my thoughts on something

the last post

2006-07-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'll stop this blog and created new blog in my website.

Please check it out.

Museums

2006-06-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

I don't remember what this was...but its kinda sexy isn't it?
de Young Museum and the tower.

Last Tuesday which was the first Tueday of the month, the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor are free so I went both with my friend, and took some pictures. Weather was so nice to us. The de Young had been in construction for years and re-opened last October or November. This was my first visit since it's renewed. It has pretty nice collections that have wide varieties. The museum has a huge tower so that you can look around the city of San Francisco. It's quite amazing! If you haven't been there, it's a nice place to go. It's located in the middle of the Golden Gate Park.
I haven't been to the Legion of Honor for years....It was nice to see some of great collections it has. I love the museum because of their collections and location. It's in Lincon park and by ocean and you can get a nice view of Golden Gate Bridge like this.

and there is the thinker. Oh, by the way, I just noticed he puts his elbow on his left knee...I thought it was on his right knee.....maybe just me?
and I found nice interesting weird pottery there:)
This was actually a pot....water comes out of its left hand..and its a woman..and a man on the other side....I know it doesn't look funny in the pictures but I loved it!Anyway, I love going to museums. Seeing master pieces is relaxing, jealous but inspiring :)

Great Sunday!

2006-06-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

It was such a great weather today! I and my frined went hiking at Point Reyes Park. It's about 30 miles north of San Francisco. Two of my friends couldn't come so that only two of us went hiking. The park has a bunch of trails. Since we haven't been there before so we took pretty popular trail with some extras. We were thinking about a 3-5 mile hiking but ended up 10 mile hiking. :) The weather was perfect and the views from the trail was awesome!! We hiked pretty much as we scheduled. We walked for four and a half hours.
It's about one hour away from San Francico, I really recommend going there. There are a bunch of short trails. You just can drive there and take a short walk. Anyway, I love walking and hiking. I will try to do this kind of this as often as possible!

Relaxing and enjoying

2006-06-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit busy doing this and that...but I'm also relaxing and enjoying life now :)
My boddy at R&H has a brother who is a rockstar! The band called Samroberts Band came to SF so I and my friend went and enjoyed the live! I'm not a music guy but it was fun!!

I saw X-men3 and liked it. well...it made over $120mil....I don't think it's not that good...anyway, it's good for the industry and I'm glad people go see movies! That supports the film industry.

I went to a ball game with my friend, Oakland A's vs Minnesota Twins. It was really a good game but we just talked a lot since I haven't talked to him a while.

Yeah, I guess I'm really enjoying my life now :) If you guys have time, give me a call and hang out!! :)

Done!!

2006-05-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm officially done with school. I finally graduated on last Friday! Now I can work!

I was fortunate to be able to go to the premiere show of Over The Hedge some weeks ago and also had a privilege to go to the advanced screening of Cars at Pixar. I liked both. Character designs on OTH lacked a bit appealing to me. They are cute but I feel something missing....I don't know what it is...well, I'm not a character designer..whereas characters on Cars have much more appealing to me. They are all cars but I feel more appealing on them. Don't get me wrong. Both films are well made, no doubt! Watching Cars at the screening room at Pixar was awesome experience:)

I watched The Davinci Code, too. I read it in Japanese...I liked the book a lot. I've been waiting for the movie to come out. I'd heard a lot of negative things on the film though, I enjoyed and liked it. Of course it's not a kid's movie nor funny movie, but I liked it! Well....seems I easily get to like a film.......I like movies for sure. I will see X-3 and Cars again when it's out!

SF

2006-05-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's been two weeks since I got back from LA. Those who know me know that I interned at Rhythm & Hues Studios in LA. I'm done with my internship two weeks ago and came back to SF.

I walked around the city a bit with my friend today. It was beautiful and great weather to wak around. LA is too huge to walk around...you need a car. I love SF because I can walk. I love walking.

I'm done with my internship and done with school in two days! woohoo!

By the way, I'm thinking closing this blog. :) I might use the different blog service like wordpress in my website. well, it's still just a plan....

continue..

2006-05-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

I try to continue about the way of work in the previous post. Some people work with spline, some work with stepped. Nothing wrong with them. But people have favorite ways. if somebody who you have to show your animation doesn't like to see spline, show it with stepped mode otherwise you might get unessesary or unreasonable changes...Try to figure out their favorite ways to see things and the effective way of showing them what you have to sell...
hmm....not easy to explain about this in writing though i hope it makes sense to you...

been busy....

