Last week Carolyn and I experienced something grand, something that most of my fellow DNAers also got to experience: the great American Road Trip. It started when I flew out of San Francisco at 6 in the morning to go down to Texas to help pack up and to venture on west. Fortunately for me, Texas was right on the cusp of a cold front so it was a cool 100 degrees instead of 105. Ahhhh how I missed Texas. Actually though, I found out I do miss Texas. As much as the actual state was silly, flat and hot, I had great friends there and I loved work. When I was approaching DFW, we flew over the Red Robin that we would always have birthday lunches at. I was surprised that it made me really nostalgic and sad. It was like flying home except that most everyone has left and pretty much all that’s left are memories and Carolyn.

In case you haven’t done it, I would strongly advise to try this just once. Pack up all of your belongings, live in an apartment complex without an elevator, and then move all of this stuff in 100 degree heat. No, really, it’s fun. On the plus side, every time I would come up the stairs, Carolyn would have a surprise for me. Whether it was a present she’d bought me or just another box ready to move, it helped keep motivation high in the heat. The biggest surprise however was after moving roughly 70% of everything, we decided it was time to move the couch. Little did we realize, the couch has wheels. So we brought it down the stairs into her parking garage and then pushed it down the ramp the remainder of the way. Only then did it sink in that we could have been using this couch as a cart for the last 4 hours. Ahh, sweet joys of packing…

And off we were. To be honest, I was not too excited. I like the midwest, I like the east, I like the pacific northwest. As far as I knew, I did not like the southwest. But fortunately I was wrong. It was beautiful. Granted Texas was nothing too special but once we got into New Mexico, it was a totally different area of America. There were landscapes and rock formations like I had never seen. Well, I saw them in Cars but i thought that that was just artistic freedom. I had no clue that the mesas and buttes would roll off into the horizon so beautifully looking like giant art deco train engines. Furthermore, Carolyn was obsessed with Route 66 to the point of Jeremy-level enthusiasm, where he gets all riled up and wacky about something that I find to be silly. Jeremy ends up making those oddities ridiculously fun though and the same can be said about Carolyn and Route 66. So much to my timeframe-minded regret, we got off the main interstate and pulled onto Route 66 for some photos and sightseeing. As much time as that took from our trip, it added to our enjoyment. Unfortunately we had to eventually get scooting, so we packed up the tripod and joined the rest of traffic on the main roads. I can’t wait to go back though and take a road trip through all of Route 66.

Regretfully, our trip had some serious time constraints. I had to get back to work on Monday which meant that we had to get from the middle of New Mexico to San Francisco in a day. Which is doable but when we were talking to some people in Flagstaff about it later in the day, they showed their support with phrases such as “haha, good luck” and “oh wow.” So we drove a pretty hardcore schedule but in doing so, we weren’t able to see anything that wasn’t directly off the main road (i.e. Grand Canyon, etc.). But now we have a much clearer view of what we want to see when we get another chance to get down there.

if you want to see the rest of the photos, check them out here.

so in that blurry photo you can see me.
and a whip.
and someone whipping me.
in the neck.

so yeah, it was a good day at work. we’ve been working on our whip animations and tech and all that for the Indiana Jones game but there’s only so much that you can get from looking through a dvd and google videos. so we brought in a professional whip-o-grapher to show us how it’s done. it was a great time. getting to see how a professional moves with a weapon like that was just great. to see how she handled it just walking around and whatnot, pure gold. reference rocks.

she started with basic stuff like whip cracking. then she moved into attacks and stuff that involved “volunteers.” i say volunteers in quotes because it involved only the animators and it started with the newest members to the team (me being #2). so she would whip poles out of our hands and for a short while she was whipping it around one of my co-worker’s arms and yanking him toward her. then it was my turn again and she started with my torso. she’d whip me and then yank and i went spinning like a top. it was fun. and, surprisingly it wasn’t painful so i agreed to letting her move on to my neck. likewise, it wasn’t painful but it looked cool.

also cool was learning about whips. like learning that the crack of the whip is from the tip breaking the speed of sound and creating a sonic boom. the tip moves at something like 750 miles per hour but could go even faster. the crack is also the apex of it’s energy. as soon at the whip cracks, the majority of its power dissipates. so if you get hit with a whip after it’s cracked (like we were), you’re in good shape.

just some good stuff to know. you know, in case you run across some thugs with whips…

The Ant Bully opens on friday. and since you’re here you’re probably curious which shots i worked on. here’s a quick list in chronological order that hopefully doesn’t give away too much plot.

• during the big flood sequence, water rushes toward a nurse ant and a pupa. i did a retake where i animated the pupa screaming.
• during Lucas’ trial, i did four shots of him and Zoc standing around, one in which Lucas rationalizes why he flooded the colony.
• during Fugax’s introduction, i animated 2 shots of Lucas being a brat in response to Fugax’s heroic stories and then his eyebrow raise reaction shot to Fugax.
• after Lucas leaves the colony, i animated three shots in a row of Lucas becoming frightened and then the frog emerging.
• in that same frog sequence, i did a retake of Fugax asking the group if anyone knows what “WAAAAAGH” means.
• near the end of the film when Lucas is being dragged away by guards, i animated the reaction shots of Hova and Zoc.
• in preparation for the final battle, the wasp leader tells his troops to start their engines. i animated the shots of them starting up their wings.
• during the end battle, i animated Kreela and her wasp flying through the air and landing in a bird bath.
• during the end battle, Hova swoops down and saves Lucas, i animated the shot directly after that where it all goes awry again.
• my final shot in the film is the final shot of the battle sequence where the group is celebrating on the wasps.

