There's so much to learn...

Finally restored!

2010-06-06T00:14:00.001-07:00

I finally got the ole Vespa restored and back on the road! It took almost a year and a half from when I took it apart, got it painted (Signal Yellow) and then put it all back together again. Certainly more than I bargained for, but I'm loving it!

Speed Racer Cosplay

2008-11-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a pick of my Halloween costume. It's not technically cosplay since I only wore it for Halloween and not to a convention or something. Go Speed Racer, Go! Thanks to Jen Woo for the photo!

Gotta plug this one...

2008-09-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0%2C21985%2C24321608-5000117%2C00.html

tablet PC Pics

2008-07-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

here's some random drawings, I love my tablet P.C.

Vespa SS180

2008-05-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of the action! thanks to bryan for the shot.

The Vespa comes home!

2008-05-04T02:08:00.001-07:00

Today I picked up my Vespa from the shop. It's the first time I've been able to ride it as it was previously immobilized while getting a new engine, shocks and speedometer among other things. On friday I managed to get my motorcycle permit, so today I was able to drive it home! It's a fast little thing and I put almost 80 miles on it today! I love how it feels like a perfect extension of my personality. I drove it home from sherman oaks, then drove it down the sunset strip and then took it up to the griffith park observatory. There were some snags along the way, but at least neither my bike or I got hurt. One time I stalled the engine while at a stop light - it almost stopped my heart since you have to get off the bike to kick start it up again! Thank God I managed to get it started right as the light turned green. Then, I lost the ignition while on Lankersham blvd, thank God I found a small construction road to coast off and see what was the matter. After some frustration I fianally discovered a metal bracket that holds a wiring circuit had snapped and the circuit was hanging by four wires - one of which had disconnected and cut my spark. I found a piece of chain link fence that I bent into a makeshift bracket, reconnected the wire and managed to get back on the road. However, my bracket needed some adjustment since it happened all over again while heading down cauhenga! I'm home safe and sound and the bike is locked up out back - but it sure was an adventure. Oh, and besides being wicked cool looking and totally retro, I still have what looks like a bit more than half a tank of gas! It has about a 1.75 gallon tank and I travelled 80 miles today - you do the math!

XSI - some tough competition for Maya

2008-05-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you not in the know, XSI and Maya are two leading and competing 3D Animation and Visual Effect software packages. I admit I'm a Maya user through and through and as such, I've been ignoring XSI for a while now. However, two weeks ago I attended an XSI evangelism meeting at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood and it finally pushed me over the edge. Don't worry, Maya is still where I call home, but I got a chance to see how aggresively XSI is working to gain market share. They pulled out all the stops and gave everyone in attendance a free XSI T-Shirt! While the T-shirt is nice, what really suprised me is that they also gave everyone a free academic license of XSI Advanced (it's got syflex and everything)! That's a $3000 or $300 value depending on how you look at it. Besides that, they awarded me a free XSI training class at Gnomon for submitting a 100 word essay on why I needed to learn XSI. That's a $900 value! It starts tomorrow! But dont worry, I havent been bought. The reason why Maya should be worried is that XSI really is motivated to get to the top and has the R&D to prove it. While Maya has been resting on its laurels and really only updating its simulation engines, XSI has developed some SERIOUS strengths, the newest of which is a visual scripting and tool development system called ICE. It's completely multithreaded meaning these tools scale perfectly across multiple processors and cores. What's more, they've gone ahead and rewritted many of the established tools in XSI to take advantage of this performance boost and opened up the tools so everyone can see how they were made and modify them at will. It's pretty amazing and why a technical guy like me should immediately stand up and take note. So if you've been ignorning XSI like I had, now's the time to learn it before everyone else does. People are staring to request XSI skills in job descriptions so it'll give you an edge - for a little while anyway :-)

A new job...already!?

2008-05-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

Well it hasnt even been a year for me yet here in southern california and I'm already picking up and leaving! Two weeks ago a job offer came out of the blue and it was an offer I couldnt refuse. Deciding to leave my job and life here in Hollywood is one of the toughest decisions I've made yet in my 24 years, and so I thank all of you who prayed for me and gave me advice. I am very concerned about leaving XLT in a bad position, since they gave me a chance and were so good to me, but I successfully negotiated a start date one month from now with the hopes that it will be enough time to find my replacement and tie up loose ends. After agonizing over this decision, things have started to fall into place. The only real hitch is that breaking my lease will cost me three months rent as a penalty - no small fee when you consider my rent here is as much or more than my parents morgage in Indiana! My new job wont cover this and I wont be making any more than I used to either - but the opportunities for learning make it worth it. I'm starting at the bottom, but it is a staff position, so at least there are opportunities for some benefits. That's right, you're looking at Industrial Light and Magic's newest Assistant Creature Technical Director. See you in San Fran Sicko!

How much is my head worth?

2008-04-06T00:19:00.000-07:00

While my Vespa is still in the shop getting a look-over, I took the opportunity to shop for a helmet. At first I had my eye on one of the Vespa Vintage Soft Touch helmets since they look so cool and appropriate for a classic scooter like my Super Sport. However, those helmets are only 3/4 coverage and not full face which may look totally sweet but aren't nearly as safe - to me there's nothing worse than the thought of cracking your jaw on some concrete just to look cool. It was tough, but in the end I went for a compromise and bought a modular helmet. These are unique in that you can flip up the whole face for a 3/4 feel, and then flip it down to get the protection of a full face helmet - all while still having the option of flipping up the visor. Scope the pictures - mine is the matte black one - but it has a clear visor. :-)

A new adventure!

2008-03-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Well after some ups and downs I now have the title for my 1965 Vespa 180 Super Sport!!!!!!!! (The exclamation points are a small indication of my excitement) I even have the original 180cc engine in my trunk (right now it has a new - though not as powerful - engine in it). I have yet to get it licensed or even get a helmet, but all in good time. The woman who sold this to me was extremely kind and went out of her way to help me get this scooter - even by lowering her asking price and giving me first grabs. Since I cant drive it yet, it's still at the shop, but I'll be sure to get some pictures up when I get it home. So sweeeeeet!

What could happen next?

