Fun stuff

Well, this is fun. I set up my brand new iPhone to be able to access this blog. On Friday, my wife and I went on a comfort spending spree. So far, I’m a huge fan of this little toy, and I may spend time talking about the various apps that I have found, and enjoy.
Here are two:
Autodesk has a sketching app that I’m a very big fan of. Of course I purchase colors for the iPhone mostly because I have used colors on the nintendo ds, and I want to support the group that created that lovely application. But right now, i’m going to spend time writing about the Sketchbook Mobile from Autodesk. So far I’m very impressed. For about $3 the application has custom brushes editable layers and the ability to import images from the camera. I would be willing to bet that the price of the application will eventually go up.
The next application I LOVE! Check out the Pandora Radio application. Type in the name of an artist or genre, and the program plays and adds music related to the artist. I listened to music all day yesterday, drove from my house to my parents and the program didn’t miss a beat. Best of all, It’s free!
As I said, right now I’m a huge fan of the iPhone and it’s been a much needed source of entertainment. Actually, this post has been written entirely from my phone.

Words For My Brother

I said the following yesterday at Mark’s funeral:

“My brother was the best man for my wedding.  His speech made me laugh and brought tears to my eyes.  I was hoping that one day I would be able to stand beside Mark, surrounded by family and friends, and return the favor.  Unfortunately, this will be the closest I will ever get to that moment.

I looked through some of my books to find something to help explain this tragedy to me.  There was nothing that worked for me personally, but I did find the most perfect description in the Tao Te Ching:

‘Embrace Simplicity
Put others first
Desire little’

Mark lived in every moment, and he embraced every moment, every interaction and found joy in the little things.  Whenever you needed him, he was there.  He loved his family and friends with every fiber of his being.  Their needs and wants were often put ahead of his own.  Mark was never driven by material things.  He seemed happiest playing music, hanging out with friends and family, making funny faces in front of his camera, or just spending the day lounging with his girlfriend.

We used to joke with him that he couldn’t make a decision if his life depended on it.  I remember when we were little; my parents would tell us that we could each pick out a toy. I knew exactly what I wanted and would rush off to pick my toy…
On the other hand, there was Mark; who stood there weighing his options and apparently assessing all the possible consequences of his choice. (Which was good since I was going to take it from him when we got home anyway.) This would go on for 10 or 15 minutes until my parents would come over and grab two toys, put them behind their backs and say choose a hand.

This indecisiveness went on throughout his life except for when it mattered.  First, I believe that he chose his soul mate in Valerie and although I’ve lost a brother in this ordeal, I know I’ve got a sister.  Second, I know he would always choose us, family and friends, over anything; even himself.

It is far too easy to stand here filled with regret and grief and think about all the things that we will never be able to do again with this wonderful person.  It’s too easy to stand here and mourn, but I’ve also tried to ask myself what Mark would want. I know he would have been happy that we went out and celebrated his life with friends and family last night, and he would honestly prefer that we continue that celebration today and into the future. Mark was a gift to all of us, and he is a part of all of us.  His memory has helped to shape our lives, and if nothing else; the way he lived his life should serve as a lesson to everyone in this room:

‘Embrace simplicity
Put others first
Desire little;

Above all, remember the good times, they will help balance the bad.

Thank you.”

Again, to everyone that has expressed their support and condolences to my family during this tough time, you are much appreciated, and very much loved.

“Let’s Celebrate Life”

I’m not planning on turning the focus of this blog into a focus on the tragedy that we are currently attempting to cope with, however, I am planning on expanding these occasional entries to include my thoughts and hopefully some writings.

Anyway, I wanted to share an experience that I had today.

I went to see my brother’s car today.  This event for me was tough, but necessary.  I will spare many of the details, but my wife found a hospital visitor sticker on his dash from the day that my oldest daughter was born.  The top portion of the sticker had a label that said “Unckie Markie” and the bottom part of the sticker had a label that read “Let’s Celebrate Life.” Yes, I broke down into tears.  Mark adored my daughters.  The “Unckie Markie” part got to me first.  I didn’t read the bottom of the sticker into a got into my car.  Those three words, “Let’s Celebrate Life” became my theme for the day (and hopefully from now on).  It was like Mark was leaving a reminder that we can’t get so wrapped up in grief that we forget to celebrate life.  The potential for heart ache is endless and infinite, and I wouldn’t want to take those feelings away from anyone since they are necessary and natural.  However, it is also important to sit back and think about all the blessings that we have left on this planet, and in all the potential grief, we must also not forget to “Celebrate Life,” for life is truly a miracle.

The next couple of days will undoubtedly be filled with grief.  But the well wishes, thoughts, kind words, and prayers have been a source of great comfort and a reminder that we are not alone in this process.  In the upcoming days, weeks, and months; we will need to find opportunities to Celebrate Life and share the good with each other as well as the bad.