2006-05-09T02:16:00.000-07:00

I've been super busy last couple of weeks but I'm done. I'll be a bit busy couple of more weeks on personal stuff and then done with it.
I don't think a lot of people read my blog though..I'll try to write something useful especially about animation.

I talked to my friend about how to approch or work on a shot. It seems that you can work the way you want, that's right, if you animate for yourself. You might have to adjust your work method if you animate for somebody else.

I will continue to write about this next time...

lack of my post...

2006-04-29T00:09:00.000-07:00

sorry I haven't posted anything for a while. I've been very busy but I'll try to post something in case there are some people who read my blog....many be 3 people I assume..

I saw Ice Age 2 on its first weekend. Animation was great! and some of my friends worked on it. I think all crew who worked on the show did good job, the box office has proven it. Congratulation guys!

I don't have anything else to write...hmmm...oh I feel unfortunately the animation job market for film industry is very cold now. I've heard there would be the laid-off here and there, but I've also heard that many studios would start hiring people in summer, maybe around Siggraph? If you are looking or will start looking for a job, be aware of that. The animation job for Games is better than for films, I guess because new game platforms are coming soon.

stopmotion, baby!

2006-03-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

I just got dvds that i ordered with my friend.
just watched some features on Wallece&Gromit. It has great features in it. I'd love to see something more related to animation like how they animated.
I'll watch Courpse Bride soon. Of course I watched them on the big screen!

i love this!

2006-03-19T15:15:00.000-08:00

oh, I love this! laughed a lot. check this out and this, too.

I was told that we can watch the Academy nominated short animation 'Badgered' online here.

Small size video, Large size video

Cars and Ice Age2

2006-03-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

I saw Pixar's upcoming film, Cars' latest trailer. I love it! I've heard so many times people said they were not sure about the film because of Nascar theme. I understand. From animator's point of view, characters don't have any limbs...well..fish have fins at least. It's hard, they might use tires though. We'll see how it goes in June.

Ice Age2 is coming out at the end of this month. Some of my friends worked on it, and I liked the first one very much, so I'll look forward to seeing it at a theater.

By the way, Spline Doctors renewed their website. Check out here.

Oscar

2006-03-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

I didn't watch Oscar today but I checked out the winners on the internet. I thought and hoped that Narnia'd win the VFX, but King Kong walked away with it. Congratulations on those who worked on it. Both films sure have great visual effects in them. Best animated feature film was, as I expected, Wallace & Gromit! That is a great film, too. and it was the first time no CG animated feature film was nominated for this category. I haven't had a chance to see all animated shorts nominated for Best animated short film. All films look interesting so I hope I'll have a chance to see all of them.
I thought Best picture would be Brokeback Mountain, but it was Crash. I haven't seen both of them but have heard both are very good. I'll try to see them at a theater or dvd.

Curious

2006-03-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

I went to see a movie, Curious George with my friends last week. It's a handdrawn 2d animated feature film and some 3d elements in it. The movie for sure is for kids but I enjoyed it very much. I saw some weird animation and thought 3d elements weren't blended well, however, over all it's well done and I appreciated what they did. There were many small studios working on the film. I really hope they will keep creating those kinds of handdrawing animated films, I really do...

Google video is awesome!

2006-02-27T23:37:00.000-08:00

well, you guys already know google video is awesome. This is cool.

things to keep in mind

2006-02-26T00:25:00.000-08:00

i talked to my friends about things to keep in mind when blocking or animating. There are so many things to remember or keep in mind. You have to know who a character is, where he comes from, where he's going to. and then acting like what he's thinking, what motivates him to act and then physicality.....when I work on one of these things I forget others and someone points them out...I think "damn! I knew that!". stupid me... I gotta apply what I know to my animation, otherwise i would be really stupid...

Nothing is easy....

2006-02-24T23:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted for a while...I have been busy and had nothing interesting to write.
just really feel that nothing is easy...I know I knew that...

Oscar is coming next week end, i guess...feature animation would go to Wallece&Gromit, VFX would go to Narnia. This is my guess. I should've seen Brokeback mountain.

Goooooogle

2006-02-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

Now you can chat with Gmail... Google will take over the internet...

