June 22nd, 2011 Welp, I’ve finished up the first class of the Character Animation Program at Animation Mentor. It’s awesome! I love it. Did you know you can spend hours animating a bouncing ball and still not get it right? It’s true. I always knew there was this mythical race of humans out there called “animators”; weird creatures… I always thought I might be one but couldn’t be sure, ’cause I’d never encountered one in the wild. Well now I’ve met hundreds of them. It’s crazy. It’s like discovering you’re part of an underground society… In this case the society…

May 25th, 2011 My mom & stepdad recently received the finished copies of their new album, “A Deep Oasis” in the mail. I had the privilege of providing the album art. All of the album art (with the exception of the inside photo-collage) was made by hand out of cut craft paper and then color-corrected in Photoshop. Special thanks to my sister Lilli for helping cut out the paper leaves! It was so nice to spend a good long time making art away from the compooter. Oasis did a fabulous job with the printing. Check it out! Here’s the cover,…

Back to School!

January 26th, 2011 It’s official. I’m enrolled in the character animation program with Animation Mentor. I can’t quite put into words how exciting this is for me. I’m posting about it here as a kickoff to what will hopefully be many more entertaining updates about how it all goes. A little background: I was a skinny little bizarre eleven-year-old in the wood-paneled basement of a 1970s condo in Lafayette, CO. (This was actually the early nineties but the construction was deliciously retro). I ordered a kids book about how to make your own animation. Now for you spring chickens out there, this…

January 12th, 2011 Finally! I have to admit, I didn’t expect WordPress to be such a beast. Anyway, I now have two count em TWO websites! Why on earth would I go and do a thing like that? Well I’ll tell you why. I’ve always felt kind of bad for personal work on professional portfolio sites. Poor little personal work, relegated to a cold dark page in the corner. Nobody’s ever gonna click on it. It just wastes away there all by itself, with all of its soul power (to borrow a phrase from Kevin Barnes) shining to an audience consisting purely…

iPhone Wallpaper for you

I made a silly wallpaper for iphones. It’s retina-display resolution! Now you can have something to look at in that dead space where all your apps used to be before they ran off on you. Enjoy!

October 20th, 2009 My cousin Eddie and my lovely friend Emily were married on October 12th, 2009! It was such a beautiful cerimony and a wonderful time. I made this wedding video for them. October 12th is the auspicious anniversary of the drafting of the original Gohonzon of Nichiren Buddhism. Enjoy! No video? Click here.

August 18th, 2008 We had so much fun on our Asian Adventure, that we decided to make a video about it! Here it is! Let’s Enjoy! No video? Click here. Music Credits: “Those Who Know” by Estradasphere Unknown track by Bump of Chicken (during Shibuya scene) “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler “Zombie” by the Cranberries “Holiday in Cambodia” by The Dead Kennedys “Indiana Jones Theme” by John Williams “Jungle Warfare” by Estradasphere

February 20, 2008 Herro and wercome. Ret’s enjoy. Back in Thailand again. Stepping into a car with air conditioning that was less than two decades old, leaving the Chiang Mai airport, was a surreal experience. This was only a Toyota, but the sensation of the soft seat under my ass called to mind the steep grade back up to luxury life we would climb over the next two weeks: First, Thailand. Then Japan. Finally, America. I think if I had flown straight from Laos back to Denver (not possible anyway), I would have suffered severe shock at the difference and…

February 18th, 2008 Howdy, When we last left . . . um, us, we were preparing ourselves for what we were told to expect was a nightmare of a two day bus trip from Hoi An, Vietnam, to Luang Prabang, Laos. I think I’ve already spent enough time describing the horrors of public transportation in Southeast Asia, and frankly I don’t really want to remember the following episode in great detail, so I’m going to keep it brief. I’ll just say that what was supposed to be a 2-day nightmare actually turned into a three-day nightmare, the middle day involved…

February 10th, 2008 Asia 8 Here I am again, I’ve just taken a quick jaunt out of the internet room to the main market street where I downed a falafel sandwich and picked up a couple last souveniers. So, I was at the point where we arrived in Doc Let. Our cab driver dropped us off at the reception hut of Doc Let resort, it was about midnight. We hadn’t eaten anything all day (we had been too sick and hung-over to) but the kitchen for the resort was closed. Doc Let has no restaurants, so that left us no…

