Ever since the beginning of time, I, Kathy, have been in love with cats. I love them. Really. And there is this guy named Simon Tofield who makes these amazing animated shorts that perfectly encapsulate some of the most hilarious cat moments that I'm sure just about every cat owner has been through. So, without further ado, here are the videos to the entire Simon's Cat series, because I love them.
I've got to admit - I'm in love with the line quality of this next one:
So I get headaches when even thinking about my blogger layout. The ones that they offer either have an aspect ratio that cuts off all of my pictures and videos, or they're butt-ugly. So I've decided to design my own layout. I'm in the process of teaching myself a little CSS in order to organize the site correctly and such, but if anyone out there has tips or links that'll help me out, I will love you forever. Though, let's be honest, I'll love you forever anyway.
I'm blowing off the dust of this thing! I've been able to do a lot of fun work lately for classes, and I want to show it off. I've also resurrected my deviantart account, so I'm just going to use the embed links from that, rather than up them to something else. Click on the picture to go to the page, then click on THAT picture to get a closer look at things! If you DO want to cruise my deviantart page, be warned that I post a lot of my figure drawings. Yes they're naked. That is all.
I'm going to be making a 3D animation! I'm surprised that I haven't posted this before, BUT here is the animatic version of it. An animatic is an animation without all of the 'tweens' in the movement. And yes, I did all the voices:
For the class I'm in this term, we're making our main character from the animatic in 3D! For any one who's curious, I sculpted the base mesh in ZBrush, topologized him in 3DCoat, and tweaked him in Maya.
I rendered this sucker for my Creative Industry Techniques class. We've been working with a way to render a scene using what are called mentalray nodes. Our assignment was to take a scene that we had textured in Texture and Lighting 1, and place the character that we modeled in Modeling 1 into the scene. Here are my results!
Then in the other half of this class, we've been learning MEL scripting, which means that instead of using Maya's user interface directly (like clicking the buttons, moving everything with the tools, etc etc), I can go under the hood and program Maya to do the same things. What makes this cool is that I can have this code affect an unlimited number of objects at the same time, where if I did it by hand it would take ages. This next video was a lot of fun, and a lot of headaches to put together. If you want a little of the explanation about it, go directly to the youtube page and you'll find it in the video description. I like making things go boom!
I did some cool things on the weekends this month that I meant to blog about at the time, but am finally going to get to now. First, I went sailing on a boat! It was amazing!!! It was a 19th century sailboat. I'll tell the best part in a glorious mix of words and pictures.
We: <
pulled on these:
to lift these:
That's right - I, wimpy Kathy of Coloradian suburbia, proved my radness by helping to hoist sails on a 19th century skiffer. Suhwheet.
The next weekend I did more cool things. I hung out with these people at this place:
and this place:
and other places I don't have pictures of. My favorite part of the trip was seeing this girl:
I got to watch her for a couple hours and it was AMAZINGLY fun. She's such a cute little babeh.
Then the NEXT weekend, I went with a lot of these crazies:
I was about to harp on Harry Potter 6 with my third item, but I don't want to leave this post with such a Debbie Downer, so watch this and impress all your friends! And definitely watch the Debbie Downer link -- so hilarious! It's my favorite when the actors crack up.
So I'm bored, and it's been a while, so here's my final project for my beginning animation class! Well, at least the current version. I sent it in to my professor to see what I can improve on and I'm waiting on the changes.
And I saw this on someone else's blog, and thought it'd be a fun waste of a few minutes.
Kathy's ABCs
A - Age: 25
B - Bed size: Tall Twin
C - Chore you hate: Eek. Dishes.
D - Dog(s) name: Chip's my roommate's dog. He's a sweetie. Then Norm's my Aunt's dog, and he's a little scamp and cracks me up!
E - Essential start your day item: Phone. I really can't go anywhere without it.
F - Favorite color: Red
G - Gold or Silver: I look good in both, but I prefer silver
H - Height: 6'2" but I typically tell people 6'3". It just sounds better.
I - Instrument: Tons. Guitar, Baritone, Trumpet, Tuba, Trombone, Pinano....and more that I'm not as proficient at...
L - Living arrangements: I live with 4 roommates in the hills of El Cerrito. And there's a doggie, Chip, who's 14, and a SWEET kitty, Squeaky, who's...not 14. Probably younger, but I haven't asked yet. He's amazing though...he gives me lovings.
M - Mom's name: Eileen. She's amazing. You should meet her.
N - Nicknames: Kitty, Kit, Kathy, Hey you tall girl...
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth of child: Not yet. Knock on wood.
P - Pet Peeve: Acne. I hates it.
