TGID (Thank God It's Delta)

I've heard that many people have had problems with Delta and we have not really been the exception with trying to get home for the holidays. However, that being said, I am incredibly happy with the fact that I just called them and was able to get our flight changed from Saturday to Sunday without a single penny more being payed. I'm kind of in shock right now. I've never experienced this before with an airline and I'm pretty flippin extatic about it! Thanks Delta!!!

Finally Made it to New Mexico

Just a quick update. We made it to Albuquerque after a huge amount of painful traveling. So here we are and we plan to enjoy it immensely! I'll try to post pics and vids after Christmas.

Roma (The City)

So here we are in Rome. After crazy amounts of negotiation with the employees of AirFrance, we are now ready to get home tomorrow. We got really lucky since we asked the lady and she gave us this one option. Otherwise we'd be leaving Wednesday.... if we were lucky. However, the incompetence of the AirFrance staff has been pretty bad these past couple of days. They gave us horrible options and then would randomly give other people amazing deals where they would get home the next morning. It was unbelievable! We will definately complain to the company. Right now we're just happy to be one step closer to home!

Heading for home

Tonight is our last night in Budapest for the year! We are very excited to go home for the holidays. While everyone has been really nice towards us, there are just those special parts of the holidays that you can't get in another country.
I was shocked to find out that people in Hungary eat fish for the holidays. I always think of turkey or chicken, but fish has never crossed my mind. It was weird for me to hear and it made me that much happier to be going home and having some New Mexican food! Whoo hoo! It's amazing how you don't realize things like this are so different until you come across them. Also, I can't wait to not have to tone down my colloquialisms!!! Yay!

4 days of school..... after today

So, today is Saturday and, just like every work day, we woke up at 5:45 to get ready for work. That's right, we're going to work. It has something to do with not working on the 24th and instead working today. Blech!

Noone is happy about this. The kids are unhappy, the teachers are unhappy, and Val and I are unhappy about it. However, on the good side, we only have 4 more days of working, after today, and then we'll be heading home! Val and I are very excited about this! We also have a friend from orientation coming into Budapest and we'll see her tonight!

After school I'll post some more videos about what we have been doing, as well. We've been quite busy doing some fun stuff and also looking for presents for everyone!

That's all for now.

Before and After

The main reason for this update is to show how dramatic of a change I have made to my SHIVU. However, before I get to that I would like to say that Val and I are very happy to be going home for the holidays! Can't wait to see everyone when we get there!

Anyways, here's the before and after of my SHIVU bot.

Here's the before....

and the after!

I think it's a pretty big improvement. That's all for that. Got some other projects in the works and I'm still working on this one as well.

SHIVU Pr0ject Re1n1tializing.....

So, I've started up my SHIVU (Simulated Human IntraVenous Unit) project again. I looked up some awesome tutorials and found out how to make some awesome reflections on my robot. Check it out.

(SHIVU and background)

I'm very happy with how the rendered image came out. I discovered a bunch of new techniques along the way and know a BUNCH more about scenes, rendering and how everything works in general. Great stuff!

For anyone who's interested this is the site that I found the tutorials on. VERY good information: 3d tutorials

Fall Break: Auschwitz

So, needless to say, this post is about visiting Auschwitz. It was a very interesting learning experience and I now know more about the Holocaust than I ever did. I think that you don't truly understand what happened until you see these things in person. However, the scale of these horrible events can never truly be comprehended. I still find it hard to actually comprehend that the belongings, collected after the liberation of Auschwitz, were only those of 2% of all of those that were killed in the camp. The camp still has a very eerie feel to it and it's hard to understand everything. Here's the video:

(Work makes you free) were the first words that people saw as they entered Auschwitz. It's rather sick, especially considering the fact that people were worked to death. It almost seems as if it was saying that working to death, or rather just death, was the only way to escape the camp. Unfortunatelly, this was true for most people.

These were some of the crystals and their containers that were used in the gas chambers in the camps. I remember that they said that one canaster could kill roughly 2000 people.

The following videos are of the belongings of ONLY the last 2% of the people that were brought to the camps. In actuality, the amount of objects taken from those killed was much higher. So much higher that it seems impossible to comprehend.

It's pretty horrible to see on film but when you see it in person it affects you tremendously. Another collection was the hair that was taken from people to make clothing for the Nazi army as well as for German citizens. I have a hard time trying to comprehend how these people were turned into nothing more than supplies. Their clothing, belongings, and even their bodies were turned into nothing more than supplies for the Nazi regime. Truly sickening, even now when I think about it I can't help but feel naseous.

