A Blog of my life. Computer Animation, Travel, and Exploration.

A Trip to Turkey

2011-11-13T18:21:00.036+01:00

Bwah. THis is my first blog post in 2 months. Talk about slacking! Anyways here's some videos!

The first batch is from Istanbul.

First Night in Istanbul

A Cool Cafe in Istanbul.

The Aya Sofya. It was SO amazing!

This place that we went to had the BEST baklava ever! It was amazing!

The Entrance to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

Inside the Grand Bazaar.... after the power went out and everyone had to use generators.

We went to Bosnia last year and first heard the call to prayer there, at sunset. I think this is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard.

A beautiful view of the harbor.

The most amazing fish sandwich that I've ever had in MY LIFE!!!! They actually caught the fish about 20 feet from where we ate it!

Jake and I decided to get a haircut in Turkey. Here's Jake getting a Turkish style haircut. It was quite an experience!

Bwah! I have no idea what this was about but it was cool!

The haircutter also used an old style razor! It was pretty cool! It was pretty smooth too!

Then it was my turn for the fire!

This was the final result of an almost 2 hour search for these amazing sweet treats. It was well worth the time that it took. It turns out that they were an old style treat in Turkey, which meant that they were almost impossible to find!

Next up.... Pamukkale

Nothing to really say here. I think the videos speak for themselves. You can really see how beautiful of a place this was. The water was so warm and clear. IT was a truly amazing experience!

Cappadocia.....

This was, by far, the most difficult part of the trip. It all started with a series of troublesome, and expensive bus rides. Each person we asked along the way insisted that finding a bus to our destination would be easy. However, we ended taking many buses out of our way and paying out the nose for said bus rides. It was a nightmare even trying to find a bus that would take us to a place near Cappadocia. However, afterwards the time that we spent there was quite enjoyable. I even got a chance to try doing some Yoga, which was actually pretty amazing!!

This is how our bus trip started out after we were basically stranded by the bus company.

However, things chilled out and started going a lot better.... kinda....

Here were some amazing trees that we found on the side of the road.

Goreme

Goreme again

And finally, on the way out of Cappadocia we saw this mountainside village.

This was our trip to Turkey. Hope you enjoyed the videos!

Remembering 9/11

2011-09-11T22:07:00.003+02:00

So, I'm sitting in bed and looking at pictures of the terrorist attacks from 9/11. I still get choked up seeing them. I hate to think that anyone is even capable of doing a thing like that. However, I'm also happy to see how everyone has united to remember the people that died. I think this is a day I will always remember for the rest of my life, as if it happened yesterday.

It's strange that here they can talk about it so casually. I don't think that they really truly understand how, as an American, that I feel about this. I hope that they never have to know either.

Phhhheeewww...... ok here we go

2011-09-11T13:59:00.003+02:00

Time to catch up on this blog. I have been seriously busy but I finally made some time to get this done.

First up....

First up is one of my new CGI projects. It's a cat shaman. It's pretty much done and I'm happy with how it turned out.

This one is a demon for a scene that I'm going to make. I still have a lot of work to do on the scene but yeah....

Well, I guess that's probably it since I can't seem to find any of my videos so I'll have to look for my camera... : /

Fail and Epic Fail :(

2011-09-04T19:44:00.004+02:00

Soooooo.... This is bad.... really bad. I haven't updated this blog in a REALLY long time. I have a good excuse though! I've been busy..... that's a pretty lousy excuse... but it IS true. Well anyways, I'll do my back entries for all the videos that I've taken. There's been a LOT.

Well, on to the present. We went to a wine festival today and it was really fun. It was in a place called Skanzen. We had some wine, but not too much, and then we enjoyed some electrofolk music, which is amazing. If you haven't heard it, check it out! This is a short entry but there will be more soon!

2011-04-27T14:13:00.005+02:00

(This is a quote from our tour guide in Mostar. to give it some context, he was refering to how nothing in the world is what it is. There is always some reasoning behind everything.)

This past trip was probably one of the best we've ever had. It was relaxing, exciting, beautiful, and thrilling all at the same time. Sarajevo was, admittingly, not the best part of the trip. The real beauty and adventure was in Mostar, which was surprising, given it's size. However we had a wonderful time there!!!

