Tuesday, October 20, 2009

It happened in 1987

Check out all the cool things that happened the year I was born in 1987:

On the day of my birthday Final Fantasy was released for Famicom and the Perl programming language was created.

Freaking Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, Castlevania, Street Figher, Phantasy Star and Mega Man came out!

In 1987 the first version of Photoshop was released.

Microsoft released Windows 2.0

The world's first conference on artificial life is held at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The first National Coming Out Day is held in celebration of the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

The Simpsons is aired for the first time

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series started

Fraggle Rock and The Jetsons ended

Animator for the National Film Board of Canada, Norman McLaren, died

The Princess Bride, Dirty Dancing, Robocop and Spaceballs are released

U2 released their album The Joshua Tree

Michael Jackson released his second album Bad

Guns N' Roses, and Kylie Minogue released their premier albums

Prozac is approved by the FDA for release in the USA

Prozac (the band) released their first album

First heart-lung transplant performed

The World Population reached five billion

Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories, changed its name to Iqaluit.

Also; Lil' Bow-Wow, Hilary Duff, Zac Efron and Aaron Carter were born... oh well it can't all be super interesting.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

New Semester!

I had a great time on my holidays, visiting family and relaxing. Since my birthday is in December I went straight from three Thanksgiving dinners to four birthday dinners right in to Christmas where we had many, many hearty meals. Phew! That was a lot of partying/eating!

I'm glad to be back in school now after the break, it's good to be busy again and doing what I love. Our classes are starting to get more advanced, also allowing us to be more creative with the assignments. The next animation we've been assigned is to animate the Pink Panther walking! It seems like a huge leap to go from bouncing balls and waving lines straight to a character walking but I guess you have to take the plunge sometime! It looks really complicated, but I bet it will be a lot of fun. I find that when I get into it the hours just melt away and in a blink I have hundreds of frames done, which is great because I was afraid I would find it tedious.

I've also started a History of Animation course this semester which sounds like it's going to be great. We're going to watch a lot of cartoons and learn all about the evolution of animation through it's inventors and contributors. It's a three hour lecture followed directly by another hour lecture, but it wasn't that bad, since we're learning something interesting.

I've finally uploaded my last animation assignment from last semester, so you can check it out here. The assignment is called "Ball and Tail" and is essentially just that. We got to add a bit of character to our animation for the first time, making the ball into an animal jumping around. It was a lot of fun. I actually pulled off this assignment without having to make any revisions which was great because we were SO busy with other assignments at the time. I think it turned out pretty successfully.

The big item on the agenda right now is the dreaded BONE TEST. I have to memorize 70 bones, and parts of bones as well as be able to draw the human skeleton from three angles from memory. Oh boy, that's quite an undertaking. I'm glad to be getting it over with in the beginning before all the other classes get too hectic. Week Seven looks like it's going to be a doozy with assignments due in every class as well as a midterm.

Finally, Jake and I are moving at the end of the month. We're starting to pack and procure furniture. Hopefully it won't be that big of a deal and we can just get it done in one big, foul sweep. All of this just means that I'm really going to have to stick to my New Years' Resolution to work on my homework as it is assigned as opposed to the day before. Wish me luck!