The last part of Auschwitz was the gas chamber. You can see in this video the hole where they put the gas into. Out of this entire trip, I felt that this room was the saddest. You can almost feel the hope. Many people came into this room, believing that they were going to get a shower. I'm sure many believed that they would be able to survive the Holocaust, but once they were in this room, there was no chance that they would survive.

I'm sorry to have such a sad post but I think this is something that everyone should see at least once in their lives. Without seeing this you can't fully understand what happened. I hope those that died can rest in peace.

Fall Break part 2

Bwah! It's been crazy since we got back. Lot's of working and trying to get back into the swing of things but it's now time for more videos! The first 3 are from Cesky Krumlow.

This was the torture museum. We had a lot of fun inside and Jake scared Val and Jamie pretty badly..... lol.

After that we went to the wax museum..... equally as frightening.

Next up was the marionette museum, which was my personal favorite :D.

Our next stop was the bone church just outside of Prague. It was even more amazing than I thought it would be. Also worth mentioning is that it was all done by a half blind monk from a long time ago.

This is the Coat of Arms made out of bones!

The Trip

I'm a little tired so I can't really write too much but here's a bunch of videos!

This door was open on the train! We couldn't believe it!

It was also nice to see fog on the train, on the way to Cesky Krumlov!

Cesky Krumlov was a really beautiful place.

I'll post some more videos in my next post..... (To Be Continued)

Post trip

Just got back from our trip. It was really fun. We did a LOT of stuff over the course of this past week. LOTS of videos too! I'll start posting them after we get groceries!

Prague and so on

I completely forgot to mention this to anyone. We even just told our school colleagues today. We're going to Prague today! Bwah!!! I'll be sure to upload pictures and videos, of course! So this is sziasztok (Goodbye) for now. I'll be on and uploading in a little bit. I've been pretty bad at posting lately. I've just been so exhausted from work that I couldn't find the energy. Fall break came right on time!

Anna's Great Fall

I'm so proud of my students! They came up with this short stopmotion this afternoon. They did such a great job!

garbage day bwah!

Just made a funny and quick gif. I thought it was pretty funny.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

This is the original of the two videos.





lols

Gerbaud and the Zoo: Part 2

Val's dad and stepmom have arrived in Budapest. We've done a lot already since they arrived last Thursday. The first was to visit Gerbaud! Where I saw the awesome old guys playing music. The guy playing the violin would say, "Opa!" every time someone would put money in the case.

Awesome.... Then we went to the zoo. It was some great stuff!!!! Sweet animal stuff happening............................................. NOW!

Cute gorilla baby!!!!!.........

Isn't that crazy????? I love the Budapest zoo!

Yes, that's a rhino and yes, I'm touching it O_o!!!!!!! I also enjoyed this particualarly sweet moment of an old lady and the same rhino.....

Ridiculously amazing stuff. Even better than the first time. We also saw some people feeding elephants. Nuts!!!

After the zoo we finished with a relaxing afternoon at Szechenyi furdo!!! It was great! What an amazing place to live in!

Fun Day and a Corks

Woohoo. Finally had my video camera in public :D. Yesterday, Val, Jamie and I went all over the city. The first stop was Gerbaud. It turned out to kind of be a bust since they didn't have the Gerbaud breakfast which was the entire reason we went. Oh well, saw some amazing street musicians!

Hazzah! Love street performers. Saturday was basically spent travelling from one place to another, eating or drinking something and then moving on to the next place to do the same. It was a great day, even though I was kind of down for part of it. No idea why : /. Anyways, fun day and very relaxing. Definitely need to do it again soon. On a side note, Val, Jamie and I have decided that Tuesdays will be our creative day where we go to a cafe and just work on artistic things! I'm thinking of making some flip books for ATCs (art trading cards). It's a thing that our friend Emily told us about. BTW, Emily expect one comin your way :D.

And last but not least, I made another animation a little bit ago. I enjoy them because they take such little time so I might just make a bunch of really short ones. Enjoy!

Nothing particularly incredible but I think they're really fun :D. Give it a try in your free time!

Back to Basics

I've been forgetting my video camera EVERY time we go out and do something interesting. There was a band playing in the metro last night and I missed it :P. I've also missed a couple of opportunities to show off some of the amazing places that we've gone to in Budapest. Last night we went to an amazing cafe in a book store. It's definitely a new hangout spot. The ceiling was huge and the music and atmosphere were ridiculously nice.
In school related news, Val and I have been adjusting to working at the school and it's started becoming second nature to us. It's nice because it gives us a chance to actually focus on other parts of our lives. Other than this, things have been quite calm. We try to keep things from getting routine and in Budapest it's not very difficult to do. There's always something new and exciting happening and I can't help but feel inspired by the city. It makes me want to create things and work on art all the time!
When we first arrived in Budapest, I loved it. Then I started to dislike it, due to culture shock and the language barrier, and now I feel like I love the city again. There's something special about it and I can understand why people love Hungary so much!
Today we'll be going to Gerbaud and a couple of other places to try and find some things we need. (I/E paint, pencils, and other things) Can't wait to see what happens today!
I'll start posting some more videos today.

