Books books books!!!

Well, only three actually:
Steampunk! edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. This compilation of short stories is pretty good. It's not as groundbreaking as the introduction would lead you to believe, but there is a good variety in the stories. My favorite was Steamgirl, but most were actually pretty enjoyable. Overall the book is well designed with nice little icons for each story. The pages are thick and nice to feel. Checked out from KCLS. Might be the first one to read it, it seemed brand spankin' new!!

Excession by Iain M. Banks. A Culture novel, told largely from the point of view of various ships' Minds, it's a pretty good romp through the Culture-verse. If it's any indication of how good it was, I read it in about 5 days. Borrowed from a co-worker.

DMZ: Body of a Journalist by Brian Wood, art by Riccardo Burchielli. This is the second DMZ collection. I thought the first was darn good, and this is a worthy follow-up. Decent art doesn't detract from the story, but doesn't add a ton either. There's a large paranoia aspect to this one which is really fun. Checked out from KCLS.

Books I've Just Read

Algaebraist - Iain M. Banks

Super good. Slow to start but totally worth it. Love the Dwellers!

Hardback, loaned from guy at work.

Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver -Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Good guilty pleasure books. Sort of horror meets WH40k. First WH40k books I've read. I read them out of order, Soul Hunter should come first. Mostly they made sense even though I know nothing about Warhammer.

Paperbacks from KCLS.

Surface Details - Iain M. Banks

Awesome! A Culture novel and really great.

Paperback from KCLS.

Allegiance - Timothy Zahn

Darn good! This was a super fast read, and action packed from start to finish.

Ebook on Kindle from SPL.

Game of Thrones -George RR Martin

Surprisingly good. Now I want to read the rest and watch the movie.

Ebook on Kindle from SPL.

New Model Army - Adam Roberts

Great! An interesting narrative structure made this even more engaging. A book I checked out because of the cover!

Paperback form SPL.

Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days - Allistair Reynolds

Two good short novels. Really enjoyed them both, but Diamond Dogs was hands down better.

Hardback fromSPL.

SIGGRAPH Observations

I was lucky enough to go to SIGGRAPH 2010 and experience some of the inside track on the computer-graphic industry. Fascinating!

Here are just a few observations, I might throw a couple images up in a while, but now, just text!

• There were tons of people using Macs. Mostly MacBookPros, and mostly the newer uni-body ones. I somehow thought there would be a higher tendency towards PCs, but it was at least a 50-50 split, if not in favor of Macs. Just anecdotal observations, but I found it interesting.
• Stereoscopic 3D was of course the big thing, but everything relied on glasses or other headgear. And unless it's a motorcycle helmet, headgear is rarely cool.
• All directors, producers and writers make a big deal about "story". Heck, even in my line of work, we make a big deal about "story". But so many movies are complete crap, who's actually behind the scenes hacking away at what may have been a good story and turning into schlock? I wish I knew... Harlen Ellison wrote a screenplay for "I Robot" and in the intro ranted that it would never be made into a movie, Hollywood would turn it into some action SFX drivel. He was right (although I did enjoy the Will Smith version, it was typical Hollywood.). All I'm saying is, I loved the panel with the folks from Tron: Legacy, and their stated attention to story and design, but the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding ain't ready yet!
• "Loom" was an incredible piece of animation, but it totally freaked me out! I have squashed several spiders, and one incredibly bold and now incredibly dead roach purely because of this short film. I never had a problem before...
• I went through the whole gamut of emotions at SIGGRAPH: super excited, totally inspired, completely depressed. Kind of in that order too. The Computer Animation Festival was great and the level of work amazing, so were several of the panels. The aforementioned Tron panel was pretty inspiring and totally depressing. One of those, "why am I not doing this?" sort of moments. Straight off, the director has a bach in Engineering, and a masters in architecture. Then he worked in SFX. Now he's a big time director. He even said he specifically wanted an industrial designer to be his production designer!
• Smartphones are the way to be. I need one.
• Limited access wifi is stupid. The convention at least had free wifi, but only in certain areas. And those areas were rarely where you would be waiting in line. Now the hotel was way, and I mean WAY worse. Not only did they charge $9.95 per day to use their stupid wifi, but it was slower than molasses! I had connectivity issues like you wouldn't believe and all the while trying to work. Sheesh, I'm trying to be productive and all I get is "no network available"! Lame.
• Emerging technology mostly left me bored with stereoscopic 3D, but two or three were incredibly cool. Surprisingly, a Sony prototype was my favorite. It's hard to describe, but it was basically a cylindrical "display" that was fully 3D -- you could walk around it and see the image inside from any angle. It looked pretty darn good. It was motion capable too, one of the demos was an Arkanoid like video game but totally 3D!

