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!!