Iron Man

Going back to my roots here. Iron Man is going to be a movie, directed by the same guy that did Elf and wrote Swingers.... hmmmm.

Myth Restaurant (SF)

After reading this blog review of Michael Mina, complete with very nice photos, I commented on a recent trip to Myth Restaurant which I'm reposting here...

Recently went to Myth Restaurant. The chef was an alum of Gary Danko I think. It's more casual than GD - a hip restaurant but full of older people...? Food was quite good but not outstanding. (Absolutely loved GD btw.)

Interior design is very open so you can see across the whole room. We were seated next to a pair of women. I ended up staring at one of them who I thought was strikingly unattractive. Then I realized she was a man. Yep, a man, baby! (Austin p) She was decked out - very convincing wig, full-on makup, nice dress. His date was a (biological) woman who looked just like him. He/she must have been a regular b/c many of the staff, including the chef i think, kept visiting their table to make conversation.

Made me think of that movie with Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Lange...what was it...googlesearchnetflixsearch... found it!

(i use y! movies for cast & crew profiles, better than imdb.)

Narbonic

The above are the main characters from an online comic called Narbonic. This was a daily online strip that ran for about 5 years and never missed a day until it recently concluded its run on December 31, 2006. I've met and hung out with Shaenon Garrity, the creator, several times and she's supercool. I got into the strip in the middle of its run but now that it's over they're re-running the strip from the beginning with "director commentary" written at the bottom.

Quickie

A drawing of Merritt at the computer desk in the basement room.

Monterey was fun and relaxing. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium every day, getting the full value, and then some, of our membership. The food at their cafe/cafeteria is quite good and impressed us every time we ate there. Their coffee it oustanding. Oh, and the aquarium is great too.

Monterey

Every Christmas/New Year we've made a pilgrimage to Monterey. We stay at the Carmel Valley Ranch where you can find a decent deal in the offseason. We go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which is wicked cool. Monterey is a nice town and Carmel, though pricey, is also nice. Since my mom-in-law was in town this past xmas we postponed our trip till this weekend. This ain't much of a post but I've been on a roll so I want to keep it going.

GNO - Bowling

Every month I try to organize a "Guy's Nite Out" (GNO) for me and my male buds. The first successful congregation was a Thai restaurant in Portrero Hill. The second was the movie "Babel". A few nights ago we went bowling. The above sketch includes the guys who showed up: Ethan, Geoffrey, Mitchell and myself. It's fairly random as to who shows up. But it's good to bond, hang and have a few beers.

I suck at bowling.

First we went to Serra Bowl in Serramonte, but they are closed to the public from 6pm to 9pm Mon thru Fri for League play. The entryway reeked of pot smoke. My friend, Mitchell, ran into a highschool classmate from Little Rock, Arkansas. She introduced Mitchell to her fiance and he, too, reeked of pot smoke. We were on our way to Yerba Buena Bowl instead. The fiance said he used to manage a league there. We asked if they had league night that night, he said no, they're more into the "corporate" thing now. I have no idea what that means.

We liked Yerba Buena Bowl. Small but fairly empty. And they had beer. But instead of pot smoke in the doorway they had cops.

Tracing the Progressive Raunchiness in Modern American Television

I start with The Simpsons in the 1980's. Matt Groening's depiction of the American family gripped the nation by the funnybone and never let go. It was accurate, blunt, unapologetic and hilarious. Only in animation could you get the spontaneous timing and outrageous visual gags. It stereotyped and made fun of stereotypes and became its own stereotype. There was subversive content in television before, but this was raunch on primetime television... for over two decades!

Married with Children took the Simpsons into live action but with two twists. First, there was no didactic punchline, nor redeeming quality, nor lesson learned. It was even more bold than its animated counterpart because it just gave a slice of ugly life, let us laugh at it, and left us with the conclusion that that's just the way it is, fugly. The second was sex - and lots of it. Married with Children flirted with cancellation almost ever season but continued to defy the networks it made money for.

And then came South Park. The Santa vs. Jesus tape of South Park made its way around thanks to the internet in 1997, heralding the current age of viral video youtube-ification. And people were just slack-jawed at the boundaries the cut-out kids were crossing, stomping, demolishing. Raunch reached all new levels thanks to Stone and Parker. But in their comedy there was often a point being made if not a moral, illustrating a "Hey look at how ridiculous this is."

Then Family Guy arrived and said, "You thought that was raunchy? I'll show you raunchy." It was cancelled amid controversy and then revived due to rabid DVD sales and audience uproar. There is no moral or point being made other than, "Let me show you how bad we can be on national tv." It's often just plain gross.

