August 2008 Archives

So I took last week off. I can’t call it much of a rest though, my mom was here through last Wednesday and then my dad came to visit on Friday and left Sunday. If I’m not going to rest, believe me that’s the best way to do it because I don’t see them enough as it is. But despite very little time to myself since the conference it’s time to get back to work. And to that end, tonight I posted a fixed bug ship to the reel and stills pages on the main site.It took me a couple of days to figure out what happened but it’s really pretty simple. At first I thought I had lost the ... more

I’ve never been so tired. And I’m starting to sleep a little more regularly now but suddenly I can sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime. For instance, I fell asleep on the plane. I don’t do that, I can’t sleep sitting up. I’ve never been able to do it in my entire life. Tonight I fell asleep on the couch for over two hours and I’m actually ready to go to sleep again. You know how sometimes just as you’re falling asleep you jump and it wakes you up? I actually did that while I was watching TV with my eyes open and everything. I was falling asleep so fast I didn’t even know it. I really want to get on ... more

I always hated the last day of SIGGRAPH. It’s such a let down when everything is over, there’s nothing more to see or do, your friends start flying home and you don’t have any job offers. None of this is a surprise to me, and I guess it’s worse this time around because I was actually here for more than just fun. But I had no illusions about the quality of my reel when I got here. I didn’t expect a miracle, I just knew I needed to get my name out there, meet people and show them what I have. So the next time they hear from me they’ll say oh, I remember her... and of course SIGGRAPH is ... more

I had considered bringing the laptop even before I knew I would be working on my reel on the plane. Since I arrived I’ve made corrections to my reel, burned DVDs, updated my site, updated my resume, added a shot list, and emailed my resume to a recruiter. This thing is killing my neck and shoulders as I carry it mile after mile in my backpack, but I don’t know what I would have done without it. I learn something every day about how I can improve my site and/or my reel and if I hadn’t been able to act on those things immediately it would have driven me nuts.So the job fair wraps up tomorrow and it’s been kind ... more

Ok, I’m here in LA. While I’m waiting for Ed Catmull to start his talk I thought this would be a good time to post an update. However, I’m writing this in TextEdit because although I’m in a place called the Geek Bar, the internet connection sucks and I don’t want my blog to cut me off while I’m writing. Ironic.What a freakin’ mess this has become. The ambient pass on my hippo animation was bad so I had to rerender it, which took until about 6am on Sunday morning. In the meantime, I made changes to my bug ship and rendered that out in After Effects on the laptop. I also put together a short sequence with the potato ... more

At least three pages are up. I like the home page. I did a different light setup for the potato so he would show up better on a white background. I really need to render the room just by itself because it’s the only interior I’ve ever lit and it needs to be seen. At the same time, I need to re-render my bug ship, composite it and edit it, then dig up the hippo and tweak the shadow color and re-render that, then edit all this into a DVD as well as something that will work on the site, then gather some compositing stills to go on the site, and don’t forget the potato in his environment... still stressed. ... more

This is as far as it goes. I’ll be spending the rest of the week getting my site together and polishing my old compositing projects to put up there with this shot. This was a good lighting and shading project but not so good for compositing, so by the end of the week I should have a good range of work to show off once I fix some problems on the old stuff. I have the files, only one won’t open but I don’t think it’s a disaster yet. I’ll know for sure soon enough. I guess I won’t be sleeping until tomorrow night. Or I guess that’s tonight, it’s just 4am now and the two hours ahead of me ... more