As 2007 comes to an end, I have to say that I’m both happy and disappointed with my progress in life. Good things have happened to me and my family. Not many “bad” things happened, but ultimately my frustration comes from my lack of making good headway both personally and for Suncoast Studios. I started the year by getting a new job, one in which my professional limits could stretch and be utilized properly in an environment that needed them. I’ve worked pretty damned hard this year, putting in a ton of hours, but I can say that there’s been a lot of great benefit from it. I’ve put together a great staff and overcome some difficult tribulations. I think I’ve offered a very good service overall. Of this, I’m proud. On the home front I think things could have gone better – it’s been tough. Financially, Shauna and I...
Category: General
Sick and Weak Week
I’ve been battling a cold for the past week. It hit me the night before Thanksgiving, and got progressively worst through Monday night. Even though I took the day off from work Monday, Tuesday I felt well enough to head back into the office. Unfortunately, the aching, soar throat and congestion caught back up with me today. So, in general, Thanksgiving went off well. I went and picked my mom, sister and brother-in-law up and they stayed up at our place for the entire day. I dropped them back off later that night. We had the usual turkey, stuffing, pashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole and rutabagas. There was delicious pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. On Black Friday, I took the day off, partly because I needed a break from work, partly because I was sick (I still did work from home most of the day). I ventured...
Inspired By Robots
I went out yesterday to run some errands and ended up buying Transformers on DVD. I haven’t watched the movie yet (I saw it in the theater), but I watched the behind-the-scenes bonus disc. I have to say that it was very inspiring to see all that. They went over the rendering process and how the shots were blocked for the special effects which, in my opinion, are the most fun of all – to see how a director or visual effects supervisor figures out all that stuff. So, now I feel like shooting a movie. But, I’ve got so many things going on that I don’t have the time. I really need to look at all my projects today and figure out some sense of order and start banging them out. Here’s what I need to do today: Clean and organize my desk. I’ve let it turn into a...
Send In The Renders
Ah, the weekend. I am ever so glad it's here. It's a time to wash away the stresses of the week and turn your energies inward, hopefully accomplishing some housework, finishing some projects, or just being entertained. I'm about to lay out my master plan for the next two days... Here we go... I'm currently outputting the final 35mm render for Tangible Entertainment. Some interesting specs on the project: 467 frames of animation 24 frames per second 19.45 seconds of footage Final output resolution: 4,096 x 1,968 pixels 1.85:1 aspect ratio (Flat/Academy Aperture) Current total render time (approximated): 6 days I've been contacted by another filmmaker out in L.A., who wants me to do a title animation for him as well. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but he's pretty well-known in certain internet circles, and I'm sure people in Hollywood know him. We're...
Fun, Then Not So Fun
Late Thursday afternoon I was invited to go to the Lightning hockey game. The owner of my company had an extra ticket, and a bunch of the executives and administrative people were going too. They had tickets to the AFS club, which is this nice area of the Forum where you get in, sit in comfy leather chairs (think along the lines of airline first class) and have unlimited food and beer at your disposal – no shit. So, I went home and changed clothes, got ready, and jumped in the car to meet everyone at one of the executive vice-president’s house. I got there a few minutes after 6:00pm. People started to slowly show up there for the next 45 minutes, and when all were accounted for, we jumped into a couple of vehicles (we only had two parking passes, so we had to cram in), and headed off...
Welcome Ryan!
Early this morning my good friend, Ninel, delivered her baby boy, Ryan Matthew (excellent name) at 7 lbs. 14 oz. I’m so incredibly excited for her and her husband Alex. I talked to her around 9:00am and she and Ryan are doing fine. I’m going to go see them all tomorrow at the hospital, as I wasn’t able to get away from the office today. In a recent fit of rage, I destroyed my iPaq 6315 phone. I hope to be able to get an iPhone in the next couple of months, but right now I’m using an older BlackBerry 7290. The good part of this is that I’ll free up a USB connector on both my home PC and my laptop at the office as I won’t need the cradles anymore. My editing workstation in the studio decided to start reporting bad clusters on the hard drive last night....
Keepin’ Busy
I just finished playing Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I recently decided to re-activate my GameTap account and I was surprised to see this game in there. GameTap has begun to add several great games to the service. I started playing Tomb Raider a couple of weeks ago, and decided to just go until it was done. I’ve been doing a lot of work at the office lately, as we’re in the process of getting ready to move. A lot of my time will be devoted to that. Right now I’m working on the electrical needs of the server room. I hope to have that finished today. In Suncoast Studios news, I’ve been keeping busy with Jeff’s book and have also been trying to help out Millard from time to time. I’m almost done the cover design for the book, then I have to move on to the interior illustrations. For Millard,...
SCS Update
Our transition to Tampa is now pretty much behind us. We now have about 75% of the boxes unpacked and the furniture set up for the most part. I can now begin focusing more and more on Suncoast Studios work, which has begun to pile up over the past few months. We’ve got a ton of projects going on. Currently, I’m finishing up a wedding video edit for a co-worker. I’ll be delivering that tomorrow on DVD. I then need to move on to finishing the graphics for Jeff’s book, then I can finally move back into the new television project and the rendered graphics for Millard. There’s going to be a lot of structuring/restructuring for the studio. I have to get a new business address in Tampa and as soon as that’s done, incorporate. With the documentary for Millard just about ready to get back in to action, I...
he Middle of Everywhere
Wow. I haven’t blogged in about a month and a half. That’s not good. I think the reason I haven’t been writing much in the past six months is largely due to the fact that I had to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to work every morning, then an hour and fifteen minutes back in the evening. You couple that with long hours (60-70 hour weeks), you get one tired Chewbode; one who wants nothing to do with the computer when he gets home. That’s not good either. Well, all that is about to change. This past week Shauna and I finally moved to Tampa. The apartment we got into is really nice and we’ve got a lot more room. So much more in fact, that I’ve decided that I’m re-building the studio to be more suited for a production company. I’m looking into getting a new desk that...
Inside My Microcosms
I’m a very visual person. Anyone who knows me well can tell you that I describe things (sometimes ad nausium) in a lot of detail. I relish the thought that I can interact with microcosms. By that I mean that I like small sub-sets of reality; self-contained little environments that I can get in and manipulate and spend my time perfecting. What began it for me were Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. When I was just a kid and lived back in Michigan, I can remember dozens of times where I would load my cars into a cheap plastic tray that rested on top of another cheap plastic tray in a thin, vinyl, lunchbox-sized case and go downstairs into the front yard of the old apartment building we lived in. Settling down, usually in an area where the grass and sand/dirt met (usually adjacent to a sidewalk or driveway), I’d...
