It’s been a crazy semester, packed full of projects and the like, and I’ve done my best to detail the best of them on my portfolio.

Over the summer I had some pretty major things going on, from my trip to Poland to the New Hampshire follow-up project I participated in, which were great projects.

I started the semester off performing in a poetry slam.  I came in 3rd place (out of 3 performers), but received very positive feedback.  Next I tackled a short film idea that’d been running around my head for a while, and made some good headway with it.  No plans for filming or even redrafting the script yet, but hopefully eventually; it was just nice to get into a project like that again after being out of it for a while.

Outside of school I rarely have spare time, but I found myself perusing Instructables pretty often, and entered their Halloween contest.  I didn’t win that one, but I did win 3rd place for their pocket-sized contest with my fork-knife-spoon piece from last year.  I wore the prize t-shirt last night :).

After that the workload picked up, and the projects got more serious.  At the end of the Spring there is an annual all-school-show where each department displays their best work.  One of my majors has a Fall show they put on as well, to showcase their department and the variety of work it produces.  Much of this is performance-related work (music, theater, dance, sound, light shows), and I was asked to be the stage manager for this year’s show.  It’s called the SIM Big Show, and it was a pretty huge event, with over 200 people in attendance.  In addition to stage managing, my music video from last year played in one of the video screening rooms, and I had a piece I called Practical Nature in one of the galleries in school.

Following that was the final show for my Food & Art class, the only requirements being that we make food to serve the audience and we make a piece to display in the show that had something to do with both food and art.  Mine had some more complex messages to it, and though simple, I was satisfied with it.

Lastly – and perhaps obviously, judging by the trend in my work so far – was my woodworking final.  All Sculpture majors are required to take a woodworking 101 class called Projects in Wood.  More artistic than last year’s Joinery, we made an experimental carving, another box – simpler than the ones from Joinery – and the final was an “interpretive box,” which I’ll detail more in its post.

Winter Break has been great; I went home for about a week for a period of total removal from everything school- and work-related, hanging out at home for Christmas and much time with no obligations, and it was wonderful.  Now I’m back in Boston, tackling some personal and home projects I’d set aside during the semester, and preparing for the semester to come.

Up ahead: casting & moldmaking with plaster, kinetic art, beat research (studying and making music and hip-hop beats), and hopefully being a TA for the Projects in Wood class I just completed.

Aside from that, I’m continuing working at Henry Bear’s Park toy store and as an usher for the Blue Man Group during vacation periods.  With the new year I feel more methodical about my approach to projects, and life, which I’m hoping will help ease the next semester, bringing less stress and a bit more time for relaxing between things, be they projects or simply moments in a day.

Hoping each of you are well,
and wishing all happy holidays,
Blake

The Header

Most obviously, the top header is my actual resume (recreated in Photoshop, but the text is real, check it over at my portfolio site). Thought that was a cool touch :P.

Also, the color bars are an actual swatch from Adobe’s kuler web-app, very useful in web and graphic endeavors. I use it all the time. I was trying all kinds of things design-wise and just wasn’t getting anywhere, so I just plopped it down on the canvas, liked it, and took it from there.

The floppy disk was a funny accident, I was going to make a Polaroid – very simple, very common on websites – and just happened to look at it a certain way and think it looked like a floppy disk. I have bunches of ‘em left over from elementary and middle school, and a purple one just like this was actually sitting in front of me at the time. I looked down, chuckled, and thought ‘what the hell.’

The Body

Pretty standard left-aligned body section. I know, it’s small (only 479px content space, if you’re curious), but I work on a small screen, and since the blog’s mostly about me and I’m most of the audience (that I know of) I figure it doesn’t matter much anyway. Plus, it’ll probably get redesigned in the next 6 months anyway :P.

The ‘Older Posts’ and ‘Newer Posts’ links were cool. I’ve done little page curls in a few designs since these. They look better now.