Gmail Chat

It doesn't have to be rough, does it?

2006-02-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

I recently had chances to talk about blocking a shot with my friends. Well, I didn't know what blocking was until I really started to learn animation. After I started learning animation for a while, I still didn't know how important blocking was for good animation. So my blocking was crappy and weak(still sometimes is crappy and weak....). Since my blocking was crappy, I had to push poses and fix here and there to make animation look good.

What I want to say is the better blocking you have the easier and faster you could animate. At blocking stage, changes and notes are expected, so it should be rough so that it can be changed easily. However, it is important for us to sell the ideas at this stage. If you can sell your idea with a few poses, that's great, but if your idea is something subtle, you might wanna put some detail in the shot to sell. Well, at least this is what I think about it now.

Spline cast

2006-01-29T22:15:00.000-08:00

Spline doctors released their first podcast about to spline or not to spline.
I learned animation from them so that I know what they said in the podcast. However, I think there is no right or wrong way to animate. Personally I don't use liner knots except pupils. I even use spline for pupils sometimes. I used stepped or constant mode and spline depending on the type of a shot I have. If you've already listened to their podcast, I like spline becase it gives me closer idea and look to the final animation because the final animation is spline like Dr. Angus said in the podcast. However, I've tried some different ways of animating and made a bunch of crappy animation and then found the way of animating that I like.
I would say, try different ways, like stepped, spline or liner, you'll see what works better or best for ya.

lazy......busy

2006-01-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

no post for a week.....I'm lazy, no, no, I'm busy. This blog is like my notes on animation or whatever, but i guess not many people stop by reading this blog, so I might keep being lazy...no, no, busy.

The recent Disney-Pixar news, I have read some articles. I just think it's too early to say anything about it. I hope the deal will be good for both studios and the animation industry as well. I don't remember where I read this but I liked it very much, so here is the quote.

----
“For many of us at Pixar, it was the magic of Disney that influenced us to pursue our dreams of becoming animators, artists, storytellers and filmmakers,” said Lasseter. “For 20 years we have created our films in the manner inspired by Walt Disney and the great Disney animators - great stories and characters in an environment made richer by technical advances. It is exciting to continue in this tradition with Disney, the studio that started it all.”
----

drawing

2006-01-21T20:42:00.000-08:00

I don't draw very well but like drawing but I'm not crazy about it. I don't prefer to draw unless I need it but I want to draw better:) I know all I have to do is just keep drawing and practicing. I haven't drawn for a while though I gradually started to try drawing again.

I've taken some drawing classes and I was very fortunate to have nice instructors. I learned a lot from them and what I learned is also able to be applied to animation. Drawing is hard, painting is much harder. Before taking drawing classes, I just drew but now I learned I have to think before starting drawing. I don't have to copy what I see, study it design it. if it doesn't look appealing make it appealing. What you see is like a reference, get essense out of it and push, exaggrate, and reduce it if needed. That sounds similar to animation, doesn't it?

doing nothing is hard....

2006-01-16T23:34:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about animation. In 3d animation, a character doing nothing is hard...when a character stops it looks dead. So I thought I had to move a character all the time. The result looked floaty and wrong.. I tried to do many things to get over it. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong. so what was wrong? It's simple but it was difficult for me at the time. I'm not telling now manybe later post, so think about it.

Reference

2006-01-16T00:43:00.000-08:00

I think reference is very important for animation. Movies are great but still images help, too. I try to film myself acting as much as i can. and then I study it and get essence out of it. I think people including myself are lazy so our poses are weak most of the time so I always try to push what I saw in the film. I've heard many times people say "yeah, I did that in my reference." but are you a good actor that you can trust your pose? I know I'm not a good actor so I doubt my poses so that I push them, but I trust what I felt when I acted it out. Try to act out many time and feel where your weight is, that would help to get nice poses and get ideas how to get one pose to another.

Movies and dvds are good material to study acting. I'd like to make my own reference library as I mentioned in the comment some posts ago. If you work on realistic animal animation, all you have to do first is study and understand how they move, otherwise it won't look convincing.

Although the reference is very important, don't stick to it too much. If you do, your animation might be very realistic but could be boring to look at. We have to exaggerate and cheat something when needed. It sounds hard, so animation is hard....I'm getting confused now..

try this.

