Valentines Day

A character for my wife's V-Day card.

Sometimes Change can hurt...

...but this time it didn't. I switched to the "New" blogger and my blog looks exactly the same. I did however cancel my website hosting with GoDaddy.com, and now I only have a blog. The portfolio sections of the site are gone.

I have also done a little work on a character from a while back. My happy little faun.

I've been tagged...

John tagged me. I decided to participate for once.

• My Childhood Ambition: Cowboy, pilot, animator
  
• My Fondest Memory: Hard to choose: The month in Australia after I got married was great.
• My Favorite Retreat: A walk, preferably in a good park, but roads will do (as long as there's not much traffic).
  
• My Wildest Dream: Being a great story teller in animation, illustration, or novels. (can't decide which to do)
  
• My Biggest Challenge: Being a proactive leader in my home
  
• My Alarm Clock is: Lime-green battery powered Timex indiglo with a four minute snooze, given to me by Ellen on our first date.
  
• My Perfect Day: A fall day of hiking in the blue ridge mountains with my wife, followed by a nice dinner at a restaurant.
  
• My First Job was: mowing grass
  
• My Most Decadent Indulgence: Buying Half-Life2. (I haven't given in yet...)
  
• My Inspiration: I'm not very inspired...
  
• My New Years Resolution: None yet.
  
• My Ideal Companion: my wife, Ellen
  
• My Favorite Color: Blue.
• The Last Book I Read: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (that's the last one I completed)
• How many Books did I read in 2006: I don't keep track, but probably 10-15.
  
• My Ideal Home Would be: Adobe finished straw-bale construction with a flat roof that opens through french doors to my bedroom. Preferably in a beautiful location.
• I am Expert at: making mashed potatoes (so I'm told)
  
• My Funniest Joke: Did I tell you about the book I wrote? The ten most humble men in the world and how I taught the other nine.
• My favorite Animal: Cats, any rodent or lagomorph as long as it has a weapon
• My favorite Breakfast: Eggs over easy, with hash browns and bacon
• My Favorite Snack: sour cream and onion potato chips
  
• My Favorite NEW TV Show: Lost
• My Couch: Green, with uncomfortable fold out bed. Paid for it by removing from the house of the previous owner.
  
• Your Greatest Fear: I don't worry about things much...
  
• Your favorite Entertainer: ?
• Your Favorite Meat & Veggie: Chicken and steamed broccoli
  
• Worst Person in the World: Bill Clinton. Can't stand that guy.
  

December

I haven't posted anything since my glorious conclusion to the first phase of my novel. (see post below) I do plan to post my novel at some point. I know that it needs much revision before it will be complete. I have sent it out privately to a few people to get some feedback on. And I'll probably read it myself in a week or two and see what I think of it. Then maybe I'll try to revise it to make it ready for the general populace.

The last two days of November were big days. On the 29th I finished the novel, and on the 30th I finished my last day as a car salesman. Already that job that occupied the vast majority of my waking hours for five months seems like an old memory. On the 4th I started a new job working in the workshop of a manufacturing company. Instead of selling cars, I started drilling holes of various sizes in pieces of metal. All day long. Ten hours a day... but only 4 days per week! The reality of a three-day weekend every week floods over me like happy sunshine (in liquid form, of course, or it couldn't flood).

The advantage of that, is that I have every Friday available to work on getting over to Croatia! I have a day to call pastors and schedule meetings, and a day to work on my presentation, or study, or whatever I need to do. (and then still have a weekend afterward!) This new job is a wonderful fit, and I'm thankful that God used a man from my church to provide it for me. I can now provide for my family, see my wife more than occasionally, and get ready for the mission field.

Now all I have to do is get to it!

Gerard just smiled.

Those are the 50286th, 50287th, and 50288th words to my novel entitled The Inn at Crossroads. It is 3:18 am, and I am finished. I'm glad next November is an whole year away!

I'll probably be posting my novel soon for anyone who is interested. My wife will probably edit it to eliminate any gross grammatical errors, but the heavy editing will wait--a long time.

More and More Words

I have not done any writing for two days. I still need about 19,000 words for my novel in the next 6 days. I was getting a little despondent, but then I figured out what is going to happen in the rest of my book! I was telling Ellen about it, and as I was talking I had an epiphany, and figured out the rest of the plot. It is only a loose outline, but now I can concentrate on producing lots of words and not have to worry about how the story will unfold.

NaNoWriMo continues

I've been plugging away at Nano Wrimo for a while now. I haven't written every day, but I've kept up with my word count by writing a lot on days I do write. It has been an interesting experience to work on my own novel. On Sunday night I exported my novel to a text format, and found out that I had written over 120 pages of double-spaced fiction! It was a milestone to realize how much I had written. Reaching the milestone was the result of a 4400 word-in-two-hours sprint on Sunday evening. I've probably never written so many words in one sitting before.

I also have a new respect for successful authors. It is difficult to write. I have had a general outline of events that need to happen in my plot, but I was having trouble getting to them. So Sunday night when I started writing I go an inspiration to shake things up. I also needed some action to get myself out of the pit of endless dialogue. (it's amazing how easy it is to fall into lengthy, pointless dialogue!) But in the course of that brainstorm, I wrote one good action filled chapter, and then when I got done, I realized I had fundamentally changed the circumstances that would lead to the next plot-point in my plan. So that's why I'm sitting her blogging about my writing instead of writing. Because my inspiration derailed my plan and now I have to continue to adapt to get back to (or ignore?) my previous plan. It makes one wonder how much of good fiction is planned and how much just comes in the writing and has to be cleaned up later. I guess that is where editing comes in. I don't even want to think about editing! Fortunately NaNoEdMo doesn't come until February or March.

writingwritingwritingwritingwriting

Nanowrimo is under way, and I'm on target for word count. So far my story doesn't stink, but I need to beef up the action. Too much talking going on right now. I'm about to seriously injure on of my characters. That injury is going to create major stress for my main character to deal with just before things begin to go really bad... it's kind of fun messing up your characters' lives! I think I pity them too much though. I need to cast more hardship and chaos into their lives or no one will want to read it. Who wants to read about things going well? How boring is that?

