Taniith’s Relto

My scarf is coming along nicely; slowly, as usual, but nicely.

One more day is not enough time. I need a bunch more time off! I don’t know how I’m going to survive the next 3ish weeks!

I watched the Will Van-Dyke version of Jekyll and Hyde with my mom the other night (we meant to do it before the production this summer). A bunch of the singing could have been better, but the effort and the acting was so great! Worlds better than that other one. Will was great as Jekyll; his Hyde acting was pretty amazing by itself, but the singing for Hyde sorta jumped between sounding just like Jekyll and, well, not so much singing. Must be why he doesn’t do the singing himself so much these days. I’d love to see the rental orders off of that ;). It was strange to watch, though, since I kept having these moments of, “I remember that person!”, “wow, Claude acted?!”, and of course “Evan seems totally different. This is before he became the awesome superstar we know and love. Weird!”. Twas fun.

On a similar note, I finally started watching Jekyll. Its by Steven Moffat (squee!), and its really awesome. The basic premise is that the main character is a direct descendant of Henry Jekyll (they haven’t explained how that works yet, since Jekyll had no kids). He suddenly starts having his own Hyde manifest itself, and has to deal with it. Its really creepy and awesome and woot! Oh, and this Patterson Joseph guy is in it; he’s really great and all, but I honestly can’t see him as the Doctor! I hope the rumors are wrong. And no, its not just cause he’s black… he just seems to have the wrong personality for the Doctor. Yeah, sure, I’m a bad person… I take my Doctor Who seriously folks!

Oh yes, and I was apparently nominated for VP of the GDC?! I was planning to run for treasurer, but I guess VP could be interesting too. The idea of taking part in the weekly IMGD steering committee kinda freaks me out though! We’ll see; I think I need to ask Alex (current VP) some questions before I accept the nomination. I wonder who the heek nominated me O_o

Anyway, I guess I should get some sleep… last chance to catch up before this whole thing starts again! Too bad I didn’t get to do anything this weekend besides homework and watching TV shows… if only that friend of mine who wanted to meet up hadn’t dropped off the face of the earth…

-K

My render farm is having issues. I had problems with the install on my server of the master to control the whole system, but the developer is great about helping to fix problems on their forum. But now Maya is refusing to start on my server, and the Smedge engine on my workstation keeps crashing any time it trys to start rendering.

Oh, and the Mental Ray slave server won’t work either. Grr…

-K

Edit 3-16-09: For people who find this while searching about Smedge, know that I quite like Smedge and would recommend it to anyone who asked. Don’t interpret this post as a deterrent.

(Crap, why’d io9 have to post this a day late, and me read it a day later?!). Apparently, Sunday was the 45th anniversary of Doctor Who. Uber sweet if you ask me!There are 31 years of on screen goodness included in that 45, which is pretty amazing for a show about an old guy (900 years, even if he sometimes acts like he’s 10) who picks up young girls and lures them into what appears to be a small blue phone booth ;p.

Clicky.

I am completely and totally burnt out. I can’t even think straight at the moment. Hell, I’ve almost fallen over while standing around several times today. I should be able to actually get some real amount of sleep tonight for the first time in 1.5 weeks. I’m looking forward to having a break, even if it is short!

Oh, and apparently Marty found a Facebook app that lets you play backgammon similar to chess by mail. So now we’re engaged in what looks to be an excruciatingly long backgammon match. I find this amusing.

-K

So, we were sitting in Animation today, and there was some sort of talk about rigging going on. Now, you know me and rigging; I live for the stuff. So, I kept whispering to Adam about how our professor was missing the point on some things, you know, jokingly. Then, out of the blue (I’m pretty sure is was coincidence because there’s no way he could have heard me from the other side of the room), he finishes his thing, and then asks if I want to give any tips since I love rigging. Well gee…. I mean, I’m perfectly happy to do so, but it was a little sudden and I was stumbling to figure out how to explain the stuff I started talking about. So I’m not entirely sure that what I started talking about was any more useful.

That’ll teach me (no it wont.. but you know what I mean).

Now, don’t take that to mean that I don’t like the guy. Its not that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, its just that I’m a little… is jaded the right word (I’ve never been totally clear on that one)? Obviously, 4 hours a week for 7 weeks can’t cover as much as 8 hours a day for 9 (well, 7, but who’s counting) months. I just wish the would start listening to the idea that he suggested to have separate modeling and animation courses. I would definitely like a course who’s sole purpose was to take pre-existing characters and (maybe) environments and just animate. Even the CDIA didn’t do that (well, it looked like Howard was trying to start that when I left, so who knows).

Ok, back to my squirrel.

-K

Remember that Jekyll and Hyde production I wrote a long tirade about? Well, I was bored last night, and Youtube suggestions got me looking at Jekyll and Hyde videos, and I came across someone who had uploaded a bunch from that show (no, I didn’t go looking for them, it was by chance). After the jump is Confrontation; by far one of my favorite songs from the score, and one of the better scenes from the production. As you’ll note, it actually starts off pretty well, and Jekyll is a very good actor. The singing starts to decline in quality as it goes on, but Jekyll’s acting is pretty amazing. He was definitely one of the few good ones in that show. Can’t say the same about Hyde (as you can also see):

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I keep forgetting to post this. For the Children In Need thing this year, they showed the first 2 minutes of the Doctor Who xmas special. You can see it here. This is gonna be awesome!

-K