Tomorrow is Another Jay

Pendulum waves

2011-07-31T21:41:00.001-07:00

If you ever want to see a visual representation of patterns in nature (or mathematics), or just like to be hypnotized, then line up a group of pendulums with varying lengths and swing them together (or just watch this video):

The various speeds of the swings causes a palindromic succession of shapes to appear: 1 long "snake", 4 small lines rotating around each other, 3 lines rotating and then reversing rotation, 2 lines that rotate clockwise then line up and rotate counter clockwise, 3 lines rotating and then reversing, 4 small lines rotating, then the snake again swimming in the opposite direction. What's interesting is the pattern is the same if you watch the video in reverse, and the entire cycle takes 1 minute to reach the starting point again.

All of this from the simple action of a swinging weight.

Meet the Medic

2011-06-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

I've always been a fan of the "Meet the..." videos Valve does for its Team Fortress 2 game. There are nine different character classes in the game and Valve has created short animated films to introduce each one. Recently they released "Meet the Medic":

While the Medic is quite enjoyable, my favorite "Meet the..." is the Spy:

Considering Valve released this game in 2007, and recently made it free to play forever, it is amazing they are still spending time and money to promote it with such well-made animations. Most studios "forget" about their game 6 months after the release and move on to the next thing, while Valve continues to please its fans with treats like these. Just one final "Meet the..." video to wait for now...

Khan Academy (and Time)

2011-05-31T21:39:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered the Khan Academy. Sal Khan began creating 10-minute Youtube videos to tutor his cousins in various school subjects. Five years and over 2200 videos later his website is now an invaluable resource for learning, and great for anyone with a passing interest in subjects ranging from Physics, Finance, Astronomy, History, Calculus, Biology, Stocks, Chemistry, etc. I've recently been watching his videos on Astronomy and found them fascinating. Here are two of my favorites which emphasize the vast scale of the universe in both time and space (similar to my own "How Big Is a Billion" post).

Visualizing the age of the universe

Visualizing the scale of the universe

Weird Job Interview Questions (brain teasers)

2011-05-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am a few months late on this, but business sites published a list of the "Weirdest Interview Questions from 2010" earlier this year. Some are fun brain teasers, others are completely subjective questions with no right answer, and a few seem almost deviously presented to obtain information that interviewers can't legally ask ("what has happened in this country over the last 10 years" may offer some insight to political leanings).

Before reading the questions and then a select few of my personal responses, you must understand the purposes to questions like these. I've interviewed many candidates for computer engineer and various tech positions and questions like these help us get insight on a person's thought process and ability to "think outside the box". In an interview, a candidate does not have to answer the question with the correct answer (if there is only one), but seeing a candidate realize that there just isn't one answer to the question or ask for details which were intentionally omitted tells us they can adapt and try new methods to real life problems presented to them on the job. Sometimes they may give a wrong answer, but the thought process that took them there is what impresses us; and since they really only had 5 min or less to come up with the answer we understand that the first hypothesis is usually not correct but a stepping stone to finding the final answer if given enough time. (a self-motivated candidate who calls back a few days later with an updated answer after time to reflect on the question is even more impressive).

Few of the Weirdest Interview Questions from 2010:

If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
How many ridges are there around a quarter?
What is the philosophy of martial arts?
Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years?
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are?
How many basketballs can you fit in this room?
Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required?
If you could be any superhero, who would it be?
You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces. How do you do it?
Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?
If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?
An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear?
There are three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?
How many traffic lights are in Manhattan?
You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair?
What do wood and alcohol have in common?
How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?
You have 8 pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps.
Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000?
You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year.
How many bottles of beer are [consumed] in the city [in a] week?
What’s the square root of 2000?
A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houson for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide?
How are M&Ms made?
What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle

And now for a few of my answers to these. They may not be right, but I really enjoyed the thought processes it took to get me to them! One thing to note is many of these questions use a similar idea of the candidate assuming the "standard way" to do an activity. Once you break that assumption, these questions actually become really easy.

DO NOT READ MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED! HALF THE FUN OF THESE QUESTIONS IS THE PROCESS OF FIGURING THEM OUT!

If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
Pencil sizes are not all standard, a person the size of a "large pencil" could easily get out. Or, a person the size of a regular #2 pencil is still long enough to easily shimmy up the sides of a normal-sized blender. (there likely isn't a right answer, I'm sure "screaming my lungs" out tells as much insight as these answers)
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are?
This reminded me of the "How humble are you" catch 22: a humble person never admits they are humble. My answer is 5, because a person who says 1 is afraid of being weird; yet we are all weird/different, so who wants to be the same? And a truly weird person doesn't believe they are weird and would never say 10. Anyone who says 10 is flaunting themselves in a way a weird person would not. Answers 4-6 work just as well.
How many basketballs can you fit in this room? This is just a good example of estimating lengths and volumes, and a good test of memorization of formulas (but having the guts to ask for the volume of a sphere formula, since really we would just look one up if we didn't know it, is good too)
Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required?
My favorite question, this one was fun. My first answer was based on the obvious omission: do we have a clock? If so, you would only need to race each horse once (5 races) and compare their speeds to find the top 3.
If not, my original thought was 11, since each race you could always eliminate the slowest 2 horses. It would take 5 races to get the top fifteen, 3 races to get the top nine, 2 races to get the top 5 (if you raced the winner of the previous race again you could order all 9 horses), and 1 race to get the final 3.
But the general rule of a numbers answer is the first one you get is likely wrong especially if it is double digits. So I worked on it more. Currently I believe 7 is the right answer, but I may be wrong:
5 races to find the five horses who place #1. 1 race between the five "first placer" horses to get the champion of champions, then 1 race with the 2nd and 3rd placed horses of the "first placer" race, the 2nd and 3rd place horses from the champion's first race and the 2nd place horse from the 2nd place horse's first race. The idea is the 2nd and 3rd place horses who originally lost to the champion horse may still be faster than the other horses who won 1st in their races, and the 2nd place horse who lost to the 2nd overall horse may be faster than the other 1st placers and 2/3 of the champion's first race too. Take the 1st and 2nd place winners of this race and along with your champion you have the three fastest horses.
Read it a few times, it makes sense :)
You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces. How do you do it?
The first of the "breaking the assumption" questions. The assumption is when cutting cake you cannot move any pieces, which is false. Cut the cake in half, then in half again to get 4 equal pieces in the original shape of the cake (square, rectangle, or circle). Then line up the pieces in a row and cut one long cut through all 4 to get 8 equal pieces.
Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?
I originally got snooty with the semantics on this one and said 1. It only takes 1 guess to possibly get the right answer (this is not the right answer and may come across wrong). But if you want the "minimum number needed to guarantee a right answer" then this is a simple binary search any computer engineer learned when first studying: you always guess halfway between the numbers.
The guess pattern assuming the answer number is 1: 500 - 250 - 125 - 63 - 32 - 16 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1! The answer is 10 guesses, but you will likely find it before the 10th guess unless the number is 1 or 1000.
Also, if you paid attention in math class you know binary searches are all based on powers of 2. If you find the power of 2 higher than (or equal to) the maximum amount you know the answer based on the power. If the answer is between 1-8 your guesses would be "4 - 2 - 1", 8 is 2 to the 3rd power (2^3) so the answer would be 3. 2^10 power is 1024 so the answer to the 1-1000 question is 10. And any computer/video game geek should know the powers of 2 up until 11: 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - 256 - 512 - 1024 - 2048 etc (these are the common numbers for "bits" and "bytes" for ram, memory, and processors among other things)
If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? Very similar to the "guess" and "omitted info" problems above. My first answer was the obvious: 1 game. Nowhere does it say how many participants can battle in a single game, so a game where 5,623 gladiators fight each other until 1 is standing is possible.
But if you assume only two can play at once then the answer changes. I got this answer "wrong" when I read this, I assumed it was asking for rounds and treated it like the "guess" question above. My answer was 13, since it would take 13 rounds (2^13 = 8000ish which is higher than 5,623) with multiple games per round.
But after reading the question again while typing this post, the question asks for the number "games" not "rounds" So instead of asking the number of "guesses" like above, we are adding the actual number of the guess. I don't know the answer while typing this, but the formula is similar as above where you keep halving the number: 2,812 + 1406 + 703 + 352 + 176 + 88 + 44 + 22 + 11 + 6 + 3 + 2 + 1.
In an interview I could likely spout off the string of numbers above (doubling or halving numbers in your head is easy) but without a calculator and pen and paper I wouldn't know the answer is 5,626 (I cheated and just used this computer's calculator), which is suspiciously close to the original 5,623 number above (I rounded a few times which explains the difference) which tells me there was probably an easier way to answer this than brute forcing the numbers and adding them. I will need to reflect on this. :(
An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear?
Not enough info. Probably market value. Plus you can't compare apples, oranges, and pears but if I had to guess it would be closer to the apple's price since the others are citrus and larger than a pear.
In honesty, that is where I left my answer. But I researched the answer because I didn't feel like it was "right" like I felt my other answers were. And the "best" answer I found is when this question is asked verbally most candidates mishear the final word and think it is "pear" when the questioner really meant "pair". Therefore the answers would be a pair of apples = 40 cents, a pair of oranges = 80 cents, etc. When the question is written this confusion is removed.
There are three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?
This one is really easy if you have a vivid imagination (or can draw it). Since you know all boxes are labeled incorrectly, you just draw from the box labeled as "Both". If you pick an orange you know only oranges are in it (since it is mislabeled), thus the box labeled "Oranges" must be apples and the "Apples" box must be filled both.
How many traffic lights are in Manhattan?
I've never been to Manhattan, so I would guess the number of blocks (and likely be way off) or ask someone in the room if they knew, then assume each block has 4 lights, realize that blocks share traffic lights so I can't multiple by 4, and arbitrarily multiple my guess by 2, then find the closest square number (my geeky Rubik's Cube days taught me 1 block has 4 intersections, 4 blocks have 9 intersections, 9 blocks have 16 intersections, etc, thus all intersections are to the 2nd power: 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, etc. There is a formula in there somehwere but it would take longer in the interview to figure it out than just creating an educated guess as mentioned above.
You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair?
I assumed the was a trick question (as you always should), so my first answer is 50/50 chance (since picking a second sock is not affected by the color you picked first). My next guess is slightly less than 50, like 47ish, but it would take some math of total possible solutions which may take me a while (I'm rusty on my probability formulas). My 3rd guess and final answer (because this is what I would do in real life) is to just pick 3 socks and ensure a 100% chance of picking a matching pair. Nowhere does it say how many socks you need to pick up at once.
How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?
Using water, such as a pool, and determining the elephant's volume and then measuring its density. I don't know the exact formulas off the top of my head, but that is how you find weight without weighing an object. There are probably other ways too, but that was the first that came to mind. Given enough time, I could probably come up with some pretty creative contraptions that were not technically "weigh machines". Now getting the elephant to voluntarily participate is a much harder problem...
You have 8 pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps.
Really easy, although I had done a harder version of this test years ago. The assumption is you can only weigh 2 pennies at a time, which, again, is false. Weigh all 8 pennies as 4 vs 4. Take the group of 4 that was the lightest (since you know the light penny is among them) and weigh them 2 vs 2. Take the lighter pair and weigh them 1 vs 1 to find the lightest one.
This test gets much harder if you don't know if the one odd penny is heavier or lighter than the others. The answer to that problem is long and complicated but uses the same principle as above (you start off weighing 3 vs 3 and hope the odd penny is one of the 2 not weighed), it just takes a few more rounds to determine if the penny is heavier or lighter.
What’s the square root of 2000?
My final answer is a guess depending on how far they want to go into decimals. But I know 40^2 is 1600 and 50^2 is 2500 so the answer is between 40 and 50. 2000 is smaller than 2050 which is halfway between 1600 than 2500, so the number is likely less than 45 which is halfway between 40 and 50. A quick mental multiplication tells me 45^2 is 2025, and 44^2 is 1936. I hate multiplying decimals mentally, so at this point I would guess 44.7 since 2000 is roughly 70% of the difference between 2025 and 1936. If I was allowed a calculator (and couldn't cheat the answer by typing it in) I would brute force the answer by narrowing down the decimals from 44.7 until I got the answer (which my computer now tells me is 44.72135... yea, I would not have found that precisely without a calculator to help).
A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houson for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide?
Yea, I hate these problems as they are too cliche and not that hard to figure out. Not to mention we don't know if the trains are on the same track, left at the same time, or if the bird is even flying towards Houston.
Anyways, I know the distance traveled in a specific time must add up to 300 so the formula is 60x + 80x = 300, or 140x = 300 where x is an equal amount of time both trains travel. I would need a calculator to figure out the exact decimals but mentally I know it it is just over 2.14 hours (140 goes into 300 2 times, the remainder of 200 another 1 time, and 600 4 times, etc). Convert this into time and you get roughly 2 hours, 6 minutes + less than 3 minutes (.04 x 60) or a little less than 2 hours and 9 minutes (again, without a calculator) until the trains hit. But the actual time in minutes is pointless, I want miles.
A bird traveling 100 mph for an x time of 2.14 (100 x 2.14) travels 214 miles.