That's all for now!

First Animation In Budapest

Well, I finally caved in and did my first animation. It took me about 15 minutes and I mainly did it to fill the need to do SOMETHING. So here it is. I'll start getting some much better one's done when I spend more time on them and actually have a consistent source of light (I/E not the sun).

It's very short but hey what can ya expect? I'll work on another one probably this week or this weekend. Get something done that is more presentable. It all depends on if I get an idea for something or not. If I do it'll be up here soon!

The Fun Run

This past Saturday, Val and I went to a fun run for the area of the city that we live in. We didn't participate in the run but we stood by and watched, which is good enough I think :D. Anyways, the thing that made this so interesting was the exercises that people did.

Pretty interesting..... Lol!

It reminded me a lot of a scene from Lost in Translation where some women are doing water aerobics in the pool. Good times.... good times.

We hung out with this guy Daniel from the school. He speaks English VERY well and we had a nice time talking with him.

On the way home we saw the bike portion of the fun run, which was nice to see. We even saw some of our kids!

As you can see, Val and I have been quite busy with things but it is getting easier and easier every day. Today, Sunday, I was even able to lesson plan for the entire WEEK! That's nutty. I'm really looking forward to getting some stop animation going too. I really need to and I really want to. The creative part of my brain is screaming for me to do something like this. Especially after I saw these : /.

Just awesome! Hope to do stuff like this!

Sugar and Yet More Work.... With a Splash of Potential Stop Animation :D

Not this past Wednesday but the Wednesday before Val, a couple of friends (Amy, Jake, and Jamie), and I headed out for a night on the town. This is one of the places we went to!

It was called Sugar. It was crazy and amazing and very Japanese!

They also sold a bunch of random things. It was pretty cool!

This is what everyone ate. It was all quite delicious but I wish that I hadn't been so full at this point : /

This past Wednesday we went out with Jamie to the Pink Cadillac. It was a really good pizza place but a tad pricy. It was very fun nonetheless. (FYI: when I say pricy I really mean that it is what you would probably pay in the U.S.)

Other than this we have been working and we are going to work tommorow. By work I mean we have to cheer on a fun run. Next week we are also supposed to start our extra lessons. We will need to choose a day to do these and I haven't decided which day. It was going to be Monday but a lot of my kids said that they have Hungarian lessons that day...... bwah! So I'll probably do them on Wednesday or Tuesday. I'll teach some stop animation in class, in English, and I think it should be an enjoyable experience!

Workin' and More Workin'

Bwah! Val and I have been quite busy with working. I have some videos that need to be posted but I can't find the time. I suppose that that's good. A lot of the stuff that we have been doing has been fun things but, of course, we have also been quite busy with work. Today I have to teach a double lesson for one of my classes. It shouldn't be too hard, but my lack of experience is very apparent whenever I have to do anything that is even slightly more difficult than normal. However, I'm learning a lot so I think that these situations shouldn't be difficult for much longer.

Well, anyways, life is going well and our days have been packed with more things that we can even think to do. I'll post some videos today when I find the time.

Gulyás Festival

This past Saturday, Val and I went to the Gulyás Festival in Szolnok. It was pretty great :D. (Special shout out to Emily and Tamas for the invite!) On our way to the train station we saw this sweet violinist!

Now THAT was worth giving money to! I have no problem giving money to someone on the street if they do something. Dance, sing, play something, juggle I don't care as long as it's a talent.

We took the train to Szolnok, where we met up with Emily and Tamas to go to the festival.

This is what the festival looked like.

Here's some delicious gulyas!

This guy looks like he's in trouble!

Heading home, we had to go through the Szolnok train station..... This is probably the creepiest train station I've ever been to at night! There was water dripping from the waiting area and we kept talking about how it was probably blood! BWAH! I took this video of Jake because he looked really creepy. It didn't turn out as creepy in the video, however.

Here's some more creepiness.... except the end where Jake waves. lol

That's all for now. What a great weekend it was!

A Bufe (No Accents)

This was the bufe that we ate at for lunch today. It was ok. Well.... the hotdogs were pretty good and the soup stuff that we had. The only thing that was bad was the yellow stuff. I don't know what it was but it tasted like rye bread..... and I hate rye bread. It was a fun experience, nontheless, and I got the chance to speak some hungarian with some of our colleagues. Lessons seem to be going a lot smoother already. This is great news for both Val and I considering how freaked out about teaching we were.