Even after his passing, my brother has found a way to be an inspiration and he has provided me with an opportunity for comfort and a whisper of hope.  I wanted to share one of the reasons to celebrate his life with you.

10/3/09 Remember Two Things

Remember Two Things:
1. Slow Down
2. Make time to spend with loved ones

I’ve held the long time belief that Death is a part of life.  Hundreds of thousands of people die every day, yet yesterday that belief was put to the test.  My younger brother, Mark, was killed in a car accident while he and his girl friend were running weekend errands.  Mark was truly a gift to the world.  Many times, as an older brother, I found it difficult to remember that truth.

Yesterday, while he and his girl friend were driving to the store, a car, presumably passing other cars on a two lane highway crossed into his lane hitting his car head on.  Mark was killed instantly.  Mark swerved onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid the collision and his actions may very well saved his girlfriend’s life.  She is doing well (physically) and is currently in stable condition at the hospital, however, she has been emotionally destroyed.  The driver of the other car also survived, although I don’t know his conditions or the condition of his passengers (his kids).

I’ve titled this entry, “Remember Two Things” because, one, it’s the title of a Dave Matthews Album, and Mark was a talented guitar player.  But, there is a lesson to be taken from this unfortunate event. 

First, Slow Down.  We live in an instant fast paced world full of rush rush rush.  Often people are in such a hurry that they forget that we are all connected in one way or another.  Our actions act as a butterfly effect for the rest of the world.  So Slow Down.  The man who killed my brother will not make it to his destination on time, and he will have to live with the fact that he killed a brilliant young man and put his own family into jeopardy.  Mark will never finish running his errands for the day.  He will never make it to another Christmas, Another Birthday, and he will never make it to any other family event or special occasion.  His girlfriend will never make it to their wedding day, and our family will never watch them walk down the aisle.  Slowing down may have allowed for all these things to happen. 

A part of slowing down is also the second thing to remember.  Make time for loved ones.  Make time to visit, eat dinners together and call.  Say I love you as many times as possible, and never leave things unsaid.  Instead of calling my brother, I sent him a text message, “I heard you weren’t feeling well. Miss you.” I know I can’t go back in time, but I wish I would have called, and I wish we would have had dinner together, but wishing doesn’t make things happen.  I know my brother knew I loved (and love) him.  I know he adored my daughters, but I wish we would have spent more time together. 

I’m not writing this to throw a pity party.  Hopefully, someone will read this and make a positive change. 

Make time for loved ones… What you’ve done is never enough.

Please:
Slow Down
Make time for loved ones.

Remember two things:
I love you Mark, and you will be missed.

Parental Perks

On a related side note, I was planning on working on the character I just posted yesterday, but I was over fatigued from the night before.  Here’s a little “Parent Perk” which are little moments that actually suck, but are a part of parenting that when push came to shove I wouldn’t change.

Saturday we went to my parents’ house for dinner for hamburgers and maccaroni and cheese.  It was a rather nice evening, I spent time working on my dad’s computer, we watched a movie, and I cuddled with my daughter on the floor.  We got in the car to drive to our house, made it about 5 blocks, and I heard a tiny muffled cough in the backseat.  I turned around and (for those of you with weak stomachs, I’m sorry) my daughter was covered in Macaroni, yup that’s right, she puked all over herself, her car seat, and her froggy (her favorite stuffed animal).

Of course we turned back and went to my parents, cleaned up everything as much as we could, changed her clothes, and got back in the car to head home.  While in route, she fell asleep and we made it without incident.  We got home, and I carried her to her room.  Right outside the bathroom, I heard another stomach lurch and she vomited again.  The poor thing is only 2.5 and doesn’t always understand what’s going on.

I volunteered to sleep in her room to help her incase she started to throw up again.  Well, if you’ve ever slept in the room with a 2 year old, it’s like sleeping with a tiny tazmanian devil that rolls and kicks and coughs.  I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

So instead of waking up before everyone on Sunday to work on my images, I slept late and tried to recharge the batteries so I wasn’t completely useless for work today.

The Perks of Parenthood… Aren’t they grand?

Just Checking In

Well, I really don’t have a lot of news right now.  Trying to find time to draw has been a pain.  I started this image:

I’ve spent a lot of time on touching this character up and detailing it with the hopes of using it in a quick animation test.  I’m getting to the point where I want to start laying our a script for a quick animation/short film. But I’m going to work on getting objects, characters, scenes, and other materials.  I’ll post progress as I’m able to work on it.

Another cool thing that I have going on: I’ve been doing co-teaching, and I’ve been using Blender and the ideas behind the program to illustrate concepts discussed in class.  Right now we’re talking about graphing and curves and I’ve been using the IPO editor to illustrate those concepts in real life.

