Littlest Pet Shop Success

Whoever said that my hobby for collecting paper-dolls was a waste of time was wrong! Wa-haa! I've passed onto the second round of the Littlest Pet Shop competition. Special thanks to Alessia Lingesso.

Taryn Caila Herman

My new baby niece was born today!!

Here she is with her happy dad Eric. They live in Australia with her mom Jaqui.

She's super cute and I'm so happy!

Hansel & Gretel

In the modified version of the fable, The children's father does not care about the children's fate and does not debate his wife's suggestion to get rid of the kids. Hansel and Gretel spend the night in the forest as in the first tale but we can see that this experience is changing Hansel dramatically.

He has a violent dream and wakes to Gretel crying by the burning out fire. This is when he explains to her that has left pebbles along the path to signal the way to go home.

The next morning, when the children arrive back at their cottage, their parents are cruel and unsympathetic to them. Hansel and his father have a terrible argument and both refuse to talk. The adults lock the children in the house and so, Hansel does not have the opportunity to collect pebbles for the next trip which he knows will be the next day.

The next morning when the children are led away from home, Hansel crumbles his portion of bread on the path, but the birds eat it and the children are lost.

Hansel and Gretel come upon the house in the woods but it is not made of candy. It is a normal house and as the children get closer to it they see that there is no one home.

Hansel breaks a window and lifts Gretel up to go inside to look for food, but while she is inside the old lady who lives there comes home. The old woman cannot see or hear well and is carrying a bunch of berries as she has been out gathering all day. She is kind looking and happy. Gretel is frightened and looks out the window at Hansel who signals her to run away, but as she does she knocks over a tin can used as a vase for daisies.

To Be Continued...

By the way, the image is the working version of the Gretel Character for this fable. As you can see, she has no hair or hands. That just won't do.

PEPSI Light Done and Dusted

I handed in the PEPSI Light competition today. This is what I submitted along with flat versions of the lables. I hope I win! I'll let you all know when the voting starts.

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS?!?

PEPSI Light -Active Every Season

Here's your friendly PEPSI Light competition preview... full images here tomorrow after submission deadline. Maybe if I win we can all meet up in NYC for a pretzel. I'll keep you posted.

The Pepsi Challenge, and Other Friday Morning Challenges

So here's the deal: it's January 13th. Pepsi is due in a week's time. I have the initial proofs, but I can't post them for fear that someone will steal my idea. Check back on the 21st. I have the ENTIRE second version to start & finish (the one, if one wins I think will win) and there's a list as long as my arm of edits I need to make to the first submission.

Littlest Pet Shop and the line of makeup for pre-teens is out the window. Instead I'm focusing on the paper-doll version of the product which Alessia helped me to draw and I worked on in Illustrator. It's due the 24th. I guess I have about 50% left of that to do as well.

Maya: maya maya maya... still makes me cry every day (in case you don't have a frame of reference, I'm talking about a software here, not a person http://www.learningmaya.com/). I've changed my idea again so that now it's skeletal Tassi Americani (Raccoons) playing poker. I'm basing it on the work of Jessica Joslin (see links).

Max: Chud has his eyes rigged. As Kosta says, that would mean he has a soul. (Max is also not a person in this context... but a software package.)

So, that's my to do list, minus any of the things I think I'm actually capable of completing on time. I might even be able to throw in a meal this weekend.

How Not to Build a Digital Human

Well, borrowing a book doesn't make you anything like a 3D modeller.

I went to Puglia with Fabri for Christmas and my laptop (circa 2000) didn't want to run Maya so I didn't do un caxxo the whole holiday. I ate (ALOT) I slept (at least 2 times a day) and I ate more. It was nice, but there's nothing to report.

New Year's was good this year cause it was super chill. We went to Alfio's house to have the boys cook dinner (spanish chicken, thyme risotto, some massive salad with everything in it), to drink loads of white wine and champagne, to annoy Cheech about staying in Milan, to watch Taranto turn into a likeness of Beirut with all the fireworks and to lose my shoes, and jewelery (which Fabri found and returned to me).

In terms of the digital Human? Forget it... I'm always far too ambitious and I ahven't done a single thing with anything else I said I would do.

Now, what was it I said I would do?

HAPPY 2006 EVERYONE!!!

Pepsi Light Competition Countdown 31 Days to Go!!

There's more truth. I should be working on Pepsi so I can get a free trip to New York. On that note... everyone will have to go to the Pepsi site and vote for my work from the begining of Feb to the end of March so I CAN win... and, while were on the topic does anyone have any ideas for the name of my project... please leave suggestions in the comments on a name for the following concepts:

1) Sporty girls doing sports in all the different seasons, surfing, biking, tai chi and snowboarding... they're really fit and active. They're full of energy and they all drink Pepsi Light

2) The 4 seasons

How to Build a Digital Human

I borrowed a book for the Christmas break from my teacher called 'Building a Digital Human'. I thought, as I'm an egoist, I'd start by building myself and then move onto maybe building clones of myself and then populating my own 3D world... but then I realised that that's exactly the same as what's going on in my head and it's not very creative.

The truth is though, that I'm not very creative (people confuse creativity with artistic technical skill ALL THE TIME!!!) and that I will start with my own model. I'll therefore have the added advantage of being able to see accurate facial expressions and morph from those. I'll ask Fabri to take the photos tonight.

Meet Chud Gibo

This is Chud. He is about to go fishing off the roof of a very tall skyscraper.