That's enough for now... peace out yo.

The continuing sketchbook saga...

I have actually been doing much better about keeping my sketchbook, but at the moment, I have no scanner. It's all packed away. However, I saw this cartoon on Core77, and it was perfect for my continuing sketchbook tribulations.

Currently, I'm in the DIY camp. But when that one is filled (about 75% through it now) I think I'm going back to a moleskin proper. I don't know though. Something about the disposable nature of the DIY version is liberating. And easier to scan.

Sketching is good though. Helps a lot. Just in general. :D

Laid Off!! How cool is that?

You know, I've always tried to keep this bloggy thing abstract and not personal. But for just one post I'm going to break that rule. Here it is:

I got laid off. That pretty much sucks. Or so I thought at first.

But, being laid off forces me to face the big questions: what do I want do do (professionally), where do I want to do it, who do I want to work for and how hard do I want to work?

I think those are critical questions I've never really asked. Things are rough economically right now, personally (duh, I just got laid off, and right before xmas!) and nationally (double duh, am I living in a cave?). Hmm. I better focus on bringing home some bacon.

So how does writing this self aggrandizing post get me to the cash? For two reasons really. I'm forcing my self to state the Problem. And by publishing it in the interweboogles, I'm showing all two of you what I'm working on. You are now my bosses. Keep me honest.

First Question: What Do I Want To Do: I am a designer, and I want to design. Simple. My focus has been on exhibit design, but that is by no means all I enjoy designing. I DO enjoy exhibit design, I also enjoy production design, concept design, industrial design... is there a reason I have to limit myself right now to just what I have oodles of experience with? HELL NO. Now is the time to think big, to take this situation and turn it into pure Awesome. And believe it or not, I have the Skills to do it. No, it's not my nunchuck skills or ninja skills, but my design skills. I have mad crazy design skills.

Second Question: Where Do I Want To Do It: Now, since I'm married with children (natch, watch the pun kids!), this really should be plural: where do we want to do it... but this is my friggin' blog so, here's my personal answer. It'll help me talk it over with the spouse. I want to be around cool people who I can be comfortable around. I want to be with my friends, and dear god dare I say it, my family. We all know where that is. If I'm more clear the creepy internet stalkers will be able to find me. But the two of you know what I'm talking about.

Third Question: Who Do I Want To Work For? This question is binary: Me or Someone Else. The worst part is I'm not sure. Which generally means Someone Else, except in this case I don't think it does. I think it's just I'm scared of the real answer: Me. Is that really true? Well over the next couple months we'll see how it goes. In other words, this answer subject to change with out notice. (Kind of like one's employment in a right to work state. How bass ackwards is that title for a rule that allows termination for no cause and with no notice? Oops. I'm trying to stay positive.)

Fourth Question: How Hard Do I Want To Work: Another scary one. I want to see my family. I want to be with them and enjoy them. When they are sick, I want to be there. When there is something silly like preschool graduation, I want to be there. So, I will bust my ass, but I damn well want to be there for my family. They are NOT I say again, NOT exclusive. You can have both. It just requires more... work. I'm willing to work HARD. I will put in long days and nights to succeed. But I will be succeeding on my terms now, thank you very much.

So there. That's my road map. There are a few turns undecided, but the general course is set. So is it I-90 and straight through the Rockies, or is it Route 66 and taking my time? That is yet to be seen.

So yeah, just like Captain Max, I'm ready to fly!

Funky Stuff! Sketchup + Photoshop CS4

And my first youtube post! It stars Max, but you can barely tell.


I made a bunch of different renders in Sketchup and some spinny animations, layered them all up in Photoshop CS4, added a short vid of Max. Voila! Crazy funky animation test!

I was also testing out the Sketchup rendering plugin Podium. I think it's pretty cool.

Zounds! Content creation is calling me...

I'll watch anything...

It's true. For reasons best left unsaid I'm stuck at home today watching Disney Channel. I got totally sucked into Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior!!



Now to make it worse, I didn't think it was THAT bad. It has the "Jolly Good" kid from Last Samurai. Funny a Thai/Vietnamese chick and Japanese dude playing a pair of Chinese relatives!! There's a joke in there somewhere.

I even learned a new term: DCOM. Can you guess what it stands for?