Monday, December 15, 2008

Presentation and junk

I had a brief presentation yesterday at school. It wasn't so much me presenting anything, but a video of my work being watched by the class and 2 teachers. I got feedback and critiques on everything I have been working on. Some people were going crazy this weekend from my class (i.e. not getting any sleep over this thing). They had really nice presentations, but in the end, the teachers focused only on our work. Its great to hear what needs work and what is looking alright. I suppose during my 2 week break I should continue practicing.

So as for how our classes work, I am with the same 30 people everyday for my classes. We are like a family. Our class is 3D77. Since I was at school for about 20 hours this weekend (I slept between saturday and sunday, dont worry) working in the lab, I had a chance to meet more of the people from the previous term, 3D76. They are pretty interesting people! Everyone is incredibly nice and it is good to interact with eachother and ask questions.

一人の3D76の人はYoutubeで、日本のゲーム番組を見ていた。私そこに行って、見ながら、紹介した。面白いことに、その学生は日系カナダ人で、両親は彼に子供のころから、日本語を教えていた。びっくりしたことに、彼も名古屋に住んでいた!なぜか聞かなかったけど、面白いだ!日本語を練習できて、懐かしい名古屋について話せる!いいね。

Ok, I just wanted to practice a little Japanese. I dont feel like translating it though.
So here is the presentation:

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Animation! continued

There's one more line test that I wanted to add, I just forgot to upload it. It is a front walk cycle. I like this guy a little more than the others.



Finally, I wanted to give out the links of my instructors. They are all really amazing.

Pat Heinicke My Classical Animation teacher

Emily Nguyen Pat's teacher's aid (who is effing only 20 years old!!?)

Mike West My Character Design teacher. Very talented artist.

Animation!

Remember how I wrote I take classical animation along with the 3D? Well, I finally have some (crappy) animation exercises that I can show. They are really simple and quite standard (nothing to be excited about) but I think it is a good way for me to look back later on, and see my progress (if there is any of course).

The first is a stick guy cracking a whip. The exercise was to teach us about secondary animation. The guy's arm is driving the whip and we had to figure out how to make the whip look like it is following the arm correctly.



This next one is a walk cycle of a boring character from the side.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Almost break time!

Ive been pretty busy at school, getting things done before the end of the term. I have about one and a half weeks left before I finish. I have to compile some of my work from each class to present to my instructors for critique. So, I have been staying at school and correcting much of my completed work. Its going fairly well; but there seems to be so much more to do. I will keep you updated on my progress here.

In the meantime, AJ sent me this link. http://www.playauditorium.com/

Its amazing. Its a simple game but it combines audio and visual so well. It is addicting and challenging, but rewarding simply to hear what music will be created. Definitely check it out.

Monday, December 1, 2008

American Thanksgiving in Canada!!

On Saturday the 29th, I celebrated Thanksgiving. As you know from the previous post, I had school all day on the 27th, so no time for turkey. I made the suggestion to the American students that we should try and get together on Saturday for dinner. Everyone in the class was invited. Well, it turns out that many people really wanted to join! So, Cecilia was a gracious hostess and hosted the dinner at her apartment.

During the day before the dinner, we decided to go to Costco to get food. Cristal has a Costco card from Mexico and it works here too. We checked for turkey, but Canadians celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday in October and it was still too early for Christmas turkey. So, we decided to get 3, 3-4 lb. chickens and roast them. I got some ingredients for corn bread too.

I went to Cecilia's apartment after that and started to cook the chickens. I made garlic lemon butter to put under the skins of each chicken and topped them with lemon slices. They smelled really good as they cooked. People slowly started to show up at that point. Everyone brought a little something too, food or wine, or something to share. Once the cornbread was done (it was started after the chicken, only one oven) it was time to eat. I have to say, everything that everyone made was really delicious! It was a great dinner all around. It was really cool too because this was a first Thanksgiving dinner for probably half of the people that came. There were 14 or 15 people that went I think. Great! I have many pictures from the night, so take a look.


Andrej seems pretty happy about Thanksgiving.