View of the countryside from the train.

A short tour of our hostel. It was perfect! If you go to Mostar, you MUST stay at Majdas. The people were so amazing and Bata's tour is well worth the trip alone! Not to mention that Majda is the sweetest person I've ever met :)

The Islamic call to prayer at sunset. It was so beautiful!

The waterfall that we got to swim in!!

A small castle town, far from civilization!

The old bank building. It was apparently used by snipers during the war. It's pretty eerie. It was totally abandoned but there were still many things in it, ranging from old files from the bank to bullet shells that had been fired by the snipers. Creepy!

Well, that's all from the amazing vacation that we just got back from. It was an amazing experience, and to be honest it was Majdas Hostel that was the main cause. If you go to Mostar, this is the only place you should stay at.

Working on a Portfolio

2011-04-17T20:02:00.002+02:00

There hasn't been too much to update lately. Things have been busy, as usual. Worl is work and life is life. We've been doing things but It's very hard to find the time to wait for videos to upload to the internet. Especially more than one. On the good side, there are many things coming up soon so hopefully that will give me an incentive to record and upload. However, I'm starting to get really into animation again since we've been having kind of a lul. Annnnnyyyways, Here's 2 projects I've been working on. Both were made in a combination of Maya and Mudbox. Both unbelievable programs! The first is the head of a type of alien from the video game StarCraft 2. I had a fun time making it and learned alot from tutorials that I watched on youtube.

Protoss bust.

The next is a character that I drew in my sketch book. I think the modeling came out pretty well and I'm glad that it came out as well as it did. He's kind of a forest spirit guy that I thought up a while back.

The Forest Spirit. The face is like a wooden mask.

Well, that's all for now. I'm excited to get back into modeling and doing something towards getting into grad school!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

2011-03-25T06:56:00.003+01:00

It's a little late but the 24th was my birthday! It was a really good one too! I got presents from some of the teachers, some of the students, and everyone wished me a happy birthday! It made me very happy :D. Unfortunately, it's at times like this that I really miss home. It makes it very hard not being able to see everyone that I love and care about. I miss everyone so much!

On a second note, I worked on a project for our friend Jake. He wanted an intro video for his videos so here it is.

Not too much else has been going on. I got some more videos to upload from our trip to Serbia.

2011-03-17T09:42:00.009+01:00

Today.... is a sick day. Val and I have been feeling like crap since we got back from our vacation yesterday. Val wasn't feeling good since Saturday and it really started hitting me on Monday. Blech!
On the bright side, I'm now able to post updates to my blog! Huzzah!

First update: The Buso Festival. This was a crazy holiday where people dress up in demon costumes, scare people, befriend children, and sexually assault women.... and yes it was as weird, and as fun, as it sounds.

One of the first busos we saw.

baby buso!!!

Buso parade!!!!!

Busos starting the bonfire!!!!!!!!!

and last but certainly not least....

The Buso bonfire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although we walked around for 8 hours, and felt like our legs were going to fall off, it was an amazing time and it was an easy festival to get sucked into. Eveyone had a great time and I think that most people would enjoy it. Even the kids, oddly enough, were delighted by the Busos. Weird, wacky stuff!

2011-02-24T19:56:00.005+01:00

Ah. The Ski trip. What a crazy, amazing, wild, fun, and disorienting trip. See, a couple of weeks ago we were invited to go skiing in Austria. We of course said yes. Well, we got some AMAZING pictures and videos!

It was super foggy. Which was really strange. Actually, to be more accurate, it wasn't foggy but cloudy. We were at such a high altitude that we were in the clouds!

This was a ride up one of the main ski lifts.

There aren't many videos from the trip but there were a LOT of photo opportunities!

Val in Ski School!

The view from the top of the red. Breath taking!

Relaxing at the top of a red run!

It was so cold that Val's hair started frosting!

Old Christmas Videos

2011-02-06T17:53:00.011+01:00

I've been really falling behind on blogging! Sorry to everyone who looks at my blog. I'm gonna try and get better about it!

Anyways, I forgot to post videos of when we went to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, so here it is now! Better late than never.

