DigitalDuckling

A lot of things have returned to me these last several days; Dirty sexy money is back, (or should I say completing their 2nd season,) Entourage started airing Season 6 and The Secret of Monkey Island returned with recorded sound and re-imagined graphics. MI1SE was really fun, but I miss some features like being able to mix the game modes with sound from the new and graphics from the old.

I got to see more footage from Brutal Legend gamespot.com. This game is looking awesome! I also came across news about Ron Gilbert being in the makings of a new game called DeathSpank; there are 3 official teaser trailers out and they look pretty funny, now this isn’t news really, but it is new to me
In my browsing on old Lucas Arts stuff I learned something sad as well; the voice actor for Ben, Roy Conrad, in Full Throttle died back in 2002:( I guess there will be no sequel to that game ever now, but it truly is a classic and I hope that Lucas Arts ads it to their Steam list soon!

I’ve seen some new movies in the cinema lately: My Bloody Valentine 3D; This one was a real surprise to me as it has been a long time since I have seen a decent horror flick. This was my first real action movie in stereo3d and I must say I’m really impressed with the perspective. Now I cannot wait for Avatar! Ice Age 3(D) was really cool as well, though I cannot say that it gave me a really big WOW effect with the stereo3d experience the animation was pretty awesome, and to think it was worked upon by a lot of AM graduates and students is really inspiring me to complete my course. Transformers: Rise of The Fallen: You know what I really enjoyed this movie, I went to the cinema alone because I kind of had to see it; There was going to be a Transformers Live Q&A at AM. I think I will buy it once it comes out on BluRay because I kind of missed a couple of shots in there; I was so tired that keeping awake was a struggle. Some reviewers criticize the film for not getting to know the characters and frankly I think it is a very bad point; you are meant to know the characters from the prequel, introducing them once more would be kind of stupid.

Today I found this OK camcorder on a site selling used stuff, I wanted to buy it, but it had been sold. It actually was quite expensive; its one of these Sony handy cams with a pretty lame function, Smooth Slow Record; Basically films 3 secs of video in 240 fps and stretches it over 12 seconds in 60fps, as for that I’m kind of glad the camera was sold since I would end up with a major disappointment; I thought at the time being that it could shoot in 240 fps for a longer period. 3 seconds is not even enough time to get the objective, I discovered this over at a electronics store that sold those cameras. Another lame thing about it is that it had to buffer the video after shooting. Now you go about 12 seconds with a practically unusable camera and your action shot is almost over. I’m still considering something like that. Or at least a Full HD cam they film in 60p witch kind of gives me the ability to play my reference in half speed at least, I could probably even go with at third of that as well. Certainly beats my lame photo camera with a whooping 16 fps and really bad res.
I also helped out with carrying a really old piano today; it needed to go 3 floors down and I even got to try out lifting with carrying straps for the first time. Carrying straps are awesome, without them the job would have been really painful, I cannot imagine.

These past weeks I have invested in some new stuff; A livedrive.com account, this is essential for backing up all my project files as my computer is probably dying pretty soon and I need to be able to recover from that. A new web host; this site is no longer hosted by Cliche.no, but by the more flexible one, hostmonster.com. A heat pump; strange as it is summer and all, but this baby can invert to be a cooling system as well, and the best part is that The City of Oslo actually sponsor investments in equipment as such, because of the environment panic, (at least there is some good coming from it.)

Now I think I’m going to get ready for bed. The guy installing my heat pump is coming tomorrow and I think I’m going to get some exercise before that; haven’t had a good workout in months. I really have to get started on this weeks assignments as well.

No Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Games, Job, Life, Movies, Shows | | #

Well, that’s that, after 9 years of waiting I have completed the newest installment in the Monkey Island series, and I can’t say that I didn’t love every minute of it. This of course also meant that I didn’t sleep at all tonight after a 11 hour day at Qvisten. I’m currently waiting for term 2′s second q&a with Leigh Rens. After this weeks eCritique I really think that this term is going to be very interesting, as I am really amazed by his thought process and input he is able to give is truly amazing.
I’ve yet to see the new Transformers movie, (I hear it isn’t very good, but I don’t care cause I bet the animation is awesome,) and Ice Age 3 hard to get someone to join me to the cinema these days; most of my friends are back on the west coast for the summer, and some of them are even getting ready to tour the US, oh how I envy them, but eventually I’ll do it too; I definitely need to get to my graduation when the time comes!
José Diaz from my class last term gave me a pretty cool link yesterday; “Thirty Second Drawing” supposedly its going to help you to start drawing faster and loosen up basically. You can adjust it to different times and the purpose is to scribble down the picture as fast as possible not caring to much about detail, eventually you manage to get a lot of detail in your drawings as you will probably draw faster and faster over time. Its a cheap substitute to life drawing, but hey, its a start
Gee I’m tiered now. After the Q&A I’ll have to go to Qvisten and work some more. Think I’ll end the day early and go home and sleep. I mean I’m doing charity work so I can demand some flexibility right? I need to get started on this weeks assignment as well, but sleep is the first thing on my to do list once I get home. there is always Thursday and Friday.
Oh and this German guy made a trailer
If you haven’t seen his earlier MI1 in 5 minutes you better check that one out as well!

No Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Job, Life | | #

The big break is over. Once I came home from Hove I got a phone call from a friend asking me i he could crash for the weekend; apparently he was going to have a look at a open apartment here in Oslo. -Awesome; Seems like my network is finally building up down here =D Of course I couldn’t say no, but I warned him that I had sinusitis and needed to take it easy. Of course I didn’t get to sleep too well that night as I had to drive another friend to the buss station early in the morning as well. Saturday went a little unexpected as instead of taking care of my self I chose a more destructing pattern. I ended up out on town and actually had a really pleasant night out. Now I am sitting in my apartment melting away in front of my computer and am worried sick if the weather is going to get any hotter than this; its 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in the shade and its 05:40 pm, and I don’t have a functioning AC. Really worried about being able to do AM work these next weeks.

I love summer, that is if I can spend time enjoying it, like on the Hove festival! Good lord it was awesome! I’m really happy I went as I got reunited with Faith No More who turned out to become one of my favorite bands ever; growing up with a lot of their music on the radio never knowing much about them. A lot of great concerts some new to me some old flames. And the weather? Great! The bathrooms? Awful! The camp? Fantastic! Bathing in the sea was awesome; clear water down there, nothing like the muddy water in Oslo. Got to meet a lot of fun people. Now I’m left here with a smile on my face and a lot of snot in my sinuses. Hopefully I’ll get well soon!

Tomorrow, back to work! Qvisten in the morning AM at night =D

No Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Life | | #

Metallica was awesome! Really disappointed with Lamb of God though. This wasn’t LoG’s fault, but the sound crew in the concert hall sucked ass!
Seriously eliminated LoG’s glory. I bet I could have done a better job with the sound even.
Anyways I’m leaving for the hove festival now! Yes, that is right, GONE for a week!. Man its pouring outside, keeping me from going to my car. Oh it just stopped. guess I’ll be going =P dammit
it started again, no wait, wait for it, wait for it… silence!

No Comments | In: Random | | #

Well I’m at the end of Term 1 in AM so here is what I have done in the last 11 weeks

No Comments | In: Animation, AnimationMentor.com, Portfolio, Stills | | #

Hey there people!
I got a little bummed out by my computer today, and want to share with you readers out there just to release some of my frustration:

Well it is summer! Yay! Sunny days and what not. This is all great, but it is not a great season for computers! I am currently on the end of the first term of AM and I decided to play a game on my computer for once. Based on what I have seen from E3 this year, (the new Splinter Cell game in this case,) I decided to just start playing the series. Starting with the first game that came out for quite a while ago. This didn’t turn out great, not only because of the horrible gameplay, but my frickin’ “CPU Alarm” went off.

I decided it was about time to clock down my CPU for the summer so that it wouldn’t overheat. Setting my system back to auto settings actually didn’t help me much; Windows constantly started freezing over. Which is strange, as that ment that I technically have clocked it down like 880MHz, but then I started thinking: “What if my CPU gets over loaded now that it is a whole lot slower?” So I set it back  and my system is as stable as always. Now I think the big problem I have goten to is tat SC maxed out my load; making my CPU overheat.

This had me run the ol’Google for quite some hours, and what do I have to show for it? ThreadMaster GUI

Supposedly it is supposed to not set the priority, but limit applications CPU load. This won’t make your software run faster, but you can prevent the system from crashing or overheating; at least theoretically.

Or if these things doesn’t consern you, how about limiting the CPU laod of your antivirus scan, or while extracting files with WinRAR etc.? Making you able to use your system even though it is runing a CPU heavy process.

No Comments | In: Hardware, Software | | #

Just wanted to share some of the assignments I have done at AM so far.
This is the Basic Foundations Course and there is currently one assignment left
you can download it from here (Quicktime)
Next up walk with personality.

No Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Portfolio | | #

Oh my, things have happened since last time that I cannot even start to mention. I’m really sorry for my lack of blogging lately, but it is getting hot outside. (In my case that means pretty hot inside as well.) I want to share my AM work so far and I’ll do it in the next post, but for category purposes I’d like to keep this post about what has been going on lately. Or for over a month.

Since my last post I have gotten hold of the Broken Sword port for the Wii, being sometimes annoyed with the horrible sound work, but it really brought back a lot of good memories.
Seen Monsters Vs Aliens and Coraline. Won’t go into details.
I have been a lot with my good friends and have had relatives for visits.
Norway won in Eurovision, which meant that I had to be in hiding for a couple of days because of the annoying song, which obviously appeared everywhere.
May 17th came along.
A few days later a bookstore right outside my apartment had to close down, so they had a sale where I managed to get a hold of a lot of cheep books and DVDs.
A lot of TV-Shows has ended over the days, and some good news about some shows returning.
Lucas Arts and Telltale Games announces some stuff that makes me smile wide, involving the Monkey Island franchise. Additionally Brutal Legend has got a release date and is looking frickin’ awesome!
It is getting hotter every day and my computer seem to hate it.
I get above average grades on AM and am pretty sure I’ll manage to stay in the mix for term two.
My car is apparently going to cost me a lot this year :S
I have spent some time over at Qvisten Animation Studio.
Metallica concert featuring Lamb of God June 17th.
I’m leaving for Hove festival June 19th.
I better get to bed and start this week’s assignments.
Oh, and unless I leave the country I won’t be able to see UP before the end of September :S

No Comments | In: AnimationMentor.com, Games, Job, Life, Movies, Shows | | #