyone to go back there for my birthday in July.

Chud and Sal look to the future.

Y'know, I might just put these two in a musical while I'm at it.

Chud's a redhead now and not quite as bald as he was in his debut feature. Also, he stopped wearing the blue coloured contacts cause I convinced him his natural, deep brown eyes were worth showing off.

What exactly am I doing? This is my final project for progettazione. I haven't really learnt how to Proggetare (plan) anything in the class, but I recently got a book on the subject of planning towards short film production... here I come.

My idea for the thesis is coming along well. As things go, in the next year I have to study biped as well as quadruped motion. Yes, we're talking four-legged friends here. The main idea comes from a story that Max told us at the bar one night (that's Max the friend, not the 3d software or my nephew). Ah, dogs are so cute and troublesome.

I'm hoping to get started on Gretel's recital in the next few days. The only think is she's all rigged nice and clean in Maya and I don't feel like pulling her out for a re-rig in XSI, which after the experiment with the gymnast seems to be my strongest animation program.

Ha ha ha... I imagine this blog seems pretty weird now. So, for something normal: Today I will go to the gym for a swim.

Sal

This is Sal. He's Chud's best friend. He's kind of like a sidekick. He has problems with personal hygene.

The Many Faces of Gretel

This is probably the work I'm most proud of this year. I haven't any time to elaborate, but I'm going to try to get a short animation of Gretel done to a song from the hit off-broadway musical 'You're a Good Man Charlie Brown'. Gretel will be playing the role of Lucy.