2008-03-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

I'm THIS close to buying a 60's era Vespa 180 Super Sport. The one I found needs some work, but the price is right and Super Sports are super rare. It has some major drawbacks (its missing the original engine and the original cowels), but those things put it in my price range. It has a new engine in it, replacement cowels and really just needs a new paint job (though, those are pricey). Im banking on the paint job being a theft-deterrant so it doesnt bother me too much right now. Tune in tomorrow to see if I pulled the trigger (or swung the bat, depending on how much you know about anime references).

tabletPC sketch...

2008-02-29T19:17:00.001-08:00

tablet pc...oh how i love thee

2008-02-26T16:24:00.000-08:00

how i've lived this long without my tablet pc is a mystery. i picked this up on craigs list a few weeks ago - is it wrong to be so in love with a machine? scope the pics yo. (thats not my drawing, btw).

LA Zoo

2008-01-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

Guess who's LA zoo's newest member? That's right! Here check out some pictures from our outing this weekend. Thanks to Freddy Burgos for being the man behind the camera (and posting the pics at http://flickr.com/photos/ianimate/sets/72157603766030574/ ).

Merry Christmas

2007-12-27T10:35:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Toon from: http://blogs.indystar.com/varvelblog/

Malibu in November

2007-11-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

When my parents were visiting a week ago, we took the PCH up to Malibu and spent the day just relaxing. You gotta love going to the beach in november. Besides a few brave surfers, some pelicans and sea urchins, we got to see the fallout from the wildfires. It's amazing how much was on fire, and even more so, how many houses were completely untouched in spite of the charred landscape surrounding them. In a tragedy like that, it's good to look on the bright side and count the lives saved instead of the property lost. Malibu is a really nice place though, and if you remind me, we can go there when you come visit!

Rigging Tutorial!

2007-10-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

First off, a big thanks to everyone who has posted in my comments section. I really appreciate you stopping by to say hello, especially since my posts are so few and far between. It's fun to hear from some of my favorite people. I especially liked Debra's comment about Jeremy's Vespa, which makes me feel better because people at work are often giving me flack about wanting one.

Now to business, I've just posted a rigging tutorial about a feature I've called "smart blinks". We've implemented this setup at work and it's pretty handy. Though the eyes rarely get much attention, I think something like this is a small, but important feature for speeding up the animation process. I thought I'd share it since I had fun figuring out how to make this kind of thing work. I hope you'll enjoy it too. You can find it at the rigs and scripts section of my website. Expect to see it as a part of the new JTDriggingTools and Andy 2.0 if I ever get those done :-)

In other news, I finally cut my hair. I've had long hair with a part ever since middle school, so I thought it was time for a change. I'll see how the short hair/no part thing goes over. So far its gotten good reviews. Now if I can just get myself to the barber shop more often I can keep it that way!

Also, I picked up the Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers DVDs last week and have been enjoying re-living some fond childhood memories. When I was a kid I was crazy about this show. I've always had a fondness for rodents, adventures and inventing things, so needless to say it was the ultimate afternoon cartoon. Also, I have to admit that I had a crush on Gadget the mouse and I wanted to see if it still held up. Well, it's true, Gadget is still one great lady mouse. Now if I can just figure out why she's the only girl in a house of four other guys (Monteray Jack, Chip, Dale and Zipper)...

Lastly, a big endorsement for the people at Valve Software and the recently released: Orange Box. I picked this up the hour it came out on Steam and have been enjoying it ever since. I had forgotten how great the Half Life games were and can't recommend them enough. Halo who? And yes, ep 2. is the best episode yet! Portal (which also comes with the Orange Box) is truly an innovation in gameplay and really messes with your head when you play it. I can't wait to see how they integrate this mechanic into Half Life 2 ep. 3. Good work Valve!

wip's

2007-09-03T12:31:00.001-07:00

I've got a number of works in progress that should be seeing the light of day in the not too distant future. First off, I've already started the rewrite of the JTDriggingTools. When I started this project over a year ago it was half utilitarian and half learning experience. Now that I've got a better handle on things, I felt like a complete overhaul was in order. Last night I got pretty close to finishing off the new arm rig. This time around there's less restrictions on how you rig things - for example you no longer have to specify if it's for the left or the right side because it works with any position or orientations in the world space. Also I'm doing a proper implementation of rig primitives so it's now possible to make as many arms or legs or spines as you want and easily hook them all together. It's also possible to unrig things with the press of a button. Besides cleaning up the code and making it smarter I'm also throwing in new features all the time. For example the arms and legs now have smooth stretch (so the IK handles dont "pop" when they hyper extend) and I significantly improved the auto-bending feature to get bendy elbows/knees for free. Also, I'm finally taking into account rotation orders which are untouched in the previous versions. It's already a huge improvement over the old code and quite a lot of fun to see it working the way I had envisioned it from the start. By the time it's done, you'll wonder where all the errors went!

Also in the pipeline is a rewrite of the andy rig. Once the rigging tools are done Andy will get a complete overhaul to use the new rig. I'm planning on remodeling it to better accomidate clothes and body blendshapes and making an all new facial setup. Some friends let me look over their shoulder at the animation mentor rig and it gave me a few ideas, so expect bishop to positively influence Andy 2.0.

Now if only I was getting paid for all this I could have some extra Vespa money :-)

a pipe dream

2007-08-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

I've started saving for a Vespa. A 1964-65 Vespa 180 or Rally is the sweet spot but I'm mainly aiming for any vintage vespa with a unified seat (some have the split seat), the square headlight (instead of the round one) and a glove box (so I can stick a lowjack in there). I figure that LA is perfect motorcycle country and if I leave here without taking advantage of the fact that it never rains I'm going to regret it. It's even legal to drive between lanes so the horrible traffic doesnt affect motorcyclists! I've found a shop in northern CA that restores and modernizes vespas from this era, but I cant decide if I want an authentic restoration with all original parts, or a modernized version that wont break down.

http://www.classicalwheels.com/codenew/product.asp

These things go for $3-4000, so it's a ways off, but I'll be hunting one down as soon as I pay off my credit cards. They're awesome!

Observations from California

2007-08-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

Who knew I'd ever end up living is good-old southern California. It's truly a different culture here. California is the place where people feel guilty about all the wrong things. By and large the people here love to kick time-tested morality to the curb, instead choosing to fight for the most fashionable cause of the day - even if it doesnt make sense. Take catastrophic man-made global warming for example. Over in Santa Barbara they want to paint a $12000 blue line to represent the area that will be under water when the sea level rises due to the consequences of global warming. As if there was nothing better to do. Likewise you've never seen so many people proudly drive "eco-friendly" prius's as you do in this state. For all the non-sensible chatter we hear about mankind [i.e. america] causing global warming, I'm relieved to see that the tide is finally turning.