I think Cristal is dancing?

This picture kind of looks like a 90's sitcom intro. All we need is Cristal's name in yellow at the bottom.

Here's some food.

Getting ready to eat.

Cecilia wanted a picture of all the shoes.



Cecilia serving desert. It was very good.


TEXAS!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving

Hello. So today is Thanksgiving! This will be the first time I am away from home on Thanksgiving Day. Im also in a different country, so we dont celebrate it here. In fact, today we get an extra class! I have school from 9:oo am until 4:00 pm, and one at 7:00-10:00! How great! There are only about 6 or so American students in my class, but I think this saturday the class would like to get together and celebrate. We are going to have a dinner or something, so it should be fun. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sculpture

Hey there. I said that I would post some pictures of my sculpture (work in progress) so here they are.




He's modeled after a drawing I made of a man on the cover of a National Geographic. It was just going to be a random sculpture for practice, but I think I might end up trying to incorporate him into my final animation.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Food fight!

I thought this comic was pretty hilarious.
It comes from a web-comic called The Perry Bible Fellowship. I suggest taking a look. Most of the comics are horrible (ethically and morally) yet amazingly funny!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Party and VFX

I figured I would put this post in a separate post from the classes. Otherwise it would be too much to read. A friend had a party last night. We try to get as many people from our program to hang out as much as possible. They are one of the best learning tools we have. So, my roommate Andrej and I all arrived there at about 10. We were surprised to see my 3D modeling teacher there. He's only a few years older than me and was a student at the school a few years ago. It was actually really cool. We asked him all sorts of questions about school, working, and animation stuff. I'm starting to realize how huge this industry for 3D animation and Visual Effects is. I could potentially end up anywhere in the world. Depending on what field I get into, I might have to move around a lot too. I'm not sure what to expect, but I am pretty excited.

While at the party, I was talking to a few people from the 3D program that are in their fifth term (there are six terms per year for 3D, and each term a new group of students starts). These students are almost complete, so it was interesting to hear their stories. They are all so busy with school it seems.

Today, about 10 students (me included) from my program went to Granville Island hotel for a VES (Visual Effects Society) event. Well, the hotel hosted a reception but the event took place at a nearby art school. We heard from speakers from various studios in Vancouver and California. The visual effects industry is really interesting. There are obvious examples like the Matrix or Harry Potter movies; however, there was an example of when visual effects are used in a way that you don't even notice them. The example was the movie Changeling, with Angelina Jolie. The movie is set in San Francisco in the 1920's I believe. The effects were used to create things like extensions to the scene. There are buildings there were added digitally. There are also digital "extras" to add a bit of variety. During the credits, there is a 2 minute shot of a road with foot and car traffic. There were real extras and real cars for the first 30 seconds or so, but the rest of the time the cars and people are all digital. It is completely seamless.

So, basically, this event was a good taste at what VFX has to offer. By my fourth term, I have to select a path. I can choose modeling, animation, or VFX. The more I learn about each, the easier I think it will be for me to make a decision. I still cant decide if I want to work with movies, commercials (which seems kind of lame, but I can make a lot of money and the studios are all over) or with video games. In February, my school will be hosting a video game event. I will hopefully have a better idea of how the gaming industry works with animation.

School update

I have been fairly busy these past weeks so I have not been able to update regularly. School is still going well. We are already going on to week five; the time seems to be flying already. I am getting used to my classes and my classmates. I am starting to understand who is good at what and how we can all work together. I'll update you on my classes and give my class schedule!

Classical Animation: This class meets on Mondays and Thursdays for three hours each. We have learned the basics of animation and are applying them in simple exercises. Due on Monday is a "whip" assignment in which a simple (very simple) character cracks a whip. Its interesting to draw everything and so rewarding when you see the little guy moving!

Sculpture: This one meets on Monday nights, from 6:00-9:00. Its a very relaxed class where we build a bust of a human (or human like) character out of Super Sculpey. Its great so far. I have my model basically complete. On Monday I will smooth out some texture, add a hat, and continue adding more texture and details. Its really been an interesting class.

