Merry Christmas!

Hope you all are having a great Holiday break!!!

sitting on the couch

I'm having a lazy night tonight and decided to do a quick painting/sketch.  Turned out alright... I haven't painted in forever, and the pressure sensitivity didn't work, but here it is.  Took me about an hour.  Jack is the black blob in the bed.  Squeaker decided it was more interesting to watch me paint than to be a subject. 

Check this...

That's right... a poster. OOOOooooOOOO! I finaled my first shot last Wednesday! I'm officially a part of the movie!

for serious.

Okay I finally got a shot... 

...for serious this time.

Good news all around!

So...

I won the Animago for BEST IDEA!

Also...

My boy is famous!

More good news...

It looks like Moe and Les has been nominated for an Animago.

http://www.animago.com/animagoeng/home.asp

I guess I find out if I win November 8th... too bad I can't go to Germany to see in person :)

And so it begins...

I am supposed to be getting my first shots on Bolt tomorrow. :)

Hong Kong day 2

Monday morning I woke up after more than 12 hours of sleep. I got up quietly and saw Chris was up and getting ready to head off to school. We chatted for a little bit and he handed me the keys and set off for work. Eventually Kevin got up and we both got ready and headed out.

Our first stop was Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon Tong. This was on the top of the list of my things to do. Its a Taoist temple that is supposed to bring good luck. So a lot of the time people will pray here if they're in need of some luck :). It was our first experience with the incense that we found out later was a must at these types of places. They sell the incense in tons and tons of little stands outside of the temple. There are even people that will come up to you and try to sell you some as you come out of the train station. Fortunately seeing as we were "american looking" no one approached us or bothered us with anything like that.

We went in and instantly felt a lil... um... different. I saw no other westerners or anything. We both got a lil wide-eyed and maybe wondered if we were allowed to be there. But anyhoo.. back to what this place is about. So people light the incense and do some praying. Hardcore folks will lay out a lil mat and offer fruits. There were also some ladies spilling some sort of oil on the ground... maybe extra luck if you do that. Then there were these cans of bamboo sticks that they would shake until one fell out and I'm guessing that this had your fortune on it. I wouldn't know first hand because they were written in what I'll guess was Mandarin or Cantonese.

I originally thought this was all that this place had to offer, but was suprized when we walked behind the temple and found little gardens and ponds. There was amazingly beautiful architecture and paths that I'll assume the monks use more than anyone else, but it was very serene and lovely just sitting down and watching the turtles swim around. There were sooo many turtles in various areas in HK. Not indiginous I'm sure, but very very cute nonetheless. There was also the "9 Dragon Wall" which is evidently what Kowloon Tong means. :) So we walked around there for a bit before heading to the train station.


On the way to the train station we picked up some incense and stopped into a mall (yes another one) and I bought myself a new battery for my camera, since I failed to bring my charging cord it was my only option if I wanted to take pictures.

We hopped back onto the train and hit the next stop on our trip which was the Chi Lin Nunnery. This place was amaaaaaaazing. Built entirely without the use of nails. So this wooden place is held together with wooden dowels and strategic bracket work. In the pictures you can see the tall modern buildings behind this place. Its funny to think something like this is just smack dab in the middle of a really populated area.

On our way to the Nunnery we passed the gates to a little garden and since we had the time after the nunnery we decided to walk through there. And that goodness we did. It was spectacular. There were a lot of really strange looking rocks and just nice paths and beautifulness. There was the "Pavillion of Absolute Perfection"... it had an orange bridge. We kept walking and noticed this nice waterfall thing they had which was right by their vegetarian restaurant. Seeing as our were hot we decided to give it a try. tummy's were rumbling and we Whooo! That was seriously the best food I've had in a long time. I'm not vegetarian or anything, but that place could convert me. MMMMmmmMMMm...

