Long time no post

I just wanted to say hi and just post something new since i haven't really had time to post anything for awhile. Just to let everyone know (whoever that may be) i'll be coming into town for christmas for 2 weeks. I will arrive in Austin on the 19th of Dec and will go down to SA for a 2-4 days to help my dad out with cleaning the attic and just spending time with my family and friends since I miss them. The rest of the time I plan on spending in Austin hanging out with friends and family and working on my demo reel (i leave Jan 4th).

I hope that I get a chance to hang out with everyone. I will certainly make some time and i'm looking forward to having some fun and relaxing! As far as doing anything on New Years Eve or any parties, I think I just want to be with my family since I haven't had a New Years alone with them for quite a long time.

I hope everything is going well for everyone, and I hope that everybody has a fun and safe thanksgiving!!

It's Always Sunny, but not in Florida

I don't know if anyone has ever seen this show, but I have to say something about it. My friend Rob introduced it to me awhile back and I've been hooked ever since. I hope that you guys will think it's funny also. Try to check it out sometime when you get a free minute if you haven't seen it already. It makes me laugh so hard and I love the writing and the acting. Hope everything is going well for everyone, now it's back to work!


It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
http://www.tv.com/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia/show/33928/videos.html?tag=;more

a little photshop fun

i decided to take a little break from my work and get my friend kevin back for always photoshopping my face on weird things. So I decided to take a stab at it and put his face on someone else...what do you think? I understand that he's a little whiter and such but I thought that it added that nice 80s weird plastic look touch. Nice mullet kev. He's a mix between white trash and kid n play! Let the games...begin!

More pics from NYC and other stuff

If you don't know what this is....you need to get kicked...This is an original Warhol...oh yea = )
I though this was really awesome...This is a pic of the brooklyn bridge. I love the waterfall it's pretty sweet!
Shot of the empire state building
lots and lots of adds on the street. I love it. It's so cool!
finally painted my macquette which i had finished a long time ago during my 3rd month of school. I definitely am happy I finally finished it...He'll be going in the case for all of the other students to see.
Here's a picture that I drew for Ms. Gonzalez. It's a picture of her father that I did for her as a birthday present. It was done w/ charcoal on cold pressed illustration board.

me in times square!

NYC public library...This is where Peter, Ray, and Egon from Ghostbusters came running out after having the crap scared out of them by the ghost librarian = ) I love ghostbusters!!

Another times square pic. I like how they were showing the old school Batman!
Here's me with Michael Jackson at the famous Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum.


Just thought I would keep posting some more pics for you guys. Hope you enjoy! I took somewhere near 500 pics so i'm not going to run out anytime soon.

Picture update

Just wanted to post some more pics from my trip to New York and also when Kellie and Jeff came down to visit at the end of June.

Also on a side note: Happy Birthday to my bro Steve! Hope you have a great birthday!

As far as classes are going, I've been working on my side projects still so by the time I get to my demo reel creation which starts at the end of October, It'll go by w/ a breeze and I can really put all of my energy into what I have already started months prior = ) I will also be going to LA next month so i'm really looking forward to that. It'll certainly be a great opportunity to meet people in the industry and establish some friendships and possible future employment opportunities. I' m really only going for the experience and to meet new people. If I happen to get a job or something from it later on, then that's just an added bonus.

Hope everything is going well for everyone. I'm still hanging in there, so you guys better be too. It's not too much longer until I graduate so mark it on your calendars to keep an open date around 3/9/09 so that way you can plan on making a trip out if it's worth your while. Maybe we can all get together and go to Disneyworld or Universal. It's always a thought.

Keep Moving Forward!!!!

p.s. still going to be loading more pics....in the next day or two

Start Spreading the News...Its My Birthday!

I just wanted to put up a quick post and say Happy Birthday to my best sis-in-law Candice!! I hope she's having a good day! I've been a little bit busy here in New York but it's been a lot of fun and certainly having a blast! So many things to do and see, yet so little time.

Anyways, I just wanted to post a couple of pics that I thought were cool, hope you guys enjoy.


