OWEN!!!

The New Blog

2009-07-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

Hey, so this is going to be my last post on here for probably a year. China has blocked blogspot/blogger, so for the past few weeks I've been diligently working on making my own blog hosted on my own website: www.owendennis.com. I implore you to look at my website and head on over to the blog section to read what's going on with me in China. I will be able to update this blog from anywhere in the world unless countries start banning my website for some reason.

If you only want to look at the blog you can link directly there by going to blog.owendennis.com which will forward you to www.owendennis.com/blog.

Alright, now that I've said "Owen Dennis" so many times:

It is unlikely that I will be able to continue in my posting duties on Hello!, Let My Show Ya Something Sweet! and WAITING FOR GIRLS TO CALL. Unfortunately, if I am able to do anything on those blogs it will be through other people posting for me. I'm told that I might maybe be able to view blogs while I am away, but I most certainly will not be able to post on them. This goes for facebook as well.

So now I would say it's time to update your bookmarks!

I'll keep my blog updated as often as I can. Blogs are easier than email lists cause you can look at it whenever you feel you want to instead of getting it stuffed down your throat in your inbox.

See you in China!

This is normal at the Tour De France

2009-07-14T11:59:00.001-07:00

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/blog/sc_experts/post/Who-s-that-guy-dressed-like-the-devil-at-the-Tou?urn=sc,176312

Apparently this guy jumps around like a devil at the last lap of the race. He's been doing it for 16 years. Reminds me of Boombox Basketball Guy around my house.

This is a test...

2009-07-09T18:07:00.001-07:00

I'm seeing if this service called posterous works. I'd really really like to use blogger in China, but if I can't post on it then I can't post on it and that's that. This web service is kinda neat though cause I can apparently just type in everything in an email, like I'm doing right now, and then send it to my automated email/updating system and it will just take care of it for me. So here I am, trying it out. Diana said she can read blogs, but she just can't post on them. I'm trying to get around this issue.

here's a picture to see if it works:

I really have no idea if this is an automated service or what. I haven't figured everything out because I'd like to be able to use host the pictures on blogger as well. Maybe I'll have to host them myself and reference them, but no one gets to see larger versions of the images or something. I could use a code that makes a small version of the image, then links to a larger version I guess.. I mean... that's what thumbnails are to begin with except they're usually pretty decent quality. I should look into this.

Posted via email from owendennis's posterous

Edit: Well that's pretty lol... I can see this working though, so I'm going to keep troubleshooting it.

New Sci-Fi movie I'm looking forward to: District 9

2009-07-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

It's based off of one of my favorite short films Alive in Joburg. It's all about racism and humanity and other such things. I like the film because it has what feel like some surprisingly powerful moments in what's really a short time frame. Whenever I've watched it I've always thought "man I wish I could see more of this". The first time I saw it I rewatched it like 3 more times. The new movie sounds like exactly what I wanted but with some sort of cover-up plot or something involved. I'm a big fan of what it looks like they're doing with the special effects. Not over-the-top, just there when it needs to be. Moon was very similar in the whole special-effects-where-they-need-to-be-but-they're-not-trying-to-be-flashy thing.

I'm really looking forward to this movie and I feel like Neill Blomkamp might be a director to start watching. Unfortunately I'm going to be in China when it's released... :-(

Asteroids: Coming to a theatre near you

2009-07-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/07/universal-plans-to-bring-asteroids-to-theaters.ars

"Astonishingly, not only is Asteroids being made into a movie, but there was an actual bidding war between four major studios for the rights. Universal Studios has emerged the winner.

As a result, Matthew Lopez is set to write the script and it will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Lopez has written the screenplays for the recent Disney films Escape to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories, as well as for the upcoming The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Meanwhile, di Bonaventura's latest ventures include Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the soon-to-be-released G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra."

Such good writing talent. I'm glad the studio decided too look deep into their vast army of writers to find us this crew.

It's not April right now. A vector based game from the 80's that has no story at all is being turned into a movie. I was wondering when this would happen. This exact situation. Some 80's game that has no story to work from at all turned into a movie. In some ways I'm happy I finally get to see it happen, in other ways I want to be the guy who invents the Kill Other People Through the Internet Machine.

The only two things that will save it (save it as far as it could possibly be saved) is a cool opening title sequence made of white on black dot and vector based lines:

and if the space ship looks like this old school 70's/80's style space ship:

This could be a chance to make a really cool movie that happens to have a video game's title (which will automatically bring it down many many notches), or it could just a really really awful movie (most likely of the two scenarios).

What to do...

2009-07-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Feeling uninspired and not creative. It's very strange and kind of unnerving. I went to my grandmother's and I had a good idea for a live action feature length movie. While I was driving today I had another idea for an animated short. Both of them are pretty good I think, but it's like any idea I come up with is anchored at the back of my head so it flies forward and then hits the end of the rope and sort of floats back. It's lame. It's a very strange feeling that only ever seems to be fixed by me changing my location. These ideas never ever EVER come to me when I'm sitting at home. I'm hoping China will give my brain a jump start.

I still always feel tired and in a state of middleness. It's basically the feeling I associate with end of the semester stress. Nothing is making me particularly excited or particularly unhappy. I'm just going. Blah. Nothing. Nothing is going into my head and nothing is leaving it. I even tried drawing a little bit to free myself up, but it's like Circle > face. Every time. BORING. NOTHING NEW. My brain is just a lump sitting up there. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my mind while I still have it.

Scratch that. I'm thinking back about the last thing that made me really excited and pumped up and it was watching The Bad Seed with my grandma, aunt, and mom on Turner Classic Movies. That's when I was really like "ahhh!! Exciting!" and that's when I came up with my new feature movie idea. I just keep feeling like I don't have the patience or effort to put into making this stuff. It's like my drive to succeed is gone cause I don't have an end goal any more. It used to be that it was like "okay, finish high school, finish college, go to california and make what I want". Well now I've finished some of those things and I'm afraid to go to California cause it's my last step and it's like what do I do after I get there? Nothing. I have nothing after that. Grow old? China is like me procrastinating by having an adventure instead of going to California to start my slow march toward death. There was WAY too much of me coming to terms with my own mortality this past month. Not a fan. I gotta get out and do something that young people do so I can feel alive and well. It's like... I just don't feel funny anymore. Like I feel like I've lost my sense of humor. Nothing is funny, can't think of anything witty to say. Everything is blah.

I need to go exploring or something. Hopefully China fixes that. I'm thinking about China and I just don't really believe it. Like I don't believe it's coming soon. It's a month from tomorrow. That's not long. Every time I've changed scenery however I always come up with something new. I just kinda wish that whatever the next new thing is is something I can do on my own. I keep coming up with non-currently achievable ideas. As I said I came up with one animated short, but it's going to be strange to make because it's not a comedy. Again, I only have a premise, nothing more. It's not funny and it ends really sadly.

Tomorrow I'm going to be going to the CONvergence. I'm going to be going the whole weekend purely because of this issue I'm having. I hope it helps or frees me up or makes me feel some sort of emotion of some kind.

A sweet mish mash of movies turned into my dream last night.

2009-06-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

Last night I had a dream that I was Michael J. Fox (young Marty McFly version) as Jon Connor. I say "I" but it was only kind of me, it was all in third person and filmed like a movie. Close ups, traveling shots, quick editing, etc. I traveled through time in Bill and Ted's time traveling phone booth with some nameless person that I was showing time travel to. We went to some medieval time and then a scary as hell terminator found me. This was a new and faster terminator than had ever been previously seen (seeing as how they're machines, they can run faster than a normal human.) It was able to run about 30 miles an hour. The terminator doesn't look like anyone I can think of, he just kind of looks like a marine in a white shirt and jeans. We jumped into the phone booth, traveled to current times (which is the future for Marty McFly) and it followed us.