Character Design: This class is on Tuesdays from 9:00-12:00. Its exactly what it sounds like. For Tuesday's homework assignment, I had to create a "character line-up". I was just supposed to create characters with with no detail. The teacher wanted each to represent a different archetype. The character lineup is used all the time in pre-production for film and video games. Its helps create a size relationship between the characters. In addition to this assignment, I had to create 5 faces as different as possible. After that, I had to pick one face and draw it with 5 emotions. It was a good exercise.

Life Drawing: This class is on Tuesdays from 1:00-4:00. I feel like I am getting more loose with my drawings. I am taking what I have learned from previous classes and applying it naturally when I draw. I am very pleased with the progress.

3D modeling: I have this classes on Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00-12:00. I am using software called XSI. It has recently been purchased by Autodesk. Autodesk is apparently trying to monopolize the entire 3D software market. In this class I just finished modeling a dog! Its really fun. We are working on rigging it now. Simply put, we are adding an animateable structure to the dog (bones really).I will post images of it later. After this assignment, I think we will model a toy car.

Texturing: This is a new class from 1:00-4:00 on Wednesdays. It will take us through the basics of applying textures and materials to models we create in our other classes.

History of Animation: 5:00-8:00 on Wednesdays. Basically, we go to a theater on campus and watch cartoons. Our teacher is very passionate about animation and has a lot of knowledge on the subject. It also sounds like a documentary whenever he talks. I found out we will have two assignments. The first will be a quiz, and the second is to draw our teacher. He showed us small collections of drawings that previous students created and they are hilarious. This is going to be such a fun assignment.

Composition: This class is thursdays from 1:00-4:00. Its a fairly boring class in which we draw compositions based off of small paragraphs from stories. The next assignment was a passage from this horribly written amateur action/horror story... Our guidelines are to draw a part of the story and use only two colors (not black and white).

Photoshop: Its a new class this week on Thursdays from 7:00-10:00pm. I dont know what to expect.

3D animation: This class is on Fridays from 1:00-4:00. Here we take the principles of animation we use in 2D, and apply them in 3D. My assignment for next week is to have a simple character (a pair of legs) jump off of a box. Its pretty neat.

So thats all of my classes.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

More Animations

Here are a couple more animations I saw yesterday. The first one was created by Pixar. I believe it is a short that came out just before Wall e.


via videosift.com

The next was a winner at Siggraph 2008.


This one was also in the 2008 Siggraph show:


Enjoy!

Cultures and Connections

I came to Vancouver to learn animation. Well, that's what I thought at least. I am starting to realize that this is not the only thing I am gaining from being here.

Sure, in school I am learning all about animation, but my 3D modeling teacher made a very important point at the end of class yesterday. He said that one of the most important parts of being at VFS is our peers. Each student in my class is learning like I am, but each is also a good teacher. We can go to eachother for help when its needed.

One other thing I like about my classmates is how we are all from differnt backgrounds and cultures. We come form all over the world. There are three students who speak Spanish as their first language, but each comes from a different country. To me, a non-spanish speaker, it is really interesting to listen to them talk. I can hear the differences between Mexican spanish, Spanish from Barcelona, and Venezuelan Spanish. Its been great for me too, because I have been speaking Italian quite a bit. Two of the Spanish speakers speak Italian very well and the girl from Turkey also knows a bit. I have learned how international South Park is. I have learned three new English words (from non-native speakers), and I learned that Hungarian is probably one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn/speak (it is one of the few languages in Europe that is not indo-european).

Yesterday, some friends came over to the apartment. Justin, Caio, Andrej and I went to KFC. Yea, fancy. It was Caio's very first time eating KFC, so he was excited. We were supposed to go to another person's house after, but we were procrastinating. We decided to go to a liquor store and purchase some alcohol. Canada has a riducilous tax on alcohol which causes a regular sized bottle of Grey Goose Vodka to go from a normal USD price of about $30-50 to being $109.99. It was insane. So we managed to get semi-cheap alcohol, and headed back to my apartment. We played video games and watched animation things (yea, thats what animation students do in their free time) until Cecilia and Panya came over. We started to play some card games that Caio was teaching us. One was called Truco. It was quite interesting, but it was taking me too long to get the hang of it. He taught us like 50 other popular Brazilian card games after that too. It was fun.

