any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

Geniusness and whatnot

It’s week 3 of Animation Mentor, and this week we’re learning to animate a bouncing ball. I think my bouncing ball will be so good that Pixar will want to license it for a new short film called “The Bouncing of the Ball” or something. Anyway, it’s going well; the workload isn’t overwhelming yet though I still wish I could get my sleep schedule in order so I could get my animation studying time into some kind of structured groove. Here’s my assignment from last week:

stupose1

The assignment was merely to observe other people’s poses and then pose the given 3D character. That took long enough; I can’t wait to see how long it will take to actually animate something that complex … *gulp*

geniusbook In other news, I just finished reading a good book called The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong by David Shenk. It basically argues against the classic notion that “genius” is just some innate quality that we’re either born with or without, most of us without. What we call “genius” is actually a set of skills that are highly developed over a long period of time, formed by constant practice and dedication. With enormous amounts of dedication, just about anyone can become a “genius” in any area they desire. The thing is, not many of us are willing to really dedicate that much time and effort to one area of study (and sometimes we can’t anyway, because of the demands of work, school, or family life). But realizing that just about anybody has the ability to become a genius in just about anything (though certainly not everything at the same time) is something few people seem to realize (though if you read through my blog here, you should see that I have long held this notion, as have others, so it’s not really an innovative idea, but it’s still a good book).

Some things mentioned in the book that I though were interesting:

Prodigies:

Firstly, there are plenty of prodigies who grow up to do nothing special, and plenty of successful adults (like Einstein) who weren’t prodigies. The qualities needed to be considered a “prodigy” and to be considered an adult “genius” are simply different. So if you weren’t a prodigy, relax, you can still do great things. And if you were a prodigy, you’re a loser now! Ha ha! See what it feels like!

No, what I mean is, if you were a prodigy, you can’t just rely on whatever made you a prodigy to help you compete in the adult world; you have to retain that constant drive to learn and practice and get better still, and this time without your parents and teachers praising how good you are to family and friends on the phone.

I watched this video on YouTube some time ago. A 6 year old girl plays an original composition on the piano.  Take note of what Ellen says at around 4:35.  She asks “How do you come up with this stuff?”  And the girl says “It just comes out!”  And Ellen says “Well, it doesn’t just come or it would come out of all of us if it did.  You’re very very special.” Oh, Ellen. You’re so funny. See? This is what a lot of people really think! Actually, Ellen, you could compose and play like that if you just practice for a few years. It’s really not that amazing. That you think you can’t anyway, however, won’t help anyone at all.  But Ellen is right; it doesn’t just “come out,” it’s practiced and worked towards.

How to be a Genius:

Chapter 7 includes some tips on how to become a genius; that is, how to work yourself to the bone to become good at something. The tips are very good (though easier said than done). The first tip is to find your motivation. Obviously it’s much easier to do something if you want to do it. Secondly, be your own toughest critic and identify your limitations and ignore them. Practice that will help you improve is not just doing the same thing over and over. You have to try to do something you cannot yet do. You have to constantly be finding areas you can improve in. You must delay gratification and resist contentedness. You might get to a point where people start praising you for your work, but you can’t be content with that. (Is praise your motivation, you shallow fool?!) You have to keep pushing yourself; never be happy with your work. I mean, you can be proud of what you’ve achieved, certainly, but the point at which you can’t find anything to improve on is the point at which you’ll stop improving (and become a big dummy). That said, you must also beware the dark side (bitterness and blame). You don’t have to psychologically mess yourself up by constantly thinking you’ll never be good enough, for whatever reason. When you push yourself, you must do it for the desire of getting better, not out of self-contempt. Finally, try to have heroes and find mentors. They will inspire you and teach you their secret ways.  (And, no, I can’t be your mentor, sorry to disappoint…)

Being a genius shouldn’t be the reward. Becoming a genius should be a reward in and of itself. You must learn to love the process, as it never truly ends.

Also, school is stupid and doesn’t help at all. Just thought I’d put that in there.

And all that said, you might be perfectly content with not being considered a genius. Nothing wrong with that. Lazy bum.

But … how does one practice effectively?