My friend Hilary sent me this text to wish me a happy birthday, so it showed up on one of the big screens in Times Square for everyone to see.

well, i've been trying the past couple of times, but my internet here isn't working too well. so this will be the pick for now. i'll try to update this later = )

say hello to my new friend

about a week or two ago I was feeding the ducks in the pond outside my apt. While I was feeding them I noticed that there were some movements under the water and to my surprise, there was a family of turtles. So I started feeding them too. Since I didn't have my camera last time, I remembered this time to bring it with me while I fed the turtles (since the ducks weren't around). These turtles are huge and I've never seen anything like them just chilling out in a pond, so it's really cool to just go out and feed them some bread from time to time. I looked up what type of turtle they were and it turns out that they are soft shelled turtles and are native to florida. Anyways, here are some pics and a video that I took of them today.

This guy is just swimming along, he was one of the younger ones.

Looking for some bread to eat


This guy on the right must have been the oldest because he was the most aggressive when it came to eating the bread and he was the biggest. I read online that the color of his shell is a symbol of his age as well as the spots on his head and the yellow lining around his outer shell.

A close up of the biggest one. He must have been really hungry because he didn't mind getting close to me. His head is about the size of my whole hand.


He's scoping out the bread, making sure it's ok, lol.

Another month down, and yet another to go

Another month comes to an end and I've been working really hard this month. I'm excited to show the video of our level that my group worked on. Things have been going good for me with school and I'm looking forward to next month since it's another animation class = ) I have been working hard on my individual side projects as well (2d animation + concept art + 3d animation) and have been working on things for my demo reel already so when I get to that class, I will be more than ready to start.

Anyways, I hope that everyone is doing well and I still miss all of you, even people I haven't talked to in awhile. I appreciate everyone's support still and interest in what I'm working on. I hope that when I graduate that everyone can come and see what I've worked really hard on.

I am also starting to play poker for charity when I have free time. There's a place downtown called Cheyenne and they run hold em and blackjack etc all night long and have lots of cool tournaments and prizes. You go in and make a donation for the American lung association and you get a certain amount of chips depending on how much you donate, then you can either play for the prizes or just keep saving your chips to buy into the bigger tournaments. I went this past weekend by myself and had a good time. I haven't played poker in at least 4-5 months so it was a nice break to go back to playing again without the stress of playing for real money. Plus it's going to a good cause!!

On a side note Siggraph will be here in a couple of months and I'll get to see my good friends Zach and Sascha. I look forward to getting to hang out with you guys and hope that we can have a good 2 days (that I have free) in LA together. I was hoping to get to have lunch with Lorena's grandmother but since I won't have a car out in LA for the week, I don't know if I'll be able to unless there's some way I could meet her somewhere. I guess I'll see what I can try to arrange.

Here's the video that Kevin wanted me to take of my classmates playing the Map that we made for Unreal Tournament 3 this month. We had lab this past Saturday May 31st and we play tested all of our maps and the teachers played along as well. It was a nice break from all of the work this month and it was well rewarding to get to see people play and enjoy the map that I worked hard on and hopefully if anyone gets unreal tournament 3, I can send you the files via filesend and let you know which folders the files will go into.



I had to cut the video by a couple of minutes, but hopefully this is enough to show what is in the level and you're able to get the gist of how it looks and plays. Thanks to Lorena for the gift this past Christmas. It has been very useful!

Again I hope all is well with everyone! keep moving forward!

Work, Work and more Work!

Well, the whole past weekend and this week have certainly kept me busy! This weekend will be a busy one as well. Things have been so hectic lately due to finishing up projects for class, packing and moving to a new apartment, and working on individual projects. This weekend will also consist of me rendering out some of my animation from my Character Animation class since me and a select few people will be showing our animation to a very important visitor to the school. He's a long time friend of my 2D animation teacher Sam and is very high up on the ladder for Walt Disney. I'm looking forward to showing my stuff and getting more critiques! I'm hoping that things will go well and i'll be able to talk to him for a little bit. So anyways, that's new stuff that's going on.

Another thing, GO SEE IRON MAN!! Robert Downey Jr. does a fantastic job of acting and really portraying the character. It has some funny parts in it, and it's not as cheesy as spiderman is. It has a more serious tone to it and it shows the people took special care as to make everything as believable as possible. All I can say is that I enjoyed the movie! Another movie to see is 3:10 to Yuma. If you haven't seen it yet, I suggest watching that as well. It has very good character development, etc etc. Russel Crowe and Christian Bale do an excellent job and carry the movie very well.