This is when the music started up to really get the scene going. It's the background music for the The Living Daylights, the 1987 James Bond movie starring Timothy Dalton. In fact, it's the music from scene where he's hanging out the back of the cargo plane fighting that general. Here it is, it's called Hercules Takes Off.

So now this Terminator is chasing us to this music with traveling shots, hand held camera now and then, and quick editing. We run across a highway and up into a parking ramp. Then he jumps in a car and starts trying to run us over, it's not working cause I (Marty Mcfly) am leaping over other parked cars to get away. Then I escape into the office building the ramp is attached to, along with the other guy. Then there's some shots of a man (played by Nathan Fillion) seeing all this in the security cameras. He's like "Uh oh" and starts getting his some security forces together. So the terminator is chasing us through the office building with other people not stopping him, papers flying everywhere. I think they're not stopping him cause he looks like a person, I don't know, maybe they're too in shock. I think he also chased us through a shopping mall and destroyed stuff. I definitely remember something about him and me in a skyway.

Then we make it back out into the parking lot and the terminator grabs my friend and starts punching him. I can't stop him, but I do see my van (Note: It's the version I have now that's in a state of x-treme disrepair). So I jump in, but I don't have my keys! Luckily the van is in such bad shape I can just turn the ignition area and it will turn without a key. I briefly thought of how much that sucks for security, but then start driving full speed toward the terminator. It saw me, then jumped out through a plate glass window. Stupidly, I continued chasing it. I fell about 4 stories in the van, landing on top of the terminator. My van blew up.

Good thing it blew me to safety. It launched me all the way to the side of an elevated highway. Then I see the terminator pop out of the wreckage from my van (also this blew bits of the building up so there's rubble everywhere, like half a downed building's worth). Then it starts running toward me. I start to run across the highway full of speeding cars trying to avoid getting hit. As I start to do this, the Terminator runs past me. I'm like "what the-?" and it continues running through the traffic spouting statistics about highways and cars as it goes. "6 lane highway, all cars 60 miles an hour, 8 cars per minute in a grid pattern, 40% likelihood of survival" etc etc. It was malfunctioning. I jumped back to the side of the road.

Then an RPG zooms in and blows up the terminator as he's running along on top of the far guard rail. I turn around and I see Nathan Fillion there in full up army gear with a bunch of other army guys. One of the army guys puts away his rocket launcher. The background music ends. Nathan Fillion says to me (and now my friend is back and we're back up on a big pile of rubble) "you boys okay?" and I'm like "yeah, I- I mean, yeah, I guess so" (cause I'm Michael J. Fox).

Then he looks at some papers and goes: "These are tomorrows newspapers, they all have your picture on the front because of all the damage you've done." and I'm like: "Oh I'm sorry." Then he looks even closer at one of the photos realizing something: "John Connor?" "yeah..." "Well... you're me." Turns out Nathan Fillion is John Connor in the future, the resistance leader for humans against the machines.

Then I woke up.

The end.

*Note: That's the alternate ending that I liked better. Originally it ended with the Terminator escaping by jumping off the guard rail into who knows where and that twist with the future John Connor. I felt miffed and I didn't like that the terminator escaped, so I rewound it and had the army guys blow it up. It made a bigger climax and a more satisfying ending.

You can't see it yet...

2009-06-17T21:32:00.001-07:00

... but I officially own http://www.owendennis.com.

Someone has been squatting on that site for about 6 years (at least). They've tried to sell it to me to no avail over and over again. Then they ditched it. Now it's mine. I now have owendennis.net and owendennis.com. I haven't gotten hosting for it yet, I'll probably do that next month or something. So far I just own the domain name. Don't care though, it's great. I'm pumped that I finally get my own dot com. I'm at my grandma's figuring out what I want to do with it.

I'm now definitely the official Owen Dennis on the internet. I'm the official facebook Owen Dennis, and the official .com holder Owen Dennis. No chiropractor or soccer star Owen Dennis, just me: Owen Dennis.

Yessssss *pumps fist in the air*

I was reminded of two of my favorite videos on the internets today...

2009-06-10T23:17:00.000-07:00

The shredding videos. I LOVE them.

Santana:

Ozzy and Jake E. Lee:

The Greatest Ape

2009-05-28T16:46:00.001-07:00

This is my senior thesis animation for anyone who hasn't already seen it.

I would of course recommend viewing it in high quality (or whatever your computer can handle). Click the video twice to go to the youtube video on youtube to see it bigger, or see it full screen using the little full screen button in the bottom corner.

This is the vimeo version. Vimeo's "low" quality looks better than Youtube's:

The Greatest Ape from Owen Dennis on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

What the hell is this picture??

2009-05-11T19:44:00.001-07:00

I found it while googling for "No sir I don't like it". The website it was attached to was not particularly informative on what it was: http://charliekane.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_archive.html

That website says nothing.

What the hell is going on in this picture??

Edit: I searched the code, it has something to do with X-ray scanners at airports. I don't understand how it works; I'm seeing a severe lack of big pouty lips, nipples, and va-jay-jay. I don't think I could look at a scanner showing this to me every day without having some severely creepy dreams at night.

Also Chris sent me this:

2009-05-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

I have probably thought about doing this a couple hundred times.

Famed Nefertiti bust is a fake

2009-05-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090505/wl_mideast_afp/entertainmentarthistoryegyptgermany

Apparently the archeologist who originally "found" it was actually making a test piece. He was trying out old egyptian pigments and wanted a piece that showed Nefertiti with a necklace that she wore. Then a German prince saw it, thought it was original, and the archeologist couldn't bring himself to say it wasn't real.

Not only that, but at the place that it was found it was never even catalogued. Which is a pretty big deal. I mean what archeologist would find something that stunning and not even write it down as a random find of the day? Not only that, but the piece was left in the dig sponser's sitting room for 10 years. Just hanging out next to the guy while he drank his morning tea. The first time the thing was ever written about was 11 years after it was found. Also there's a claim that the left eye was never even fashioned to have an eye in the first place.

I'm a little confused as to how, with all these bits of information, it wasn't scrutinized more closely. Weird. Sucks. I really liked that piece. I always thought it was really cool. Now it's only kind of cool... :-(

At the same time I see images like this:

So maybe the whole "things resembling art nouveau" or whatever is just coincidence. I dunno. It's not confirmed that it's a fake (apparently it can't be?), but things are looking more and more likely. I mean a lot of weird stuff happened in Egyptian art during the Amarna period that I really liked, so it's not completely out of the question that this would be so different, but it is worth thinking about.

Two test shots from my senior project:

2009-04-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

The school was asking for some images from our stuff for the commencement screening posters. These are the two screenshots I chose:

EPIC

So apparently youtube voluntarily hosts full movies now

2009-04-18T17:58:00.000-07:00

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Crackle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUHUAx9Lbzk

Just don't accidently click on anything while a movie is playing. Pretty damn cool. Unfortunately cliffhanger is taking forever to load even though I'm on the school's connection. This must be Youtube's answer to Hulu. This means you can also watch some of those awful movies that there's no WAY you would pay for and actually you should even pollute your mind with.

Such as the all CG Starship Troopers show Roughnecks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhwuopkWeOs

Also, not related to youtube, this is something Nick Bachman showed me. I really should have known about this already, apparently I'm falling behind the internet. I LOVE this:

Clown Matrix Commercial?

2009-04-16T17:14:00.001-07:00

Sounds lame but it's amazingly cool looking:

The amount of work that had to have gone into that is mind boggling. I do not know how they did this. I mean I guess I know the basics of what one might to do achieve such a thing, but holy crap no. Good job Mr. Berg and "Stink Digital. Please change your company's name, no one will take it seriously and in will fact be repulsed by it.