On a personal life note, we went out with some friends last night. It was really fun and it looks like it will be a normal occurence. We also looked into a school for Hungarian but they told us that it would be pretty pricey (50,000 forints) and that they didn't have a Hungarian teacher at the moment but would let us know when they did..... No thanks.

On a hungarian note, does anyone know how to make the accents on an english keyboard. I wound like to actually spell things correctly!

Agi Turner's Hostel and the Bear Sanctuary

Ok. These are two different thing but they were both awesome and I didn't want to make 2 seperate posts for them. The first thing is that on Thursday Val and I went to the hostel, like I wrote about in my last post. We had some awesome food that Agi prepared and met some people fro various places around the world (Germany, France, Australia, and Scotland).

It was an amazing experience and was very fun. I'm seeing more and more that Hungarians are unbelievably hospitable. Like going out of their way hospitable.

Today, we went to the Bear Sanctuary (Medve Otthon). We had a great time and after speaking in pretty pathetic Hungarian to our waitress, a lady over heard us and asked us if we'd like to go into the wolf pin to see the pups in there........ ummmm hell yeah!

This was when we first went in.

Here I am getting an overkill of love!

There were some other people but they were really scared of the wolves. But seriously? How could you not think they were just really cute?....

Then, if that wasn't enough excitement, we got to feed bears with honey on a giant spoon!

What an amazing day it was! It took us about 2 and a half hours to get there but it is WELL worth the traveling. To anyone who wants to know if it's worth checking out, it is! I love how, in Hungary, you can get as close to the animals as is probably safe. In the US people would be too scared to let anyone do these things but realistically it's not usually the animals fault that they hurt people but really the stupidity of the people who get hurt.

This day was both the most amazing and unusual experience that Val and I have ever had.... EVER!

First Day Of School

Bwah! Sorry for the lack of updating...... I guess it's only been 4 days or so but Val and I have done a lot in that time and been super busy. I finally took a video of our apartment.... I mean.... flat. I said I would do it a while back but the video I took was too long so it couldn't upload. Anyways, here it is..... (drum role)

I know EPIC right?

Now on to the matter at hand. Our first day was pretty great. Val and I were both incredibly nervous. However, she is excited to teach the 5th and 6th graders and I'm excited for the 7th and 8th. Our second day was also good and not much to report there. Tommorow we'll meet with the teachers that we'll work with and start some lesson planning. I'm considering making a lesson on Sunday for the entire week but that might be a little heavy. I dunno.

Tonight we have been invited to Turner, Agi's (Agi Turner) daughter's hostel for some Hungarian home cooking. We actually leave in about 40 minutes from now. That should be exciting and I'll probably end up taking some video of the experience. We'll have to see if there's anything that would be ok to record.

A Trip to the Countryside

Today we went with our contact teacher, Agi, to her countryside cottage. But before that we went to the Achaun (pronounced Ocean). It was a HUGE super market. Parts of it even looked like a mall with various stores in it. Then we headed to this small bakery a couple of towns over, on the way to her cottage. After that we went out for Langos!




I love Langos!!!!!

Next was our final destination, the cottage. It was unbelievable! I love how, in Hungary, you can go 10 minutes outside of the city and be in a quaint country village. I have to be honest, my jaw dropped when I saw the amazing view from her cottage!

See..... pretty awesome huh? Val and I were so honored that she took us to see it. We even sat out on the patio and ate food and drank wine with Agi.

Great times. We can't wait to visit people in the small towns :D

The End of Orientation

Yesterday was the end of orientation for Val and I. We went to the various classes, we missed Hungarian because my back was causing me problems, and then everyone went out to the Bagolyvar (not sure if that's the spelling on that one) and it was really good. They have it set up so that you can order a "Menu" and they bring out different courses depending on the Menu you get.
When we fist walked in there was a guy playing the hammer dulcemer, which seems to be a popular thing in Hungary! It's very cool.

You can also see how nice the restaurant was in this video. Very swanky! The other night we also just stumbled upon St Istvan's Basillica. It was unbelievable. I can't get over how amazing the architecture is here. Budapest is truly a hidden gem of a city!

This was walking towards the basillica.

I love the very artistic lighting on it. It adds to the dramatic ambiance and made for a beautiful scene.

Anyways, skip ahead to the present. We are currently sitting in the computer room waiting to meet our contact teacher for our school. We shook hands with her and she seems incredibly nice. Val and I are both scared and excited to see our school, apartment, and potentially our boss and coworkers. This will probably be the last time that we'll be able to easily access the internet until we get it in our apartment so there should be many long posts to come about the first day of school and about the continuing saga of our lives.