So, here is one of the short animations we watched:

Watch falling art.divx in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Its quite disturbing, but the character design is amazing. I will look for more of the animations we watched and post links a little later.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Diwali

As I am sure many of you do not know, the Hindu festival Diwali (or Festival of Lights) has been going on for more than a week now. Vancouver is home to many south asians, mainly from the Punjabi speaking areas of India, thus; Diwali is celebrated here as well. Yesterday and today are the main events for Vancouver. I went to a community center yesterday to see what Diwali is all about. It was quite amazing. I arrived and entered a large room full of people, bright colors, delicious smells, and loud (but excellent) music. I bought some food and sat down to watch the performers. I have pictures, but I wasn't able to move around as freely as I wanted to, so there are some annoying angles and distracting microphones in some of the pictures. I also regret not bringing my zoom lens (I had room for only one).





This band below is called Sangha. They use traditional instruments from India, Iran, and Arab countries. Their compositions are original and really great. You can hear a sample here . I suggest taking a listen.
This artwork here is made entirely of lentils and other legumes.
I am going to try and find all sorts of interesting cultural events while I am here. It should be fun.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Class!

Well, the whole reason I came to Vancouver has finally started. Monday was my first day of classes. Since this program is only a year long, I have one real break during the end of December for only two weeks. Besides that, I have school continually for the next year. Because of this, the classes are set up different from normal semester based schools. I have a series of terms, each about 7 or 8 weeks long. The first three or four terms are used to build skills such as life drawing, composition, animation concepts, and more fine-art related courses instead of computer animation. This is mainly because an animator must understand how things move and be able to apply those mechanics to any media.

Monday, I had a basic intro "meeting" in order to learn about the school, meet my program managers, and get a tour of the building where most of my classes are. After this, I had classical animation. Finally, I had a sculpture course. The day started at 10 and ended at about 8:30 or so.

The classical animation class is quite interesting. My teacher is great. Besides being completely passoinate about animation, he is also able to remember 30+ people's names he meets for the very first time (Many of them with difficult to pronounce names too)! We learned basic concepts in animation (many I had known from previous courses at DePaul) and applied them to the standard "Bouncing Ball" exercise. This assignment is one that pretty much every animator does. All it is, is an animation of a ball bouncing. Whats great about it, is that a circle is quite simple to draw, and it teaches many animation concepts.

The next class was sculpture. Here, our goal is to sculpt a bust of basically any human or human like form we can imagine. We are using super sculpey because it is clean and easy to work with. This class is to help us get used to translating a drawing into the 3D world.

Today, I had only two classes. The first was Character Design, followed by Life Drawing. Character design is exactly what it sounds like. Its a great class. Our first assignment is to create 10 "characters" out of simple shapes. There will not be any details. I have a greater respect for cartoonists after starting this project. In the case of human characters, they have to have a great understanding of the body and how it is proportioned, as well as how it moves. They are able to take that knowledge and exaggerate it (both in design and how it moves) which really is quite amazing. I will show work if I have anything worth seeing...

Life drawing was also great. Its a 3 hour long class. Wanda, our model, came a few minutes late, but when she did, the instructor made us draw her for about 30 mins. We had 30 second poses, 2 min poses, a five minitue, and a 20 min pose. Our instructor wanted to see everyone's skill level. After this, he jumped right into giving techniques. He slowly divulged information througout the class, and each time he did, it seemed like my drawings became a little better (at least my understanding did). What I like about this teacher is that he explains a techniqe for drawing and looking. He told us to not be so concerned with what we think we see, but what we actually see. Ive heard this from every art teacher, but he really explained it well. By the end of the class, I felt a lot looser and more comfortable with my drawing. This is definitely noticable in the quality of my drawings. I am excited to see where I end up after several weeks.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Granville Island

So, I went to Granville Island on Sunday to see the Public Market. Granville Island is well, a small island, connected to Vancouver's West End by the Granville Bridge. There are many shops and restaurants on this small island, but its main attraction (besides the brewery) is the Public Market. Its basically a farmers market carrying just about anything (but good prosciutto).












