And to the right of the craft....

I've added some links to my blog. Feel free to peruse them at your leisure.

don't call it a comeback

Well, it's the one month anniversary of me not posting on my blog, so to commemorate this momentous occasion, i'm.... posting on my blog.

So, for all 2 of you that actually still look at this page, here's the things that have been going on in my life for the past month.

I've been working part time at VanArts as a teacher's assistant in the CG classes. Just when i thought i could get away, they pull me back in..... Actually, it's good, because this time they pay me instead of me paying them. It's pretty easy work too, I just basically have to stay one step ahead of the students, and be able to figure out how to solve problems.

I've also been working part time on an internship with Yummy Interactive, a local video game company, along with Hallis, Shawna, and Fatou (some of my classmates). We're working on a demo for a video game based on a popular children's book. It's pretty fun, and we get a lot of creative input. Mostly i've been working on background design and kind of honing in on the art style but by the time we're done i will have done some animation (in Flash) too. It's not a paying job right now unfortuantely, but if all goes well when we're done the demo, that should change.

Aside from that, i'm looking for a full time job, starting work on my own character in Maya, and trying to come up with ideas for characters that would work well to animate in Flash. I need to get some more Flash skills under my belt (and on my demo reel), in case i ever want to get a job in that field. Don't necessarily want to get stuck in 3d animation, if'n you know what i mean. Always good to keep my options open. If'n you know what i mean. Know what i mean?

By the way, i've enabled word verification for comments, in order to keep those spamming bastids away from my blog.

things and stuff

First Adobe and Macromedia, now Autodesk and Alias. It'll be interseting to see how these things change the digital graphics and animation world. I'd like to think it'll make it better, but everybody knows that less competition = bad for the consumer.

A short interview with John Kricfalusi.

Tom Neely provides some nice Fleischer-style flash animation in this video for the Muffs. I don't think i've heard that band in almost 10 years....

More to come soon. Maybe i'll even let you in on what's going on with me.

here you are now, entertain you

spend some time in the bizarre world of castleBERDskillz. click things. see what happens. maybe try the arrow keys or space bar once in a while.

watch this trailer for a heartwarming comedy. fun for the whole family.

the brilliant stop-motion animation of PES.

funny corporate animation by Chris Harding: Make Mine Shoebox

disturbing educational film on bicycle safety: One Got Fat

if i ever listen to the radio, it's kexp from seattle.

update coming soon. maybe.

congratul and vac

Howdy folks, me again. Back on the horse. Horse meaning blog, of course.
I'd like to start this post off with a few congratulations to pass out (in no particular order).

To my fellow students at Van Arts: congratulations on making it through the year and graduating. It's been fun and i hope to work with each of you again sometime in the future.

To Gordon and Andrea: a huge congratulations on your engagement! AJ and I are so happy to hear the great news! Now that i'm done school, hopefully we'll see a little more of each other.

To Ben and Jess: another huge congratulations for your wedding (wish we could have been there!) and for surviving the honeymoon. And for anyone who thinks that last part is a joke, it's not and I sure didn't mean for it to sound like that. They apparently had quite a harrowing experience, and i'm so glad to hear that they made it through safely.

And now on to the rest of my life since my last post...
My brother Shaun came to visit for a few days before grad and we showed him a few of the sights of Vancouver: the aquarium, granville island, stanley park, vera's burgers.....Poor guy's not used to walking so much.
Friday, August 12th was my grad (finally). It was a good day, a bunch of friends and family came out to see what i've been spending so many hours doing and it was fun to see everybody's work on a big screen. Lots of talent going out into the world.
The next day we caught a flight for a well needed vacation in Alberta, visiting my parents in Cochrane, seeing some old friends, checking out some familiar sights in Calgary and area.
We were there for about a week and a half and the weather ranged from 4 degrees to 30 degrees. Crazy.
We went to the Calgary zoo one day; i tried to draw the animals a bit but it was a little tough to get much drawing done with all the crowds, though. And like the Vancouver aquarium, the place was just lousy with children. They shouldn't let kids into places like that.
Spent a couple days hiking in the mountains, went to Banff. I really miss living near there. Such a beautiful area, and the air smells so good.
We picked the right week to visit my parents though, as it was also the week that their new hot tub arrived, so we had to spend a few evenings breaking it in.
I also got to spend some time just sitting around watching movies, which was probably better for me than it sounds. Of course, Mom kept me well fed, all the better to keep my student belly for a while. Now to just get rid of it somehow....
It was a great time, just what I needed after finishing school. But it's nice to be back home in our tiny, tiny apartment (seems even tinier now after spending a week in my parents' roomy house). Now to just do a little bit of work for my demo reel, then, ah.... anybody got any leads on any animation jobs?

