Interview follow up
Well, Nerd Corps still hasn’t called me. I followed up on them and they said they havnt made their decision yet. Hmm I wonder how much i will be competing with? I hope I get the job though still even though its been 2 weeks and a half. Keep wishing me luck readers! Getting a job these days is like finding a gold nugget in the middle of an empty sandy dessert. It’s that rare still and I’ve looked at other provinces, so far they’ve got nothing. Hopefully things start to pick up soon, I’m running out of cash as the debt go higher. Some holiday huh?
I got back into writing tutorials again. I hope it goes well this time! I’ll keep you guys posted be sure to check it out!
Anyhow, I’ve got no art for this week. I sincerely apologies. Do me and yourself a favor though and have yourself a good holiday! More stuff coming in January.
Forgot Yesterday’s blog
I didn’t really get to blog yesterday. I tried squishing some work in even though I fell asleep at 6 pm and woke up at nine. The whole day yesterday I was working on a painting and some more XSI practice. I’m really getting the hang of XSI. But the problem is that I get distorted whenever I am in Maya. I continued on with my reel which I haven’t touch for some time now (just a week or so) I’m in my unwrapping stage right now. I’ll post updates soon. But here’s the WIP.
Nice HD (though I really hate untextured work)
Stuff to show I didnt get to show yesterday:
Interesting enough though some of these paintings are already on my site but I thought I’d show it in black and white version of it!
But that’s today’s and yesterdays blog. Some of these will make it in my site, some wont! Lots more coming!
Oh come on Media Molecule! Really?
This might be late news, but I just recently figured out that there will be no Little Big Planet 2.
It’s hard not to fall in love with that little bugger! That little smile of his will easy win you over! (I don’t care who you are or how many men you’ve killed) Too bad it ends in the beginning. RIP sack boy 2008-2009. I have such a faulty internet. The company quotes that a sequel would be counterproductive in this article and they say that DLCs for the game will continue on. Not everyone has good internet for the PS3 you know! Oh well, for those people that do, may they enjoy many more contents to come! It’s ok, really. I can just sit in my couch and dream about it.
Anyhow, Today was not very productive although I manage to sneak some time for a quick piece of art today somehow. I didn’t really know where I was going with it but here she is.
All I did today was clean the house today and had a nap with my girlfriend. I’ve been longing for a break though so its not too bad of a thing
Blogging Again A Year After
Wow.. Wow wow wow wow! It’s been more than a year and some time now since my last blog. So much has changed. I dont even know where to begin. But ill try to fill in that tremendous gap.
Fisrst Off, October 2009 I finished school. I couldn’t find a job. My family was going on a trip to the Philippines for that winter. Should I stay or should I go? Well, I went. I wanted to stay because i wanted to see if I could get a job here first, which didn’t happen. But you know, everything happens for a reason. It was time filled with anxiety and stress most likely caused by the massive amount off caffeine i consume. That was the result of the substance withdrawal. I also suffered from depression and sleep deprivation. Seriously, that’s some serious stuff. I would be up at 3 am in the morning walking around my neighboorhood because i couldn’t sleep. I would bother my mate and we’d have tea (he didn’t mind getting bothered) and that was a life cycle.
I’m glad I went with the trip though. It saved me. Those were times i had cleaned myself up and seen the ugly side of things. I also suffered from weight problem. I was 195lbs and I was able to work all those off. Came home and I was 160lbs! I didn’t get to do much work relating to my field. I promised myself all the time that i would work on a second reel; That never happened. Everything happens for a reason. That trip recovered me back to normal and I got to see my family again and some for one last time. That’s right. During my stay it was the time the death of my grandmother occurred. God bless her soul. That was December 2008 to January 2009.
Things got better with me. The industry got worst. I accepted the fact that it was impossible to get a job (with my slowly rotting reel). I needed a job, BAD! I worked at my local gas staion for $7.00/hr (is that even legal?) from February to May 2009 where I have burnt my hand and sold my soul for labour abuse. But one day I said, “ok fuck this…” and I quit. I worked on new material for a few months while doing an odd financial service job that never got me any money. Until finally, I got into Nitrogen Studios.
I worked at Nitrogen from June to October as a lighter and a compositor for the show Thomas the Tank Engine. That was cool! Everything was soo cool! Except the fact that I got laid off. It was fun while it lasted. But it gave me hope, hope that I can get a job that i enjoy in the industry someday! I never liked the lighting and composting side of things. But I’d do it if that’s all that’s left in the plate. meh why not?
Here we are at November/the end of November ish. It’s been a crazy journey and I tell it all as short as I can with all the modesty. I can go on for a year telling, well… a years worth of life experience. I feel happier with myself and happier with life in general now. I hope my next journey in this industry happens soon! Soo far I’ve been polishing up my skills and posting new materials (modeling and mostly Concept art) onto my newly designed website (credits to my girlfriend Melissa Loa). Life is good and sweet!
Right now at this very moment I am brushing up on my XSI modeling skills because I have an interview next week at Nerd Corps and I heard they use XSI there. I applied as a Modeler recently and as a compositor a while I go. I hope they are considering me for a modeling position, hence the practice! Anyhow, for those who took a peek on this little long tale, wish me good luck!
