I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.  My building rocks, and I’m learning the Canal Street area as far as food goes.  Lots of food for super cheap! Today I ate a fried Pork-chop and Rice with tea egg and cabbage, from a little place my co-worker showed us, for 5 dollars.  It was delicious, but I had this horrible image of turning into a fat round ball and rolling down the street at the end of the year as a result of these lunch specials, so I think I’ll be taking food quite often to save cash and my tummy.  I feel like doing tennis again today.  Yesterday, when I played against Rym I was surprised I could still hit the gosh-darned ball, it’s been so long since I played.  Tonight is a Geeknights night, so I should run on my own or something.  Or animate maybe.  Hey, don’t laugh, I actually worked on a new shot yesterday.  When it’s cleaned up, I’ll post a vid here.  I’m thinking that maybe this would be a good place to post miscellaneous drawings that I don’t put on my main page.  Art dump!  Whoo!

Hey, what a weekend!  Hey, what a start to the week!  The sun is shining brightly on my arms and face as I walk to get lunch in Chinatown, and as the dog days of August come into full force, many changes have occurred around here.  Saturday was quite the event.  The Johnny Wander Crew was moving to Brooklyn, and the FRC turned out in force to schlep heavy items up the many flights of stairs to their enormous walk-up apartment.  Five of them are splitting the rent, so it works out to be fairly cheap, but man, was I ever so envious of an apartment as I am of theirs!  They have roof access and a clear view of the Manhattan skyline, and I see it as a perfect place to be young and full of art.  Jaa, but we made quick work of the moving.  I feel sometimes like our group of friends is like some kind of magic force that you can call upon in times of need, and when summoned descends in a big, overwhelming wave to perform the task of hand.  Nat-chan and J. even came, even though it was J’s birthday party that night (they brought an unfortunate fanboy acquaintance from Otakon, who I doubt was expecting hard labor.) We got sweaty and sore, but in a little over an hour, we had the truck empty and the furniture installed in more or less the right places.  I brought a change of clothes, but the sweaty boys were forced to buy 2 dollar t-shirts at the bodega on the corner.  By the end of the experience, it looked like a uniform of white shirts and jeans had taken over.  I finally got to meet Aido’s mom and pop (both awesome) and hope to be visiting the Wander Crew from time to time.  Damn, Rym and I missed you guys!

Following the move, the white shirt brigade (minus Aido, Ananth, and Conrad, who needed a little time to recuperate) headed back to Manhattan to go see Ponyo.  We barely made the movie because the E train was totally full of fail, but we got there, hungry and tired but happy and settled in for big screen Ghibli time.  I had been very skeptical about Disney’s dubbing ability, but every character was spot on.  Tina Fey as the main character’s mother pulled off a particularly good performance, and Liam Neeson was really well cast as the sea wizard.  It was so great!  This is the first time in a long while I have been this pleased with an anime dub.  Later, we headed up to a Japanese bar called Riki on 45th, where I had reserved a party room for J’s party.  We sat on cushions, ordered Japanese comfort food, and sang Karaoke for hours.  It was not the best karaoke outing, but it had been a while, and we used the Japanese machine.  We did about half ani-song karaoke, which is tough but always a plus despite my warbling.  Out of town Fanboy was a karaoke n00b and a microphone whore, though.  I had this mental image of Jumba from Lilo and Stich shouting “Share!” and apparently that was the general mood of the group.  Next time, we will not go to an izakaya, but to a regular karaoke box.  I hear the one above the sushi train on 3rd has free lunch specials…

We packed up the office for our move today.  The necessities are boxed, the random cords sorted, and the software FINALLY inventoried (all this time we had a copy of COMBUSTION?  What?!) and with that, Our team is heading down to Soho for the forseeable future.  Everybody is all excited about the prospect of all the food down there, because the pickings over by Penn Station are kinda slim, but it may be that we’re just spoiled New Yorkers who find a street with less than three Asian Fusion joints on it some-what bland.  I will miss team meals in K-town, my Cafe Zaiya melon-pan in the morning, and the inevitable detours to the Bryant Park Kinokuniya on my way home, but I’ve got a good feeling about this business.  I feel like I’m starting fresh, like it’s a new semester and I’ve got all new pencils in my pencil case.  I’ve learned a lot in the two years I’ve been sitting at my desk in the one room office of this little game studio, and now I feel like when I sit down at my desk in Soho, it will be as a professional 3D artist, not a green-horn student with diploma in hand, trying to fool people into paying me for my art. (Although, first I may have study up bit.  I realized that the people who are my awesome art interns are more experienced than I am, and have the mad 3D skillz.)

It’s weird,when we were cleaning, we found a piece of paper with stick figures on it.  It basically was advertising a thousand bucks to the winner of a character design contest, and I remembered seeing this paper stuck up on the bulletin board on the eighth floor hallway at Tisch.  I looked at the stick figures, thought “what kind of scam is this, here?” and proceeded to stay up late on my birthday drawing my entry. I didn’t get the thousand dollars. I did, however, end up somehow landing a job at this little start-up web company with a big dream.  Now I make awesome air pirates for a awesome living with awesome people.  Who would have thought a scrap of paper with stick figures on it would change my life?  Thanks, guys.  Now I need to stop being full of piss and vinegar when it comes to controvesial subjects, like Office 2008 and Harry Potter. Boss, just think of me as spunky!

Welp, I’ve got some time to kill at Grand Central waiting for my train out, so I figured I’d use the time to do something if not exactly productive, at least having the semblance of being so.  Something I haven’t done for months and months, I’ll bring an old project out of storage and try my hand at it again.  I’m finally going to *gasp* update my BLOG!  A novel concept! My rationale is thus:  If I can successfully find the will (for it’s really not a question of time, considering the long-ass commute I have to look forward to daily) to update this baby three times a week, perhaps with the additional prettification of my portfolio site, I may find that I do indeed have the where-with-all to get off my tail and do some sort of serially updated internet art thing.  One of these days, I’ll attain my great and momentous dream of being internet famous for a second!  Just see if I don’t!

Speaking of art things, though, I have been motivated out of my animator’s funk lately by the kind gift of a somewhat elderly tablet PC.  A generous co-worker, upon leaving the company, was apparently moved enough by my appreciation of it (brought on by a nerd girl’s perpetual gadget fetish) to entrust it into my care.  New computer hardware is great, but free and art-worthy computers are a joy to be rivaled by few things in life.  In any case, not having a Flash license (even if I had the cash, the trial of CS4 was like molassas on this guy.), I have been rocking Pencil, an open-source, no-frills animation program.  The name is accurate, for it’s pretty much just a digital version of animator’s pencil and a stack of punched paper.  I love it, I think.