This first video is of some blacksmithing! It was really cool and it was nice to get close to a heat source since it was so unbelievably cold!

Along with the blacksmithing were some carols! It was great. This was a rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star!"

Lastly, there was this street performer with a puppet. People loved it and he drew a huge crowd. It might be hard to see in the video but the "puppet" got mad when an old man walked accross his stage. It was pretty hilarious!

I loved Bratislava and I think it was a nice place to go for a day trip.

So fast forward a bit and we find ourselves at the day filled with adventure. Jake, Val, and I explored the town and discovered many new and interesting sights! The first was the top of Castle District.

the castle and the Fisherman's Bastion!

These were some old ruins accompanied by a little dialogue from my self and from Jake!

This was part of the underground hospital. They were selling gas masks for 1500 HUF ($7.50) and that was WAY too good of a deal to pass up. We had a lot of fun afterwards taking pictures and videos wearing the masks!

Well, now we fast forward to the recent past. Val and I's friend Amy recently had a birthday party and she invited us. It was Mexican themed and she invited some Hungarians to join in the festivities as well. Great fun! They all loved the tacos that Amy made and Val even made some sopapillas that everyone loved as well!

Otkert

2011-01-21T20:47:00.004+01:00

Ahhh what can I say about this wonderful place? It's the MOST amazing place in Budapest and our favorite place to go. This place has it all, good food, amazing decor, and the friendliest staff I've met anywhere in Europe. If you go to Budapest, you have to go here. I've been agonizing about posting about this place because it's so amazing and I don't want people knowing about it, but my kind nature made me change my mind :). If anyone wants us to take them there when they're here, let us know! (Not that you'll have a choice) :)

Otkert on Google Maps!

The Speaking Test!!!

2011-01-14T07:04:00.003+01:00

This has been the craziest week that Val and I have experienced yet! It seems that everything is falling on the same days. For instance, this week we had everything happen! The new teachers from CETP arrived this week and we stopped by to say hi, My kids had a practice speaking test (That they all did great on!) and Val and I started our Hungarian lessons this week as well! It has been crazy, but mainly exciting!

To everyone that I haven't talked to on Skype, sorry about that. This week has been absolutely packed with things and I've had a hard time managing all of it.

The Christmas market

2011-01-06T12:50:00.004+01:00

I had gotten out of the habit of posting anything for a while so this is very, very late. Well, you know what they say 'better late than never'. Here's some videos of the christmas market. It was amazing while it was here and I'm so glad that we saw it.
The first thing you see in this video is a stage where they held a bunch of performances. It was really great and we saw some pretty amazing performances.
This was a stand that was selling these amazing smelling things. They were delicious smelling and everyone that walked by stopped to smell them!
They even had some blacksmiths that were selling hand made crafts. They were very nice but very expensive as well.

Well, that's all for the christmas market. :D

TGID (Thank God It's Delta)

2010-12-30T17:52:00.004+01:00

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

2010-12-23T01:28:00.002+01:00

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)

2010-12-20T13:53:00.004+01:00

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

2010-12-16T17:44:00.002+01:00

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

2010-12-11T06:56:00.004+01:00

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

2010-11-28T16:47:00.006+01:00

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.....

2010-11-23T09:25:00.005+01:00

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

2010-11-22T16:25:00.009+01:00

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

2010-11-13T13:54:00.006+01:00

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

2010-11-07T15:31:00.004+01:00

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

2010-11-07T09:33:00.001+01:00

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

2010-10-29T15:07:00.002+02:00

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

2010-10-18T20:45:00.004+02:00

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!

2010-10-11T19:38:00.003+02:00

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

2010-10-11T16:58:00.007+02:00

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

2010-10-03T15:12:00.005+02:00

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

2010-10-02T10:04:00.006+02:00

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

2010-09-26T15:19:00.007+02:00

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

2010-09-26T11:49:00.005+02:00

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

2010-09-24T14:21:00.005+02:00

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'

2010-09-21T06:17:00.004+02:00

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

2010-09-12T13:14:00.010+02:00

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)

2010-09-09T13:50:00.008+02:00

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

2010-09-04T18:00:00.010+02:00

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

2010-09-02T16:57:00.006+02:00

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

2010-08-29T15:33:00.012+02:00

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

2010-08-28T09:49:00.005+02:00

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

2010-08-26T13:44:00.007+02:00

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

2010-08-24T11:27:00.000+02:00

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

2010-08-22T10:56:00.000+02:00

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!

2010-08-20T19:01:00.000+02:00

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!!!!

2010-08-15T21:48:00.000+02:00

(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

2010-08-12T05:39:00.000+02:00

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

2010-08-10T03:40:00.000+02:00

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

2010-08-07T03:53:00.001+02:00

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

2010-08-01T17:43:00.000+02:00

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"

2010-07-26T05:12:00.001+02:00

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

2010-07-24T00:57:00.000+02:00

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

2010-07-23T05:22:00.000+02:00

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

2010-07-22T05:07:00.000+02:00

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

2010-07-20T23:55:00.000+02:00

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

2010-07-19T03:05:00.001+02:00

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

2010-07-18T18:38:00.000+02:00

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!!!!!!

2010-07-12T05:00:00.000+02:00

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

Vallecito Drawings

2010-07-12T00:18:00.001+02:00

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!

2010-07-09T05:00:00.000+02:00

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......

2010-07-01T17:32:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-27T04:22:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-24T22:12:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-24T00:01:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-14T21:52:00.000+02:00

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.....

2010-06-11T23:26:00.000+02:00

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

2010-06-09T22:09:00.000+02:00

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

Kontroll and Taxedermia

2010-06-08T03:05:00.000+02:00

Me and Val have been in search of good Hungarian films to watch lately. We came across two movies that we thought would be interesting.

The first was Kontroll.

I absolutely loved this movie. It's about the control officers in the Budapest metro. It's very funny and stays light even when things get intense. It is a dark comedy so if you like that kind of thing check it out. It is also very beautiful, cinematicaly, and also heavy on the symbolism. Great movie!

The second was a movie called Taxedermia.

Although the picture doesn't seem it, this movie was INCREDIBLY disturbing. From vomiting to masturbation, the movie never ceased to push the limits of what can be shown in a movie. It is, after all, not rated. However, this movie is very beautiful. Colors are used very intentionally and it doesn't seem that anything is unnecessary for any one scene. Like Kontroll the movie is heavy on symbolism, showing representations of all the different eras of Hungary from World War 2 to modern times. Brilliant and provocative, I say see this movie once.... maybe. If you don't have a strong constitution, pass it up. Although it was amazing, the sheer darkness and vulgar nature of the film really stop you from enjoying the movie too often but for all you film people out there, check it out.

Also, if anyone knows of some light hearted Hungarian films, let me know!

Sketchbook #2

2010-06-04T22:09:00.000+02:00

I was gonna post this tomorrow because I did my last one then but I drew this and was pretty happy with it so I thought I would post it now. I haven't been in a drawing class for a while so I was worried about trying to draw an actual face. I think it came out pretty well. I didn't want to draw the person's eyes that they had so I drew my own creepy ones. Kinda looks like a zombie now. :D So this will be two pages of my sketchbook.

Getting Antsy

2010-06-01T02:29:00.000+02:00

I am starting to realize that I want to do a LOT of things for two reasons.
1. I really can not wait to move to Budapest.
and 2. I feel like I'm just sitting around so I want to do something more active.

I am very excited to move and I am not too happy about waiting until August to leave. Of course I will miss everyone but this is going to be the start of our lives. Also, seeing images of people there, the things we've heard, and the thought of living in such an exciting place is driving me crazy. I can't wait to move to such a beautiful city and meet the many hungarians that I'm sure we'll become friends with..... I hope :P.

Learning to Animate: The Animator's Survival Kit

2010-05-31T23:07:00.000+02:00

I got this book called The Animator's Survival Kit for Christmas this past year. I have been meaning to read it but have not had the chance since it accidentally got put into storage. Anyways, I thought that I would start reading it after I found it and was totally blown away by the first few pages! I have heard from other people and read on blogs that it was an absolute necessity but never really took it to heart. I think I will now. I feel as if I will learn more from this than the 4 years I had in college! I'm going to continue to read it but as a VERY quick exercise I decided to try my hand at a quick animation to see how it would work out. I made it into a GIF but couldn't post it so here was what the process looked like.