I decided since I have a smaller picture of my final project for this month, i'll post it on here. This was for my Art Creation for Games class. It involved me building models, laying out UV's, texturing the scene, and once I placed everything into the Unreal 3 editor, I put lights in the scene. If it turns out that the teachers like it, then they will be putting it on the computers for the behind the scenes tour at Full Sail! So I hope that mine gets chosen! Also, we are the test pilot class for the new Unreal 3 Level editor so they were a little more lax on us and let us pick our projects. From now on though, they are going to make people choose from a list of projects instead of doing their own. We were lucky that we got to do our own. I'm happy for that! Anyways, let me know what you guys think or what you don't think. Take care...Keep Moving Forward!!

SIGGRAPH HERE I COME!

So back in February I entered in a contest to become a student volunteer for SIGGRAPH. I found out the news yesterday that I had won and I will be able to volunteer this August out in LA for 1 whole week. If no one knows what SIGGRAPH is, here's a good way to get to know about it:

http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/media/Siggraph5.wmv

There were over 2000 applicants and only a couple hundred were chosen. I wanted to say thanks to Sharon for editing my essays for me!! I truly appreciate your help!

I am really excited to have this opportunity to go and see all of the coolest, latest greatest technology, and hang out with the best of the best in the industry. This will hopefully be a good starting point for me to get to meet some great people and make some new friends. I'm excited to see what happens.

Another little update on me. I finished CAN last month (Character Animation) and it was by far the best class and experience so far that I've had here at Full Sail. My teachers and lab instructors are some of the coolest and best people to talk to and gain knowledge from, I am truly indebted to them!

This month is Advanced Game Techniques and what it involves is creating buildings modularly, laying out the UVs, creating Ambient Occlusion maps, Normal Maps, Spec maps, etc etc. and Texturing them in photoshop, all in 1 lab. It is a very quick class. In lab, they give us 2 assets that we have to build and do all of the above that was mentioned in under 3 hrs. It can be stressful and there have only been about 2 times where i've gotten full credit. I have come close by 1 or 2 points the other times though so it's not too bad.

I know that I keep saying this, but I promise that i'll have some of my animation from last month posted on here to show soon. It shouldn't take me too long to get it, but my other classes take priority over anything else right now.

Also, thanks to the people who still comment on my blog and still keep in touch with me. Thanks for being great friends and supporting me!! I don't know what I could do without you guys. It means a lot to hear from you and be able to laugh. I look forward to seeing some of you soon and show the things that i'm working on. I hope everyone is doing good and I love all of you! I still think and care about everyone all of the time even if I don't talk to you on a regular basis.

p.s. I will try to get a picassa album started soon so I can post pictures from my trip to disneyworld etc on here soon. I know my family wants to see what i've been up to so i'll post the link once I get it up. Take care everyone....KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!

Full Sail University

I just wanted everyone to know that i'm officially going to a University now! It sounds so much cooler to know that I will get my degree from a University rather than real world education, lol. I'm excited about the change for the school. It certainly gives it more prestige than it already has. Check out the full story about the change here:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/orl-bk-fullsail032408,0,3428704.story

I have always thought of going to a University so this is a great addition for me. I get the best of both worlds. Doing what I love to do, what i'm passionate about, and also graduating from a University. I am currently a Junior right now and by the middle of the year, I will be a senior than a graduated student! I am excited for the remaining year. So many cool projects to work on and I'm excited for the challenge.

I hope things are going well for everyone. I obviously made it back to Florida in one piece. The flight wasn't too bad, but it did take awhile for the plane to arrive. It was an hour late and I was already on a 2 hour overlay at the Houston airport. I ran into another one of my full sail friends who will be graduating next month and we were able to talk and kill some time during the delay. It was nice to not have a full plane also and we traveled at about 600 mph. It took about 1.5 hrs to get from Houston to Orlando, normally its about 2.5 hrs, but the captain said that since they were running a little behind, they would fly faster to get us there. Another cool thing about the flight was that I got to sit by someone I know and we watched the Incredibles on my laptop. I wish I would've remembered to take some videos of the flight because while we were up in the air, we were passing a storm and there was lightning flashing all around which was so cool to see from above the clouds. I have never seen that before and I thought it was cool to see it from a different perspective.