I’m still not really quite sure, the book doesn’t go into a whole lot of detail on this point. I shall have to do some further reading and research, I suppose. I guess some of it depends on what exactly you want to learn. And I suspect it has to do with what I mentioned earlier: finding some certain thing you are not yet capable of doing and figuring out how to do it. Give yourself little goals and then work to achieve them, and when you do, give yourself more goals. So I guess the trick is to find little goals that will actually aid you in your larger quest. For example, if you’re learning to play the piano, and you give yourself the goal of playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” even faster, that might not be as helpful of a goal as trying to play it with more accurate tempo or something. Or in learning to draw: If you wish to draw dragons that can only be seen in your mind, redrawing family photos from reference might not be as much help as studying anatomy and learning to recreate bodies in positions you do not have reference to work from. For arts like writing and composing, the art is so much more subjective that coming up with goals might be harder. Having a goal of simply “getting more praise from more people” just seems a bit stupid. Areas like that are, I think, more tricky. I could go into my thoughts about them, but I think that topic is worthy of another entire blog post, and I don’t really feel like getting all into it now.

Overall

Overall, I recommend the book, especially if you don’t already agree with its message, because you need to understand how wrong and foolish you are! I only deduct a few points because the author misinterprets an Ayn Rand quote, and gives too much unwarranted credit to Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, the “stupid old foolish scientist” as he’s known in these parts.

Happy reading! (Or happy non-reading, to all you non-genius folks…)

By S P Hannifin, ago

Life is good (with Animation Mentor)

OK, this post is part just talking about Animation Mentor, and part completely me bragging about how happy and excited I am, so look away if you hate that kind of stuff, as I probably would if I weren’t me.

Animation Mentor has officially begun! You can see I’ve got official badge on the side there, haha! My mentor for the first semester is animator Tim Crawfurd, who did some 2D animation before getting hired by Pixar in 1997 (when CG animation was still pretty new), and he continued to work at Pixar until 2009. Check out his imdb profile to see the films he worked on with Pixar, and his showreel on YouTube.

The structure of Animation Mentor might seem confusing at first, but basically there are six “classes” or “semesters”, each one lasting 12 weeks. Within each class there are 12 to 15 mentors, and each mentor is assigned to 9 to 14 students. So Tim Crawfurd is the mentor for me and 12 others. I think three of us are in the US, and the others are around the world, like in India, Ireland, UK, France, Spain, etc. Each semester you get a different mentor, so you get professionals with a variety of industry backgrounds (but they’re all character animators, obviously).

Here’s how the learning part works: on the Monday of each week, you get a video lecture and a corresponding assignment. The lectures and assignments are the same, no matter which mentor you have. The lectures also feature a bunch of different animators, so you get to hear from a wide variety of pros; it’s not just one guy telling you everything. You have until 12 PM PST Sunday to upload your assignment, so you have almost the entire week to work on it. Sometime during the week, you have a Q&A session with your mentor, live using webcams and microphones, allowing you to talk with the other students in your group and the mentor, asking any questions you have. Lastly, each week you’ll get a (non-live) video from your mentor reviewing and grading your assignment from the previous week, so if you did something wrong or have something you could improve, you’ll know exactly what and why from personal attention from your mentor. These reviews are also made public, so everyone can learn from your work and the mentor’s comments. (If that embarrasses you, too bad! I personally think it’s a great idea! The assignments are animation practice, not strict tests to see how smart you are.) Lastly, the online “campus” has other places to visit, like the perpetual chatroom, a forum, a “library” with book recommendations, and videos of animated-related learning material, like one about stop-motion animation, Maya training, etc. There are profiles to learn more about each other, video journals you can keep, etc. I think it could be easy to forget you have an assignment to do with all the social networking fun on the site!

To more specifics:

The first semester, that I just started, is “Basic Foundations” … so we’re starting with the basics, bouncing balls and such. You obviously can’t just jump right in and animate full characters! You have to progress to that. There’s no real assignment this first week; it’s all about getting introduced to the site, to the other students, and to your mentor. Yesterday I spent some time meeting some other students in the perpetual chatroom, which was a ton of fun. And I just had my first Q&A session yesterday and it was awesome. We mostly just tested out our webcams and how the whole Q&A thing will work, and had the opportunity to ask questions. I could probably sit there and ask a professional animator endless questions, but I only asked one today about how he approaches scenes that combine a lot of physics with character movement; to me that seems like the toughest stuff to animate; I fear I’ll really stink at it. But I haven’t animated anything at all yet, so maybe I’ll stink at even simpler things!