and by the way, below are some pictures of the last couple of weeks, mostly taken by Shaun, but some not. And if anybody knows how to post more than one picture in the same post, let me know. There's probably a way, but i haven't bothered to find out

a view from the car

elbow falls

aj, dad, and mom (and me running off somewhere) elbow falls

shaun, steph, simon and otto
not pictured: chipmunk

the view

aj and i enjoying the view, kananaskis country

that which i was attempting to draw; bow river falls, banff

me, drawing in banff

shaun, me, aj, and brad at my graduation

a seal, as seen from kits point

shaun and i, eating ice cream on the way home from the aquarium

Willis at the bat

Hey everyone, sorry about the lack of updates recently, that is if any of you have actually been checking for updates.
I can't believe i'm halfway through my final week of school. It went so fast. I'm looking forward to being done, so i can finally try to sort out all the stuff i learned, clear my mind, and keep learning. i'm not as much looking forward to joining the real world, however.
Above is an update on my final project which doesn't tell you much, except showing you something close to what it's going to look like. For all you know, the animation could be crap. Total crap. Anyway, i finished animating yesterday (or stopped animating anyway. you never really finish animating) and started rendering today, and since i couldn't do anything on the computer at school, i decided to come home early. Hooray for coming home early. My project ended up a lot shorter than i originally planned. I decided to cut a few scenes off the end because i didn't think i'd have time. Whattaya gonna do.
It feels good to be done animating (again, i probably could have kept animating, but at this point i was getting short on time and brain power) and i'm looking forward to whatever my next project is going to be. That's good, because i was pretty sure i'd be totally sick of computer animation, and never want to do it again. Lord knows that's how i felt a couple of weeks ago. But actually, i'm looking forward to the next project i start, which probably won't be until after i've had a few weeks away from it with all the goings on of graduating, and my brother Shaun's upcoming visit here and our trip to Calgary to visit my parents and recover a bit from the last 11 months.

why can't i stop....

playing this?

your turn to animate

Hey all, sorry there's been no updates in a while. I've got lots to write about (some things i've been meaning to write about are Batman Begins, Pixar animator visit, progress on my project)but i haven't had a lot of time or energy for it. Hopefully i'll get to those things soon.

Here's a fun website that allows you to make a short animation and save it on the web. So if any of you want to try animating, here's your chance!

If you do make one, save it and post the link in the comments.

To start things off, here is a quick one i did. it's kind of tough to draw with the mouse, so that's my excuse.

Found via Drawn

happy

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish my lovely wife a happy anniversary, and congratulate her for six amazing years married to a wonderful man. I know they'll have many, many more...

O Canada!

It's Canada Day! And how, you may ask, is this particular Canadian celebrating our dear nation's birthday? Why, by going to school and working on his animation project, of course! Whooo! So to all you kids out there who are taking today off like you should be, I salute you. So crack open a beer for me, and watch some fireworks. For me.

guesty goodness

Yesterday my class had the privelege of having Mark Pullyblank (sorry if i spelled that wrong), animator at Rainmaker here in vancouver sit in with us for the afternoon. For the first half, Mark talked to us about his experiences in the industry, and how he went from being straight out of school, unable to find work to becoming lead animator for Dr. Dolittle 3. The stuff he had to say managed to entertain, frighten and inspire me, a good combination i think. For the second half of the afternoon, he made the rounds in the classroom and looked at our work, giving critiques and tips to us. I always love it when people currently working in the industry come in to see our stuff, they always seem so thrilled to see what we are doing. Anyway, Mark stuck around way longer than he had to, talking shop with us students. When he left, i felt i had a little more knowledge and a little more ammunition to face the world after school, but most importantly, i wanted to animate.

guess what day it is

Not only is today the second day of summer and my second day of biking to school, it's also the first day of my brother Shaun's thirty-second year on earth. So happy 31st birthday Shaun, from all of us here on the world wide interweb.

pant pant gasp part 2

And here i thought the second day biking to school was supposed to be easier.....