(On a side note: I suck at spelling so if you see a typo know that I can't spell check because the computer thinks that I spelled everything wrong in Hungarian)

Gellerthegy and a Hungarian Speaking English

So we finally figured out how to pull out money. Thank God!!! We paid the rest of our money that we needed to and we're now debt free. Hurray! So the other day we climbed up Gellert Hill and took some video.

It was pretty tough but the view was worth it! This was mostly at the top. We didn't go ALL the way up but that will be an adventure for another time.

And finally for a little something extra, this is Maria, one of the instructors, speaking english. This gives you an idea of what the Hungarian accent sounds like!

The audio is pretty quiet but you can still kind of hear her : /.

Last night we had some pretty awesome experiences though. We showed some people the movie "Kontroll" and we also hung out in front of the hotel with some people and that was pretty fun as well. We and Val also drew some monsters. I'll be sure to post them! O_o

That's all for now! I haven't been carrying around my camera for some bizarre reason so my future posts will have much more interesting things in them!

Orientation

Just a real quick update. There hasn't been too much to blog about. Mainly because we've been trying to take it real slow. After all, we do LIVE here so we don't want to burn ourselves out on everything.
Today was ok. Actually it kind of sucked. It turns out the bank's debit card stuff isn't working. Whatever that means and they have no idea when it will be back up. Kind of annoying. Other than that orientation was actually pretty fun and we learned a lot.

Day 2 And There's a LOT To Talk About

Ok. SO it's really the next day here but I couldn't find the time to blog yesterday. I did want to make sure to do it at all though. Yesterday we went to the zoo, even though we originally planned to go on a paddle boat ride.










The plan kind of fell through when the park ponds were all dried up and hence unusable for a paddle boat. However, the zoo was amazing! I've never been to a zoo where you can get closer to the animals! You can even feed most of them, which would be unheard of in the US. Here's a look:

These were the hippos that we saw. They would open their mouths whenever someone would put their hand up. They were always expecting some sort of food.

A Giraffe!

There were these amazing baboon babies. They were really playful as you can tell. I'm amazed at how people are allowed to feed the animals or at least I think they are..... regardless, everyone did feed them and it makes for a much more enjoyable experience than American zoos.

This was another instance of something that would NEVER happen in the US. These rhinos were in an enclosure that was seperated from people by a few flimsy wood poles and pieces of metal. It makes for both dangerous and amazing fun times :D.

We didn't really do much today so not much to post about on that. Anyways, anyone who's in Budapest MUST MUST go to this zoo. It's deceivingly large and full of amazing things!

Been a Crazy Past Couple Days!

Val and I have been in Budapest less than 24 hours but we have already done so much! Today is Szent Istvan day and there has been a lot of activities around the city. Val took a bunch of pictures of some funny things that we saw on the plane on the way over so I'll let her handle all that stuff.
Val and I had a long conversation about how scared we were last night and this is what conclusion we came to:




This morning, when we went out, we were terrified to do even the simplist thing, order breakfast. We walked around for a good half an hour, past cafes and etterems (restaurants), because we were too scared to speak Hungarian to anyone. We settled on a small place on Vaci Utsa (Vaci street) and went inside. the people were very nice and we got a reasonably priced meal. It was very enjoyable and the girl at the counter spoke English to us while we spoke Hungarian to her. After breakfast we decided to head over to the area around parlaiment and have a look around. Well, to our astonishment there was a little celebration going on!

This was a little area on the road. There was a lot going on there!

This was some of the opera that was going on!

Here is the greatest thing I've ever eaten! Langos!

and to top it all off a sweet gypsy band!

This was pretty much our day today. We did a lot and now we're too exhausted to even leave the hostel for the fireworks. Oh well, it was worth it! We're having an amazing time so far and Budapest is really an amazing city!

Harom Napmulva Budapestre Megyunk!!!!

(3 days until we go to Budapest)

I can't believe that we're leaving so soon. This Wednesday we will be leaving for another country. It's become almost impossible to comprehend as it gets closer and closer. I don't think that I'll comprehend it until we're actually on the plane.
I've been struggling with the thought of missing everyone and I'm not really sure how I'll be feeling after we leave. I really just hope that this sadness will leave and that it will be replaced with only hapiness and an urge for adventure upon entering Budapest. I am excited but I feel really terrible for making people feel sad.
I don't think I'll have time to think about any of this when we leave though and I know that everything will be fine.
Budapest, here we come! :)

6 days and counting

Only six more days to go. It's driving me crazy. Every day seems to drag but I know that when we get to Budapest it will all be worth it! I'm scared, excited, happy, and anxious all at once. I made the unfortunate mistake of counting the hours for a while! What was I thinking!??!!?! Well, at any rate I can't wait and doing something, anything becomes a chore. I kind of snapped at Val today, which I still feel kind of bad about : /. <--- that's an upset face by the way. Val was packing and I wasn't and when she said I should pack I kinda flipped out!!! Lame on my part. Well, to finish this post out. BUDAPEST BUDAPEST BUDAPEST! :D <-----that's a REALLY happy face!

