The last dance with Sandy P
Alright so it is now over. Our Career Preparation class ended today and to be honest with you the only thing I know for shore that I am not going to miss is getting up at 7am on Monday mornings. I know that during the time we spent in the class and especially in the first few weeks there were a lot of people who thought that we were wasting our time even bothering with a class such as this. Now that its over looking back I am definitely happy that I took it. Overall I believe I have come away with a stronger knowledge on how to market myself to the media in some ways that were previously unknown to me. Not only my resume but also my ability to write cover letters has increased tenfold now that I have an idea of how to format information properly rather than free styling the way that I presented information about myself.
There were a number of people in the class who from day one close mindfully neglected to take in any of the knowledge that was bestowed to us over the past 12 weeks. Although these people may not think they needed improvement I think it is foolish to believe that your knowledge can ever be so vast that you are not open to learn more on how to better yourself. There is always room for improvement and I am greatly appreciative of the time that was set aside for us to learn these vital techniques.
cheers and go with Christ bra
Amadeus
my friends, my foes, court jesters, and camalots. Now is the hour of our discontent, and my friends…..we are very discontent. RELEASE THE HOUNDS!! and may our enemies taste the rage in our mouths as we unleash hell upon their brows. We shall break their skulls and eat their entrails upon their tummies. The gates of Quel’danor are open and the minions of Kethos are drinking the souls of our children as they sleep their sorrow of the last mid summer night.
What did I just say you might ask yourself. The truth is I really don’t have an answer. I temporarily and quite often create stories in my head, sometimes to share them with people and sometime just for myself. Sometimes I find myself watching a presentation that I have no idea about but I see this man doing magic tricks and smiling an ever so inviting smile. He just performed a trick where he lit something on fire and now the room smells of burning match. The smell calms me and I feel at peace. I’m having a great time right now. Peace be with all of you and godspeed on this the summer of our discontent.
Lets get down
As we get closer and closer to crunch time for those of us who are not one hundred percent set on our demo ideas the pressure is beginning to magnify. I have had a couple ideas that I have brought up in a couple of classes. Ideas that when i initially came up with I was excited about but it seems that the teachers were not impressed with my ideas. The general consensus seems to be that anything that you create that you spend a large portion of your time developing your own concepts is goin to come across as amatuerish no matter how good you may think it looks. I am currently having a hard time coming up with a concept that I know is going to be both original and existing. I don’t quite understand it but I seem to be completely compelled to somehow encorperate death into all the ideas I have to date come up with. I’m not sure if I am sick of seeing the same old pretty stuff in every environment reel I see or if I just have a completely unrelated dark obsession. Whatever it is I need to come up with an idea soon that both my instructors and I will be stoked on. Let’s get down.
Dal Rend
My horses name is Hidalgo. I groom him twice a day as his coat seems to turny rather matty in the summer days heat. In my spare time I build Soapbox Race carts and am currently working diligantly to create a car worthy of a race on a Talladega night. I pick up Salmon Oil pills from the local market to keep my skin soft and salmony. The small one armed orphan child always always gives me a great bargain on the salted peacans so I am always sure to pick up a pound of fresh nuts and tip my little friend Juarez so he may ride the imagination balloon which gives him so much joy. My father says I’m a man of habit and order. I prefer to think of myself as essential link in the chain of diversity that makes delving into the lives of the everyday people that inhabit the world a refreshing and interesting process that can lift our minds out of even the darkest and most deserted places of our conscience. Some would say running is a boring and mindless form of exercise, which is highly debatable in my situation. I take my two marsupial mouses Binky and Tippy out for runs along the shallow coastline every morning (assuming the sun is shining bright of course) and I never bore of faces on the small children as the prance in joy while chasing my 2 companions (which never happens). If this lifestyle sounds appealing to you I encourage you to visit me on Mulholland Drive.