2006-01-15T01:04:00.000-08:00

try this. I thought it was cool.
http://www.echalk.co.uk/amusements/
OpticalIllusions/colourPerception/colourPerception.html

...Blogger

2006-01-14T00:52:00.000-08:00

I was thinking writing about animation, but before that I have some things about a blog in my mind. Is there anyone who can teach me how to know how many people visited my blog? well, you say, go check out online help on Blogger! I know....
I've been reading some blogs out there but I don't really know about blog, feed,..RSS...I know, I know, I have to study them....

witnessed

2006-01-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

I witnessed this, wienermobile.... I didn't know what this was and what this was for. It seems it's well known. Anyway, it was awesome. (the picture was from internet, wasn't taken by me)

I want this.

2006-01-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

I want this so bad...
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Happy New Year.

2006-01-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to you all. I hope this year is going to be a good year for you all.

So, I went to see the movie, "Memoirs of a Geisha " with my friend. Cinematography was awesome, and I liked color. But something was weird or missing... Japanese and English mixed up was a bit distracting to me. But I'm glad I watched it at the theather. It sure was beautiful. I just realized that how big a movie screen was. I like to watch movies on a big screen. I think it's a privilege to be able to watch movies on a big screen. I just watched a dvd with a projecter at my friend's house some days ago. It was sooo nice to watch a dvd on a big screen. I'd like to get one someday....

nothing interesting to write...

2005-12-31T00:18:00.000-08:00

I was going to see "Memoirs of a Geisha " but I didn't...lazy me.. People around me said the story sucks but the visual is beautiful. well, I can imagine that. I just want to see how this theme was treated and depicted.
Anyway, I wish you all a happy new year.

random stuff

2005-12-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

I watched dvds with my friend. Dvds we watched were...Polar Express, Catwoman, and Spiderman2..well, nice line-up, isn't it? Well, we didn't really watch stories, just talk about vfx or animation while watching them. I hadn't watched Polar Express so it was interesting. I'd heard many things about it. Whatever people said, it made a lot of money (more than $160milion), so VIP people moved on to Monster House which is useing the same technology called "Performance Capture". I saw the Trailer of Monster House and I kinda like the look and color of the film, I also liked the same things on Polar Express, too. I don't really know why the perfomance capture is used for it...it could be easier for the director to direct acting because the director can direct actors when their motion is captured..

Catwoman...yes, Catwoman! I don't know how many of you have watched it though, my friend worked on it so it was interesting to hear what they did for the film. the digital human was actually awesome! Since what cg-catwoman does is what human can't do so animation isn't really convincing so it's sometimes so obvious that it's the digital human, but if it's not moving a lot, it looks so real....the movie itself...I'm not going to say anything about it....

Spiderman2, i watched this at the theater. IMO, it's better than the first one. we watched only the second disk. I love watching the second disk. the digital character looks great, but the digital catwoman could be better or as good as the digital spiderman. Obviously, the catwoman was more challenging because her skin was exposed a lot and leather outfit etc..spiderman virtually no skin exposed. I know there are a bunch of technical stuff going on underneath, it's just what I think about those characters.

Happy Merry Christmas.

2005-12-25T03:11:00.000-08:00

Happy merry christmas to you all.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

2005-12-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

I should've written about this movie before King Kong. I had a chance to go to the screening of The Chronicles of Narnia a while ago. It's a fantasy movie like the lord of the rings. I don't like sci-fi movies though I like fantasy movies. Anyway, this is based on the novels that I haven't read so that I don't know how close to the original story the movie was. However, the story could've been stronger... But, Azlan, the lion blew me away! He was entirely a cg lion..looks and animation are awesome, and I loved gliffins which have eagle heads, wings, and lion body. There are a bunch of quadruped creatures.

Anyway, animation including crowd animation and vfx were awesome. I'm glad that we got those two fantastic films, Narnia and King Kong. Now I'm wondering which will get the best vfx oscar.

King Kong!!

2005-12-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

I watched King Kong with my friend tonight. Men.......it blew me away!!! It's a three hour film and could've been shorter, but I enjoyed it very much. I'm not going to say anything about the story and such though...damn it...Animation and vfx were awesome! If you haven't seen it yet go see it! and Narnia was pretty good, too. Go see that, too.

blog

2005-11-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

ok...I just got my blog up.