It was interesting to see people from all different time zones as well. It was late at night for some, early in the morning for others, 2 PM for me (which is perfect for me).

And it was really just my nerdy dream come true to be talking LIVE to someone who REALLY WORKED on some of my favorite movies of all time! And I look forward to more!

So now I’m in a state of elation, just so excited at actually having the opportunity to learn this stuff. So I hope I’ll be geeking out over animation for the next year or so, and my other interests, like music, might take more of a back seat. Maybe for eternity. OK, not for eternity.

Oh, I also love how informal Animation Mentor is, by which I mean it’s not like being at a university, with lofty professors who take themselves too seriously and dress up for class and have you worrying more about your grade than the actual subject.

So, overall, life is very good right now!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Quite complex

Greetings and such things.

Animation Mentor starts in about a week! I was going to put the student "badge" on the side there, but the student login is closed for the week for a break before the summer term starts. I’m almost ready, just need to review my basic Maya skills and find a camera to record reference with (I’m also practicing becoming double-jointed so that my reference shots will be more fluid and cartoony). I’m nervously looking forward to it.

complexity Hmmm, what else? I’ve been reading this really interesting book on complexity called Complexity: A Guided Tour. It’s got some fascinating chapters on emergent properties and genetic algorithms. Really makes me want to start doing some programming again. And if you like the classic book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, this book should please you as the author was heavily influenced by the book, seeking out Hofstadter to study under after reading it. (It’s been about 10 years since I read GEB; I need to reread it.) The book is just a wee boring at certain parts, especially in the beginning, but I suppose such chapters can be skipped, as some of them just give an overview of stuff you might already know. The book can also be a bit confusing at times, but overall, since it’s not very mathematically in-depth and only 300 pages, it’s great for more casual (yet fascinating) reading. I’ve still got a few more chapters to go, but it’s a great book.

Oh, I got Mass Effect 2 the other day from Amazon.com. I played through the prologue and it looks like it will be a really fun sequel. Too bad I won’t really have any time to play it.

masseffect

By S P Hannifin, ago

To self-publish or not to be?

Good tidings!

If you are an avid reader of this blog (and if you’re not, you should be, because my words are full of much beauty and wisdom), you will know that I have criticized e-books for their high prices, and predicted that they won’t become very popular until those prices go way down. However, I realized earlier this week that Amazon allows writers to self-publish their books on the Kindle (and other e-readers that can interface with Kindle books). It seems to me that if a writer were to price his self-published books nice and cheaply, at $1 or $2, he actually has a great opportunity to get some sales. Probably not nearly as many as he might get if he got professionally published and his book sat on physical book store shelves, but I think he’d have a much greater chance of making any money at all (since getting published in the first place is quite difficult).

So I’m quite tempted to try this out. I reckon my first novel, if I can finish it, would take years to try to convince a traditional publisher to publish it, and who knows if it’d ever get published or not? So I might just skip that step and go straight to self-publishing. There are already some print-on-demand services that allow writers to self-publish their work for free, such as Lulu and Amazon’s CreateSpace (I think it’s called), but print-on-demand books don’t attract a huge audience in and of themselves because they end up costing slightly more than regular books. With paperless e-books, readers can now try out new writers for $1 or $2 (or in some cases for free), so the risk is much lower. So I’d really like to try self-publishing on Amazon for the Kindle, and pricing my book at $1 or $2. It might allow me to get some reviews and make a little money. Most importantly, though: it would give people an easy and convenient way to access and read my work. Which is why any writer wants their work published in the first place, isn’t it? So that other people can experience it?

Of course, there’s one huge disadvantage with this self-publishing system, which is also it’s biggest advantage: anyone can do it. There’s a TON of competition, so you still might not attract any readers or make any money. But at least the opportunity is there, and to me it looks worth taking.

That said, time is of the essence here. Everyday, other writers are finishing their novels before me, and putting them up for sale. The longer it takes me to finish my novel, the more competition it will have.

I don’t want to rush, of course, that would obviously make the quality of the work suffer. But, as a commenter suggested a few posts back, I’ll have to at least try being more disciplined, and set some deadlines for myself. I won’t keep to them too strictly, since Animation Mentor is coming along, and I’ll be dedicating most of my time to that (the chance of Animation Mentor helping me find a full-time job afterwards is much greater than the prospect of being a full-time author, obviously). However, here are my suggested deadlines to myself to help myself make progress and self-publish a novel as soon as I can without sacrificing quality:

Firstly, I’d like to have the entire novel completed by Friday, September 10, 2010. (That is the day I’ll be seeing The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at Wolftrap with a live orchestra playing the score. It will be amazing. I might be crying at the end. And if I can have my first novel finished by that time, it will be even more amazing.)

