http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Spazwerks&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Spazwerks en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:12:23 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/18264403/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/18264403/ Sat, 10 May 2008 21:42:50 PDT
]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17733352/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17733352/ Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:46:13 PDT
Yessir................anytime now. Okay, time to jump in. Five, four, three, two, one.............GO!

Doesn't count. This one will for sure..................five, four, three, two, one................WOOHOO GO!!!

Still doesn't count.

Oh man...........coffee just hasn't kicked in yet. Or I'm just too tired to tell. Mind you, that's what I get for staying up until 6 in the am working on the junkyard. So much stuff to do with that, yet. That's okay in a way, since I do love losing myself in the details after the big stuff's done, but sometimes Mr. Clock has a way of not telling me when its planning on putting its own hands ahead when I'm not looking. The good news is that I've got plenty of time left before I'm bringing it in, but thanks to my obsessive sense of 'git 'er dun!', I feel like I'm a million miles behind. Of course, adding 40 ounces of concentrated caffiene probably doesn't help the anxiety levels much. Propping my eyelids open with toothpicks isn't really effective either.............looks kinda creepy too...............like pink beaks open wide and waiting for momma to regurgitate worms into them. Ew.

Thankfully, I've got a decent storyboard to work from that John's checked over. That was a huge relief, to have that approved. All I really have to do is stick to my dope sheet timing and maintain a decent camera angle/move, and life will be grand. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to go through this.

But knowing that sucks. I start bargaining with myself, and the deals aren't really that great. Oh sure, short time gain in the form of some Doom 3 time (appeasing myself until the fourth title comes out), but the long term sucks. Now is the time for discipline, and where that little annoying green bug in a top hat sits on my shoulder and thumps my ear with his cane every ten seconds and screams moral obscenities in my eardrum. I'd squash the littler fucker...........well, that is...........if he wasn't right. I could get him to shut up, and I know it would feel better to just do it, and get it over with, then spend the rest of my weekend (my week doesn't start until tuesday nite at 7pm........night class) enjoying Doom, Halo, or a Star Wars marathon on the big screen with all of the above on the 42" inch. Input.........tons of input.

Okay..............five, four, three, two.......................

]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17659869/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17659869/ Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:37:42 PDT [link] Not so much in terms of any sort of compensation, but the healing that's being acknowledged. I know that largely this is government lip service, but in truth it's good to see some history actually being taken seriously in this matter enough to want to try and discover some numbers of just how many unclaimed, unmarked graves there are out there. The trouble is, there wasn't a decent system in place with checks or balances in the residential school system for the First Nations children that were put into these damned places, nor was there an accurate accounting of deaths that were unnaturally high, far higher than schools in the public system of the day. I don't know if any families will be lucky enough to get to have a gravesite to visit, or remains to claim, since many of the native children were often buried in mass graves, with their numbers or English names usually listed with pigs and chickens that died that week or month as well.

It's good to see Professor John Milloy involved with this, since he has studied ad nauseum the effects and the aftermath of the residential school system for decades.........I read his book 'A National Crime', and needless to say, the system was a nightmare for anyone that had to go through it, or lost family members to it. Unfortunately, I lost my dad to it, but his was a slow painful death that lasted about 62 years before alcohol finally claimed him. He never did tell me any of the stories..........I had to hear them all from my Uncle Bob (his older brother), who filled me in on a lot of details on their day-to-day life in the Father Lacombe school in Alberta in the forties. Needless to say, a lot of it included some archaic child tortures that were rather inventive, if they weren't so reprehensible. Suffice it to say, it was enough for a grown man with a Christian upbringing refer to nuns in that particular institution as 'cruel bitches'.......something you don't hear so much. My dad didn't like to talk about this stuff, even with prodding.......his childhood wasn't really a topic of discussion. It was his choice ultimately, but whatever had happened had definitely stolen his voice, or his desire to acheive anything barely past just providing for his family. The rest of the time was his, largely to sedate whatever ghosts were haunting him.

I don't imagine for one second that the school was the sole reason for his silent and slow suicide, especially after hearing some of the stories about my grandmother from my dad's youngest sister. But it sure didn't help, considering that he and my uncle were abandoned in that place by my grandmother for a few years.............what would a six-year-old mind think of something like that? Left in a hell-hole by someone that's supposed to be your guardian, your protector, and your centre of life. It would be one helluva thing to have to deal with. It would be hard to come back from.

