Tiko Project is on sale for preorder!

Holy moly and I'm behind on writing stuff on here. Lots been going on, thus I've not had time to write about it:) I'll try and catch up when I get some time.

However, the important thing here is that the Tiko project that I worked on for FAR TOO LONG is about ready to ship and is on presale. My college debt fund gets a little help everytime Tiko gets invited to a new home and even more so with those "custom invites" (hint...hint). One of my other animator friends Keith Osborn helped out on the animation portion for Tiko and my buddy from college and fellow facial animator at work Scott Englert did a piece that'll be on the DVD called "Bassimator." It was a lot of fun to make but I'm very glad it's done. Check it out and see if you might like a copy....

...Tiko will thank you (quite literally if you happen you get a custom message version and have him thank you on it...;)

Here's the LINK

Out.

Fantastico!

Holy cheerios, Batman! I'm DONE with my freelance gig. I'm burning the DVD's for the client now. Whoo hoo! It'll be a bit till I can update my site cause well, that hard drive crash I had a few weeks back took out all of my web source work. So, now that this is done, I have to get another hard drive to start unpacking my backups onto to see if what I've lost forever, and what I've got sitting in an archive somewhere.

Good times.

As soon as the client get's the DVD ready for sale, I'll post a link cause I know you'll wanna help Tiko pay for his pear eating addiction;)

Lots O' Nothin!

• Never ending rendering - So my never ending project is about at an end. I really can't thank the client enough for being patient. Let's just say that rendering at HD res adds just a "wee" bit of render time AND Lightwave doesn't render the hypervoxels so fast at that res. I'm pretty tired of not having my main computer. That and losing a hard drive a few weeks back makes me ready to give my computer a little break. About 30 frames to go!
  
• Running after being sick - I was sick for about 3 weeks. Not too bad of sickness - tired all the time, headaches, etc. So for about that much time I didn't really jog. So last week, I tried to start up again. Wow did I lose a lot of my runnin' mojo. Before I got sick, I was running 6 miles most days and close to 10 every other weekend. This week, I started at completing 2 of my 4 mile circuit and after a week of it, I'm only barely back at 4. The funny thing is I lost nothing on the lifting front....strange.
  
• Pirates of the Caribbean - Saw this last weekend with some friends. To get ready for it, I watched the first one the night before. The movie was a fantastic popcorn flick...just a whole lot of fun. It was a little long, but not too bad. On the special effects front I just have to say, "Wow!" Davy Jones is the most amazing cg character I have yet seen on the screen. The greatness of Golum has been eclipsed and my mind is still reeling at the how's of it. It was a special effects smorgasborg and I can't wait to pick up the DVD to see the behind the scenes.
  

Up for air...

Here's a little test render for the final lighting of one of the shots from my freelance gig. It's almost done! Another week and animation will be done!

Couple of things:

• Keith Lango is moving to Brazil! He's gonna set up shop so he can animate and help people too. I think that's just pretty awesome.
  
• God has been kind enough to give me some small windows of rainless time to run outside as He knows my disdain for treadmills....thanks, God:)
• I'm heading to Oklahoma City next week to see my mom and some of my fam AND my aspiring comedian cousin is moving to Chicago in two weeks so it'll be great having some family local as well. He's a very talented guy and I'm sure he'll do great.
  
• Stranglehold (my main project at work now) showed very well at E3 and is looking pretty amazing. I think it's gonna be a pretty sweet game when it's done.

That's all she wrote...or he wrote...I wrote? Back to work, I might not surface again till animation is done on my gig, so...lata!

Taxes and an update...

Song of the Day: "Shiloh" - Andrew Peterson - Carried Along Album
Good golly I dig Andrew Peterson's music. You'd think I'd be sick of it by now having listened to Carried Along most days in the car for the last 2 months. You'd might think that, but you'd be wrong.

It's that fun time of the year. Ah yes, taxes. I really don't have a problem with taxes, but they could make things a little easier to understand. It's one of the only times in life that you can have absolutely every good intention of being honest and doing the right thing and chances are, you're breaking some minutiae of law. A couple years back, I called the IRS cause I had a question. The guy answered it, then added the addendum that the IRS would not be held accountable for his answer and that if he told me the wrong thing to do, it was still my fault.

Fun times...

I've got a little render test from my current gig that doesn't really give anything away but is close to the final look. The lighting needs some tweaks and Tiko's gonna be sped up a few frames, but it's a good first step.

Here ya go.

Suffice it to say, more happens after that. But for that, you'll have to order a DVD from Bitstream when it's done. Not only will you get to see it, but you'll be contributing directly to the "Josh-Burton-Gets-Out-of-College-Debt-Fund" as anything I get is going there. It's a good cause, trust me. That and Tiko needs to eat...;)

Time to throw Toy Story 2 on and get to animatin'!

I'm a liar...and other stuff

A few weeks ago I wrote that there was gonna be an article in 3d World on The Potter. January's issue has come and gone and I actually was mailed a copy of February's issue which I thought would contain it. Alas it did not. I say I'm a liar because I made a statement based on bad "intelligence" that I believed to be true that turned out to be wrong. The story may turn up in time but for now but, according to the politics of the day, I am a liar. So for making statements I believed to be true, I must and shall be villified. Any takers?

Enough satire.

Edit 02/06 - A buddy emailed me this morning and informed me that the the article is in the March issue...sweet vindication:)

Things are going along fine. I've been coming home and putting in 4-6 hours a night into this freelance gig I've been truckin on. I'm getting close to being done with blocking for the whole thing so I expect to really start moving this weekend. I took a break last night and did a little test render for the client of the set and modeled some flourishes as well and did another pass of polish on surfacing. Getting close on a final set.



I received copies of the new Houdini book that used a Potter image over the weekend. The publisher was kind enough to send copies for the whole team so I gotta make a run to UPS. Some buddies got me to try site called linkedin.com last week. It seems pretty sweet for maintaining connections and broadening your industry connections. Give it a whirl.