robsomebody

We don't talk much anymore, do we?  You know what... I'm okay with that.  Our best run was 2002 - 2003.  Epic timez, they were.  Or embarassing.  I think epic and embarassing go hand in hand in this instance!

Maybe I'll update you again one day with something legit.  Maybe.

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I get quietly giddy inside when I watch BSG sometimes now, having met several members of the cast (and even one of the science team behind the scenes!)  As if the show could not possibly fill me with any more joy and happiness... it goes and tops itself when I watch Saul Tigh on screen and remember my personal "So say we all" with Michael Hogan at D*C this year..  or any episode with Kat, and I recall my on-going list of almost-romantic encounters with that lovely lovely lady Luciana Carro...

Other people may eventually get tired of this show, and that's fine.  But I highly doubt I ever will.  I don't just love it anymore.  It goes straight to my soul.

So say we all.


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Best Buy has a pretty damn good deal on a box set of Star Trek movies II, III, and IV (i believe).  One is Wrath of Khan, one is the Journey Home (the one with the whales!), and the other is the Search for Spock.  I have never seen any Star Trek outside of the hot and bad ass new movie this year.. should I pick up this box set of classic films?

I'm hesitant.  It's classic Sci-Fi... and I don't tend to get along with most Sci-Fi (Star Wars, you bore the shit out of me and probably always will.. sorry...)   But I loved the newly re-imagined Star Trek so much that I'm painfully curious about where it all began.  I don't want to indulge in endless TV series, but a few good movies would do the trick just fine.

Problem is... that new Star Trek that I know and love will be on DVD on Nov 17.. so what's the point in buying these older films if the one I adore will be out so soon?


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Starbuck!  My cup runneth dry ;)

Unless you're crazy like me, the man in the first 10 seconds is all you need to enjoy:



 

 My life and mind are so scattered and pushed to the bitter edge these days, that drinking a few good beers and watching BSG is what centers me and keeps me sane.

Thank you, Ron Moore.

Thank you, Dogfish Head Brewing, Co.

Glen Keane, one of the greatest animators of the last 30 years, animated this scene in Disney's Treasure Planet. Remember that film? Few people do, but I enjoy it. Anyway, this is such an exquisite piece of animation. It humbles me every time I watch it, then inspires me all over again. I may never be this good, but the beauty of being an animator is that we can't stop ourselves from trying!

Enjoy

www.penciltestdepot.com/2009/09/glen-keane-rough-sarah-and-young-jim.html

So while I was wearing Wash from Firefly (NOT at all goth!), I attended some pretty killer goth/techno/rock concerts at Dragon*Con. Ayria performed Sunday night @ about 3:00AM. Remember that night, around 7pm, when I was DEAD TIRED while hanging out with friends on the 10th floor of the Marriott around 7:00pm saying I would NOT be staying up late that night? Some people said I should take a nap, I of course declined (I hate naps). But even without any extra sleep, I still somehow ended having the time of my life at 3:00 IN THE FRAKKIN' MORNING at the ballroom of the Hyatt attending this:





You can't see me clearly in the video since it's so shaky, but Ayria herself recorded our craziness because she was so blown away by the energy of the crowd. I saw Ayria open for The Cruxshadows at a small club in Jacksonville, FL last December and believe me her performance at Dragoncon DESTROYED what she did in Jacksonville! The Hyatt ballroom was bouncing out of control!

Here's proof I was there! This pic was posted on her website. I'm on the bottom left, partially hidden behind some dude:





One last Ayria video that she posted on her website. Her show was seriously unreal, so it's no wonder she had to capture these moments for herself!!

Here is the storyboard animatic for the short film I'm creating at Animation Mentor. It's about a boy who has a pet spaceship!

Halfway through Class 5: Short Film Pre-Production now (which is CRAZY!), and the short will be fully animated next term in Class 6: Short Film Production.

I'm not much of an artist, but I pushed myself to figure out some kind of visual perspective in terms of landscape and character staging so that I'll know visually what the film should look like when I'm animating it.

I'm not a tech-geek, nor am I simply a follower of trends.  Since starting my serious animation studies, I converted to Mac due to hearing repeatedly that they are great for high-end graphics software.  I know Windows users can throw many valid points of why they prefer their OS, but one point that I know for sure Windows CANNOT beat Apple at is sheer simplicity of use.

I'm sitting in Barnes & Noble, rocking the free Wi-Fi with no effort.  Apple's Airport finds it automatically, one click and I'm already blogging and checking email.  Done.  A nice woman sitting next to me asks if I can help her Dell laptop connect to the same Wi-Fi.  I could not figure it out!  I'm sure it's easy for experienced Windows users (or is it?  I've witnessed some real pro's struggle needlessly before....)  But seriously, there is no need to have a computer be so complicated to set up the most basic of tasks.

