Details are sketchy

Ever have one of those moments when you realise just how little free time you really have. Lately I've been having a lot of these. Looking through my 3rd year Univeristy timetable, I have a total of 12 hours in lectures and semesters each week, which really doesn't sound like a lot but I can assure you it's exhausting. They say that you are meant to do two hours of work outside of Uni for every hour in so that's 36 hours in total. Yeah, a lot, but i'm probably (well definitey) not doing this much and I really should be.

I don't mean to say this isn't fun in any way because I'm enjoying every minute of it but honestly, with my leap into the industry only two years away and my level of knowledge in Animation still so limited, it's a little daunting.

Alongside this, I'm currently studying French, which is going great. I'm starting to be able to understand whole chunks of writing and listen to tv shows and films and good grip on what's happening. I've honestly been slacking a bit when it comes to this though, with my inteded amount being an hour of French exercises a day, but lately i've been too swamped to do this. So I make do with listening to Smallville or a movie in French language in the background or with English subtitles when I'm having a break. It's a really fun way to do it and has helped the speed of my comprehension, to say I can understand things that before were much too fast to follow.
This blog seems really rushed and I'll probably hate how it sounds in the morning but it's gone midnight and I'm tired, been to see The Social Network (which by the way is a great movie) with my friends after class and I just want to sleep. Another thing I've been going crazy for lately is the Animation Podcast, which everyone who's a fan of aniamtion should check out. Animators for Disney and other great studios talking about their experiences in some of the best animated films of all time. Great listen. Ok, I'm going to listen to some more of these and go to sleep, up early for more work (on my day off) wooo!

This week I start back for my third year, actually starting my Integrated Masters degree this year and really looking forward to starting it. After asking about doing some more theory work on top of my other work my theory teacher from last year asked me if I want to be one of the editors on a university journal which is great news and I think i'll be taking her up on the offer. Should be fun and can't wait to get started on both that and working out a new essay to try to get published in the journal too.

I've been doing as much stuff as possible in the few days I have left before we start back. Been watching the season premiers of the tv shows returning and reading a lot. Not to mention practicing writing a bit. I was watching the first season of Alias the other day and realised I'd never written something in that secret agent sot of genre before so I decided to do that. Here's what I wrote for the beginning of a story that I've got no idea how to develop, Comments would be great :)

Bullets and blades riding the air like whispered secrets of the deadliest nature. They travelled with such a silence and with such speed that passersby could neither hear nor see the things that picked them off one by one. Each of them fell so gracefully with little more than a moan. Within the time it took them to take their last few steps, twelve men, women and children lay there dead.

Dust still unsettled around the fallen residents of this part of the city, a man approached one of the victims. He was dressed in a simple suit, frayed here and there and not the typical Armani attire you would see many of his co-workers wearing. He reached down towards the young woman at his feet, gently brushing aside her fair brown locks to reveal delicate features stained with a splash of crimson from the deep and evidently fatal wound to her chest. Lifting up her chin, he looking deep into her cold, dead eyes and realising she was not the individual he was searching for, he callously threw her to the pavement, breaking her neck and letting out a deafening crunch.

A sick smile spread across his face and stretching his arms above his head, he shrugged off the botched bloodbath before him. He raised his head, his face blank and sinister, pointing to the next bustling street of unsuspecting pedestrians. He spoke into the microphone attached to his collar and the smile reappeared as he gave the same signal that had started the silent massacre and walked calmly towards his next victims.

So today i went for that interview for the part time job at a cinema. Would've been awesome with how much I love films but I didn't get it :( It required lots of teamwork and as usual I gave some great ideas and came out with none of the credit. So I've decided to just take charge of things for myself and after downloading an ap for my android installed a program to help me keep up with a list of things, from 3DS Max practice to learning French. I think it will help motivate me but I am really going to struggle without money coming in. Thankfully my parents give me enough for food the government barely help me at all. So although I have no money and somehow still need to save for the summer, I will still have to go out on nights out with friends. I do appreciate their friendship its hard when they all have money to spend on what they want and i can either have alcohol OR things I like :P

Oh well.. I guess I just have to carry on doing what they want, I don't want to lose a friendship just from not getting this job and financial stuff but honestly if I could just get this term over with and get ome good work experience somewhere over the summer I'd be so happy, I just don't think I can work over summer like last time, I need to be doing something career-related now. Might just run away to the US for a couple of months :P I wish...

Anyways night people (well the few who follow this..) hope to see more people following soon :)

Ok. So i've been absent for a while.. partly as i've had loads of work to do and partly as i've been pretty lazy recently. But now i've decided I will keep this up and put more effort into wirtitng it.

Since i've been gone. We've had a lot of animation-related work to submit and thankfully that's over with and we've started with some stuff that's a bit more fun and I can focus my efforts on.
One of the things we have to do is a wiki on Batman :D What else could I ask for? i get to delve into a character that i've always liked and look at his character more and how it has developed over the last 70 years and why it has changed. Great project, I think it should go well as i also get to share the workload with Basil ( http://theinflamedtime.blogspot.com/ ).