Here are the novel-writing steps I decided upon earlier (again, just a guide, not an overly strict plan), now with suggested completion dates by them:

1) Clear beginning and clear ending, with character motivations and plans figured out (almost finished now) Due Monday, June 7, 2010
2) List of important scenes (this is the step I usually stop at and just start writing, but not this time, I hope) Due Monday, June 14, 2010
3) Details of how each scene begins and ends, adding connecting scenes when necessary Due with step 4
4) Purpose of each scene – make sure each scene is important and accomplishes something plot-wise and theme wise (not just one or the other (but plot-wise is more important)) Step 3 and 4 due Monday, June 21, 2010
5) Details of all scenes – details on what exactly happens between each scene’s beginning and end, including dialog (like writing each scene into a little screenplay) Due Monday, August 2, 2010

Complete rough draft due Friday, September 10, 2010

Complete final draft due Thursday, November 25, 2010 (Thanksgiving, and my birthday! Yay!)

And then it should be up on Amazon’s Kindle marketplace in no time! Yay!

OK, this probably won’t work at all; I’m bound to fail with lack of self-discipline, discover things take a lot more time than planned (especially since Animation Mentor will become my main focus), lose interest, etc., but it will be worth a try.

I think I finally have an outline for an ending though, so I need to start plotting, working backwards from the end, and forwards from the beginning. It will be fun! Especially with my new Piccadilly notebooks!

23 days left until Animation Mentor begins!

By S P Hannifin, ago

New glasses and other things that don’t matter

Got my new glasses today, and they’re awesome, the world is so much more clear now! I love it!

Also, my album is finally on iTunes! Just go to the iTunes store and search “Voyage of the Dream Maker” or “Sean Patrick Hannifin” and it should pop right up. It took them quite a while to get it up, about 8 weeks. But I’m glad it’s finally there.

Also, I guess I’m pretty ignorant and stupid, because I just recently realized you can self-publish on Kindle (and maybe iBooks, but I think Apple might require you to have a Mac for that, because Apple is kinda stupid). If I can actually finish writing something, that might actually be worth a try. I’ll have to meditate on it, so please excuse me… oohhmmmmmmmmmm…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Plans on planning to plan to write

Yo, word up! Whatever that means…

June already… soon the year will be half way over… and what have you got to show for it?

I finished reading a short science fiction novel called Mass Effect: Revelation … yeah, it’s based on a video game, so I guess I’m a dork. But it was a very easy read, and helps kinda flesh out some of the back story to the game (which I thought was great), so I enjoyed it, whether you like it or not, and maybe I’ll read more, haha!

I’m continuing to plan out another fantasy novel. I’m going to try to resist starting to write until my plans are as detailed as possible. So far, all my attempts at novel writing have failed. With The Game of Gynwig, I diverged too far from my outlines and ended up not knowing where to go next. With The Book of Harbringer, my outlines were too loose and vague, and I didn’t put enough thought into how scenes connected with each other. I could (and would like to someday) revisit the stories and try to get them right, but in the meantime, some new ideas are floating around in my mind. But I’m going to try to spend most of my time planning and planning and planning this time around, so that I won’t be having to figure out any plot whatsoever when it comes time to actually write. It might take years, decades, I might even give up, as I often do… anyway, right now I’m trying to get a sense of the overall idea: how it begins, how it ends, and what all the characters’ main motivations are… in fact, here’s my plan:

1) Clear beginning and clear ending, with character motivations and plans figured out (working on now)
2) List of important scenes (this is the step I usually stop at and just start writing, but not this time, I hope)
3) Details of how each scene begins and ends, adding connecting scenes when necessary
4) Purpose of each scene – make sure each scene is important and accomplishes something plot-wise and theme wise (not just one or the other (but plot-wise is more important))
5) Details of all scenes – details on what exactly happens between each scene’s beginning and end, including dialog (like writing each scene into a little screenplay)

Then flesh it all out with description and whatever, and I’ll be done!