Whew! That was fun, yet draining. Let's see what odd questions 2011 brings!

The face tells all

2011-05-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

An amazing reference sheet for animators (or amateur detectives) came across my desk this week:

(click here for the full-size-readable version)

An artist called Cedarseed compiled all of her notes on facial expression to create a "facial map" detailing the differences between emotional expressions! For example: the difference between a "sad expression" and a "blue expression" is that in the blue face the eyebrows are lower and the eyes' irises are partially covered by the eyelids, whereas in the sad face only the pupils touch the eyelids.

Cedarspeed analyzes 60 different expressions in this manner and offers a great starting point for any artist depecting a subtle expression. Of course, facial expressions are not universal (each culture may express the same feeling in different ways) and the accompanying body language can easily change the meaning of an expression. But for a quick facial cheat sheet, they don't get much better than this!

Sonic youth(ful) nostalgia

2011-05-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

This week I had not one, but two (unrelated) interactions brought upon my retention of frivolous Sonic the Hedgehog facts from my early 90's gaming days. That is twice as many frivolous-Sonic-fact-caused-interactions in the past week than I've had in the past 16 years! (but that other previous interaction is a post for another day)

The first interaction this week came from my meeting with a video game composer who worked on the Sonic games 18 years ago. A few months ago I read an article about a local art school. The article briefly mentioned the President of the school, Spencer Nielsen, composed music for Sega games. Upon looking him up, I realized not only did I know much of his music but he wrote the soundtrack for "Sonic CD" which was my favorite soundtrack of the Genesis era. I talked to my coworkers who previous worked at the art school and this week I finally got to meet Spencer.

The conversation was amazing and we discussed various topics, both old and new. As the meeting ended I finally was able to ask the question that bothered me for 18 years: "What were the voices saying"?

Sonic CD was the first CD based game I owned and also the first to have a "Red Book Audio" soundtrack which meant the music played from an audio portion of the CD as opposed to a synthesizer chip from inside the game cartridge or system. As such, the soundtrack used actual recorded instruments and vocals when most soundtracks of the era were rudimentary beeps and bops. To celebrate the occasion, I bought my first pair of speakers and plugged them into the Sega CD system to enjoy the game's music in glorious stereo. Hearing the music out of multiple sources allowed me to pinpoint various instruments, vocals, and tracks in each of the soundtrack's songs. And after playing a specific level a few times I noticed something odd: in the background of "Tidal Tempest" music I heard voices speaking.

(listen to the left track at 1:03- 1:06, headphones help]

Now, much like earlier generations thought they heard secret messages hidden in LPs, my 11 year-old self was sure I had stumbled upon a secret code that I could use to "cheat" in the game (infinite lives, level select, etc)! Games of this era were notorious for hiding cheat codes in the least-expected places of the game for players to find (which incidentally is was led me to my second encounter detailed below). Unfortunately, I couldn't tell what the voices were saying so I had no idea how to use the "code". I listened to the music over and over and eventually, as in months later, gave up and moved on to the next game. But I never forgot the "code" and the question of "what the voices said" stuck in the back of my mind in the "will likely never know" folder. That is, until I met the composer of the song.

Eighteen years later, Occam's Razor had taken hold and I assumed the voices were from a conversation unintentionally picked up on mic. But I still wanted to ask the composer just in case... Spencer did not know of the voices I mentioned and assured me there was no way a conversation was accidentally recorded. But upon sending him my digitized copy of the song he conceded that was exactly what it was and was surprised anyone could hear it (no one had noticed it up until now). He also gave me a personalized signed copy of one of his out-of-print CDs; not for finding the "secret code" but just because is an overall awesome guy!

And so my Sonic-knowledge-event ended for the week, or so I thought.

As mentioned above, games of the 80's and 90's hid secret codes in the least expected places to reward "superfans" who found them (and to allow programmers to use them to skip to various levels in the game to bug test). Many games also offered a special menu for players to listen to every piece of music in the game, which sometimes numbered over 100. And Sonic 2 is notorious for hiding its codes in the "music test" option. If players listened to track 19, then 65, then 9, and then 17 a special sound occurred which allowed the player to select any level from the game (the numbers are actually the birthday of the director of the game - 9/17/1965). Other combinations of track order playback opened up other secrets, but this was the most famous.

So this week while reading one of my favorite webcomics, Sam and Fuzzy, a throwaway line caught my attention. One character yelled a computer command, "Command Code 1965917", which caused all the robots in the scene to attack the heroes. My guess is most people "read" the first two numbers of the sequence then glossed over them to the next word with the understanding that is was just a string of numbers. But for some reason the numbers stuck in the back of my mind and when I read them again the memories of selecting any level I wanted in Sonic 2 came flooding back. So I e-mailed the artist to point out his hidden geekery (another Sonic "superfan") and a few days later he posted my e-mail and his reply on his website.

I'm not sure I have many more frivolous-Sonic-facts left that could lead me to intersting interactions, but you never know what the future holds...

Fossils and Myths

2011-05-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I read some interesting theories regarding the origins of myths and legends. One fascinating theory states various ancient societies unearthed fossils while digging for stones to build their civilizations. The bones of long extinct animals perplexed the ancient people who then created imaginative stories to explain them.

For example, imagine you lived in ancient Greece and one day while hunting for food you come across this strange skull as large as your chest:

Well obviously, this must be from some large one-eyed creature with vicious teeth capable of rending a man in half:

(of course, since you live no where close to the Serengeti you wouldn't recognize a the skull as that of a dwarf elephant , complete with a large hole for the trunk, which lived on Mediterranean island until 9,000 years ago)

Similarly, if you came across a protoceratops skeleton (ie a triceratops without horns) you may assume it was an beaked creature the size of a lion with giant wings connecting to the frilly areas behind the neck.

Thus the griffin was "born".

Finally, if you lived in ancient China/South America/Europe/India/pretty-much-anywhere-thanks-to-Pangaea and you came across this skeleton larger than your house:

That must be a dragon (and not a Spinosaurus). Better call a knight to dispatch of him, and then eat his bones to claim his power.

Many of history's most fantastical stories have humble beginnings grounded in reality.

Good Life shot - blocking

2011-05-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy month of animating. As mentioned in my last post, I "finished" my shots for my short and began a new dialogue piece. I spent weeks of filming reference, building sets, modifying rigs, and blocking the 600 frame shot (ie more frames than all of my "finished" short shots) to the point where it can be shown in its first stage here.

When I am "finished" with this shot I will upload my video reference for the piece, but right now the "scruffy-bearded-man-effeminately-crying-over-a-teddy-bear" video is too embarrassing to be shown without countering it with the successful final product.

Animation eye + 1, morale - 1

2011-04-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a creative epiphany from a successful endeavor which completely killed your morale?

For the past few weeks I have polished a segment of my animated short with the intent of updating my reel. And by polish I mean painstakingly positioning each individual finger, toe, knee, elbow, etc on 600 frames so that they made beautiful arcs. My plan this week was to finish* polishing the segment and add my highly-regarded "Get Out" dialogue to the end. Bam! New reel completed.

I accomplished the former, but the latter step hit a major block:

Six weeks of over-analyzing minutia in my "Head of the House" shot had inadvertently trained my eye to be more sensitive to animation principles. When I finished the short's polish, I opened my "Get Out" shot to add it to the reel and audibly gasped: It looked terrible.

This was a shot I spent months writing about on this very blog. It represented my best animation and I proudly showed it off. I even received feedback on it from some very influential animators and came away happy. But now, I see so much "wrongness" in it. Or, to be more precise, I see so many ways that I could do it even better.

The piece itself isn't bad, it just is no longer indicative of my current skill level. I have progressed enough over the past year that creative choices I was once proud of now cause me to cringe. I stared at this shot for over a hundred hours completely oblivious to errors that now loudly scream "look at me!" to me in every playback. And I couldn't be happier.

Well, at least now I couldn't be happier. When it first happened my morale was obliterated: my months-long plan to update my reel for the first time since January '10 was foiled by my obvious lack of skill. The simple task of pasting my last shot to the end of my current shot suddenly turned into a scores-of-hours process of updating my old shot to at least be decent. And again, I had tirelessly worked on this animation for months and then prominently displayed it for the past year to everyone. Goodbye self-esteem!

But it didn't take long for me to perk back up. This is natural, after all. Artist actually want this to happen. All artists look at their old work and shudder with disbelief. And all artists are exponentially more critical when looking at their own work. Many readers on this site may look at my "Get Out" shot and say "it looks great to me", which is fine. But I know I can do better and have already begun my next shot to prove it.

And I'm sure in a year I will look at my "Head of the House" shot and ask, "what the hell was I thinking" and repeat the cycle all over again (it has already happened once). I look forward to that day.

In other news, my new reel is up. Although there is a very good chance it will be replaced in the next 8 weeks. :)

*nothing is "finished" in animation, they just take it away from you and tell you to move on.

Head House - SP11 state of the short!

2011-04-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

It is a new term at Animation Mentor and after a fantastic Winter term I am super excited to animate even more of my "Head of the House" short. I received wonderful feedback at the end of the term that motivated to put all of my focus into my animation for the next few months (some studios are keeping a very-interested eye on my progress, I've heard), so again sorry for the lack of blog updates but my animation is eating up most of my non-work time recently.

For the sake of progress, here is the current state of my short. This includes animation from 2007 (the beginning and end of the short) and the new animation I redid from scratch at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011 (anything with the new couch). Hopefully the difference in quality is obvious enough that I don't have to point out where the cuts are. :)

Head House - The frisbee catch

2011-03-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a new shot from my short recently. Below you can see my stages:

planning (sketching ideas)
reference (filming myself doing the actions)
blocking (ie choosing poses from reference and recreating them in Maya)
splining (adding the motion in between the poses)

The next week(s) I will be polishing the shot to make it look even better. Those hands before the jump are a little floaty for my taste!

Head House Week 8

2011-02-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

Moving right along! Came to a stopping point on many of the shots in this sequence so it is time to begin a new one. (and also deal with that couch, after all these years it has gotten old and needs to be replaced)

Digital Domain's Tron

2011-02-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

The movie was fun; imperfect but fun. But the amount of work put into the design and visual effects of the film is mind blowing. Especially considering how easy it is to forget that 95% of what you see is not real and was added later:

This also includes some of my favorite music from the movie. Congrats to everyone at Digital Domain who worked on this!

Head House dog side

2011-02-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

Another week, more animation! This week I focused on the dog and improved his walk animation. I also tried something new and received critiques on an animation from another angle, this time from the side. Usually, you animate to a camera and as long as it looks good in that one camera then it really doesn't matter how you "cheated" to get it there (sometimes a character walking towards camera is actually taking 10 ft long steps just to get the right angles in the legs). The dog walk was throwing me for a loop from the front angle so I stepped to the side to see how well it looked from there... not bad! The bounce shot also went from blocking to splining this weekend (meaning there is animation between my poses from last week)

Notes
Dog walk
- rotated camera towards center
- Smoothed foot rolls so the feet take off at the last moment without floating the weight
- Smoothed head roll arc so it doesn't hit a "wall"
- added snout overlap
- smoothed ear arcs

Bounce Prep
- rotated camera towards center
- splined all controls, ironed out pops
- focused on bounces in body, head, and shoulder
- smoothed frisbee arcs
- did a finger pass on screen left hand

Head House 2 - block

2011-02-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Starting a new shot on my "Head of the House" short. Blocking is now finished (meaning I have the major poses done and will start creating the inbetween frames):

Before I know it, the final polish will be uploaded and it will be time for a "progression post"!

Buccaneer Band logo

2011-02-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

Before heading down the animation path, I studied graphic design in college. And occasionally, my friends would come across a project or two that needed the services of a graphic designer. Since many of my friends were musicians, during my college years our band program's fliers became far more interesting. After graduating I focused completely on animation and moved on from graphic design, but recently one of my longtime music friends (and now a head band director) called me up with a new project: all the departments in his school were to design logos which were then scaled and painted on the school's hallways. He gave me the band font, color scheme (I could only use black and the school's blue) and in return I sent him this:

A few weeks later he sent me the final image after it was painted:

I was impressed at how well the painters were able to recreate a 6 foot image on the wall, especially the negative-space-from-hell French Horn and the vanishing-point-parallelograms of the xylophone. Sadly the painting ended up only using one color, but even then it still works.

Yay! And now that I have the graphic design bug out of my system it is time to hit the animation splines again.

To buy or rent?

2011-02-06T22:53:00.000-08:00

I came across a fun, informative, and interactive chart today at Trulia

The chart takes various factors, such as rent cost, purchase price, foreclosure rates, etc and uses an algorithm to determine if in the long term it is better to purchase or rent. Unsurprisingly, San Francisco is a "rent" suggestion, but I surprised my old stomping ground of Fort Worth was one position away from Los Angeles (although the cutoff from "buy" to "rent" occurs between those two positions.

As much as I love living in the Bay Area, sometimes I tempt/tease/depress myself by looking at other cities on charts like these and realize that what we pay in rent for a relatively small apartment could buy us an extravagant, large house in another metro area. *sigh*
Being the optimist, I like to think that if we ever do buy a place and then sell it and move out of state we will then live like royalty.

