Kaiern - Life, Animation and Everything Inbetween

First Impressions of Google+

Kaiern — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 16:21:25 +0000

So I got invited to Google+ a few days ago by an Animation Mentor friend of mine, and with me being a huge fan of Google and their many projects (who isnt?) I was really looking forward to trying it out. Personally I sort of abandoned Facebook quite a while ago, for a variety of reasons, and I have been using mostly Twitter in order too keep in touch with people. I have also been hoping for Google to come up with some sort of competitor for Facebook, and now that they have i really hope they succeed.

And so far I have to say that Google+ does look promising. The only real problem it has right now is that there are so few users so you really have no idea what it will feel like once you start having over 100+ people in your friends list and people start using it actively. But the Circles feature looks like it will be able to do a good job of filtering out those people you don’t really have that much of a reletionship with, which is good.

One thing that I’m also worried about is that many people will start using it more like Twitter than Facebook, and spamming it with too many updates all the time, whitch is something that I think might ruin some of the experience for other users, but then again, you can just use Circles to filter out those people. All in all I think Google+ has some great functionality, and I’m looking forward to playing around with it more as the service evolves.

I’m Still Here

Kaiern — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:24:58 +0000

Right, so I haven’t posted here in a while. Mostly because I haven’t had anything to add, and I technically don’t now either but I feel guilty for abandoning the blog for almost two months. So what have I been up to lately? Well, I’m trying my best to constantly work on some animation, and I will try to throw up an update on the shot I’m currently working on by the end of the week, because I am having a lot of fun with it, and trying some new things, so it should hopefully be somewhat interesting. The shot is a short two character acting shot, with no dialogue.

I am also still sending out various job applications, though I have no expectations yet when it comes to getting a job. It’s also something I have put on hold for now untill I finish the shot I’m corrently working on, so hopefully my demo reel will look slightly better. But I am also applying for various non-animation related jobs, and hopefully I will get something soon, so I can make some more money in the meantime.

Though I have to admit that for the last few days sidegig as an 1940′s LAPD detective in L.A Noire has taked up more of my time than it probably should have, but damn that game is a ton of fun. Props to Team Bondi for making an awesome game. And if you haven’t bought it yet you really should, you won’t be dissapointed.

Inspiration Post #1

Kaiern — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 21:06:55 +0000

Here is a small collection of various things that have inspired me recently. I’ll be trying to throw one of these posts up once a month or so, depending on if I find anything interesting. Though as alway with this blog, I’m not making any promises.

Images

75 Sensational Examples of Sci-Fi Illustration

Cthulhusaurus Rex

The Citadel

Super Silo

Music

Video

Kindle. A Review. Sort of.

Kaiern — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:09:45 +0000

One of the things I promised myself I would do in 2011, is read more books. Reading is something I haven’t done enough of in the last few years, but that’s about to change. But because I don’t have a ton of space in which to store a lot of books, I decided to buy a Kindle, which, obviously takes up less space. Right.

And after having used it for a little over a week, I am really happy with my purchase. The screen is really comfortable to read on, and it feels like you’re reading in an ordinary book. The menus and interface is easy to figure out and navigate, and I haven’t come across anything that has been hard or annoying to do yet. All I can say is that the Kindle is definitely worth spending money on. It has been really great to have on those long, boring bus rides in to work.

Currently I’m about halfway through Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and I am having a lot of fun reading it. Fantastic book.

A New Look

Kaiern — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:11:03 +0000

So, Kaiern.com has been re-designed. Again. And I, for one, am not surprised. I have been playing around with this idea for quite a while now, because I wanted a site that was focused more on showing off my demo reel, and not just be a strict weblog. Which is the reason that the first thing you see when you go to my site now is my demo reel. There are still a few things with this new design that needs work, and I promise that I will get around to fixing them, but right now I am bored to death with mucking about in the wordpress HTML and CSS files. It’s probably good that I am the only person that needs to look at those files, because I tend to make quite a mess. But, somehow, I manage. I hope to have the site completely finished by the end of the week, but I’m not making any promises.

But, what’s with the demo reel? As it stands now it’s rather short, and lacks any kind of music. It’s a first draft, if you will. I threw together some of the best work I had lying around, for various reasons that I don’t feel like talking about yet, because I don’t know if anything will come of it. But that’s beside the point. The demo reel will most likely be updated many times in the next few months, because I am trying my best to constantly be working on something new to add to it. So I am hoping that eventually the reel it self will look a bit more respectable that it is in it’s curren state.

