I sure would like to be able to go to SIGGRAPH this year. Though even though it will be so close I think I might not be able to afford it. This makes me sad. Send me something happy to cheer me up.

And saying it very briefly.

I was sitting around the house a lot and freelancing a little from the time I graduated till a couple of months ago, but now I have a job where I'm modeling houses in 3DS Max for a real-estate company. The upside is that now I have a steady and pretty respectable income and get to hang out with some cool guys and practice using VRay which is this really super renderer.

The down side is that I have to ride the bus every day, I have no free time and I have to actually think about paying some of my debts.

I really enjoy ZBrush 3 but I haven't had enough time to make anything worthwhile with it.

I've been accepted to this really awesome online school called Animation Mentor which involves all the very finest animators in California and around the world. I honestly can't believe I got in. I'm prepared to be humble.

Thing is, I think I would really enjoy collaborating with other artists here if we have any skills to trade. For instance. I don't really have a lot of characters or concepts but I think my execution of an image in 3D is better than some people can do.

Here are some projects I've had in mind:

Gnarled old oak tree with hidden hollows where elves, rabbits, owls and gophers may live - as part of a forrest scene.

Rembrant with the curving staircase
The painting is known as Philosopher in Meditation. But the background is wicked cool.
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Venice

goldfish pond (koi)

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The building with the art deco indian angel sculpture on the front of it
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Though another art deco building might be just as good. Perhaps you could suggest a theater with an interesting facade?

The factory was a good idea too. I long ago had an idea of doing one with a swing music track like the old factory sequences in cartoon shorts and advertisements I remember.

A dreamscape consisting of floating islands, similar to Miyazaki's Laputa etc.

Wizard?
Environment involving lots of chemistry stuff.

Cthulhu
Maybe along with his environment Rilyah (Yes, I know I didn't spell it with all the apostrophe's gaps or other accents.)

Maybe better yet Yithians and their city

Ancient Mayan or Aztec city

dinosaur skeleton

Scene involving Japanese drum bridge.

Most of my ideas are or involve fantasy landscapes. I'm trying to work on those right now.

I went to a job interview at a hotel when I was in San Antonio for Siggraph '02. And though I showed up for the appointment on time the interviewers were still busy with someone so they had a guy buy me a beer while we waited in the bar. He asked me something that I hadn't really thought out before. He asked me what my influences were. That question has taken me a while.

What I had to do first was find out what aspect of computer animation really interested me. There are inspirations and influences for each skill and sub-discipline involved in the art. There are tile makers and pattern designers that inspire texture artists, for example. M. C. Escher might be a good example. He did amazing tesselations, repeating patterns and was able to map them onto surfaces in some of his etchings.

I finally decided that I enjoy the modeling aspect of the work. I don't think that making the characters move is as big a deal to me. Its butter. Telling a story is nice, but I think I enjoy trying to create a mood. I like making environments. I think of it as creating fantasy worlds. That's what 3D animation was all about to me. So I'm not as much of an animator as an illustrator. Knowing that, I can think about whose illustrations really inspire me, and what kind of work I would like to do something similar to.

ReBoot, by Mainframe Entertainment, was, to the best of my knowledge, the first fully computer animated series on television. As such, it holds a special place in my conception of the medium. The camera, and sometimes the characters sometimes floated in a slow and surreal way. The lines and shapes were rarely modified far from their pure, idealized forms. The beauty of such a surreal landscape was breathtaking when it was new. Though today it is a mark of skill to get away from that supernatural cleanliness and dreamlike floating motion, I still like it for what it was. ReBoot was a big influence on me, but so was a lot of other early computer animation, such as Tron, and Lasseter's "Andre and Wally B." This is the influence of "computer model surrealism" and though we have learned to make forms more organic, shadows softer, action that is snappy and has weight, and above all, dirty-looking surfaces, there is still something of worth to me in this look. It is the look of the pieces that attracted me to this work in the first place.

Escher is an influence. His crisp, raytraced reflections distorted in spheres, his palm trees with fronds that are so obviously curved planes, his numerous repeating patterns, one kind of thing morphing into another and surrealistic imagery. All surrealists who depicted dreamlike imagery with precisely rendered idealized forms. This is the influence of surrealism. The imaginative image rendered with perfection and austerity.

One of the first things I wondered how to create when I began to work with the computer was a tree in the style of Dr. Seuss. I have made other Seuss-like objects and characters since. His floppy and organic style appeals to me. I wish to make many other things suggestive of a style like this. In the same vein, I used to try to draw many elements from Tom Eaton's comic strips in Boy's Life magazine. He had a wonderful combination of simplified forms and intricate tangles. His environments were always fantastically imaginative. Bill Watterson has done some similarly wonderful things with his nature scenes, and particularly the imagination sequences in Calvin and Hobbes. These are my primary comic strip influences.

I am similarly drawn to the fantasy illustration of other media. I enjoy, not only the settings and style of Miyazaki films, but every aspect of such movies as "Laputa, Castle in the Sky" and "Spirited Away." In painting I am also drawn to the work of Frank Frazetta, and those whose work is similar, such as Boris Vallejo. I also find much to admire in the approaches of Jacek Yerka, Roger Dean and Rodney Mattews.

Having said this I have finally set down in words what I have been tending towards creating. It should help me focus my efforts better in the future.