While I was taking a shower, my oldest son dug up a pair of boxing gloves from out of our closet. There are more pictures, but I couldn’t resist posting these - sweet poses of victory and defeat from this little 3 year old (almost 4!)
Man, I promise that I really AM working on a new shot. It’s just extraordinarily difficult to find solid blocks of time to work on it right now. I’m watching both our boys during the day now, so that pretty much rules out any time to work on animation from 6am to 8pm. It’s just not possible to get a solid block of time in there where neither boy needs something or another. Plus the fact that one of the boys is only a year old….forget it - he requires near constant attention when he’s awake, otherwise I’ll turn around and find him drinking out of the toilet or licking the funky chocolate milk stain on the carpet from when his older brother spilled a full glass….well, nevermind - suffice to say, I don’t get any work done during the day.
That leaves me a few hours each night to try to work on stuff. And I just don’t have the ability to cut myself out of my family’s life on weekends like I did when I was in school. It just isn’t possible anymore.
So right now, I feel like the tortoise - plodding along, slow and steady. I’ll finish the race (ie: get my next job), but I’m not going to be coming in first place like in the old Aesop fable. Instead, I’ll come in a day late, just (hopefully) not a dollar short.
I’ll get a vid up ASAP with my new shot. I promise! :)
What an amazing night. No matter what your political preference is, you’d have to admit that this was an incredibly historic moment. This is one of those times where, in 20, 30, 40 years or more, you’ll remember exactly where you were when Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America.
Congratulations to him, and to us all.
Well, viewing enjoyment too…
The Pixies: Where is My Mind (live in 1988)
But maybe I should be. I gotta say, whoever came up with Wasabi and Soy Almonds is a frickin’ genius. I mean, almonds are tasty all by themselves (and good for you too!), but adding wasabi and soy powder to them? WIN. I go through at least a can of these per week. Fortunately, they’ve been on a continuous special at my local grocery store - 2 cans for $5.
If they ever raise the price though…well, my youngest doesn’t need diapers anyways, right?
Well, it’s the eve of the 2008 election. Get out and vote tomorrow. I know I will.
So I have a couple new things on my plate. First off, I’m moving on to a new animation project. I’ve tried to keep myself motivated while working on my short, and I just really, REALLY don’t like it. It’s funny - I can watch the whole short as it was when I finished it in school, and I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s just that the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I try to work on shots from it, and I just can’t stand to revisit it. So I’ve decided to move on to something new. I’ll post up a layout pass soon, I’ve spent the last 2 evenings just mapping out the phonemes for lip sync. I don’t get much time each day to work on this stuff, but I’m trying to keep everything (family, animation, ‘jeff-time’) balanced so I don’t go all whacko.
Whatever the other thing was I was going to write about I forget - I started this post a couple days ago, had to save it, and now I don’t remember what else I was going to write about…I’ll just post something new if I remember.
One more thing - On November 4 - get out and VOTE. Personally, I know who I’m voting for, but I try to keep my politics out of my professional life to whatever degree I can. It just ain’t worth it. So my message isn’t to endorse any particular candidate, but just to get people out to vote.
Wow, I’m terrible at this blogging thing. I can only promise to try and keep up with it a bit better and we’ll see how that goes.
Well, they say all things must come to an end, and so it was with my time at Technicolor. To be honest, I expected it - they’ve been laying people off in ones and twos for the last few weeks. This time it was 6, including me. So there was that, plus the latest game I was working on, Saboteur, was wrapping up and the fact there wasn’t anything lined up pretty much pointed to staff reduction.
There’s a project that the studio is very close to landing…and in that case, they’ll bring a bunch of us back, but it could be 2-3 weeks, so I’m not going to wait around to find out what the deal is.
So, for now, I’m jobless, but that could actually be a good thing. I should get some more time to work on some of my own projects, which would be nice, because I was usually too burned out after the long weeks (commute plus hours in studio added up to being gone from 7am to 10pm every day). Plus, I should have a lot more time to actually post to this blog. It’s been sorely neglected - I’m usually just too darn tired, or too involved in TF2 to care to update it.
By the way - Valve is offering a free weekend for Team Fortress 2 (August 22 - 24). If you’re not already playing, you should be. It’s got a great visual style, it’s a lot of fun, and 4 out of 5 doctors recommend it*
For your viewing enjoyment, I present here the animated segments that Valve has produced to introduce some of the various character classes that a player can be in the game…
*not really. I’d be surprised if ANY doctor recommended playing this game - it’s too easy to sit around on your butt for 5 or 6 hours and not realize any time has passed