Silencio
It is autobiographies such as this where we can escape ourselves and become a moment in our subconscious. I simply wrote and I became. When time is taken to sit back and escape we can gain a fresh perspective and emerge from our rabbit holes. All hail Dal Rends Tribal Guardian.
The brighter side
This past thursday was a big day for me. After almost 2 and a half years of being on medication perscribed to me I finally got the ok from my psyciatrist to be taken off it:) Over the past couple of years I have learned to look at the world in a new light and have been living not for the sole purpose of a substance but rather living for the the love of those around me and and for the idea of making a positive influence of my life and the life of those around me. On Saturday night I had an unexpected and unpleasent confrontation with my brother that triggered me into a temporary state of negativity and depression. I believed all of the work I had done was for nothing and I was not going to be able to continue on without my medication. It wasn’t until I attended church on Sunday(which I regularly do) that I was able to snap out of my funk and get my mind frame back on the proper track. Now in no means am I saying “hey if you convert to Catholicism and attend church every sunday that it will solve all your problems. All I am simply trying to say is that I believe there is a place in all of us that if we search down deep and envelop ourselves in that belief, that we can reach a state of nirvana where all the the negativity that shadows our lives can be washed away by looking at all the good we have in our lives.
Questions
Throughout my past few years of living a life of relative clarity in relation to my perceptions of reality I have considered myself to be a creative person. In saying that over the past few months that I have been participating in the digital animation program at bcit I have been questioning my imagination. for almost 2 months now I have been struggling with the idea of coming up with a demo reel concept. I know that I would like to do an environment reel but I haven’t been able to narrow down a decision on what I would like to do it on.
If you had asked me a year ago if and when it came down to making a decision on a demo reel I would have thought that my only problem would be narrowing down pages of ideas into one solid idea. I don’t know if the pressure of knowing I have to make a decision soon it somehow creating a mental barrier that I must call upon the armies of Azzinoth to help me cut down.
The forces are amassing and the armies must be conjured if we are to have hope in this epic battle. THINK LIAM , THINK!!!!!! YES, I SHALL, I SHALL!!!!
Week 6 – Getting down with the cause
For the past few months I have been looking forward to watching the film documentary ‘Sharkwater’. It is being released for rental and purchase finally this coming Tuesday, but working at Rogers Video I was able to rent it early and watched it last night. When I first saw the preview however many months ago it was, I don’t know if I wasn’t paying attention enough or if I just forgot but I totally took the movie for something that it wasn’t. The film made me aware of a large scale problem in regards to the illegal hunting and harvesting of shark fins around the world. The shark fin trade is the second most profitable trade in the world next to the drug trade. In the past two decades the shark population has decreased by 90% and sharks are now on the verg of extinction. The film was extremely eye opening and had a great effect on my attitude towards sharks . I believe sharks to be the world most misunderstood and disrespected animals on the planet. Besides the cruel and extreme means of the harvesting of these animals, one of the things that really pissed me off was that even tho most of the methods being used to capture the sharks in all of the places being fished were illegal, nothing was being done because the governments are corrupt and are being paid off my the large scale ‘shark fin mafia’(it actually exists). After watching this film I questioned the meaning of the majority of the human populations existence. If you think about every animal in the natural world everything in it breaks down and has an essential purpose in the circle or life. I’ve found myself wondering what 90% of the population really contribute to the world. We polute the air with our fossil fuels, we are sucking the world dry of all its major resources, and we are driving many of the important animal populations into extinction without regard of their essential role in the circle of life. If you look back in history at all the major changes to happen in the world over the past 100 years all were driven by very small groups of people who devoted their lives completely to making a differance, for example the abolishment of slavery in America, Ghandi’s effect on India, Nelson Mandel’s effect on Africa, and the fight for womens rights. It is in this small percentage of people in the world that are the ones who have kept the world from caving in on itself. Its still not enough.
