Struggling with Finessing and New Favorite Movie Contender

I'm having a bit of trouble finishing the work I need to get done for my shot this week. I keep hitting procrastination and misinspiration. I think the best thing to do is go in via arcs one by one. I'm going to take a break now and get back to it this evening.

But in terms of generalised inspiration I saw Horton Hears a Who last night (albeit in Italian - Orotone e il Mondo dei Chi) and I absolutely loved it. It was fantastic. Great story, characters acting and the animation was super exaggerated and fun. Apparently 22 graduates from AM worked on it so that's something to aspire to.

In terms of aspirations, jobs and the like, news has it that my phone's been ringing off the hook with interviews and offers recently. I don't know what it is... spring fever? Anyhow, starting a stage on the 5th of May and looking forward to it.

House Hunting and Other Hunting

Fabri and I have been looking at apartments lately, on a whim really to see what's out there and if we'd be willing to buy. So far we've seen alot that we like but every place has a catch. One's too expensive, one's too far from public transport, one opens up onto the garbage disposal. i guess with patience we'll find what's right for us.

I'm meant to be starting a stage this week at a post production company but I haven't heard back from the boss since last week. I uess I just have to truck along and see what happens. I had a phone call for some other work last night but it was from a client who is pretty unreliable and always contacts me at the last minute.

It's been pretty rainy lately, but I'm not letting it get me down. I'm too busy to be sad about anything and anyhow, things seem to be going great!

I'm working on a face in Maya for animation cause I need to get my skill-set back up if I want to have a job. Here's the progres after a few days on it. Slowly coming along and definately better than anything I've done previously. I'm following the workfolow of Jason Osipa as in his book 'Stop Staring'. Hopefully it'll turn out pretty decent.

In terms of the Cola assignment, I'm working on simplifing the blocking and getting everything nice and clean for my next upload. Dana said I need to simplify and I'm finding it easier said than done. We talked about it a bit more in the live Q&A yesterday and I thnk I'm getting the hang of it. I've gone into splining cause I feel I can understand what's goign to happen better from there. Hopefully everythign seems to polish up nice.

Week 3 - Coke Machine

Things are going well so far with my first assignment for acting. I had struggled the first week with the video reference and getting all my ideas to fit into the allocated timing. Blocking is done now and I'm heading into refining the blocking but I'd like to head what my mentor Dana Boadway has to say about what I've got so far first.

Well, I'm not going to feel bad that I'm a bad blogger. I have other things to do. Most of them relating to animation anyhow. I'm currently reading 'Timing for Animation' by Harold Whitaker and John Halas and listening to Clay Kaytis' Animation Podcast on my ipod. I'd really like to get a copy of Desmond Morris' Manwatching, but it's out of print and quite costly. I found used ones on amazon, but I haven't got the money right now and I guess it's best to read one book at a time.

Inproving at Animation Failing as a Blogger

I know just look at my other blog to see how bad I am at this. Class 3 has begun now and I didn0t even update on class2 in all this time! Dimos was a fantastic mentor and i got over some hurdles with planning and blocking. Now I have Dana Boadway as my new mentor and am already immersed int he 2nd week of my first project. Here's what I have so far: It still needs work during the blocking pass but I'm waiting for feedback from my peers on the site. I'm feeling pretty good about the acting so far though I did struggle with my video reference last week.

Months and Months!

Well, I'm just awful. Since I've been gone I've been to Canada, India and got married. What kind of unreliable blogger goes off and does all that without an update? Halfa year has gone by.

Okay. Montreal and New York at christmastime was awsome. Fabri's whole family came along and it snowed and we saw all the sites and did loads of shopping and eating and hanging out.

The wedding was last month and I still haven't even gotten around to talking to my friends yet and telling them all about it. It's cause I'm always so busy with the next thing. Which at the moment is Animation Mnetor again, finding a job and an apartment. Anyhow, the wedding was really lovely. I wasn't stressed at all during the day and I thourally enjoyed myself. I wouldn't change a thing except having more of my girlfriends there but that wasn't in my hands anyhow. It turns out the place we had the wedding was Sofia Loren's old house. Crazy stuff. Small world too cause my mom's friend ran into her at the airport on the way back from the wedding and that's how we found out.

India was crazy. A mishmash of colours, sounds sites and smells. There were animals everywhere and people so so so many people. It really was a wonderful adventure. We met some great people too; our driver and the folks in the little villages. here's where we went:


When I get the photos I should post them and then it'll inspire me for more details. We've been looking at apartments to buy and have seen some interesting options but I'm concerned about finding the money for the deposit. i guess we have to go through the process of finding one we like enough first. The money is somewhere!

That's all for now and I hope not for the next 6 months! I have animation stuff to get back to and other things going on and I don't want to forget to eat lunch.