I will try to post some of my projects on here soon. Once this month is over, I should be getting some more of my animation on here.

That's it for now. Keep moving forward!

p.s. thanks for coming up on sat mom and dad to hang out with me. I enjoyed my time with you and look forward to talking again in July when I come back to visit.

Rigging, My current class

so this month I am taking Rigging. What rigging consists of is placing joints inside of a skeleton so that you can move the model around. With the picture I am showing, there is a skin layer outside of this skeleton but I have it hidden so that you can see the joints clearer. I am further along in this process so these pics aren't what you would start with but kind of in the middle before the advanced rig that i'm working on right now.


this is the skeleton just relaxed. You're most likely wondering why there are letters and arrows around the skeleton. The S stands for shoulders and it's the icon that an animator can select if he/she wishes to move the clavicle, scapula, arm bones, etc. when you click on the S, it makes all of these moveable at once. Just as the other icons which i will show in a minute to give you a better idea of how things work in rigging.

I just translated this up in the Y axis. if you notice the shoulders move along with the clavicle and scapula. The way that this works is that the rig is built up of an hierarchy chain. first the child, then the parent. so when you want something to drive something else or one to take dominance over the other, you use the hierarchy. Simple example is if you move your shoulder. If you watch it, what is moving along with it? your ulna, radius, hand, and your scapula and clavicle. so it makes sense why we would create a control that drives all of these. the shoulder bone is parented to the left clavicle IK handle. The IK is used for rotation. i'll keep it simple. (still following along?)

so what i did here is move the arrow icon. I parented the eyes to follow the icon, but however there is something else parented to the icon as well, these are called locators.


If you notice the highlighted objects, these are the locators. The eyes would be the child and the locators the parent. Hopefully that makes sense. So the locators are the child to the arrow icon, and the arrow icon the parent. That way I can either select the arrow icon and the locators will tag along due to being the child of the parent, or I can move the locators individually and the eyes will follow because they are the children to the locators....make sense? I hope so. It's really just logic if you think about it. Anatomy plays a role a little bit in helping figure out what should be the parent of what.

This is an example of what an IK does. The purple surface is where I attached the IK handle to.


As you can see it allows me to bend the arm in a certain fashion, but if you look at the V icon in the background, that is there to allow me to translate up or down in the y axis as well as constrain my elbow so my rig doesn't break....an example is that you can only twist your arm so far because it stops, adding a pole vector constraint to the arm keeps is from going crazy.

What I was thinking about doing for anyone who's interested is recording a little bit of me fiddling around with the rig so you can get the idea of what's going on. If you have read this far, please leave a comment letting me know if you would like to see a little youtube video of me moving the parts around and I will record and upload it. I'll record a 30 sec to a min clip just kind of explaining how things move around. Plus its a good refresher for me = )


that's all for now, back to studying.

Trip to Palm Beach

Yesterday I was invited by my friend to go to a drifting competition in palm beach. It was a pretty fun drive but the scenery was kind of boring. Nothing really to look at except the same countryside for 2 1/2 hrs. Once we got there it was pretty cool to see all of the different types of cars competing and they had a little section where they could practice drifting on the track. We were hoping for a little more excitement then what we got, but overall, it wasn't too bad. We ran into the owner that had sold my friend his car and since he runs most of the competition, we were able to go "backstage" (if you want to call it that, more on the other side of the fence) and take a look at some of the cars and meet the people driving them. Overall it was a good trip and I wound up driving his car for awhile back home since he was tired. If you didn't know he has a very nice car! well, as far as racing goes. We wanted to put his car into the drag competition, but decided against it because if it broke down, we have no ride home, lol. Here are some pics of the day. I will upload a video from my camera to youtube if anyone wanted to watch. I also wanted to thank lorena for the cool tripod = ) It's very useful. Before I left I came across a raccoon who was watching me, lol. He was scared so I didn't get too close but I setup my camera and got the best pic I could.



Jays Engine. His car is fast!!A racing car. Mazda Miata used for a racing school.


Here's the raccoon.

A 300zx on the practice track. If I had money, I would like to try it out. These people kill their tires since they're peeling out a lot. The whole place smelled like burned rubber! I think I still get faint smells of it!

