It's been a while... again

Here it is in october, and I'm embarrased to note I've not written anything in some time. Life as always has been chaotic. We've moved (not far though only the unit next door) and are now getting settled in. Work has been good, though there have been lots of changes. It almost feels like I've quit and started somewhere new. So many new faces. Lots of great people. But I do miss some of the old folks. Oh well. Such is life.

The first few episodes of the series have started airing. They are getting good reviews(thankfully).

I'm looking over at the shelf beside the TV and notice that I now have three sculptures (well two and a half anyway. the last one isn't done), and I still havent baked the last one. Sigh, heh heh I've still not put up any more photos. When george lucas came to the studio we had a little art show and he saw my sculpture. Cool eh?

I've found out that my cousin danny smith is in a new band. The City Drive. They are doing quite well. I've seen some photos of them with goo goo dolls, and aerosmith. Dang Danny made good! I'm proud of him.

long term goals

I'm committed to being a life long learner.

Right now I'm working on sculpting, scripting, and managing other people.

That's a lot. Plus I'm playing a lot of wow and trying to be a good father/husband.

Wed is my 14th anniversary. It's exciting but makes me feel old too. Ha!

I've found an old friends blog...

Glendon Mellow is writing a blog called the flying trilobite or something like that. I remember Glendon from grade 7. We used to draw together. We parted ways as we grew but I will always atribute some of my skill to the practice and encouragement I gained while we were friends. I've looked him up recently and find he is married now, and continues with his art. Maybe I've had a similar influence on him, I don't know. It doesn't really matter. It's just kind of neat to see an old friend.

I've finished the sculpting part of my sculpture yester day, and on Wed I'll paint it up. I am really impressed with it. Especailly for my first sculpture. I am thinking I will paint it with a sepia brown wash. Well honestly I wanted to paint it up cream coloured for the skin and a brown colour for the shorts maybe a light grey for the hair. And Then have some kind of wash applied. But... I can try a wash first (and then paint it).

Oh did I mention George Lucas looked at my sculpture?? Ok I will eventually stop mentioning that... Maybe.

I'm now watching two tv series on DVD. Scrubs season 4 (melanie just brought it home), and Studio 60 on the sunset strip. It's an interesting mix of comedic methodologies.

Scrubs reminds me of MASH. Ah the good old 4077... Hawkeye I miss your wisdom.

Me and George

I met George Lucas yesterday. He said I'm doing a great job, and he loves my work. I was so star struck and dumbfounded. Truly an amazing day.

ryan

http://www.starwars.com/clonewars/site/index.html

Did I mention on this thatI have become the lighting and compositing supervisor for lucasfilm animation singapore?

No?

Of course not!

I just got it! Yay me!

Check out the above link for the latest on the up comming clone wars film. I didn't work on the film, but I have worked on the tv series. It is quite a good tv show. I hope everyone will like it.
it will be interesting to see what people think of the film. I think the TV show actually looks better, but I might be biased.

More sculpture pics.

ok these are not the greatest pics in the world. our dining room is very yellow and our lighting does not lend well to photography. I've spent a lot of time on the back shorts waistline (which will eventually be detailed all the way around), and the front right boot. I'll put up more detailed photos soon.

more sculpture

I skipped last nights calss to say good bye to a good friend who is leaving. Here are some pictures of where i'm at.

Some cool clone wars news.

I'm very proud of these. This is the first episode I was a leading that was viewed. Yoda doing his jedi thing. ;) very cool stuff.


sci fi netowrk

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=57570

L.A. Times
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2008/07/tca-star-wars-t.html

The Live Feed
http://www.thrfeed.com/2008/07/first-look-clon.html


Premium Hollywood
http://www.premiumhollywood.com/2008/07/11/we-interrupt-our-chronological-coverage-of-the-tca-press-tour/


Desert News
http://deseretnews.com/blogs/1,5322,5000018,00.html?bD=20080711

Sculpture class

Sculpture class is going well. Here are some pics from last week. I'll take more tomorrow before and maybe after class. It's turning out really well though these pics don't really show it. tomorrows will be better.

We met up with the canada club of singapore for canada day (july 1). We brought a cake. Melanie and Jen made it in the afternoon.

This is my first movie attempt here. It was a tribal show at the night safari. I hope it works.It was a very impressive show.

I've not done any drawings yet, but I keep carrying a sketch book and pencil around.

Time for a bit of an Update.

I've let this slip a lot. Sorry gang. But now I'm back in action.

We have bought two new digital cameras as our last two have died (we are not so lucky with digital cameras). I will post some pictures tonight when I get home.

Jen is doing a great job on my website and I will release it to the public very soon.

Work is work, and I am treating it as such. I'm trying to give it the attention it deserves (which isn't very much ;) ) and get on with the rest of my life.

I have signed up for a maquette sculpture class for two nights a week (wed and fridays) and will post up some pictures of whatever I make here. I have also gotten a new sketch book and god willing I will fill it up and also post some here.

It is a new phase for me, and I am going to hit it hard.

Ryan

the quiet is all consuming.