Read this story:
http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm

Though I'm sure it didnt make any headlines like the alarmist stories always do, NASA quietly corrected their mistake that led many greenies to believe 1998 was the hottest year ever recorded and thus fuel the fire that things are only getting worse as the economy expands. The corrected data now shows 1938 as the hottest year on record - confirming what we should all know by now- the earth warms and cools on its own and we dont have thousands of years of accurate temperature information to know if there is any sort of abnormal warming (or cooling) trend. Thankfully, more and more people are starting to realize that there's little more than environmentalist propaganda [*cough* al gore *cough*] to support the notion that your car exhaust is causing hurricanes, killing polar bears, and raising the ocean . Add this story to the mounting evidence debunking the myth of man-made catastrophic global warming and we may just start solving the real problems in this state. *sigh* I wish I could believe that.

pics of the place!

2007-07-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

my new sofa couch! Thanks Ikea.

Check out the bathroom. What more do you need?

This is my house. I live behind the big window on the first floor. My car's parked in the back.

This is wilton street looking toward the Hollywood Hills. The Hollywood sign is just to the left.

My bed is behind the divider. There's the big window you can see from the front of the house. Notice the other windows behind my computer - it's a curved wall (like a turret).

This is my tiny kitchen. There's no counter space! Notice the doors on top where I store my stuff.

My fridge is very centrally located.

This is one of the beaches in Santa Monica at night.

I'm not updating much, but I figured I at least owed you some pics of my place. It's a small place, and it really does cost a fortune for what it is - but that's California for you. I really like the studio setup, and it's less than a mile away from work, so I walk there most days. It's probably too small for two people since there's no bedrooms, but perfect for just me. Plus it's all yellow and the utilities are included! I'll try to put some pics of my work too. Thanks for checking in.

It's been a while...

2007-06-13T19:02:00.001-07:00

Wow, it's been a while and so much has happened. Unforuntately I dont have internet access yet so I'm doing this on company time (oops) and I can't write much right now. Here's a few highlights:

-Played some Guitar Hero

-Graduated with my MFA in Savannah!

-Travelled across the country - Georgia to California!

-Tire flew off my car in Louisiana

-Saw Mark in Texas!

-Working at Extra Large Technology (XLT) - it's great!

-Saw Bryan at Jim Henson - and got the tour

-Found a place to live in Hollywood CA

-Ate some good Sushi

Here's a few pictures until I can write some more:

It's that time again...

2007-05-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to have to rename this blog. Now that school's over, there's not a whole lot to write about. For now, I'm back home again in Indiana so I can attend my old roommate's wedding on the 19th. I left my car and stuff in Atlanta because I got plane tickets for $39 each way - it was such a deal because I can't even drive home for that little. At the end of the month I'll return to Savannah to turn everything in and get my signatures. However many people have asked me what I'm going to do next...

The big news is that I have secured my first official job! About two weeks ago, one of my professors told me about an opportunity at XLT (extra large technology). Apparently, they tried to hire her first, but when she decided to stick around SCAD, she pointed them in my direction. One of her former students (David Bokser - creator of "The Old Man and the Fish") has been there for a number of years and offered me a position as a Character TD and Animator. XLT is a small company that is most notable for its direct to DVD animated films, but what really sold me is that it seems to be a really good fit for what I do. I wasn't getting any love from the bigger studios (Pixar finally got back to me with the bad news - surprise, surprise) and I hadnt heard anything from the promising companies we met with at the job fair (LucasFilms, Framestore, Charlex, etc.) so I started looking at video games. I have nothing against video game work, but my best skills and interests are in animated film, so I wasnt all that excited about doing global tool development or pipeline work for interactive stuff. The cool thing about XLT is that they still make films, and since they're small I can wear a lot of hats and do the things I like to do. I'm not so worried that I'll show up at their door and not have a clue either, which is a really good feeling.

The catch is that this job is contract work, so I'm only hired until January - and I'm paid by the week instead of a salary with benefits. Don't get me wrong, the pay is very good for a first job, even in California where everything is more expensive (9.3% in state income taxes!? are they insane?). That's right, I'm moving to Hollywood. The day after Graduation I'm driving my little Volkswagen convertible across the entire United States (Savannah and Hollywood are two extremes). It'll be quite the adventure. I still dont have a place to live, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I start work on June 8th and if I make it past January, they're likely to hire me on for longer. However, I'd also have the chance to go somewhere else, since there's so much work out in LA. I just hope it doesnt fall into the ocean when I'm there.

So that's the news. I'm working for my dad while I'm home and finishing up writing my thesis paper. I'll see some of you back in Savannah for Graduation on the 2nd!

I've also been prepping a new Andy release:

Scrap Metal and Such

2007-04-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

Now that the wedding is over, it's possible that you've been wondering what I've been up to. Well, Sean and I have gone into the scrap metal business. We're pulling old cars out of the woods and selling them to the local recycling center. How redneck is that? The upshot is that we get $0.07 a pound for scrap and we've made two runs at around 5000 pounds a piece. The first trip we made $333 and the second trip we made $369. It's fun work and a good way to pass the time between writing my paper and playing guitar hero. Yes, we spent the first $280 on a PS2, Guitar Hero II (with guitar) and a second wireless guitar. The rest of my cut will go toward the clutch in my car.

I also spent some time writing a speech in preparation for an interview to decide who would be awarded excelsus laureate at graduation in June. I made it past the first round interview, but it seems I lost in the second round. The good news is that now I dont have to speak in front of the entire school and since I had to go to SCAD Atlanta for the interview, I got a chance to see that campus. It's a really nice place, and I really liked it there. It even has lockers and windows (take that Montgomery Hall!). If you're reading this and you had any involvement with getting me nominated for this award, I want to thank you for the honor, I'm very grateful.

I'm working on another update to the Andy rig. This one will add some nice texture enhancements. I just added a nice skin shader, and now Andy renders out really purdy. Maybe I'll even have time for a new hair style.

Stay tuned.

Now that school's over...