The mini-business-card links to my AnimiVirtus homepage, the main portal of my animivirtus.com domain and the place I’m trying to advertise the work-stuff I can do for people (if you or someone you know needs something, send somethin’ my way, I’d be happy to help out if I can). The Polaroids are just a cutesy way to get you to email me. About anything. Honestly. I’m lonely.

Lastly, the delicious section is the latest 7 links from my del.icio.us account, freshly collected and totally random. Enjoy the mix :P.

The Footer

Ah, the footer. Somehow it seems either really complicated or I’m really slow on the uptake to get Twitter posts conveniently embedded into a webpage. My method’s definitely not the most advanced, CSS only barely gets its hooks into these buggers, but it gets the job done for a first-time job. Maybe sometime I’ll look into better ways to pull this off, but for now you’ve got my posts, and they look just fine.

Next to that’s my latest work from my portfolio site, updated manually for now but I’m toying with ideas for making that automated. Maybe…

And the standard footer with navigation and info links. I even credit myself for the site design :P.

The Future…

If you read any of the blogs I’ve kept up (or not) over the years, you know I’m good at talking about things and less at making them happen. Well, some good news on that front is I’ve already got drafts of about 5 posts in various stages and seem to be coming up with ideas lately that don’t take away from regular life – often the cause of previous latent posts and unannounced hiatuses and such.

Nonetheless, if something does go amiss and you’re not hearing from me, email me here or with the cooler link above and I’ll try to put something out to assuage any concerns.

Thanks for checking out the blog, I hope you like the new look and feel free to send any comments or questions you’ve got about the design, the content, or anything else, and I’ll do my best to address them. Any ideas for better usability or functionality would be cool to hear too. Let me know, happy browsing :).

I’ve moved back to VT. For the holidays, but also for the foreseeable future. It’s vacation, then working, saving up, and if all goes as planned, film school starting in the Fall. I’ve taken a two-year detour from what was really my dream, and I’m back on track. So that’s good.

Before I left, I got to check out a MAKE IT! fair and was pretty impressed. I’d wanted to go last year in Vancouver but looked up the vendors that had websites and was pretty turned off. This year I just took the plunge and am sure glad I did. From Cocoa Nymph (awesome chocolates) to Thyrza Segal’s Plantscapes to Daughters of Bastards Warrior Wear (awesome chain mail jewelry, no website, sorry) there was plenty of awesome stuff to check out and to gawk at. Catalyst Reaction had some cool leather stuff and I picked up some great Christmas cards from Hug + Kiss Designs.

Other than that, not much else to report. T-day in Seattle with the bro, a week in NYC with an old friend, then getting settled in here, ready for Christmas, watching the last of my funds slip away.

Moved onto Season 2 of Fringe and giving Leverage a second chance. Finished Dexter Season 4 last night. I’m still traumatized. Fantastic show…they don’t pull any punches. Hoping to start in on Supernatural Season 2 soon. Being Human was a no-go for me; the emo vampire dude was waaay over the top annoying, I couldn’t even look at him. Watched Slither and Gremlins recently. Both were awesome. Definitely to-purchase. Great fun. Excited about Chuck’s Season 3 and Burn Notice’s continuation in January too. Workin’ away at my to-watch lists…

I’ve been on a pretty major Star Wars kick lately. Partly nostalgia (I found my first screenplay – a Star Wars fanfilm, almost 70 pages!), partly reading Death Troopers (fun!) and partly finally getting around to watching Star Wars Clone Wars from Cartoon Network. Pretty awesome series, I’m having a blast. You know it’s good when it gets you excited about watching the prequels. Yea. That’s serious.

Listening to lots of industrial and gothic, generally dark stuff lately…Rammstein mostly but Imperative Reaction, Assemblage 23, Zombie Girl a bit, I:Scintilla, Heimataerde, Icon of Coil and Birthday Massacre. Got Nightwish’s Dark Passion Play on in the background right now. Never a baddie :P. Awesome album.