We went to the gift shop and got ourselves some nice lil sketchbooks and made our way back to the train station. Since I didn't have camera battery for that morning I requested that we go back to Wong Tai Sin and take pictures... so we did :)

Hong Kong day 1

Alright so Sunday morning Me, Kevin and Chris set off to tour around Hong Kong a little bit. It was at this point that I realized how much of a genius I was because I brought the cables to transfer images from my camera, but not the cable to charge it. Wonderful... especially since I had no juice in my battery. So I apologize, but there are a lack of pictures from day 1... Kevin has most of those pictures and we have no internet at home right now so I have none to show :)

Okay so we set out for the train station. The public transportation in Hong Kong is amazing. Easy to use, convenient, and cheap. We went and purchased Octopus Cards. Octopus cards are like little credit cards that are used on all public transportation in HK, and even taken in restaurants and vending machines. So we got those and hopped on the train to Kowloon Tong to go to the mall to get our coffee on. So we went into Festival Walk, which is the mall just outside the train station. This mall is incredibly clean... and huge. There was an ice skating rink inside. I tell you I have never seen so much shopping in my life.

From there Chris we hopped on another train up to Yau Ma Tei... Chris wanted to show us some crazy shopping districts where the signs covered the sky and people were packed in tight. We also walked through some markets that had produce and fresh fish swimming in little styrofoam tanks of sorts. This was very intriguing until one large fish decided to take a flying leap out of his tank missing my face by inches. I'll admit it scared the crap out of me and was definitely not what I expected... therefore a few curse words were yelled and I hopped away as Kevin took a picture of the flying fish. That was enough market for me, so we kept walking. We were getting hungry so we stopped at a pizza joint to grab a bite. I think one of Chris's favorite foods is Nachos, and so we got some there. What they brought out to us was quite interesting. It was... nacho flavored Doritos, covered in cheese, beans, and all the fixings. It seemed a little redundent to me, but... they were good. After there we headed toward the water. We walked around a little bit and decided to take the Star Ferry over. You would think... man taking a boat across the water would be expensive, but it was like 25 cents American. SO we took that across the way and ventured into the heart of Hong Kong.

It was on the boat that Chris explained to us that in Hong Kong everyone had a maid. EVERYONE. And Sunday is their day off, but they aren't allowed to stay at the house with the families... so... every Sunday there are hordes and hordes of these women just lining the streets and different areas. Most of them sitting on cardboard playing cards and eating or just... sitting. When we got to downtown is was even more than I could have imagined. A lot of these women are really well educated as well, but they can make more in HK as maids than they could in their home countries being lawyers and such.

So when we get off the boat and start trekking across downtown we see tons of these ladies around. Its weird.



SO we walked around and around... through some parks, which are more like landscaped paths. At this point I am huffing and puffing because its 90 degrees out, plus humidity, plus I sit behind a desk for a living. We headed back to Chris's at about this point. We were going to meet some friends of his for dinner and so went back to take a little rest before then. We got back around 4 or 5 I think and man was I beat. I was so tired in fact that I decided I'd lay down for a little bit. Cut to 7 o'clock Chris comes in and asks Kevin and I if we wanted to go out... I don't remember responding, but I believe it was a no, then cut to the next morning when I woke up. Yeah... we slept forever. Miles of walking + heat - 15 hour time difference = JET LAG.

Hong Kong... the prequel.

So, last week me and Kevin ventured to the far off land of Hong Kong. We stayed with my cousin Chris who has lived there for quite some time now. It was our first out of country experience and I'm going to post basically what we did day by day. So... without further adieu... Hong Kong.

I guess I should start with a prequel to what happened before leaving Hong Kong. On Thursday night me and Kevin flew up to San Francisco and hopped on a BART train to Oakland. Jon picked us up and we took Kevin to the hotel to sleep while I went and surprised everyone at poker night. It was a lot of fun, I didn't win anything as usual, but a great time none the less... I even got some old bust-a-move in! After poker night Toaster took me back to the hotel and I went to bed.

Friday morning we were off... we BARTed to the airport and went into the International Terminal. We exchanged out money and it was nice to see that the American Dollar was worth about 7 HK dollars... and their money was pretty colors! We made our way to the gate and to see if we got on the flight. Our names were called and we ended up getting business class! I asked the lady at the counter how long the flight was going to be and she said "oh about 10 hours"... oh how wrong she was. 14 hours later... we arrived in Hong Kong.

We got off the plane and went through what I guess was customs... aka... nothing. The new Hong Kong airport is amazing... HUGE! (I think it is like the 2nd largest single room in the world or something like that) Walked out and began the search for my cousin. Kevin had no idea what he looked like, and I wasn't sure what color his hair would be this time around, so I just told him to look for a white guy haha. I tried my laptop to see if Chris had emailed and left a destination that we were to meet at, but as soon as I got the laptop open Kevin nudged me and asked if a guy walking around was him... and it was. :) I haven't seen Chris in forever, but he looks the same... and I swear he never ages! So, did some introductions and we were off! We caught a Taxi back to Chris's flat back in Tin Sum Village. Tin Sum is one of the few places in Hong Kong where the buildings cannot exceed 3 stories high.

