Turn My White Skin Red

 Life in General  Comments Off
May 032010
 

This past Sunday, I participated in football again for the first time in a couple of weeks. There were a number of notable results of this:

  • First and foremost, I forgot that unlike the modern-day wimp vampires, I do not sparkle in sunlight, but rather am like the old-school bad-ass ones, in that I burn to a crisp. I was out in the sun for a couple of hours, and forgot to bring any type of sunscreen; hence, I now have a lovely shade of red to my face. And neck. And arms. And calves. At least this means I’m “warm to the touch” as my radiated skin pumps out it’s own personal heat waves.
  • I stuck to playing center and the rusher, which means I didn’t have to do a lot of running around. Even though this was a bit frustrating (I really wanted to try and help the team as a receiver and defensive back), it was the wise choice. There were a couple of times that I had to break off some quick runs and cut-backs, and I could tell that the ankle wasn’t back up to full strength just yet. I had the brace on, but I suspect that if i had pushed it, I would have had a good chance at re-injuring it.
  • I ran into an old school classmate at the field, Small. “Small” was a semi-nickname that she had in Parsons, mainly because she hung out a lot with a “Biggie;” Small is about 5′ 2″ while Biggie is about 5′ 10″. So yeah — go figure on the names. Anyway, Small was there with her boyfriend to help out another friend of her’s; we were not playing each other, although that might have been amusing. It was a very nice surprise to see her, and we checked to make sure we had the recent numbers of each other (I actually had lost her number after switching phones). Now the goal will be to catch up over a lunch or sometime after work. Definitely a New York City moment: running into an old friend by random chance.
  • Our team finally scored a touchdown, something we haven’t done since week one. The first half was a close contest, with each team at only 7 players. But, then 2 more people showed up from the other team, and they outpaced us in the 2nd half.
  • It was fairly brutal weather to play; the heat was up around 90, and the humidity was clobbering us like a lead candlestick holder. In that regard, I was actually glad that I wasn’t playing at full tilt. Next time, I need to remember to bring more water….

Afterward, we hit up the official bar, and then I left a bit early, managing to get home in time to knock out my laundry. Well, the washing and drying; I still need to put the stuff away. But hey, at least it’s clean!

I got the connections, my friend

 Life in General  Comments Off
Feb 212010
 

So, a few days ago, I was riding the subway down to my job, and as I’m standing in the car, I’m taking the time to check out the art that they have currently up:

Actually art on the subway for a change.

Hmm... interesting....

Given where I am standing, I can see that this piece has the name of the artist, and so I look closer:

I think I know that name....

Andrea--wait, Andrea?!?

And then I realize — I know the girl who made this! She was a fellow classmate in my days at Parsons, and extremely talented in world of information design; I had completely forgotten that her skills also extended to illustration. What really made this an ironic moment is that only reason I recognized the name is because just a few days prior, I had actually gotten a Friend request from her on Facebook. It was the first time that I ever really saw her last name spelled out, so it had stuck in my mind.

Ah, the wacky small-town life of NYC.

Interactive — “10 After Midnight”

 Interactive, Narratives, Stuff I Made  Comments Off
Oct 282009
 

10 After Midnight

This was my final project in the Digital Boot Camp session that many of my fellow students and I were required to take before we started Grad School proper. We had about 2 weeks to put it together, and you can see a lot of influence from my earlier work, “Road Stop.” The biggest difference was that here, the player sees all scenes, as very short 10 second snippets. Again, though, the idea is to let the user figure out what had happened.

Video — “The ARG”

 Games, Interactive, Narratives, Stuff I Made, Video  Comments Off
Oct 272009
 

For one of my Parsons classes, my friend and fellow classmate Linh teamed up to run an ARG. It was mainly for a small group of fellow students, but did attract some additional players from other parts of the world. At the end of the project, we presented this video to help explain what it was all about.

Animation — Sound Design for “Virgil’s Tours”

 Animation, Audio, Stuff I Made  Comments Off
Oct 272009
 

Man, I hope I can revisit this someday….

This was actually made for my Sound Design class at Parsons, but the basic idea I had already developed from a different class, which was a bunch of unruly trainees learning how to become tour guides in Hell. While the animation remained fairly simple (that wasn’t the point of the class, after all), working with the audio was a joy. I had about 8 people record a huge number of lines — in the very professional recording studio we had, no less — and then went through ProTools and crafted them all together. The voice work by my friends was great, the sound effects fell into place, and the background music was absolutely perfect. I had so much fun making this, that, as I said, I really hope I can actually make this a full-featured short.

Oh, and that voice in the beginning? That’s me, with a little help from ProTools’ reverb.

Animation — “The Lab”

 Animation, Stuff I Made  Comments Off
Oct 272009
 

This was a short, short project I made for my Maya 3 class in Parsons. That opening shot of the lightning reflecting in the glass bottles took way longer than you might first think, and introduced me to the world of render passes.

Video — “Box Study”

 Animation, Stuff I Made, Video  Comments Off
Oct 272009
 

One of the first projects that we got as 1st year Grad Students at Parsons was a “Box Study.” Each of us were assigned a particular type of box (something simple that you could make yourself and fold together), and then required to do something like 50 “studies” of it. I can’t comment on the intended goal, but I can say that pretty much everyone wound up hating their box with a deep, irrational hatred. In the end, we had to make a basic presentation about the box, to sort of introduce the rest of the class to it. This was my final for the project. It was made largely because, well, video is one of my better skills, but also because it gave me the chance to have some fun with the box (for a change). I was pleasantly surprised that the instructor not only actually liked it, but even laughed at the last line.