Kotog’s Neighborhood

Zorro

for my Visual Elements of Story class we were asked to develop a story of our choosing (one of three). I chose Zorro with an Asian-themed twist. What you see here are my first attempts at photoshop :\ Lot to learn, but considering I didn't even know photoshop could be used for anything but editing photos before this class, I'd say I'm pretty happy with what I got out of it.

Zorro Environments

ZORRO page5 low res

ZORRO page6 low res

Zorro thumbnails low res

QotD: Plans for My Remains

Hangaku Gozen
Aug 15, 2009
9 comments

Do you plan to be buried, cremated, cryogenically frozen or something else?
Submitted by aynge.
Eh, the "something else" in this question brought a lot of morbid scenes to mind. Like "sky burials" in Tibet, or that guy who wanted his body ground up into dog food for a local shelter.

(If you go to Wikipedia and look up "sky burial," there's an actual photo of a corpse left out for the vultures to eat. I was wondering if it was faked, not that I wanted to study the photo carefully.)

It's a practical way of disposing of one's remains, I suppose, especially if you really, really care for animals. But I want my body to go in the style of the old country and be burned to ashes, with monks chanting sutras for my salvation.

Not that it's gonna help.

Riding to Shelton

CGrande
May 30, 2009
1 comment

I biked to Shelton this past Thursday. By the end of the day, I had biked over 50 miles. Yep, it was pretty sweet.

Near Steamboat Island

I should say just north of Shelton; my professor hosted a seminar at her house way the hell up there (her drivetime commute is like a half hour when traffic is good.) Although all the photos are nice a peaceful, I spent most of my time on the shoulder of the 101. It was pretty awesome though; her house was AMAZING (I'm suprised a college professor can afford something like that) and there was a beach nearby. All in all, a good trip with a grad total cost of $0 for the whole day (Didn't bust an innertube or buy any food.) It was the closest thing I've gotten to a vacation in a long ass fucking time.

If I have a chance this summer, I'd like to do some long distance touring on zi bike. Though I wouldn't complain if I had a solid job to hold me down.

Now that it's getting into the summer months, Olympia is heating up. Mid-day riding almost guarantees that I'll be drenched in sweat by the time I get to where ever I'm going. When I arrived at the college today, I had sweatlines on my shirt in the exact positions where my backpack was (straps, back.) Its gotten to the point where its kinda impossible to go to anywhere 'professional' without sticking (stinking) out like a soar thumb. Then again, all that fancy equipment shit cost hella bank, so I think I'll just let everyone deal with my odor.

I should also mention that I'm updated the "maps" function on flickr so you can see exactly where I took all my photos. Kind of cool, kind of creepy; I'm not sure where I stand on this issue.

Final Project for Principles & Pipelines

Since the walk cycle we've been focusing entirely on our final animations, which included developing a story that could be told in 30-60 seconds, storyboards, character development and the actual animation hand-drawn.

Here are the rough storyboards for mine from oh so long ago:

"character developing" for me just meant hundreds of little drawings of rats trying to learn how ta draw 'em. I still think I could've used a few hundred more practice drawings to get it right but didn't have the time unfortunately. In the end he looked a bit wonky in some parts but I figure it's a first animation, and my char happened to be more complex than my classmates, since I suck at simplifying.
Practice sketches:

The final product came out to be only 33 seconds. I know it's not impressive, but keep in mind that even a short animation usually takes animators months and months with multiple people working on production and lots 'o little animation bitches doing your in-between drawings for you (assuming it's even traditional animation). I made the mistake of leaving the end until the very end, like the day before it was due. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish it...but not likely.
Anyway, here it is.

final project

Word of the Week: Boooring

CGrande
May 15, 2009
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So I'm at work now working on a project for my supervisor and have no fucking clue what they want me to do... They've stepped out for the day and I'm here til 7:00PM (its 3:27PM right now.) Basically I'm suppose to find connections between education programs at local colleges and businesses. Blah blah blah, boooring...

Did I state that I'm in a program about the book, "Capital" by Karl Marx? Yeah, booooring...

Also, I wasted my morning showing up to a friend's arraignment that the judge was an hour and half late for. Boooooorrring like church (only no free food.)

Ugh... At least I'm not jail. SUPER boring.

Worst part? It's sunny for once... Torturous. I did however get paid today. I'm going to go eat decadently after this (i.e. I'm going to eat food that wasn't free for some stupid event on campus.)