SPOILER:
I kind of wish it ended with a reveal instead of a loop. Would have made the whole thing perfect.

Edit: As it turns out I was just dumb and there IS a reveal at the end. I just didn't read it properly. I dunno why I didn't read it. Maybe I was watching it too hard. I dunno. It's still freakin' cool.

Robot uses logic and reasoning to understand scientific theories

2009-04-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE53167K20090402

Alright, technically not a robot, but Holy fuckin' sweet. One step closer to AI. This robot has been able to watch scientific experiments and figure out what is happening in them without any prior knowledge of the experiment. Computers are now as smart as three year olds. That's the coolest thing ever. This is generation 1 of the robot, they're already working on generation 2. I didn't believe it at first, but then I read that it was posted on April 2nd so... I mean... awesome.

Snoop on Martha Stewart

2009-03-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Awkward pairing or most awkward pairing?

Favorite quotes:

"White pepper? I ain't never heard of white pepper! I don't like that man! I dunno.. I want black pepper!

"Uh oh, let's see what Snoop's gonna add to Mashed Potatoes!"

Unfortunately it ends before he gets to stereotypically talk about chicken wings.

Sham-WOW guy beats up a hooker...

2009-03-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Well there goes Vince Shlomi. Loved his infomercials. Billy Mayes and Vince Shlomi were of course my favorite infomercial masters. I somehow doubt that Vince will get much more in the way of marketing jobs after this. It's unfortunate cause I loved him so much. He was so weird. I guess I now know how weird he really was.

Here's some videos of his past greatness:

This is especially unfortunate after Billy Mayes challenged Vince to a sell off two weeks ago. I really wanted to see how that played out (I guess it plays out with a beaten up hooker?)

I'm going to call this setup to a gag in an upcoming family guy episode: "Just like that time Vince Shlomi bit his tongue..."

I'm part of a new blog.

2009-03-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

So while this blog is a general thoughts blog about my life and stuff, I've been added on as a contributer to Sam's new blog. The title of it is based off of his most commonly uttered phrase: "Hello! Let me show ya something sweet!".

The idea of the blog is just to post sweet stuff. Sam is constantly finding little oddball things that are pretty cool, and it's just easier to make a big digital library of all the cool things he finds than to bookmark them all or just not remember them. He's still working on the format a little bit so we'll each have our own avatar and the site has a coherent style, but I think it's gonna be a nice bookmark for anyone if they're bored.

I'm not gonna stop posting stuff I'm interested in here, but all those little cool things that I find that I don't think warrant a whole post will be moved over into the something sweet blog.

The most amazing sheep herding video ever

2009-03-18T12:50:00.001-07:00

I know that's not very high praise, but it will be impossible for anyone to ever get that comment again after this video:

wtf is this symbol??

2009-03-16T18:40:00.001-07:00

We all drew this symbol. Everyone. Every American kid that was in elementary school in the early and mid 90's drew this symbol. I posted this question on the GTF (cause I really really needed to know) and they even posted it on other forums. Turns out no one there knows (one person claims they were doing it in Alaska in the mid-80's, so it's even farther spread than I originally thought). Everyone associates it with something. My school was in and around a city called Stillwater, so the local high school football team (Stillwater Ponies) was all about turning their S's into this dumb celtic knot S.

It's a real life meme. Does anyone know what it comes from or why it suddenly cropped up in the late 80's? What happened at that point in time to make us all agree that yes this is cool, and yes we must draw it on everything. Maybe it's like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and we'll all see it inscribed in a mountain sometime be inexplicably drawn to it.

I am going crazy over what this symbol is and how it came to be, if anyone has any leads to tell me I will follow them. I'm pretty confident it has something to do with skateboard/punk culture, but I can't figure much out beyond that.

Edit 03/18/09: We now have someone from Australia who says they did it, and someone who says they did it in 1981.

Rambo and the Forces of Freedom

2009-03-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

So I have now seen all the Rambo movies. I just watched the most recent one ("Rambo" aka: "First Blood Part IV") and I found that it was just like the others, and still full of the 80's style violence. However it was oddly disturbing, I don't think I've ever seen so much Vietnam warzone-style rape in a movie before. LOTS of rape in this movie. I'm mildly interested in why I found the violence in this movie so much more disturbing than most 80's action movies I see. Maybe it's because it wasn't always followed by a one-liner, it was just death after death after horribly violent gruesome death.

I wanted to see what critics thought of this movie. Turns out the Rotten Tomators gave it a 36% (btw in case you were wondering, Beverly Hills Chihuahua got 41%). I guess I can accept it as being kinda low, but it's no worse or better than the other Rambo movies, something I think the critics didn't keep in mind. It very much stayed true to form.

So when I looked up the score for this movie, I saw a whole bunch of other titles for Rambo movies I hadn't seen that got more and more ridiculous as I read on: "Rambo: The Rescue", "Rambo: First Strike", "Rambo: The Doomsday Machine", "Rambo: Raid on Las Vegas", "Rambo: Swamp Monster", "Rambo: Attack on El Dorado", "Rambo: Just Say No", "Rambo: When S.A.V.A.G.E. Stole Santa".

Okay what?

Well this is what:

Mechanical genius known as "Turbo!"

Master of Disguises named "Cat!"

Why thank you 1986.

I had no idea that this existed. It actually makes me rather amazed that a movie series that was very very much rated R for a reason was then turned into a 65 episode children's TV show. A movie series based on a man that lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and kills a bunch of people because they wouldn't leave him alone was turned into a saturday morning G.I. Joe clone. I guess it's just something they did then. They made Aliens toys, Predator toys, and Terminator toys, all movies that were rated R.

This got me to check what movies are now turned into toys. It seems PG-13 is the cap. If toys are made now over the R rating they're actually figurines that are all cool and sculpted and expensive. Action movies don't seem to want to step much over the PG-13 rating anymore however.

Top 5 grossing PG-13 movies:

Titanic

The Dark Knight

Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest

Spider-Man

Star Wars Episode III Dead Man's Chest

All of these movies (except Titanic... Titanic was PG-13? Even though it had a breast? That explains a lot) have/had very lucrative toy franchises.

Top 5 Grossing R movies:

The Passion of the Christ

The Matrix Reloaded

Beverly Hills Cop

The Exorcist

Saving Private Ryan

All of these movies should have very lucrative toy franchises. I'm assuming this has something to do with the columbine shootings. I've heard all sorts of movies that had violence in them started toning everything down cause of that incident. Scream 3 apparently had a big issue with that back when it was made. I mean a similar thing happens now every time someone wants to do a movie about terrorists, plane hijackings, or a large disaster hitting a big city.

Anyway the DVD also had a really really horribly depressing small documentary on Burma and the civil war there. It also talked about a bunch of other things about how apparently some of the violence (like how a 50 cal gun rips through people like tissue paper, how the regime in burma actually works, how the things that happen there are depicted in the movie) are all actually pretty realistic. Maybe that's why I was more bothered by it than a normal 80's style ultra violent movie. I dunno. I know the movie definitely bothered me more than a normal violent action movie. Basically, when I started watching this movie, I was expecting Commando but instead got a bunch of documentary footage from Vietnam.

It's my birthday

2009-03-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to play videogames... *thumbs up*

A dream that actually had to do with life...

2009-03-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

This is a long post that doesn't make any sense:

So I had this dream that actually had stuff to do with everything I'm thinking about right now. I was driving from my parents house to my graduation ceremony with a brown greyhound dog in the passenger seat named Pogo. He was having digestive problems. So I let him out and he did his thing (his really BIG thing) and then he got back in the car and we went off a jump I guess.