That headline brought up a lot of this stuff in my thoughts, largely because of how that system touched our lives. Granted, we're Metis, and my dad wasn't a true aboriginal, since his mother was a half-breed, so it's not as if there will be any peace in having a grave marked, or having any remains returned (if such a thing is even possible, considering how difficult it will be to forensically identify anyone in a mass grave from fifty to a hundred years ago), but there is a sense of comfort that perhaps these atrocities will become more mainstream in knowledge. I truly don't think Canadians, as a whole, know just how bad those places were, or how bad a lot of the kids were treated when they were 'converted into good Christians', forbidden to visit with family members, forbidden to speak their language upon punishment (depending on the school, I've heard practices that involved nuns sticking pins into the tongues of children that uttered any native words), and taken from villages for the duration of their young lives. Often, they were returned to their tribes with only teachings of isolation, fear, punishment and depression........virtually with no ability to raise and nurture children of their own. Needless to say, when I hear about a First Nations person that flips out on the reservation in a drunken rage and beats his or her children, I think of the great 'gift' given to them a generation or three ago that provided for most of that even happening in the first place. Suffice it to say, many tribes didn't strike their children when they were correcting them........that was a gift from a white society that relied on fear and intimidation as a teaching method.

I hope this happens, and although I'm not a big fan of re-using names or parts of other names of incidents or titles in another, I thought the word 'holocaust' certainly applied. Apart from creatin... ]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17580647/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17580647/ Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:21:22 PDT
As usual, my memory started to slowly come back. The Port Mann bridge seemed more familiar, but I still didn't really know why we were out on the highway to begin with. Then she mentioned that I should probably email my teacher, and I came to the conclusion that I was on my way to class. When we came to the 200 st. offramp in Langley, I remembered that it was Saturday, and it was Ken's class for texturing that I was supposed to be at.

The most unsettling part of those things is the weird sense that everything is unfamiliar, that my life is somehow wrong, or my place in it is out of kilter with the rest of the world, and everyone around me knows it. Generally, my instinct is to find somewhere safe to hide. Fortunately, my wife took me home, and made sure I was okay before she left for work (she's a nurse, formally specializing in neurology, so this stuff is old hat for her.........well, although with this particular case, it's a loved one so it's not just a cut-and-dried situation of just another patient). Another half hour later, I started to remember the details of where it was we were heading, why, and where it was that my memory stops. It was just under the overpass of Kensington Avenue, and seeing the sign is about where I leave off in my thoughts, which was the last one before our turnoff to BCIT, so somewhere in the space of about 3 kilometers is where it happened.

Well, so I missed another class.........texturing, and that sucked. I love that class, simply because texturing is one thing that was a bit of a bugaboo for me. Oh, prior to the course, I had the basics and the concepts understood, and totally had the grasp of the bump map and alpha channel, but dealing with UV maps and using the best available methods for UV unwrapping. Fortunately, Ken always does a recap of the previous class, so hopefully I'll get the needed info, or at least get pointed in the right direction. He usually has some good reference stuff to play with, I should be okay in that regard. But, sadly, I was looking forward to submitting my junkyard stuff in person. I'll have to be satisfied with the email. Not that I'm looking for a pat on the head or anything, but as an entertainer, I do like to see the reactions of an audience, be they good or bad. Getting useful critiques is something I count on, too.

Well, that's enough babbling for one day. Back to work. Cheers to all.

]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17524575/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17524575/ Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:30:59 PDT
Granted, it's all just simple blocking out of moves with breakdowns right now, but the movement is pretty solid so far, and for the most part, my dude hasn't blown apart too badly other than some dragging geometry that occasionally seems to need some weight painting. I'm gonna ask the teacher about that issue, and how to fix it. Considering that it's the first time I've ever animated anything with a skeleton, I'm pretty happy with the results. Now, I need to make it AWESOME! instead of just neat. But that's coming. As soon as I can afford a website with video hosting ability, I'm gonna put this stuff up. If anyone knows any free sites that can do this, I'd appreciate the link, though. I haven't rendered anything yet, but I do have some 2D stuff that I've done that's sorta amusing, so I could always stick that up for now. I did try YouTube for one of my animations, but I couldn't upload it for some reason.

Spazwerks.........I like the idea of building a website around that name. I suppose I should buy the domain name, unless it's already been taken.

]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17483495/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17483495/ Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:55:43 PDT
Man, what is it about turkey that makes Jack being a dull boy, and ready for a thirteen hour nap afterwards? Every year, I keep saying that I'm not going to pig out, but every Easter/Xmas/Thanksgiving I'm off to the dinner table with the extra large plate and ready to wear out the elastic band on my fat pants. If cooking is an art, my wife is Van Gogh.