Another racing car from the same school. I guess the school is sponsored by mazda.

Happy Valentine's Day

so happy valentine's day to everyone. especially lorena = ) I hope everyone is having a good day. I am happy today because I got a 100 on my test so i feel like things are going good in this class.

I can't remember how Valentine's day got started so I decided to look up the history of it and came across this. it's always nice to know how things got started and why we celebrate these days in our lives and history is cool (not the class though, lol).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day

so anyways, no new stuff to post yet. I have maya 2008 on my mac laptop and am running bootcamp for my pc so ill try to get some screenshots taken then i can post my little duck script that I did for class.

Anyways, I want to take a moment and say thanks to the people who post comments on my blog. It really means a lot to know that people take the time to post, either just to say hi or talk about whatever. I know people are busy and have lots of things to do each day. so when they take the time to comment, I feel special, thanks!!

I hope everyone has a good day.

onto the next month!

HOORAY! I finally finished my 2 classes of mel scripting and production modeling. I have learned a great deal from both and hope that I will continue to remember everything that is taught to me. I just finished my final projects which i spent the last 3 days working 16 hrs each day to get them finished and/or working correctly! This month certainly has been an interesting one and definitely a tough one. I also am glad that it's over and i'm moving onto rigging (putting joints, bones inside of 3d models to make them move). It's the only class i'm taking this month because it's so in depth so I will have 17 lectures/labs. Normally ill have 2 classes per month 1 class is usually 10 lectures/labs, and the other class around 7-8 lectures/labs. Since I'm hoping to have a little more time this month, I decided to start working on my own individual studies to help keep me fresh and continue improving on what I want to do (which is animation). So today I was looking around for some pre-built rigs and found a couple of them that I liked so I downloaded them and posed a couple just to show you what i'll be working on.
B4 that though, let me show you one of my final projects. Since my code only works right now for the pc, i'll have to wait to show others the pictures of my duck, once i have that, then i'll post them along w/ the GUI. I do however have my head model I can show.

This is the side wireframe of me. We were required to build a bust of ourselves

this is the side view also without the wireframe so you can see the smoothness. Does it look like me?

here's the front view wireframe

here's the front view smooth. Does it still look like me? Maybe a little?

So onto the next part. Like I was saying before I'm going to keep building assets so that by the end of the year when it comes to demo reel time, I will have a whole library of animations that I had been working on and also a bunch of extra things to throw onto my demo reel. I'm excited to keep improving in animation. It certainly is a lot of fun to give a lifeless object life and character. Here are some of the rigs that I will be using for my individual studies = ) just so you know, since I was getting used to the rigs, I posed them and took a screen shot to make them more interesting.

A ball w/ legs and a tale? Is he starting the moonwalk? Eat your heart out Michael Jackson!

Since I can't touch my tongue to my big nose, I decided to have this guy do it for me = )


Scooby Scooby Doo!! I love this dog! It's going to be fun making this quadriped move. The only thing about the dog though is that its ears and face don't move = ( But at least i'll be able to make him wag and run and walk, sit, etc. And another bonus is that I don't have to feed him or clean up his poop!

Ruh Roh, he's getting ready to pounce!

I will definately post some animations of this dog once I get some fun things started with him. I'm excited to show others what I work on. I love to hear feedback and suggestions if any.

I hope that everyone's day has been good and I start my classes back up tomorrow so I hope to hear from anyone who reads this soon and look forward to posting more stuff!

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Bringing in the new year happy 2008!