I have made some frieds from school, so thats pretty cool. Since orientation, I have been hanging out with my roommate, Caio (from Brazil), and Andrej (from Hungary). I know I will get to know more people, its just been a rough week for everyone. So anyway, Caio and Andrej met Justin and I at the Granville Public Market on Sunday. It was fun. I have to say that the highlight of my day, was learning a new English word. Yes, English. Andrej kept using this word which sounded like this, fa-cool-tuh-tively. I just thought it was him saying a word and I couldnt understand his accent. Caio then mentioned that that word is also in portugese; "Facultativo". So, I looked it up online. Turns out, Facultatively is an English word... (they were using it as in the second example) Its sort of embarrasing when non-native speakers of my own language are teaching me new words. I did learn some Portugese after that, but no Hungarian yet though.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Last weekend before school...

Ok, so this weekend was the last weekend before school starts. On Saturday, I met up with Caio and Andrej at Stanley Park. Justin and I left pretty early and caught a bus up to the island park. We all walked around for a couple hours and as we were about to leave, we met Daniel. That was unfortunate, but in that two + hours, we ended up only touring the very eastern tip of the island. So, we will most definitely head back again. We all went to get cheap (really cheap) pizza for lunch, then hung out at a cafe, discussing 3D and animation related stuff for a couple of hours. It was a good time to get to know everyone and basically create a network of animators! In the long run, these people are going to be potential co-workers, or even potential business partners. Its great that everyone was from a different country too. After the cafe, Daniel went to his apartment, and Caio, Justin, Andrej and I traveled to the Beach, and then got some dinner. I can't wait to see what the beach is like during the summer time. Its beautiful, but it was quite chilly. I am finally uploading some pictures. All of the ones here are from Stanley Park and the beach.

This appears to be some sort of refinery.


This is a replica of the end of a ship that delivered supplies to and from Japan.








The area in the center is known as Dead man's Island. It was a burial place form the native people of this area. It was taken over by the Canadian Government and has become a military base.


This is a totem from the First Nations people of Vancouver. (First Nations is the term Canadians use for what we call Natives, i.e. Native Americans)


This is right by the beach. A building with a huge tree on top!!!!








So, something interesting about Vancouver's First Nations people: There seems to be a lot of work done to promote their existence in the area. For instance, Vancouver's hockey team (the Canucks...) uses a whale in this art style. I have also seen many shops and art galleries around town. I even found a beautiful mural under the Granville bridge in that same style. Pretty interesting.

I have more pictures from today to upload still, but that is a different story. Ill let you know tomorrow possibly. Oh, speaking of tomorrow, I am going to have a class late in the day with the director of EDIT: Animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit! Sorry for the confusion Alex.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Insight into Vancouver

I've been noticing a few things here in Vancouver. The population is 1/4 Chinese. That is quite a large amount. In the area where I live, there are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, European, and South Asians, well, a little of everything it seems. When I walk around town, I hear many different languages. English is not clearly dominant among the crowds of people. When I do hear English, it tends to be from someone speaking it as a second language. Its quite interesting to see how all of these different cultures interact with each other. In Chicago, there are definitely different cultures all thrown together. In fact, I'd say that there is even more variety in Chicago. The thing is, the west end is not very large, so the different communities cant be too separated. There is lots of overlapping. To me, it seems like there is less prejudice between the groups (although, there is always prejudice no matter where you are).

Interestingly, I did notice quite a few racially mixed couples here. There are many European Canadians with Asians. Its not always the oh so common Caucasian male with Asian female either, I have seen many Caucasian females with Asian males. Also, I have noticed South Asians with Hispanic, Caucasian and Afro-Canadian, and many other combinations. Its quite a good thing in my opinion.