Until then, I will (ab)use my location in the Bay Area to the fullest and enjoy the multiple luxuries the area provides! Plus, animation studios are here! Woohoo!

Specks in the sky

2011-02-01T22:21:00.001-08:00

I've been on an astronomy kick recently (not to be confused with an astrology kick, although I have some posts on that as well coming up). Every now and then I come across a photo which stuns me: some for the sheer colorful beauty of the heavens depicted, others for the ideas they represent. Today's primary photo falls in the latter category, but I'll include a little reminder of the former too.

Today's photo comes from the Herschel Space Observatory courtesy of Dr. Scott Chapman from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.

(click to zoom to get the full magnitude of the photo)

While this image may look like a bunch of static, what it represents is far more mind-blowing: Each non-black pixel in this relatively small infrared image depicts an entire galaxy. And, as previously discussed, a single galaxy contains over 100 billion stars (more than the amount of humans that have ever lived) each with the possibility of its own solar system with a possible earth-like planet. If each star was 1 square foot in size, there would be more stars represented in this picture than could cover the entirety of Earth.

That is a lot of galaxies, and billions of stars, especially for an image which is only a minuscule fraction of the total sky. If the amount of "space" out there doesn't inspire awe in you then maybe it hasn't "clicked" yet, because for me that hint of knowledge changes a seemingly boring photo of static into a masterpiece of possibilities and colors.

Plus, it helps to remember that each dot of "static" represents one of these:

To quote the great Keanu: "whoa"

Touring AM with Jay and Victoria

2011-01-31T23:16:00.000-08:00

One of my jobs at Animation Mentor is hosting various Q&As and webinars for students, alumni, and prospective students. The last group requires a special webinar as accurately describing an online school where professional animators teach animation and critique students' animation can be a difficult task. A few months ago we recorded one of my Q&As on the subject, so if you are interested in seeing me discuss exactly what we do at my company then your wish is granted:

http://www.animationmentor.com/campustours/replay.html

Woohoo!

Head of the House - polish!

2011-01-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

My animation short "Head of the House" is coming along. After "finishing" it a few years ago (more like shoving it under the bed out of disgust) I reopened it with fresh eyes and new animation knowledge. After a few (spread out) months of focus on specific shots, I finally have a coherent clip of polished shots!

Currently I am working on the middle of the short on arguably the hardest shots of the piece. Here is the most recent update:

And here is the original "finished" piece from years ago. Not a single key from below is retained above, I have completely recreated the each shot from scratch.

Finally, here is the original animatic for the short:

A Mouse called Tron

2011-01-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

After 7 years I finally replaced my mouse on my computer. While my old mouse continued to work, it finally passed the point of no return: no amount a cleaning supplies could remove the finger oil from the mouse. I had literally worn away all the paint and plastic covering of mouse and was brushing against the endo-skeleton, at which point the oils began to build up into their own coating.

Moving on, it was time to get a new mouse. And luckily, the perfect mouse for me just arrived on the market. Meet Tron: The Mouse:

Not only does it glow (and shut itself off at night)...

But it also creates fascinating glow trails as you scroll across the mouse pad! I sometime find myself moving the mouse cursor to out-of-the-way areas on the screen just to create cool new patterns on the pad. I am not ashamed to admit I have written my name in cursive once or twice this way.

And as an added bonus, it makes the Tron bike noises from Tron Legacy when you start the computer. At this rate, I may have to spring for the matching Tron keyboard and call it a set.

/Geek

Salt and Pepper

2011-01-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

In January, I grew out a beard for a combination of artistic prank reasons (the product of which to be posted in April), a gentlemen's agreement, and a Hanukkah gift to a friend who wanted to see someone at the company in mutton chops (if only for a day, and no picture to be posted for that one).

While trimming the beard to keep it somewhat presentable I made a startling discovery:

How cool is that!? Here is a close up:

Oh noes! I am teh old! :P

Or more accurately (at least to my mental state), I am now "distinguished". Bring it on, Father Time!

50's advice from the fitness godfather

2011-01-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

Today I learned about a man who changed the world and inspired people to take the same the same steps in improving both their physical and mental health as I have taken over the past few years. Yet this man gave his advice to a national audience over 50 years ago and spent a lifetime changing peoples' lives. Sadly, I am only discovering this man due to his untimely death at the young age of 96: Jack LaLanne.

Here are just a few of his numerous accomplishments: starting the first public gyms in America (now Bally Total Fitness), inventing leg exercise machines and pulley weight machines, hosting a fitness show for 34 years, performing 1,000 pull ups and 1000 jumping jacks in just over an hour, creating a vegetable juicer line still sold today, performing over 1,000 push ups in 23 minutes, swimming in handcuffs while towing 70 rowboats with people for over a mile... at age 70. This man could do straight-body finger pushups at age 90, a feat I just tried at a relatively fit age of 29 which nearly resulted in breaking all my fingers (I won't even attempt the one-handed version he did at age 50).

Even with all these amazing feats, what surprises me most is how his life advice from his 50's TV fitness show is still applicable today. This man knew what he wanted in life and chose to share his secrets to achieving happiness and longevity to everyone. And the fact that he happily lived to the age of 96 shows that there may be some merit to his teachings. Here are a few of my new-favorite inspiring videos:

Life needs incentives

Stop being so tired

The effect of bad habits

Why people are unhappy

And more can be found here

Add color, update the outfits, and change the hair and these videos could be mistaken for current day "self-help" programming. The maladies he mentions, from obesity (from empty calories and man-made foods) to general happiness due to modern luxuries, still apply today. Even his primary rule of nutrition "if man made it, don't eat it" is the basis of many of today's popular diets (and the organic movement).

Thanks to constant technological improvements, scientific discoveries, and general generational gaps, I grew up with the (often erroneous) assumption that the older an advice on health (or self-help, finances, etc ) is usually wrong and I should only read the newest book with the newest advice. It is videos like these that remind me how little has changed throughout the years and that some advice is timeless.

Get Out - 2011 Polish

2011-01-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

After two false starts at the end of last year (sadly, due to waiting for a event that kept on being postponed) I am back in an animation class to work on new and old work alike. At the beginning of the class I showed my current reel and expected a lot of notes on my perpetual-work-in-progress short. While that did occur, I also got a lot of notes on my "finaled" dialogue shot "Get Out" from 2009. Thus, I returned to "Get Out" to polish it even more, and see things that my oh-so-naive eyes of 2009 completely missed.

Here is the newest polish:

And for reference, here is my "final" shot from the end of 2009

As is true polish, the changes may so small enough that you don't see them at first, but as a whole improve the entire shot:

Added a preparation breath prior to the dialogue
moved lip sync to hit the accents better
added nicer arcs to hands before "plague" and the jump "why to me?"
eyebrows are used more
Eyes are consistent throughout the shot, the old shot had him looking at 3 completely different "people" during the tirade
took out the staggered "Pixar blink" before the silent "whaaa?" (I have a Dreamworks mentor this time, it was the first thing he axed)
subtle hip and lower body movements throughout to keep him alive
subtle camera change at the end to keep him from hitting the side of the video window

The best laid plans... (of 2010)

2011-01-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

'Tis 2011 and my blog has been far more barren than I had planned. I would like to say "life got in the way" but I also know that I could have posted more if I had prioritized it higher. In retrospect, my biggest downfall was reaching my year-long goal of a "healthy, talented Jay" for my 10 year reunions. After traveling and spending two weeks with my old high school friends I found it hard to motivate myself to return to my strenuous routine when I returned. I still worked on each of my stated goals, but instead of doing all six of them every day I would do only 1-3. And the most affected, and public, of these goals was posting to this blog. My "upcoming posts" admin page has 20+ partially finished posts each waiting on me to finish an earlier, time-sensitive post before I can publish them in chronological order. I must overcome that desire for accurate chronological posts and instead post when I have a topic that needs to be written.

Regardless, I have no more excuses and plenty of motivating factors to encourage me to return to my goal-accomplishing habits of old: I'm taking another animation class (yay for daily animation); I've organized a gym team at work (exercise, woot!); I've moved and now have a 1.5 hour round trip commute (dedicated time for audiobooks and family phone calls); and most importantly (and unexpectedly) I've moved in with a wonderful someone who has similar goals and the mutual desire to help the other reach their goals. Most of all, I'm looking forward to 2011 and seeing this poor little blog have some life again!

Birthday and Beyond!

2010-12-16T23:44:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday* and the last of my 20's which doesn't really bother me or seem significant. I'm lucky enough to have an eclectic group of friends and coworkers who throw the "traditional milestones" that define my age out the window. Some friends are older, single, have successful careers, and enjoy life like they are fresh out of college. A few of them are starting families well into their 30's and early 40's. Other friends are younger, raising large, happy families but haven't really started their intended careers. And then there are friends who are in one of those categories but wish they were in the other.

Essentially, I know some respectable "twentysomethings" who fit my childhood perception of "thirty/fortysomethings" and vice versa. And neither path is "right" or "wrong", just different. As such, age really means nothing to me. As long as you are happy with life and where it takes you then age is but a number.

And for something that doesn't bother me much, I've already wasted two paragraphs on the subject. Time to put it away, enjoy my new birthday cartoons/clothes/candy and look forward to another fantastic year with friends and family!

*written on time, posted late

Months of photos

2010-11-10T08:06:00.000-08:00

And I return! October flew by and before I knew it November was here. I have a backlog of posts to add and the vast majority of them will be photo based since the following events happened in the last 4 weeks:
Two 10 year high school reunions
2 week trip with the family
A trip to the World Series
Halloween party madness
An "escape the stress" trip to Southern California
and smaller events too...

So even though it is November, you will soon see some quick posts from October and September (all the posts I wrote before I left for the 2 week trip in Arkansas/Texas) appear below this post. After a week the newer posts will appear and then we are back on track to follow up with the passions!

A tale of two (World Series) cities

2010-10-30T22:26:00.001-07:00

I had a (likely) once in a lifetime sports opportunity happen this week: a sports teams from each of my two hometowns competed against each other in the championship game of the sport (and I could afford a ticket to the game)!

I grew up in the Dallas, TX area and moved to the San Francisco, CA area seven years ago. In both cities I attended the local sports events but never thought I would see my dual allegiances challenged in the ultimate game for the sport. In some sports the event can't happen since both teams are in the same division and could only play each other in the playoffs. In other sports, one team or the other, to put it bluntly, has no chance to play in a championship game in the foreseeable future.

When this year's baseball season began I thought the latter would be true. The San Francisco Giants had never won a World Series, and the Texas Rangers had never even made it to the World Series. Yet, as luck would have it, both made it to the Fall Classic and played in the opening game just minutes from my house. I couldn't miss this opportunity, bought the first available ticket, and was on my way to the game of my life.

In the end, my heart leaned towards the Rangers as I had been to more of their games and wanted closure with them so I could move on to the Giants. But the Giants won the game (and the series) and I am just as proud for my new home team. Plus, I can actually see the winning ceremonies here in town (and I don't have to bear the ire of my California co-workers if the Rangers won)

Steak a la Pizzaiola

2010-09-24T23:11:00.001-07:00

One of my good friends and co-worker is a phenomenal chef who loves to experiment. She invited me over one night for some cooking and musical fun and that night we decided to create a new dish. Technically it is Steak a la Pizzaiola, but what made it fabulous was the mashed potatoes mix which contained numerous ingredients (such as cayenne pepper and thai spices) that don't normally go into a Southern potato mix but tasted wonderful. Below you can see the end result, along with a few of my steps to get there:

You Will ads

2010-09-16T00:01:00.001-07:00

I cam across these videos at work today and realized at how much has changed in the short span of time since they aired:
I remember seeing these ads during the Cowboys Super Bowl games of '93 and '94. At the time the features shown in these ads seemed so far off, yet now many of them are so common place that we forget about living in a world without them (well, other than the phone booth aspect). When I was 13, the "3d character animation for motion pictures and games" industry didn't even exist. And now I train people who live thousands of miles away from that industry, and we do it while seeing each others faces in real time. Similarly, I can call my family and see their faces from my phone and send them movies and photos at the same time. And I can even write this post and update it to a digital blog from the comfort of my bed without having to worry about wires, monitors, overheating, or any of the other early 90's computer annoyances.

With advancements like these, I wonder what we will be taking for granted in another 17 years when my children graduate...

Passion: Healthy progress

2010-09-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

When I created this blog I stated my different passions and goals, one of which involved my health:

A decade ago I was underweight and couldn't gain weight no matter much I ate. 2 years ago I was overweight and lazy. Through hard work and dedication I was able to lose 40 pounds and get back into decent shape. Now I want to really work on being fit and being able to get the most out of life.

At the time of my first post I had run a 5k and 10k at roughly 10 minutes a mile and was proud of my growth from couch potato to amateur runner. One year later, I am running unplanned half-marathons for fun (also at 10 minutes a mile but my first 10k is at about 9 minutes a mile, the last one kills me). I've brought my 1 mile speed down to sub 7 minutes from 9 minutes and will get it even lower by this next year (it would be great to see a mile in the 5 minute range). And overall I've just had fun with running, something I never thought would be possible.