We climbed the steps to his place... where he informed us he had become Asian and shoes were to be left outside the door. Which was cool with us :). So we went in and got some good ole air conditioning. Air conditioning is an interesting thing in HK because... no one has central air... they all have these window/wall units. Incredible tall buildings... all with air con units attached to the sides of them... dripping down on all the people on the sidewalks. We relaxed and caught up for a bit and then headed out to a near by Thai place to eat. It was sooo good. Other than the hard pieces that were in the soup that you weren't supposed to eat, but I somehow managed to get one in every spoonful.

After eating we just headed back to Chris's flat because we were pretty lagged from the plane ride out. Chris graciously offered us his room and we passed out.

Then the real adventure begins...


This is us waiting for our flight in San Fran.

Humble Beginnings

So... I was going through my CDs the other day looking for a copy of some program when I ran across an old cd with my name scrawled across it. It then hit me where I got his from. It was a disk with my high school 3d work on it.

At my high school there was a random 3d studio max class. I had to take a really dumb class as a prereq. for it, but I was so excited to see what this 3d thing that I thought I wanted to do for a career was all about... and to make sure I enjoyed it before I spent the money to go to college. So our teacher pretty much had no idea how to use the software or how to animate or anything so we had books we would try to do things from and some tutorials online. I made pretty much the coolest gold fish project ever and was very proud of myself. It was after this class that I knew CG was for me. Looking back... wow... I mean... dangerous skills here haha.




This is the AWESOME fish animation I did... Yeah... those are blend shapes on his tail making him swim (if you can even see them). I was pretty much a camera animation genius. Man... so good... took all day to render this.

The class was mostly modeling and trying to make something that looked cool. Everything looked plastic and totally CG, but I think that was the point for us.









And finally here is a fireplace thing I modeled... very proud of it.

Happy Birthday Mama!

Today is my Ma's birthday... so this is a lil shout out.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MA! Hope you enjoy your present!

Huntington Library

So this weekend Kevin, Gwen, Firat and I ventured over to Huntington Library in Pasadena to check out the sights there. Gwen went there once when she was little so it was a reminiscent trip for her. Good times were had by all... well... maybe not Firat who seemed to be at war with nature.

We started off by going to the Desert part of the Botanical Gardens.






We then made our way through a misc gardens until we reached the Japanese gardens. They had a lot of Bonsai trees there, disgustingly large koi, a budha, and a mock japanese house. Muy interesante!






After that we made our way up a tretcherous hill toward the rose garden of beauty... Took lots of glorious pictures of the strangely named roses... including a special one for my uncle Rex!






Right after the rose garden we tried to go into the tea house which was crazy packed so we enjoyed about 40 seconds of air conditioning before heading out into the heat and checking out the "rain forest" aviary... or whatever its called.






After that we narrowly escaped the wrath of a swarm of bees and a disgustingly large peach colored spider which disappeared 5 seconds after we ran underneath its web making barf noises in disgust there was a sculpture garden, but I'll spare you the photos as I'm sure this was more than you wanted to see anyways.

There's also great art/document galleries there too, but no pictures in there! Nice stuff... I'll definitely have to go back.

Once we were all sweaty and gross we came back and played with the monster for a little while and hit up some delish Korean BBQ... mmmm so good... so hot. Literally... I may have first degree burns on my face the grill was so close! MMMMmmmmMMMm Great Sunday!

Suuuuubs.

This post is primarily for my dad because he wanted me to send him pictures from the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage preview day that I took him to. It was a lot of fun and our first look at the ride all completed. Its really surreal to see your work out there and to know that people will be looking at it every day for the next 40 years and that I'll probably take my grandchildren (if I have any) on it!

So yeah ANYWAYS... here's some pictures and a video on the making of... featuring 1 second of me! Can we say FAMOUS!




For some reason he wanted his picture taken at the Burbank Airport... I passed.

Comic Con

So a couple of weekends ago me and Kevin ventured down to San Diego to go to Comic Con. It was a lot of fun and a lot busier than I remember last year being. Luckily we got up early enough to park in the parking structure and walk around a bit before things got really crazy. Unfortunately we were too late to pick up Scott Morse's new book :(.