pant pant gasp

Rode my bike to school today for the first time in at least a year. I used to ride a lot, but the sweatiness eventually turned me off the whole thing. But i decided some real exercise might do me some good (the 40 minute walk twice a day was nice, but didn't seem to be benifitting me a whole lot), so i figured i'd give it another go. It gets me to and from school in a little over half the time and most of the ride is along false creek instead of on the busy and noisy streets, which is nice.
Good lord, i'm out of shape....

show me your willis

As mentioned earlier, here's a screenshot from my animation project. This is Willis in a abtting cage (or what will later look like a batting cage). For those of you who don't know, this is what computer animation looks like when we're actually animating. That also means that in the end, my project will look a heck of a lot better than this shot does (so don't worry, mom and dad).
In addition to sharing my work with all of you, this is also a tedt of my image-posting abilities. Looks like it works.

'bout freaking time

I'm finally animating! After spending way too much time modelling, rigging, and weighting my character, i finally started animating today. And it feels good. Sure, it's fun to be able to create my own characters and make them work - for the first few days. But then it takes way longer than i expect it to, and i just want to move on... and now i can. I may be a few days behind schedule, but i'm happy to now be doing what i got into this field to do - actually bring that character to life and tell a story. Stay tuned, maybe i'll post some screenshots so you can see a bit of the work in progress.
So till my next post (which will probably read something like "aaarggh! i hate animating! why does it have to be so hard!"), this has been Ryan D reporting for pull my moustache!.

crosstown crazies

I've noticed that vancouver seems to have an unusually high number of people who walk around talking to themselves. There's one guy i've seen on the bus that seems to spend a lot of time arguing with himself. Lots of people shouting angrily for no apparent reason. It's a little disturbing and sad.
But yesterday on the bus, i saw something a little different. He was a pleasant looking man, talking to no one in particular. "Do you listen to the kingston trio? Do you listen to the kingston trio? ***** is a song by Bob Seger."
If i ever go crazy, i hope it's like him.

you're commenting, i'm commenting, everybody's commenting

The comment system on pull my moustache! is now set to receive comments from those who are not registered blogger users. So if you drop by, let me know you've been here.

go west

One of my favorite cartoon voice actors, Billy West, is interviewed this week on the Onion AV Club.
(Thanks Shaun for the heads up) He pretty much sums up my thoughts on the trend of celebrity voice acting, so instead of ranting about it myself, i'll let the pro tell you how it is.
As for the possibility of more Futurama on the way, alls i can say is "good news, everyone".

procrastination station

Howdy, all you kids out there in TV land (er, computer-monitor land), and welcome to the very first post of pull my moustache!, the magical blog of Ryan Dergousoff. I started this thing a couple of weeks ago, but didn't feel like i had anything important to write. But now i have something important to put off (my final project of my computer animation program) so i figger, what better time to start than now. So anyway, for any of you wondering what i'm up to these days, i'm nearing the end of my one year computer animation program at van arts, full swing (or at least close to it) into my final animation project. My daily schedule is basically as follows: wake up at 7, turn off my alarm, fall asleep, wake up just before 8, get up, rush to get ready, walk to school (about 40 minutes), get to school about 5 minutes late, classes till 4, stay at school till 9 or 10, go home, spend a little time with the lovely wife, watch some cartoons on the computer, go to sleep. Saturday's a little more open, Sunday's my day of rest. Animation and all that is fun, but my schedule isn't always.... So that brings me to today, national procrastination day. In order to get further behind on my production schedule, i skipped class this afternoon and caught a showing of Howl's Moving Castle, the enchanting, imaginitive tale of, um, i don't know what. I have to say, i was a little disappointed. Sure, it had all the imagination and eye candy you might expect from a Miyazaki film, but the story just didn't capture me. It was worth it to see Howl's Castle, uh, moving, but in my opinion it doesn't quite reach the standard set by Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke or Castle In The Sky. And of course the MPAA and studios are doing their best to ruin the movie for the audience. I'm seeing this mess on almost every movie i go to lately. No wonder people are going to the movies less and less. So then i came back to school and spent some time listening to the drunken louts gathering outside for the BC Lions game across the street. What's the deal with sports; they seem to bring out the obnoxious drunk inside everyone.

So really, i should try and get some work done. Check back in the future for (hopefully) regular updates on the goings-on in my life, my thoughts on animation, movies, and anything else i might feel is worth writing about for you all to read. Hopefully i'll be able to put up some drawings when i figure out how and have anything decent to share.
Later, all

ryan