As for my weight goals, I began working out more. As mentioned above, I had lost 40 lbs before beginning this blog, but it the process lost a lot of muscle too. Below you can my transformation from 10 years ago to 3 years ago to last year at the time of my first post:

While I am not at the "fit" point that I want to be I am on the right path. I have gained 15 pounds since last September, yet my pants size has dropped one size so most of the weight is now in my upper body. My workouts now have me lifting double/triple the amount of weight I was a year ago. My max pull ups doubled, I went from roughly 10 max "perfect push-ups" to over 50!

I am building a future post (likely for 2011) on this subject that will include more embarrassing before and after photos so I won't go into too much here. Without giving too much away, here are some photos one of running buddies took, without me knowing, of my obsessive relationship with pull ups (both overhand and underhand): If I see a workout bar on the street, you can expect to see me at least pump out 10 pull-ups. You can even see the sequence where I drop down and suddenly realize they were taking photos. Not shown: the severe beatdown I gave to them afterwords. But hey, at least I have something to show now, right?

I am on my way to a fitter Jay!

The Goals: my blog's 1st year

2010-09-12T23:14:00.001-07:00

So last week marked the one year anniversary of this blog. At the time I was busy running an impromptu half-marathon and was unable to address it, but my plan in creating this blog involved a yearly check-in to verify I continued to meet my theme:

This blog will document my passions, progress, and random musings so at the end of the day I can look back and see that, while I have not reached everything I have hoped for, I am further than when I started. And tomorrow is always another day on the road to a new Jay.

So how did I do? Well, for base stats I posted 220 stories in 365 days, blogging for roughly 60% of the year. While this is far from a 100% posting rate I had imagined, it is a vast improvement over the 1 post per year rate I had previously. I also noticed a trend of 3 months off and on for my posting habits. I was really strong September and October (literally posting everyday) and then posted only 30 times over the next 3 months (having a new baby may be a good excuse though). I then did well from Feb-April, but disappeared from May until July. Although at this time I was stuck on the notion of emphasizing the posting date over the completion date, and many of April's 29 posts were actually written throughout May and June. I then picked it back up for July and August and have maintained roughly a 60% monthly average since. Not bad, but it could be better.

Then again, one hypothesis that I am looking into this year is whether posting too often about productivity is detrimental to my actual productivity. Maybe I need that other 40% of time for my projects? Or maybe not. We'll see how my numbers are in September 2011...

My most common themes were:

Jay (53) - it is a blog about me, so this is not surprising
photography (53) - did not expect this, but in retrospect it was far easier to spend a weekend with the family and a camera to create 5 posts than it was to animate for 3 weeks to get 1 post
animation (44) - it is my job and hobby, but not enough of these posts were showing progress in my work, they were informative articles or links
family (41) - a vast majority being photography of my frequent trips to visit the family. These will be fun to look at over the years
music (34) - surprised it was this high, I feel like I didn't create enough performance videos this year
theme (33) - a somewhat nebulous category since the majority of my posts do involve my theme of progression, I just got tired of tagging them all and only tagged the major milestones.

So that is a brief look at my first year in blogging. Over the next month I will create a retrospective post for each of my passions to see reallly how much I progressed during this year...

And with that, I shall end this much like I began it: it's my blog and I will do what I want!

(and I have)

Die Pennies, Die

2010-09-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

I admire this man's passionate diatribe against pennies, plus he gives some very good points as to why pennies are no longer needed:

Streaks - the Seinfeld methods meets the iPhone

2010-09-08T20:58:00.001-07:00

Exactly one year ago I wrote about Jerry Seinfeld's method of marking a calendar each day he worked towards a goal and trying to create a visible "streak" each month on the calendar. I implemented this into my workflow and found it very helpful. But I did have months where even though I did work on my projects each day I never wrote them on my calendar since I wasn't near it when I completed the goal. Recently I was told about an app for the iPhone that recreates this goal method perfectly called Streaks. The app is very simple: you have a calendar with a task title, such as "Work Out", and each day you do the assigned task you mark it in the calendar. The app then tracks your streaks each and lets you know how many times in a row you have done it! You can create a separate calendar for each of your various tasks and track them all.

If you are serious about tracking your work towards a goal then I highly recommend picking up this app, otherwise pick up an actual calendar and try it the "old fashioned" way.

Parallel Parking

2010-09-07T23:59:00.001-07:00

This 30 sec short should help to remind everyone to always pay attention to the street signs before parking, else you could end up like this:

Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

Nice stop-motion style to the piece too, kudos to the creators.

Glee-fully Looking Back at Children in Eternity

2010-09-06T23:04:00.001-07:00

Welcome to another pseudo-Jay's Playlist! Today's topic is about confused familiarity with new musical themes.

The other day I was watching the first few episodes of the show "Glee" and heard a theme I recognized. As two characters (who are destined to be together as the season progresses) begin shyly flirting with each other a simple, beautiful piano theme plays in the background. Each time I heard it I racked my brain trying to determine where I heard it from. A quick Google search brought up the song "Looking Back" by Kerry Muzzey: (beginning with the theme used 0:56)

While the mystery of the song title was solved, a new one presented itself: I had never heard of the piece before, so why was it so familiar? How could I hum the upcoming notes to the piece even before I had even heard them the first time?

The answer came when a began listening to my "favorites" playlist with all my top ranked singles. One of my favorite pieces from 1996 suddenly called up emotional Glee scenes in my mind as it played:

Soon after that, my Final Fantasy piano playlist began, and it happened again:

It is amazing how a simple melody pattern can appear so often in my emotional favorites list, and in roughly the same key no less. "Looking Back" and "Eternity" both use the B-flat, A, F to B-Flat, A, E-flat pattern (Eternity pulls the e-flat from the baseline though while the treble still plays the F), and Children does the same pattern but with A-flat as the starting note.

Upon hearing this many people may call it plagiarism, but really it is just a coincidence. In the end, there is a finite number of melodic combinations of the 12 chromatic notes, so the same combination is bound to appear in numerous pieces. Malcom Gladwell addresses this in his essay on "Plagiarism":

Ferrara once served as an expert witness for Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was being sued by Ray Repp, a composer of Catholic folk music. Repp said that the opening few bars of Lloyd Webber’s 1984 “Phantom Song,” from “The Phantom of the Opera,” bore an overwhelming resemblance to his composition “Till You,” written six years earlier, in 1978. As Ferrara told the story, he sat down at the piano again and played the beginning of both songs, one after the other; sure enough, they sounded strikingly similar. “Here’s Lloyd Webber,” he said, calling out each note as he played it. “Here’s Repp. Same sequence. The only difference is that Andrew writes a perfect fourth and Repp writes a sixth.”

But Ferrara wasn’t quite finished. “I said, let me have everything Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote prior to 1978— ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ‘Joseph,’ ‘Evita.’ ” He combed through every score, and in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” he found what he was looking for. “It’s the song ‘Benjamin Calypso.’ ” Ferrara started playing it. It was immediately familiar. “It’s the first phrase of ‘Phantom Song.’ It’s even using the same notes. But wait—it gets better. Here’s ‘Close Every Door,’ from a 1969 concert performance of ‘Joseph.’ ” Ferrara is a dapper, animated man, with a thin, well-manicured mustache, and thinking about the Lloyd Webber case was almost enough to make him jump up and down. He began to play again. It was the second phrase of “Phantom.” “The first half of ‘Phantom’ is in ‘Benjamin Calypso.’ The second half is in ‘Close Every Door.’ They are identical. On the button. In the case of the first theme, in fact, ‘Benjamin Calypso’ is closer to the first half of the theme at issue than the plaintiff’s song. Lloyd Webber writes something in 1984, and he borrows from himself.”

In the “Choir” case, the Beastie Boys’ copying didn’t amount to theft because it was too trivial. In the “Phantom” case, what Lloyd Webber was alleged to have copied didn’t amount to theft because the material in question wasn’t original to his accuser. Under copyright law, what matters is not that you copied someone else’s work. What matters is what you copied, and how much you copied.

In this case, it doesn't matter whether the composers knew they were "copying" each other, the end result is the same: three beautiful, emotional themes. So the next time I hear a new theme that sounds familiar, I should listen to my "favorites" playlist as I may have discovered yet another pattern that emotionally resonates with me.

World's Scariest job

2010-09-05T00:36:00.001-07:00

Saw this video and found it quite interesting and vertigo-inducing. It is great reference for climbing, especially for those of you animating for first person games. And even though the video is just a small square on my screen, my body still cringes and reacts as if I was the one doing the actions:

Boy am I glad my job keeps me grounded...

Marathon at the Bay: a photo story

2010-09-02T21:25:00.001-07:00

Have you wanted to run a 1/2 marathon but were unable to do so due to health/weather/rabid coyote concerns? Or, if you are not a runner, have you ever wondered what walking next to a bay at sunset looked like? Then this post is for you!

One day I walked outside and said "I am going to run until I cannot run any longer". After 13.1 miles, 2 hours and 24 minutes, and numerous stops for photos passed I walked into my house and collapsed asking myself why I ever decided to do such a thing. Now you can enjoy the experience without all the annoying knee pains, gasping and wheezing lungs, and sore legs which refused to go up or down stairs for a week afterwords!

Below you will find my final course through Emeryville. While I didn't originally plan on running a marathon when I started, I ran these various trails enough to know their distances and by mile 9 decided to take a detour to reach that 13 mile marker (final total was 13.4 miles). The numbers shown below are actually locations of pictures for reference (not miles). Click on any photo for a larger, more detailed photo. Sometimes the tiniest/furthest parts of the photo are actually my next destination in the run!

For full effect, press the play button to hear the music I listened to for most of the run, a piece which is perfect for watching sunsets.

1. Looking West towards Marina - At about the 2nd mile I was stunned by the beauty of the oncoming sunset and took the first photo. The little tree in the center of the road is about 1 mile away at marker 2.

2. Looking West towards San Francisco - the first of many shots showing the sun slowly lowering towards the horizon, which for this vantage point is the Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco is the land in the center.

3. North towards Berkeley Marina - The brown land mass in the center of the photo is the Berkeley Marina (marker 9); one hour later I would be standing there taking a photo of my present location.

3.2 East towards Berkeley - in about 20 minutes I would be running along that path bordering the water on the other side of the bay

2.2 East towards Emeryville - this is back at marker 2 looking towards marker 1 as I head back to Emeryville from the marina. That is Oakland on the right.

4. North towards Berkeley Marina - The trees on the small land mass on the left are at marker 9 in the Berkeley Marina; the path on the right borders the water for about 2.5 miles. Marker 5 is on the other side of the (closer) trees in the center of the photo.

5. North towards Berkeley Marina - Just finished the Ashby hump and am officially in Berkeley, will run for another 1.5 miles until reaching marker 6. I spent this stretch of the run on the phone talking to my children and hearing about there exciting day. It was amazing!

6. West towards Berkeley Marina - One of the hardest section runs as I was looking into the sun and running on an uneven road without sidewalks. My feet hurt at this point since I was essentially barefoot. Roughly halfway finished.

7. North almost in Berkeley Marina - Nature is trying to reclaim this section of the trail

8. North inside of Berkeley Marina - At this point I realized I wasn't going to make it home before sunset. But at least it would be a beautiful sunset!

8.2 North end of Berkeley Marina - looking northwest towards Richmond. Won't be running there any time soon.

A
9 South towards Emeryville Marina- The companion piece to marker 3. The little trees just left of center are in the Emeryville Marina where I was standing 1 hour earlier. The Bay Bridge and part of San Francisco are to the right (as shown in the second photo along with the Golden Gate Bridge covered in sunlight)

At this point the sun has set behind the hills and the night portion of the run begins (as shown by the blue line and numbers)

9.2 East towards Berkeley - The sun just dipped below the horizon as I ran back towards the mainland.

10. South towards Berkeley/Emeryville - the pedestrian bridge (roughly behind marker 6) in the center is my point of no return. If I cross it then my final total is 10 miles, if I run under it then it will be another 4 miles before getting home...

11. South towards Emeryville - ... the pedestrian bridge is behind me, I am in this for the long haul! The white building on the left is near my ending point and will be marker 13, but I will have to run 1 mile past it and loop back before seeing it up close. The Emeryville Marina is on the right.

12. Southwest towards Emeryville Marina and San Fran - looking at marker 3 for the final time and San Francisco right behind it. Now it is getting noticeably darker by the minute and I still have another 25 minutes left. Also, the lights on the far left (marker 4 are from Chevy's Mexican restaurant, a delicious food source I have run past 3 times on this trip. By mile 11 its aroma has nearly taken over my starved body (again, I didn't actually plan to run this far so I didn't eat as well as I should) and it took a lot of will power not to stop and eat the largest burrito I could find...

13. North towards Berkeley - the small white building from marker 11 is much larger. The sky is dark (the lights are from the city) and I am just .5 miles away from my destination!

End! (no photo) I collapsed into my bed (in retrospect, it was a bad idea to stop moving completely after running a half marathon). When I could move again I slowly proceeded to my car and went to Chevy's to have that burrito that had called my name 3 times in my trip.

Girls at the airport!