We've also finally been given a teacher who wants to teach us :D He's great at getting the basics of the program (3DS Max) across to us, at the same time letting us practice and just kind of play around with the software, which sounds like we're not doing work but we are and i've learnt more yesterday than I have probabably all last year on the program and i'm really looking forward to next weeks seminar.

So i'll be practicing 3D modelling and animation all day today, looking at possiblilties for a project for this subject, Man and Machine. Should be an awesome topic and i've already got ideas running around my head so i'll work on them asap.

Aside from work, i've been trying to practice drawing whenever I can and doing the general stuff like watching DVD's, especially trying to catch up with Supernatural, which is now one of my all time favourite shows. And i'm annoyed to hear FOX has cancelled yet ANOTHER awesome show, Dollhouse which i've found to have a real following and i'm surprised at this.

Oh i've also recently bought Dragon Age: Origins. Made by Bioware, it's pretty awesome and i've tried not to compare it to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as that's one of my favourite games of all time and although it does carry some of the same elements, as it is a medieval/fantasy style game it also definitely has some elements from games such as Fable 2 and Oblivion. Which of course is great as I also love these two games. It seems you need to dedicate a lot of time ot this game as there is a rich storyline and a lot of backstory to get through, all with some great action and Bioware's trademark system of allignments, this time not of good and evil but how friendly you are with each playable character, much like KOTOR 2. Overall this is a great game and once I get enough time i'll play my way through it :)

A random review there. Maybe I should make my blog a review blog :P

Oh and not to forget I got an interview at HMV on thursday, can't wait I might actually be able to earn some money :D

Well that's all from me I think i'll try to get on tomorrow to tell you what thrilling things happened to me today... Bye :)

Soooo not updated for a few days :P but here we go.

I've been really busy getting all my uni work done. A podcast, presentation and 3D modelling work.
So yeah a fair bit. We're doing a presentation on Commodity Culture and the Simpsons. Sound fun.. well it isn't it's boring as hell and two lines were missing from the top of each page in the reading we were given for it.. so quite difficult to read.
That's tomorrow and i'm nervous as I always am before presentations :( I've known the people i'm presenting to for a year now and likeliness is i'll still be a babbling fool when i get up there.
Then we have the podcast.. I hate doing these normally but this one went down fine.. second recording and i'm happy with it :D Just got to hand that in tomorrow woop!
But the thing i'm really excited about is my progress on 3DS Max. It seems like a pretty intimidating program but once you get used to it it's pretty awesome. I'm currently animating a fight scene between two characters. It's an assessed exercise to help us develop natural movements and i'm really enjoying it.
Um... I've not spent to much but acquired loads of DVD's in the past few days and some would probably say a weird mixture but I like them :D

Dogma, Mallrats, My Neighbour Totoro, Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice, Karate Kid 1,2 and 3 (In a badass tin XD), Butterfly Effect and The Craft.

HMV having a sale.. means a much more awesome October :D

Anyway bye for now should be back soon.

So the last few days have some strange ones. I've been ill but also been probably more productive when it comes to my future than ever before. After spending half the day in bed yesterday with some sort of cold/flu and missing two lessons because of it, I decided to get something done.
First task was to contact some people in the Animation industry. I've been worrying about exactly where I wanted to go with my degree (once i've finished) ever since our tutor mentioned it to us. So I typed up 5 emails to various different people and sent them out, eagerly waiting on the relpies for hours after that.

One to a 3D Animator in the US who had worked on some big titles including the Bioshock videogame. He was focused on cinematic animation for films and game trailers/cutscenes and this has recently been something i've been looking into and likely the career path i'd like to follow.
Another to Square Enix, the video game company who most famously develop the Final Fantasy game series and many other.
One to a UK-based 3D animator who has worked on quite a few well known advertisements and character animation projects.
And lastly, on to Blur studio, a Visual Effect studio that have worked on shows such as Heroes and one to one of their 3D animators that had particularly interested me.

I'd pretty much given up hope on getting any advice when the emails started coming in.

Firstly I heard from the guy who worked on Bioshock, Ryan. He was really helpful and had spent his time on a long letter detailing all the things I would have to know and what areas I would have to work on to make it in his area of the industry. I learnt a lot in the way of requirements and this also opened up a connection into the industry, which I was so pleased by! :)

Then I was sent an email from Square Enix which, although it was a generic sort of letter that was not so personal, it did highlight the requirements for working in their company, which was great to know.

Following this, I got some great advice from Sandra, the UK based animator, who told me the essentials for her area of animation and she said she would also like to keep in contact. Also, after seeing some of my portfolio, she said i'd make a great character designer XD which really made my day.

I'm still waiting on replies from the other two but still, 3/5 isn't bad :P

That was yesterday.. today was not so constructive.

I got up late, feeling ill again. After a morning trying to recover somewhat, I went to Uni and worked on my 3D animation project, which was going really well and I was pleased with.. but then 3DS Max.. that hellish program closed itself. It was like an oven in that room and I was too annoyed to stay so I came back and sulked if i'm honest :P

Better now and going to go to bed now as I have a life drawing class in the morning which should be good :) But that's me caught up.

I also watched the pilot episode for Dollhouse and it was awesome so I might have to get the DVD boxset tomorrow :) and not forgetting I watched the awesome fiom that is Beetlejuice which was bought the other day :D Burton's the man.