Really, I hate to blog about my own future plans, because I hardly ever follow them, but I still think it’s good to have a goal in mind when working on something on the scope of a novel (a novel I’m personally satisfied with, that is; I could write a crappy novel any old day of the week).

My new glasses are waiting for me at Walmart, so I get to go pick them up tomorrow, woohoo! The world will be less blurry!

26 more days until Animation Mentor classes begin! Getting nervous!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Movies and stuff and stuff

Been really loving my new Piccadilly notebooks (cheaper but just as good versions of moleskines)… if you want write or sketch or keep track of all your brilliant ideas that will never come to fruition, I recommend them. I mean, you could use ordinary paper just as well, it’s not like the notebooks will replace any talent you don’t have (though I’m sure you probably have some)… they’re just so aesthetically pleasing that they encourage you to use them. So I’ve found myself starting to plan out another fantasy story that I’ll probably never write…

Um… what else? It’s the start of a 3-day weekend, though I spent most of the day today sleeping, so my sleep schedule is completely off now. I’ll have to try staying up all night tonight to try to correct it.

I just went through one of my bookshelves and made sure all my books had my property stamp in it. It reminded me of all the books I bought but haven’t read yet. Meanwhile, I have all these books out from the library… and I keep getting half or a third way through a book and then moving on to another interesting looking one. So I’m going to purge my checked out library items and return some and see if I can read some of the books I actually own this summer. Then again, maybe not; I read out of interest, not ownership guilt.

Oh, I also started watching those old mystery movies I got, from the Mystery Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection. Watched the first one, so I’m 2% done! The quality is pretty terrible; these movies haven’t been restored or anything. But the first one, Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge, was actually pretty funny; I suppose it’s equivalent to one of the comedy detective shows that might come on nowadays like Monk. But it was made in 1937, when TV series weren’t really an option, obviously. Anyway, I think it will be fun to watch the other 49 of these…

Oh, I also watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last night. My next few sentences might contain SPOILERS so look away if you haven’t seen the movie yet and don’t want to be spoiled…

The imagery and the uniqueness of the story and its world were pretty awesome. Some of the effects were a bit cheap, as in you could tell they were using blue screen sometimes with those fuzzy edges you get on cheap blue screen effects, but it’s amazing what they were able to do on such a limited budget. The thing that really annoyed me though was the ending. The ending was visually appealing, but story-wise, I just didn’t get it. The motivations and actions of the characters just became unclear and chaotic. It was just weird and unsatisfying.

Remember, writers, the two most important parts of your story (in my opinion) are the beginning and the end. (By “the end” I mean the story from the climax to the absolute end, not just the last scene.) The beginning should hook people (Doctor Parnassus definitely had a fun beginning), and the ending should satisfy them, revealing all mysteries and making *everything* clear. (I know some audiences don’t mind some ambiguity here and there, but I don’t prefer it.)

OK, that’s my blather for now…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Some junk I bought today (to help the economy)

Today I bought me some Piccadilly notebooks, so life can finally begin! I was looking for some notes on a story I wanted to write in my few spiral notebooks, but I seem to lose them easily, and their metal spirals get all caught in each other, and tangled, and they don’t sit on a bookshelf very well. Their big advantage, though, is that they’re cheap cheap cheap. But I decided, hey, I’m a billionaire (in the making), so why don’t I buy some nicer notebooks? Hmmm?? Why??? HMMMMM???!??!? Then I punched myself in the face and had a nervous breakdown. After that mess (which has now come to be known as my morning routine) I picked up the dagger, ran down the hall, and stabbed the cook.

OK, sorry, I’m just tired. Of being bullied around.

OK, sorry, serious blogging time…

So I went to Borders and looked at their moleskines. I know some people who just love their moleskines. But, geez, they were expensive! Fortunately someone on Twitter told me about Piccadilly notebooks. They look just about the same, but cost less than half as much. So I bought some of those. Yeah!

I Googled around “Piccadilly vs moleskine” and there seem to be a lot people quite happy with their Piccadilly notebooks. But I think you can only find them at Borders, where as moleskines are available all over the place (I think). I wonder if moleskine lovers are kinda like Apple lovers… nice quality, but expensive… although after you buy something expensive, I think you’re more likely to at least try to convince yourself that it was worth it, since you just spent a lot on it… know wad I’m sayin’ yo?