So I was at the bookstore the other day and I was looking around and found a cool book. So me being me, I bought it = ) (cmon it was about the 80s and the toys and games I play w/...I had too)
Anyways, anyone who knows me always knows that I think the decade of the 80s was totally awesome because i was born in 80 and I feel that so many important changes happened during that time for society and I was lucky enough to grow up in the middle of it. Music was crazy, movies were awesome, people were exploring new realms that had never been explored before such as computer graphics, cellphones, creation of better toys, etc etc and which would lead into the 90s w/ internet etc. To me the 80s have always been an exciting time....weird, but exciting..I usually find myself laughing at the outrageous styles and the big bangs girls had....like my sister, lol...I love you Kell! don't get offended please. So anyways, I just finished reading the book and it was such a good and fun book to read. I love reading about the old games, and toys, etc that I used to play with friends and family. It's certainly endearing and meaningful. I still find myself listening to 80s music because of it's awesome keyboards and just the creation of the music as a whole (there are so many sounds mixed into each song and people were experimenting w/ new technology as well in music)! Who doesn't know Huey lewis and the News or Genesis or Phil Collins, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Vanilla Ice or people such as Michael Jackson and Twisted sister....ok we can do without twisted sister, lol, but in all seriousness....who could say that the movies like The Goonies, Transformers, etc etc. were bad movies? No one I know. Well, maybe Lorena doesn't like the Transformers, but she's the exception ;P I remember crying when they killed optimus prime in the Transformers movie....they killed the main character...what movie did that at the time? None that I knew of.

I just remember so many great times. I would go to the mall with my mom and she would drop me off at Aladdin's Castle. The best arcade at the time, lol. Now there are no arcades = ( I eventually hope to open my own arcade one day w/ a bookstore and a store like starbucks attached to it. I will call it Cafe 80s (what's that from? Anyone, if you know...you just might like an 80s movie). But I think it would be cool to have a place like that. I've never seen one.

I'm sure if you made it this far, my blog might be somewhat entertaining so I though you should know that as I type this i'm watching Big Trouble in Little China and working on my .mel script for school and eating yogurt, and i'm as happy as can be, lol. These movies are so great and I feel like a lot of the newer movies that are coming out have been letting me down. I feel that they are putting so much stuff in the movie that the simple storylines and such are getting lost...either that or it could just be the movies i'm watching, lol. There was a good one recently..."Juno" I would suggest that to anyone.

My thoughts on the decade of 2000. I think the decade of 2000 is who can make something better which is good but not new, I mean the technological leaps and bounds that are being made every 5-6 months is amazing! But at times, its seems to me that it's like well we already have this stuff, let's just keep adding things onto it. So you buy a top of the line laptop for 2500 - 5k$ and then in 6 months it's outdated and you have to upgrade to play even the latest greatest games. As far as music goes, I feel that hip hop has been popular for the 2k decade. It's all about over-abusing hip hop to the point its not hip hop anymore, but garbage rapping about the stupidest things that I could create in the matter of a minute...I could just walk down the street and rap about what i'm wearing and how i'm walking and how cool i am for walking down the street....but who wants to hear that? not me!! What happened to the expiremental hip hop from the 80s? or the good gangsta' rap of the 90s? now its just about rapping about how much money you have and your image not talent....) Another thing I noticed that IS cool about this decade is that they are coming back w/ a lot of the 80s things, like toys, etc.

Although there are many changes in the past 5-6 years I think there should be something soon that will catapult us into a different age like futuristic cars, etc. We are already starting. I'm excited to see where things will go in 2010-2020.
I apologize to anyone who reads this and gets confused...i tend to type free flow and just let things out as they come to my head.
So I guess another thing I just realized too is that I'm almost 30......CRAZY! I don't feel like i'm 27 and I certainly don't act like i'm 27. I'm not disappointed in my silly attitude because that's just me, but I always think it's funny when I tell people i'm 27 and they're really surprised...they think i'm 21. Thanks! I remember when I was 16 being told I looked like I was 21 which I was proud of then too! Funny how things reverse. I'm still keeping my youthful looks....maybe its due to me always laughing...who knows! As stressful as being away from friends, family and loved ones while going to Full Sail, I still find time to laugh and goof around, either just making myself laugh while working on my projects (most likely because I have gone crazy from staring at the screen for so long) or just enjoying the company of my friends.

So I guess I will rap this up since the movie finished and I have to find another 80s movie to put in...maybe i'll watch the Wizard or TMNT. I hope that you enjoyed reading this somewhat and I will be posting some pics and such online soon. My schedule has been crazy this month and it's a lot of work...plus i've been procrastinating too which doesn't help, but I should be good to go for tomorrow = ) When i'm done w/ the class i'll post a screen shot of my duck and show you the amount of code it takes to create such a simple little duck. its crazy!

Well I hope everyone has a good day, don't be afraid to chat with me online or call whenever, if I don't answer, please leave a message. Take Care