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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
President Bartlet Gives Advice to Obama
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I haven't posted any thing in awhile, been a little busy moving and settling into Southern California. Things are going well though, Vicki started her job a few weeks ago and we bought her a brand new 2009 Scion Tc, it's purdy.
What drove me to finally post something is a "conversation" from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin between former President Bartlet and Senator Obama (written just before the debates), where upon Bartlet bestows some advice to Obama. If you never watched the West Wing you probably won't appreciate it as much, but if you're like myself this is the best thing I've read in awhile.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21dowd-sorkin.html?_r=1
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
2008 Show Reel Up!
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Wow, The Force Unleashed is finally out, which means I can finally post my new show reel which represents almost two and a half years of my life... which has been distilled down to two minutes. So far the game is being met with mixed reviews, largely praising the art and story of the game, but critical of certain aspects of the game play. I have to say I find it relieving and validating the reviewers are calling out issues that myself and others on the project saw but, but we wondered if we were just too close to it. So I raise my glass to all my incredibly talented team mates (especially the animators) who were in the trenches and made this game under extremely difficult circumstances. I am finally glad to get the Lucas experience behind me... so long and thanks for all the fish! |
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Because I am deep like that...
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Here is photographic proof of just how serious and deep thinking I am at my new job... |
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Thursday, August 14, 2008
Joined the Red5 Tribe!
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Hey everyone, I am very excited and pleased to finally announce that Tuesday I started working at Red5 Studios in beautiful sunny Irvine California, or "The Tribe" as they call it. I'll be working on a yet unannounced super secret MMO (that's Massive Multi player Online game for those you that don't speak game). Currently I am trying to get up to speed on all their tools and *gasp* 3D Studio Max, but thus far I am really enjoying the studio and the people, not to mention the amazingly perfect weather! Seriously, I was about slit my wrists with the 50 degree or below foggy weather in San Francisco in the middle of freaking August!
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Friday, August 01, 2008
Auto Save... Saves Babies
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My Maya has been rather unstable lately and has been crashing a lot, and I have been losing a lot of work. When that happens, I punch the nearest baby I can find, if I can't find a baby then I eat a kitten. Okay, okay, I don't actually punch a baby or eat a kitten (although I might naw on it). I do however get very angry, turn bright green, grow muscles, and my pants become way too tight. The good news is that this is totally preventable, with a little script my friend Christine turned me on to that will auto save your files to a preset interval you set (to the second no less). Best of all it has an option to give you a little "do you really want to save?" message before it does. I've been using it for a few days now and I am totally satisfied with what I paid for it, which was nothing because it was free. Seriously though, its a fairly nifty little script.
Get Auto Save Here! |
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Monday, July 28, 2008
Dang Nabbit Camera!
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Maybe I am the only one, but whenever I use the maya default cameras I inevitably end up accidentally moving my carefully placed camera while looking through said camera. This is especially irritating because you can not undo camera movement made while looking through the respective camera.
You can lock the translates and rotates on the camera if it's fixed, but if you need to animate or make changes, you have to keep unlocking the dang channels. The solution? Just make a simple camera rig that allows you to look through the camera and manipulate it through external nurb controls. This has the added benefit not allowing me to move the camera accidentally while looking through it. I even stuck little focal length attribute in the main control so I don't need to keep clicking the camera shape.
Is this an original concept? No.
Was this difficult or time consuming to make? No.
I'll tell you what though, I'll go ahead and put this online and save you the 15 minutes or less it would of taken you to rig up. But maybe this sort of concept is less common than I am assuming, who knows, maybe it will help some poor schmuck from messing up their camera... let me know if this rocked your existence!
Camera Rig for Maya 7 and up
(PS- If my crappy camera rig actually "rocked your existence" then you need a hobby)
*Update: My astute colleague Dave Smith has pointed out that you in fact can undo camera movements with the "[", "]" keys. Who knew? However I still prefer not having to undo the camera movesments at all. |
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Saturday, July 26, 2008
"The Animator"
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So I was google stalking myself, and I ran across an apple web page for the 2008 Education Summit where I was a panelist speaker. It was about an hour long and we were asked and answered questions about the education paths we took to get to our "high tech" jobs. They also made videos introducing ourselves that they played as we walked on the stage, they have a link to my goofy video where I blab on about some lightsaber bullshit. Anyway I thought people might get a kick out of it.
2008 Apple Education Summit |
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Sunday, July 06, 2008
Vicki said YES
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I am very ecstatic and proud to let everyone know that yesterday, July 5th, I proposed to Vicki at Golden Gate National Park in Marin (this exact spot), and she gave me and resounding YES. We are both very excited, although we aren't going start making physical wedding plans until the end of August, after I am settled in Irvine and her project is over. For now we are thinking next spring, late summer, or early fall. We also still need to figure out where it will be, however rest assured there will be at the very least a west coast party in some shape or form. Both of our families and friends are asking us to see pictures of the ring, so we snapped a couple last night. Click on thumbnails to see them full size, the ring is actually an antique from the 1920's, "Edwardian" style. And yes, those are Vicki's lovely and delicate fingers.
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Thursday, July 03, 2008
IGN TFU hands on preview
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So I am not yet quite bitter enough about being laid off to not be proud of TFU (The Force Unleashed). Lucas arts had the first hands on preview a week or so ago for some of the gaming media, and IGN has one of the first articles only about it.
Check the article out here
All in all in its a pretty positive review, I am really eager to see what people think once they actually get the full game in their hands and play all the way through. The other cool about the article is that they posted some footage of the one of the JunkTitan's finishing moves which is animated by yours truly. I think the footage was taken from an older build, so the real thing will look even cooler, and I dare see, even more unleashed?
Check the video out here |
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Sunday, June 15, 2008
New Fancy Photography Galleries
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 A funny thing happens when you get laid off, you have a lot of time on your hands. One of the things I have been meaning to do for a long time was figure out how to get my Adobe Lightroom to make fancy photo galleries for myself, in a template I create to match the rest of my site. Wouldn't you know it, I some how found some spare time just laying around and managed to figure it out. So if you look to the navigation bar on the left, once again there are some subtle, but none the less earth shattering changes. You'll see a new "photography" option that will not only take you to the old photographs I had on my site, but also the first of many new Flash based photo galleries, like you would see on sites such as Flickr. I can now take as many photos as I want, and with a couple button clicks up load them immediately to my website, which makes it much more easier, and more importantly inclined to get off my lazy arse and get new photos up in a more timely fashion. |
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