Fortunately, I survived, and we even decided to get festive this year for Easter, and decorate. None of that kinda gruesome Jebus stuff, mind you.........just the kid-friendly sort of things. Personally, when I was raised as a Protestant, I never really understood the fascination with worshipping people that raised from the dead. Or the logic, but I was only a young'un at the time, so I suppose I could be forgiven. Mind you, that never made it easy to try and marry the ideas of why we worshipped one zombie while trying to destroy the rest of them with beheadings. But then, asking questions like that usually got me time in detention or a slap on the hand with a very solid wooden yardstick. Oh well........each to their own, I came to realize as I drifted away from that sort of stuff. The Easter Bunny seemed a lot more fun, anyway.

But getting back to the decorating, that's what we did for the first time this year. Oh, we've decorated spectacularily for things like Xmas and Hallowe'en (I'll post one of our Hallowe'en pics........I suppose you could classify it a sculpture), but this is the first time we ever put any effort into Easter apart from some lame window stickers and crap like that. Our neighbors even got into the thing (of course, it was our neighbor Jo who started it all in the first place.........my wife joked that since we all go so nuts for Hallowe'en and Xmas, maybe we should decorate for Easter too.........Jo took that and flew with it.........to the tune of about 200 plastic colored eggs tied to trees, eaves, and used as covers for Xmas lights). So naturally, all of us on the corner of our little hood decided to get into it, and next thing you know, plastic eggs were all over the place. And lights that were formally Xmas lights were now hanging strings of egg lights.........each of the little suckers individually punctured and painstakingly stuck over a gazillion tiny bulbs. But I have to admit, those Xmas icicle lights look pretty cool with the colored eggs over them.

So now, another tradition got started, and our neighborhood will never be the same again, and our garage's attic just got a little more crowded with another holiday's decorations. I have to admit, being creative is truly infectious........I'm even starting to wonder how long it would take to sculp a fifteen foot Easter Bunny out of styrofoam.........if I can find a place to store it for the other 357 days of the year.

]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17418456/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17418456/ Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:21:20 PDT
Well, I notice that not only did I blast away the rant on Student Finance last week, but the previous entry as well. Granted, the rant I did probably needed to be taken off air given its angry naughty words directed at my school (which they weren't.........solely directed at Student Financial Aid, who's very title inspires a BOATLOAD of bitter irony). I'm not a big fan of censorship of ANY kind, but I didn't think that was my finest moment. Trouble is, now I'm not just one week behind, but two. Bleh.

Work is going good, despite my whining about getting charley-horsed in the ribcage by the ground (gravity sucks). I'm finding that texturing in Maya isn't nearly as complicated as I first thought, nor is it as big a boogaboo. That's the problem with me though.......I see all this technical stuff in a program, and I figure there has to be this huge massive amount of steps to acheive a certain look, or create a decent UV layout, and it turns out that there is no real magic formula......just a lot of patience, a few tools appropriate for the sort of object I'm trying to texture in 3D space, and using the right settings for the effect I wanna acheive. Ta daaaaa!

I've just about filled the sketchbook Russel gave me, and have been practicing on the bus and SkyTrain on the way to school. Uncle Bob and the Punker Zombie were both drawn on a moving bus with a mechanical pencil, and I'm purposely trying to do it in order to see if I can get better control over my pencil...........it actually helps refine my work, believe it or not. Bumping, rolling and bouncing down the road while trying to do subtle pencil moves does help to improve my ability to make bolder pencil strokes and trust in that ability to do so simply because it forces you to either do it or don't. That, and you actually begin memorizing every pothole between the Walnut Grove Park 'n' Ride and Surrey Central Station.

Cheers.

]]> ~Spazwerks http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17018730/ http://Spazwerks.deviantart.com/journal/17018730/ Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:04:27 PST
I've just put some finishing touches on the exterior scene that I've built in Maya at the school, and it's gonna be the first part of my demo reel in animation, or the set really. I'll put a still of it up with some cheesy lighting to give ya'll a sense of the sort of stuff I've been doing lately.......very time consuming stuff, it is. It's amazing how a person can spend literally days working on something like this. Right now, it's not smoothed at all, and it's not textured or bump-mapped in the slightest......this is pretty much what any enviro in games or movies looks like in the raw, in one rendered still. In my version, this is pretty low poly count stuff, so this would be a game enviro. Every teeny, weeny little object needs to be modelled and textured, and I haven't gotten to the texturing part yet. This scene was loosely based on Doyer's Street in Chinatown, New York. It was just this little cul-de-sac looking sort of street that seemed to be such an old, yet cozy little area. Mind you, the Flatiron building I added isn't part of that street in NY, but I thought it would make a nice touch for my scene. More to come, I can assure you. And I'm working on a pretty cool monster for my own amusement in Photoshop that I'll post up later on. My hours as of late are getting easier to manage, and as the schooling process carries on, I find that I've been getting a bit more time that I can spend on the creation process for my own personal portfolio use. Man, I've been inspired!!

Jeff

]]> ~Spazwerks