Along the way I picked up someone named Nate (he was my friend in the dream, I've never seen him before though), and Nick Bachman. Nate was carrying a violin and we were all driving to graduation.

I got lost in the city driving down an alley that dead ended after much twisting and turning. So backed up. I realized that time was slowly running out and we had to be at the opening ceremony so we really booked it and I was really nervous and scared cause time was running out.

So we made it there, busting in through the doors. The place had stadium seating like the IMAX and the whole ceremony was already happening. I spoke to my parents real quick at the top of the seating area. Then they started showing the hardships that some of the students faced on getting there tonight, mentioning this Nate guy and his violin. I got pissed cause I was like "Wtf, I just picked him up cause I was being nice, I was the driver and it was scary and tense as hell!" and they kept kept KEPT talking about him.

Then a bunch of between 7-10 year old chinese kids in green t-shirts ran in with flags and stuff and started motioning for the audience to follow them out the door in a reasonable fashion, so I plunged down the stairs to get in my seat so the order wouldn't screw up. We were led out a door and up some stairs to a sort of landing platform

The world was COMPLETELY different up here. It's like I was a couple miles above the earth surrounded with clouds above and below me. I was standing on a little patch of green grass, like a mountain top peaking above the clouds. About 100 yards away, across the cloudy abyss was another mountain top, that's where the actual gradation ceremony would happen. So they gave each of us this hot air balloon, but the balloon was only about as big as a large beanbag chair. It had some netting over it that you had to hold on to and a hole you had to cover so the air wouldn't escape. So basically, inflate a beanbag chair, cling to it, jump out into the abyss. I explained my nervousness about this. "How do you control where it goes?" "Oh don't worry, the wind will just take you right over to where you need to be." "The wind? That doesn't sound very reliable, what if I miss?" "You won't" I was also nervous cause my Alzheimer's grandfather had to do this too. Everyone had to do this and there was a line forming behind me.

So I did it. I closed my eyes pretty hard, it was really scary. Then I landed in this snowy place that was like a factory and waited for people to show up. No one did except for one guy (He ran the factory). I was like "Where is everyone?" and he's like "Right there" pointing about 20 yards over to my right. I missed the island and landed on this one. The only thing connecting the two islands above this vast chasm was a chain link fence on small natural rock bridge that spanned the gap.

I was like "fuuuuuuuuck!"

The guy started figuring out how I could launch myself over there with the balloon again by sliding down the snow really fast. Then I would be working against the wind and then the wind would take over again, kind of looping me back on to the other island. So I didn't wanna do that, but I did.

So I finally make it to the island and I go through a stone archway to find a sandy path that goes way up into the sky. I walk up the path and there's a crossroads. One keeps going up, and one goes down a little following almost the same path I took to go up, but separated by a rock wall. So I take that one and it leads me down to a little alcove beach on the ocean where some folding chairs are set up. People are waiting for the rest of the graduates to come. Nancy Kahlow (my good high school art teacher) is there as a teacher, and Julie Kahlow (ex-girlfriend now extremely good friend) has a spot with the graduating students. I sit next to her, we talk a little, it's nice. Then I'm back in a parking lot of a cub foods (which is actually a hotel where my grandparents are staying) and I find out my dad and grandfather didn't attend the graduation cause they didn't think my grandfather could do the balloons.

So... It got pretty crazy there near the end. I feel like there was one other kind of "test" I had to do before I got to the balloons part, but I don't remember it. The balloons were really scary, I'm sooooo afraid of heights.

Another helmet casting failure.

2009-02-28T19:21:00.000-08:00

I can't get the mold to 1) hold it's shape right and 2) not be full of air bubbles. It's really hard to keep this mold clean. Part of the problem is I can't keep the sides of the mold up. They fall in on themselves because there's no interior structural support. I can't put something to hold them up on the inside however because that will affect the casting and will screw up the final surface and whatever I use as extra structure would be stuck permanently on the interior.

This is really discouraging and I'm not sure what to do. I have to figure something out though. I don't know what however. One possibility is to go back a step and make a different kind of mold. I could buy some alginate and do it that way. It's much cheaper than silicone, but I've read that it's possible that it can dry and shrink over time so you have to cast almost immediately. I am now also out of aluminum powder. At least, I don't have enough aluminum powder for another casting. Blugh. This sucks. I know I can do this, but it's fighting me all the way and I'm getting more and more concerned because of time restraints with this and my senior project. I'm feeling like this will be yet another notch under my belt where I shot too high or my perfectionism has made it fail.

I Got a Cafepress account for Ben and David

2009-02-20T19:29:00.000-08:00

I kinda want those turtles as shirts as well. So here's a couple. Just the two that Ben and David wanted:

http://www.cafepress.com/owen_dennis.360104963

Also to be found in that store, the retro classic character Time Clown. I'm assuming I'm going to keep adding things to that store cause I kind of enjoy doing this. Though Cafepress is somewhat limiting, it's a lot easier than doing it myself. Plus it's just fun; make a doodle, make a shirt.

Turtles

2009-02-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

So I someone I know online is taking a screen printing class and she asked if I would make a few turtles for her to screen print. All she said was "Make some turtles, let your imagination go wild!"

These are what I came up with:

She absolutely loved them, but then she told me she actually probably intended to make them for her kids. She wanted something less traumatizing and more like the toys the manchildren in the above images are playing with.

I'm probably going to do a couple more cause that really only gives her like two "cute" images to work with. It's been an awful fun break though. I'm actually going to make some of these into shirts of my own. If anyone wants one tell me (note: it's not free).

My exact experience:

2009-02-17T17:27:00.001-08:00

I found an article on the front page of yahoo that summed up my exact experience working as a maid in Yellowstone. She actually didn't talk about one thing (it might have been that she got there slightly later than me so she didn't know) but she didn't talk about the blankets. Before the season starts the blankets and pillows are folded and put in the corner as well as everything else in the room (trashcans, coffee maker, bible, etc). They're put there at the end of the season before winter blocks all the roads and no one can get in.

At the beginning of each season the first maids who are there (that was me) go through all the rooms and make them up by taking the blankets that were in the corner and stuff and putting them on the bed and put everything in their proper place. After I put those blankets and pillows on the bed, I never once changed them again. Every time we cleaned a room we stripped the beds, put on new sheets and pillowcases, and then put the blankets back on over the top. I asked around, no one had ever changed them. So who really knows how long those blankets have been there? I guess we put on new top covers, because they updated the rooms a little bit style-wise that year, but the fuzzy under blanket was never changed. My bosses told me they've never changed a blanket either.

Kinda gross. I assume this happens at every hotel. I found while I worked there that my main goal was to make sure that anyone walking into their room wouldn't feel like there was some weirdo sleeping in their bed mere hours before they got there.

I just discovered "Ganguro" today...

2009-02-15T21:22:00.000-08:00

What is a ganguro you might ask? I just found out about them a little less than an hour ago. Some of you may be familiar with "guidos". A guido is an Italian or guy who wishes he was Italian that looks like this:

Yes they are serious. You can assume, and rightly so, that guidos act the way that you assume that they act (read: total d-bag).

Anyway, this brings me to ganguro. As I said before, this is something I hadn't discovered before now, wikipedia says the style peaked in 2000 but that it's still something going on to this day. Ganguro have a different origin story that guidos. Guidos are Italian in origin while ganguro are Japanese in origin. True to tradition in Japan, they're weird:

They sport makeup that has something to do with pandas. One thing I've read states that it's sort of a societal fight against what school girls must traditionally wear in Japan. Sort of in the way that goth kids all wear the same ridiculous clothing to be different from everyone else in a totally non-conformist way. The difference here being that these people are Japanese, so everything is CRAZY LOOKING.

