Freedom is my muse

This picture is quite possibly the best picture that my buddy, Brandon Bollom, has ever taken. Which is saying something, because Brandon is currently getting his "takin' picktures" doctorate at the University of Texas. The photo is the inside of a Dunkin Donuts bag that I passed to him when I picked him up on July 4th.

The picture is so American, full of hidden potential, fat, patriotism and deliciousness. I want to make it my desktop. By the way all the photos in this blog entry, besides the desk shot are taken by Brandon.

Sorry for the blog silence. I have spent several weekends out of town for various family functions.

Also, recently, I was setting up some of our groovy new Cintiq/traditional animation discs at the studio...

The arms that hold the monitors have joints that you can adjust with a hex key. These joints have a plastic cover that you snap off to get to the hex bolt. I could'nt get the plastic part of, so I tried to pry it open with a knife. Long story short: me not coordinated, knife too sharp, me slip and open thumb instead of hex bolt, me raise the number of stitches I have gotten in the past 3 weeks to 12.

The thumb injury kind of set me back a couple of weeks from both my classes and side projects.

Steve Parker, former Vizlab alumn, and former Powerhouser came to visit this last weekend. Steve works for Mr. George Lucas in San Francisco these days, as a technical director on the Clone Wars. Though I miss Steve being in Texas, I am really happy with all that he has accomplished.

It was good to hang out with him again, especially on the July 4th weekend.

We had an uber-American 4th. Complete with fireworks, firearms, firing up the grill, video games, and cowboy hats, (pictured respectively below.)

It was topped off with "Cop Stop" ice-cream at Amy's. This is a coffee and donut ice-cream that would make Captain Capitalism proud.

The picture below is what happens when 3 former AV club types get together with their wives to watch fireworks. Brandon had a mini tripod (gorilla-pod?), and a time delay on his aperture, so we tried a long shot to let more light in, and also shot flashes off from our other camera to light the scene. Looks like a really bad album cover.

One thing that has come up that has me a little worried is this story about Alabama . Apparently the country super-group that I have been making a cartoon about, (though the cartoon is parody and a labor of love), might be a tad litigious.

Yikes.

In other news, Krishna Jain finished the flash work of the Animation Budget History project I have been working on for a while. He actually finished it several weeks ago. I hope to put that up on the blog this week with a more detailed explanation, so stay tuned.