Heres my concept and the mesh of it soo far. Please dont laugh at my model. hehehe its a WIP after all and my native program is Maya.
First Demo Reel Up/Available for Job
My first demo reel is up on youtube. I’m sorry, I should really do something better than that. But like I promised everyone who had seen or picked up my demo reel at industry night I will have my website soon! I thank all my instructors and friends at BCIT for helping me down the road. Sure I’m kind of mad that the majority of the stuff I did where all self taught but that’s how things are in the end in this field of work anyways.
I’m now also working on my second demo reel. I’m going to push higher with it. I’m not going to lie to anyone… I don’t know what I’m doing this time. My last demo reel is off of my own preference and now i would like to base it upon industry people’s standard but the problem is i don’t know what they want.
I’ve seen quite a bit of BS in school to know that I don’t deserve a job anyways. I feel like 70% of it is networking. I like… suck at that. I have one guy in the industry I’m crossing my fingers to and my classmate of course. The rest i just threw my demo reel everywhere and littered it all away.
The industry is doing awful right now at this moment anyways so I’m not too worried. Still though, I still have hope. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkPkp-T67Bs
…be sure to watch it in high quality
Ideas developing
Well, my ideas are locked and loaded pretty much. The only thing that I’m having troubles with is weather I should keep the Indian chief idea or scrap it for my icy castle Idea. I created a model sheet for one of my characters and 5 different types of concept just for that one. I’m just focusing on the process of making an animatic for it. I’ve semi blocked my character already and trying to study a clean geometry to apply it to. I’m focusing on the whole icy castle concept and prioritizing it in case I don’t make it out of here alive.
Animating it might be another thresh hold i need to deal with. Because i’m not the greatest animator at all. Actually, I’m pulling an all nighter just for my animation. we have this assignment thing for animation where we have to do 5 scenes of a marine guy and a terrorist guy interacting in an abandoned church. It’s up to us how we want it to end up looking like. Since my run cycle looks like the dude needs to take a serious dump, I’m then making the whole story a funny one where the marine needs to use the toilet badly, but the terrorist is occupying the crapper. My talented friend Roman loves every second of it. He’d already be giggling at my video when i haven’t even pressed play yet. Hopefully Adam Sale, (awesome animator) my teacher loves it!
Updates on art real soon
Monor Calling…… and Difficulties
I feel like crap the whole week. No matter how hard I tried to put on my game face as I work, I couldn’t play it right. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I’m even a blog behind update, the most simplest task on earth.
Well, tonight I sort of figured out what it was. Actually, it’s a blend of two things:
1. I’ve been overwhelmed with my negative thoughts. I keep thinking to myself I wont make it in the industry. Just that itself was stress enough. It was damaging my work flow and the whole mentally was just slowing me down over all. The deeper we dip in to the course, the more I’m doubting myself. I’m certain this is why I feel this way. I usually never get stress out with work, NEVER! Well at least for now… But it’s really fear thats getting into me. Maybe I need to calm down a little more. I’m reading my future way to early when I should go with the flow.
2. Pop culture and mainstream has began invading through my system again. I thought I got rid of this poison for good, and my remedy for that is to be alone. In an unrelated matter, being alone is great! Not many people know the great amount of possibilities there is when you begin to create your own world. You’re free to daydream, imagine, and create all you like! Sure there’s school that’s got me on a leash, but at least I’m free from being a cliche! It’s the same method I do for writting music. I wouldn’t listen to a single piece of music for two months (I can manage! haha) then I would write music because music would start to warp around my head by itself to feed my starving musicless mind, thus a melody is born.
But getting back to the point. One thing I should no longer do is roam around day light. I did it because I had to go home early. The countless of teenagers I saw living a cliche life was phenomenal. I then felt the need to mingle with some of my old pals. I began to do less work and browsed facebook for four hours straight accomplishing nothing looking for some social life I ended up not finding. I then looked up myself in the mirror and said ‘goddamnit i’ve let myself go!’ My hair was long and I was getting older. Just when I was about to decide on fixing myself… I woke up last minute thinking, what the hell do I need to fix myself for? I’m still in this war. Unless I guarantee myself a promise land of my own (aka. a job in the industry) I have to keep fighting these asshole test that life seems to keep throwing at my face and focus on my work!
There’s another one of my minor calling! To be honest the solutions to these problem are simple! It does not take much effort! However, my mentality is what’s preventing me to commence!
Yes, please consider this a lame excuse for not updating my webcomic as well haha! =] But I’m starting to ‘piece’ the puzzles together, creating more plots and twist for the inter connection of all my books and stories and what not!
For now please enjoy these!
A little about the things I like
Before I move on and speak away, I would like to inform you all about some of my web comic posted up on the Web comic column. So please enjoy that before reading this! haha i’m kidding.
Anyways, before I’ve become a desk nerd at home doing digital stuff, I was a big video game fanatic.
It was back at 2000 when I’ve got my hands on my second video game ever yet so far. That being Metal Gear Solid.