Maybe I'm a bad person, or too much of a "straight dude lookin' to hook up" or some other not-so-nice thing, but in all honesty the first thing I thought of was making out with them. I feel like it would be like making out with a clown. Not like a regular clown however. Making out with a ganguro would be like making out with a clown from an alternate dimension. I feel like if I ever opened my eyes briefly while doing the human tangle that I would open them to a scene not unlike the final scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey:

I'm greatly interested in seeing one of these people in real life. I want to meet one and have my picture taken with them. I know it only encourages them, but I think I'm all for it. I like having strange groups of people for me to study and look at. Doesn't look like they're really harming anyone, just being weirdos. If anyone has some other odd groups of people that they feel are important for me to know about please tell me.

I tried casting a helmet

2009-02-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

It failed. I'm going to inspect it a little further tomorrow, but so far it looks as though I 1) didnt' use enough resin, 2) didn't get enough coverage with the resin and 3) Might not have added enough aluminum powder (but I'll figure that one out when I try buffing it).

Sucks. Oh well. I'll make another one.

Mold: Complete

2009-02-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Aright so the I've now made a mold. It's really cool and a lot of fun to play with. It's made of silicone so yes, it's the same texture as fake boobs. Anyone who wants me to make them a set of fake boobs can email me. I'll only agree to make clear or varying shades of blue however, so if some nerd stumbles upon this blog, I can only make the blue one.

Anyway, here's the final sculpt:

Also here's me:

This is the first layer of silicone and also the most important. I have to make sure everything is free from air bubbles so it doesn't show up in the final cast. In all honesty I don't think I did that very well so we'll see what happens:

Here's me looking nervous:

Layer 2. This is basically safety and reinforcement for layer 1. Keep in mind that each of these layers has to be done at specific time intervals. The layer previous has to remain tacky. I didn't realize that it took about 4 hours for each layer to become tacky, so I was not so pleasantly surprised that I had to stay up until 6 am to do this:

The peanut butter layer. This where I cake on the silicone like frosting or peanut butter to fill in all the undercuts of the piece (the holes on the head, those things sticking out of the side of it, the cheek-bone kind of things, etc.):

Layer 4, the final layer:

This is the mother mold. You have to build this as a separate mold for your mold as reinforcement so that when you make your final casting you won't have any warping due to the silicone flopping around all over the place.

Took the mother mold off:

Now we get to see a bunch of flattering pictures of me as I take off the silicone:

Pretty neato. There was minimal damage to my original sculpt. It has made me realize a huuuuge amount of applications that this process could be used for. You could use it as the mold to make a fleet of spaceship models or like an army's worth of guns. That would be especially cool just because you could build the original models out of whatever you want, fill it with resin and you have a heavier version that doesn't look like it's made out of clay and wood. You also wouldn't have to be as afraid to drop it or something cause you can just make another. You can even fill it with expanding foam and have a stunt version of the exact same thing. No longer do you have to buy super soakers and spray paint them black to make a "laser gun", you can just build it out of whatever you want and do this.

It's really cool stuff. This is also what they use when they make fake heads and limbs... *thumbs up*

So apparently we were 24 hours from a worldwide economic collapse...

2009-02-10T01:27:00.001-08:00

Now personally I think it's a little bit over hyped. I don't know. It's money. I don't understand it. I do think we're hurting harder than people are letting on, but of course there's no way to show that. Either way, it got me thinking.

I've often thought about what my role in society would be if I were to be placed in another era. I've also of course thought about what I would be doing in a post apocalyptic society (I just thought it would be the fault of super intelligent robots, not pieces of paper with dead presidents on them). I get to thinking, some people are going to have degrees and they'll mean something and they could probably still get a super important job in the wake of a collapse, I however have just been spending years honing a very specific craft. I mean animation? How important is that? It's not something people might think of as a "Yes I need to do this, this will help" when the whole world collapses.

So now I'm thinking of what the depression would have been like if they had the internet, iPods, and McDonalds. I mean that's what it would be if it happened now. The internet might only be accessible by a select few. We would probably become a much less world connected society. Hell, newspapers might actually make a comeback, how strange would that be?

Assuming that we don't just fall into anarchy, this eventually of course leads me to think about what I would be doing in this non-existent yet plausible society. There's still money and success to be had in that kind of environment, it just requires a little creativity. People would require a distraction from the depression that real life would constantly be shoveling at them. What's an easier way to provide cheap escapist entertainment than animation? I mean the "golden age of animation" happened in the 30's. What is there to stop the... I dunno.... platinum age of animation? Or would the first one be called platinum and the second one be gold? Whatever.

I guess I would have to gather up a number of my best and brightest friends and start entertaining. We could become the new Warner Brothers. Seeing as how everyone might be a lot less world centric it's possible people would have nothing to do by themselves at home, so they might want to go out. If that doesn't happen because we still have computers and televisions, I guess we could start distributing animated shorts on thumb drives and DVD's. It would be better if we could gather people together in one location though, they'd be more likely to pay. We could grab a projector and show stuff on the side of a building and pass around a collection plate on a stick like a church. We could hack Xbox dev kits and make fun little games for people to play (obviously this would require sam to work properly, maybe bobby as well). Maybe we could walk around, videotape some people's reaction to a prompt, and then animate the prompt. Then people would show up at the showings every month to see if their friends or family got to have their prompt turned into a story.

Whatever we do, it will be like the depression, but with a technology infusion, which is so strange to think about and would require a lot of creativity to flourish in.

One step closer...

2009-02-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

... to the edge? And I'm about to break? No but seriously, I'm very very close to pouring on the silicone and making the mold. I have the resin that I want to use in the mail and here by friday. If I really wanted, I think I could get this done over the weekend. I've gotta work on my senior project though. I predict completion of this helmet within two weeks I think. Right now I'm just doing finishing touches. Basically sand it, fill it, sand it, fill it, over and over again. I've now finally sprayed some primer over the whole thing so I can see where the surface has bumps or cracks. I would be done sanding it tonight, but I ran out of sandpaper... :-/

Here's the primed piece. It's all sanded to be really really smooth. It's really nice to touch:

Here's me cleaning out all the lines so they don't get too clogged with paint:

Here's all the effin' sandpaper I used. This is what happens when you try to sand clay. There's about this much again in the trashcan:

This is what I typically looked like after I did all the sanding:

Just... Just a mess... I have to clean it all up when I start doing the silicone too. LAME.

Emo post is emo

2009-02-04T04:20:00.000-08:00

Only read this if you wanna read emotalk. It's dumb, I just wanted to write it down cause that's helpful to me. Blah blah blah whine whine whine:

So I'm writing this script for Advanced Screenwriting and it's really wearing. Basically the the whole thing is my Yellowstone experience. While I was there I felt like the every day was one giant movie or sitcom and since then I've never doubted that idea. So finally I now have the chance to write it into a movie. It's going pretty well. It's just that it's really emotionally wearing. It's like I'm writing this thing and it's not real life, it's fiction, but it's almost a half and half kind of thing. Like it has real things that happened in it, but then other things that could have happened or things that might as well have happened etc. Thing is, it's like now I've got to revisit all these emotions I never dealt with properly when they were here in the first place. I'm basically putting myself back in my summer shoes again and reliving the entire experience over and over again in order to write about it.

