Montreal really is a great city.
I watched the film "Man On Wire" in remembrance of September 11th. I'm so glad that he succeeded with his dream when he had a chance.
My friend inherited the accordion. I think I want one. I immediately understood how to play it, it's like a piano and a harmonica. Really I need to get my hands on one.
Kyler
In my first animation class today, we went around the class introducing ourselves and explaining why we are in animation. At first this seemed like a little bit of a ridiculous exercise because I know nearly everyone in the class, and I’ve heard this stuff all before. But of course it proved enlightening.
What I noticed was that the majority of the class had got into animation for the underlying reason that they simply love drawing. They did it as a kid and have never stopped, thus animation is the perfect extension of that as they get to draw a lot. But I didn’t get into animation because of the drawing.
Now we make a quick jump back in time to last week. I got to see Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, at a question and answer session here at our university. I did a bunch of research into his life before attending and watched this video.
Steve Wozniak
He is a very interesting person and I found a great parallel with him. He got into electronics because as a kid he taught himself to build his own computer. At a young age he was designing circuits, reading chip manuals and figuring out the workings of computers. It really is incredible. And he decided to be a computer engineer so that he could do that for the rest of his life.
This relates to me because I taught myself how to make 3d graphics. I was interested and figured it out all by myself. I figured it out because I really, truly was interested in it. I simply needed to know how it worked. Seeing this parallel with Steve Wozniak was a great reinforcement that I am in the right field.
But to get back to the reason I am in animation, it is not because I draw, it is because I love the technical aspects of it. I love learning how cameras work, learning how programs work, learning how computers work. I would consider animation to be the art form that has the greatest latitude of technological influence. You can use mechanical systems like a camera, projector, flip book, but you can also look into the most advanced forms of computer simulation. It covers the entire gamut.
But further than that, animation delves into a deeper understanding of the mechanics that lie in the brain that allow us to perceive everything that we do. And when I think about video games, I see them as truly a medium which requires an understanding of how we think.
So a little question at the beginning of class actually caused me a big revelation.
I must say, I sure am excited about this year.
Kyler
Beowulf is probably the first mainstream CGI film made solely for adults. They use the R rating to include copious amounts of gore and nudity. I'm not really sure what I think of the movie. I'm certain it isn't a great movie, but it is a stepping stone for others, and should be looked at carefully.
I'm fairly certain that the intention of the filmmakers was to recreate human figures in computer graphics to the highest degree possible, except of course they were held back by technological and financial limitation. This film showed a wide variety of quality levels, all depending on different factors.
Most objects in the people that were made of metal looked extremely realistic: crowns, spears, swords. Except of course some of them looked too perfect, and again did not fit in.
The character models for the most part looked pretty good. The old king in the movie was especially good, with great facial details. Some of the woman however certainly did not look very good. They lacked a feminine quality which I suspect was the result of trying to build a woman from a male model that had already been built. There are certain details which I suspect were overlooked, such as the fact that womans joints generally can hyper extend more than men's based on the formation of the bones.
In terms of facial animation, most of it was very stiff, which is most likely caused by the insensitivity of the motion capture system that was used. These systems have become much more powerful even in the last few years, so this issue may soon be a thing of the past. The only way they may have overcome this would have been through the work of skilled animators, but skilled animators are expensive.
The other sore point of animation was the hands. The biggest culprit was the hands of many of the background characters, they often would have completely stiff hands that wouldn't move throughout a scene. This lack of quality creeped into the main characters as well in certain scenes.
Another technical limitation was the clothing simulations that were used. While they did look like cloth, they didn't have the necessary resolution in the simulations to form any realistic looking wrinkles. This resulted in very boring looking clothing that was completely unrealistic.
The most successful character in the film was probably Grendel. I really cannot imagine a more horrible creature ever created for film. There were so many layers to his grotesque anatomy. I could barely even comprehend how the modelers would go about creating such a character.