2007-04-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well, school ended without much fuss and I've now made my way to Atlanta. I'm spending my time helping my cousins prepare for the wedding (Whitney is getting married), trying to write my thesis paper and desperately trying to find a way to afford Guitar Hero II. The current scheme is to trade the engagement ring Sean bought a few years ago (the engagement didnt work out) for an Xbox 360, for which Guitar Hero was just released. I'm not sure how that one will work out. When the wedding is over I hope to be able to drive my paper back to Savannah for the required signatures - but before then I have to replace the clutch in my car (think big $$ that I dont have). There's no news on the job front, though I did get to meet some great people at the job fair last week. I sure hope I can find something soon because I havent had an income in over a year and you can only live on credit cards and student loans for so long. :-)

Some small insight

2007-03-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

Just a little insight from good ol' Hammish McKenzie regarding scripting:

"...of course, more often than not, advanced tools generally enable people to work faster and find other problems based on the new tools. which of course means my work is never done. and thank goodness, or I’d be out of a job…"

As with the real world, If you're careful to always keep learning, automation won't put you out of a job. Instead, it will let you move on to bigger and better problems, which is very good because I hate doing the same thing all the time. "Forever a student," as they say.

Some great news...

2007-03-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

First of all...the andy rig is posted (check my website)! There's bound to be some bugs in this release, but I won't know unless you download it and try it out for me! I think I managed to accomplish everything that I wanted to put into version 1.0. Sometime I'd like to put in the palm lifter (thank you Jason Schliefer) but I dont want to add anything that you can't get out of the JTDriggingTools, since the andy rig is supposed to be a demonstration of what's possible using that tool. However, when I figure out how to integrate it with everything that's there already, Andy will be updated accordingly. Also, I want to encourage everyone to modify the textures, create new hairstyles or even add some blendshapes. If you want them to be included in the next release (and I like them, of course) I'd be more than happy to give you the credit.

Also, I have a phone interview with Pixar on Monday! This is a huge deal for me, so I hope that I dont screw it up. I know that the reason for the interview is to see if I would be a good fit for them and if they would be a good fit for me, so I'll try not to get my hopes up just yet. It's for a chance at the Technical Director Internship in the Fall, which would be perfect timing as well.

That just goes to show you that especially in the hard times, you never know where encouragement will come from.

Currently listening to: Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible, The Submarines - Decare a New State

it is finished!

2007-03-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

That's right, you heard it here first, Inside The Box is finished - and just in time for the siggraph deadline. It took some serious work, but it all paid off. Great work to all those involved, it's been a privilege to work together. Here's hoping the festivals like it as much as I do!

Generic Character rig and ITB screenshot

2007-03-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

I know that I've been talking about this mystery rig that I'm building, but I decided to finally post a picture. Everything is still in flux, and probably will be for a while but I like where it's headed. Also, here's the latest composite for the opening shot of Inside The Box. It's beautiful!

almost a month has gone by...

2007-02-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, it's been a while - almost a month, in fact. Needless to say, I'm pretty exhausted and the ole' blog isn't a very high priority. School and the job hunt has been keeping me busy - I'm just real tired. The good news is that Inside The Box is almost finished! We're compositing now, and it's looking sweet! I'm very proud of the four of us who have remained faithful to this project. We hope to finish it in time for the SIGGRAPH deadline.

In other news, the generic character (now called: Andy) is modeled and rigged and in the texturing phase. The very talented Ying-Chi (Rae) Chen has agreed to help texture it, so I'm very excited about that. She's the best we have here at SCAD, so her help all but guarantees that this project will be a success.

I've also just finished my finger rig module! I'm happy with how it turned out. Look for that to be added to the rig section of my website after a bit more testing.

To make amends for the lack of posting, here's a WIP documentary on my short film: "Inside The Box." All the credit goes to my right hand man, Nitesh Patel. I'm the worst part about this video, so if you can ignore me, this is a lot of fun to watch. Now it's your chance to meet the many talented people who slaved away on the project:

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jdoubl20/files/ITB_Docdocumentary(compressed)_512k.wmv
(download is aprox. 50MB)

Just an update

2007-02-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

I know it has been a while, but that's how it goes during my last quarter. If I dont manage to post here, be sure to check out my Visual Effects web page over at http://www.sfdm.scad.edu/faculty/mkesson/vsfx705/wip/winter07/john_doublestein/john_doublestein.html
it'll be updated with my work for that class.

I havent been doing too much outside of school (what else is new?) but I'm pretty spead out on a lot of things. In addition to my course work, I'm trying to write my Thesis paper and perfect my rigging scripts. I've been working with many different students to test out my stuff and help them with their characters. Also, I've been learning more about MotionBuilder and setting up a pipeline to go from maya to MB and back to maya. The good news is that since my rig simply attaches itself to a normal hierarchy, it's easy to detach it and send the joints out to MB (sans the rig). I've also managed to strip the rig out of the maya file except for the fingers so that it's easy to merge the MB animation onto the skeleton back in maya and then animate the fingers with familiar controls. Animating in motionBuilder is quite nice, but it doesnt really have great finger support and you'd still want to do facial animtion in maya.

We're also finally in the compositing stage with Inside the Box. Yesterday I helped discover what has been wrong with our shadow passes, I'm really quite surprised that we didnt catch it sooner. Basically Maya only puts cast shadows into the shadow pass. That means that the surface shadows are only in the beauty pass. Unfortunately, we never rendered a beauty pass (only a diffuse pass) because we wanted control over the shadows, so we really only ended up with cast shadows coming through to the final render. The solution is to apply a white shader to the entire scene and turn off shadow casting in the lights. This gives us a frame that only has surface shadows that we can multiply over the diffuse pass (just like you would with an ambient occlusion shader) and combine with the shadow pass we already have. Now we have a complete shadow pass, and since we dont need to re-render the cast shadows we can turn off ray tracing and render it out through maya software. Instead of 12 minute render times for an entire shadow pass, it now takes less than a minute to repair what we already have!

On the job front, I think I've finally decided on some places to apply. I'll follow up on the PIXAR thing and see if that can happen this time, but if it doesnt, it seems that Blue Sky has a posting for my dream job on their website. I would be a happy man if I could work on the animated adaptation of Dr. Suess's Horton Hears a Who. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and I got a new hermit crab to keep the other one company.

Hermit crabs etc...

2007-01-21T10:46:00.000-08:00

Hey all, many of you know that I have two new pets. Unfortunately I lost one of them. I'm sad for my little hermit crab, he wasnt with me long. The other one seems okay though, here's a picture of us at the beach!

