DigitalDuckling

I finally got access to AnimationMentor. I was able to log in on the 18th,

Run away!

but it was not to the full website; just a limited orientation site, but yesterday it finally opened up. And let me tell you it was worth the wait. I have got fellow students in my class from all around Europe and South Africa. My current Mentor in the Basic Foundations program is Ruth Daly, who have worked on The Iron Giant and Futurama for TV. I’m really excited and tomorrow we get to met her in the Live Q & A!
So now my headset is ready and my microphone is working as good as it gets. Hopefully I don’t come out as a complete idiot.
Even though there are no deliveries for this week we got a simplified version of the manikin-like rig “Stewie” called Stu, (without the extra wie,) on which we can play around with poses.

This is about me just kind of laying my previous animation knowledge behind me and starting over; really getting in there from the basics and working myself, (not back but,) up into a better animator that I was before.
I like their philosophy as well; “There is no BEST animator” And I can only look upon my two years at Noroff as a trail and error phase, I can’t say that it was a complete wast of time; I learned a lot and I got even more sure that I wanted to be an animator.

4 Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Life, Noroff | | #

This given time I’m on a little vacation back to my roots. I’ll be heading back to Oslo on Monday, and the orientation in AnimationMentor will start on Wednesday.

The last few days I’ve been hanging over at Martinus’ while he was playing through Silent Hill: Homecoming. This game was supposed to be the sequel to Silent Hill 4: The Room and had Silent Hill V as its working title.
The original creators of the SH series, Team Silent, did however not develop this game; a Californian developer, Double Helix, did.

I have to admit I never play the Silent Hill games, (I only watch,) because I’m an adventure-gamer and when the action comes I tend to fail miserably, but even Martinus hatefully criticized the combat system in this game.
SH: Homecoming comes puzzles, though sometimes they seemed to be a little bit out of place; Jig Jag Puzzles to open important locks? There are some awesome riddles around in the game that aren’t too hard to crack, but leaves your brain a little bit more challenged in the long run.
The graphics didn’t impress me that much at all; I think of them all together, (if the graphics don’t share the same quality through the entire experience, they aren’t that good!). Mart was playing on his computer with high resolution and the detail set to full. The scenes were often punished with bad texture resolutions and stretching polygons; the latter often happened during the transitions between the two dimensions. It was kind of sad to see as well because the game looked so goddamn good in the trailers.
The story is probably what disappointed me the most as it didn’t seem to base from the Silent Hill games, but the movie. They included Pyramid-Head, who really doesn’t belong in any other game than SH2, but luckily they didn’t overuse him. Don’t get me wrong, the story was good, but it didn’t have any mystery to it; all loose ends gets tied towards the end and rubbed into your face. Very Americanized you might call it. I still think it was a good effort, but Jacobs Ladder seemed to be more of an inspiration to this release than any of the others.

The Silent Hill games made by Team Silent left the player slightly questionable of what was going. The only questions I’m left with after Homecoming is: Why isn’t it called Silent Hill 5: Homecoming? Did Konami realize along the way that this game wouldn’t cut it for the fans of the original series? Will there be an actual Silent Hill 5? None of these questions are actually related to the story are they?

No Comments | In: Games, Life | | #

Hey all! Long time no post. Getting irritated while working in Maya, I started to Google around for information on why the Sidebar needs more RAM reserved than Maya, even though I am using Maya and not the sidebar. Well, all the posts I came over always talk about the same thing; Vista reserves my memory so that apps have play-room or what ever. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL THIS! But I can’t find a single way to do so, (that seems to work anyway.) So the sidebar reserves 250MB of RAM for no reason, and I have to restart the app to free it; ironically the Sidebar only uses 30MB once its restarted. What does Microsoft prepare it for?

My results weren’t only disappointing as I stumbled over a tool on Microsoft TechNet; Process Explorer. Why hasn’t this been included in Windows before? You can get detailed task manager information without even installing the app. You can see the apps, how they are running in threes etc. and you can right-click-Google stuff! I’ve been wanting this since Windows 2000.

technet.microsoft.com

2 Comments | In: Software | | #