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.