Major Overhaul

I made some pretty dramatic changes to my SHIVU. I was very displeased with the limbs and their lack of interesting shapes. It just seemed far too normal. However, I did some concept drawing and redid the limbs as well as adding some decals. There still needs to be a lot of tweaking with everything but for now they are as they are. However, I am very satisfied with the results.
I also added some basic feet and am also pleased with those. I think that this project is really coming together even better than I thought that it would. I have not done any dramatic lighting work or done anything that will make it look realistic at the moment. Have a look! :)

Budapest and Skype and WAAIIITTTIIINNGGGG

I'm starting to lose my mind. I can't think of anything.... well, I can think of one think, Budapest. I've never felt so anxious for anything in my life. I look forward to hearing a new language, living in our apartment, calling home to family members. It all seems so exciting!
The thing about going to a different country, especially to live, is that EVERYTHING is exciting. Going to the store to buy food becomes a test in speaking, listening, reading, and general cultural experiences. I've read some blogs about how people hate struggling to communicate but to me that's the whole fun of it. It gets so boring day in and day out mindlessly speaking, driving everywhere, and generally carrying out a relatively predictable exhistance.
Well, on another, lighter note I have still been working on my robot. It's going well but very slow. I worked for a couple hours today and that's pretty much it.
*sigh* well, I can't wait for Budapest and that's that.

2 Weeks and a Robot

As of next Wednesday Val and I have 2 weeks until we leave for Budapest. There's still a couple of things left to do before we leave but it's hard to get yourself to do anything when you know that you're leaving so soon. I pretty much just want to sit around dreaming of Budapest. However, this wouldn't be the best of ideas so I push on... kind of. I slack of sometimes and other times do things that I shouldn't when I need to be cleaning and packing. One of those things is doing CGI. Not that it's unimportant but there are things which have a higher priority at this point in time. Oh well, this is what I've been working on. It's called the S.H.I.V.U. bot.

Simulated
Human
IntraVenous
Unit

"Judge Us Not Equally Abraham"

This weekend Val and I went up to Denver for her cousins wedding. That isn't the point of this post. That'll be soon enough.... Aaaaannyways, Val and I decided to rent an Audio book from this place called Aardvark Audio books. We had our hearts set on Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and so we rented it. What an amazing book! All I can say is that this book is ridiculously good but very, very dark. The book starts out slow but give it a chance. It takes about 4 chapters before there's any real vampires but after that it takes off!

We were a little apprehensive because Val's dad and step mom said that another of the author's works, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was a little too heavy on the Pride and Prejudice and not enough on the zombies. I'm glad that that wasn't the case with this book. The details of his actual life and the vampire aspects are woven together to the point that you start wondering if this book might actually be real! It reveals dark aspects of Abraham Lincoln's life, both fictional and non, and does a great job at story telling. Great read if you're into zombies or even horror. :D

The Woman Robot Saga

I'm very slowly building my robot and I even have a scene planned. She's going to be pulling herself away from the wall that she is plugged into. I'm gonna edit in some steam for effect. I'll also build a scene based off of the Hungarian movie "Kontroll". It has these awesome gritty scenes and there was one particular one that I liked. It'll be pretty cool. The torso is going to be tricky and I'm going to have to look at a lot of reference photos for the different parts.

I like the green glow :D. If anyone wants to leave feedback I would love it!

Nice dynamic angle :D

Side view.

Seriously! If anyone has any ideas or critiques let me know. I'm always looking for input!

Woman's Head: The Robot

This is something I made based off of the robotic woman in Starcraft 2. I'm going to work on it a lot more but this is a good start. I also haven't made it so that the parts are interacting together with the light.

Woman's Head: Part 2

Here's the next part of the woman I'm making. I'm not sure what I'll do next and I never learned how to do hair so we'll see how that goes. I'll probably do skin textures and stuff like that. This will be my first time doing this. :D

3 quarters view.

Distant side view.

Front view.

Woman's Head

I started on a new project since my "toughbot" was getting to be a little bit of a pain and I didn't want to work on it any more. This is what I've been working on since yesterday. It's a woman's head that I found a picture of online. It's a huge pain to find good reference photos for modeling! I'm almost done with it and will most likely post pictures tomorrow. :D

This is when I was pretty much done with the facial features.

This is where I stopped today. I just need to smooth it and then connect all of the pieces together. The ear was a pain but I found an awesome tutorial that helped A LOT!