Walk Cycle

I've fallen behind on my updates! I've been too busy to post anything this semester but now that I'm done (X-D)... I can finally show you what I've been doing.

This is the walk cycle that I did way way back in like, February. It was our assignment after the flour sacks. I didn't wanna do a person so I decided to try for a rat on it's hind legs. Studied youtube videos of people training their actual pet rats to walk to get it right :P

Apologies for the crap quality. I can only get it to play on a loop on quicktime, not as a uploaded video, so I just recorded it on my comp screen. As good as I can do for a non-tech saavy person :x

first walk cycle

insomnia + late night viewings of slumdog millionaire = an admission of guilty indulgence

Hangaku Gozen
May 11, 2009
3 comments

I came home late tonight from a Mother's Day barbecue and found myself too cranked up to go to bed, maybe from eating a large portion of tenderloin for dinner. (Don't ask. It was delicious and I felt absolutely horrible afterwards.) So I started watching the DVD version of Slumdog Millionaire. If you haven't seen this movie, it's well worth taking a couple of hours out of your weekend to watch it: but on this third viewing I found myself more interested in the music than the plot development.

(I saw it first on the big screen, at the wretchedly awful Grandview Cinema---c'mon guys, just because it's an architectural treasure doesn't mean you can't upgrade the screening quality or the seats---then on the Fox Searchlight DVD, which didn't have the advertised special features. I had to register to get a new copy that included the Danny Boyle interview, deleted scenes, and other special feature gewgaw: then when I got the new copy, Fox had the nerve to ask me to mail the screwed up copy back "at your leisure." I still have the featureless copy and would be happy to give it to anyone who wants it, if they aren't interested in watching Danny Boyle instructing the boy actor who plays Jamal on how to feign constipation in the privy.)

A taste for Indian pop music came slowly to me: Daughter #2 first introduced it to our household thanks to her Tibetan friend, who had acquired a taste for Bollywood while she was growing up in India. My first response was "It all sounds alike;" but I wasn't really listening at the time. Later, when my Third World Cinema class forced me to watch Indian films more closely, I started to get hooked, especially after I did my graduate presentation on Lagaan (2001) that year.

Mitwa-Lagaan

But I'm still pretty un-hip compared to my kids, who knew about MIA's "Paper Planes" before the song was featured on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack.

Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack ( Mia - Paperplanes )

Anyway, I think I have lost all common sense after having seen the Lucky Lips video on the More Hockey, Less War blog ("possibly the only anti-war hockey blog in the universe," written out of Portland, Oregon, of course). The song isn't great, and the lip synching is awful, but those schoolgirl uniforms are straight out of an anime fanboy's fantasy, and the scene where the girls take on the British Navy is too cute.

lucky lips

And this is what happens when I forget to refill my sleeping meds prescription. *sigh*

change in japan.

Hangaku Gozen
May 9, 2009

I've been mulling over why the Japanese are so wild about our new president, especially since they've never expressed any particular interest in previous prezs like Bush or Bill Clinton. His mixed ethnic heritage might have something to do with it, along with his growing up in both Hawaii (a popular vacation spot for Japanese tourists) and Indonesia. But the election sprouted an Obama impersonator trend in Japan as well as use of his face and name to promote businesses and products (see above). Japanese comedians however had to be told that blackface is considered offensive by African Americans: so some of them have opted for no-sun tanning ointments and hours spent on the tanning bed. (The thought of which makes me laugh, since I think a lot of Japanese are naturally "brown" like myself.)

Anyway, thanks to Japan Probe, I get news about these sort of things in my email box:

That's supposed to a beer mustache on our President. I don't get a mustache when I guzzle my beer, but maybe that's because I can't wait to pour it into a glass.

I don't think it's offensive: it's more funny than anything else. But the Japanese are still new to the idea of a multicultural, multiethnic society, and you still see little gaffes, like portraying Obama with big lips and bulging eyes. I also don't see huge changes in the culture: it's still very difficult for a non-Japanese individual to apply for Japanese citizenship, and in the hinterlands a white person still gets a lot of stares, never mind an African American.

But it took us 232 years to elect an African American president. Change does come slow, unfortunately.

I'm Tired

CGrande
May 4, 2009
1 comment

I just wrote a whole fucking post on Vox and the shitter deleted it.
Basically I'm at Coffee Strong, a coffee house for G.I. resisters, doing legal support for people in jail. There are Strykers being shipped out to Afghanistan, so people are blocking them. I've gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours, so I'm a little out of it. The main reason wanted to post was for photos: