If you haven’t noticed yet, I’ve redesigned my main site. It is now extremely simple, mostly just a collection of links. That’s really the only purpose it was serving before, but it was much more cluttered and clunky, and the CMS I was using (called “Dragonfly”) was out-of-date and had some problems rejecting certain IPs and newer browsers. I did have some forums there which had about 35 members, but I doubt many will miss it; most people registered, posted a few questions to me, then left forever. In case any future visitors want to do the same, I created a new forum with phpBB, though until I become rich and famous, I know that it won’t get much traffic. Now I just need to recreate a “links” section for it…
What do you think of the WizardWalk.com redesign?
I have never seen true beauty until this day (67%, 2 Votes)
It's just OK, and I don't really care (33%, 1 Votes)
It's pretty good, but not great (0%, 0 Votes)
It's kinda lame (0%, 0 Votes)
I have never felt so sick from just a website (0%, 0 Votes)
Whew! It’s been a busy weekend. Fortunately, due to my ability to work well under pressure (did you hear that, potential employers?), I was able to get my animation to a level I was pleased with for my Animation Mentor homework, after dedicating about 5 non-stop hours to it last night and 3 more this morning. (Daylight savings time was convenient.) The shot still needs more work, but at least it’s on the right track… I think. The assignment this week is, I think, to polish and finalize the shot.
Now I’m at work again. We get a ton of business on Sundays (if you can call it “business”). On the one hand, this makes the time fly by like a neutrino, on the other hand it leaves one as tired as a quantum physicist misunderstanding the point of Schrödinger’s Cat.
Not sure what I’ll do when work is over, if I’ll go see Megamind tonight, or just go to sleep, or try reading, or watch the next Animation Mentor lecture, or watch a movie, or play a computer game. Nice to have choices.
When you’re too tired to do anything creative, is it better to just take a nap, or do something involving less thought, like playing a computer game or watching TV?
As I continue to plan out the cartoon I’ll probably never make because I’m too busy and lazy and untalented, I’m having trouble deciding what kind of cartoon it should be. Should it be one of those continuous story cartoons, in which there’s an entire “season” that has an overarching story? With those, you can really build up the story, but viewers have to watch the shows in order to completely understand what’s going on. Or should each episode be a self-contained story?
What kind of cartoon should I make?
Bunch of self-contained episodes (67%, 4 Votes)
Season with overarching story (17%, 1 Votes)
You'll have make two cartoons, one of each (17%, 1 Votes)
Back on August 4th I posted a link to a graduation speech in which the valedictorian went over some major criticism of the current American education system, which I mostly whole-heartedly agreed with. After all, I’ve ranted about the education system on this blog quite a few times. I said that I couldn’t verify the speech though; it was only posted on the web from a second-hand source. However, I finally came across an actual recording of the speech, which seems to have been uploaded to YouTube by the speaker herself. So, for your enjoyment, or for your frustration with young people these days, here’s the speech:
Woohoo! Yes! Indeed! That’s right!
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Animation Mentor progress
Week 8 (of 72) starts today! I’m pleased with my assignment this week, though of course I can still see areas that could use some tweaking, but you only have a week, so running out of time is inevitable. I’ll upload it to YouTube tonight or tomorrow. I was hoping to revise my pendulum assignment from last week, but never got to it. (I got sick that week so didn’t spend as much time on it.) Oh well.
The transforming room
Someone on Facebook posted a link to this very interesting video:
Of course, here in America, if you have enough money to afford designing and building something like that, then you probably have enough money to just buy a more spacious place, unless I suppose there’s some squished location that you really really want to live in. It would be awesome if someone opened up apartment buildings or hotels in which every room was like this; should get some good business just for the uniqueness of it. (Probably apartments; hotels would probably need too much maintenance.)
Don’t you hate it when you have a good idea for a topic you want to blog about, and then the next day, when you have time to blog, you forget what it is?
Anyway, haven’t been up to much these last couple days, just working and animating. I’m staying busier than I was in high school or college! Of course, in high school and college I 1) could get away with procrastinating every now and then and 2) hated doing the work in the first place, which is why I procrastinated. Though animation can be a bit frustrating at times, it’s something that I really want to do, and I wish I had more time to do it. Having my paid job interrupting my more interesting animation work is the annoying (but monetarily necessary) thing. I’m scheduled to finish Animation Mentor in Fall 2011, and, after paying my last tuition, it will be very tempting to try to leave work at that time and work on animation full-time for my last semester, with the intent of course of polishing a demo reel and getting a real animation job. And in 2012, take a vacation, a real vacation, ahhhh… but I must snap out of it! It probably won’t happen! Focus on the now! But, geez, the now is pretty intense! The ice I skate is getting pretty thin, and the water’s getting warm so I might as well swim! Can’t even fly out of a window! A tree doesn’t think it’s a tree, it is a tree! Ah-he-who-ha-ha!!
Oops, I had a mental breakdown there for a second. Please forgive me.
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Anyway, I’ll post this week’s assignment on YouTube tomorrow night. I don’t think I’ll ever post that pendulum assignment. It turned out terrible, and I don’t think I have time to do a revision like I had hoped, so too bad, but I think this week’s assignment looks a bit better.
Hey, I finally installed a WordPress plugin that allows me to post polls… took a while to get it to work; a lot of plugins seem to have problems with WordPress 3.0, but I think this one should work OK.
So, as sort of a test of the new poll plugin, my first question is: what novel should I work on?
Over the past year, I’ve been working on plotting out at least three novel ideas. They all need more plotting and planning before I can actually get to the writing, but they all seem like fun to work on. (Not that I really have any time for this, maybe just 1 hour a week.) Here are the three ideas:
1) The whodunnit solvers: It’s about solvers of a whodunnit mystery. Only this takes place in a Hannifinesque fantasy kingdom. Really, all these ideas take place in fantasy worlds, and I just love the idea of writing a mystery.
2) The protectors: It’s about children (though this is not necessarily a children’s book) who receive certain magical powers to protect a kingdom from evil-doers.
3) The designers: It’s about people who have the magical power to design magical things. Only one of the designers is evil, oh no! And, alas, the only designer who has the power to stop him doesn’t even know he’s a designer! Woah, amazing! I won’t call them “designers” of course; that makes it sound like they belong on HGTV. And it would be less cliche than it sounds.
So which novel should I work on? They all seem like fun ideas. Of course, I probably still won’t actually get around to writing any time soon; most free time goes to my animation studies. But if I can spare one hour a week, on Sunday nights perhaps… that short story sale last week just really makes me want to write some more. (Though I have to remember to do it for the fun of writing, and not the prospect of money, which is always tempting.)
What novel idea should I work on?
The designers (75%, 3 Votes)
The whodunnit solvers (25%, 1 Votes)
The protectors (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 4
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(poll ends on Sunday, August 15, 2010 @ 23:59 PM EST)
This is all kind of self-indulgent I guess, but that’s what a blog is for, right? I mean, I guess I could post helpful stuff, like stock tips or how to improve your golf game, but what fun would that be?
Anyway, that’s the poll. Now I’ll have polls more often, woohoo!
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