Update: I did another animation. This one was not nearly as jumpy as the first and that's why I'm uploading this one and not the other one.

Leah's Sketchbook

2010-05-31T03:11:00.001+02:00

I showed my 7 year old neice, Leah, my sketchbook drawings. She loved them so much that she wanted to make some of her own. I taught her some techniques for shading and this is what she drew!

Weekly Sketchbook 1

2010-05-29T23:41:00.000+02:00

This is some of my sketchbook that I just recently found during Val and I's excursion into our shed. Although I like people to see some of my sketches this is mainly to catalog my sketchbook as I am terrified of losing and losing all of my pictures. It has happened MANY MANY times before.

Have You Taken A Door Off Its Hinges Today?

2010-05-29T00:29:00.000+02:00

Today was an unusually boring day. That is until Val, Leah, and I decided to get some of Val and I's stuff out of our outside storage shed. We went out to open it and, what do ya know, it wouldn't open.... of course :P. So we began a very rigid search for a solution. We tried some graphite lubricant that we had. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Next we tried some WD-40. Again, it was a big fat failure. Since none of the basics worked we decided to try some drastic measures. We looked up ways to fix the problem and saw that you could just remove the door knob. Duh! It seemed so obvious! Unfortunately, the screws were on the inside of the door. Great.... So we decided to go for the only thing that would work, taking the hinges off the door. So this is what we did! In order to properly document our process and leave notes for future knowledge seekers of door removal, Leah made a list. Here it is:

Oh! and don't forget the "hi five". It's probably the MOST important step!

I also found some of my old sketch books and thought it would be fun to post some pictures! I'll start that tomorrow. Val also found some of her old journals and plans on emailing our old hostesses in France that we lived with! How exciting is that!

Another Robot

2010-05-27T01:28:00.000+02:00

I started another robot. This one's supposed to be more like a fighter than my last one which was a scout bot. He's only a little bit done but I thought it would be fun to post all of my progress. So here's the first!

You can see that the legs are barely started and the joints need to be built but you can get a slight idea of what's going on.

Short Animation: Part 2

2010-05-26T03:10:00.000+02:00

Just an update of the video. I fixed some things and changed some others. I think it looks a LOT better now.

A Short Animation

2010-05-20T00:54:00.000+02:00

I worked on a short animation for about an hour today. The rendering took FOREVER so I didn't want to fix anything with it today. It's not perfect but I think it came out pretty well. :D

In The Weeds

2010-05-18T23:45:00.000+02:00

Today was a pretty intense day for our volunteer teaching. The kids were all TOTALLY out of control. When I was working with my kids I thought I was the only one but when I looked up the other kids seemed to be just as far as mine were in the activity book. This actually helped me focus again and realize that it wasn't just me. It also didn't help that the substitute yesterday was apparently very mean and didn't get ANY of the kids up to the point where they were supposed to be in the activity book. Every kid was behind and this made it even harder for them all to finish. Only a small handful of kids were able to finish to the point where they were supposed to be and even the ones who were were focused barely managed to finish in time. I also had the unfortunate privelege of having 3 kids that are supposed to be seperated from one another to prevent problems. Seperated, they are actually quite good but together it causes quite a few problems. However, I got through it and now it's time to relax.

Warning! Graphic Image!

2010-05-14T22:37:00.000+02:00

Oh dear lord what is that growing out of your hand??!!?!??! Oh a second head? No, actually it's the result of my accident yesterday. If you're at all squeemish you might not want to look at this picture......

.....Ok I warned you.......

No seriously......

Last chance.....

Oh god!!! It kinda looks like a sillhouette though right? Anyways, have a good one :D

(Insert Explitive Here)!!!!!

