"Milo's Train" and the Auction

Our oldest son's preschool had an annual fundraising event where there is a live auction during dinner. The auction items are things parents have volunteered whether it's their summer home in the wine country, a package trip to san diego or box seats at Giants stadium. A parent who knew I was in school to become an animator suggested that I auction off my ability to make a cartoon. I thought, "No way."

But she was persistent and my wife got into the idea, so I figured why not. I said I would make an animatic starring the child as the protagonist of their very own story. In other words, whoever won my auction item, I'd go over their house, get to know their kid, take a few pictures, recordings, sketches and go back and make a story with their child as the hero, a story that would reflect the child's interest, a little snapshot of their mind at age 4.

But some people were still a little confused as to what an animatic was so I decided to make one for my son, Milo, and showcase that at the live auction event. In addition I printed out a color copy of the storyboards and bound it like a small children's book so people could flip through a hard copy.

The parent who was running the auction event asked me what the item price should be so they could estimate a starting bid. I replied I had no idea since I'd never done anything like this before and I didn't even know what story artists make. So we guesstimated the best we could and came up value of $1000 and a starting bid of $600.

When the bidding started, a number of parents raised their numbered paddles immediately. The bid quickly rose to over $1000. When it hit $1500 the number of bidders dwindled down to three. Then it became a bidding war between two families who happened to be sitting at the same table, right next to me. I was too shocked and embarrassed to look, I just kept my head down. The winning bid was $2000. It was the highest selling item of the night.

Below is the animatic I made for Milo called "Milo's Train".

Media Review

The Namesake
I liked the book and the film stayed pretty faithful to the novel. Ultimately, I was a little disappointed. Still 3 stars but a low 3. I think the movie was a little dry, I was expecting the cinematography to be more stunning, especially when you're shooting India which is such a visually intense place. The actors were all excellent. I liked Kal Penn and his mother played by Tabu was also very good, but the standout performance was the father played by Irfan Khan. He was exceptional. I would recommend seeing the movie just based on his understated performance.


Crash
I finally rented this somewhat controversial movie that won Best Picture in 2006. Controversial in that people thought Brokeback Mountain should have won Best Picture. I saw Brokeback first and I thought it was wonderful. People I know either liked or disliked the Crash, so I came in with low expectations. I came away thinking that Crash definitely deserved the Best Picture nod. I liked this movie a lot. Both Brokeback and Crash were Oscar worthy but I don't know which would have deserved it more. I can see why there are Crash-haters out there, but this film really spoke to me. There's a lot of anger in it, and I related to that anger.

Meet the Robinsons
Not horrrible. Not great. Kinda sorta okay, I guess. The visuals were awesome, the animation was also very good. The pace was strange. You could tell that the story was re-worked and patched together. There were some shots that didn't make sense at all. The main villain was very very fun to watch. I'm glad I saw it but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. How's that for a half-assed review.

Spiderman 3
Let me start by saying that I barely liked Spiderman 1, mainly because they totally got the Goblin wrong, missing a grand opportunity with Willem Defoe, and I thought it was a little too violent. I liked Spiderman 2 but thought it could do without a lot of the cheese-factor with Mary Jane, the action sequences were great. Here's what was good about Spiderman 3 - the Sandman visual effects scenes and Venom's visual effects scenes. The rest of this film sucked hard. All the criticism you may have read, I agree with. It was a pretty bad movie all in all.

The Proposition
Great movie. Highly recommend. Australian western. The landscape scenery was stunning. The acting superb. Visually crafted. If you like them brutal westerns I think you'll really like this movie.

The Departed
I saw Infernal Affairs which is the Hong Kong film that Departed is based upon. But they are two very different movies. Which I was glad to see. I thought Departed was great, but I think I would've voted for Babel for best picture instead. Still glad to see Scorsese finally get his oscar nod though.

Capote
Very good but I wasn't completely blown away by film as a whole. The performances were great, I really liked Catherine Keener. Obviously Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man, I always like him in whatever he's in, but the breakout performance for me was Clifton Collins Jr. who played one of the killers, Perry Smith. I thought I had seen him before and indeed, he played the gay Mexican hitman in one of my favorite movies, Traffic.

High School Football Theme

Two high school students modeled for us.

Clothed Figure Studio continues...

