Nov 9th and 10th

Nov 9th & 10th.

Well, past two days haven’t been anything incredibly exciting, so I will just lump them together (since I went to bed too late last night to write). 

So, yesterday was a good day, productive.  Picked up my Debit card at lunch, so its nice to have that now.  Then I got two more shots done.  They weren’t bad, felt like I kind of breezed through them.  The BEST part:  two of my shots didn’t even need revisions, they were good to go and passed the first round for Primary animation!!!!  SO happy.  That was a very very good feeling.  So now, I will get some kind of feedback after round one, and then go on to smooth things out and move into Secondary.  THAT will be interesting for sure.  Hoping that goes well, and that blocking was the hard part.. but you never know.  Myke is very particular, which is good, but difficult.  Still good. 

Anyway, then came home to the house, everyone home, and TELEVISION!  We finally have tv.  Just a couple of channels, but at least there is tv now.  STILL though (Wednesday the 10th) NO internet.  SUCKS.  That’s what I’m pissed about, and I know I rave about it a lot, but its my only solid communication home.

Aside from that, had a good evenings, had my leftovers for dinner, and then headed to bed a bit late.  Was up talking with the room mates and watching some tv. 

Today, got up and headed into work again.  Today I worked straight through the day (over 10 hours), with small breaks, but nothing substantial.  Today was not a very good day in terms of productivity.  I just wasn’t feeling it.  Was getting easily frustrated at things, and of course, then got my first feedback on a Primary shot that needed to be changed.  That took a while, cause I had a few things to change, and it went through a couple of rounds.  Got that down pretty much though, and re-submitted it.  It was just a rough day.  Everything was fine, but you know, just hard to get into the new shots.  Very dialogue heavy, and the Animatics have nothing in them except staging, so its up to me what they do really.  Good, but also difficult. 

I moved offices today too, which was actually nice.  That also hurt the productivity a tad, cause I was in a room with the other animators.  Which is GREAT, but the headphone jack in my computer doesn’t work, so when everyone is talking, I can’t hear the audio in my work.  A bit hard for dialogue heavy work, but that’s ok J.  It was fun, I love being in a room with them.  Im sitting right next to Matt, and across from Mercedes and Nick.  Cristina is behind them, and Sushil is on the corner.  Great group of people.  A few more it sounds like will be coming into that room, there are 3 vacant desks I believe.  I hope Kate comes, she is a lot of fun.  Great group really.  We had a nurf gun fight early on in the day, and THAT was fun.  I got to participate this time, even though I didn’t have a gun.  Kate has two, so she let me use one of her others.  Gooooood times.  Haha. 

The rest of the day was just sitting down working on the shots.  Nothin too snazzy.  Just hard to stay focused today.  Blah Wednesday. 

After work, I went out to “steak wednesday” with Nick, Cristina, and Kate.  That was a great time.  Decent food (can’t complain for a $10 steak!  It was cooked perfectly too!), great beer, and awesome conversation.  Great way to wrap up a long, frustrating day.  Unfortunately, I have two shots that I just got critique on to fix up tomorrow, but that’s alright because I kind of knew that at least one of them would have some changes (sometimes the staging and timing of Animatics doesn’t work so well when actually put in Animation in Maya, so there are changes that have to happen later on).  So, tomorrow will hopefully be a better day for productivity… though I’m not sure.

We have a bunch of media and people from Nickelodeon (high up people) coming in tomorrow and Friday to film / take photos, and see what we do.  So that will possibly be distracting, but at least Im in a separate room with just a few animators, so hopefully not too bad.  Looking forward to Friday, we are having a big party after work at the office.  Should be a blast :-D.  Can’t wait.  This weekend should be busy actually, which is nice!  Of course when I finally have a novel to read :-P.  I have some errands to run, got to go get some more pillows, since the two I have are cheap-o and tiny (I smacked my head against the cinderblock wall night before last when I got into bed, since my bed is in a corner, and I mis-judged my distance..), and I need a duvet.  I have the cover, so I essentially have two sheets, but no comforter.  NEED that.  I need more hangers for sure too.  I think that will help.  I hung up all my sweatshirts, but since theres no dresser, I think it will help to have more.  It’s a big closet, but the stacking bins I got just aren’t enough for everything I brought.  So I’ll do that Saturday.

Sunday, I think the day is mostly free, but then at night, theres this place called “Big-Ups” that I am going with the people from work.  Its like, $20.00, and its some crazy big like, play house thing.  They have sumo suits, fighting arenas, a blow-up obstacle course… haha, looks hilarious.  So that should be fun.  Really looking forward to that.  I love the people from work, and that they hang out together.  THANK GOODNESS for that.  Should be a good weekend.  Sounds like tomorrow night too, there are people coming here to our place for a BBQ.  Nia’s friends are going away to travel for a while, so she thought about having a good-bye BBQ for them.  A few friends of the other room mates are coming, so hopefully it’s a good time. 

OH!  I forgot too, since I didn’t write yesterday… but everyone here at the house wants to do Thanksgiving… even though none of them are American!!!  HA!  So excited about that.  They all were like “what do you eat on Thanksgiving?”  They knew the staple things, but all were really excited to do it.  Hopefully we’ll get that together, that will be fun.  I am thinking about starting to find out who will be around for Christmas too (whose not going back to their home), and hopefully Kyle will be here, but maybe I could get a group of people together to make a big Christmas dinner.  That would be fun J.  Looking forward to the holidays, though they will DEFINITELY not be the same without the family.  That part will be hard.  But hopefully I can make something of it and still have a good time, and a good meal.  I’ll be bringing around all the recipes from home that we always have!  Gotta get them from the family. 

Anyway, already after 10.  I want to get to bed so that I can finally get up and run or something in the morning…we’ll see how motivated I am.  I hope that might help with the slump I had today at work.  Hoping it stays a bit more quiet tonight.  Nia and Terry aren’t home (I think they’re both working), and Scott and Kira have gone up stairs I think, so its just me, Alvaro and Ernesto watching tv.  Haha. 

Alright, bed time I think.  Later.