Monday, July 25, 2011

OOOOH! On the radio.



That's right, I was on the radio recently, and I didn't even have to become a sultry disco queen to do it. (Maybe next time). Also, by the way, I totally predicted this would happen. ;)
I was indeed on the (how-is-this-not-obsolete-yet) chattering box just this passed July 19 talking about my book on The Book Club. Although it wasn't just me alone in that booth. There was another guest on the show at the same time. His name was Jim Cochenoff (I hope I spelled that right). The title of his book eludes me tight now. They might have mentioned it on the show so listen for it. I do remember that his book talks about all his favourite action movies from the 1960's through to today. We both took turns getting in our 2¢ about our books (which I think by the end of the show added up to $1.37).
Without further ado, I have embedded that very radio in this blog post for your listening pleasure. The entire show is about 1 hour and 7 minutes which I have divided up into four parts. So, you may want to make sure you're nice and cozy, maybe even get a snack or two, before hitting the play button. I should also point out that the show is kind of quiet, at least it sounds that way on my computer. If it's too quiet for you too, then it would be a good idea to pull out the good speakers and make sure everything and everybody around you shuts up.

Here it is in it's entirety. Enjoy:




Friday, July 22, 2011

Some recent work I did

Just less than a month ago, I did some animation work for a client. It's someone I met at the Ottawa Animation Festival last year. Her name is Melanie Persuad and her project is something she calls Alcowda. It's about a mad cow who becomes a terrorist. If you click that link, you'll see the animation I did in the upper right corner. It's that shot clip of her in the TV set.

Are you interested in how I constructed that? Sure you are. After Melanie sent me the sound file, I quickly drew up some rough key drawings in Flash to get the basic idea of how it is going to look. Then I sent that file to her for approval. Here's the file I sent to her:


Thankfully, she approved that immediately. No time consuming revisions for me. Hooray! So, the next step was to ad in all the other drawings so that the action looks as smooth as possible. Here's that:


After that, there was nothing left to do but clean it all up and send it off. Finally, here's my finished product:


All in all, it took me about a week and a half to do all that. Yes, I admit that the animation is quite limited (like say 3rd season of The Flintstones kind of limited) but I think it looks like she's alive and that her personality is coming across. In animation, that pretty much all you need to accomplish.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Good advice:



For a closer look:


"What book am I talking about?", you ask. THIS BOOK, you jackass!