Robot Chicken on Comedy Central is nothing less than pure genius. And just plain wrong. It takes Saturday morning cartoons from our childhood, soap commercials, current celebrities and everything under the sun and puts them all together in a stop-motion extravaganza, juxtaposing elements in a way only animation can. It's rude, crude satire and you can't help but gawk at what new stratospheric levels of raunch American television has reached today.

Pyongyang

Irene got me this book for the holidays and here's my review.

"Pyongyang: Notes from North Korea" by Guy Delisle
A Canadian animator goes to North Korea to supervise the production of the television animation he's working on and he tells his tale in graphic novel format.

It was good. Pretty straightforward but dry and witty and honest. Nothing glamorous but the honest depiction illustrated the extreme situation in an extremist country.

My mother is originally from North Korea. Just as the Korean War was breaking out her family fled, as many did, to South Korea. She remembers them carrying lots of rice and riding the train with many other people. She still has relatives back in North Korea so whenver there are talks of reunification it's too difficult for her to contemplate. I think there are a lot of stories like hers.

So reading this story made me think a lot about her and the relatives I'll probably never meet.

The mexicans are coming...

Last night I saw "Children of Men" directed by Alfonso Cuaron who also directed "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". It was very good.

Last week I blogged a review of "Babel" directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who also directed "Amores Perros" and "Life's a Bitch".

Both of these directors hail from Mexico. Both films put the audience right in the action, the panic and the confusion. They are visceral. While Babel is set in modern times, Children of Men is set in the scifi but not-so-removed future. I can't say enough about the quality of both these films and the skill of their directors. But if I were an Oscar voter and had to choose one I'd probably choose Babel.

Brothers

The next pencil test animation I'm working on is called "Brothers" and the above is a concept sketch of the three characters. Although I was learning 3D animation with applications like Maya, I was also introduced to "Traditional" animation using the good ol' pencil, paper and a light table.

I've found the traditional pencil test animation to be a very quick and rewarding way of seeing your idea come to life. Animating in 3D can be quick once the models are created, getting to that stage takes a gargantuan amount of time. So I do pencil tests.

Movies I'm looking forward to:
Pan's Labyrinth
300
The Transformers

"Bare" Storyboard

The assignment was to tell a story in 24 frames. I used the '3 tries' method where the main character tries something 3 time and on the third time succeeds or fails, leading up to the punchline. I made an animatic out of the boards above but when I upload it, some frames are lost for some reason. Hopefully the image above is big enough (click for larger image) to read.

I realize that I'm just posting older material and have not been actually making a new drawing a day. But it's better than not posting at all...?

Dad

This is a drawing I did of my Dad several years ago. He had just taken a shower and was reading a book on the bed.

When my Dad stopped drinking for good I asked him if he noticed any difference in his life. He thought about it for a while and said that when he read a book before going to bed, he would wake up the next morning with no memory of what he had read and would end up re-reading the same pages night after night. After he stopped drinking he could remember what he had read and got through books much faster. That was the only difference he could think of.

My mother snorted.

Book Reviewk

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
I had heard of this author years ago but not read anything by her. I recently saw a trailer for a movie called "The Namesake" based on her novel of the same name. So I started reading this book of short stories before said novel. It's excellent, beautifully written. Why are most short stories so freakin sad and depressing?

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Again, beautifully written. I liked the story as well but thought it really glossed over certain obvious areas like sexual identity/insecurity in a predominantly white town. Or maybe that was just me.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Oof. Great book. A page-turner. Sad. Romantic. Satisfying. Didn't end poorly which lots of books with great premises often do. Highly recommend.

Model sheet

For my thesis, I'm developing 5 stories. All five will be storyboarded and one or more will be created into an animatic. I have 3 stories that are close to finished and 2 others yet to be conceived.

One of the stories is called "Heart" and it's about a robot that wants to be a part of something. The original version of this story can be found as an animatic at this link.

Some feedback I got from this version was that they didn't understand why the robot fell in love with the car and why he'd go through such drastic depths to 'save' it. So I went on a long twisting, winding, convoluted plot redesign that ended up with a practically brand new storyline. The above image is a model sheet for the characters in the new Heart story.

Movie Reviewee

I've seen 3 movies in the theatres that are probably going to be nominated for an Oscar or two if not Best Picture.

Little Miss Sunshine
Very funny, very good. I'm a big fan of the ensemble cast. I listened to the Creative Screenwriters Magazine podcast of Michael Arndt who wrote the film and currently works fulltime at Pixar. Excellent interview. My favorite bit, "And where is your grandad now?" "In the trunk of our van."