The camera in the film was a little bit weird. Because they have complete freedom of the camera movement, they often used it to it's fullest, but in doing so made many scenes in the film appear more fake. Some particularly fast camera pans made me flinch with how awkward they seemed.
One less noticeable failure of the movie was the foley. Foley is the practice of making sound effects for a movie. It simply was not well done in this film. It was not convincing.
I guess the main point that I can draw from this film is the importance of consistency. Some parts of this movie were extremely well done, other parts pulled those down into the realm of lame 3d animation. I am however excited that such a film can open doors for more films to come. I'm enrolled in 3d animation course this year, so I hopefully have my own work to show.
Kyler
I went for a walk today up Mont-Royal, through the cemetery behind it, and over to l'Oratoire Saint-Joseph. I was caught off guard by the thoughts I ended up having when I got to the cemetery.
I had assumed the cemetery would be a tranquil place. I thought I would have interesting thoughts there. I was however overwhelmed with thoughts that all raged around a single theme: it's sheer uselessness and extravagance.
The first issue is the size of the cemetery. It is easily bigger than the actual Mont-Royal park. Row upon row of headstones and monuments scatter the land. It is a beautiful park with majestic trees and filled with the sounds of insects and birds.
In spite of beauty all I can see there is row upon row of dead persons egos attempting to use up space in the world. The more money they had at death, the more space they take up now. It was easy to see that thousands of dollars had been spent on each and every headstone, meaning that millions of dollars of work were lining the area. But it is a futile attempt at attention. There is such a cacophony of headstone that there no rest, they all beg to be seen, but together they negate each others purpose.
And than I think of the value of the land. While I wouldn't suggest building on the land, I would hope it could be put to a more redeeming purpose. The whole enterprise seems like a horrible trick to take the money of those who die by renting them out a little plot of land.
In a world with six billion people, it would be insane to allow everyone such a luxury as to be buried. It feels like a last, selfish act which serves no one any purpose. What finally makes me most frustrated about the cemetery is that it is protect by the mystical forces of being "sacred" land. Any attempt to get rid of them will be thwarted.
The living should have precedence over the dead. Be thoughtful when you die. Donate your body to those who can use it. Donate your money to a worthy cause. If you want yourself to live on past your life, allow your work to live on. Allow your children to live on. Allow your influence to live on. But whatever you do, don't leave the world with another useless plot of land and another headstone.
Kyler
P.S. I wish not to anger the living who use the cemetery as a place for remembrance and to grieve. These are definite needs that need to be filled, but I don't think cemeteries need to be the only option. A creative mind can think up thousands of more personal and effective alternatives.
I finally just had to sort of mash a new blog design together. I find blogger extremely confusing to start from scratch, so I had to just mess with a template until I got what I wanted.
I am still going to be working on it in the future, but I hope it works for now.
My intentions are first of all to make my blog easier to read. I'm trying to make the text as legible as possible by making it black on white, with an easy to read font that is fairly large.
I've gotten rid of all of the extraneous design because I didn't make it. I dislike having had used a template that had someone else's aesthetic in it. So I'm starting from scratch.
This new template of extreme simplicity also represents how I like to type on the computer. I use a full screen text editor that actually looks a lot like how the blog looks now.
And finally I wanted to make sure the posts were central to my design. The title of the newest post is now at the top, and the blog title has been put to the side.
Any comments about the design will be useful as I am still working on it. Does it work in your browser? Does it work with your screen size? Is it actually easier to read?
Kyler
After my varied experience with girls and relationships, I think I have been able to distill all of my thinking and knowledge into one fairly simple bit of understanding:
Love is not chess.
You can’t use logic to win at love. You can’t use a strategy to win at love. You can’t play a few steps ahead. You can’t predict what is going to happen. Never let yourself fall into any habits that you might associate with playing chess and you will do better with relationships and love.
I suspect that this advice might have little meaning if you don’t play much chess, or simply if you have a different outlook on things than me. It has to do with how your mind works, everyone’s will be different.
So I guess you will have to figure out your own strategy (except of course I mean the strategy is actually to relinquish all strategy).
Kyler