I’ve been procrastinating writing about the last part of my vacation.  Why is it so hard to write about something fun?  The longer I wait the more ridiculous it seems to write about, seeing as I’ve been back a couple weeks and other things have happened since then.  But I was waiting until I had the rest of our photos uploaded to flickr.  And since I hadn’t done that yet I couldn’t write another blog post about it.  And since I hadn’t written my blog post about that, I certainly couldn’t write a blog post about anything else that happened AFTER that because things would be out of order.  So let me write about the rest of my vacation:

We had fun - finally got a couple days of sun - went water skiing for the first time - came home reluctantly.

I still don’t have all the photos uploaded yet but you can see the ones I do have up there (through water skiing day) at my flickr page.

OK, good.

Now I can write about something else.

I’m catching up with my animation blog feeds today.  Here are some pretty sweet posts:

Cartoon Network Acquires Adventure Time
Watch it -> ALGEBRAIC!

Bolt : Storyboards vs. CG
A good illustration of why most 3D animated movies are boring and bland compared to hand-drawn 2D. (Pixar excluded)

So, as I understand the animation process at Disney, here is how you translate a board drawing into a final CG film frame:

1. Remove all the funny shapes in the character design and turn the character into a nondescript blob.
…
5. Repeat this process until you have blown $150 million dollars.

Independence
Fellow Portlander and animator/illustrator Ward Jenkins totally makes me want to go freelance:

But now, being on my own, my appreciation for working has vastly increased. With each new job awarded I’m fully awake and alive, attacking whatever project head-on and staying completely focused. Something about the timeframe in between each job that shakes me awake and makes me fully appreciate the fact that someone has given me an opportunity to do something special here. I cherish it like there’s no tomorrow. Like it’s the only job on earth.

That’s it for now.  Looking forward to the 3-day weekend.  Kicking it off with some early morning surfing tomorrow!