Ear tutorial

Happy Birthday and a Teapot

Val and I were sitting around trying to figure out what to do for her birthday. We could not think of ANYTHING. It was not good. We had to find something new and different to do. After about an hour of thinking Val thought that it would be fun to go to Art Attack, a local place where you can paint your own pottery and things that they have prepped and ready for painting. We settled on a teapot that sits on top of the teacup that it comes with! I thought it was going to be weird and full of old people, but it wasn't at all. In fact, it was a bunch of artsy college students. Weird right? Yeah.... really weird. Anyways, we felt right at home and everyone was really nice there.

"I love tea..." in french

Val drew this character walking. How great!

Annnnd here she is again.

This is from the other side. It says "me too..." on the top, in Hungarian.

And this is what it looks like seperated :)

After we finished our couple teapot I asked the lady that worked there when it would be ready. "By Wednesday", she said.

"What!??!! Wednesday? Aww man", was my response.

"Well, I am throwing some into the kiln now and have some extra room.... I could put it in and it would be ready by tomorrow."

"That would be great! Especially since it's her birthday today," I said, pointing to Val.

"Oh! Well! Happy Birthday!"

So we were actually able to pick it up today, which was quite exciting since Val and I NEVER get to work on projects. Great times were had by all.

As a side note, the lady said that this was literally a ONE time thing. She would never do that normally and we would not get to do it again. How lucky for us that she let us do it at all! Well, hope you enjoyed this post and support your local art places!

Starcraft 2 Beta Invite

Just a quick little post. I opened my email this morning and found an email from Blizzard, the creators of such hits as Starcraft, Warcraft, and of course World of Warcraft. Anyways, I while back I had signed up for betas for both WoW and Starcraft and today I was invited to beta test Starcraft 2. So basically I get a sneak preview before it comes out. I don't get a lot of time to test and play it but hey it's better than nothing. ;)

RUN FOR IT!!!!!!

Totally rigged my "Toughbot" up. I also posed him like he is about to take off sprinting.

Vallecito Drawings

I've been forgeting to do my sketchbook lately. So as a fun little thing I decided to include my pictures that I drew at Vallecito.... I know! cool, right? Aaaaaanyways on with the show.

This is kind of sad about Vallecito. There was a huge fire in 2002 and a lot of the trees were burned. This is a drawing of one of those trees. When we talked to some people in the area about it they said that the area burned was the size of the state of Rhode Island. It's sad but when we saw that the forest was growing back with such force it was pretty hopeful :D.

I drew this thing because I thought that it was pretty bizarre. It's a bronze antler that was turned upside down in order to look like a statue. I loved it so I drew it.


Here's a page with some Hungarian on it. The robot is balsting the page with his eye laser and saying one moment to someone. I thought that it was kinda funny..... heh.

In the upper right hand corner is a guy I made when I accidentally made a thick arm and turned it into a head. I think it looks pretty creepy! The little guy singing was inspired by Katamari Damacy. It's not the prince from the game but just one of those guys.

This is the song he's singing:

There's some more Hungarian. I don't know if it's right but it should say in English "Where is my dog?"

Chubby was the name of the horse I was riding.

Most of these drawing were for Val.

On this page I tried to draw a bird pretty realistically. It didn't go all that great :P

These are some guys based off of that guy creepy Charlie. (If you look a couple of posts back you'll see what I mean.)

Well. That's everything. I wanted to make a little bit of a longer post since I was jealous of Val's epicly sweet/long posts. As a last note Val and I's friend Ken is in Las Vegas. He sent us some pictures and a picture of his Hungarian friend. It's so crazy how many Hungarians we are discovering in the world. They're EVERYWHERE!!!!

Vallecito!

This past week I went to a cabin on Vallecito lake with Val and her family. We had a great time. Very relaxing, good restaurants, and most of all horse back riding :D. Here's some videos:

Great times! That's all for now. I just got back from vacation a couple days ago and everyone's pretty beat from all the relaxing we did. ;D

The Last Airbender......

I don't think there was anyone more excited about The Last Airbender than the group of people at the midnight showing of the movie premiere at midnight this morning. People were dressed up as characters from the tv show, some had arrows drawn on their bodies. I made sure to wear my Appa shirt to show off my own personal fandom. Unfortunately, it was not worth the effort.
I don't want to give out any spoilers for anyone that wants to see it but know that I thought that it was not a good movie..... at all. However, beyond getting the names wrong, Aang was called Ang, AND changing huge chunks of the stories original plot, the movie was just poorly made. I don't blame M. Shamalan though. It just seems like the movie ran out of money. However, rather than using lower quality special effects, the rest of the movie suffered for the few special effects that there were.
The editing of the movie was bizarrely paced. Some sections seemed to drag while other, more important sections, flashed by.
The dialogue was atrocious. For some bizarre reason it seemed as if someone thought it would be a good idea to leave out EVERY pronoun in the movie. This caused some incredibly redundant sentences. This was especially true when referring to the Avatar. I have no idea why.
The bending was also done in a way that seemed to be saving money. Rather than having each martial arts move cause some sort of bending, the martial artists would do these incredible complex moves and then a small little fire blast or air blast would appear. It seems unintentional and another sign that this movie had a very low budget.
Overall, as a fan I cannot seem to fathom why things were made the way they were and why Nickelodeon studios decided to make the movie the way they did. What I do know is that this was a film that ran out of money far before it ended and this combined with poor writing ruined this movie for me. I would say that anyone who was a fan of the show should probably pass and anyone who has never seen it, catch it when it comes to Nickelodeon later this year.