Q - Quotes you like: We have it within our power to speak to hundreds of millions of people, two hours at a time, in the dark. No single person before has ever had that power: no emperor, no saint, and no individual, however powerful. So we have a tremendous responsibility in what we say...As artists, we have a wonderful tool...to do away with hate, bigotry and war, and work for the brotherhood of man. - Frank Capra, Director, "It's a Wonderful Life"
R - Right or left handed: Right
S - Siblings: 1 brother and 1 sister
T - Time to wake up: Eek it's been super late lately. Like 12. It's ridiculous. I'm on a weird schedule.
U- Underwear: Yes, I wear them.
V - Vegetable you dislike: Buk Choy. I want to like it so badly, but it's just gross.
W - Ways you run late: Sleeping in. Surprise, surprise.
X - X-rays you've had: Hrm...most recently my wrist. I fractured it back in January.
Y - Yummy food you make- Zebra Brownies. They're divine.
I want to write an entry for several reasons. The least blog-motivating BUT most exciting is that it's my birthday today!!! I'm 25. It's pretty much increderific. A second reason is that for the first time all week, I've had a chance to do something other than drawing! My new classes are from 4pm-12am and that's been driving me pretty crazy. It's meant that my evenings are shot, and that's when I get to spend time with my friends from church, which, to some extent, is my whole social outlet. It's also meant that by the time I get home, which is usually anywhere from 12:30am-1am, I'm so wired from drawing all day that I can't get to sleep for HOURS. This is the third reason that I'm blogging...insomnia sucks. Enough background!
It's time for....
The List-o-things I'm Looking Forward to!
My birthday potluck! I really, REALLY enjoy eating food I didn't make myself. This is going to be fun!
Going to the temple this weekend! I missed out on Ward temple night this Wednesday for class, and I had too much homework to go during the day. I REALLY want to go tomorrow, and will do everything I can to go before the day gets away from me.
Bethany Dillon's having a free concert on May 2nd. I love her music to the moon and the stars. And it's only half an hour away! It's perfect! Lunch starts at 12:30 and the concert starts at 2, if anyone's interested in coming with me.
Stake Women's Conference! We're doing all sorts of rad sounding service projects that I want to help out with! According to the flyer it ends at 12:30 on the same day of the concert. My plan is to stay through the end, and miss the concert's lunch, but get there in time for the show. However, there's a possibility that Stake Conference will be longer than that. If it is, I'm cool with not going to the concert. She'll be back next year.
The neat projects that I'm going to do for class! I was going to update my blog earlier today because I realized that I had my Maya files could get some screen shots of last term's work via school computers, but time ran short. BUT this term's going to be fun. I already love my classes - they're lots of work, but it's extremely satisfying!
Going to the gym! I've been trying to be more active in my off time. Animators do a lot of sitting, and I want to keep my health as best I can.
UP! I'm SUPER excited for Pixar's new movie to come out. Every time I think about May 29th, my heart skips a little beat!
Healthy Living Lunch! I was in charge of planning and coordinating a free lunch given at school. It was fun, but I'm really glad it's over and that I don't have it on my shoulders.
My 24th year. You know, life has just been getting better and better and better. It's been magical, and I'll remember all the neat things that happened over the last year with fondness.
The 4th season of LOST! Man, the writer's strike sure messed up that season. I'm liking season 5 a bunch.
TODAY!!! I had a BLAST in class, AND I even got 2 free pieces of delicious carrot cake PLUS a free dinner, but this was a really long week for me, what with the late nights and the friendless existence.
The first five people to leave a comment on this post will receive something made by me. However there are some limitations:
1. I make no guarantee that you will like what I make. 2. What I create will be just for you. 3. It will be done this year. (might take a while) 4. You have no clue what it is going to be, poetry, shoes, bags or a little invention of my own. I may bake something and mail it you . Who knows? Not you that's for sure! 5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. It may blow your mind! Here the catch, if you choose to do this. You must post this on your blog and be ready to make something for five people too. This will be fun! When you receive the fabulous item I make you, you must post a picture of it on your blog.
My plan is to toss a few things that I've been working on up here. My friend, Mindy, totally inspired me to finally get around to updating. I'm planning on it being small, just so I can finally finish something.
I made this today in my compositing class using Adobe After Effects. It's based off of one of my favorite memories with my sister. We were out in the backyard tossing styrofoam airplanes back and forth. One got caught high up in one of the pine trees - so high we couldn't even knock it down with a broom. We gave up on it and kept playing with all the other planes, and about 10 minutes later, we glanced over and lo and behold, our cat, Loki, was climbing up the tree! She was too high to reach her when we noticed. With gargantuan effort, Loki shimmied up the tree and crawled out to the end of the branch, knocking the plane down for us! We were stunned! However, when she went to turn around and climb down, she had a bit of a mishap, as you can see.
I hope to post more of my stuff later - for now, I gots to go to bed!