Cool Site

I found a cool site through Blender Nation that is definintely worth checking out.  There’s a very nice couple of Blender Tutorials, and one in particular that people may find useful is a tutorial that focuses on the IPO editor in Blender and flying Meat Cleavers.  Very Useful.

Totally Blended Check it out.

Meet Rosco

I’ve been increasingly interested in animation which makes sense, because I’m a giant kid that loves to watch cartoons with his daughter.  Anyway, my current goal is to bring some of my sketches to life in Blender.

I had a general idea in how to accomplish this, but I wanted to test it out before I spent a huge amount of time working on an image specifically for Blender, therefore, I decided to create a very quick and simple face, and Rosco was born.  (It’s only fitting to name him, even if you don’t plan on using him for much.)

For people that understand Blender, I’ll quickly talk through my method, and for those that don’t, I’ll try to come up with a tutorial when I can find time to sit down and work on one.  Either way, I think this method could bring some happiness to those 2D people out there that like me, struggle with having to redraw the same character over and over.

(By the way, there probably exist better ways to do this, however, this is the one that I used)

First, as I said, I created Rosco.  I used Inkscape to get the general shape and Photoshop (open source purests can easily use GIMP, but I paid for Photoshop, so I’m going to use it).  The important part here, is that I saved the image as a PNG so that I could use his ALPHA (transparency) later in Blender.

(Even if you are wanting to do cutout animation in any program, remember to use PNG to save the transparency so you don’t get rather strange masking effects)

With Rosco created, I opened Blender…

set my view to top view witch makes the x and y axis viewable. (I’m planning on later using this for students, and we teach students to think and graph in x and y.)  Using the Background settings in the View menu, I placed my image as the background, added a plane, and then extruded the edges to make the face, but I made sure that I constrained all movement to the x and y axises.  I also utilized a Mirror modifier to speed up the modeling process.  When finished modeling, I applied the modifier and used a little bit of vertex tweaking to move things around to where I wanted them.  The final result was a decent modeled representation of the my character.

I then unwrapped the model and used the UV editor to import the Rosco image.  There are quite a few tutorials on UV unwrapping and texturing, but I have learned that having a model with the vertexes where you want them before you try and unwrap will save a ton of headaches later.

When everything was the way that I wanted it, I used the Materials portion of Blender to add the image as a texture on the UV settings, but I also enabled the ALPHA channel so that what should be see through remained that way.

Next, I moved onto rigging the face, which funny enough works just like rigging everything else in blender.  Originally the face was made up of two bones, the master and jaw (I would recommend using the Master Bone as a Master only and create a head bone and a jaw bone to move the sections you want to move).  A little bit of weight painting and my Skull Head opens and closes his mouth… YAY.

This left me with tons of limitations, so I asked myself how could I rig the face to get more.  (I tried shape keys, but I’m not all that skilled at rigging bones to drive shape keys, so that’s on my list of things to do…)  Then I remembered a site I visit quite a bit called The Process Diary and the gentleman who write on this has an excellent face rigging tutorial.

Utilizing Latices and Hooks parented to bones, I rigged the rest of Rosco’s face. See below for setup I used.  The Left side pictures the Rosco Plane, while the right side shows the bones (Top Right) and the Bones and Lattices (Bottom Right).

To get the face to move the way that I’m happy with, I ended up using 14 bones and 4 lattices.  The 12 smaller bones are driving lattice hooks that adjust small movements on the mesh. (Again this is probably overkill, but it works.)  The large lattice acts on the eye sockets,  and there are three smaller ones around the mouth that I have acting on the top lip, bottom lip, and the sides of the mouth (To make an ‘O’ Face).

I added very simple eyes (Circles I colored in Blender) and parented those circles to the Bone that controls the bottom section of the eye socket.

Here’s a test animation for 2d facial rigging:

And if you want to try some of this out, please feel free to use Rosco (png image below).  Please just use him to learn these methods, and if you e-mail me (gixgidea@yahoo.com), I will send you his .blend file so you can try out what I’m talking about and/or have an example.

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Cut Out Project

I’ve started a new project.  I’m hoping to use 2d images from inkscape and Photoshop (or gimp depending which computer I’m using) in Blender to create cut out animation.  I’ll post a walk through, screen shots, and a character (or other object) to try your own luck on.  So far I’m working with creating the image in inkscape then in Blender.  The next step is to work on rigging my 2D images for a 3D program.

Hmmm

All work and no play makes Gix a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Gix a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Gix a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Gix a dull boy.

I’ve started a couple of images and have an idea for a project to start, but I just haven’t had time to do anything. I really want to finish my fish, but I see that’s going to have to be put on the back burner for a bit. If it weren’t for needing sleep in order to be a productive and not cranky member of the work force, I think I would get more done.