Indie Rock and Roll

This is a list of my new favorite bands:
1) The Killers
2) Maroon 5
3) Stereophonics
4) Franz Ferdinand (though I don't even have any tracks on my ipod)

In case anyone was interested.

I got an OK!

So the progettazione exam was today. It took all of the 30 seconds to watch the film and another 2.5 minutes (that would be 3600 frames of animation) to read my report in English and discuss dormer windows. I got an 'OK'. I don't know what that means but I don't think I'll be pulling in a 30 as Mauro's work ended with his logo and a 'made in 3d Studio 7' page. Oooops, I guess I'm not as professional...

Anyhow I've attached one final rendering for your pleasure. Let me know what you think.

Progettazione... on and on eh?

So the project is going okay and I may finish in this decade. I even wrote the paper that goes with it. Anyhow, I guess too many lights are on in the house and it's keeping the neighbors up so I'm going to go turn some of them off.

Night!

Wait, anyone else find the spelling of neighbors scary? i think I'm going to avoid that word from now on.

Projectazione.... bah humbug

So here was the scope for the project: Make a photo-realistic architectual subject in its environment. Now, go away and do it without any instruction.

I finally have some windows and doors and the balconies out front are up. I almost pulled out all of my hair because I lost over 6 hours of work when the file from having opened it at school no longer opens on my PC. I've saved 7 versions of this file just in case.

I rekon I have about 20 hours of work left... ??

It's like a little rabbit.

Okay so the old mystery is solved. Went to the doc today with the test results and I was diagnosed with SLE (Lupus - it's like a little rabbit).

Ah-ha!! So now I have an excuse for napping as often as I do and enjoying it so much! Anyhow, it's not terrible, but it does need to be managed and I could (and probably will) have flares from time to time, which mean I'll want to sleep even more and won't want to work with my hands too much. But hey... that doesn't change anything.

Anyhow, I decided that as I'm already working on the pet shop thing for school I'd adopt one of the toys as my new mascot for this disease... Meet little Lupus. We're going to get along great since we have to live together and I'm going to make her happy so that we don't have to have too many fights.

Project-Tation

Update on JT. Davis House:

It has no windows or doors, the bricks and concrete are wonky and it makes my eyes hurt. And then I wonder if I really do want to do a winter night scene. Gonna need alot of faking it in Premier. Other than that we're on track.

Reminder: DEADline 13th of Dec.

Fire!!! An update:

f So we go to a party at Piso's house last night and within a moment of walking through the door we meet a firefighter (Mario!!!) who helped with the blaze on Friday. Turns out no one was hurt and that the fire probably started because the chimeny got too hot and was possibly made of aluminium. When it gets to hot it starts to transfer the heat and if there's no suitable place for the heat to dissipate then a fire will begin... makes you think about fireplaces no?

Anyhow, a little weird coincidence that this guy was at the same party as us no?

Other than that... nothing to report.

Photo: Mario the fireman, off duty.

Littlest Pet Shop Project

This only took all day to do. He's not super great, but at least I didn't waste the whole day doing something fun like building a snowman or riding horses.

Built in Maya and I have a cramp in my hand now so I'm going to take a bath.

Yippee!

Fire!!!

f Last night Fabri, Andrea, Cheech, Mario, Lucrezia and I were in a fire! A real fire!

Everyone was tired. I was frustrated cause yesterday I didn't manage to get anything accomplished in Maya and my 'Littlest Pet Shop' work as well as my the class itself were being compromised.

I was drinking Strongbow Cider. I had a discussion with the barmaid about it (Cidro in Italian). They didn't have it on tap. I was drinking poured from the bottle into half-pint glasses.

The conversation was as follows: Andrea wanted to convince Mario and Cheech to come see a CRF motorcycle, Cheech wanted to fool everyone into thinking his graduation was the 23rd of December (we decided that it's actually the 22nd). Lucrezia had ribs and french fries that had too much fat on them.

The truth was it was a very boring night. So, logical as we are we decided to pack it in and head home. Not a moment too soon....

SUDDENLY

Well, not that suddenly, but we all noticed that the fireplace int he room next to the door was a bit hotter and more orange than it had been. Then we noticed embers falling from the ceiling, then we noticed... well, I didn't notice anything actually cause I was already shouting at people to leave (stupidly I must admit in English 'out out!!')...

And then the pub was on fire.

And then we were standing in the street wondering how the hell it went up so fast.

And then we were running away cause we couldn't breathe cause the black smoke was billowing out of the windows.

It took a while for the firetrucks to arrive and when they did they didn't have oxygen masks or anything. I was disapointed for that. They did have axes, but didn't seem to do anything with them.

We had to walk all the way around the block to get back to the car cause eventually they closed the street off.

A real fire. Wow.

Photo Courtesy of Fabrizio Lingesso the day after the fire (today).

Thursday Night Fun

There was Olivia's birthday party last night. I mostly hid in the kitchen.

I helped with the clean-up effort by eating alot of what was left in the sink.

I rubbed sugar on Michele's face. Twice. He was happy.

I danced in the lounge to Janice Joplin and the Grease soundtrack (in German). I had an audience of horrified early-twenty-something-year-olds. They were truly horrified.

And now, I have made the difficult decision to scrap one idea in favor of another: 'City Scene4' is out... 'Scene1/Hotel Room' is in. It's just the most humane thing to do for myself. And off I go!