Effects: 8
Story: 6
Dialogue: 2
Overall: 5

An Epiphany

So occasionaly I've been terrified to go to Budapest. It's a huge step in Val and I's life and there's no reason to NOT be scared. However, I, strangely enough, found some pretty heavy wisdom..... in a manga. Yes a manga. Full Metal Alchemist to be specific. After reading the entire series, I finally finished it tonight which is weird. I've been reading it since high school and having something just finish feels a little weird. The quote says:

"A lesson without pain is meaningless. For you cannot gain something without sacrificing something else in return."

I thought this quote was interesting because it showed me that this is true. Although there is the fear and pain of leaving those we love behind, this pain is what makes the experiences worth doing. Our sacrifice will be worth the experiences we gain and the friends that we make. After reading this short quote I don't really fear the unknown and rather I now embrace it with every fiber of my being.

Drawing a Steampunk Magpie :D

I've been feeling pretty down on myself lately. Thinking I'm a terrible artist and won't ever be able to do anything. blah blah blah. Aaaaanyways, in order to make myself feel a little better I decided to draw off of some real pictures as opposed to just drawing from scratch. However I wanted to draw something original using some reference photos rather than just drawing something. This is what I came up with.

The Steampunk Magpie

I'm very happy with how it came out and want to look into making other steampunk inspired animals. Mainly small animals like lizards and such.Thanks to my girlfriend Val for kicking my butt and making me use reference photos :D.

World Traveler

visited 8 states (3.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

I found this on a girl named Lauren's blog. I thought it was really cool.... so of course I got it myself. I can't wait to add a bunch of countries to it in Hungary. It'll be fun to track where Val and I travel to.

On a second note, Val and I have been working on a couple of projects. We just finished an American Ninja Warrior video for this guy and he said, to celebrate, he was going to take us out for sake! WOOT! Never had sake before but I hope it's not going to be like drinking acid. This project has been taking up a lot of our time so we haven't had a lot of time for much else. Especially when you add it to the hours of time spent on looking at http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

Speaking of which, we found a picture of this thing that people are calling creepy charlie.

It's on the site on the picture. The caption on it says:

"Creepy charlie is only a little creepy, mostly it's just shy"

lolz. Aaaanyways, I've been drawing and doing cgi but not a lot. I've been a little too preoccupied with other things, like oh I dunno.... moving to another country. Once we move I'll probably blog about adventures and traveling more than cgi. Well, that's all for now.

Super Render

This is a rendered image of my bot after I got the mental ray rendering going. Mental Ray is just a REALLY good way to render things. It has things such as ambient occlusion which actually calculates how the light would hit an object, where it would bounce off to and keeps that going until it practically becomes black. It makes very realistic pictures because the light particles act almost exactly like real light particles. The thing that is tricky about mental ray, rendering and lights is that you have to find the setting that is needed in the lighting menu and also in the render options. If you forget one nothing will happen. Well, anyways here's the picture!

It looks much more realistic when rendered with mental ray, which is why I can't understand poor quality shows on TV. It's literally just a setting that you turn on and it makes a HUGE difference.

So..... close... to being.... done.....

This is yet another update of my "ToughBot" as I've been calling him. I almost totally finished now.... in a way anyways. I've layed out all of the armor, where it's going to be, and essentially defined how the body is going to be shaped. What's left is to add all of the mechanics, rig, pose and maybe animate if I'm not totally burned out on this guy at that point. So here's the updated pics.

Basic front shot.

Here's the legs. I plan on changing the feet though. Right now these are just place holders.

The back....

and the front!

Tough Bot Update

Here's an update on my progress with my newest creation. Bah! I have way too much on my plate and I don't want to do any of it. All I want is to be in Budapest!!!!!! Right now!!!! *regains composer* Anyways, I worked a little on the torso. If you look at the old torso you can see how different it looks when replaced. It took a lot longer to do this area than I thought it would. Mainly because I didn't know how to make the croch area. If anyone wants to give some feedback I would really appreciate it :D