I’m writing this from flock, a new web browser which comes with a lot of built-in utitlities for the most popular web technologies including flickr and blogging. I’m writing this post from within flock’s blog utility. I’m not sure yet if this is a worthy feature or just a gimmick. I intend to try flock out for a few days and see.

It’s just like the old days of Netscape vs Internet Explorer when more and more technologies kept emerging. After IE won the battle things were stagnant until Firefox came around with their tabbed browsing and so forth. We’ll see how this turns out!

The budgie is almost complete. Here I am testing all of the bones. I just have a few things left to fix up with the bones. Then I need to fix the tapering of the wings. After that I just have a few little things like making the bird blink. Then I’ll be about 80% done towards finishing up the cartoon the budgie will be staring in.

Budgie Final Rig: Test 1 on Vimeo

Finally got to do some more work on the budgie today after having taken about 4-5 days off to do other stuff like photography and be with my wife. Finished rigging up all 6 toes on the bird. All I have left in the rigging is to do his legs and creating a tracking bone for moving his eyes. Here’s another foot animation to showcase all the little toes moving around. I hope the next one will have the entire bird moving through his entire range of motions as a test.

I’ve been inspired by a string of videos on Vimeo involving live action stop-motion. Usually stop motion is used to animate inanimate objects or create movies such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. But with the cheapness of digital photography, more and more people are turning to using stop-motion to animate themselves. I didn’t have this intention when I shot this sequence of photos. I was just trying to make sure to get that moment when the person opens their Christmas present and has that sense of excitement in their eyes. So I took a lot of pictures before and after gifts were opened.

I don’t know if it’s the fault of global warming, but something is seriously wrong with the climate recently. Yesterday it was 72 degrees in Washington DC - IN THE MIDDLE OF JANUARY! Don’t get me wrong, I love walking around in a tshirt and tank top in January - it kinda reminds me of when I used to live in South Florida. But, seriously, something very wrong is going on here. By this time last year it had snowed at least two times here, if not more.

KDE.news has reported on part of the progress of KDE 4 specific to SVG graphcs. (I know that’s redundant) It’s redundant because SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. Ever since about 2 years ago, Gnome and other projects began to move to SVG rather than PNG, JPG or other types of graphics. “What’s the advantage?” you may be asking yourself. Well, the advantage lies in how pictures are represented in SVG instead of, say, PNG and its ilk.

Ever though celebrities were a bunch of know-nothing morons? Well, Ironic Sans has used Google’s new patent search feature to discover that many patents have actually been filed by celebrities. The smartest was Hedy Lamar who was actually a brilliant mind in the world of Cryptography. However, her equally good skills at acting caused most not to take her seriously. It was only recently that she has received the attention she deserves.

My budgie is almost ready to perch. I finally finished getting all the bones in the right front toes. This is the annoying part of computer animation. I need to make bones for each part of the body I wish to move and then tell the bones what parts of the flesh they move.

So here he is moving his toes around and getting ready to perch.

Budgie Feet: Front Toes Test on Vimeo

Here are two great captures of my grandfather from my Christmas vacation.

Bet you’ve wanted to see the budgie all the way around, eh? Well, here it is! I was doing a test on timing and light. Naturally, the timing is wrong! That’s why I’m doing a test! The camera is moving too fast, I’m going to try and work on that as I continue working on the modeling aspect.

Here ya go:

Budgie Camera Timing & Lighting Test 1 on Vimeo