Squids and Stuff

I had originally planned on posting once a week, but well, Christmas happened and stuff.  I got a new Wacom Tablet for Christmas, which I promptly put to good use.  Here's a self-portrait I drew for your viewing pleasure.

I would love to get some ideas of how I could improve.  Anyways, I don't have much else to say tonight, so I'm going back to playing Mass Effect 2.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Fat Man With a Bag of Goodies!

This week I bore witness to the annual student-written Christmas play festival thingie at my school.  One of the offerings at this event was a play called Superhero Santa, by one Phil Baur.  This play was perhaps the most honest and faithful presentation of the Santa mythos ever (if you don't know where the Santa myth came from, might I suggest a refresher course?).  In the play, an ordinary man named Scott takes on the persona of Santa, calls himself a superhero, and brings Christmas to children who's families are too poor to afford Christmas presents.  He then challenges the other two main characters of the play (and the audience) to do the same.  I can't possibly do the play justice in words, but I would love to make an animated version of it in the future (maybe next Christmas?).  If you were among the fortunate few to have seen this play, or even if you weren't, I strongly encourage you to spread both the true meaning of Santa and of Christmas by donating a Christmas present to a child in need and becoming someone's personal superhero.

All this talk of superheroes reminds me; I finished my first human model in Maya this week.  He is a superhero (see how this ties into the first paragraph so well?), his name is Zenyth, and he looks something like this:

I also previously made a robot for him to do battle with.  Its name is XLCR-01.  It looks like this:

These were my first outings into the world of 3D modelling, so I know there's a lot I can improve on.  Overall I'm happy with how they turned out, though, but I do need to put in a not black background.

An Account of Boats, Dragons, and Things That 'Splode in the Night

Last night, I attended a preview showing of Pirates of the Carribean The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  If I had to ascribe a value to it in the form of an arbitrary number, I would give it a 7/10.  Worth watching at least once.  Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favourite book in the series as a child (as far as I can remember).  The movie took a few liberties from the book (all of which were justifiable in my opinion), which resulted in the feeling of experiencing something familiar and yet unique at the same time.  The film was also in "3D", a stupid gimmick that I am not fond of, but luckily it only caused my eyes to bleed for the first 3 minutes or so, and during the final battle.

What I really wanted to talk about was the visual effects in the film.  All of the talking animals in the film were wonderfully made.  Reepeecheep (I have no idea how that is spelled) and Aslan both seem believable as animals, and yet when they speek or have a human expression on there faces, it doesn't come off as unbelievable.  The Minotaur, however, looked completely out of place.  The minotaur was a recurring extra in the film, so you'd think they would have put more effort into making him look as good as any other talking animal.  It isn't that he looks bad, per se, it is just that he does not emote.  His jaw moves up and down without ever showing expression.  Even muppets are capable of more emotion than that.  It was unsettling.  And then there was the fawn, but that will have to wait until another post.

I also want to point out that my favourite video game developers have announced a new game.  I don't think I've ever been this ecstatic before.

What's All This, Then?

In case you somehow found this and hadn't noticed yet, this is my first blog post.  So come on in and have a cup of tea while I introduce myself.  I am currently an animation student at Northwestern College.  I'll be getting some videos up on youtube and some concept art I've been working on as soon as I can, but right now I am preparing for the end of the semester.

I also enjoy movies, video games, and ranting, so I may use this blog from time to time for that stuff, too.