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

Orlando Fog

So I went to school this morning and on my way out my door I noticed it was really foggy outside. I thought that it looked cool so I decided to take a couple of pictures to share with everyone. Since I live next to a lake, I thought it looked awesome how the fog covered up the houses across the lake and how it was so thick that it covered up the sun but you could still see a nice glowing outline of it. Nature is great!





This is the sun and I was trying to go for a good composition. I really love the contrast from light to dark. I feel that it really adds depth to this picture and even though the sun is so far away, it still looks like it's within reach of just grabbing it and pulling it from the sky.


Here's a little bit more of a closer shot. I was trying to make the sun a little bit bigger and more apparent.

This picture to me makes me feel calm for some reason. Maybe it could be due to the soft white from the sun and the silhouette of the trees. I really love how this one came out. I was thinking about doing some things in photoshop to see if I could enhance it. I might ask Lorena for some guidance since she's more experienced with photo-manipulation. I need to start educating myself on photo altering. The more that I have been painting in photoshop, the more i'm starting to understand how layers work, etc.

Anyways, I like the way all of these pictures came out so much that I might make one of them a background for my pc = )

I hope you guys like them!

2d animation projects

2d animation...staging

In our 2d animation class we were asked to do 6 different drawings throughout our 9 days of classes. We were asked to specifically set up a pose that shows what the subject was doing at the time. I will caption below each picture to tell you which project is titled what. We were only given a couple of minutes to draw each one, so these drawings are sketches and just trying to get basic lines of action and ideas down quickly. The teachers said that they do this at disney all the time to set up scenes and to make sure that a particular action is going to work for that scene. The objective is to have someone from the audience be able to understand what's going on in a scene without much thought. So our job as animators is to guide a person along without them having to think much, so stuff just makes sense. They say that "you can tell when there is good animation, when you can't tell its animation at all." So if you're watching an animated movie and you forget that you're watching drawings, computer graphics, etc, then the animator is doing his/her job = ) But, the downside to that is if they make a mistake, someone will point it out very quickly! My teachers tell me to "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE AUDIENCE, people are smarter than they seem." Anyways, on with the pictures.


On this one, we were told to show "Interaction with an Animal" So since I hate cats!! I decided to show a person kicking its ass! Notice the extra emphasis on the big foot, lol. Will it land on its feet?...i hope not!

This project was to show "you're waiting in an elevator, but how are you waiting?" I decided to draw a crowded elevator with 2 fat people squishing me. I'm sure all of us have been there at some point in time where people are too close for your comfort....I have a zone people!! acknowledge it!


This is was "giving a gift" Now it's the spy vs. spy guy, but the only thing i'm kind of bummed about with this one is that I didn't draw the other guy to show him in a birthday hat, etc. waiting to accept the gift, so in my opinion, this one takes a little too long to think about. Well he's got a bomb behind his back...who's he going to give it to? is it a gift? you decide.



This one is "avoiding a puddle" Now this one I made very clear, so there's no confusion as to what's going on. The other thing with this one that the teacher's liked is that I had a secondary action...the umbrella. Animators like to show and have a secondary action. I was trying to keep the scene simple, yet interesting, I think I did that with this one. (I thought it would be funny and ironic if there were a car to come by and splash him since he's being so careful to avoid the puddle. maybe i'll draw something like that later on)

This is titled "helping an old person" I decided to show a guy giving a purse back to an old lady from the burglar who took it from her. it's an ok drawing, i'm sure I could have made it more interesting.

This is one I like also; "putting on a trenchcoat" I was trying to be humorous in this one, but i'm not sure if the trenchcoat I drew is necessarily a trenchcoat, this one could have been more interesting, or i guess, more understandable. Hopefully people get that he put his leg through the arm part of the coat because he's dumb. I tried to add extra emphasis w/ the question marks, but I think this might take someone too long to think about.


On a side note, I was at downtown Disney last night at the Virgin megastore and I came across this book: To Infinity and Beyond; The story of Pixar Animation Studios. I haven't put it on my wishlist, but this is definately a book that I would love to get.




So I hope this update was good enough for the time being, I have to pull some of my other projects off the school server so that I can get those uploaded on here. I thought I already had, but I looked around on my hard drives and they're not there, so expect those to show up here in a couple of days.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Happy Thanksgiving. As you all know, I will be celebrating Thanksgiving by myself this year, but I hope that everyone has a great one.

Just for fun and for you to know a little history on my family, my great ancestors actually sailed across on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower compact and celebrated the first Thanksgiving. Here is a list of the names that signed the mayflower compact:

The Mayflower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc. having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape-Codd the 11. of November, in the year of the raigne of our sovereigne lord, King James, of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fiftie-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.

John Carver	Edward Tilley	Degory Priest
William Bradford	John Tilley	Thomas Williams
Edward Winslow	Francis Cooke	Gilbert Winslow
William Brewster	Thomas Rogers	Edmund Margeson
Issac Allerton	Thomas Tinker	Peter Browne
Myles Standish	John Rigdale	Richard Britteridge
John Alden	Edward Fuller	George Soule
Samuel Fuller	John Turner	Richard Clarke
Christopher Martin	Francis Eaton	Richard Gardiner
William Mullins	James Chilton	John Allerton
William White	John Crackston	Thomas English
Richard Warren	John Billington	Edward Dotey
John Howland	Moses Fletcher	Edward Leister
Stephen Hopkins	John Goodman

::My ancestors names are Samuel and Edward Fuller. I have always liked learning about my family and where I came from. I feel that it's important to know who your family is and what kind of challenges they faced during their time and where they traveled to. If you want to know more about your family and do some background research, The LDS Church offers free services to those who want to do some genealogy work on their family. Here is a site that will help:

http://www.ancestorhunt.com/mormon_church_records.htm

Lots of people from all over the world will travel to Utah (Mormon or not) and will do their genealogy work at the building downtown. There is a vast database of information that they have and it's cool to see other people who care about their family and want to know more history about them. Here is the website for the genealogy library and just a little paragraph about it:

http://www.utah.com/mormon/family_history.htm

"The Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest genealogical library in the world with copies of millions of original records including the names of more than two billion deceased people. People come from literally all over the world to search the library's records and find information about their heritage. The library has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Salt Lake City."


So hopefully everyone has a good Turkey Day! Make sure you save a plate for me when I come back to town, lol.