In other news, I'm working on a generic character rig. The school's been using other rigs off the internet, but it's high time we had our own customized for our purposes. Also, since there's plenty of cartoony rigs out there, we wanted something a little more normal. That means that it's not all that interesting, but it'll work for all kinds of situations (and genders), especially when a guy with a huge jaw or wearing tighty-whitey's is not all that appropriate to the scene. Here's the concept - thanks to Craig Scheuermann.

A quick render

2007-01-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

We're busy rendering away, here's a quick composite that I put together. Chris Henderson will be making up the final shake template and we'll mess with Depth of Field later, but I just had to see what things were looking like all put together. Enjoy the HD720 render. Pretty Sweet!

The end is near

2007-01-11T07:44:00.000-08:00

Hey all, my last quarter has begun and it looks to be as busy as ever. I'm taking two electives and Thesis, in addition to trying to finish Inside the Box, and find a job. So far I'm very excited about my intro to programming for visual effects class. I know nothing about Renderman or TCL, so hopefully I'll pick up enough to be a good foundation if I ever want to learn more in the future. However, I've heard that Pixar is going to be replacing Renderman and TCL soon, so I may be a bit late to the party. I'm way ahead on the MEL portion of that class, but my Professor is helping me find new ways to be challenged. My naturalistic 3D character animation class should be alright as well. We're doing some motion capture, so I hope to get a handle on our Vicon system and the IQ software. I also hope to pick up the ole' animation skills and dust them off a bit. Thesis is ongoing, but I've made some significant progress in the past day or two. With any luck, I'll have an updated website soon that'll have JTDriggingTools available for download.

In other news, I have some new pets! Ashley gave me two hermit crabs for Christmas! They live in a little habitat next to my computer. I also have a Chia Garfield to take care of, so I have my hands full. Until next time...

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

http://blogs.indystar.com/varvelblog/archives/2006/12/so_this_is_chri.html
I wanted to post the cartoon here, but I dont have premission, so be sure to check it out yourself.

Bummer

2006-12-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

Well it fell through. I was trying not to get my hopes up when I got an email from the PIXAR recruiter I had met at SCAD saying that there might be an opportunity for me to intern there in January. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts I still got my hopes up. I didnt even have a chance to send them my updated portfolio when I found out today that they went with someone else. Oh well, at least I wont have to drop out of school now. I'll pick myself up and try again in March.

Adv Figure Drawing FINAL

2006-12-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

Well school's been over for a while now, so I thought it's about time I wrapped things up. It all ended very fast. Thanks to Frappachino and Milky Way bars, I stayed up for over 48 hours to get things done, and then drove back to Indy with only two hours sleep. Fortunately, I travelled with someone who had a bit more rest, so I could doze here and there. Since I'm at home on break without internet attached to my computer, it's been harder to post. Here are a few pics from the work I turned in:

Fortunately, I landed an A in this class. I'm very proud of my grade, as it was a lot of work. Forgive me for this moment of pride, but the other work in the class wasnt even close - almost painful at times. I was the only grad student though, so maybe that's why.

In other news, I'm having to scramble a bit to update my flatbook, demo reel and website. PIXAR emailed me yesterday with some very interesting news...I'll let you know if there's anything else to report.

Anyone in Indy have a computer with maya 7.0 that I can use for a few days?

Adv Figure Drawing #7

2006-11-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

I dont have much time to write, since there's less than a week left of school, but perhaps you'd enjoy seeing some progress on the sculpture. The plastic skeleton has to be done for tomorrow, then we tear off all the clay and return it, so that's my priority for today. On the final ecroche I've finished the neck, back, chest, arms and lower legs. That leaves the upper legs, butt and all the muscle striations. I lugged it into class on Tuesday (it's probably over 50 pounds) and got some great feedback from my professor. It really does blow everyone else's away, but I knew he liked it when he asked if I was also going to turn in a CD with photos of it in progress. See, he will often patronize students by complementing their work, even though it's often pretty bad (especially compared to his work) so it's hard to know if he really likes what you've done. However, he didnt ask anyone else for photos, so I knew he was impressed. I'll let you know how the final critique goes on Tuesday. I still have all the drawings to do :-(

ITB render

2006-11-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

Here's a new render I just got back. It should be obvious that Chris did an amazing job on the lighting, as this is with just the color and occlusion, no shadow, spec or reflection pass added in yet. Good job Chris! I can't wait!

ITB reality check

2006-11-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well ITB isn't going to get done this quarter :-( We just didnt have enough people committed to the revision. Hopefully next quarter will be different, but I suspect It'll be a worse struggle with everyone trying to finish their thesis work. The good news is that we have started rendering, and let me tell you, ITB in HD looks amazing. The HD resolution increased our render time, but since we rebuilt and optimized a lot of things at the beginning of the quarter, it's about the same render time as what we had for standard def in the original renders. Also with Bryan Bently's help we've got the motion blur problem solved.

My original solution was to render the motion vectors out with a mental ray shader and use a retail plugin that could read the motion vector images and do motion blur in Adobe After Effects or Shake. We even got the shader installed on the render farm. However, the plugin costs $200, so all we could do was work with the demo version.

The neat thing that Bryan showed me is that maya has a hidden built in motion blur post-processor, that can read IFF motion vectors and motion blur our final composites. From what I can tell from my tests, the results looks just as good as what we could have gotten with the expensive plug-in.

What you do is render a low quality (but at the same resolution) maya software pass with default textures, no lighting, no raytracing, and no anit-aliasing into an IFF file. This should render very very quickly. If the motion blur was turned on and the option to save motion vectors was checked, then the motion vectors are stored in the IFF file. Then you take your high quality images that have been rendered in mental ray and fully composited (without motion blur) , and run blur2d from the command prompt using the low quality IFF images with saved motion vectors as a guide. It will read the low quality IFFs and motion blur the high quality images! The advantage is that you can get a very fast motion blur on images rendered with Mental Ray, because as we all know, Mental Ray motion blur, while very accurate, slows down our render time so much that the farm gives up. So there we have it, now we just have to get everything rendered with that extra pass. Good times.

Victory is mine!

