Thursday, February 28, 2008

What am I thrilling to?


Not sure. So much "stuff" to deal with, so not so much deep reflection and splendid studio "process" this week. Yet, life seems pretty good. I'm feeling some hum of creative energy despite feeling kind of trashed, put-upon, and haggard.

Ol' Thucydides is firing up my imagination. Good stuff for a 41-year old man to be taking in. William Blake, however, had no time for the "silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword." Romanticism, anti-romanticism. Fire it up. Let's see who wins.

Oh yeah, nobody wins, actually, just suffering and death. Damnit!!! I always forget that part. !@#$

And. . . so much for getting the site up last week. Hardy har har.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Real Life & Anti-Romanticism


Thucydides is an anti-romantic. If anyone finds a less romantic sentence than this, please let me see it (5.116.3-4):

Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously, and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and settled the place themselves.

Bleak enough by itself, these are the concluding words in the chapter containing the famous Melian Dialogue, in which the rag-tag rebel Melians tell the Athenians to get stuffed. This is the way 300 would have ended in an alternate universe. Clearly superior power overruns outnumbered, noble, brave, and honorable crew of desperate men killing all of them and enslaving their families.

Last few days spent dealing with water heater replacement and school silliness. Please return soon, Muse, you are sorely missed.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Dear Diary. . .


Ha ha, I didn't post anything yesterday. Who cares? I did, however, buy some pants w/o trying them on, and they're . . . a bit tight. The factory must have mis-printed the size.

Getting ready to talk about Pericles' Funeral Oration this afternoon. I thought I knew what I was going to say about it, but now feel like I have no idea. "Uh, yeah, that was a pretty wild speech, huh?" or maybe, "Yup, that Pericles--he's always up to something, isn't he?" Maybe we can talk about how stabbing someone in the face or liver never seems to go out of style. Savage killing and high-order rational thought and rhetoric make good bedfellows.

And by the way, Maya just crashed, so @#$% and #$@$%. I just downloaded an autosave script which I'm sure will totally @#$% up my life and make Maya crash more, but what can you do?

Saturday, February 23, 2008

No slackin'


Thought I'd have a lot to write, but I'm lazy. It's Saturday night, and it's time to do some more modelin' on my vague fellow. I've deconstructed the face model in an attempt to better understand what the hell I'm doing. Here's the original plan drawing. Exciting times. Whoomp.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Crap-rock The Suck-@#$


3:30 a.m. and all I've got to show for it is this tediousness. Lots of restarts. Still not close to being done. . . and it sucks. Argh. It's nice to see that my modeling abilities haven't progressed in 10 years.
Great Job!
Got to get up early, take Sam to school and have a bunch of meetings. ^$%&# and #$^*!@. Guess this counts as the Friday post. @#$%^.
Oh, the @#$%ing ignominy.

I'm pretty sure my Fine Arte ranking just took a big hit.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Batroc The Leaper



In Jr. High School, my friend Justin McCarthy and I became obsessed with the French super villain, Batroc the Leaper. He was ridiculously verbose, even by Marvel standards, and he always ended up getting a savage beating without ever managing to offer much of a threat. The Wikkipedia entry on Batroc notes his ". . . stereotypical accent (Batroc ze Leapair), funny name, clumsy vocabulary with the tendency to insert whole French words (which are sometimes erroneous, such as mon capitan), Dali-like moustache, lack of superpowers, and apparent inability to win a fight. . ."

I still laugh for days when I start thinking about him. When I read this part of his biography, I actually started crying:

"Georges Batroc was born in Marseille, France, and served in the French Foreign Legion."

I suppose I mention all this, because I spent the morning working on a 3D character in Maya, to whom I gave the working title, "Batrocque," even though he has nothing at all to do with the real Batroc. Accept no substitutes. I love you, Jack Kirby.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Thrice-Majestic Hermes


Wednesday. Time for University Seminar and Sparta's first attack on Attica. Joe, Evan, and I sat for the lovely portrait at left. Hermes Trismegistus yet walks among us.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

"aksjf;lasd," the other white meat


Here's a portrait of Evan I did for an in-class demo on collage. @#$% you, Francis Bacon. Grandma turns 96 today. And yes, she's starting to slow down a bit. Life's annoyingly short. Lots of women are pretty. Children grow up fast. etc. etc.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Miles In Action



There he goes again. Did you know that Height (in pixels) x Width (in pixels) x Color Depth (# of bits per pixel) = the # of bits in a digital image? Thank you, Eric Picard who taught me all of this digital nonsense in graduate school. My teaching compatriot Dennis Dunleavy took this picture on his Iphone while we were "team-teaching" this morning. He's an honorary "Fairbrass Brother," along with my brother and Marco Rosichelli.

What is The Happiness Hole?