Hope all’s well with everybody reading. And everybody not reading. And no I didn’t get you presents. Have great holidays! :)

Had a good run today, talked to my mom for mother’s day, and got my portfolio page updated with a new video showcasing my latest VFX endeavor! Go check it out! Roommate just got back from baseball, it’s pouring outside, and I’m watchin’ True Romance… one o’ my faves!

Hmm…WoW’s not working on my Mac still, and none of the other games I’ve got are really worth getting into right now, so I’m left to…news…started running every day (well, every day it’s possible given my random schedule and Vancouver’s crazy weather patterns). That’s doing me some good for sure. That plus a bit of exercise in the morning and biking or walking for travel, I’m feeling good about it. It’s interesting because now, if I don’t get do physical activities during the day, I feel like I’m wasted – not tired, but like I wasted my body for a day, didn’t get the use out of it I should have. I love the feeling of being tired, exhausted, but knowing you worked hard and honest for a while, doesn’t matter what it was – running or moving, building stuff or working on a film set – it’s the wholly muscularly tired feeling you get at the end of the day. When I can gulp down a beer and not taste the bitterness, just feel the cold soothing and bubbling its way down my throat, that’s awesome. That’s the best.

Also…finished Y: The Last Man #4. Good book. 3 was the best so far, but it’s a fun series. Still on my list for sure. Also, I finished Walking Dead #3, great series, really cool character writing. You could replace zombie apocalypse with anything else with similar catastrophic consequences and the story would be the same. It’s human and emotional. Good stuff.

Gonna start looking for The Stuff of Legend, a darker Toy Story-like series about toys saving a young boy from the Boogeyman. I read the first chapter I got from FCBD and liked it much. Added to the list, heh. The Overman sounds cool too, really cool art in there, so I’m gonna check that out; gonna look into Brit, Battlepope and The Astounding Wolf-Man, all by Robert Kirkman, writer or Walking Dead. I like his stuff so far, and I’ve developed a liking for hardass, bitter ’80s British characters, and Brit sounds like it’ll do the trick.

And, of course, I’ve started Hellblazer #2, and I welcome John Constantine’s return to my consciousness. We tried watching the movie the other night and I couldn’t take it. I’d seen it before reading the books, but now I just can’t relate the two. Parts of the movie I remember and think are cool, but as an entity entirely separate from anything Hellblazer or John Constantine. It’s like they stripped it of its bitter, cynical, sarcastic, political, intelligent core and left whatever fluff was left in the movie. And believe me, there ain’t much fluff in this series.

Lastly – I guess – I started trying to writ again tonight. I’m picking up an old web comic idea where I left off with a friend about two years ago or so. We’d gotten two episodes written, but never got the art farther than a few concepts and then I moved and we dropped it for practical reasons. But I’ve been really missing writing lately, feeling something missing without it – kinda like those days without exercise I was talking about – and so it felt good to at least warm up a little bit, open the mind to the concept of writing more in the near future. I don’t know where I’m going with it or what I’m doing with it, for now it’s just an idea I like and want to give it a shot for a while, so I am.

Well, the roommates seems to have left. Thank god I’m not as tired as I was earlier, so it’ll take a while to get to bed now, and then I’ll be laying here and get hungry all of a sudden, and then I’ll eat and then it’ll be like 1:30am, and then I’ll watch whatever movie we’ve got in the player, and then I’ll drift to sleep. Late. Again. And wake up to the alarm at 8:30 reminding me of exercise and wish I could just stay on top of the schedule in the first place. Right. Well. That’s quite the update. Glad you read it? Good. Now go do something productive for me.

I’ve yet to read the next DMZ, but I’m currently in the middle of Y: The Last Man, book 3, and it’s pretty sweet. Lots of high-tension, sort of a pulling-in-different-directions of the male’s storyline. Cool effect, and the art and narrative go together quite well.

To check out more of my reading interests, see my GoodReads profile.

It was my first WordPress theme, after which I went on to follow Drew Douglass’s tutorial series on Themeforest.net which is a much more in-depth series getting into the nuts and bolts of making a theme, and learned a bunch more about the way themes work, which gave me the confidence to tackle something a bit more aggresively (thus, the AnimiVirtus redesign was brought to life). Not to discredit the original tutorial I’d followed, that’s great as well, just a different approach.

