Man this sucks but my cousin died last night in a car crash celebrating his 29th year. :( I didnt see him much cause he lived far away, but its still I'm pretty sad about it. He leaves three little girls who will have to go through the same thing he did. Ironically his Dad died in a car crash when he was little.

RIP man.

Everyone: wear your seat belts, dont drive like a moron, if your friends are driving like morons tell them to slow down, tell your family you love them.

Making more hits with Nissan. I did all the exterior shots (CGI) for the 2009 maxima website. It was a three week tour through hell I can tell you that much, but I was happy to be apart of it.

2009 Maxima launchsite

I like the car, but I probably wont ever get one. With the new 2009 model coming, it means current model will get some sweet deals.

After long hours, and endless weeks it was done. Now I can talk about it. Here is the nissan GT-R virtual tour my studio created. this is 100% cgi and it took us nearly five months to create this two and a half minute short.

Nissan GTR virtual tour

A better version can be seen at gtrnissan.com

choose "see car" and "take virtual tour"

Thank God its almost over! I'm talking deadline week for this massive work project. Its been 5 months of long hours and insanity, but tomorrow is the absolute deadline, and we are going to make it like peanut butter on jelly. I can't exactly say what the project is, only that its amazing and totally kicks ass. I will elaborate further in coming months. Man I am tired, I've put in 80hrs since sunday and I've been working everyday since New Years. But, at this point we are just waiting for things to finish rendering. So as I'm typing and drinking a cosmopolitan and a Jack N' Coke I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Also, I have some new work up. Go here, and check out the 3rd and 4th image on the right hand side. I did the CGI work on both from start to finish and I am damn proud considering Infiniti now considers both to be the standard for future CGI automotive images. Thanks everyone, I'm back. :)

I'm not saying the whole Jeff firing hasn't bothered me but I'm taking a break and not just because of the whole Jeff thing. I actually disagreed with many of his reviews, but I don't like how he was cut down so unceremoniously. No matter what GS say about still being fair, I know how much money can influence business decisions. Maybe Jeff had it coming, maybe Cnet higher ups gave him guidelines for reviews that he didn't live up to. Who knows? I really like the community here, but its becoming too much of a distraction so I'm taking a break. I'll still pop in from time to time, but I wont be as active. I have a huge project at work heading into crunch time, so I need as few distractions as possible. GS is a big one. But its something I need to do, and it comes at a time when I've lost some faith in this site. The one thing I haven't lost faith in is the awesome friends and community we have going on here. I'll blog about the project I'm working on when it goes live, its going to be huge.

later

PS: I've started a new account over at gamersperspective.com. A few well known GSers are admins over there and its a nice little community. My User name there:Supermachine. Wont be very active there till the work thing is over.

Its Fall again, and anyone who lives in the Northern part of the US knows its also time to rake up the yard. I live in a very wooded neighborhood so I've had to rake my yard once a week for the past three weeks now. It sucks, but it has to be done. After all, I spent a lot of time this summer getting my new dirt and moss patch turned into a lush green lawn. But its not there yet because I'm waiting for spring to do some real lawn magic (my new hobby). Now I've really been trying to reduce the amount of waste I put on the curb lately, so I mulch all my yard waste instead of bag it. My mower does a great job with the lawn clippings too. Not only does it reduce my waste, but it also adds natural fertilizer to the lawn. The idea is to perform tasks that cut out a lot of waste in one shot. It works with fall leaves as well because I can rake them into a huge pile, and mulch them into a small pile and cart it to my back yard and dump them. I live in the city so my yard is small, but not too small where I can't hide a pile of mulch. I digress.

The real reason why I hate this tree is because of what happened Sunday. I raked, and I raked and almost every tree had droped leaves except for this maple my front yard. The maple with a full canopy of thick golden leaves. The same maple drops winged seeds all over my driveway and landscaping for three months in the summer too (shallow roots also kills grass :( . I really dont like this tree, but its too big to get rid of it now. Anyway, I had trouble getting my mower to start so I wasted a bunch of time messing with the engine. It turned out I had bad gasoline. I went and bought some fresh fuel and the mower started like a champ. By this time it was already getting dark so I had to finish it all quickly. With my yard clean, the leaves mulched I felt good. I wake up the next morning only to see my yard covered with yellow leaves. Yes thats right! The maple tree drooped 90% of its canopy over night. No rain storm, no wind, no freezing temperatures, they just fell off. I was so pissed, because I dont have the time to clean them until the end of the week. Damn you tree! Rant over.

What are yours?

Here are a few of mine in no particular order.

Ultima7, PC (yes Avatar)

Tie Fighter, PC

Test Drive 3, PC

Star Raiders, Atari 800

Space Quest 4, PC

Duck Tails, NES

Mega Man 3, NES

SMB, NES

Out of this World, PC

missile command, Atari 2600

Super Castlevania, SNES

For anyone not familiar, katsudon is a Japanese dish consisting of rice in a bowl covered with soup broth and egg, sauted onion, and lighty breaded fried pork chop sliced into thin strips on top of it all. One of my favorite Japanese dishes aside from udon and sushi. Tonight I tried to cook it for myself and it was a disaster. BTW I dont cook very much so it was bound to go wrong from the start. Long story short, I under cooked the rice and burnt the pork, and managed to fill half the house with smoke. lol, more succesful than my atempt at making california rolls... clean up was a nightmare. So it was a failure, but can assure the next time will be a success.

We won an Animation World Magazine award for an amp'd mobile spot we worked on a few months back. But looking at the award site, it seems more like we have to share the glory with a couple dozen other studios. I guess its better than not being noticed at all.

Link

I went to ozzfest yesterday. Anyone who doesnt know, its an all day music...I mean metal festival including Ozzy Osborne as the final stage act of the event. We had some great weather this year, sunny and 75-80 degrees, perfect since half the bands play on a second stage located in part of the parking lot. So no shade, and about 1000 people crowed on ashpalt makes for one crazy time. I try and stay out of the pit, but when there are about 100 crazy dudes swirling in the middle its tough to stay neutral. My big cup of lemonade got obliterated :( Luckily I was with a group of friends and my brother, so its way easier to hold your ground when you have some back-up. Two of my buddy's are more entertaining than the show IMO. They are full blown psycho metal heads who are also full blown drunks. Safe enough to party with, but man do they get fired up! lol. At one point, I looked behind me and noticed a 10' circle around my buddy Bill where the crowd had moved aside. This year, the bands were ok, but not great. There were too many niche death metal bands, and I'm really not into that type of metal. Last time I went, it was awesome. There were bands like Primus, Rob Zombie and Head PE. The second stage was in a better spot back then too. Instead of a hot parking lot, it was a shaded stage with dirt floor (I don't miss being covered head to toe in dust). For the final act, Ozzy comes out on stage, and opens up with Bark at The Moon. It was a perfect opener. The nearly full moon had already risen into the clear night sky and the crowd was going nuts. Imagine a few thousand people howling at the moon with the chorus. Yeah! :twisted:. Ozzy is showing his age. Sure he does his little jumping thing and waves his arms around, but he skips about every 5ht word with an inaudible mumble. The show stopper was Zack Wylde, Ozzy's long time Guitarist. Man can he shred! It was amazing to see him live, and it sounded great too.