2010-05-14T04:22:00.001+02:00

So tonight I went over to my dad's house. He has been wanting me to go over to his house and fire up the grill. He's never used it before and we both thought it would be a great idea to make it a father son thing. It started out pretty good. We had the steaks, some potatoe salad, and some beans in a can. What could be better? So I went to start up the grill and..... nothing. The grill didn't do a thing. I looked at the propane tank and it turned out that the guy who had put in the grill and the patio that it went with had forgotten to turn off the gas when he tested it out..... nice dude. Anyways, there was no way to cook the steaks on the grill so we decided that we would cook them on the stove inside. I asked my dad, "do you have a frying pan I can use?"
He said, "Sure, let me find it."
He was having a little trouble so I started helping him look. Unfortunatelly the one that he was talking about was barely big enough to even holod the steaks in them. I was already committed to cooking the steaks and I absolutely HAD to cook them if my life depended on it. Half way through I paid dearly for my attempts at pathetic steak cooking. As I was flipping one of the steaks a HUGE splash of grease went all over my hand. There were a few explitives, needless to say. The rest of dinner went well and the steaks were actually pretty amazing but, MY GOD! My hand feels like it is going to explode!!!

The Run Cycle

2010-05-12T03:53:00.000+02:00

Here's the run cycle now.

Oh My God I Can't Waaaiiiiitt!

2010-05-12T03:00:00.000+02:00

I'm rendering my run cycle right now for my robot and started on another robot guy. I'll post the run cycle for those who are interested. I had to post something though while it was rendering. I'm just too impatient not to! So in the mean time, for all those Tim and Eric fans out there....

Juggling..... Sweet, Sweet Juggling

2010-05-05T23:00:00.000+02:00

Recently, very recently.... actually yesterday me and val decided to start seriously juggling. I had done it before in the past and wanted to start doing again. While I have started traditional juggling, Val decided to take up contact juggling.

Here's some sweet juggling that Val found and showed me.

Annnddd here's some contact juggling.

We're working on it every day so once we get good I'll post some videos.

Walk Cycle

2010-05-04T04:38:00.001+02:00

I'm taking the next step in my animation. I'm using this walk cycle in order to study things like weight. In this first walk cycle the robot seems to have a decent amount of weight to it. I don't really like that and want it to appear to seem very light weight. I want this to be some sort of scout bot so being heavy at all would not be good. This is also why there is very little armor and why there are many cameras on the front. After making a short animation using environments and such I'll start making other types of robots.

Slacking..... a lot : /

2010-05-03T01:26:00.000+02:00

So I've been putting off rigging for a REALLY long time. However, today I took the initiative. It's not that I don't want to do it.... but it's just so much easier not to do it. Aaaaaaannnyways, I had some of it done but decided to finally finish it out. So here it is (drum role)..... the first test video of the legs.

The Knee Joint

2010-04-19T23:00:00.000+02:00

A quick update of the robot. He's almost completely done. I just finished the knee joints. This was basically my 3rd attempt at knees. The first ones were basically just a place holder. In my concept drawing I made them very indistinct. You can see them in some of my previous posts. I then decided that I wanted them to look very organic so I looked up some reference photos of knee joints. I started to make them but I realized they looked far too organic and didn't fit with the rest of the robot at all. The version that I have now seemed like a good compromise and fit with what I wanted the robot to look like.

The next step will be to rig the robot. I'll post some hardware renders so I can have pictures of what the model looks like with the invisible joints. Then I'll move on to animating and looking for a nice scene to put the robot in. Lastly, I'll do some sort of short film test for this guy! Enjoy!

I Missed the Cameras!!!!!

2010-04-15T05:26:00.000+02:00

I can't believe it but I noticed after looking at my last post that you can't see the cameras at all! So here ya go. I put a lot of work into them so enjoy!

Robot!!!!: The Sequel

2010-04-14T23:00:00.000+02:00

Just a quick update on my robot. I was meaning to change the eyes to look more like camera lenses. Well, today I took care of that.

I also finished the feet, which I didn't take a picture of before, so I only need a few more things and my creation will be complete.

And another...

The Robot... is not quite finished...

2010-04-14T02:16:00.000+02:00

Here is a post of my most recent project. I'm creating a robot based off of a concept drawing I did. It's not even close to being done. It's mainly just detail work but that always takes the longest. Here are some pics of my progress.

The light pink parts are supposed to be like an artificial muscle structure.

I wanted some parts to still look robot though, so I made sure to keep the main part of the body very robotic.

I also added some wires, which I still need more of, that connect the camera lenses to the main portion of the body.