I did manage to get over to Kevin Dart's booth and pick up this print. I've been admiring it for a while and when we ran across it at the convention I decided that would be my purchase for the day :)

We moseyed around for most of the day. Stopping to chat with friends to had booths and gawking at some of the interesting people the con had to offer. Of course I went mostly to look at toys and thank goodness side show didn't have anything I needed this year. BUT.... Gentle Giant is toying with my emotions by setting this awesome Voldemort 1:4 scale figure out. ME NEED! Unfortunately there was no release date for that... waaaah WAAAAAH!

It was a great day... except for the crazy traffic all the way back to Glendale... 3.5 hours worth. MEH. But yeah... successful :

Happy Birthday Michelle!

Today is my friend of 18 years' birthday. Crazy to think that we've been friends that long. Michelle and I lived across the street from each other from 1989-1994 and pretty much played together all 5 of those years. When I moved to Indiana we kept in contact by letter and eventually by email. We may not talk as often as we did back then, but we still keep in touch and I still consider her one of my closest friends. Unfortunately I have lost her phone number and can't call her today :(. But as soon as I find it I will give her a ring!

Consiquently it is also her brother's birthday (guy in the tube socks on the left, though they're not twins he's a year older)... so happy birthday to Paul too!

Sick day...

I've got some sort of stomache virus or something that woke me up in the middle of the night. So... I'm trying to get well at home today.

The other day I got a package in the mail from the Winnipeg International Film Festival. It was a plaque and a gift certificate. Seems as though I won the "Audience Favorite Short" in June. Its a really nice plaque, but unfortunately the gift certificat is for renting flim equipment in Canada. So um... I guess within the next year if I decide to give up animation and move to Canada I'm set! Its 1000 dollars woth too... dang. I'm still pretty honored though.

http://www.winnipegfilmfest.ca/

...and now back to sitting on the couch and sipping water.

The monster who hides under the couch

So this is me and Kevin's very first foster kitten. We decided to call him Houdini because we lost him in our apartment for about 12 hours when we first got him... so we figured his disappearing trick earned him the name. He's about 10 weeks old and has plumped up quite well from the skin and bones that I picked up last week. He's got quite the little belly now and walks with a little more of a waddle. He's really come out of his shell the past few days. Usually he'd just hide under the couch and you'd have to go in with a broom to get the lil booger close enough that you could grab him. But I got up this morning to a lil face making lil squeekie noises and wanting to be played with and petted. So... I stayed a lil past what I usually do to play and I might even go home for lunch since he's actually being somewhat entertaining. He's still got a lil ways to go and I figure he wont be up for adoption for another 3 or 4 weeks, but... if you're interested let me know :) He's awfully cute eh?

I'll race you around Tom Sawyer's Island

Somehow in my first few weeks at Disney I was talked into being on a Canoe team. What!? Yes... a canoe team. Its a Disney thing in which teams from all of Disney (mostly the parks... well actually all from the parks except us) race for the best time rowing a canoe around Tom Sawyer's Island. So that meant for the past few Wednesdays I've been getting up at 430am to drive to work, to carpool all the way down to Disney, to row around a smelly lagoon, then turn around and come back to work change and sit in front of my computer for 8 hours. Fun? YES! Tired?... Definitely. Within our teams we needed a male and female steerer, and somehow I ended up steering the front of the canoe. Man... I used muscles I never knew I had. But we never hit anything! I mean... other than that tree that one time. Which had spiders in it, which were all over my back since I was the first one to go into the branches. Last week was our last time rowing. We had to be in the top 16 time wise and of course came in 17th. First place losers, but we shaved a minute and fifteen seconds off of our previous time! It really was a lot of fun and a great way to meet people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. I'm definitely going to enjoy sleeping in tomorrow, but was an experience I'll probably never forget... getting soaked as AJ paddled backwards shoveling water down my back as he "helped steer", walking through backstage and seeing people painting merry-go-round horses and grooming character heads, and of course all of the mighty interesting conversations that were had. Hopefully I'll be able to see these guys every now and then around the studio. And who knows if they keep me around until next year hopefully I'll get to do it again!

So I have a blog now.

So it looks like I have a blog now. Yes... yes I'm sure of it. Now to figure out what to post... hmmm...