American Pie in the Face
Hello, all you faithful readers out there. I know I’ve been terrible about contributing to this blog, and this site, on a regular basis. This used to be the place to go for funny cartoons and funny movie reviews, but lately Pat has been carrying the full responsibility of entertaining.
Not that Pat can’t carry that load on his own. He’s a natural-born crowd-pleaser, a one-man summer blockbuster, Ocean’s 11 in human form.
I got a rare treat Saturday night in the form of an uncut airing of “American Pie” on Comedy Central. How do I know it was uncut? Stifler said “fuck” on cable TV. This was astonishing to me because I was actually enjoying a movie in its full cinematic glory, albeit with commercial breaks and content warnings, on TV! Also granted it was extremely late at night, maybe even early morning, so the presence of impressionable ears was minimal.
Then comes the Nadia scene, and I wasn’t really surprised to see that her ladybits were blurred out, but I started thinking about it later. They were able to use the full range of verbal profanity, but they could not show breasts. Because that’s what would cause the moral decay of our society? So, my elation was brief, and my support of Comedy Central as some kind of late night rogue vanished overnight. Instead, maybe they’re up for Hypocrite of the Year, masquerading as edgy but still at the mercy of their Standards & Practices department.
I’m not against censors as a whole. They keep kids’ things kid-friendly. But when they draw a line between an f-bomb and a nipple, and say, “Beyond this point, chaos,” they must be mocked.
And now a personal anecdote. I’m taking a few classes at Lake Washington Tech this fall quarter in order to brush up on my marketability and also to see if I might have any aptitude for the more technical side of game development. To that end, I’m taking a class called Character Study which is all about 3D character animation. Makes sense, right? Maybe not, but the instructor knows what he’s talking about AND he’s enthusiastic. Literally bounces around sometimes. That might sound quaint when you’re learning about statistics or Meso-American history, but it’s positively necessary for learning animation.
So we just learned about breaking down the simple movement of walking, and after explaining the major poses, he left the rest up to us. “Make it look as natural as possible,” he said. I was having trouble sitting in my chair at the computer and envisioning a walk, so I decided to take my study to the field. Luckily, there’s a nice long walkway just outside of the classroom; long enough to practice wind sprints if recreational running is your thing. So, to get my head wrapped around it, I just started walking and paying attention to the movements I was making. I wasn’t looking at my feet, more straight ahead with a concentrated sort of thousand-yard-stare to my focus. I was concentrating on every movement I was making and talking myself through it. “Knee bends, ankle bends, toes hang back, hip lifts. Wait, hip lifts or dips with the bent leg? No, that doesn’t feel right. Maybe push off the opposite foot a little more.” My walk was too subtle, so I exaggerated it more to bring out the movements. “Lifted leg swings out, then back in. Left hip up, right hip down, leg straight, toes bent, come down hard, but now my arms are swinging weird.”
Then I had to stop. Someone was standing directly in front of me, having gone completely unnoticed because of my intense introspection, and from the way he was looking at me I could tell he’d been watching for a good couple of minutes. His expression was gentle but wary as he said, “Are you feeling alright?” I can only assume I looked very much like a lost lobotomy patient walking strangely and mumbling to myself. Fortunately, as an artist I’ve gotten used to that kind of reaction from people. So, without missing a beat, I gave him my biggest grin, said, “I’m just super,” turned on my heel, pinwheeled my arms, and skipped back to the classroom, taking careful note of my movements along the way. Embarrassment only gets in the way when you’re an artist.
I’m also taking Zbrush, a 3D computer sculpting program and it’s taught by a Coug, so you know it’s good. It’s amazing because, unlike Maya where you start with polygons and then add a textured skin to make it look real, Zbrush starts with the skin. So someone like me who’s forgotten most of what he learned about edge-loops and unwrapping can create this:
The great thing about sculpting is it’s perfect for refreshing what you know or just plain learning about human musculature. Just ignore the hands. They were…..grumpy.
3D Materials and Methods, which is a fancy way of saying “texture painting.” Whenever you’re playing GTA IV and your car is skidding on its roof across weathered black-top, or when you’re sniping from atop a stone promontory in Halo Reach, those surfaces you casually ignore are textures. Someone either drew it, photographed it, or created it with a convoluted series of Photoshop filters, then made it tile-able so that it could cover huge surfaces without actually looking like a repeating pattern. Sound fun? It IS! *twitch*
So, you’re all caught up.
The site is updated and pretty.
And, oh yeah, there’s a new comic for you.