It's not really therapeutic, it's actually kinda depressing. I mean the whole tragedy of the story is a couple falling in love and then in the end they have to split up, not because they want to, but because one lives in the US and one lives in China. The movie version will probably have it work out in the end, but the real life version didn't end that way at all. The real life version was awful and still to this day is awful. I get more pissed about it because I can't really talk to people about it because everyone views it as a summer fling. I mean I guess technically it was, but it's the only relationship I've had where there was no closure to it at all, whatsoever. Also she was the first girl I had met that had the same long term goals as me in life, that was a real eye opener, it was really nice and welcomed. Normally I might talk to my dad about something like this, but he's given the impression that he too thinks it was just a summer fling. When I've spoken to him about it before it seems like he's just humoring me. His opinion is that since yes, she was more conservative than me, it wouldn't work out in the long run. I just have to disagree. I mean Julie was like meeting myself. She was just like me. That actually made things kind of boring. Wei was enough like me and enough not like me that there was always something to talk about. When we got into discussions they were just discussions. She would debate me. It was great. I loved it.

I don't do flings. I don't get into a relationship just because I wanna fool around with someone. It was a legitimate relationship and it hurt a lot (like a legitimate relationship) when we had to end it. We didn't even end because one or the other of us got pissed or tired of it or something, it just ended because we had to go home. I mean I had never felt so completely tied down to something in my life as I did when I had to leave the airport to drop off Wei. If school wasn't in the way I totally would have taken off to China as soon as possible. Just for the fun, the spontaneity, and the young-person-being-recklessness of it. I mean that would have been fun as hell.

It's just so draining. I get so tired of school all the time. I can't just enjoy life. I've already started a trend where the less homework I have (like summer) the more likely I am to get a girlfriend. It's really nice. I really enjoy it. I like living and exploring the world with someone who I enjoy being with. I can't do it during the school year however. Things just fall apart because I can't maintain them properly. It happened with Julie. It even happened with Wei. I couldn't even respond to her emails I was so involved with school. It's not like I could even expect something from that, she lives on the other side of the world, but damn if it doesn't still feel like if I saw her I could just walk right up to her and give her a big hug and kiss. It is complete insanity that every time, EVERY TIME, I see an asian woman of any age, I am reminded of her. It's not fair at all, it's horrible.

I got to watch her get all emo about me too. We rarely got to talk online because of the time difference. The number one way I knew what she was really thinking and feeling was by going to her blog. She writes poetry that she thinks is too cryptic to understand, but I got it. I got to watch as she longed to see me again and how she felt like she'd been dropped from the sky, to watching her argue with herself on how she should forget me to now, where she wants me to vanish from her memory so it won't hurt anymore. I mean how awful is that? This girl I totally fell for and she for me, wants to erase the memory of our time together. Not me, just our time together so it won't be so emotionally hard.

I mean I'm so torn. I'm really happy she's moved on, I'm glad she's gotten a new boyfriend that I'm quite certain is a good guy. I just wish it could have been me. This script makes me think about this stuff over and over again every night to the point where, what do you know, it's about 7:15 AM now. I get these good ideas for the script, and then I also get to think about this girl I loved being on the opposite side of the world with someone else. It's wonderful, I love life right now. *thumbs down*

"Why is this happening to me?"

2009-02-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

I seem to recall that this is what happened when I had to have some of my teeth removed. I mostly wanted to sleep though. This kid is a pretty active talker:

Of COURSE I would like this:

2009-01-20T22:30:00.000-08:00

Cool company that makes all kinds of props and replicas that I would totally be into:

http://www.kropserkel.com/main.htm

check out their originals, those are what I like the most.

EDIT: Link has been fixed.

Absolutely adorable

2009-01-14T01:45:00.000-08:00

The kid I want to have in the future is probably an exact duplicate of this one:

I just got accepted to go teach English in China

2009-01-12T13:06:00.001-08:00

I'll be going to Shenzhen. It's a 10 million person city (No bigger no smaller, it's population is controlled by the government) just outside of Hong Kong. I'll get my own furnished apartment for free and if I don't get my own apartment I at least get my own bedroom. The apartment is usually located on campus of the school I'll be teaching at. Each apartment comes with air conditioning (which is good because apparently the weather is basically like Florida), bathroom, telephone, TV, cooking facilities and washer/dryer stuff. I get "internet access" either in my apartment or at the school and 3 weeks paid vacation for Chinese new year and various 3 day weekends throughout the year. I get a Chinese working visa that gives me unlimited access to go in an out of Hong Kong as I please. I'm also getting Mandarin classes twice a week.

When I first get there I go through a 2 week intensive training course in Beijing and a tour of the Great Wall (score!). They basically pay for everything except meals for the first two weeks that I'm there, also the train ticket to get from Beijing down to Shenzhen.

What I have to do is teach 15 45 minute conversational English classes a week. I'll be viewed as full time faculty at the school and expected to act just like any other teacher... like... a grown up... Also I have to wear a suit? I think that's kinda funny cause I promised myself "I will never take a job where I have to wear a suit every day" and then, of course, my first job out of college I gotta wear a suit. LAME. Maybe I can make it a "cool guy" suit and wear it like.. like a cool guy... like House:

Anyway I'm pretty excited. Anyone who wants to visit me can have a free place to stay for a couple of nights. *thumbs up*

Mr. Chi City has made an update.

2009-01-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

I love this man. He is a comedic genius:

Helmet update:

2009-01-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

I'm really happy with how this going. It's looking just like my drawing:

It kinda reminds me of a wasp. I'm having a lot of trouble with the little ventilator thing on the back of the head though. I tried doing a mold of a shape I liked, it kind of worked, but it looked somewhat handcrafted. It wouldn't stand up to any sort of close examination. I could probably make some sort of press or a punch that I could take the shapes with. I dunno; I'm not sure what to do about it... :-/

Melting Chocolate Rabbits

2009-01-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

So here's something that's totally art fag but very beautiful:

Melting Chocolate Rabbits

It's like a year or two old, but I like it a lot. Thanks to Diana Chao!

Two things I found today that I really enjoy:

2009-01-02T21:27:00.001-08:00

First is this:

Second is this:

I'm pretty much in love with the guy in the white suit.

Step #1 of Helmet #1 Complete

2008-12-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

Sara helped me with my big mache head

We made it while watching the movie Judge Dredd

There was glue everywhere

and... how'd it get there?

"You look retarded" she's known to have said

Yes, you just got hit up with a limerick and a bunch of half naked pictures of me.

.

2008-12-18T23:45:00.001-08:00

I've always wanted to do this but someone beat me to it

2008-11-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

A photographer recorded the video game faces of a bunch of kids. He put the camera behind a piece of glass and they played the game projected onto the glass or something:

"Immersion"

It's pretty cool. The girl with the rap music playing makes me laugh A LOT.

I'm not so much a fan of those kids playing what are obviously some M rated games. I feel that this only enhances stereotypes and that's no good. I also kind of wish it wasn't enhancing the stereotypes of "Videogames are for kids" because there isn't anyone older in there. I would like to see someone my parent's age or my grandma's age or even my own age doing that. I LOVE game faces, they're soooo funny.

Cool Commercial

2008-11-11T23:39:00.001-08:00

Reminds me of the Sony Bravia bouncy ball commercial. Really cool looking and hard to think about how they did it. I mean I guess I can understand how one would go about doing this, but it's still really difficult to pull off:

Does anyone remember this?

2008-11-10T23:01:00.001-08:00

I just remembered it. I couldn't remember much about it except that it was anti-drug and featured Alf and Kermit. It's a video featuring all of our favorite late 80's early 90's cartoon characters with a strong anti-marijuana and crack cocaine message. I remember the imagery from this very very well:

Includes an anti-drug message from our president George H.W. Bush!

Right after the McDonald's commercial featuring a bunch of kids with Downs Syndrome.

One of the coolest fuckin' things I have ever seen!!

2008-11-06T11:28:00.000-08:00

INSANELY AWESOME.

Btw it's made of paper.

Awh mah gaaawwd

2008-11-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is probably the cutest, most adorable webcam I have ever seen in my life.