2010-09-01T22:13:00.001-07:00

My first joy each time I fly to see the kids is seeing my children waiting for me at the airport. And the feeling is shared by them:

Plight of the Bumblebee

2010-08-31T22:22:00.001-07:00

Recently, a lost Mickey Mouse cartoon appeared from 1951 has been liberated from the literal Disney animation vault (not the fake one used to create artificial supply and demand). I love seeing seeing animation from this era in a non-finished form, the art behind the animation is in full view and we are left wondering why something like this has hidden away for 60 years. What is amazing is that the animation is 99% complete and the alleged reason the animators never finished was because the short was considered too long. Since the directors refused to cut anything out of it the fickle Disney execs just canned the crew and threw the animation into the vault with no intentions of anyone ever seeing it again. But 60 years later someone digitized the prints found in the vault and now Jack Kinney's Plight of the Bumblebee is available for everyone to see:

Update: or not :(
That's the nature of secret animations, they appear and are pulled down faster than you can write about them. But now that the cat is out of the bag, it is bound to re-appear. When it does then it will be properly linked. Until then check out pics from the short here:
http://afilmla.blogspot.com/search?q=plight+of+the+bumble+bee

Talkers and Doers

2010-08-30T22:04:00.001-07:00

Get Rich Slowly posted a fantastic article on the difference between Talkers and Doers that mirrors many of my own ideas. Essentially people, especially those new to productivity ideas, tend to fall into a "talker" group rather than the "doer" group. The Talkers know what they need to do, even tell their friends what they need to do, but never actually do it. Some go as far as giving advice to others on how to do things that they themselves aren't actually doing. The Doers take their own advice and actually accomplish what they set out to do (or learn from the journey and update their end goals)

Derek Sivers dives deeper into the Talker mentality and gives a wonderful, short presentation on why talking about your goals is actually detrimental to completing them:

By telling others about their goals, the Talker receives the satisfaction of "completing" the goal without actually doing it. They tell a friend they have decided to lose 50 lbs and everyone congratulates them on it before they even start losing weight. They then may begin the process of losing weight but after a few weeks give up because (well, one reason) mentally they've already received the kudos from those around them; a satisfaction usually reserved to those who have actually completed their goals. (my recommendation: post to your goals to a blog, receiving comments on a post is a lot different than verbal congratulations, and the persistent and public nature of the blog should inspire you to keep going)

Get Rich Slowly also breaks down the steps to convert yourself from a Talker to a Doer:

Make time for the things you want to do. One of the keys to getting things done is setting aside time for the things you want to accomplish. You have to make time to get stuff done. As the Kevin J. Anderson article I mentioned above demonstrates, you don’t just become a best-selling author or an Olympic athlete. Talking doesn’t make it so. You have to carve out time to do this stuff. You have to put your Big Rocks first and fit the small stuff in around them.
Have a goal in mind. I truly believe that the biggest reason I used to struggle with getting stuff done is that I didn’t have any sort of plan. I had no goals. Goals give you purpose. It wasn’t until I became committed to digging out of debt that I was able to actually start moving in the right direction. Part of my current problem is that I’ve recently achieved a bunch of big goals, but now have nothing planned for the future.
Don’t take on too much. While it’s important to set goals, don’t take on too many tasks at once. I try to set just one or two major goals at a time. Any more and I find I can’t pursue any of them effectively. This year, my one goal is to lose 50 pounds. I’m on pace to do that. Why? Because I don’t have anything else on my schedule competing for time. This is my Big Rock.
Don’t let failures deter you. This is huge. One of the reasons I used to talk so much without acting is that I was afraid of failure. I’m not sure where I learned to be afraid of defeat, but that’s the way I was. And when I did try something but failed, I’d give up. This is no way to get stuff done. Talkers let fear of failure keep them on the sideline; Doers overcome fear and move on, and when they fail, they simply try again.
Don’t find reasons that something can’t be done; instead, find ways that something can be done. This is a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people come to me for advice, but when I give it, they tell me all of the reasons it won’t work for their circumstances. (This often happens when I suggest people take a second job to boost their income, for example.) One of the biggest difference between successful people and those who aren’t is that the successful don’t make excuses. If something looks difficult or impossible, they find ways to make it happen anyhow.
So the next time you set out to do something, ask yourself if you want to be a Talker or a Doer and then go out and conquer (but possibly keep it to yourself)!

Vaccines rant

2010-08-29T21:32:00.001-07:00

One of my major pet peeves (I don't have many) is the use of misinformation or irrational ideas to scare people into doing or avoiding specific actions (This is probably why I don't get along with politicians very well). One of the more recent ideas that infuriates me is notion that vaccines are harmful and should be avoided. This is especially infuriating because the original article that started this movement has not only been proven to be wrong many times but the journal that printed it has retracted the article and distanced itself from the disgraced scientist who wrote it to help "prove" a notion in a lawsuit. Despite all of this, people still refuse to vaccinate due to a misguided conspiracy theory and children die because of this choice. And not only are the children who are not vaccinated at risk but anyone around them is at risk due to them being carriers (vaccines don't protect from viruses 100% of the time but they do prevent the spread of the disease so those who aren't fully protected by the vaccine never come in contact with the virus).

Anyways, Penn and Teller recently did a piece on Vaccines and they put it far more bluntly than I ever could: Even if what was said was true about vaccines (it is not) those risks are far better than the thousands of deaths and disabled children caused by not vaccinating.

You can find the entire show here and here (warning, some harsh language and random nudity at the very end)

Evernote

2010-08-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

This month I tried a new mobile productivity program called Evernote to keep up with my ideas, ramblings, desires, and tasks. So far I really enjoy it and can see it becoming useful in certain situations (and not as useful in others). The great thing about Evernote is it syncs online automatically so whatever notes I create on my phone are automatically on my home and work computers when I sit down at my respective desks. And using the iPhone I can take photo notes or audio notes for future reference as I explore. These functions are wonderful for noting gift ideas (such as you are at a store and see the perfect gift for someone in 6 months, take a photo of it to remember) or if you hear a song you like but don't have time to figure out what it is (record it and use Pandora later).

Since I always have my phone on me I know if I come across something I need to remember, or just have a random good idea to follow up on at later time, I can open the app and note it for later. It also recognizes text in images so if you take a photo of an sign (such as a UPC code of a gift item) you can run a search for it later to easily recall the note. Some of the notes I've created so far:

Gift ideas for others and myself (if you see something you want or someone else will enjoy, photograph to use come the holidays)
Conversation reminders for the next time I call a person ("oh, I need to talk to them about that")
Document the changes in my To-do list dry erase board each week
Photo of a restaurant that I should try the next time I am in the city
Note a website link that I want to access when I am out (such as a specific computer to buy at Fry's)
Photos of artist names in movie credits to look up their blogs
Take a photo of an outfit that may look good on me the next time I go clothes shopping
Note animation ideas and possible dialog pieces to analyze
Photo of my car in a large parking lot to easily find it again
Website links for blog topic ideas
Photo of my printer so I can remember exactly what type of ink to get next time I am in a store

And others as well, but you get the idea. The one thing that I hoped Evernote could help with but has let me down on is a comprehensive To-Do list. The tagging feature of Evernote is great for grouping common themed notes, but since the notes are all "live" until you delete them there is no easy way to sort your To-Do items into separate groups for "Completed" and "Pending". Instead you have to tag the items as "To-Do" and each time you search for the tag it brings up everything you have done in the past too. You could probably add other tags for "completed" tasks but then it just becomes tedious to track them all. And there is no date sensitive option for reminding you of notes on specific days. You do get the option of adding check boxes to notes but those features are not available on the mobile version, you can only add them on the computer.

As a note taking option Evernote is awesome. If I were still in school it would help immensely for research papers and other project tasks. It is great for documenting ideas that you have on the spot, and a good resource to remind yourself of specific details when you are away from home. But as a day to day task manager it doesn't quite meet my goals, so instead I had to turn to another program which I will post about later after I've tested it more. If you constantly find yourself coming up with ideas and are nowhere near a pen and paper (or computer) to jot them down, I highly recommend adding Evernote to your repertoire of productivity suites!

July Trip 2

2010-08-20T23:49:00.001-07:00

After the birthday celebrations we took the girls to my old lifegaurd-stomping grounds. Rae remembered visiting the amusement park from the previous year but this was Mia's first visit. For a tall 2 1/2 year old, she handled the rollercoasters quite well! They both had blast and couldn't wait to come back again. Maybe next year!
At home, Elliot was beginning to stand up and suddenly wanted to be included in everything we were doing. He has become so expressive in the last few months!

July Trip 1

2010-08-19T22:15:00.001-07:00

We began my July trip with the always-dependable MarbleWorks set up. While the 2 year old still isn't able to figure out the physic of building an awesome marble tower, she is able to make a mean tube and pretend to be an elephant. Afterwords we celebrated Rae's 4th birthday by creating an awesome train cake. While the girls loved building the cake, many of the edible decorations disappeared before they could be placed on the cake and the girls weren't very hungry when it was time to indulge in it. Regardless, the journey is part of the fun! Then, like any good animator, I gave Rae her presents which consisted of dolls from Toy Story 3 and the Disney Princess line. We had a blast playing with them outside, although the dolls may say otherwise (especially after being thrown 20 ft in the air).

Secret Powers of Time

2010-08-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of RSA animate, which is a group that takes informative lectures and animates the subject matter to reinforce the concepts. I really enjoy their presentation on the different perceptions of time and how different culutures' views on the past, present, and future influence the way they function and interact with others. Ironically, this lecture may also suggest why I (or my generation) am attracted to flashy, involving demonstrations instead of a standard audio lecture (see section at 6:00):

The ending statistic of the number of families who eat together for family time is a little depressing though...

When culture creates its own pop clothes

2010-08-17T23:13:00.001-07:00

The internet offers artists a chance to show their work to a much wider audience and skip the traditional "middleman" when it came to creating and selling their art. One industry which exploded in popularity with the internet is the user-created clothes industry. For decades, everyone and their mother had ideas for cool shirts, but unless they knew talented artists, stores with screen-printing machines, or could live with text-only shirts very few of them ever made the shirts. Now, everyone with a shirt idea can create a store and sell the shirt to anyone in the world. Entire sites have appeared whose sole business model is "allowing" artists to upload their art for the chance of being popular enough to appear on a shirt. In some harsher cases, the sites accept the artists work, sell the artwork on shirts, offer nothing to the artist (accept pride), then prevent the artist from selling the same or similar concepts on their own in order to make a living.

Anyways, while I may have an issue with a few sites exploitation of uninformed artists, I definitely do not have an issue with the encouragement for creating art and showing it to the world. Especially creative pop art. Below are a few of my favorite, hilarious art samples from various shirt sites (many of which are also collected here). Many of these contain references to characters and situations from the 80's and 90's (the timeframe today's creative internet users grew up in), so if you don't get the reference just ask a twentysomething.

Graduation uber-weekend! pt 3

2010-08-09T22:33:00.001-07:00

After the graduation everyone congregated in the lobby and celebrated! Hundreds of almuni and friends flew in from around the world for this event and with everyone seeing each other in person for the first time the excitement was palpable! Drinks were had, poses were photographed, people were embarrassed. Overall it was a successful Graduation!

Next up... the BBQ!

>!--more--M

Graduation uber-weekend! pt 2

2010-08-09T22:26:00.002-07:00

We held the graduation at the fabulous Palace of Fine Arts near the Presidio in San Francisco. Many of these photos show the "behind-the-scenes" aspects of the show. All the presenters (professional animators from around the world) would nervously look over their speeches as their moment approached, while everyone else watched the feed of the ceremony from backstage. Then the balloons dropped, the students became alumni, and a party ensued!

Graduation uber-weekend! pt 1

2010-08-09T22:26:00.001-07:00

I work at a fantastic company. One of the aspects of the job that makes each day entertaining is talking to people from around the world who love animation. Thousands of animation students and alumni from scores of countries log on to our website and I love talking with them. While being an internet-based company allows us to reach far more students, the downside is you rarely have tangible experiences with the students.

Except for one weekend each year when we host a spectacular graduation for just-finished students and then host a ginormous BBQ for all students/alumni past/present/future!

Thus begins the photo journey of this animation über-weekend:

Civilization Medley

2010-08-09T22:16:00.001-07:00

One of the first concerts I attended after moving to SF was the newly established "Video Games Live", a concert comprised of arranged video game music that would never come anywhere near my previous hometown in Arkansas. The organizer (and host) of the concert was a man named Tommy Tallarico, a video game composer who released CDs of his work in the early 90's which also happened to the be the first CDs I ever owned. I had kept in touch with him over the years (he's very responsive to his fans) and got to meet him at the VGL concert. Sadly I haven't been able to see the concert again the few times it has been in the area, but luckily they recently filmed the concert and are playing it on PBS. One of my favorite pieces (and from a game I had never played before) is now available online:

No offense to the soloist on the right (who performs the piece at all the concerts) but the soloist on the left (who performed the original piece included in the game) just steals the show, especially at 3:35.

Interesting fact: The lyrics to this song, "Baba Yetu" are actually The Lord's Prayer sung in Swahili. This must have come as quite a surprise to the people in Dubai (a predominantly Muslim city) who set up an entire tourist attraction around this song.