Again, Windows has it's place and can do things that Macs cannot, I'm sure.  But they are retardedly complex and have no excuse for that!

 Thanks to Taj at the Colonial Fleet, I've got my own laser etched Amazon flask!  Dragon*Con just got 47% more awesome.

Party with rob while you still can.  If life goes well i will be in Greenwich, CT by early 2010.   That's where Blue Sky is now located.

Side note:  I miss Yaya and Brian and the Blue Martini.

I saw the new Ice Age movie last night.  Funny, though I know I've seen the first one, I don't think I've seen the 2nd!  But I still laughed my ass off from top to bottom.  Seriously, I think I may need to work at Blue Sky Studios after I graduate.  Lucky for me, Blue Sky LOVES to hire students from my school!  So I suppose the odds are good..?

What tickles me most is the absolute Warner Bros nature that studio seems to embody in an age today when everything is completely wholesome or too-cute-for-words in American animation.  The visual gags were relentless in Ice Age 3, making me laugh like the best Wile E. Coyote or Daffy Duck cartoons.  And the timing!  Oh god that snappy, killer, hold a pose and stick to it for life style of timing that you just DO NOT find in most computer animation!  They make it work so beautifully!  The Scrat segments alone are worth the price of admission.

Blue Sky really got on my radar for consideration after seeing Horton Hears a Who.  Now after Ice Age 3?  Yeah, I'm sending my reel IMMEDIATELY upon graduation!



Here's a link to a salsa dancing shot showing the animation from rough layout, to blocking, to spline mode, then final polish.  Animator Jeff Gabor did this work, and he's clearly one of the best computer animators working today.  And I love how long he stays in stepped mode!  So cool!

www.jaganimations.com/EvolutionReel.mov

 Things that make Rob happy:

- Craft beer (..mmmm.....)
- Great friends visiting my neck of the woods (Brian and Yaya, I'm looking your way!)
- Crazy times in gothic dance clubs
- Classic Bruce Lee movies.  And the movie "Hero."  Just saw it for the first time.  BEAUTIFUL.
- Not animating ANYTHING (semester break!)
- Alien conspiracy theories.
- Ancient lost civilizations, ancient Egypt & Mexico.
- Those mid-season BSG "throw away" episodes from Season 2 when Ron Moore was contractually required to write more ep's than normal and thus created semi-useless storylines for the series to meet demands...and ended up writing some of the best, most sincere and perfect BSG moments in my opinion.
- the Dave Matthews Band.  I love them beyond all other music.
- Hitting the gym hard while listening to Bear McCreary's badass score for the BSG series.
- My new BSG sleeveless shirts just arriving from Aradani Studios in a very sleek black color.  Not screen accurate, but DAMN do they look good!

So after handing in my shot around 1:30PM today, I took the rest of the day to do what I have been wanting to do for a LONG time:  Read a book!  Seriously, it's lost artform to me these days.  But I honestly read for like 2 straight hours, which is more than I've read in the past 9 months (not even kidding).  

I'm reading through Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock.  It's a historical book documenting evidence of Earth's lost civilization.  Outside of animation, I really am fascinated by the universe, science, physics, and archeology (especially ancient cultures).  This book combines almost all of them, and so my mind is constantly being blown with each page I read.  AMAZING. 

Then I cleaned the shit out of my bathroom (well, not literally *shit* -- I tend to flush that down right away.. okay okay, TMI, i know..).  But it was an overdo cleaning and I love the smell of a bleached out bathroom!

Time for an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a bottle of Dogfish Head beer.  Perfect day.  Ready for my final week of the semester!

I've been largely silent on my animation this term.  I don't like to talk about the things I do too much for a couple reasons:

1)  I fear most people don't get/aren't interested in the work I do.  Well, that's not entirely true, because I've yet to meet someone who doesn't say "That SO cool!" when they find out I'm an animator.  But then 9 times out of 10, their eyes glaze over if I begin to talk shop in too much detail!

2)  I like to live by the words of one of the Roosevelt's (I think it was Teddy): "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."  In short, shut up and let your work create the hype.


That said, I've been painfully busy for the last 20 weeks.  I've had no break between semester's 3 and 4 with Animation Mentor (my school), for some strange calendar reason that I don't understand.  Each term is 3 months long, and basically has anyone who's really trying to succeed working 6-7 days per week with weekly deadlines every single Sunday at 12:00pm PST.  Normally we have 1-2 weeks off between semesters, but for whatever reason, this round we had no break.  My mind is so scattered right now I hardly know where I am.  No joke -- a friend called me tonight to ask me about something that happened at a party I attended just this past Saturday...and it took me 2 minutes to recall even attending that party!