There are many reasons for my silence over the last few weeks. The largest of them has been the passing of my mother in law Cheryl Anne Jeffery. She succumbed to her cancer on april 10th. Although I will miss her (all mom in law jokes aside), I am glad her suffering has come to an end. She now gets to explore the next stage of life, and I hope it is more peaceful for her.

I have taken a week off of work to help with the grief with jen and melanie and emma. All of life seems on hold right now, even if it isn't. Fortunatly we have signed our lease for another year (increased of course), and now it is the schooling situation to wade through.

We planned a small vacation back to bintan to help us relax, but it blew up in m y face a bit. Emma's passport is 5 months and 17 days away from expiring. To get into Indonisia, your pass port must be 6 months or more from expiring. So... we could not go. To postpone our trip will cost us about $200. Sigh. Such is life I guess. In the mean time I've been running around trying to get her passport renewed on time and could not.

Jen is home.

Yes we really found the two of them sleeping like this. I have no idea what was going on to have caused this pose.

What a relief to have jen back. But it is not going to be easy. She has gone through a lot, and needs my suport more than ever. I'm there for her. Once she is normal I'll collapse and then she can take care of me for a while. ;)

Picking her up from the airport was my usual drama. I miss read the flight numbers and paniced when it said her flight landed two hours early. I grabed the kids and lily and we ran out the door to the airport. We went to the wrong terminal first and that precious delay meant that when we went to the right terminal most of the passengers had already left. I figured we must have missed her so we rushed home to an empty house.

What do you think does she look excited?

I double checked the internet, realized my mistake, notice her plane was still landing early, so we had to rush out to the airport again. I at least got the right terminal number this time. It took some of the excitement out of the kids but I think it was still good that we went to get her.

This is mel and emma waiting for the first taxi to the airport.

It has been hard for jen to get over her jet lag and all the emotional stress she went through, but, like always, we will manage. We are strong like that.

Here are some more pictures as I really do think they speak more words than I could type.

My dad above.
Emma below.

And Scrapper.

AHHHH I miss jen. Ok I just had to toss that out there. I've got a few more pictures to share. haha I have just noticede that emma is naked in the background!! Unfortunatly that is a common state for her. :D

It would seem that my last two posts had been saved as drafts and not posted. I've put them both up now. (see bellow)

Work is work. I'm getting a bit frustrated at times. We seem to have a high turn over. GWL liked what I had done, but he did have some requested revisions. Nothing too out of the ordinary. We are in the last two weeks of revisions. I've learned a fair amount working on this one. It is very difficult balancing life, interviewing and training new people, doing my own shots, and approveing the teams, as well as managing the day to day business stuff.

Today Emma and I were going to go to the zoo. However it is raining much too hard to justify the $50.00 in cabs we would have to take. So we will find something else to do. We might go downtown to the far east plaza, or walk around orchard a little bit. Even the mrt ride takes up some time that emma enjoys. ;) While planning for our zoo adventure, I found a website that lists the weather for the island. I thought it was funny that it has 12 variations of rain adn cloud, and only two for sun. A bit revealing I think. Here is the link: http://app.nea.gov.sg/data/mss/docs/ncastmap.htm

I bought a new camera as both of our old ones have been broken. I bought a samsung L100. It's a little family model that has some nifty face recognition features and stabilization. Emma should be a pro with it in about two days. I might take a week. Here are some of the first photos we have taken with it. i will get some with melanie and lily soon too, and then wehn jen gets back I'll post some more of her and me. :D

My website redesign has been going well. I have a layout and colour scheme picked, and a map of what each button will do. I'm looking forward to watching jen build it.

Hey mom! If you click on the photos they should open up bigger. I can send you high res ones too if you want to print them off. Just let me know. I am so happy to have a camera again.

Wow it's febuary.

ok ok . sorry for taking so long to update this. Life as usual has been crazy, and any spare time I've had I've spent taking a deep breath. Jen is in Canada for her mom, and isn't due to return until march 16th. Hopefully she will return on that date. Life as a single dad has been an eye opener for me.

Future plans

So... my efforts to update my web site are proceeding. I do not yet have a design that i love, and frankly speaking I doubt I ever will. I have a few things going against me for that, one is the technical how to build it, and the other is I like so many different designs I have trouble limiting myself to just one, and when I do I feel the limitation. Ah well it is good to create stuff on my own again. When jen gets back she will help me with the technical. This means you won't see an update for at least 35-40 days. My google count down clock has set jens return at 28 days (that means she will arrive home on march 16th). I figure I'll give her a few days to get it built. ;)

The image beside this will be on my about page. I was going to cut out my girls, but then I was missing arms and frankly didn't want to have to rebuild them. The picture was already a composite.

Once my site is up, and I'm slightly happier with it, I am going to try some outside development. As tough as this sounds with my family situation going, and being a "single" dad for a bit, I have decided to help my crew develop their portfolios. Many of them have expressed a desire to improve their vfx type portfolios. I, by no means have a rock solid vfx portfolio. But I want to help these folks, and figure I will learn from it too. I will need to run it past my work to make sure it does not conflict with any legal obligation or ownership. We are not going to sell anything, just learn from it and enhance our experience.

It will be interesting to see who wants in. More so to see who actually contributes what. Time for some to step up I think.