One other thing I noticed about this area, and its not good at all, is the amount of homeless people. Every city has its homeless people, but there is an unsettling amount here. Many of them clearly have drug problems as well. There is a large China Town as well as a trendy area called Gastown; however, the surroundings of both areas get seedier as the sunlight wanes. It is unfortunately not uncommon to see people with needles in their arms around those parts.

More Vancouver

Its been taking a little while to get used to everything. I have been doing a lot of walking around the West End just to get an idea of the area and figure out where I can buy cheap stuff. I opened my bank account with TD Canada Trust the other day, and the woman that created the account went beyond customer service and printed out maps for me highlighting both areas of interest and places to go shopping at reasonable prices. So, as of now, we actually have some food in our fridge!

On Tuesday, there was another orientation, but this was for foreign students. I accidentally missed an hour of it due to getting an e-mail and handout with different times for the event. It was nothing special. I went with my roommate to get Ramen that night at 7, and we sent a mass e-mail to the students in our program. About 3 students actually replied, so I was happy. We got there and had about 6 people eating with us. After we ordered, about 6 more students came in. It was good to get together with them before school starts. After eating we all headed to a bar and had some drinks. It was a good night overall.

Yesterday was also good. I did more walking and exploring and found some pretty cool places. There is a Japanese market nearby the apartment, so that will fill all of my Japanese goods needs. I also found a Beard Papa! http://www.muginohousa.com/ I discovered Beard Papa in Hiroshima, so its pretty cool to see it here. Also, the location of Beard Papa was pretty cool. I can see both the ocean and mountains, so its really cool coming from flat Illinois.

School still doesn't start for several days and I'm getting nervous in anticipation. I just want it to start so I have something to do. Also, the orientation made it seem like our lives will end once school starts. Basically, everyone at the School (faculty and current students) say that we will be working our asses off. That is a good thing. Its just that when I hear how extreme it is, my imagination goes a little crazy and I keep thinking its near impossible to complete the year. I know it won't be easy, but once I start, theres no stopping. I'm already trying to come up with ideas for my final project, so Ill let you know about that later. OK, I will post more later, and maybe take some pictures too!

Monday, October 20, 2008

School Orientation

It went well today. I woke up at around 7 am, and Justin and I left around 8 for a quick walk to the Vancouver film center. We met our program advisors and received some paperwork to complete. We headed into the theatre area and had a brief presentation about what we can expect from the school. The man presenting stressed how the year will be a challenge for us. It won't be an easy year. But, I am looking forward to where I will end up after this.

After the presentation, we watched some student work and then met up with our program classmates and program advisors. After that we headed out to speak with vendors from various places. I spoke with a woman from a bank, so I am going to go tomorrow to set up an account. At this time, we also had a chance to mingle with the students and write our emails down. Its quite an interesting group it seems. People from all over he world. For example, theres some people from South Korea, Thailand, india, Pakistan, germany, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Mexico, Iceland, and probably more. This is just in the 3d animation program, of which there are only 30 students. Interestingly, there are at least 4 students in the incoming programs from Houston TX! (my roommate included.. hah) The Polish guy is from Worsaw, but before coming to Vancouver, he went to, suprise, Chicago to stay with his aunt for 2 weeks! Pretty cool I think.

After all the school junk, Justin and I went to find a microwave, and we will pick it up on sale tomorrow after more orientation. I got a cell phone too! Pretty exciting stuff. So I may or may not go to an Irish pub in a few to meet up with some people from the school, we'll see. Ill let you all know how everything goes.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Vancouver

Hey.

I made it to Vancouver! I had an interesting day yesterday. I hate flying. Not because I fear airplanes or anything like that, but because I always feel extremely rushed at the airports. Its like, once you get your boarding pass and get into security, bam, you better move as fast as possible. Oh well. So the flight itself was pretty ok. I was tired as hell though. It was about 4 hours from Chicago to Seattle. I sat at the window seat, the seat next to me was empty, and the one next to that a really nice grandpa sat. Everything was good, but, there was an annoying kid behind me that occasionally kicked my seat.