Danny & Annie

2010-08-09T22:12:00.002-07:00

Proving once again that story is king, watch this beautiful true story (as told by the title's namesakes) and be moved by "true love". The animation is simplistic but fits the story and doesn't distract or get in the way. Just try not to cry too long once it finishes...

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

May with the family part 2

2010-08-09T22:12:00.001-07:00

The second part of my trip in May had us exploring a creek, visiting the local playground, catching up with old college friends, and making an impromptu visit to the baseball park for the sole purpose of jumping on the bouncy houses.

High Five!

2010-08-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why, but the last 15 seconds of this trailer contain one of the funniest skits I've seen in years.

I have no desire to see the movie but I couldn't help to laugh at this prank. I still can't believe these guys are still creating material. he first Jackass TV show premiered my freshman year in college and was the funniest thing ever (for 18/19 year-olds); yet somehow these guys have survived all the crazy antics and explosions over the years and are making yet another movie 10 years later. At 28, these childish pranks now seem as juvenile as they are, but occasionally one stands out that just brings a smile to your face.

High five!

Sketches and snakes

2010-08-09T21:56:00.000-07:00

A number of employees at my work are artists and enjoy life drawing. As such each month we pool resources and pay for a model for a life drawing session.

This life drawing session was odder than most though: when I walked in the classroom the first question one of my friends asked was "Do you mind snakes?". Immediately I looked at the model and verified it was indeed a woman (I've heard that question before in life drawing, but it was from a sarcastic/overcompensating male model). My curiosity now piqued, I replied "No, why?". Then a 5 foot boa constrictor slithered in front of me and answered my question. The model was a huge snake fan (in the same way some women are cat ladies) and her pet needed some exploration time while "mommy" worked (ie posed nude for people).The rest of the life drawing class went well, but it it was rather distracting watching the (friendly) boa and making sure she didn't surprise you while we were deeply focused on drawing. She spent about 15 minutes crawling up the table behind my chair and then proceeded to investigate my eraser and other pencils before attempting the "jump" to my chair, at which point I scooted further away and let her glide down to the floor to go visit someone else.

As for my drawings, we ended up doing longer poses than my usual favorite quick gesture drawings. So I ended up drawing a quick 2 minute gesture of a 20 minute pose and then slyly drew gestures of the other attendees in the class (which I did by passing off my searching for the snake as really looking at each person's pose).

And, of course, once the session was over I played with the snake, who in the end only wanted to be loved.

May with the family part 1

2010-08-07T23:49:00.001-07:00

I'm coming up on my August trip and I still haven't posted photos from my May-June or July trips! I usually spread each trip's photos out over 5 posts (it is easier to narrow down the photos to roughly 10 photos per event that way) but in the interest of speed this trip will be shown over 2 posts!

My May-June trip began in Dallas where I visited Reel FX, an awesome animation studio where I know many of the animators from their work at Animation Mentor. My sister then drove me to Arkansas where we met our parents and got one of our first family photos in a while. After than we picked up my kids and much fun ensued. The girls enjoyed Popsicles while the baby had grown big enough to roll around and demand to be included in the activities. He was also very interested in the computer, especially the videos of his sisters and him, something his sisters also enjoyed watching and joined him in viewing.

Bishop 2.0!

2010-08-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

So one of the projects going on in my department has been the creation of a new character rig for animation. Over 2500 students and alumni (including myself) used our previous rig, Bishop, in thousands of animated shots over the past 5 years. As such many of the shots began looking the same since the rigs rarely changed unless the student knew how to build hair/clothes/etc. Even recruiters were beginning to complain that there was little character variety between reels, especially since so many AM students are now out in the industry and showing their reels.

Well last week we finally announced Bishop 2.0! This changes everything!

Congrats to every at AM who worked on this over the past 6 months and I can't wait to see what cool new characters (ie Bishop mods) students come up with!

Top 10 things successful people have in common

2010-08-04T13:16:00.001-07:00

It has been a while since I posted about productivity. I find great articles about productivity each week but have yet to actually write anything new on them on this blog (then again, how many "new ideas" are there, basically the same productivity ideas that Dale Carnegie wrote about in 1937 still apply). As such, it is time to link to my favorite inspirational pages instead of coming up with my own.

First up, the "Top 10 things successful people have in common":

http://www.alltipsandtricks.com/top-10-things-successful-people-have-in-common/

1. Hard work. Successful people work very hard and they are keen on practising or rehearsing things until they come out perfect. Their outcome is only the tip of the iceberg; it is only that 10% that people see. The rest of 90% is preparation and hard work.

2. Focus. When they do something, the rest of the world disappears until they stop. All their attention and all their resources work together for a common goal, to complete the current task they are on. Many times, they forget even to eat or sleep, so much they are absorbed into their action. They just don’t let themselves overwhelmed by “urgent-not important” issues that crowd their agenda. They are keen on prioritizing.

3. Passion. They like what they do or they do what they like. Either way you put it, they enjoy their work, they are so passionate about it, that hard work is a pleasure and a must for them. Do you think that Beethoven could have written any of his works without passion? Or Van Gogh would have been able to paint so astonishing if passion was not there? Of course not!

4. Curiosity. Successful people want to know. They want to learn. The questions they most frequently ask are not “What? When? Who?” but rather “Why? Or How?” The best way to repeat a successful action is to know why was it successful, what was that little trigger that generated attraction and recognition.

5. Empathy. Have you noticed how many people like successful guys out there? It’s because their way of coming into resonance with others, their way of establishing rapport. Highly successful people are empathic and often it happens that despite their solitude, many people like them and feel good around them. That is because of their high level of emotional intelligence, because of their abilities to listen and learn from the world.

6. Responsibility. They are fully responsible of their acts. When something happens, they don’t waste time to search for who’s to blame, they rather move on to finding what needs to be done next. They don’t complain and they don’t look for pity.

7. Self-improvement. Successful people work on themselves, they change with the times, they learn from the past. Look at the famous singer Madonna: how many times did she completely change her style? Too many times. Each time when she felt the need to shift to something new. The result: she was appreciated every time by her fans and she’s still in tops after so many years.

8. Humor. They appreciate humor, they live in this spirit, they do serious things with relaxation and joy, they don’t rush or get hurried just to see things done.

9. Creativity. Successful people think out of the box. They search for new ways of doing things, when they don’t find something very comfortable, they try to adjust it to serve them better. Going with the flock is definitely their way of life.

10. Flexibility. There is a saying that in an organization, the most flexible element always wins. It is true. Think no further than your workplace. Which are the colleagues you value most? Aren’t they the ones who are flexible, who can adjust themselves so much that they can understand your point of view? Yes, success comes with a large dose of flexibility, and this does not mean that such people do not have their own opinions. Not at all! It just means that they know how to listen and how to act to see things and actions going their way. They know how to spot opportunities and change them into more joy, satisfaction and success for themselves.

Bad Universe

2010-07-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I wrote a post about how to visualize 1 billion (and how there are more stars than grains of sand on this planet). While writing the piece I contacted the great Dr. Phil Plait, a former NASA astronomer and writer of the brilliant "Bad Astronomy" blog (where he also featured my post), and got some great advice. Well, Dr. Plait is now going to the big time and I would be remiss if I didn't advertise his new TV show: "Bad Universe"

Looks like Myth Busters meets Cosmos! I'm super excited for this and want to again say "Congrats Dr. Plait! You've got a viewer right here. Keep up the great work".

Sunny times

2010-07-26T22:44:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, the most mundane of environments (such as the concrete parking garage you park in every day) are the best places for photography, especially when lit properly.

And hey, I've included an intentional self-portrait too! That's a first (for this blog at least).

And since I really have no where else to include it, here is another sunny photo taken from my monthly vantage point of seat 17C.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

2010-07-26T18:51:00.001-07:00

Last year was all about experimenting and trying ideas/actions/tasks I wouldn't normally do. I began growing my hair out last July in order to look like Mr. Darcy in time for Halloween. While my hair was not long enough to match my Darcy reference, by Halloween it was pretty long. In fact, it was longer than I could ever remember it being. Then I realized that I had never grown my hair out before. I had always jumped from having a short, an almost-buzz-cut, to spike hair (with blond highlights), to a bowl cut around the forehead, to parted either down the center or side, then cut and repeat when it got too long. Maybe I would look fabulous with long hair? How would I know if I didn't try?!

Also, seeing how both my grandparents and my father are bald (and that little ball of hair at the bottom of the shower ain't getting any smaller), I knew my time to grow long hair was limited.

So I let my hair grow. And grow. And, coincidentally, during this time my wardrobe expanded to include a fabulous collection of hats.

Alas, all good(?) things must come to an end. I reached my goal of growing long hair out, and it was time to go back to something more familiar...

If there is one benefit to come of this (beyond the scores of "wow, you look good!" complements) it is that now my mother and sister will stop bugging me about my hair every time I visit (or slyly mentioning it at the end of their blog posts) ;)

Jay's Playlist: End Credit themes

2010-07-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my playlist, where I discuss the music which is currently entertaining me. Below you will find a video, press play to begin the song and then read my feelings on the album.

Today's music is end credits themes

I am an avid fan of soundtracks, and more often than not the best track of a score is the one which features a medley of all the themes in the movie: the end credits track. Often times the themes used in the score are truncated due to the action on screen. Soon after a motif establishes itself the entire piece has to shift to a new tone due to a change in the onscreen action (you can hear this especially at the end of one of my previous playlists). But with the end credits the composer is given 6-10 minutes to fill with as many themes as he wishes which allows him to fully flesh out the melodies without needless interruptions.

Of course, this post could easily turn into "my favorite movie" themes, which it sort of is, but I've picked out a few end credits themes from movies you may have forgotten the themes to (or maybe only remember the main theme and not the secondary melodies).

And I would be remiss if I at least didn't mention the king of end credits themes: John Williams. Nearly all of his major films end with bombastic triumphant theme music (Star Wars series, Indiana Jones series, Superman series, Jurassic Park series, Harry Potter series, etc) and it has become cliche to the point that hearing first 5 notes of any motif reminds me of the beginning of the credits ("Directed by Steven Spielberg/George Lucas") rather than the movie itself.

Sometimes the end credits allow composers to add familiar themes that are tied to the franchise but were not in the movie. This happens most often in sequels with soundtracks not composed by the original artists. The new artists want to add their own style to the film but know if they don't include the original theme the fans will turn against them, so they wait until the end of the movie:

Um... yada, yada, yada, Costner isn't British.

Even the "end credits" track title has become so cliche that composers will spoof it if given the opportunity...

And sometimes, the end credits are the only time music is played. In the case of Cloverfield (a largely silent film musically since it was presented as "found footage") the only time music plays is over the credits, which is as close to "theme" as the movie will ever have.

Finally, movies are not the only media with end credits. One of my favorite pieces is from the game Vagrant Story which is the only time the theme appears in an orchestral form:

April with Daddy pt 7

2010-07-11T13:30:00.001-07:00

On the final day of my April trip I took the girls to the local school to play on the playground. They loved swings (of course) and were fascinated by the track and field area. The idea of running as fast as you can and jumping into a pit of sand (or a soft pit) is one that resonates well with toddlers.

I enjoyed my April trip very much but if flew by fast. Luckily, my May trip was not far off...

Fantasy Football ads dissected

2010-07-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of creative commercials, especially ones with technical feats that make you go "how did they do that?". Being in the visual effects industry and having worked on set for some visual effects shots by ILM, I try to dissect the videos to determine which techniques they used based on my own experiences. Some of the more interesting commercials (which really don't sell anything) are the Fantasy Football ones where players do outrageous feats (yet they could be "real" with enough skill and a lot of luck) in order to convince you to choose them from your fantasy team. Here are a selected few, see if you can figure them out:

I had my guesses on a few, and it turns out I wasn't far off. Once you figure out how they hand the balls in and hide the transitions it really isn't that difficult. Surprisingly, not as many virtual balls were used as I expected (ILM can create fake hand-held balls that you would not be able to tell the difference, but here all balls in hand are real). Here are the same commercials dissected:

Fascinating!

I was considering adding a sports category to my blog, but it seems my only sports posts tend to be funny commercials or science rants...

How games keep you playing

2010-07-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

I recently read an interesting (and somewhat humorous) article about how the game industry keeps players involved to the point of addiction. Their closing paragraph really nailed it:

The danger lies in the fact that these games have become so incredibly efficient at delivering the sense of accomplishment that people used to get from their education or career. We're not saying gaming will ruin the world, or that gaming addiction will be a scourge on youth the way crack ruined the inner cities in the 90s. But we may wind up with a generation of dudes working at Starbucks when they had the brains and talent for so much more. They're dissatisfied with their lives because they wasted their 20s playing video games, and will escape their dissatisfaction by playing more video games. Rinse, repeat.

Which hits a lot of the points I mentioned earlier this year:

The sad thing is due to the nature of competition, both within the medium and against the other mediums, each source of entertainment is coming up with new ways to retain the interest of the viewer and prevent them from living a life beyond. In the case of video games, when I first started playing most games could be be finished in an hour or less and since there were only a relatively few games you could play all the new "good ones" over a weekend and move on with your life. But now if a game is less than 10 hours long, or does not include a multiplayer competition (which never ends), the game receives lower scores in reviews and will sell less copies. And there are many "good games" released every month, so many that there is no way you will be able to play them all (or get good enough in the multiplayer to truly enjoy it).