February 10th, 2008 HELLO!! I SAID HELLO DAMMIT!!!!! DID YOU HEAR ME?!?? From the brief stop-overs in two of the major cities south of Saigon, I was already starting to get the hint that the Vietnamese are a little noisier than their other southeast-asian neighbors. My time in Saigon and the other cities to the north have nearly amplified this fact to the point of splitting my ear-drums. I’d just like to take a minute to describe the sound of vietnamese culture, and more specifically the vietnamese language, to you, so that you may better imagine these scenes I describe…

February 8th, 2008 Herro After the last time I wrote, we took a bus from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Phom Pehn, the capital. As expected, the city of Phnom Pehn shattered the vibe of the quaint rural Cambodian life. The door to our bus to opened to an outrageous stink and a bombardment of taxi drivers so thick we couldn’t even step out of the door. City life cranked along at full-speed here, and it was a bit of a shock at first. The people were abrupt, as seems to be the international standard behavior of city-people, but they…

January 20th, 2008 Gweetings Ahhh let’s see. Last time I wrote was before my trip to Nikko with Emily. Nikko turned out to be great. It’s a little mountain town a couple hours north of Tokyo by train. It has all the charm and friendliness of any Colorado mountain town I’ve ever been to, but it sits peacefully in the shadow of a great collection of ancient temples (yes, more temples). Nikko is settled only a third the distance over sea-level that my hometown (Boulder, Co) is, but with how little excersize I’ve had over the last few weeks, it…

January 11th, 2008 10 Things the Japanese are Really, Really Into: (in decending order) 1.  Fashion 2.  Work 3.  Dessert 4.  Malls 5.  Video Games 6.  Cell Phones 7.  Pirates of the Carribean 8.  Cameron Diaz 9.  Manga 10.  Ferris Wheels And now for the longest blog entry yet; lots of good stuff to cover. You have been warned . . . The last few days have brought some long-overdue relief from the hyperstimulation of japanese city life. After my first night in Osaka, I decided that I’ve thouroughly got the gist of the city thing (items listed above have…

January 5th, 2008 You’ll have to forgive me in advance for any punctuation errors; I am typing this one via a Japanese keyboard and the special characters are all in different places. Ahhhh rots and rots of things have happened over the last week, I can hardly remember back to new year’s eve. The names of places in particular fade from memory almost within minutes; the regions of Tokyo as well as their names have started to mush together in my memory as a stew of neon, noise, and people, people, and millions and millions of . . . people….

December 29th, 2007 Herro! Things have been winding down a bit over the last few days. We’ve been seeming to have a string of bad luck with things being closed . . . Kabuki, closed. Museums, closed. We took a two-day trip to Hakone, a charming mountain town neighboring Mt. Fuji. They refer to Mt. Fuji here as “Fuji san,” which would translate to “Mister Fuji.” For all we knew though, Mister Fuji could have been off on vacation because the fog was thicker than beef stew. Not once during our two days did we get even a glimpse of…

December 22nd, 2007 Aight Here’s a proper blog. Asia 1 It is now day 3 of my trip. I am meeting Briana at 3 in Akihabara, the electronic mecca of Tokyo, the electronic mecca. First proper day, I met with Briana and Mike in Asakusa (say it with me, mama-se mama-sa asakusa!) and meandered through a street market that seemed to span for miles in every direction. I keep thinking to myself, “everywhere I look there are little shops selling asian stuff…how touristy! . . .” Then I remember that I am, in fact, in Japan, where this is the…

Thursday, December 20, 2007 Mega Tomato! … or, I’m here. Hello! To all who are wanting to know, I am here in the lovely island of Japan. WOO! The flight was very nice. I am tired, I will write more or post some pictures later….maybe both! Sorry I won’t be sending out many personal emails… I didn’t realize until it was too late that I don’t know anyone’s email addys by heart, they’re all in my computer which is now 6000 miles away from me. Everyone is very nice and helpful. Only a few hours off the plane and I’ve…