Oh, they also ended up having a hardback Anathem by Neal Stephenson on sale for $6 (cheaper than the paperback) so, though I already read it, I done went bought it. Awesome book. And hardback for $6? Great deal. (Actually, it looks like the paperback Anathem is only $3.20 on Amazon, ha! Did they print too many?)

And then I also bought Mystery Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection. Not that I have any time to be watching movies. They’re old and not the greatest of quality, but for the price, I couldn’t resist. They also had some other genres, like science fiction and horror, and though those were also tempting, I think the mystery genre of old films is probably the least crappy. (Old sci-fi films I can hardly stand. They’re usually so corny. But it’s still tempting to give them a chance…)

Um… I guess that’s it. Just me blathering about junk I bought today. I just bought it all to, you know, help the economy.

I can only let myself buy one more thing, and that’s a new pair of glasses. I looked at a few places in the mall, but looking at myself in the mirror, I just didn’t like anything, not even the glasses I have now. Maybe it’s my face, but I can’t do anything about that. So I’ll look at Walmart selection tomorrow, or some time this week…

Well, maybe two more things, because I also need a haircut. But that’s it. Although… some computer games on Amazon are lookin’ cheap… Mass Effect 2 especially… mmmmmm… but I must resist… I won’t have any time to play it anyway…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Google TV looks good

Here’s Google TV:

Looks good to me. Basically, to me, it looks like it tries to put your Internet video watching on your TV. There’s already software out there that does this (or at least something like this; I don’t know the extent of features GoogleTV is ultimately planning), but I don’t think it’s become widely used enough. And I can hook my laptop up to the HDTV whenever I want, but it’s not very practical. So if Google TV can give the nation a cheap and easy-to-use solution, as this looks like it could be, it could finally put the on-demandness of Internet video on your TV.

A few years ago I was arguing (well, more discussing) with someone at college about this stuff. His concern was bandwidth… he said that more on-demandish video isn’t here yet because it would cost too much bandwidth to be providing so many different TVs so much different content. My argument was that the technology was already here and it was all possible… but the cable and satellite companies and ISPs don’t have the supporting business models yet, so they’re still trying to figure out the business model side of it before changing things around for the consumers too abruptly.

So… if Google TV does become really popular (as I hope it does, because on-demand is better), it will be interesting to see how cable and satellite and ISP companies react. Will they want to create new restrictions? Will they charge more? Will they somehow seek to regain the content control they hold now?

Speaking of content, how will Google TV affect the content people watch? If you are able to load up a YouTube video as quick as you can turn the channel during a commercial, won’t that even up the playing field for content creators? Would that allow us creative dreamers to create our Internet TV channels and shows and have them actually compete with the big networks?

Guess we’ll find out … it will be interesting.

And here’s how to get GoogleTV now!

Anyway, got my eye exam tomorrow, woohoo!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Eye exam, Sleeping Beauty, blah blah blah

I finally made an appointment to see an optometrist this Friday. Need to get me a new prescription so I can get some new glasses. My eyes have gotten worse. Though I read somewhere that glasses help make your eyes get lazier and help make them worser. Oh well, I still need some. Right now the distance is a bit blurry even with my glasses on.

I also watched Sleeping Beauty on blu-ray today. Reading The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation makes me want to watch animations. And I’ve actually never seen Sleeping Beauty before. I must say, it looks wonderful on blu-ray, the way all films should be watched. What strikes me, probably because I’m watching it for the first time as a 24 year old, is how short it is. Only 75 minutes. If I had watched it as I kid, I’m sure it would’ve seemed longer, like all 75-85 minute movies did. Anyway, I ended up watching it twice, once just normally, and then again with the audio commentary (featuring a group of people who didn’t actually work on the movie). There are a bunch of special features on the bonus disc that I haven’t looked at yet, but hope to. (The best part of the movie: “This dress looks awful!” “That’s because it’s on you, dear.”)

Also had my first little Animation Mentor experience tonight: just a little Q&A session about what’s coming. So I got some more info on how the program will work, and got some questions answered. I listened for about an hour and twenty minutes, really excited, and then my connection started having problems. I’m not sure how long it went on afterwards, but I think every question I was curious about got answered. Can’t wait until it actually begins! Probably annoying for me to keep saying that…

This animation study, starting next month, might mean I don’t compose much, if any, music over the next year and a half, as my free time will go way down… but we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll still write a bunch of melodies though. I can’t stop doing that.

Guess that’s it for today…

By S P Hannifin, ago