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!