just spent 5 days in cancun. could not possibly be more relaxed. here’s the daily schedule of events that sara and i followed:

• wake up in giant bed, shower in giant rainfall-type shower in giant luxury bathroom
• order breakfast from room service
• stake out giant thatched-roof umbrella on the beach, lie down in total shade
• meander out to giant pool and fountain, swim around aimlessly and enjoy the near-body-temperature water
• swim up to bar, order margaritas with lots of salt
• swim around drunk
• meander back to umbrella, read book, possibly with naps.
• swim out into ocean, ride the waves on inflatable raft
• order guacamole and chips in spanish from cute cancunian.
• meander to pool again, swim around some more.
• head back to room as sun sets, take another rainfall shower.
• meander down to beachhouse restaurant, order awesome tacos.
• head back to room, sit around in terrycloth robe, watch american movie with spanish subtitles, drink beer, fall asleep.
• lather, rinse, REPEAT AS NECESSARY.

yeah, there’s been a lull. i don’t post as often as i used to. mostly because i haven’t had anything to impart. that, and it’s been pretty busy here at work. i’m involved on the R&D team for the work we’re doing on an unnamed movie, and that’s taken up a LOT of my time. i’ve moved to a bigger and better office, though, and that’s nice. i likes a bigger space fo’ sho. the sad thing is that my MAME cabinet got the axe, and i had to take it home with me. on the downside, there’s a lot of people who played on it that are sad because now they’ve got to do something else on late nights or during lunch. it was a fun service to provide for people, and it wasn’t distracting (we had pretty strict rules about use in order to keep from bothering people nearby). on the upside, i have a nice MAME cabinet in my apartment now, that i can play on whenever the hell i feel like it. :)

also, i’ve been teaching myself some php and mysql, which has been challenging but very rewarding. it’s for my own project for myself and some friends, so it’s nothing huge, but it’s a good experiment. speaking of my friends, i’ve made a bunch of new ones. i’m going to be an enforcer for PAX’07 this coming august, and i’ve been chatting a lot with other enforcers, both new and veteran. they’re a great bunch of people, and i’m stoked about volunteering at yet another awesome convention.

i’ve still been drawing, but not as often. the drawing level has dropped since i’ve been involved in this more technical project, but once it’s done, i expect the pendulum to swing the other way again. i’ve read scott mccloud’s books and i bought myself a giant awesome volume of facial expressions (one of my weaknesses), and i’m excited about drawing more soon. maybe when i scan in some of this fun stuff i’ll share it up.

thanks for listening/reading.

i did not think that i could post from my cell phone, but it appears to be remarkably easy, thanks to the opera mobile browser. too bad that even with t9 typing, word entry is still painful and tedious. i guess i need a blackberry or something with a full keyboard.

well, mostly:

• BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
  • “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall
  • “Poseidon,” Boyd Shermis, Kim Libreri, Chaz Jarrett and John Frazier
  • “Superman Returns,” Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum

i thought that xmen would be in, but thought that poseidon might edge it out.  and it did!  very cool.

my life is full of fur. mostly canine. i’m currently combing wolf fur for a movie adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass”, a young adult novel that’s been a favorite of mine and sara’s for a while now. it’s fun, but sometimes when i’ve been staring at wolf butt for four hours straight, my brain starts to leak out my ears.

last night was a lot of fun… sara and i and some friends went to the academy voting session for the VFX bakeoff films last night. the 7 films that made the cut get presented… 5 minute intro, 15 minute reel, and 3 more minutes for closing comments and questions. this is the fourth year in a row that sara and i have gone, and the first year that we haven’t gone with our good friend jude, who is just a little too far away to attend with us. of the 7 films:

• “Casino Royaleâ€?
• “Eragonâ€?
• “Night at the Museumâ€?
• “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chestâ€?
• “Poseidonâ€?
• “Superman Returnsâ€?
• “X-Men The Last Standâ€?

i predict that Pirates will win, and the other two nominees will be Superman Returns and X-Men, though it’s possible that Poseidon could edge out X-Men. X-Men’s story was way stronger (no surprise there), but the fx shots in Poseidon were just awesome. i wish that Casino Royale would make the cut, but i think that the work that they did was too invisible for anyone to appreciate it enough. it would be nice if i was wrong. oh, and it was obvious even from the 15 minutes of dragon footage that was shown, that Eragon was a steaming pile.okay, back to work! the wolves are howling…

nuthin’ to see here, folks.  sara didn’t write nuthin’ and i didn’t draw nuthin’.  we did, however, manage to save a young girl’s life, twice.  turns out she was an unwitting victim of the man-made GUILT virus *gasp*!  after scrubbing up in post-op, we sat down and watched spiderman, something we hadn’t seen in at least a couple years.  wheee!
yes, we’re playing Trauma Center: Second Opinion on the Wii.  you should be, too!

i plan on (emphasis on ‘plan’) making a larger, more complex drawing over the weekend.  i hope.  wish me luck!

sara’s story about the elephant was awesome.  it turns out to be an idea for a picture book that’s also a mystery.  again, i’m not at liberty to illuminate you, but when it hits the shelves at your local bookstore, i’ll call you and let you know about it.this is a very fast sketch i did for sara this morning.  i was already late for work, and i should have drawn it last night, but i didn’t, and so i was slightly later than already anticipated.  meh.  the scale of the plate of cheese is slightly off, but i like the way this one turned out anyway.  i don’t know how ‘open’ this pic is to interpretation, but i have no doubt that sara will surprise me, as she always does.

sara’s out for the night, and you’d think i’d be playing zelda. but NO, my brain wants to draw something. *sigh*.so i thought about sara’s second line that she had given me:

Sometimes she’d remember her old life and she’d forget to smile.

and i knew i wanted to try my hand at a more detailed face. this sketch (maybe an hour or so?) is the result. a friend had lent me his old ‘mode drawing’ books, and man, were they helpful. though i drew her arm wrong twice. :)

i’m going to go rescue zelda now.

no idea what the story is for this one, but sara had a whole story thought up before i managed to send her the picture (she had seen it briefly in my notebook last night though). i’ll let you know how awesome it is later, when i’ve heard it myself.i like this one, since i feel like i learned a little about line weight. i’ve been trying to do it in the other pictures i’ve inked, but i think i really succeeded here, and that makes me happy.

hey, i’m close to 100 posts!  that’s a lot of commitment for me for any given project.  usually i pick up web technologies and then play with then, and then throw them away or let them gather dust.  i’ll have to save post #100 for something… special?

the story sara wrote to this picture is so awesome, it’s killing me to not share it with you. when i drew it, i imagined a terrible apartment in a squalid downtown slum. the kind you imagine when the drunkard hero gumshoe goes home to his crappy flat on the lower east side in some hardboiled detective novel. lonely, poorly furnished, and depressing. the actual story that sara wrote, i must tell you, is wildly different.