i also did a ton of crowd cycles that are used all over the film. they’re quite a bit harder to pick out however ;) but if you really really want to, pay attention to the background ants during the flood sequence when they’re climbing up the walls and they slip, pretty much whenever the ants are cheering and all of the background wasps, pill bugs, and stink beetles. there is also a shot that my friend Jason Hendrich did of the ant kids celebrating and doing a jig at the end of the obstacle course sequence. that animation is based heavily off of the jig cycle that i had done for the cheering ants.

i’ll have animations up shortly in the animation section in case you want a closer look at my shots. go see the movie though this friday, in imax 3d if you can :)

about six months ago, i wrote a quick little article decrying the xbox 2′s pathetic existence. so now i would like to set the record straight. or at least give a current summary of the situation. you know… because everyone seemed to be asking me about it… they were like, “hey pj, why don’t you pontificate about the xbox 2 on your webpage?” well sir, this if for you.

overall, not much has changed with the xbox 2. had i not gotten it as a present, i would still be holding off on buying it. there is still a massive dearth of games. because of that, currently i have only three games. i received one game as a gift, one game for 2/3 off from a co-worker that i have yet to play and one game that i payed full price for which was a mistake. so software-wise, the xbox 2 really isn’t cleaning up on me. in the immediate future i am looking forward to three games. that’s for the entire year, three whole games. so yeah, not exactly a stellar lineup here. however, i’m finding i am playing my xbox 2 nearly every single day. and that’s where this article is heading.

1. xbox live arcade – XBLA (abbreviating not because i’m lame and think i’m hip but because it’s faster to type (that is, unless i comment about why i abbreviated it (*sigh*))) is awesome. plain and simple. awesome. it’s by far the #1 use of my xbox 2. xbox 2 games by and large are stupidly over-complex, stupidly overly “cinematic,” stupidly single player, stupidly expensive and take stupidly long to be enjoyable. they _are_ fun, but you have to invest for that payoff. XBLA games are the exact opposite of all that. they’re mindless, they’re quick, they’re immediately enjoyable and they’re cheap. you can even download demos of every single game that are amazingly full-featured. when you do buy one of the $5-10 games, you get no intro cinematics, no need to use all twelve buttons on the gamepad, no unskippable EA logo being displayed for two minutes, you just get pure fun.

i love XBLA games. here’s the kicker though, so does my girlfriend. the last time she visited, she stole my controller and we almost didn’t leave the apartment because she was playing uno, hexic, astropop and bejeweled. when i get home, i don’t necessarily want to sit down and play through a two hour long quest in oblivion. no, i want to preheat my oven and play a quick game to relax before i pop in dinner. i love it.

and yes, i realize that this is apparently the type of game that the nintendo revolution will be targeting. it’ll prove to be interesting.

2. xbox live – playing console games online is sweet. there’s no more worrying about upgrading my video card or having the right drivers or anything like that. i just pop in the disc and play. the built-in voicechat is essential for co-op missions and it’s handy for catching up with friends. when i was in high school, i could go over to a friend’s place and play goldeneye with him and the rest of the crew. now however, and especially because of the DNA layoffs, my friends are all over the country. it’s great to put my headset on, look like a complete dork, and play co-op games online with them. it’s great to be able to catch up and act like we’re sitting in the same room. and there’s no hurdles or hoops to jump through, it just works.

3. xbox live marketplace – so last in the triumvirate of the xbox live suite is marketplace. marketplace is where you can download demos, movie trailers, expansion packs for games and “more!” demos keep this thing alive for me. demos of the XBLA games or demos of upcoming games, it doesn’t matter. it’s such terrific fun to download new content so easily. also, during e3, it was great to be able to download the just-released e3 demos. some of the demos that were being played in LA were immediately available to me for free in my living room (most generic statement ever). it’s convenient to be able to download HD trailers and play them directly on my HD tv instead of viewing them on my 12″ laptop screen. if i were 10-15 years younger (or burke), they even have silly gamer pictures and themes and music videos from awful artists.

so after all this praise, i’m going to end it with some more criticism/rants.

1. games – holy crap, why are there only a handful of non-XBLA games that are actually good out for the system?! where’s my guitar hero and katamari damacy?! where’s my monkey island and master blaster?! where’s my doukutsu?!?!

2. dashboard UI – as much as i love the xbox dashboard and all it’s access to live stuff, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE outsource the UI to Apple. every single option is buried behind 40 other options. my phone handles deleting multiple files better than my xbox 2. oh wait, my xbox 2 doesn’t even support multiple file deletion.

3. SIMPLIFY – my last point is similar to my second and it’s aimed at mostly developers, but SIMPLIFY. it takes so damned long to start a non-XBLA game it’s staggering. you have to sign into your profile, you have to create a game account for saves, you have to go on a scavenger hunt for bent toothpicks, then you might actually get to the options menu where you have to choose if you want to play off or online. holy crap, it’s a game, not a test. i want to play. i do not want to read your four thousand item options menu, i want to play a game. i don’t want to see your publisher’s logo, your logo, the xbox logo, the live logo, the abc logo and then a dissertation on copyright law, i want to play.

so that’s it for now.

at launch, i would have given it a C-, now i’ll give it a B or B+.