If you're me, Joe, Evan, or Ty, it's a collaborative project we've been at since 2005. If you're anyone else, here's a late night stab at describing The Happiness Hole. It's rough, but that's the point of this @#$%ing blog, remember?

"Materialism. Pornography. War. Failure." In the near-future, a brilliant but troubled entrepreneurial team of scientists, artists and viral marketers harness quantum physics to create a supremely powerful “Quantum Computer” capable of collecting and processing infinite amounts of minutely detailed information about the whole of humanity. Shortly after boot-up, the “Q-Comp” quantifies the existence of a collective “happiness hole” so vast it portends the collapse of civilization and the inversion of a goodly chunk of time and space. Hilarity and tragedy ensue.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Now is the time


I suppose it's about time to get the site up. I'm going to try and go live tonight. Yikes.

Update: Well, maybe not tonight. I went and played pro-evolution soccer with Sam. I did get some Cheetos and Dr. Pepper, though, so anything's possible.

Update 2: Ah ha ha ha! I can't believe I said I'd finish the site tonight. That's a ^#%$in' laugh riot. I made some changes to the site structure, thus creating much more work that I can't just bust out ce soir. Frig. Since I work all day tomorrow, I'm guessing another week. Brilliant. Agh.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Tis Saturday


11:45 a.m. Sunny. Ducked into my office for a sec to pick up some stuff to read today--then, o'er to Starbucks to get the lady some coffee. I'd love to drop a few hours on the site, but I don't know if that's going to happen today--We've folks in from out of town, and Don Von's 70th birthday. Wow. 70. At least I'll do this here daily drawing. . . Snorky as real-world go-getter?

Also, I'm going to be posting links to my former students' sites soon. They're doing some dynamite, inspiring stuff. Staying in touch with them is a motivator for me gettin' muh junk on the web.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Cranky Friday


Sat through some tedious dept. biz this morning and started thinking about my teaching philosophy. "Don't assume that what you're talking about is interesting to anybody," was as far as I got. "Read this Thucydides, and experience an uncanny wonder at the violence and pointlessness of human endeavor, bee-ach." Personally, I loves me some liberal arts n' shizz, but I've no interest in inflicting it on the unwilling.

Blast from the past. I'm sending out a copy of Legends From Camp to the Disorient Film Festival in Eugene, OR today. Flashing back to 2004. The sun was shining everywhere back then, wasn't it?

On another note, I really want to get my #@%$ing website up so I can get on with my @#$^$ing worthless life. !@#$% all y'all! @#$%$^&$*$%@!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Giving up, giving up, giving a #$%@



As a modern mother on the go, my husband, my son, and my career are all very important to me.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Days of Thunder


A mildly diverting day. Working on clickTags and sorting through the ridiculousness of 563 versions of Flash for the web. Didn't get much done today, but not particularly painful. That's not so bad, really. Sam's brushing his teeth after finishing all of his valentines for the big day tomorrow. Charles Schulz got the Valentine's day thing pretty well. It's kind of a bitter "holiday."

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Public Eye


One of the odd things about doing le blog is that it's semi-public. As a teachin' man, I'm constantly in front of an audience. A small audience, true, but it's very different from being holed up in a dark room pushing lead and polygons around. Sometimes I hates talking to people. Leave me in the cave. On the other hand, having somewhere I have to be can be a nice kick in the ass to stop moping around. I'm looking forward to taking a hike up Grizzly Peak in the spring and taking a long nap in the sun.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Ups and Downs



Well, not too much to say. Worked late, got up early. Preached the holy arte gospel. It's now 7:00 p.m. A long day. I should write a poem. Had a good chat with Joe Brick last night about the whole web thing.

It feels liberating. Dare I say it, "reifying." And the sun was out today. Riding my bike around felt good.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Up mit People

I'm looking forward to seeing all of my "concept" work up in one place. I'm not sure why that is. I'm not a slick commercial "concept artist" who renders out industrial sci-fi machinery and anatomically correct triceps (though God knows, I've tried.). I suppose it's because I'm realizing I've spent a lot of my life using drawing as a way of thinking and feeling. And when I see these desperate little scuff marks on the paper it feels like me. It feels like who I really am. My students think I'm some weird, muttering, disorganized bald guy, my colleagues think I'm scheming to wreck their lives, and my neighbors think I'm a lazy oddball with a shitty yard and crappy beat up cars bringing down their property values. But really, I'm just a guy excited about thinking and drawing things. Kind of like a 5th-rate, irrelevant Hokusai (who apparently described himself late in life as "an old man crazy about drawing."). Yeah. I think that's it.
p.s. this drawing was a concept for Arms and Ether.
p.p.s. still haven't found the USEM papers. #%*@!

Gray again. Gray.