But all that aside, it’s a new look, an upgraded feel, and hopefully I can start implementing some more exciting widgets and whatnot in the sidebar, give a more social and dynamic feel to the place. I’m hopin’ a Twitter feed, maybe iLike and GoodReads feeds too…who knows, maybe I’ll get curious and learn how to add another sidebar on the right someday…

No…no I can’t do that…I’m a busy guy…I’ve got other responsibilities…

But it calls to me….[Sidebar: Blaaake...Blaaaaaaaake...BLAAAAAAKEE!!]. Oh…that’d be my roommate telling me to get back to work. See ya’ll later, enjoy the new look and keep comin’ back, I’ll keep up with content as it’s been coming recently, and when I get the time I’ll work on adding some more cool stuff to the site. See you next post :P.

It always bugged me that when you hit Tab+Enter after finishing a message there was no button highlighting that confirmed your ‘Tab’ had selected the ‘Send’ button… et voila! That’s been addressed by a nice faded orange highlighting of the entire button, not just the usual dotted outline most ‘Submit’-type buttons get when selected by keystrokes.

Some cool GUI features have been added, including button outlines and clearer highlighting of the message actions menu just above your list of messages, which I’d always been curious about. There’s a more compact feel throughout the whole thing, with icons and extra separation spacing eliminated from the drop-down menus, giving more focus and limelight to your messages – the point of checking your email in the first place. Non-message text is even smaller now, making message text look slightly larger, a nice addition to the add-on. In-message links are slightly more attractive, and that same nice ‘Submit’-button highlighting is used in search boxes, which is nice.

Overall, nice updates to an already great add-on. And I can forgive the jittery page scrolling for a nice GUI. If you don’t already have the extension, get it here, and be sure to check out their GCal Redesigned and GReader Redesigned extensions. Alternatively, get the whole bunch of them with Google Redesigned.

Right now I’m watching a mockumentary by Zak Penn called Incident at Loch Ness, a fairly funny little flick with a great back-cover description.  It’s a bit slower than I’d thought it’d be, but it is indeed, like the back cover says, a pretty well done indie style flick.  Good fun for a group of witty friends and some nighttime snacks.  Heh.  Yea.

Here’s wishing you a great holiday season, and hopefully I’ll get some updates up within the next few days with some videomaking progress and fun time with Elliot, who’s coming down tomorrow for some finishing up of The Waiting Room, and of course we’re hoping to do some other things as well.  But I’ll update with whatever happens on that front.  Have a great last few days of 2007!

So what’s the plan?
Today I’m going to essentially get as much rotoscoping work done as possible, along with a few other things.  I set aside plenty of time for bringing my dad home and figuring out what he’s doing for the day.  Ad I’ve also set aside two big blocks of time for the roto work.  Those should leave me with enough time to get some serious work done on those projects, as well as taking a short break or two to revitalize my work ethic – since it is long, tedious work – and check in on my temporarily non-mobile dad.

Any changes?
Well I’ve laid out the list a bit differently, written it in pencil, and planned much looser, with more time around tasks and events that I did yesterday.  I think part of the reason I was a bit odd feeling about the whole thing yesterday was that it was so rigidly planned out, that nothing seemed at all spontaneous or new, it was all pre-fabricated.  Which can be nice, mind you, but in a personal life I think I need a bit more randomness.  So hopefully the more organized (and easily erasable) list format will be helpful today, and the extra time cushions will give me some sense of being more relaxed.  Although I did start the day late today, so maybe I’ll be wrong.

Next Update…
Today I work the 3:45-11:30 shift at work, so I likely won’t get home until around midnight, which is when I’d be going to bed anyway.  So I’ll write a little recap post before I leave and use WordPress’s cool ‘Post Timestamp’ feature to make it appear magically at 10:00, like the othes have been… more or less.  Just to keep up some form of regularity in an otherwise sporadically-added-to blog.