I made it to Seattle, and navigated the airport fairly easily. I had to wait in line at customer service at United for literally 1 to 1.5 hours. It sucked. I finally got my boarding pass and headed to the correct gate. The plane from Seattle to Vancouver was realllly tiny. It had propellers! The flight was 30 mins.

Arriving in Vancouver was easy. I had to go to Customs and they quickly showed me where to go next. I had to go to immigration after getting my bags, and by chance, saw my roommate. He got there about 1 and a half hours before me, but was stuck at agriculture forever because he had some plums... hah At immigration, the workers were kind of pushy, to the point of assholishness. The guy and girl helping me were pretty nice, and funny too. They told me that most people hate immigration officers and that they rank somewhere between meter-maids and lawyers. So i paid for my study visa and Justin mentioned the date his was good until, and I checked mine. It said I had to be out of Canada by Oct. 17th 2009. School doesn't end until Oct. 23 of 2009. So, i went back to immigration and they fixed it after some confusion.

We got a taxi to the apartment and passed through some very nice looking residential areas. Its cool to see the ocean and mountains too. I met my landlord, a very personable woman who is very welcoming. We got food after putting our stuff down. We walked around the city for a while, looking at stuff and buying some essentials. At one point, as we were walking down the street, i noticed that the English I heard being spoken gradually changed to Japanese, and Korean. Then I noticed I was the only white person.. it was strange, but cool.

There are tons of Asians here. Most are Chinese (from Hong Kong), Japanese, and Korean. I heard quite a bit of Spanish too, suprisingly. I read that Vancouver has a pretty sizable Peruvian population too. Oh, and if Mahasti is reading this, I met a Persian woman too!

So today, I walked around some more. We went to get more stuff for the apartment and walked all the way to near china town. The area went from upscale stores like Gucci, versace and whatnot, to crackhead filled street! Yea... China town was huge.

We went back home, and on the way, saw a little hot dog stand on the street corner. what was interesting is that it had like 20 people waiting in line. So, we had to see what was up. It was this http://www.japadog.com/en/ Its Japanese hot dogs, if that makes any sense. The guy taking the orders had a laminated sign over his shirt that said "I apologize, my English is very poor." or something like that. It was funny. As for the hot dogs, I had a miso mayo hot dog. It was on a toasted sesame bun, and the hot dog itself was called Kurobuta (meaning black pig in Japanese. Kurobuta is 100% pure all-natural Berkshire pork. Its the so-called "Kobe beef" of pork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef

It was one of, if not the most, delicious hot dogs Ive ever had. I cant even call it a hot dog, because the meat was actually meat. The miso added an interesting sweetness to it all and it was topped of with sprouts. I will definitely be going here again.

So, that was the excitement of my 2 days. I have orientation at school tomorrow, so I will get to meet all of my classmates. I'm pretty excited.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

New animation


I uploaded a new animation. Its only 30 seconds long; more of a test than anything. I took this image to the left (which I found on google) and animated it usingAdobe After Effects. Its nothing special, but it does what I wanted it to do.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

New Blog!

Ok, so I made a new blog to share my experiences in Vancouver and to show how school is going. So about the title... Mr. Witt from LT art class came up with the best technique for naming something (like artwork or a Blog in this instance) if you can't seem to think of one yourself. He said to take a science fiction novel, flip to a random page, and then point to a random spot. That sentence, word, or phrase is you new title! I used The Time Machine for my title. I still have to finish that book...

I'm still in Chicago and will be until October 18th. I met my roommate (from Houston) on the 24th while he was staying at a friends apartment by St. Xavier's. He's cool, and I'm glad I got to meet him before going to Vancouver.

I'm almost done getting everything ready and I can't wait to see Vancouver. Ok, so I'll keep you updated on everything.

Also, I finally uploaded my DePaul Animation I final.


PS - I should definitely be able to update this blog a lot more than my Japan blog, since I will be surrounded by computers pretty much all the time! Definitely e-mail me or comment if you have any questions or want to talk!