I am currently working on what should be my greatest piece of animation yet.  To be honest, it is my best work.  But I'm also that much more critical of myself.  It's not about grades, it's not about getting pats on the back from friends or family.  I want a job in the industry by the end of the year.  If I crawl too far into 2010 without a single job offer, I might lose my mind.  So to that end, I'm pushing myself incredibly hard.  I sleep minimally, hit the gym when I can to blow off stress more than to keep a healthy routine going, and feel a steady bit of schizophrenia as I simultaneously LOVE the artform and hate my own work.

Only 2 weeks left on this shot.  I've been working on it for 7 weeks now.  I hope it turns out okay.  I'm going to SIGGRAPH in August and will be bringing 100 copies of my demo reel DVD to pawn off to every single animation studio recruiter there.  I have no other purpose in going than to sell myself and my work.  Well, that and to hang out with other fellow Animation Mentor students and meet the founders of my school who will also be there.


All the stress aside.... I still can't believe how far I've come in making the impossible dream a reality.  I haven't gotten a job yet, but I know that I'm very close to getting one because I look back my college years of animation dreaming (when I studied nothing and did absolutely no art or animation of any kind...I was an ENGLISH MAJOR for frak's sake!) and I wonder what the hell I thought would get me a job in the industry back then.  What back door did I think I could slip into???  I'm getting very highly specialized now and I *still* fear I might not get a job!  There ain't no backdoors in animation, that's for sure!  I even recall my pencil animation days at Pratt and while I love those memories very, very much -- I realize now I was still incredibly far from getting a job in the industry with my skills at that time.

I'm very close to my dream job now.  Very close.  But that just makes me work all the harder and scrutinize my work to the point of having panic attacks (like I did today).


I was going to end this on something else, but as previously stated, my brain is so fried that I'm nearly that guy from Memento sometimes.  Not even kidding.  I had a conclusion, but who knows what it was.  Good night.

I've been following The Animation Podcast interviews since the creation of the podcast back in 2005.  That means, I've literally listened to each animator's interview *at least* 100 times by now.  Not even kidding.  Many car rides, train rides, hours spent walking a campus or sitting on my break at work, or of course, hours upon hours of animating have been blessed with their interviews chiming away seemingly on repeat through my iPod for the past 3 years.

Nik Ranieri's interview was the 2nd one conducted for the podcast back in 2005, which means that I have pretty much every word it memorized by now.  I have extremely fond memories of listening to Nik talk about animation and his career while riding the train to and from New York City as I began my journey to becoming an animator at the Pratt school in Manhattan.

And now...

Nik Ranieri is my teacher.

This week's lecture is hosted by Nik himself, and he talks about all the little tiny nuances that make a good animator.  The tiniest things that most people never notice while watching a great animated film, but that come together to put on that spectacular performance we come to expect from top quality studios like Disney and Pixar.

Nik Ranieri is my teacher.  Frak, I love saying those words!

This trailer makes me wish I could draw and apply all my knowledge of animation to the paper...

The whole reason I ever became interested in animation at all was because of Toy Story.  In 1999, I discovered animation as an artform that I wanted to do, and so it's only fitting that in 2009 I am on my way to achieving that dream and the 3rd sequel in the Toy Story saga is just around the corner!

Animation Mentor co-founder and a regular teacher of mine for the past year, Carlos Baena, animated the first half of the Buzz Lightyear section!  Yeah Carlos!!



Oh and also check out the latest student testimonial video from school!  My friend and former classmate, Arnie Mecham, is the video around the 2:40 mark, haha!

Why has it been so long since I've cranked him up?! Seriously, no man should ever have a chance of getting laid if this guy walks into a room. He is the male check-mate. Game over. Thanks for trying, haha.

Having never seen ANY Star Trek movie or TV show in my life, I feel like I'm the prime audience J.J. Abrams & Co. are going for in re-creating the legendary series with new young actors and a more modern action-oriented edge.  I can't pick anything apart because, well, I don't know anything!  That said, I loved the Star Trek movie.  Not love it like I love Battlestar Galactica, but I enjoyed it far more than I ever did Star Wars (which I frankly don't like much at all).  I thought story was pretty deep for the action packed ride it was, I enjoyed the physics of space travel and time being interwoven into the story, and the casting choices were pretty hilarious and awesome.  I mean c'mon, John Cho?  Simon Pegg??  Who was that brilliant casting director?  Promote that man!

I would actually enjoy going to see it again.  I will definitely own this one on DVD when it comes out.

That said, I have no desire to visit any of the other Star Trek movies/TV series right now.  Maybe one day, but right now I just want this new one -- my own first Star Trek experience -- to nest in my brain for a while before I see other things and inevitably begin to compare/contrast.