It’s weird to get hooked up with games like that at the age of nine. I mean the violence and all. Not to say that I’m a violent guy (I’m very brittle =]) But i guess it was the brilliance of the story line that penetrated through my young naive brain.
On a side note, ever since then, I like making my own stories up.
But back to the point. I love it. It’s been my most favorite video game ever since. It’s a good tittle to follow
Video games, somewhere in the middle of the course, had died on me. My 2D Instructor (also the program head) a brilliant man Russell Heyman called it right. I remember him telling us that the blissfull savory aura of games will fade inside of us somewhere in the middle of the program the moment the illusion is broken. Now thats not to say that that is true. The spirit remained inside some people in my class (I can tell), but not me however. The feeling had fadded away, and believe me, it has nothing to do with illusion, more like moving on, really.
I’ve always hated anime as a kid. As far back as I can remember, I seem to live in another universe compare to the other kids on the block. For one, I was new in Canada. I was nine years old when I first moved here, so I isolated myself from the others. To make a long story short, I never was into the mainstream anime like Dragon Ball Z or Pokemon not like the other kids did at least. Believe me when I say this as well, I love cartoons!
But when I took this program, I happened to run across Akira, an old 2D animation film. The piece really woke me up. It made me realize how ignorant I was with the whole anime universe. I should have given the world another shot. So I did but the problem is that I didn’t have any leads. So I sat back on my couch watching TV when I ran across a cell shaded film called Appleseed.
It blew me away. This 3D anime film really opened up my eyes. Although I almost feel guilty everytime I mention my love for it because this very talented man named Max Lundburg has so much beef with it haha. So I did a little research on it.
A man named Masamune Shirow was behind the mastermind. The film was an adaptation from his early manga nammed Appleseed as well. I couldn’t help but check out the old Appleseed film back in 1988 but it did nothing but make me laugh.
So I dug in a little deeper in his previous work. Aside of countless of erotic art and adult content artwork, I saw Ghost in the shell.
Wow. That’s all I had to say. I saw the first Stand Alone Complex and was left speechless from it’s brilliance. Next to that was the first film, then the second called Innocence, then next to that, the second Stand Alone Complex. They were all great.
To conclude this introductory article about what I like, I love Metal Gear Solid, Ghost In The Shell, and Appleseed. So If I do some Fan artwork from those series (Or some other) Don’t be super surprised! haha
Here’s an armed suit (straight from Ghost In The Shell and Appleseed) that I modelled and rigged
It’s not the best render picture but I will animate it fighting each other in a junkyard settings that I’m modelling and texturing in my texturing class
Here are some pictures of the rigs. We haven’t learned much rigging at this stage of the game and we are only at the beginning of the send term I promise you better stuff next time. Also I didn’t texture it. I didn’t feel the need of texturing it because the when I came upon the reference picture, just blinn shaders did justice.
Broken Promises
I’ve got a friend of mine to check out my webcomics before i post them. Now he’s editing them first. But for now I owe you guys six pages and six pages you shall get the moment the editing process finishes!
More bad news, I can’t log into my BCIT account if that even matters. I’m sure nobody cares but that sure made my day.
There’s homework stuff I had to do so I made sure to store it in my storage device thats ready to fall apart. It’s sad, but it’s insurance enough. I guess I’m ok for this week.
This had happend to me before actually. It didn’t take drastic measures to remedy the situation, which what annoys me the most. It’s something I could fix in the spot, but yet I can’t because it’s the weekend and help service are not available.
Now I have to sit here waiting and worrying until Monday comes. It’s amazing what life throws at you.
I seriously doubt I have people viewing my blogs constantly yet, so I’ve got nothing for now.
But to give an update, for those who’ve watched either appleseed and ghost in the shell, well I’m modeling the armored suit from the film. I’m done, so pictures to be shown tomorrow.
I also want to animate it as well! so it can kick Curtis’ Jedi’s ass! hehe sorry curt =] Awesome jedi though for the record!
Web Comic
Wow, It’s really eating up my time. I promised myself a page a day, that will later turn to five pages a week and now it’s down to three! I wouldn’t mind updating everyday, but I have school to worry about. I miss my 3D stuff. I miss Maya. The last time I have used a 3D software was when we had to model a junk yard for my texturing class. Heck, I’m pretty behind with writing my sequel for my book ‘The Three Boat Hoppers’.
At any rate I have the first three batch prepared for you guys, believe me! But I’m not going to post it unless I finished the book title, which sucks by the way.
For now… um here’s another artwork. I can’t tell you who it is yet. Not until I finish the trilogy I’ll keep you guys filled in. Although I can tell you that he is a big factor to the web comic!
If things go according to plan, I might update the first batch tonight!
This piece was done in Maya, all the textures are done in photo shop
He needs to be brushed up here and there. I only gave him four days worth of work
and regret it! I will need to brush him up since I have to and it’s very important that I do!
Very special thanks to my friend Malcolm Wanless on editing the dialouges. I will keep updating as much as we could. hopefully school doesn’t get to busy. Thankfully it’s a breeze… for now.