The Queen
Good film, well made but I wasn't completely blown away by it. Helen Mirren was, as usual, perfection. An interesting film but a little dry and not very dramatic. But I still give it the thumbs up.

Babel
Harrowing. A very very good film. I felt the panic of all the situations (and there were many) and I wasn't taken out of the story at any point. I highly recommend this flick but not if you don't like tense films that leave you feeling more than a little drained.

Farmer Jim

This is Farmer Jim. I drew the sketch of him above then modeled him in Maya then made his tractor and created the animation found at this link

The animation came out slow for some reason but you get the general idea.

A post a day makes the guilt go away

My main New Year's Resolution is to post a drawing each day. What I really want to do is draw every day, practice drawing everything so I have more vocabulary of physical objects in my fingertips to use in my stories. The above is from my sketchbook, made up monster type.

Thanksgiving in Seattle

My oldest brother has been living in Nairobi, Kenya with his wife and son. He is an epidemiologist doing AIDS research, she works for PEPFAR. He is associated with the University of Washington in Seattle and comes back to the States to write a paper and teach for a few months out of the year. So this Thanksgiving my family had a Chung Reunion in Seattle. It was the first time all the Chung cousins would be together, my middle brother lives in Las Vegas and they're expecting their second in April.

I like Seattle a lot. Even though it rains a ton. Apparently it's been a record-shattering November in terms of rainfall, but we actually had a few days where the sun came out. It was a very nice Thanksgiving. My parents really lucked out with 3 great daughters-in-law who all get along really well with each other. Everybody helped out with everything and I think everyone had a relaxing time. It was special to see my sons interacting with my brothers' sons.

Next week, my brother returns to Kenya and we will not see him for at least another year.

Listing

There are animation/storyboard artist blogs that I read out there that are very good. Right now there's a trend going on amongst them where they're listing their favorite 20 movies of the PAST 20 YEARS. So from 1986 to 2006 here's my short list that I can come up with
Adaptation
Big Night
The Iron Giant
Traffic
LOTR
Sexy Beast
6th Sense
Finding Nemo
Memento
Kill Bill

But if I were to get rid of the time limit and say all-time favorite films, here's a quick list (note some movies above may have not made it to this list):
Amadeus
Star Wars (1977)
Jaws
Breaking Away
Tron
The Iron Giant
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Three and Four Musketeers (1973, 1974)
Glengarry Glenross
The Hunt for Red October
Resevoir Dogs
You Can Count on Me
Big Night
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Heat

web app reviews + book review

If there is one book every person must read this summer - or, er, fall - it's Freakonomics. If you've already read it, read it again. I'll be quoting from this book in future blogs, there are some really fascinating excerpts to digest. The premise is basically that conventional wisdom doesn't explain reality - human self-interest does, and the numbers prove it. Go. Read. This. Book. Now.

WEB APP REVIEWS:
GMail
I like Gmail but have not migrated to it as my primary mail client, mainly because Y! Mail is just good enough and I'm too lazy to make the transition. However, some migrations are worthwhile, more on that below.

New Y! Mail Beta
I've tried the new Y! Mail Beta and while I think it's nice that it's following the "Outlook UI" (clean and powerful)... it's just too damn slow. Within a few days I had switched back to the old Y! Mail. Why? Because of performance. The new UI isn't worth the slow performance hit.

Google Calendar
The most impressive user interface I've used in a long, long time. I'm not the most savvy web calendar user, so maybe there are some great internet calendar apps out there that are better or that Google is copping from, but this thing blew me away. Love the color labelling mutliple calendar feature and it's a very straightforward UI. Can't say enough good things. One drawback is my general complaint on Ajax - yes, it's fast but it can be buggy and sometimes I'm not sure if something has been stored or not. Makes for some annoying run arounds. But I was so impressed with this product that I manually transferred all my datebook data from my Palm Desktop app to Google Calendar. And it's already worth it.

Firefox 2.0b2
Two steps foward, no steps back. The new icons are nice, but so were the old ones. At least it wasn't a step down, but not a huge improvement either. (When it comes to icon design my motto is "as long as it doesn't suck." Harder said than done.) Fading out the tabs is brilliant - it differentiates them from the browser chrome. Giving each individual tab a delete "x" button is a no-brainer, allowing for users to delete a tab they're not presently viewing. Also nice is if you click on a link that opens a new tab, then deleting that tab pops you back to the original tab. If you don't know what I mean, too bad, I don't want to try to explain it any better.

Digg.com
I'm a recent convert to Digg. Apparently it's a brand new web design which is also quite nice.