2006-11-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

Hooray! I finally did well at a fencing tournament! Last weekend the fencing team went to Georgia Southern University for the Halloween Open fencing tournament. I did pretty poorly (placed 9th out of 20) early in the morning at the D and under tourney (a D-1 event), but things went well for me at the open later in the day, which was a C-1 rated event! I placed third (out of 21), which means I not only got a cool skull necklace as a trophy but I also leveled up! I went from being unrated to earning my D (skipping completely over the E). I lost to a B rated fencer, but not before scoring 10 points on him. I'm not sure why there was such a difference between the D and under and the open, but I suppose I was just finally on my game. I'm not sore anymore, but the bruises still haven't healed yet.

http://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=2394&FREDSID=89c5329e6b24df6603d1ab2712ca6b26

Advanced Figure Drawing Update #6

2006-11-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, I've been very busy with this class. However, I decided to show some progress today because I'm about to cover up all my nice back muscles with the latissimus dorsi and the trapezius (as you can see on the plastic skeleton). There's lots left to do and only a few weeks left of class, so we'll see how things turn out and if I can actually finish all I'm supposed to. Dont forget that this is a drawing class, so I have all that left as well!

another ITB update

2006-10-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to you who posted comments on my last update. That test image was actually facing the wrong direction (if the characters were on the screen we would have seen only their backs) so that's what caused some of the lighting abnormalities. These new images should be lit properly. We consciously made the decision to have one side of the street in shadow and the other side brightly lit. It's not a theme of the film, but one of the concepts that we built into the subtext was that the kids from the "poor" side of the street are the ones with the imagination and the kid from the "rich" side of the street didnt need to use his imagination because he has always had whatever he wants. This is underscored in the dim lighting as well as the desaturated (less vibrant) colors of the rich side. But like I said, it's not a theme, so it's supposed to be subtle and just build contrast within the scene. Here I've posted the latest renders. You'll see just the beauty pass (diffuse, shadow, specular combined), the occlusion pass (soft shadows) and a test composite with the occlusion added to the beauty pass. I also added a subtle bump map to the street and DingDing finished the dirt maps. We havent broken the environment down into separate layers yet so we can tweak things individually (add depth of field, darken things as they recede, correct colors, etc.), but Chris did a final composite of the girl with her bears so that should give you an idea of the direction we're heading.

ITB texture update

2006-10-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

We're moving along on Inside The Box, but the textures are holding us up a bit. However, we're finally settled on the look for the rich side of the street. I like the multiple colors and the desaturated look. I hope you do too!

Advanced Figure Drawing Update #5

2006-10-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've got midterms this week, so I've been quite busy. For Tuesday we have to have all the primitive forms done in both sculpey (miniature) and plastelina (ecroche) which includes the skull (I finally fixed the proportions of the skull, which were off in my last post), rib cage, pelvis, scapula's, and clavicles. With the primitive forms out of the way, we'll start learning the muscles and adding them to our ecroche. In class we build them on our little plastic skeleton. On Thursday we learned the supra-spenateous (sp?), which sits above the spine of the scapula and goes under the acromion process before inserting on the coracoid process. Under that is the infra-spenateous which sits below the spine of the scapula. Beneath that is the Teras minor and beneath that is the Tera major, which actually goes underneath the humorous before attaching on the front of that bone. Besides building them, we have to do a drawn rotation of the sculpture with overlays of the primitive forms, skeleton and muscles. In addition to that we have to do the overlays on top of a classical sculpture, I've chosen Bernini's Neptune fountain in Rome. I've got a lot of drawing to do before Tuesday, so off I go!

JTD rigging tools update

2006-10-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, I've added and perfected the neck rig and the leg rig modules. I've also better implemented the rig primitive system so that the rig parts automatically hook themselves onto the other primitives in the scene. This saves a lot of time previously spent in the dynamic parenting tab. With a little help from Jason (www.jonhandhisdog.com) the shoulders are finally stable and the resulting rig is really solid. I still havent figured out how to do the finger setup UI, but that's really the last step before bug checking and testing. I'm also working on a simple way to connect the original bind skeleton to the rig skeleton, since the rig skeleton gets broken up into separate parts that you probably wouldnt want to bind to a mesh. It's easy to do by hand (point and orient constraints) but since I'm aiming this at a non-technical audience, I have to come up with something that only takes one or two clicks. We'll see what I can come up with after midterms, this sculpture class is killing me.

ITB update

2006-10-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

The "Inside the Box" revision is coming along nicely. We're finally getting animation fixes and seeing some renders. Chris Henderson's new lighting alone has improved this film by 100%. There's almost no comparison between the old film and the new renders, it's like night and day :-) Kelsey's animation was excellent to begin with, but it's even better now. The same goes for DingDing's textures. He's redone the street texture and is still working out the rich side's color. We've been struggling with how the rich side should look compared to the poor side, as we've always liked the poor side and are still having trouble finding the right color ballance. Another thing that we've been struggling with is motion blur. Mental Ray's motion blur increases our render time by 300%. It gets to the point where the render farm drops frames because it takes so long on some of the slower computers (we have to motion blur at least six layers per frame, and some of those layers are an occlusion pass). To solve this I've been doing some research. This led me to the Real Smart Motion Blur plugin for After Effects or Shake. I downloaded the demo and instantly saw the power of this plugin. It can read motion vector information (which I still havent figured out) but also does an amazing job without anything extra. It gives us good motion blur without any of the render time, especially when we separate the characters layers from the background, which we're doing anyway. Once we figure out how to get maya to give us motion vector information it will be amazing. The only trouble is that the plugin costs $200, so we'll have to raise some money somehow. Speaking of which, does anyone want to give us a grant to get some professional music done for this thing? Maybe we can get the school to foot the $5000 bill.

Mephis is burning!

2006-10-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was at the 2006 North American Cup fencing tournament in Memphis this weekend on the very same day a few huge fires broke out downtown right next to our hotel. There was no need to evacuate since the worst of it was a few blocks away, but it sure was strange to walk to the convention center and see buildings still burning. There was a historic church that was completely destroyed. Even though the news said that the embers shooting into the air had caused the spread, A fireman at the tournament said that it was probably arson, as three separate unoccupied buildings were on fire on the same night and this is about the time the local gangs are doing initiations. Despite the blaze and having to share the convention center with a bunch of American Idol hopefuls, it was a good trip. I wish I had done better at the tourney, but it was still some good fencing.