Enjoy!

Tiggy

2010-04-10T00:12:00.001+02:00

I was working on some modeling today in Maya (A computer modeling program). I was just messing around because I couldn't think of anything to make. All the sudden a tiny cat came up to my computer and started batting it with her paw! I realized that she was trying to attack the model that I was building. For most cats this would be normal behavior, but what made this especially cute is that Tiggy, our cat, never plays at all. It was amazing and ridiculously cute. We had to record it, and we did!

India Videos

2010-04-09T01:28:00.000+02:00

Here are some videos from Val's mom who just recently got back from India. These are just some various shots of different cities around India. The train station is in Lucknow.

The Last Airbender: A Mini Marathon

2010-03-25T18:42:00.000+01:00

Last night me and Val really got into watching the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I wasn't to hot on the idea seeing as how I wanted to watch something that would be resolved before we went to bed. I'm so glad that Val talked me into it though. Everything about this show is obsessive worthy. The story is ridiculously complex, the humor is quite funny, the characters..... oh the characters. It sounds silly to have such high praise for a kids TV show but it is truly amazing. In my last semester in college I recommended the show to a hand full of people. They pretty much all gave me a look as if I was crazy. The conversation went something like this...

me: "So the show is about this kid, who's the avatar. No wait.... ok the show is also about all these nations that are fighting and can do stuff called bending. There are four nations and they can all do different bending fire, earth, air, or wind. The avatar can do all of them and has to save the world."

them: "So that's the entire show?"

me: "well..... kinda. (Incoherent ramblings in an attempt to explain the show)"

them: "Riiiiggggghhhhttt. Sooo, it's a kid's show."

me: "Well, yeah but it's not really. Just watch it. Everyone I've ever met has either seen it and loved it or has never seen it."

SO two of the 4 people rented it and watched the entire first season in two days over the next weekend. We all started telling inside jokes such as calling our group that was working on a project "Team Avatar" which is only funny if you've seen the show...... Anyways, check it out if you get the chance. It's well worth it!!!!!

It's My Birthday!!!!!!

2010-03-24T21:03:00.000+01:00

So today is my birthday. I'm very excited. Everyone has been wishing me a happy one and Val made me some Makos Kifli!!!! It's probably my favorite dessert ever. She's gonna post pictures on her blog some time soon. I also got a picture from my friends at Le Peep (the restaurant that we frequent). It makes realize how I'm going to miss them all like crazy when we move to Hungary.
Today I've been very anxious to open my presents but i have to wait till later in the week due to the multitudes of people I need to celebrate with.

Come.... Walking With Dinosaurs!

2010-03-22T00:05:00.000+01:00

Last night me and Val had the amazing privelage of going to see walking with Dinosaurs with her parents. It was an unbelievable experience and completelly worth seeing. It's a tad pricy but our jaws were dropped the entire time! Completely worth every penny! Have a look....

I come from the Borque!

2010-03-19T21:00:00.000+01:00

So about 10 minutes ago me and Val were listening to some music on Pandora Radio on my Ipod. A band came up called "Hawk and a Hacksaw". We both seemed to really enjoy them. I was curious about who they were so I loooked up about the artist on Pandora and began reading. Nothing too crazy. The main guy wrote all of the music for the first album which was quite impressive. However as I kept reading I started to freak out! It turns out that the guy is from Albuquerque, New Mexico! Of all of the random places to be from... he's from my home town! What a weird coincidence, right? Well, it got weirder. As I read on I learned that his latest project was in...... (drum roll) freakin Budapest! I couldn't believe it. If you aren't a family member of mine or decided for this to be the first post you read on my blog, me and Val plan on going there to teach English in August. I found this to be incredibly intruiging. I'm going to see if I can get in contact with the guy through email just to see if he's still in Budapest and would be interested in talking with some fellow New Mexicans. I guess we'll see....

UPDATE: I tried to find an email address for the band but I guess there doesn't seem to be one there. I'll try and see if I could contact the guy alone. If not, oh well.

UPDATE 2: I gave up. I couldn't find anything right away and I thought it would be kind of pathetic if I spent a long time looking for the email address. Especially if the guy sent something back along the lines of, "How'd you get this email?"