So what else is there to say? Well, I really want to be better at updating this blog. And I have been playing around with a few ideas on how to do so. A blog post once a month dosen’t feel like enough, and I want to try to get more interesting content in here eventually. I’ll let you know if that ever happens.

Back to Basics

Kaiern — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:23 +0000

After doing a few more complicated shots lately, I figured it was time to try something simple. I haven’t done a walk cycle since the earliest classes at Animation Mentor, and that wasn’t even full body animation. Walk cycles may not be the most interesting animation in the world, but it’s still really good practice. I didn’t want to do a completely vanilla walk, so I looked around for some nice props to try to add some resemblance of personality to the whole thing.

There is still some minor polishing that needs to be done before I consider the shot complete, and I have gotten a bunch of great feedback from people at the AM forums that has been really helpful, so I will be having another look at it later this week.

New Year, And All That

Kaiern — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:52:11 +0000

I admit it. I’ve been extremely lazy when it comes to updates on this site lately. It’s been over two months since the last update, in fact. This is one of the things I definitely plan on changing this year. With that said, happy new year, everyone! Personally, I got kind of a bad start on 2011 becuase I’ve been laying in bed with a fever and a massive headache for a few days, but that’s all good now, and I’m ready to get to work.

So what are my plans? Well, first of all i need to get a demo reel together. That is my number on priority. So in order to get that, my plan is to try and get some animation done every day. Even if I can just do an hour or so of work one day, that is progress non the less. Hopefully this will allow me to have a somehwat decent looking demo reel by Feburary. And then I can start sending it out, so that I at least can get my name out there.

I will also try to update this blog a bit more often, with animation that I’m working on etc. I will try to have at least one update every week, but I’m not promising anything. Currently I’m also working on a re-design, to make the site a bit more demo reel-friendly, if you will. It’s moving along slowly. But it’s not that important right now, or a priority.

Other than that I will hopefully be working a bit more than I did last year, because I definitely need the cash. If all goes according to the plan I will be moving out of the house some time this year. That might take a while, but it’s absolutely something I’m hoping for. Been living at home for over 21 years now, and a change would be very much welcome at this point.

CG Studio Map – Another Job-Hunting Tool

Kaiern — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:08:44 +0000

Found this site a few weeks back, and I though I should share it. Just like the two game studio and animation maps I posted earlier, this map has a list of a bunch of CG studios. So this map should be really useful if you’re looking for a job in the CG industry, whether its in animation, 3D modeling or anything else. As I’m writing this there are 700 studios listed on the site, I’m not sure if all the information is up to date, but you should still have more then enough to choose from if you’re looking for a job.

CG Studio Map Website

Slacking Off

Kaiern — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 19:38:05 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here now, mostly because I haven’t really had anything to write about, but also becuse I’m lazy at times. But I figured it was about time to add an update.

I’m still working away at my demo reel. It’s going quite slow though, but I think I might be going in the right direction, finally. Currently I’m working on a new body mechanics shot, which I think is going quite well, for once. I’ve taken some idea from things I’ve posted here before, and simplified them a bit. Gone away from the Bishop rig and switched to the Stewie rig for example, so that I can just focus on the body animation, and not having to worry about facial animation etc. This has helped my progress a ton, and I will be sure avoid making things more complicated than they need to be from now on.

One other reason for slacking, at least for this week, might have something do to with the fact that this little baby arrived in the mail on Monday.

So I have to admit that I’ve been spending some time playing Red Dead Redemption and Batman: Arkhan Asylum. Both fantastic games, and huge time sinks. Other than that I don’t think there is anything else interesting to mention. I’ll be back with an update on the new shot I’m working on shortly.

Two Brilliant Sites For Job-Hunting Animators

Kaiern — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:26:29 +0000

Discovered these two fantastic sites a few days ago and thought I should share them with all you fellow animators and VFX-geeks out there that are looking for jobs in the industry. Both of them are really neat and should help you with finding different studios you can apply to. I’m definitely gonna have a closer look at these two sites once I get me demo reel done.

GameDevMaps

GameDevMaps basically gives you a map of most of the game development studios in the world. All you have to do is click on a location and the site will show you a list of all the studios in that area together with a link to their web site. Absolutely a great web site if you’re looking for any kind of job in the games industry.

Wayfaring – Animation Places of Interest

Same concept as GameDevMaps, except this site covers all kind of games/film/commercial studios etc, not just the ones that are game related. Also if you see a studio that is missing, you can easily add it to the maps yourself. And since Wayfaring uses Google Maps the site gives you a much more accurate location of where everything is.