Mr Man Gets Away

This was an assignment from my storyboard class this semester: Mr Man (whose character design was predetermined) has to wake up, go to one other room in the house, then leave the house - make up the story.

PSI

I'm not a car person. I still drive the first car I've ever bought and owned, a 1997 Honda Civic EX. Yes, it's black. Yes, I'm asian.

But I do get a little obsessive when it comes to car maintenance and the latest zit on my mind was tire pressure.

My wife's Subaru Outback LL Bean edition has a leaky tire that I refill with air every once in a while but never checked the psi before. When I brought it in for a checkup at the dealer I asked them to be sure to check the pressure in the tires. They assured that they had when all was said and done. Shortly after I noticed that the leaky tire was low again, so I read up on the manual on what the correct psi is for front and back tires (30 psi front, 29 psi back) and got out my trusty tire pressure gauge (pictured above) and checked the pressure on ALL the tires.
Front driver side: 20 psi
Front passenger side (leaky): 10 psi
back driver side: 35 psi
back passenger side: 37 psi

Needless to say I corrected the tire pressure for all four wheels and keep an eye on the leaky one. My wife said she immediately noticed a difference in the way the car handled.

Then I checked MY car's tire pressure...
Front driver side: 20 psi
Front passenger side (leaky): 10 psi
back driver side: 20 psi
back passenger side: 15 psi

I corrected these as well and I did notice a difference in handling although it could be my imagination.

Moral of the story. Go get yourself a tire gauge. Check your tires when they're cold - as in not driven for at least 2 hrs. Add or release air as necessary.

From your friendly car maintenance man,
Fred.

in studio work...

More Sketches

Sketchbook

I have been drawing quite a bit lately but just haven't been posting the work. Here are some sketches from my sketchbook. You're going to see a lot of people's backs because people get a little antsy when they think they're being watched. Which they are.

This American Life

"This American Life" is a radio show that I've rediscovered in podcast format. It's a 50 minute broadcast of a particular theme delivered through three 'chapters' or individual stories. Once you subscribe to the podcast you get the currently released podcast for free but the archived episodes are sold separately via Audible.com.

It is an outstanding piece of storytelling week after week. At worst it's reliably entertaining, at its best it is moving, heart-wrenching, marvelous and hilarious. And now they're producing a brand new television show debuting on Showtime on March 22nd. Should be interesting, will DVR that baby.

One of my favorite pieces is the one titled/themed "Babysitting". Does anybody have an episode they would like to recommend? I wouldn't mind buying them off of Audible but would rather not pick blindly.

Impro

Last semester I took my very first acting class, "Acting for Animators". Why is an acting class in the curriculum of an animation program? In an animated feature film, there are voice actors such as Mike Myers providing the voice for Shrek or Tom Hanks providing the voice for Woody. But they only provide half the performance. The physical performance, what you actually see on the screen, is not the work of the Hanks or Myers but of the animator. Therefore in production, the animator is considered the actor and often times will study acting to reference physicalities they can incorporate into the animation.

I really enjoyed the class. It really pushed us to act physically: touch, push, pull, punch, shove, grab. Reactions then come more naturally and spontaneously. One handout reading assignment was a chapter from a book called "Impro - Improvisation and the Theatre" by Keith Johnstone. The book was mainly about improvisation acting but had a lot to say about storytelling and learning. The handout was the chapter on Status and it was fascinating. Many comedy routines that improv actors can utilitize are about shifts in high and low status between the characters. I liked reading this chapter so much I checked the book out of the school library. It's an excellent read. If you're an actor, it's a must read, but it's also essential for storytellers.

duke

I forkin hate Duke. And I really hate Duke basketball. Why? Maybe it was the Kentucky/Duke championship game where Christian Laettner (grade A asshole) stepped on the Kentucky player and went on the hit the game winning shot. I hate Christian Laettner. Maybe it's that Duke's rep is that of a homogeneous, white, privileged, stuck-up, entitled, white, cocky school (reminiscent of my high school. I hated high school.) Maybe it's the Duke fans. Yeah, it's the fans.

I actually like the coach, Mike Krzyzewski. I respect what he does and how he does it. But I find the Duke fan just completely obnoxious and undeserving. Feel the hate. Feel it.