We need more….
to be continued
week 5 – A vision
Some of us may find ourselves from time to time completely out of touch with the bonds of reality. The escape we thought once only attainable through mind altering substances has folded over as we make our new beds. I believe strongly that our imaginations can take us to places that can rejuvinate and re amplify our desires to achieve our goals that some of us have drifted from. There was a time in my life when I believed I had nothing to live for. I was stuck in a downward spiral full of substance abuse and found myself constantly questioning the meaning of my existence. It wasn’t until I was forced to return to reality that my mind was given the time necessary to repair itself. I have been clean now for 2 years and I still feel as if I still have a long way to go. Even in this small margin of time I have had the opportunity to mend broken relationships with loved ones that I fear I would not have made it without. There are many forms of love, all healthy, which give us the strength to carry on living our day to day lives. If we are surrounded by love we emit what we take in and that reflects in our attitude and the way we in return communicate and contribute to the public. When you feel a sense of being loved, the places your mind takes you too in times of non precipitated hallucination in my case anyway are most times peaceful and enjoyable. Although I am still occasionally haunted with hallucinations of the past, I have enough power over my mind now that I can climb out of hell and bring myself back to a somewhat peaceful state. It was when I was at my lowest that I began to have no control and fell deeper and deeper until the only escape left was total physical and mental annihalation. If we take care of our brains and seek out love in the places we have come to escape to, then there is no way you will ever feel low enough where you feel there is no other alternative. There is always love to be given and it can come in any form.
This was not written to form to the traditional paragraph or essay criteria. This is simply a train of thought.
Week 4- Persistance
As dusk approaches the stench of dead bodies from the first battle rises with moisture in the blood soaked soil. They are gone for now. Pushed back into the nether vortex of our subconscious, we find our minds temporarily at peace. Free to focus on nothing but the task at hand and to devote the coming months to the recovery of our town and our people.
This week I felt at peace as I modeled my first set of eyes and a mouth in 3d design. I gained a feeling of power when I looked into the eyes of my creation, my friend, my soldier. Soon friend, soon you have the power to stand up and approach the challenges that you will be faces with. This is only the beginning of our feast. I think most of the people who participate in program such as Digital Animation or even anything remotely close to that in teaching institutions across the world never stop to truly think about the power of their creations. Inside the minds of every one of us exists a civilization of both the most peaceful and terrible things co-existing in a subconscious world. It is in the world that our creations are free to think for themselves and be free from the bonds of the consious mind. They live, some in peace, some in terror depending on person to person thinking for themselves and developing their own personalities. Next time you create a 3d model think not of it as an it but as a him, a her, a thing. Next time you create a 3d environment think not of it as a project, but as a place you can go to and be free whenever you wish.
This is the truth
week 3 – survival of the fittest
Welcome friends and thank you once again for tuning in on this episode of life. I thought I would take some time to write about the topic of commitment and self understanding. Myself and my classmates have been in the digital animation program now for 6 months and already we have lost a couple of people. When I think about the amount of money and time we have taken out I find it hard to understand how one could fail to care enough to put in the time and effort to acheive the initial goal the originally set out to do. We have all made sacrafices to get get here and I believe every one of us would be more than happy to be working as a professional animation or modeler. After all some of the top video game companies in Vancouver such as Radical entertainment and EA have constantly been rated in the top 100 places to work in Canada, often being in the top 20%. Two weeks ago I took out the remaining 2500 dollars out of my bank account to put towards my term two tuition. My father agreed to pay for half of my school before I originally signed up for this course, so even with him paying for half of it the money I have put taken out so far has not even equaled to half of the total that I owe my father. The past 2 weeks have been the first days in a long time when I can say I have had less than two thousand dollars in the bank. Already, and this is no joke, I have lost 10 pounds now that I have not had any money in the bank to spend on mindless things I was purchasing in my everyday life. I literally have 12 cents in my bank right now and I can barely afford to pay for gas to continue getting to school. Every time I think about leaving school right after class rather then staying and spending that couple of hours getting ahead of the homework that I no I am not gonna find time to do later I think about the sacrafices I have made to be here and suck it up. Good push friends lets take a rest and camp here for the night:)