Puppy cam

If they're asleep check back when they're awake, they make little cute squeeky noises.

C'mon dad!

2008-11-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

I found this image today:

My new favorite porno is now online!!

2008-10-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

"Who's Nailin' Paylin"

My new favorite porn of all time. Here's the first few minutes:

What the FUCK is going on???

2008-10-17T11:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.monsterfactory.net/html_charcters/ow_owen.htm

It's a gorilla, his name is Owen, and this is his description:

"Owen considers himself a great, undiscovered talent. Though he has his doubts from time to time."

Who the hell is looking at my life?? What the hell is this?? WTF?!?

Really cool abandoned city.

2008-10-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

Check this place out, it's called Gunkanjima (also Hashima Island):

http://www.archibase.net/archinews/14101.html

It's a man made island built on a reef in Japan in the early 1800's.

Here's the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukanjima

They built it as a coal mining facility. It had the highest density of people ever recorded worldwide. Here's some pictures:

I have never ever been interested in typography...

2008-10-12T15:13:00.001-07:00

but this stuff is wonderful: http://abduzeedo.com/fantastic-frilly-bits-typography-inspiration

I love curls and intricate stuff like that. This is one of the first times I've looked at something like this and thought "Wow, that took a lot of work, good job."

I think this man is amazing.

2008-10-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

This is extremely quotable.

Here's a video where he becomes a McDonalds Dollar Menu Millionaire:

2008-09-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

To kick off work on my senior project, I figured I would post this relaxing video of a windmill in action:

I'm back

2008-08-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

1) I'm back, and I've been out of the loop on EVERYTHING for 3 months. The reason I wasn't updating was that basically that other post I made was some kind of fluke. I could never get back on to this website (and have it work, too much stuff on the screen at once) from yellowstone.

2) I cannot begin to say how amazing this piece of software is:

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.

The possibilities and ideas that can come from this are absolutely astounding. Thanks Tom for pointing this out to me.

So when they said they had internet here...

2008-05-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

What they meant was: "Yeah yeah... the internet... you're talking about the world wide web right? Netscape and all that?"

They opened up one of the computer terminals here (running windows CE? wtf??), but they have a cap every day of 500 megs of downloading, after that it's 56k. These computers are so slow I'm typing faster than they can display the informatin on the screen. So with the amount of time that I'm allowed to use this terminal, mail is actually one of the fastest ways to contact me, outside of the phone, which works intermittently. These computers don't allow youtube or IM and they won't download anything (they think yahoo is a program and refuse to go to it.) But I should get my computer back from MN by like monday or so. While I was backing up my harddrive the hard drive failed so it had to be fixed. Apple was going to throw away my hard drive (right after I said I wanted to keep the harddrive) without telling me. They seem to view it like they're just replacing a part. It's more like a plumber comes into your home, then replaces what needs to be replaced, then takes off with all your artwork, family photos, and music collection and says it's company policy. BS.

SYNOPSIS OF YELLOWSTONE SO FAR:

Anyway, besides that headache yellowstone has been pretty sweet. There is snow EVERYWHERE. On the way here the snow was higher than my van, so it was like I was driving through these big channels in the snow with walls of white on either side. It was sweet.

Everything here is really spread apart and hard to understand the layout of. The employee dining room is 3/4 of a mile away and I have to walk through snow channels to get there. Also when it snows here it's basically white out conditions, I haven't seen it do just a light snowfall yet.

I've spent the past 3 days cleaning bathrooms and getting all the hotels in Grant ready for today. Today is the first day that people are allowed to be here.

Also there's a grizzly bear down by the lake so every time we go down there we have to make a lot of noise.

What else? I've found that there is so little to do here that everyone is constantly drinking or doing drugs of various types. It's either that or you can do a puzzle. We've gotten so bored we're making up new types of ping pong games.

Also I'm a semifinalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. That's pretty cool.

There's a guy here named Roger that has a tattoo down his forearm that says "ROGDOG" in that tribal lettering style. He's pretty much the new Steele Pletts. I don't have any real stories about this guy yet because he works in the kitchen and I'm housekeeping. The guy is ridiculous though. He speaks with a twang from virginia I think (70% of the people here have a twang of some kind, I'm actually now able to tell them apart from one another). People like my complete lack of an accent.

There's a guy here that works out CONSTANTLY. Too bad for him no amount of weight lifting can fix your face.

Also no one here shares my sense of humor very well. It took me two days just to find someone that knew there was a new batman movie coming out. I mean wth? It's BATMAN. Lame.

Anyway, I know there's more, but all of this seems to read rather boringly and I doubt anyone will read this far anyway. If you do though, kudos, I can't include pictures to break things up at all cause this computer is ridiculous. Today is my day off so I'm gonna go find something to do.

So last post for a while...

2008-05-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

I mean I haven't made a post in a while to begin with, but this will probably my last post for a while until I'm at least on the road to Yellowstone. I have to be there by the 16th of May and I'll be staying there cleaning rooms until the 15th of August. So I'll be gone for 3 months out in the wilderness hopefully. I've got a lot of stuff I have to do before then, like get an atlas, get some sneakers, maybe hiking boots I dunno, I should probably get a bicycle helmet as well, mosquito repellant, sun screen, bear repellant, etc. Also I have a hard drive I'm in the middle of backing up and I have to back up my computer as well. Also I have to get moved out. I only realized tonight how much I'm gonna miss some people. I mean I knew I would, but tonight was when it struck me the most.

Anyway, goodnight, people probably won't be hearing from me for like a week at least.

That guy that makes the realistic pictures of cartoon characters...

2008-04-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

He put a video up on his blog a couple days ago of his process. Pretty sweet. I've been wanting to do something like that for a long time. I'll do it over the summer sometime. Probably not a cartoon character, but maybe something original.

Gracias to Julie for linking me.

Vote for me!

2008-04-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

I need a high rating. Then if I win I get 1000 dollars to make a one minute clip, then radiohead selects from the finalists and I get 10,000 dollars. So I need as many people as possible to click the 5 bombs icon underneath my video.

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

I don't know if you have to have an account to make it work though, I hope not... :-/

Here's the link to the voting page.

Help is appreciated and I thank you!

Turns Out I Just Needed to be Emo for 2 Hours

2008-04-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back and it's all good. There are still going to be some parts that are going to be a bitch to handle, but I've increased my efficiency a lot, so it should work, even though mathematically my dad said it was highly improbable.

My stop motion final is an epic failure.

2008-04-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've done 11 shots, of them 4 have worked. I'm not even talking worked as in "Alright, this is perfect!" I'm talking worked as in: "Okay... I'll accept this..." One of those shots (the one I finished about 15 minutes ago) took me 8 hours to complete. I feel absolutely horrible. I'm not going to have anything to show for any of my classes by the end of this semester.

Stratacut!

2008-04-10T08:58:00.001-07:00

I made this stratacut yesterday:

An M. Knightmare...

2008-04-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Texas just did a raid on a polygamist compound. Some girl called in saying that 14 and 15 year old girls were being forced to marry old men. The place was full of people that had lived there all their lives. They had no idea about the outside world...

The Village is real...

Everyone there was dressed like a pioneer and it comes fully stocked with a Church of Later Day Saints, a cheese factory, and the rule: "No wearing red, for it is reserved for Jesus..."

I Spy With My Little Eye...

2008-04-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Owen Dennis in a Raisin Bran Crunch commercial:

Any Ideas?

2008-04-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

So I was on a high today cause I finished my set and got all my lighting and everything ready to go. I got iStop Motion working, I got the computer set up, and I decided to do a test shot to see how it worked.

Answer?

Nooooooot gooooooood...

