The Goal One of the things I’d love to do is to create my own show. I’d like it to be a bit wacky. Not quite as out there as Tri-Gun, but something along those lines. Maybe between that and Cowbody Bebop episodes before Ed. I’d like it to have 24 or so episodes a season. That’s one episode every two weeks, with a short break between seasons. How long should an episode be?

Life Events It seems like there are times in one’s life where changes keep cropping up, one after the other. Quitting the day job, along with most of the rest of the team, when the boss changed. Taking on a course of self directed study for a new career. Deciding to sell the house in Minnesota and move back to California, along with all the prep work involved in getting the house for sale.

It can feel unreal how death of family or a close friend affects one. You do those things you’re supposed to do, but you’ll find yourself staring into space at odd points. You go to sleep on time, but, even if you don’t wake up, it’s not as restful as it should be. There will be other little things that happen, different with every person. With me, as I walk through this city that the deceased was such a large part of, I find myself remembering what I did with them as I pass certain buildings, or enter certain neighborhoods.

Family Health Issues It is difficult to see a loved one with severe health issues. Where they were strong throughout their life, seeing them unable to stand on their own is heartrending. At least, in this case, there seems to be little pain. Just an exhaustion that’s bone deep, particularly in the afternoon, or after helping them to move. That, and the indignities of the needed assistance. My Health Issues It also makes me reflect on my own health.

During my first animation project I made quite a few mistakes, largely due to a lack of experience. Animation, more than nearly anything I’ve done with Blender, has a lot of potential for a change here messing up more than you anticipated in the scene. Yes, if you change a model that already has textures, there’s a good chance you’ll need to re-texture some of the model. It just seems that in animation, a change in a scene can have many more implications.

An aspiring 3D artist is likely to take on a short animation at some point. It could be as little as 30 seconds. Hopefully it won’t be more than five minutes of screen time. This could be an assignment from one’s school, something one’s doing for themselves, or even a freelance project. I’m still undertaking that first independent, non-tutorial led animation. It’s for a paying customer, though I underbid it quite a bit.

In Time For Halloween One of the things that amuse me about 3D animation are all the outtakes reals. Not the scripted ones, but the ones where a character’s fur explodes to a ridiculous inverted characters. One of my first experiences with that was A Beautiful Disaster. A simple walk animation where the legs weren’t keeping pace with the body, based off of CGCookie’s Animation Bootcamp. Today’s accident involved the Blender Human Generator plugin.

I was recently asked what I’d make as a Blender tutorial from a company that already has a ton of great, in depth courses. At the time I was stymied. A lot of what I’d teach was already covered by their lessons. I know now what I’d teach. A tutorial specifically about proper scene management in Blender. It’s one thing to create an animation or two, but even a relatively short animation can involve scene management.

Well, I heard back and I didn’t get the job. I’m pretty sure they had a lot of applicants, and I’m happy to have had the interview, but I can’t help but think that I may have messed the interview up a bit. Also, I am not yet as productive as I’d like to be. I’m working on a paid for project, which has slowed my contributions to the CGCookie Gallery and paused my own development of this portfolio site.

Man, I really need to focus a bit more on this site. My landing page is a bunch of blog entries when it should really be a “wow” portfolio page ala Lewis’s site. In order to have a “wow” page I actually need to organize and upload a bunch of my work. Another site I’m really impressed with is Dolph’s site. I also feel like I want to do a fair bit of work on the “organization” tools of Hugo.