On life and pointless advertising endeavours

Firstly, apologies for the long period of no posting. Stuff happened, life went crazy, then busy, blah blah - I could write excuses all night. However, I should probably bring things up to date.

Things at school have gotten interesting , which has partly resulted in the lack of posts (the other part is just laziness on my part). We have recently been learning z-brush (whoever designed the interface of that program needs to be shot), where completely by accident I turned out a model that looks kind of like a very buff Patrick Stewart - random aye. Also we have been learning the inner workings of mental ray

(a rendering engine that comes packaged with Maya). As a class I reckon we are going to be turning out some pretty sweet stuff

when it comes to production. Next year we will be producing 2 shorts, which I will most likely blog about. In the mean time, still life projects are coming up i n a couple of weeks, which will be fun. Stay tuned for stuff on that, as well as some W.I.P 3D stuff which I am working on.

On another completely unrelated topic, what is up with the latest McDonalds Angus burger

campaigns? It's a burger, nay, a MCDONALDS burger! It can NEVER be fancy, and it certainly does not require huge billboards and painted buses to try and convince us otherwise. Then again, knowing the general public, it wouldn't surprise me if many people were likely convinced by these stupid ads. Ah, the joys of capitalism.

2012: Disaster Movie on Steroids

See this article

That article sums it up. A movie that spreads a very thin veil of story over a director's seeming desire to destroy as much stuff as possible in a single 2 hour block. That film must set some kind of record. My thoughts? Looks really depressing, somewhat weak, but maybe the special effects will be good.

Our Galaxy

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

(Found on Wohba!)

Halo 3 ODST Trailer - WATCH

That is one epic trailer right there. If I had an Xbox 360, I would play it.

My Showreel

A sampler of some of the stuff I've done at Lifeway the past year. This vid will be updated when I have more stuff to put into it, probably at the end of my course at MDS.

Good Gaming II: Star Wars - The Old Republic

In the past I have made no secret of my disdain for MMORPGS(Massively Multiplayer online role playing games), and in particular, the MMO behemoth known as World of Warcraft. Yet now I find myself confronted with this new Star Wars MMO - The Old Republic. Set 300 years after the very successful and popular Knights of the Old Republic, and 3000 years before the movies, TOR offers players a chance to forge their personal saga online, or so Bioware (the developer) claims.

From what I have seen and heard, this game will actually do what it says. Bioware have created (and are still working on) what could actually be the first successful story driven MMO. This means that it could be, and I venture to say it will be, groundbreaking. Story driven MMO games have been tried in the past and have resulted in epic failure (Uru Live), but this game looks likely to succeed with story where others have failed. Why? Because they seem to have managed to integrate story and new innovations, while keeping the familiar and entertaining formula that makes games like WoW so popular. The environments looks awesome too - see the above video showing the latest reveal - Coruscant. I think its the first time that Coruscant has actually been fully realised in a game.

I love star wars, and yes, I love the idea of playing a heroic warrior in an epic story (who doesn't), as well as exploring visually appealing and immersive environments. Will I play TOR? Definitely. Would I recommend you do likewise? Of course.

Time

Time is a strange thing. Or maybe just our perception of the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff... (shameless Dr. Who quote there). It's weird how at one point its just zooming past at insane speeds, and other times it is just crawling along at a snails pace. I think there's almost a scientific formula to our perception of time - speed time seems to go by is directly proportional to the entertainment/concentration factor of the activity you are engaged in. i.e. when you're busy and occupied, it goes very fast, but when you're bored, it seems 10 times slower. Why? I don't know.

This comes a year to the day almost since I first left my home in Ranui, West Auckland, to start a 3D course in Snells beach, and less than 2 days before I return to Ranui, West Auckland, to start the 2nd year of my 3D studies in a different school in central Auckland. 13 months since I first found out about the september intake at Lifeway and applied, and 1 month since I first found out about the september intake at MDS and applied. 12 months since I left my parents for the first time, and now I'm about to leave the proverbial nest again. God seems to like working in patterns.

And now, I should go do something... like packing.