...

The biggest game currently, World of Warcraft, literally never ends. The game keeps expanding and gathering more subscribers (around 11 million currently) who pay $15 a month to live in a simulated fantasy world. The game makes more in a month than most movies make in their entire worldwide theatrical runs. The game is fun and, in a way, social. But unlike a book or a movie it will never end; there is always another task to do or goal to "accomplish". So the generation who grew up playing 1 hour games to completion get pulled into the game and never leave.

This change from short term game completion to long-term obsession happened so gradually that many players in their 20's and 30's don't realize what has happened and are just doing what they have always done. There is no older generation who experienced this, screwed up, and are warning others to avoid it. We are the first to do this and suddenly the ill effects of this entertainment cycle are becoming more apparent to us. And it takes people like Brian to reach out to those around them and say "hey, this isn't actually good! Slow down and look what life we've missed!"

This phenomenon is new, no generation has gone through this before, and no MMO has been around long enough, or been ubiquitous enough, to change social behavior on such as scale. Malcolm Gladwell, author of some of my favorite books Outliers, Blink, and What the Dog Saw (currently reading), states that in order to be happy at work people need:

Autonomy. You get a role in deciding what you do every day. Even if you might not always get decide exactly what you do, you can choose how to get it done.
Complexity. It must be an intellectually stimulating challenge. As the book states, it should “engage both your mind and imagination.”
Connection Between Effort & Reward. The harder you work, the greater your income or recognition (at least eventually).

And instead of working harder at their job or studies in order to improve their positions and achieve these work qualities, the players spend time in virtual worlds to gain the same satisfaction (being in a recession doesn't help much either, since it is harder and harder to find satisfactory jobs even if you do work hard to earn them). Again, this is so new that no one knows what effect it will have on future generations but it will be interesting to watch.

On a side note, one game company is trying to use these addictive methods for good by creating "Epic Win", a game where you level up your character not by fighting monsters but by completing your daily chores in real life. You want to earn a better sword to fight? Do the dishes and take out the garbage. Need more gold to buy better armor? Finish your homework. Need more strength to beat the boss? Go to the gym and work out:

Sure you can lie and say you did the chore instead of actually doing it, but then the game loses the "Connection Between Effort & Reward" aspect and players will quit playing. If it takes no effort other than lying to level up the game is no fun, therefore the true gamers will actually complete these actions (or move on to something else).

Kudos to this company for at least trying to make a difference.

I Love to See You Smile x 3

2010-07-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

When the kids turn 6 months old I create a music video of them and their various accomplishments/experiences. As a 6 mo old, this usually means lots of smiling and maybe even rolling over. When I created the video for my second child, I realized that I had a lot of similar clips as her older sister, so after I finished the video I synced it up to her sister's and suddenly a great comparison video was made!

Elliot, the 3rd child, just turned 6 months in May...

5k, schmive-kay

2010-07-07T08:01:00.001-07:00

Most days when I run I don't try to push myself too hard. I don't need to break a personal record each time, and pushing yourself too hard, too fast, and too often is a great way to get injured. But every now and then I wake up and ask myself "I wonder if I am any faster?"

About a year ago I ran my first non-stop 5k (3.1 miles) in 34:40 with roughly a 11:20 per mile average pace. I was proud, I had reached my first goal of training to run that length. My next goal was to run in less than 30 minutes. About 2 months later I ran a 28:40. I then wanted to run in less than 27 minutes, which I did this past Spring (I took a break from running in the winter to when Elliot was born, and because it rained every frakkin day in Cali). My new goal was to run in less than 26 minutes...

Today I ran the 5k in 25:27 (8:10 pace) and still had energy to go farther and faster. My new goal is to run a sub 25 minute 5k with an average mile pace of below 8:00, or roughly 10 minutes faster than I ran a year ago. A year ago, such speeds sounded like a dream, but now I don't think its going to be too hard. Hopefully my next running post in the following month(s) will have my creating an every more ambitious goal after finishing this one with ease...

April with Daddy pt 6

2010-07-07T07:54:00.001-07:00

As we near the end of my trip in April, we see photos of a calm night with the family. We took the dog for a walk, played with sparklers (we stock up on them each July 4th and New Year's to have them all year), and just had fun "baby time" with Elliot who is getting big enough to interact with people now.

Jay's Playlist: Sam Tsui and Covers

2010-07-06T08:16:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my playlist, where I discuss the music which is currently entertaining me. Below you will find a video, press play to begin the song and then read my feelings on the album.

Today's music is Covers by Sam Tsui (and Kurt Schneider)

The immense popularity of "Glee" has created a trend among young singers of producing stylish (yet simple) covers of popular songs. Thanks to the ubiquity of Youtube and its helpful "related videos" feature, viewers can easily find new arrangements of their favorite tunes linked from the originals and potential vocal stars (and their video producers) can put their voices out there for the world to judge. And of all young stars online, Sam Tsui stands out as the one with the potential to take the world by storm (with the help of his friends).

I found Sam exactly as described above: I was on a Glee kick and after listening to their version of "Don't Stop Believing" I saw Sam's version in Youtube's "related videos" area. So I watched it. Then I watched his a cappella Michael Jackson medley. Then the Lady Gaga medley. Then his "College Musical" series. Next thing I know, I am purchasing his album on iTunes and haven't stopped listening to it since. Since I rarely drive any more, and listen to my iPod when I do, I am blissfully ignorant of the current pop music on the radio. So his album of covers contains about a half dozen songs which I have never heard before and only associate with him. At this point I don't think I can listen to the original versions as they wouldn't sound "right".

Sam and friends, specifically his friend/guitarist/producer/filmmaker Kurt Schneider, are passionate artists who attend Yale University and have access to (and the talent to use) the university's musical production equipment. After seeing the success of High School Musical they began making their own (somewhat juvenile, yet entertaining) version called "College Musical". They produced four episode and ended on a cliffhanger before being contacted about making a full length movie which is currently in production.

While we wait for their feature debut, Sam and friends have been hard at work at producing more music videos of popular medleys, hilarious musical duels, an album of Covers, and duets with fellow aspiring vocalists. Which brings us to our...

Bonus

Nick Pitera works down the street from me at Pixar, but in his spare time he records covers of his favorite duets. Yet he sings both the male and female parts. Watch his version of Aladdin's "A Whole New World" for a good laugh:

Muppet Memorial

2010-07-05T22:36:00.001-07:00

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Jim Henson. The man was an inspiration to millions and his work still retains its relevancy decades later. Almost every American under 40 learned from him ("c is for cookie!") throughout their childhood. My children know who Big Bird is even two decades after Henson's passing (they also love the original Muppet Movie and can sing "Movin' Right Along" which is stuck in my head due to my 5th grade music class with Mr. Ukena).

I was too young to really understand what his death meant and how we lost a brilliant teacher (and comedian), but this somber anniversary helped me realize how much he meant to the world. His service is on youtube, and if you are muppet fan then the medley of muppet tunes is a must see. You may not have heard some of this songs since you were under 10 years old, but hearing them will bring back wonderful memories. And if you want to cry today, watch Big Bird singing "It ain't easy being green".

And to end on an upbeat, here is one of my favorite moments from Seasame Street:

Bay to Breakers 2010

2010-07-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

In May I ran my first "official" race: Bay 2 Breakers!
The annual race travel 12k (7.3 mi) from one end of San Francisco (the bay) to the other (the breaking ocean waves). In 2009, on a whim, I decided to walk the course which was my first long distance walk/run exercise in 5 years and my first large race experience. Considering I prepped in no way I am surprised that I didn't collapse within the first few miles.

After a year of running for fun I decided to do the race "officially" (meaning I paid money and got a race number). I put on my trusty Five Finger shoes and ran my heart out, then as a bonus got my picture taken:

When I crossed the finish line my time was texted to me: 1:16:00! I ran over 7 miles in about 75 minutes! A few items to note:

My 2009 time was 2:15 which means I knocked an hour off of my (unfit) time; awesome!
While my overall average mile for the race is just over 10 minutes in execution it was even faster. I underestimate how large 80,000 people really is (see below) and spent the first 3 miles running 11-12 minute miles as I tried to pass the slower people in front of me. By the 4th mile I was running with people traveling the same pace as me. So to average an overall 10 minute mile I likely ran 8:30 miles for the last half of the race! And 8:30 for a mile used to be my "fast single mile" speed, not my pace speed!
The Five Finger shoes feel amazing, but they pretty much are like running barefoot. And running barefoot on street concrete for over an hour does not feel good. I normally run my 5ks on dirt paths, my heels were not prepared for this race. Luckily, the last 2 miles were in Golden Gate Park and I did a lot of "off road" running.
Any food consumed after running for 75 minutes tastes like the best food ever. They gave out free yogurt at the end of the race and it was like manna from heaven. I bought it at grocery store later and it tasted like... plain yogurt.
Whoever decided to set up the bus stop (to get back to the start line) almost 2 miles from the finish line needs to be shot.
At 5:30 AM on race day I had everything ready to go (cell phone, water bottle, running clothes, sun screen, race info, etc). EXCEPT: I didn't realize the racing bib did not come with an adhesive. I always assumed they had sticky backs, but you actually use a clothes pin to attach them. Seeing as I am a guy (ie: I don't sew) I had no way to attach the bib the day of the race (I was out of tape too). Luckily, my first aid kit provided a solution: band-aids! I'm not sure why I needed 30 band-aids in my first aid kit, but now I only have 25...
Sports photos are a racket. The company offered printed photos for $20+ but if I wanted digital copies they cost over $50. Most. expensive. blog post. ever!

(I'm that white dot 354th from front about about 24th from the right)

Dinosaurs at the desk

2010-07-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

I work at a very creative company. We recently expanded and added cubicles (gasp!) to the expansion. Soon after, the CEO was walking through the expansion and despite all the cool posters, colorful wall paintings, hammocks, and big screen TVs playing animated movies he felt that the office looked a little too "corporate". So the company offered each employee a budget to decorate their desks to match their personal style.

I, of course, chose dinosaurs.

(Although, considering how long it took me to find them, the chocobos did remain among my decorations. And Yoshi is also a dinosaur so he stuck around.)

The little orange Spinosaurus was given to me by my oldest daughter for Father's day. She didn't even know I was collecting dinosaurs, she just went to the toy store and thought I would love that toy.

(more photos below)

Interesting enough, a few dinosaurs come from a french company which creates toys that are in no way related to existing brands. Yet, if you look at the Raptor, Spinosaurus, or the T-rex you can tell they were definitely "influenced" by the look of a certain movie. Although their newer models (the Allosaurus in the 2nd photo at the top) also look great and are not "based" on any brand.

I ordered enough dinosaurs that the model company offered to send a free creature. Unfortunately, the choices did not include a dinosaur. And since a unicorn wouldn't quite fit my theme, I ended up choosing an alligator (which did live during the time of the dinosaurs).

Posters were also needed, and I found this great painting on deviantart. It looks good next to my mosaic of the girls.

Finally, it wouldn't be a animator's desk without an animation toy. Rex from Toy Story fits the bill just fine...

April with Daddy pt 5

2010-07-05T08:35:00.001-07:00

After Easter I cooked one of my special meals for the kids. While the main dish was enjoyed, it was the fruit smoothie that really made the girls go wild. By the end of the meal their faces were covered with smoothie, to the point that Raeleigh mentioned that she "looked like a clown".

DK in Love (guitar)

2010-07-05T01:17:00.001-07:00

Yay, another guitar recording!

Like my last piece, this arrangement of a classic video game theme, Donkey Kong, is written by kabukibear. If you don't remember the "theme" of the Donkey Kong arcade game don't worry because it is actually only 5 notes long (and played at the beginning of my video) and turns fairly annoying by the 10th time it plays.

I love Justin's arrangement of this, he added a true melody to the piece and ran with it. The first time I heard it I knew I wanted to play it, and boy was it a struggle. The piece uses a lot off pull offs (playing the string by pulling off of it with the left hand instead of picking the string with the right) and I had trouble learning this at first. After I was able to "play" each note, I listened to my performance and realized the actual DK part of piece was completely lost, the 5 note rhythm was just background garble. After more practice and lots of focus on my pull off techniques I finally got my performance where it is today and am very happy with this piece.

I am bummed it took me 8 months to finally record it but it was worth waiting for the better quality. Previous recordings were done with my smaller digital camera which doesn't have the best sound quality. While I filmed this one with DSLR HD camera, the audio was recorded separately with a better mic that we finally got at work. It isn't pro quality, but its an improvement over my previous recordings. Plus I got to show off a few of my desk decorations in the process! And I finally found a use for my footage from GDC of Steve Wiebe playing Donkey Kong.

I have another piece that I have been working on for years that is about ready to be recorded, hopefully there won't be another 4 month gap between that recording and this one...