It's 3:15 p.m. a bleak time in anyone's life. Slept in til 10:00 today. Thanks, baby. Still groggy, though, of course. Sorting through Legends From Camp material today. Hmmm, should have done this oh, about 4 years ago. Too bad, so sad. Okay, so I didn't get my act together until today, but I didn't have a total nervous breakdown 4 years ago either. I came very close, I bet. The Moral? Growing up is a gradual never-ending process. And then you die.
Here's a concept drawing I did for Legends From Camp, back 'round 1998 (!). Since starting this web project, my mind has shifted back and forth between, "Oh my God, look at all the stuff I've done!" to "Oh my God this is all the stuff I've done?" Go figure.

Helpful Hints


Kids, it's important to market yourself effectively. To this end, you need to have an appropriate publicity photo. The image at left is an example of a clear and alluring head shot sure to leave a strong first impression with the people you need to impress.
I've finished the first pass through the Lithia job, and now I'm friggin' with my web site again. Actually, I'm going through all of my @#$ing disorganized $#@% in order to dig up the rest of the images I'd like to post in the Vault section of the web site.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Saturday, come love me


I'm working on a quick flash job for Lithia Motors today. Glory. Then the site. Then DMF. Then USEM. This blog is making my life look bleak. Working on little things here and there. Fugreheth. I love how long my Macbook Pro takes to open and close programs. It's awesome! Computers rule! Kids, don't complain about computers. It's weak. Like me. Like our society. Er, uh, etc. . . Still, I'm a big fan of Microsoft products such as Word. The "Word" computer program allows you to "process" your words and create published documents from your own desk. You also receive a genuine advantage by using their operating system, "Windows." Macintosh products are more expensive, but made of silver. Outstanding.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Friday Fever


Okay, Friday, 2 p.m. down at school working on the site after spending two hours doing department work. I'll probably pass out at some point. . . Buddy Holly's good, though.

Can't Get Started With You


3 a.m. Sweet Jebus. Hacking around with the web site. It was either that or mope around the house when I should be in bed. I've been going through all o' my Daily Drawings from the past 10 years , and I'm mired in 2001. hurglh.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Two-Headed Monster of Deception

It's as good a gray day as any to pop outside, walk down to the Beanery for some Olde Testament Yaweh, and then to school. More work on the web site. Office hours. Then it's time for my 3D modeling class--in which I teach the 3 "D's" of modeling: Dependibility, Dexterity, and Defense.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Abysmal Morning Made of Night


Kind of Miltonic? Everyone's their own William Blake these days. 10:00 a.m. Worked on my new "web site"yesterday and this morn. Goody. Still trying to figure out what this blog thing is. Don't try and label me, man. Here's an awesome drawing that Sam did last week on the computer. Sam rules. I'm adding a "Vault" page to my web site to hold the olde crappe I've done over the years. That's a dark window into one's own mortality. . . but should be fun! Now I've got to find a stack of papers from my USEM class. Also, put together some junk for a dept. meeting today. This, dear readers, is the joy of man's desiring.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Embarrassment? Shame?


11:00 a.m. and I'm feelin' uptight. Swimming in trivia. Bunch of @#$% to do for school. Bleh. All aboard the Great Northern Railway!

Monday, February 4, 2008

I suppose it's the 21st Century


And so, it begins--gettin' the web thing going. Joined Flickr and Vimeo tonight. Flailing with Dreamweaver and Freeway. Exciting, though. Good to get connected with this odd new phony electro-world. It'll be good to have this junk up and accessible. Here is the proto-link to
Happiness Hole Flickr

Sunday, February 3, 2008

University scene


Exterior: The University. CU on Fetal Advisor, pull back to show Shankton, Shaman Chet, and Fetal Advisor walking through woods to Warren's car. We see Warren asleep in the car. CU Warren asleep and waking up suddenly. CU Fetal Advisor blurry, coming into focus. Warren freaks out. Drives off. The trio remain. Say something?

Computer-generated 3D graphics


You may have already heard that personal computers now give you the power to create your own "3D" graphics--even if you know nothing of traditional perspective drawing techniques. This morning I'm beginning a sensual journey of erotic self-discovery by getting re-acquainted with 3D Studio Max. In honor of the year 2008, I'm using the 2008 edition of the software. Here's a "self-portrait" created using FaceGen a procedural head modeler that works with photographs.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Sky High!

Here are some links to short animation tests for The Happiness Hole--a project I've been collaborating on with mates (peng you's for our Chinese readers) Evan Carroll, Joe Brick, and Ty Burrell.

Jeff Song by The Sky High Achievers
Warren Wakes Up

While we're at it, here's a link to my "web page" such as it is.

I'm Dull


Just put the Bee to bed. Time to play a bit of Flat Out. Just another swingin' Saturday night. Here's a shot of a head I created in ZBrush last month.