Why mention it? Well, you see, my wife went to Duke. And she has a lot of friends here in the Bay Area who were her classmates. And now they're my friends. And get this, they're all really great people. Well, most of them anyway. But they do shatter my image of Duke. But does it quell my hatred of their basketball team?

No.

So when people find out how much I hate Duke and that my wife went to Duke they ask is that a problem in our relationship. I reply, "Only in March."

It's March.

Home Alone

The wife took a business trip to Baltimore from Saturday to Tuesday and I was home alone with the two boys. While I have been a pretty involved dad and being the primary parent on duty (PPOD) was nothing new, this was a fairly long stretch for me. The big difference boiled down to one thing: there is no backup.

When there is a diaper changing emergency you can't call on your significant other for a little help. When one both boys are having mini-emergencies you have to choose to deal with one at a time. In the middle of the night wake-ups, there's no taking turns to deal, it's just you.

Milo, the older one, really missed his mommy but overall he did ok. Ben, the younger, didn't seem to mind at all, out of sight out of mind. I did well and am pretty proud of maintaining some sense of normalcy in the household. Nobody got hurt and everybody was fed. But, I am really frickin tired.

Y! Sports Redesign - It's the Internet, Stupid

I wanted to sit on my review of the new Yahoo! Sports redesign for a week or two so I could digest what I liked and didn't like and not just react to the change.

In brief, I like the new visual design, but I don't think there's huge improvement in the utility of the site and my big rant is that big images are overrated (read below).

Small tidbit to begin, I miss the nav bar that disappears when you dig down to a main sports level - I always browsed "across" all the major sports pages to get an overview of everything. But I'm probably in the minority and it's not that big of a deal.

Here's where I get pissy: images are overrated, information and functionality is King. The new design seems to be driven by the massive image size of the photo. In magazines and brochures images matter a great deal. But the internet is about performance, efficiency and practicality over glamour and gloss in every instance except for brochure sites where how you appear affects your brand. But on the internet it's how it well does it function - do you get what you want quickly, consistently... and then, easily.

One could argue that a sports media site is like a magazine and therefore the gloss and glamour of a big photo applies. They're wrong. One might say that the users wanted the big photos - well, the useres are wrong too. This is a case of not giving the users what they think they want. The reason they like the internet is not because it's just like a big magazine. It's because the internet is basically a gigantic database laid out before them. It's a database. Information. Very dry, very boring, all statistics and feeds. And that is the beauty of it. Images only tell so much. What's more informative to the sports fan: the scores of all the NCAA basketball games or the acne on Mark MacGuire's face?

The most obvious evidence of this truth is the history Yahoo! Sports itself. Before its first redesign it was a very successful site. After it's first redesign (1998) it was still a very successful site - all the while ESPN and Sports Illustrated had big honkin images on their frontpages, and Yahoo! did not. But the scoreboard was in plain site. The information displayed quickly and reliably. If splashy, glamourous and glossy equals success, then why was Y! Sports (all business, dry as a bone) among the top 3 of its category year after year? I'm not saying good looks don't matter but just that huge images are vastly overrated for an INTERNET product.

I'm glad the scoreboard is still on the frontpage(s). But it's a pity it got pushed down.

At worst, Y! Sporst looks like an ESPN wannabe by copying the high contrast black background theme. That's probably unwarranted, but I'll stick it in there anyway.

Kudos to the Sports team, I know that a redesign is an odyssey of pain and pain and more pain. And I know that the design process is full of compromises, where the designer is hearing it from all sides. I still think Yahoo! Sports is the best sports site on the web hands down.

Silhouette

In Storyboarding and Animation, they talk about silhouette value. If you block your character completely in black, how does it read? Can you tell who it is and what they are doing... feeling? It requires the artist to think about positive and negative space wrapping around their character. Characters that have good silhouette read better on the screen. Ten times better. See my revision of Raul above.

Sick

I have had a low-level cold for several weeks, which then mushroomed into a bad cold with flu-like symptoms, which now has finally subsided but not completely gone away. Breathing through your nose is a privilege. Hacking up green goo was getting tiresome. Children are a germ farm especially when they start school.

Harry the Hairdresser

nuff said

Raul the Butcher

Betty

In my Storyboard class this semester, one assignment was to do a single drawing of one of these characters:

Betty the Beauty Queen
Raul the Butcher
Harry the Hairdresser

Above is Betty.

Pics from my backyard

Dusk a few days ago.