Advanced Figure Drawing #4

2006-09-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

What, with the title of this class being adv. figure DRAWING, I figure that I owe you at least a few sketches. You'll finally see some drawings, but before that, how about some pictures of the rib cage? We've gotten the head primitive form down, and now we're working on the rib cage. I've added it to my ecroche, but I've still got to make a smaller version out of sculpy like I did for the head (the work never ends). You can also see the Plastilina head form on the armature. For the sketches, we start with a simple egg, soup can and teacup, then we cut them up to a more descriptive form, just like we do with the clay. That's why it's important to draw through the model, lightly placing those edges even if they're obscured and cant be seen. Enjoy!

advanced figure drawing #3

2006-09-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, one might ask: "How do you draw a perfectly foreshortened character with no reference at all?" Such questions are exactly what this class is trying to address. The idea is simple: through repetition, master the 3D primitive forms of a human so that the objects can be mentally rotated and placed without the need for something to look at. In that pursuit, we have to build the primitive forms out of sculpy, so at the very least we can take these around with us, hold them up to a figure and quickly get an idea of the form without all that skin getting in the way. I spent the weekend making the head, here's the basic process:

1. Form a ball of clay as spherical as possible
2. Score a center line down the longitude
3. Score a center line down the latitude
4. Use the center line to help divide the sphere into thirds along the latitude
5. Cut out the section that goes from the bottom third to the center longitude, this is where the skull attaches to the spine
6. Add this excess to the remaining bottom section to form the chin and the front of the face
7. Hold the form by gripping the excised section. With the face pointing away from the body Cut a tapered slice from each side of the head, so that the back of the skull is wider than the front of the skull
8. Roll the face along a table to round it out

I learned a valuable trick about sculpy that is worth mentioning. You can put sculpy in the freezer to temporarily firm it up so that cuts are easier. It's always been difficult to cut a ball of clay without squishing it in the process. When the clay thaws out you can put it right back in to the freezer, just make sure it's at room temperature before baking it. I did bake it, and then I realized that the jaw was much longer than it should have been. Unfortunately, that meant I had to take a hack saw to my perfectly modeled and sanded form. It was painstaking. After almost an entire can of spray paint and a few packages of sandpaper, here's the final product:

My Pet Spider...has moved out

2006-09-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you saw the previous post, I had a giant golden orb weaver spider living on my porch over the summer. Her web pretty much blocked the door, but I was willing to put up with it because I wanted to see how big this thing would get. Well, unfortunately not everyone in my house likes spiders, so the spider had to move out today. I picked it up with a stick and moved it to a tree in the backyard. Hopefully it will stick around so I can continue to check back in on it.

Advanced Figure Drawing #2

2006-09-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

The armature is complete! After much $ and even more work I think I've finally got the armature where I want it in preparation for constructing the muscles. To get the proportions right, I enlarged a skeleton diagram on the copy machine...but didnt get around to actually measuring it until around 12:00am. Unfortunately I had made the enlargement too small, as the sculpture is supposed to be a minimum of 3 feet tall and, my copy was only 2.5 feet. It was too late to go make another enlargement, so I tried to adjust things just knowing that everything had to be a bit taller. This made things very difficult and I'm still not convinced it all worked out properly. I used my callipers to try and at least make sure the proportions were consistent, but it would have been a whole lot easier if I just had the right size diagram to form my wire on top of. I also ended up waking early so I could go buy some new galvanized pipe to accommodate the taller skeleton. Then I wrapped the larger armature wire with the smaller stuff so the clay will have something to grab on to. Finally I used epoxy putty to concrete it all together. We'll see what my professor thinks, but there's not much going back now!

update: JTDriggingTools

2006-09-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I made some major progress last night! I'm starting to get the hang of providing custom context sensitive right click menus that can travel with the rig file. This allows me to call custom scripts without requiring the user to know how to run a script (you'd be surprised how many people still dont know how to run a script) or asking them to install a special shelf. I'd been using this technique to do the dynamic parent snapping, but last night I also moved over my IK/FK switching to rt click menus. My previous approach was to trigger the snap scripts using a selection changed scriptJob - if the user selects an IK icon, it will snap to IK mode, if they selects an FK icon, it will snap to FK mode. However, this caused some problems with undos (the scriptJobs would remain even after the rigging was undone) so with the rt. click menus it's much simpler (I also got rid of some clutter by getting rid of the icons).

Oh, I also solved the shoulder flipping issues I mentioned in the previous post. It was strange, if I rotated the hips 90 degrees, the shoulders would also rotate (this wasnt a pole vector problem either). It turned out that I just needed to fix the rotation orders of the shoulder up-vector used to drive the advanced twist. Peachy!

JTD rigging tools

2006-09-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

I hope to use this blog to also track the progess of my auto-rigging MEL sript: JTD rigging tools. One of the main reasons that I'm developing this is that I want to help people complete their animation projects, but I just dont have time to help everyone that asks. I've tried to steer them towards other rigging tools like The Setup Machine2 or zooCST, but I dont know these tools very well so I can't expand them. With my own approach I can help when problems arise and expand the tool to add features that they request. Developing this has helped me learn a lot, but in the end I hope it helps my fellow classmates finish their projects before they graduate! Last night I finished the foot rig module. It's a lot of code, especially since it's built off of the arm rig module and includes support for the two most popular types of foot joint placement - the one that includes the heel, and the one that goes straight from the ankle to the ball of the foot. There's still much to be done, but I'm getting close to being able to release a beta version. I've got one big problem to fix with the shoulders, then I need to code the neck setup. Maybe in a week or two I'll put up a download and a few sample videos. Stay tuned!