NaNoWriMo Approaches...

As November 1st approaches, I'm getting excited and nervous. I'm actually planning ahead! I don't know if I'll have a full outline, but I have plotted some major points that I want to cover. I'm sure I'll deviate once I start writing, but at least I think I know where I'm going to start out.

No news on the new job front. I'm still waiting to hear back from my prospective future employer. If nothing changes I'll be selling cars a little while longer.

The title of my novel? Crossroads Inn

NaNoWriMo

Check this out!

I've been thinking about writing a novel for a long time, and now I may actually do it. Next month is National Novel Writing Month. I think I am going to try to it. (Provided I get that new job and have more than two hours of waking time outside of work, that is.) If you want to join in, comment please.

I already have a seed of an idea that needs much fleshing out. I will not divulge the content of that seed at this time, but I'll try to post snippets of my progress here at AniMattic.us. as I begin a rapid and furious attempt at a novel next month.

*an inspiration*
I'll add a link to the NaNoWriMo website in my links section!
*end inspiration*

That's all folks! Join in the fun.

Besides, it's a lot of fin to talk about "Nanowrimo" and have people look at you really funny and say, "What?" I know, because that's how I reacted when my friend told me about it last year.

Wandering from my original purpose

This blog was orignially conceived to host my professional art and animation. Since I have gotten away from freelancing and have had less and less time for art due to my work situation, I have had nothing to blog about. So this blog is going to spread it's wings a bit and wend its way o'er a wider range of topics than animation and my own personal art. Hopefully this will mean more frequent updates so that the few people who check my blog will occasionally be rewarded by a new post or two.

A little exercise

I worked on this a bit on my day off.

Cars

As usual, I have been negligent about updating. I've been very busy lately, due to a new job that requires me to work a lot of hours. I'm selling cars at Spartanburg Dodge. The car business is a funny thing. Everybody needs one (or more) cars and everybody wants a nice car. But what everybody wants and what everybody's credit will allow are often not the same thing. This is where the challenge comes in. As a salesman, I have to help the customer fall in love with the cheapest car that they like. If I try to sell them a car that is too far above their budget, they either fight the price down (reducing my profit) or don't buy the car (even further reducing myprofit). But if I can find a car they like and can afford, we're both happy. They have a car they like and I can bring home bacon.

A New Character

Right now I don't really have time to dedicate to a big project, but I felt like I needed to work on something. This guy is a faun I've been sketching variations of for a while. I'm pretty pleased with the way he turned out. I think I like him because he reflects my original sketch pretty well. I'm planning on toon-shading him. He doesn't have a story yet--I think I'd just like to put a really good, flexible rig in him and use him for animation exercises.

The Archer

While I'm working on story ideas for these characters I thought I'd start to do some conceptual art to see what kind of style the images will be. This methold replicating stained glass was done in Photoshop. Whether these characters are toon rendered in 3D or hand drawn (which I haven't decided yet) I should be able to get a similar feel using PS and/or After Effects to polish them up!

Something New

I haven't posted any images in a long time, so I'm putting this trio up. Out of a number of sketches, these are the first to hit on something I really like. They are a bit rough, but not too bad considering they were only 1" tall on the margin of some notes:) I'm trying to think up a project for these knights to inhabit. I have a few ideas brewing, but it may be a while before I settle on one. I need to do a lot of exploring and refining to do still, but these guys are heading me in the right direction.

The Waiting Game

After my last post I spent a week or so furiously modeling and rendering a few examples of what my picture book will look like. I then eagerly sent them off to Brannon at Portland Studios so he could send them off to an editor who is interested in the book...and then I waited. And I wait still. (And will continue to wait patiently.) That is the hardest thing about freelance. Waiting on the verge of a big project--not wanting to start so as not to waste effort, and dying to start on a good project--is killer. It takes much patience.

p.s.
I think the other hardest part of freelancing is having cool images and not being able to show them off without risking the project.

Freelance Work

Today a step was made towards the approval of a storybook proposal that has been in limbo for months! It's a fun book for little kiddies--a counting book. I have some concept art, some character models, and I've gotten a lot of good feedback. Unfortunately I can't show them off yet, as I'm intending to sell the book. But one day, if the book gets sold, everyone can buy the book and see them! There might even be a website devoted to them! That would be fun.

The Joys of Website Ownership

One of the blessings of having a webpage is having things break for no apparent reason. The link for the DivX version of Radio is not working. I tried a quick fix but was not successful. Hopefully I'll be able to fix it soon. In the mean time, please check out the QT version of Radio. Unfortunately, it is larger than the DivX version. :(

The Were Rabbit

I just saw The Curse of the Were Rabbit today! Make like the bunnies in the picture and see it (if you haven't already). It felt different than the 30min. Wallace & Gromit films, but it was very good. All the characters were incredible. They were all different but fit the style so well. There was also a nice preview of the next Aardman film, done in 3d, but with the classic Aardman style. It looks pretty good.