Articles from: 2002

I got one of those “if I only knew then what I knew now” feelings when I was staring at an original Swoop dinobot behind a glass case at a comic book store with a price tag at $190. It was accompanied with  fond memories of my Dinobot whose wing my friends broke. Ahh the memories.

For background design we’re designing Baby Herman’s bedroom (of Roger Rabbit fame) and one thing we need in the room is a cluttered desk. So as I’m drawing more and more stuff on the desk I’m thinking that it takes much more effort to draw a messy desk than to make a messy desk. I’ve done practically nothing and my desk at home is cluttered with books, peanut shells, an itinerary, plastic utensils, a glove, some loose change, my sunglasses, orange peels, empty takeout containers, a wooden fan, some pharmaceutical post-its, and various drawing related stuff. I mean one minute it’s clean and a couple weeks later … voila! All this stuff! Background design is another matter and it looks like I might have to put a good deal of effort to make a mess as good as the one I have beside me.

The new Spiderman DVD which Rob brought to class has rekindled my love for the silly red and blue costume. The closest thing I have to that are these black nike stretchpants which my mom brought up with her when she visited me last weekend. Those pants, combined with a really tight fitted black and red jersey which Denisse wears that I tried on today, can almost make me look like a costumed superhero from the neck down. Without all the muscle bulges. Now if only I had 1) a mask, 2) superpowers, and 3) a cool name/symbol. The only thing I do have which is remotely superpowerish is the ability to not sleep very much so I probably could, in theory, roam the streets late at night (I haven’t yet developed the love of not sleeping very much) So my mom came up to visit me last week for a couple hours. She naturally brought me a trunkload of stuff which was nice (like the stretchpants), useful (a mini stapler), tasty (jellybeans!), and some some other stuff like cologne which I said I didn’t need. We drove around a bit and I took her to a place I like to eat.

Rob has introduced me (and a few others) to the wonderful world of cellular text messaging. Sure it’d be a whole lot faster and easier to call the guy up but it’s kinda fun to get a message. Kinda like email on the go but instead of 101 keys y … o … u … (space) g … e … t … (space) p … (backspace) o … n … l … y … (space) 1 … 2 … (menu) (send)

So I ran out of milk yesterday. In the spirit of Halloween I decided to use orange juice in my cereal instead. I figured: it’s orange, halloween is orange, it could work. The result was very scary indeed.

I know I haven’t been posting as much lately but it’s been kinda busy in the studio. Take today for instance. Mike dressed up as a runner for Halloween and had a stopwatch and everything so we had to see how fast we could stop and start the stopwatch. Mike and I tied at 0.07s and Rob was able to get 0.06s (I get the impression that he plays videogames a lot). Then we tried to stop the time exactly on 1.00s and only Rob was able to achieve this impressive feat although I got 0.99 a couple times. Then we tried getting 1.00s without looking at the timer and surprisingly all three of us were able to do this. As you can see we’ve really had our nose to the grindstone these past couple weeks.

I just picked up my bike today from the shop which has a new gear thingy at the back. They said they lubed the brakes and, in addition, put on the chain some new grease so I’m looking forward to seeing it on my pants leg in the near future.

I just went to visit my layout/background/animation assisting teacher. Her name is Birgitta. She’s Finnish and built like a viking but she’s super sweet and says things like “yaaay!” and “wooohooo!” a lot. She lives right across the border so she can keep her American green card and it was fun to get away from the city a bit and be on native soil. We took the bus which dropped us off right before immigration, and had a fun four mile jaunt to her place. We passed lots of blackberry bushes and some donkeys. Brigitta’s house was super cool. It reminds me of a small IHOP restaurant with these steep angled roofs. It’s a small cozy place with two timid cats and a fireplace. Brigitta cooked up a storm since a lot of us were planning on going but there ended up being only four so we ate like kings and queens (deviled eggs, yams, some vegetarian curry and rice dishes …) and still had mounds of food to take home with us. She bought a turkey in case anyone ate meat. Since I was the only one who did I practically took home a whole turkey in my backpack. Which is good since the way I’ve been sleeping lately, I might be needing the tryptophan.

Ahhh. what a good night’s sleep. Not only did I almost get a whopping eight hours, I also woke up to this nice dream: I was at this big seminar and one of the speakers was in this weird contraption/costume thingy which opened up to reveal this really cute French girl with thick short hair and a really nice nose. She came up to me a spoke some french which I barely understood and in front of everybody started to ask me these questions like have I ever eaten a cucumber or have I ever watched CNN. I had trouble understanding the questions but she was patient with me. Anyway when she finished we sort of looked at each other and smiled and for a long moment I was smitten. Then she rolled away. Did I mention she was in a wheelchair? I remember using Google in my dream to look up her name and saw she was some researcher in the social sciences; had a PhD and everything. Man, I wish I could remember her name. Just for kicks, of course.

I didn’t feel much like drawing tonight so I decided to go on my usual bike ride around Stanley Park. It was pretty dark. I felt paranoid that some dude would pop out of the trees and scare me or that some stick on the path would trip up my bike and I’d go flying helplessly over the seawall. At some point I stopped and felt really vulnerable. The last time I felt so secluded from civilization was the time I spent laying down on the beach at night. I covered up my ears and staring up into space I could almost imagine that I was in space floating somewhere. Anyways afterward I had dinner at my usual spot: this Japanese noodle cafe. It’s almost a tradition for me to go there for Sunday dinners. I’ve pretty much settled to some favorite restaurants around town so the bulk of my meals consist of either Smile Diner omelettes, Subway sandwiches, Daikichi sushi special, or Shouyu noodle soups. I picked up twelve potatoes today during my regular Sunday Safeway shopping. I’m going to try to make mashed potatoes next week. We’re going to visit one of our teachers, Brigitta, over thanksgiving next Monday and I thought I’d try my hand at this cooking business. In case you’re wondering they celebrate Thanksgiving here in Canada in October. Brigitta thinks it’s because it’s colder here and the harvest is sooner. I can testify to the colder bit.