The first thing I dealt with was the fact that I had to make him look heavy, cause he always had this seam of light underneath him that screwed it up. So I put a little dark wad of tape behind him where the camera can't see which blocks the light and makes him look like he's sitting properly.

Now my biggest problem:

I can't get the dog thing to stay in one place while I animate him. One idea I've thought up is to glue a magnet to some pins, and push the pins into his butt. Then I could put another magnet underneath the table to pin him down, but I just don't think that will be strong enough. Sam said I could stick a wire in him that would pin him down or something... I dunno. I'm just not sure how to get something in there that's strong enough to hold him in one place, while not ruining the paint job.

Freaking out a little because this is definitely a very hard problem to solve in a good looking way.

EDIT: The magnet idea totally is gonna work. I stuck some pins on it and put them up in his butt. Haven't tested it in front of the camera yet, but it's looking pretty promising!!

Zelda: The Movie

2008-04-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

A high class april fools joke: The Legend of Zelda.

Looks pretty cool, only solidifies that fact that a Zelda movie could never ever ever be made properly. The flying spinning guys though, those look pretty sweet... *thumbs up*

Finished my puppets!!

2008-03-30T22:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't painted the eyes on the dog yet. Also I need to decide of some new way to make the pins in eyes and mouth shapes stay attached to the eye and mouth pieces. The super glue keeps coming off for some reason, not cool.

I'm finally done building the puppets! I've been working for months for these little guys (I figured out that it's probably a little over 50 hours each).

I'm so excited!

It's My Fault they can't find the leak

2008-03-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

Oh wtf they're blaming all their invalid gas readings on me! They weren't picking up any natural gas with their instruments, but my apartment is right next to where they do all that stuff. So they decided that half of the problems they're having with everything is that my apartment is giving off an odor (from when I baked that foam latex about a month and half ago) that is messing with their instruments.

Wtf, I didn't do shit!!

Gas leak in my apartment building...

2008-03-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

2:30 in the morning I'm trying to go to sleep and security is pounding on my door. Apparently there's a gas leak (which there definitely was, you could smell it pretty strongly in the hall). Now I'm stuck over at the school with nothing except a cell phone, my clothes, and an open computer lab. I'm kinda freaking out about the fire department clomping through my mess of an apartment destroying delicate projects (see previous post) trying to find a gas leak that was in another apartment the whole time. If my building gets set on fire I am going to flip the hell out in a go-into-shock sort of way.

The Props for my Stop Motion Final Are Done!!

2008-03-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

So today I finished the last of my props for my stop motion final.

This is the chair, it's not very detailed so I'm kinda getting it out of the way first. It's barely seen, it's only going to be used as a "Oh... looks like that's kind of a chair back there" kind of prop:

This is the desk my egg man will sit at. It's made of aluminum and the wood laminate is a wood texture I made and printed off the computer:

These are the puppets. They're not painted yet but that *should* only take a day to do:

These are sheets of paper. On one side it's an expense report I found on google and on the other side it's a tax form about like... property taxes or something... In between the sides is a little piece of tinfoil so it retains shape. I photoshopped the expense report into being about my birthday. It says stuff about how Colin and Dylan and I went to Pancho's and had tequilas and how I got a videogame from Julie. Also the paper is signed by me and BATMAN!!!

These are replacement mouths and eyes that will get pushed into the egg shaped guy's face for different frames.

This is the stamp he will use and his favorite mug:

This is the suitcase he carries around with him, the inside isn't nice looking cause you never see it, but it does open up with little hinges and it's cool.

These are the tubes that come down from nowhere that deliver the pieces of paper.

Next I gotta move all the furniture in my house and make my gigantic white sweep. Also I have to paint my puppets which is really important and I keep not doing it for some reason?

Anyway, END POST.

I google image searched "poor taste" today.

2008-03-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

These are the fruits of my labor:

Man masturbates onto woman on an airplane while she sleeps...

2008-03-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

How does something like this even happen???

Story goes as follows:
Woman sleeps on plane.
Wakes up 20 minutes before the flight is over to a man suddenly sitting in the seat next to her, he is masturbating and staring at her.
Woman hides face in embarrassment and runs her fingers through her hair.
There is semen in it.
Eventually she is able to get the attention of the person in front of her who then comforts her and confirms that it is in fact semen.

wtf??

1) How does this woman not completely flip the hell out when she sees this happening next to her?
2) How does this woman not completely flip the hell out when she finds that his has happened on her?
3)How do you not completely flip the hell out when you find out that this just happened to the woman behind you?
4)How does no one notice something like that? I mean the position you would have to put yourself in to not only masturbate, but to then get it in her hair? That's a big distance to cover. You can't move anywhere on a plane without everyone around you knowing about it.

21st Birthday!

2008-03-14T00:18:00.000-07:00

My family took me out to dinner for my 21st birthday tonight, it was the most expensive dinner I've ever had. I went to a place called Murry's and I had a 14 oz mustard with peppercorn steak and some red wine (Didn't like it, went back to being middle class and got a coke). It's supposed to be the best steak house in Minneapolis. Get back to my apartment, helped someone with some homework, go out drinking a little with Colin and Dylan, then come home and am retelling the night online when I realize: MY LEFTOVERS ARE STILL IN MY PARENT'S CAR!!!! NOOOOOO!!

AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGH!!!!!

I'm just so stunned at my incompetence. This of course had to happen on the same night that I was talking about: "oh yeah, I never forget leftovers, like ever, I'm always so focused on the great meal I'm gonna have the next day that I-" blah blah blah STUPID.

Video of a really good dancer

2008-03-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

This girl is going to be a star some day:

Greg Simkins

2008-03-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

Greg Simkins is a guy I just found today. Kate linked me to a site he was featured on. He's sort of a surrealist that has a strong focus on character.

He also did this picture, which I had seen before and didn't know he did:

Pretty cool stuff. I like it. Go to his site.

Your brain can now control videogames!

2008-03-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

There's a company that has just created the first consumer quality videogame brain controller. As in you put this headset on and it converts your brainwaves into movement inside a videogame. Apparently it can also figure out what kind of facial expressions you're making and can put those on your in game avatar: Brain controller.

I would go with the only downside to it being that the controller is 300 dollars and that you would have to start making games that support it, but I mean come on, it reads your mind! That's pretty cool. I was at the gas station today and there were TV's at the pumps that were advertising to me, this is reason number two in just one day that I feel like I'm in the future.

Marmo and the Awesome Grandma

2008-03-07T00:05:00.001-08:00

I would post a single picture from this series, but it's all one giant image. Check this lady out: Awesome grandma

On another note, of something that I personally have done, this is an illustration I did of a toy named Marmo. He's pretty action packed; he yells a lot.

Gorilla made of coat hangers

2008-03-04T20:24:00.000-08:00

So I was looking for pictures of gorillas (cause gorillas are awesome), and I came across this picture:

It's a gorilla made of coat hangers.

Don't care if you've already seen it, it's effin' sweet and deserves a repost. It was made by this guy.

It's pretty good stuff, none of it catches my eye like this gorilla though.

Mario and Luigi

2008-03-02T16:36:00.001-08:00

This is another picture I did last semester for illustration class.

Mario and Luigi are pretty epic:

I'd kinda like to give this treatment to some other characters that aren't supposed to look like that. Like maybe Sonic, Kirby, Donkey Kong, that atari game Centipede, Pikmin, Godzilla, maybe pokemon, I dunno.

Expression Changes!

2008-03-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

So I made this video for my stop motion class, we were supposed to show a face changing expressions:

First Post

2008-02-28T23:30:00.000-08:00

+1 amirite?

So here's a picture I made for illustration class, the assignment was to make a UFO. Get this, I'm sitting here watching bernie mac, and they're talking about blogs right now!!

Crazy huh?

Rhetorical question, yes it is.