Fireworks: The silent killer

2010-07-04T23:44:00.001-07:00

Happy Fourth of July everyone! This year I decided to stay in the East Bay for fireworks instead of going to Diablo Valley. I took my trusty camera and was eager to get great photos. Then the obvious happened: we had fog ("Fog in San Francisco? You don't say!"). The fog was low enough that the fireworks exploded about half way into it, so you could see just the bottom of the explosion. It was an interesting effect that lost its luster pretty quick. I also learned that I really need a zoom lens for fireworks, the prime lens is not really needed since I am leaving the shutter open for a long period of time anyways (prime lens let in a lot of light but can't zoom).

Beyond that, it was an enjoyable 4th!

(thank you to The Onion for the great title)

Why work in games?

2010-06-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

Another of my articles has been released:
http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0610/feature_special.html
It is amazing how much has changed over the past 15 years in both the game and CG animated movie industries. Today's video game version of Toy Story 3 likely uses more advanced models and has more polygons than the original movie did in 1995 (and that took 13 hours to render each frame, unlike games which render 60 frames a second). Read on!

This is also a continuation of my first article based on my time at GDC. I had a final game article to finish the trilogy as well, but its going on the backburner as we ramp up for Siggraph!

Vibram Five Fingers update

2010-06-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

I bought the Vibram Five Fingers shoes in April and mentioned I would update this blog with my thoughts. Well, after nearly 3 months of use I can say these shoes are one of the best health purchases I've ever made! In those 3 months my runs have improved tremendously thanks to the way the shoes force me to change my stride. Prior to buying the shoes my best sprint mile time was 7:49, today I ran the same trail in 6:51!

Granted, running a few times a week would improve my speed regardless of what shoe I wore, but the day I bought the shoes my best mile went from 7:49 to 7:30 and the 7:30 mile wasn't even a sprint. Suddenly I realize how bad my form was when I wore tennis shoes and how much energy I wasted with that form. By landing on my toes first (as shown in the videos in my previous post) not only do my knees feel better but I am able to move my feet faster and cover more distance with less effort. And I love the way the shoes feel. Now I find myself running off the paths as much as possible just to feel each new texture. I've thought about actually running barefoot (no shoe at all) but after finding thorns and glass over 1/4 inch long stuck on the bottom of the Vibrams I've come to appreciate at how much they protect my foot and how running barefoot in my neighborhood could end in disaster.

For those of you who also recently bought the Vibrams, I highly recommend reading Born to Run. The book is absolutely fascinating and talksabout the Five Fingers along with a super race against the world's fastest long distance runners and also how the human body evolved to run differently than every other animal (and why the Neanderthals died out due to their lack of running ability).

Other milestones that have occured during the last 3 months since buying the shoes:

I ran my first 12k (7 miles) in 1 hr 16 minutes.
My long distance pace went from 9:30 to 8:30 per mile
My 5k went from 29:40 to 26:45
My regular mile pace (ie, I don't feel like I am dying after running 1 mile) went from 8:30 to 7:30
And my sprint mile went from 7:49 to 6:51
And 1/2 mile sprint is now 3:10

My only complaint is that the shoe is so thin and skin tight that there is no place to put my Nike+ pedometer so that it accurately measures my speed. I have to recalibrate it each mile because the force of each foot impact changes the pressure on the pedometer and it can't get an accurate read (previously the tennis shoe absorbed the impact so the pressure was constant).

I'm running a 1/2 Marathon at Disneyland this fall, hopefully by then my speeds will be even better. And all of this thanks to a piece of rubber loosely attached to my foot.

Building a single-person boat out of cardboard...

2010-06-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

Every year our company completes a team building event which varies from being practical (cook-offs in the kitchen featured in Top Chef), to techy (geocaching event in Tilden park), to the downright geeky (scavenger hunt in downtown Berkeley where, among other thing, we found actors in various stores dressed as comic book heroes). This year's event takes the cake for being the most creative: we designed, built, and launched single-person boats made out of cardboard.

Each team of four had to design a boat that would ferry a single person across a lake and we could only use the materials provided at a store for a small price (or so we thought, the rules were left intentionally vague). We then built the boats, decorated them, pitched them to the "client" (who was determining which one to mass produce), and finally tested each one in a lake.

Some teams spent time planning their boats before buying the supplies. Unfortunately for them, other conniving teams (*innocent eye roll*) bought all the supplies first and held monopolies over valuable resources such as tape. Those teams also began scavenging the park for extra flotation assistance, with recycled plastic bottles conveniently left over from our picnic working quite well in assisting the pontoons. Once the boats were built, flags designed, and hulls decorated each team made a hilarious sales pitch and showed off their designs (a few teams scrambled to find more resources to finish their boats while others pitched).

Finally we trekked to the lake and selected one lucky anchor..er, volunteer from each team to sit in the boats and row across the lake. Some boats actually floated quite well (especially the winning pontoon with sealed plastic bottles inside).

Others... did not.

Overall we had blast, and we were surprised at how some of the "sure-thing" boats quickly sank while other "doomed" boats made the entire voyage unscathed (except for the nerves of the expecting-to-be-drenched passenger). I don't know how we are going to top this next year, but word is that it may involve building hang gliders...

Click the link below to see all photos from the event (including the delightful picnic prior to the boat building)

April with Daddy pt 4

2010-06-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

My visit in April coincided with Easter which is always fun to experience with toddlers. The girls dressed up, searched for eggs, then had photo time with daddy!

Also, carrying an flowery Easter basket really accentuates my outfits. Will have to remember that for future dates (or not)

Catch up!

2010-06-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

I have a month's worth of posts sitting in my pending section. In the past I would back date them to post on the day they were created, but with so many now it is probably better to just post them as today's date. Over the next 2 weeks there will be posts covering May and the beginning of June. It has been a crazy 6 weeks!

Jay's Playlist: The OneUps

2010-05-07T19:36:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my playlist, where I discuss the music which is currently entertaining me. Below you will find a video, press play to begin the song and then read my feelings on the album.

Today's music is selections from the video game band The OneUps

As I've said numerous times before, one of my favorite genres is soundtracks. One of my favorite sub-genre of soundtracks is game soundtracks. And my favorite sub-genre of game soundtracks is orchestral/band/piano arrangements. The OneUps is a band comprised of people I've been following since 2000. While their instrumentation (sax, guitars, trumpet, violin, etc) leads to more "jazzy" arrangements, the band tends to avoid that description when defining their genre.

I first heard the name "The OneUps" on a collaborative CD of fan arranged Final Fantasy music and loved the bossa nova performance of Costa del Sol. It was soon after that I learned the band was based out of Fayetteville, Arkansas (and one of my high school band rivals played trumpet for them) which blew my mind!

I couldn't believe it: one of the top video game bands was based just a few hours away from me. This was during the a time when the vast majority of game bands were either based in Japan or at least the west coast. A few years later my next door neighbor (who I used to jam with playing FF arrangements on the piano while he played guitar) during high school joined the band and has been their lead guitarist ever since. As such, I keep up with the band as much as possible and see them perform live whenever they hit the San Fran area:

And if that connection wasn't odd enough, a few months ago I went a party here in California at my current neighbor's house and met another connection to the band. My Cali neighbor had a friend visiting who she met in Florida but he currently lives in Fayetteville, AR. When his phone went off and played Final Fantasy music I mentioned the OneUps and he said he knew them personally and was soon joining them. Sure enough, the next concert I went to he was now a part of the band. Just to make this clear as mud: My current neighbor in California has a friend she met in Florida who now lives in Arkansas and just joined my favorite video game band which includes my Arkansas high school neighbor who I used to perform video game music with. Small world...

When the band was last here I also had a chance to take some photos for them:

Guitar jam achieved!

2010-04-29T23:42:00.001-07:00

Today was another first for me: I played in guitar jam. A few people at work also play guitars (including the CEO) and so they brought them into work today, passed out music, and we jammed during lunch. Our repertoire ranged everywhere from The Beatles, to Bob Dylan, to Van Morrison, to Elvis, to Richard Berry, and more. the group consisted of 3 guitars (2 acoustic, 1 electric), 1 bass, an electronic piano, and a drummer. One of the players has his own band and knows lyrics to many songs of the past 50 years so he took lead vocals (although I think he made up most of the lyrics to "Louis, Louis", but then again, so did Richard Berry). Overall we had an awesome time and will definitely do it again!

No recording or photos today, but maybe next time!

Super Mario Crossover

2010-04-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

If you are a child of the 80's you may remember the many fun games on the Nintendo: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Contra, Megaman, Castlevania, etc. But did you ever wonder what would happen if the characters of those games ever swapped places? Well someone did, and the result of that experiment is Super Mario Crossover:

http://supermariocrossover.com/

The flash game (you can play it in the link above) is the entire game of Super Mario Bros. for the NES. But now instead of playing only as Mario and you can choose from a roster of other characters complete with their own signature moves from their games. While the levels remain the same, the sound effects and music will change depending on the character you play as. And yes, all the moves of the characters remain the same. Suddenly, I realize Mario came ill-prepared to the Mushroom kingdom with his only way of killing enemies consisting of jumping on them or (if he was lucky) shooting a small fireball at him. Instead, he needed to bring a large spread machine gun (like Bill from Contra) or an arm cannon like Megaman and Samus.

Let's hope this begins a new trend of playable game crossovers beyond the videos previously shown.

Salmon and Pineapple Salsa

2010-04-27T23:31:00.001-07:00

My next culinary experiment introduced me to the world of non-tomato based salsa (something unheard of by this Texan):

Salmon and Pineapple Salsa

The salmon was easy to cook and didn't require anything too odd in preparation. I was more worried about ruining a delicious salmon steak by covering it in a "salsa" the consisted of mostly pineapple and soy sauce.

I am not a fan of soy sauce, and I only like Pineapple as a standalone fruit or drink. Sweet pineapple on a pizza, ham, chicken, starch, or pretty much anything that is not sweet naturally ruins that food for me. But this salsa required the pineapples be grilled with onions/jalapenos and mixed with reduced orange juice prior to mixing them with meat, so I hoped those actions would tame the sweetness enough where it wouldn't overrun the taste of the salmon.

In the end, I was really impressed with the so-called tomato-less salsa. It was good enough (and spicy enough) that I dipped chips into it like a "real" salsa. And it went well with the salmon. I don' think I would eat the salsa too often and I still prefer the more traditional Tex-mex variety when it comes to snacking, but I did learn that mixing some of your least favorite ingredients can create a delicious dip.

Helium!

2010-04-27T23:02:00.001-07:00

A great short from a talented grad of Animation Mentor!

Helium. from Daniele Zannone on Vimeo.

The variety of facial expressions in this are amazing, and the simplicity of the short (essentially 2 characters and one object, no other sets needed). Plus a little morbid humor to end it all. Great job Daniele!

April with Daddy: pt 3

2010-04-26T22:30:00.001-07:00

The girls enjoyed a wonderful time searching for Easter Eggs. I hid some eggsin hard places for the eldest daughter and made some eggs quite obvious for the 2 year old. But wouldn't you know it, the first eggs the older one found were the easiest ones meant for her younger sister. We ended up cheating and pointing at the harder ones for the little one.

Modern Vintage

2010-04-25T23:18:00.001-07:00

I sense a new trend...
Check out these two ads to see it:

Man, the 80's had some weird commercials, didn't they? These ads bring back some awesome memories of these toys...
Or do they?

Well if they do, they aren't real toy memories. Because these two "80's" ads were created for products that came out in 2010! Lots-o-Huggin Bear is another used toy at the daycare in Toy Story 3 (and he briefly appeared in Up too), and Mega Man 10 is a new game created for nostalgic gamers which looks and plays like 80's entries of the franchise.

The creators of these ads recreated the 80's feel perfectly. The ads come complete with recorded vhs distortion, cheesy soundtracks, 80's apparel, and fake sitcom closers found on many 80's series. Gotta love the creativity, and determination, of these ad agencies!

Bonus: Lotso has a Japanese counterpart it seems...

I didn't watch much Japanese television ads as a child but I assume they weren't too far from this.

Head of the House - 3 blocking to spline

2010-04-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

As mentioned before, I am finishing/completely overhauling my short one scene at a time.

I recently completely recreated scene 3 with new acting reference (essentially starting the scene from scratch). Below is the first pass of my blocking (planning poses without getting too detailed in the movements between) as I go into splining (figuring out the movements between the poses, focusing on smaller movements to complete the action).

It is a start! Again, for the non-animators this is just the very beginning of a shot which is why it looks rough. I probably have another 10-30 hours of work to go into this. Once it is "finished" I will post a comparison to see how much it changed!

You can see the original shot here, roughly at the 20 second mark.

Conan is in town

2010-04-23T23:34:00.001-07:00

This weekend Conan O'Brien came to SF for his "Legally Prohibited from Appearing on Television" tour (the title is literally true, he is not allowed to be on television for few months after leaving the Tonight Show). The show was hilarious, but also very similar to his TV shows without trying anything new. I was hoping to see an uncensored/unrestrained Conan but save for a few curse words he was the same guy that I watched on TV. Which is fine because I laughed throughout the entire show. Unfortunately, there were no big name guest stars on this part of the show. The very next night Conan played in LA and had a special guest:

Oh well, it was still an awesome show. You can see the beginning of it here, and I'm sure eventually it will be broadcast online or on DVD.