Factor 5 Presentation at IGDA Meeting

Factor 5 will be presenting their new PS3 game at this months IGDA meeting in San Francisco. If you are in the area make sure to stop by this coming Tuesday.

Click here for details.

Robot Chicken

Remember when Family Guy was hilarious in every episode? Now take that and multiply with 10 and you got Robot Chicken. I dont really watch TV so I hear about these shows from friends mostly , I saw one episode of this on the net and instantly hooked. The cool thing about this show is it teaches you all about gags , every show is 10 minutes long and its basicly a series of totally unrelated characters\gags every 30 seconds\2 minutes. All stop-mo , done mostly with toys we used to play as a kid.

check out the website here.

The Magic of Animation

I just came from seeing Corpse Bride at Pixar's theatre and wow , words cant do justice to this movie. It is movies like this that makes me say to myself "you did the right choice when you chose animation as a career"

It is just amazing when you forget you are looking at puppets five seconds into the movie and totally get captivated by the story , the incredible animation and the amazing environments. I normally hate singing in animated movies but Danny Elfman did some of his best work for this one , the songs are very very nice and the animation matches them perfectly.

Hands down one of the best animated movies ever made. Go see it now!

3 pages a day...

So I just found out about this interesting technique that is amazingly helpful. Chances are you have trouble focusing on your work all the time like the rest of the population due to the fact that our brain keeps repeating all those little problems like "did I pay the bills , wtf was that sound in the car , did I forget to lock the front door , will I ever be able to finish this anim" etc. All those add up and mess up your concentration and creativity.

here is the easy simple fix:

When you wake up in the morning , before you do anything else , write down three pages of whatever is on your mind. Just put it on paper , if you have nothing to write just write "i have nothing to write" for three pages. Doesnt have to make sense , doesnt need to be a story , its just a brain dump. Do it for three days and you'll be amazed how you ever lived without it. It REALLY does make a difference.

The friend who recommended this to me read about it in a book called "The Artists Way" by Julia Cameron.

Advent Children

Thanks to chinatown i got to see advent children today. Well what do you know it didnt suck as much as I thought it would. From the trailers I got the impression it was going to be along the lines of Polar Express but surprisingly it wasnt. They animated the eyes and brows nicely which was the main thing lacking from Polar Express. Also kudos to the team the environment models\textures\renders are nothing short of amazing , its more detailed then any cg movie I can recall. Overall highly recommended.

Oh..the story..I dont know if there was one , this is a eye candy movie dont expect any story. :)

@@^!!%@ weather!

Ok , if you are holding any drinks put em down now before you watch this vid.

Tourettes Weatherman

This is the funniest thing I watched all year , I hope the poor guy didnt get fired.

Ipod Mini Sucks

Ok I havent bitched about anything since starting this Blog which is almost a violation of its term of agreements. Thank you Apple for providing me with the opportunity.

So I went to visit a good friend of mine yesterday and he sold me this Ipod Mini for cheaper then the retail. I already had a crappy 128 mb mp3 player called IROCK (oh yea!) but after using it for 3 years it looks like it walked through a minefield with clown shoes. Anyway , so I came home and opened up the real nice packaging. On the Ipod it says "please install software before connecting Ipod" so i am like "ok" i pop in the cd , the computer freezes.

after a restart and the installation of the drivers I hooked up the Ipod ready to transfer some good music.

After opening the folders and messing around a bit i realized you cant just drag drop mp3's on the ipod , or if you can its not clear cause it didnt find the songs i dragged in. So i open the manual index it says "page 16- file transfer" you go to page 16 and it says "please refer to page 9 for the 4 step easy file transfer. what next? "go to the corner of 16th and Geary and await further instructions , come alone"? The manual does a great job of being vague.

so i install itunes and put some mp3's on the thing. Now i heard a lot about how great the ipod sound quality is and all that and how the apple headphones are great , lies!

the thing sounds like a lo-fi radio recovered from a deep sea dive. There is absolutely NO bass regardless of the eq setting and i tried 4 different headphones including my Sony stereo monitor headphones , still no go. My $40 IROCK mp3 player has way better sound then the ipod.

rant over ,

I have to go try one of those Creative Zen players now.
-A

The Last Q&A

Just had the last q&a with Jason for this semester of AM and the realization of not being able to do it next semester hit hard afterwards. It really is a great community with some of the friendliest folks on the planet and it felt extremely great to be a part of it.

Thanks for everything Jason , you are the best mentor EVAR! :)

Ready...Set...Short!

So I finally pretty much finalized my script for the short I am working on. Storyboarding starts as early as tomorrow. I'll keep news posted here as it moves along. Its going to be a huge learning experience.

Wallace & Gromit Featurette

Quicktime posted this behind the scenes look at the upcoming Aardman\Dreamworks feature. Aardman rocks!

Click here to watch.

Goldfrapp

I just discovered this british band called Goldfrapp their new album is totally amazing. Listen to some of the samples at their website by clicking on the supernatural fly and then clicking on jukebox. Sadly the site is in flash and tries to be hip instead of presenting all this info in a easy to find layout.

Click here to check it out.

Oliver Twist Trailer

This movie is going to kick major a..apples.

View the trailer here.

Emperors New Groove - Special Edition DVD

Disney is coming out with a special edition dvd for emperors new groove , which in my opinion is the best film Disney ever made. I wish they made it like the Incredibles DVD where you get your animators commentary and many awesome making of's but its still a improvement over the old DVD which didnt include much of a making of section.

Click here to go take a look at whats included.