STAR WARS CLONEWARS ANNOUNCED

http://www.starwars.com/video/view/623.html

http://www.starwars.com/theclonewars/news/announcement.html

Pretty cool eh? Nothing shown here (except for one or two scenes) was done at the studio I'm at. But is can show you roughly where it's going. Personally, I like our episodes better, but I might be biased.

I'm re-working my professional web site. I've always hated the one I had, but never really had the time to make it better. Jen made it very functional, but I want a bit more flare.

If you have any good reference sites please pass them on.

cheers

ryan

Life goes on...

As per usual, my life is full of drama. Jen has been back in canada for... 5 days? Something like that. She has returned to help her mother. She has also asked me not to go into details about that saying that it is private, and not really my business to post on a blog. She has a point. So... well... what I can say is I miss her horribly. When I was here on my own, it felt very different. Strangly I feel way more alone this time, even though I have lily and the girls with me. I guess I'm trying to be a super dad. I'm not quite cut out for it I'm afraid. Jen is much better at the super parent thing. I enjoy work far too much. Fortunatly work has been helping me out there latly. ;) My episode, (not really mine but the one I was leading on my own) has faultered a little bit. It has nott been my fault, nor the fault of my crew who I still respect highly. Sometimes the best of intentions, are not enough. Sometimes no matter what you do in the battle you still loose the war. I'm not saying I've lost, but I have not been as wildly succesfull as I would have liked. Sigh. I will prevail eventually, and the episode does look fantastic. It's just running a little long. Ok sorry. Thats enough work talk.

Melanie is growing up quick. I'm gonna post some pictures of her all dolled up for her first dance. I can't believe she is only 11. I seem to have lost my post picture option button. I'll post this and see if I can't get it back. I've got a great pic of mel in her dress before she left for her own adventure.

Heh heh. Clearly this is not melanie in her dress for her first dance. But it is a picture. It's a cute one of emma in her school uniform on her first day of school. I lvoe them both. The picture I wanted and mentioned earlier must be on the other computer. That coment would have been so decadent 5 years ago, but now it just seems regular!

PS the spell check doesn't seem to be working today. maybe because I'm on the wireless... anyway sorry for the typos. I hope you understood everything anyway. ;)

Might be time to change my blog title.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!!

It has been a while since i have updated this. Sorry everyone I hope you have not given up on me here! We have had a good holiday. My parents came to Singapore for Christmas for two weeks, which was very nice. We showed them bits of Singapore like sentosa (the island resort) and little India and some of china town. It was a bit overwhelming for them I think, but I hope they still had fun. I was very worried about the crowds and heat here. My dad brought a picture of snow up to his waist in front of his house. It seems they have lots of snow. I imagine the temperature alone was quite a shock for them. Fortunately it was rather cool here. Not more that 27 degrees for the most part.

It was really great having them here. As usual the pics of their visit are on the other computer, so I will post them up tonight. Here is one of my "local" family taken after we set up our meager Christmas decorations.

One of the things that I realized while my parents were here was that I was comfortable here. I don't miss Canada anymore. I've come to accept my life here and it now feels like... dare I say... Home. I know my mother will be very upset to hear that. (sorry mom) It became quite clear to me that this was no longer a "vacation spot", but my life. I don't know what that means in the long term, only that when I do move back it will be a starting over again, probably just as difficult as moving here.

Work has changed a lot in the last 6 weeks. We have had a great visit with the "circus" from San Fransisco. I enjoyed it a lot. I got to spend a lot of time with Dave Filloni, the supervising director of clone wars. He had lots of great stories to tell. He is one of those people who can tell almost any storey and make it interesting. He also managed (and I didn't think it was possible) to restore my love of star wars! After one visit I was practically glowing I was so enthusiastic about being a part of this.

Our CG supe Matt Gidney has left clone wars for bigger and brighter things in Australia. I wish him luck and hope his new endeavour will satisfy him. It does leave some managerial holes here though. I am hoping Ben and I will be able to maintain what is needed to get the season done and then perhaps, he can be replaced more smoothly for second season. I think that will be difficult to do on the fly during production because the role is relatively undefined, and to define it would be to adjust every ones job. Something that would require great fortitude, and endurance to make happen. Colum Slevin, the man that hired me, has also moved on. He will be missed though he never really fit in Singapore as family issues held him back State side for some time. He was replaced by Xavier Nicols, who was them promoted to replace Chris K. (sorry Chris I'm not gonna even guess how to spell your name. I can't even pronounce it!) as head of studio. He seems very intelligent, and I'm looking forward to his leadership. He seems quite natural at it. Athena has gone back to San Fran and was replaced by Tim Smith. He is a good friend from my CORE days on the wild. I"m glad to be working with him again. It sounds like there has been a lot of change here, and that is true but most of it was well planned for in advance. The studio has been in production for two years here, and peoples contracts and promises are now up. Most people will only commit for two years at a time, so this transition is natural.

The episode I've been working on is looking amazing. We had created a shot of the week award, and it is becoming very difficult to award because so many shots look so good! We are behind as usual but I expect we will pull through by the end. We always do. ;)