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.