Headphones

2006-09-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

So I've been doing my research on headphones. I'm looking to get some new phones worthy of my new DAP. My previous favorite pair of headphones have started shorting out, and since they fit over my ears like a vise, my head is sore after five or six hours of wearing them. I've always had my eye on a pair of Bose QC2 active noise cancelling headphones and loved their sound and comfort when I finally got a chance to hear them (thanks to Chris Henderson). However, those are a bit out of my price range (~$300) and I'm now much more interested in getting a good pair of earbud headphones. I almost put down the money for the Etymotic Research ER-6 Ioslator headphones which got a great review in MaximumPC, but was turned away when I read lots of complaints about their lack of bass. I then turned to the creative Aurvana earbuds, and at $100, they're more than I'm willing to spend so I would've had to find a real good deal to consider these babies. Once again a search of the reviews revealed that these phones got dinged on their bass reproduction. I was about to just give up and get some $30 Sony phones, but then I did a price search for some headphones I never thought I could afford so didnt even consider. Shure makes some excellent earbuds but at $100-$300 I figured there was no way I could afford them. Imagine my surprise when I saw the base model on amazon for only $70! The Shure E2C-n usually cost $100 but I can get them for $30 off with free shipping so I think I'm gonna jump on them. They're not only critically acclaimed, but normal people love them too. I can't wait!

read the reviews: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E5GKW8/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/103-8779452-3159067?ie=UTF8

ITB update

2006-09-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Two quarters ago I led an effort to finish a short film called Inside the Box. We made a valiant effort in the 9 weeks that we had to work, but I wasnt satisfied with what we had when it was over. That's why we're taking another crack at it and making it into what it should have been. The first step is to make sure we can actually render it again. I've been working the last week on going back through our files and figuring out what kept it from rendering as quickly as it should have (we were up to 45mins a frame at one point). I've narrowed it down to the environment file, the file that had everything except the characters. Not too surprisingly, this file is a mess. There's all kinds of empty groups, history and invalid objects in this thing. So I'm in the process of rebuilding that file, going back through all of our assets and cleaning them out, and then making sure they import cleanly into this new file. Everything is done except the street (more on that later) and we're now rendering in less than 2 minutes at full resolution in mental ray. That just goes to show you what trouble you can get into if too many people aren't careful with their files. So here's a few rules that I must reinforce after fixing this file:

1. Name everything, it doesnt matter what you name it, just be consistant
2. Dont ever pass off a file without cleaning out the outliner. This especially includes showing all non-DAG objects and making sure there's nothing extra hiding in there.
3. It's just as important to name materials as it is to name objects
4. Group things together so an object made up of many parts can easily be selected with the pickwalk command (the up arrow) and moved
5. DELETE HISTORY. There's no excuse for not doing this now that maya lets you delete non-deformer history. If history nodes (they look like empty groups) dont go away with this command, delete them yourself.
6. Optimize the scene size (File->Optimize Scene Size). People are afraid to do this because it can remove things unexpectedly. However, if things dissapear with optimize scene size, it's a good indication that there's something wrong anyway
7. Dont assign materials to faces. Maya doesnt handle this well and it's a far better idea to just break an object into a few pieces so you can assign a material to the pieces instead of the faces. Then group the pieces back together.

The street in the environment has been a real pain. From the beginning we were unsure what to do because it required such a big texture and we had to get so close to it that it was noticably pixelated. We kept upping the resolution, but maya has a limit and the image file size was getting out of control. Compression helped the file size, but it seemed to only make it more pixelated. That's why I suggested using multiple UV sets, that way we could tile a smaller image over the whole street and then use special "hero" tiles that we customized so things didnt look repeated. We created four different street textures, three were unique and the four was tiled. However, the UV sets didnt seem to play well with mental ray and while we finally got them working, I realized today that it's far easier to break the street into a bunch of different pieces and assign a material to each piece, rather than try to use multiple UV sets. I'm not sure why I didnt think of this before, but it makes things so much simpler. Better late than never I guess.

The same goes for characters, just break your character up into pieces to use more than one texture. You can skin the character before you break it up, and then use copy weights from the seamless character to the separated character. This will make sure the seams are all weighted evenly and wont pull apart.

Music Update

2006-09-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

If you know me, you know that I love music. I'm pretty addicted to it, so I have to subscribe to Napster so I can get enough. For $15 a month I get unlimited music and transfers to my digital audio player, how can you beat that? Check out my new toy:

It's a sandisk sansa, probably the best DAP for the money ($180) on the market right now. It's a 6GB flash player with support for photos, videos and of course music, including music from subscription services. It can also record, and even record off of it's own FM radio. Oh and it has an expansion slot so I can put more memory on it when it fills up. It's the same size as the Ipod Nano but twice as thick. Probably the best thing about this player is that it's not an Apple product...I suppose I've never seen myself as one of the conforming masses...er...I suppose I just like what all you get for the money :-) Every now and then I'll post some music for you. You can listen to it for free if you follow the link and allow pop-ups (the player wont appear if your pop-up blocker is enabled). Here's what I'm listening to today:

Chicago -Greatest Hits
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Frou Frou -Details
Breathe In

Cake-Comfort Eagle
Comfort Eagle

My Pet Spider

2006-09-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Check out the spider that lives on my porch. The thing is huge, probably one of the biggest spiders that I've seen just hanging around. It's a female Golden Orb Weaver spider. The male actually lives on the web too, but it's so small you can hardly see it. They say these things can get big enough to capture small birds, so I'm keeping it around until that happens! The trouble is that it's starting to get hard to take the trash out...

Advanced Figure Drawing #1

2006-09-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons that I started this blog is to track my progress in my Advanced Figure Drawing Class. This class involves an in-depth study into human anatomy (minus the head, hands and feet...that's a separate class). This class is going to be a real challenge for me as the work-load is infamously overwhelming. Yesterday I went out and bought the materials so that I don't get too far behind. The total came to about $120 (which is very good, since the professor estimated that it'd be rare if we could squeek by with spending less than $150) though I only bought five pounds of clay for starters and will probably buy at least five pounds every week or two. For my $120 I also bought what I needed to make the sculpture stand. This thing has to be sturdy to support the 50-80 pounds of clay it'll contain. I was proud of myself though, as the kit sold for $35 at the art store (without the lazy susan underneath) and I managed to put an almost identical one together for $19. The turntable was another $20 though, bummer.

After the stand is set up I'll have to put together the armature, but since I'm not sure of the scale just yet, that'll be another post. To get the pose down, we had to make a bosetti - or a small clay sketch. It's moveable, so I'll continue posing it until I get it just right, then I'll photogrpah it and smash it up so I can use it for the real sculpture.

I chose a pose from the Muybridge photographs and hope it'll be dynamic enough to be interesting, but not so extreme that it looks like an action figure. The idea is to place the figure slightly off ballance so the movement is implied. It's a still pose, but it has life because it indicates the next move.

So next week we'll be getting our plastic skeletons and begin building the muscles in class. The homework will be to build those same muscle groups on this sculpture that I'm working on at home. Then we'll be drawing them from various angles. This class is all about repetition. It should be a good time.

A new chapter

2006-09-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

I had some recent feedback that I should start chronicalling some of the things I'm doing while I'm finishing up school. This quarter should be an especially interesting one to document, so here it goes!