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