100% pure creative juice!

If you're gonna do a cover. . . . . .

for the love of god do it right. Seriously, if you're gonna do a cover that means the song/and or band can A)make their own material and not waste their time regurgitating someone else's art and B)are better than you; the least you can do is respect the band/song by not butchering the fuck out of it, even if you sound almost the same as the original.

I present to you exhibit A:
this is atreyu shitting all over the only faith no more song that hit the top 10
there are tons more other FNM songs that are worthy of a cover



-horrible isn't it, i can only go 32 seconds in until he makes the actual vomit sound

ladies and gents: exhibit B:
Same song, even worse rendition. Im totally at a loss, no im not--it's as if these hick ass wigger meatsacks fucked this song like it was their little sister, and buried it in their mothers backyard next to all the pets they used to kill with bb guns and firecrackers. These kids are horrible. I mean terrible. But that's all I'm gonna say about these dudes, my mom always told me it was wrong to make fun of the mentally retarded.




did you notice how he kept holding his shirt out for you to see how cool he is for having it?

and finally i leave you with a cover gone good, it's more of an example of just playing the same song with different instruments, hell they even got the original lead singer to do the vocals, hard to fuck that up.

drunk history

(screamed in 300 style voice) THIS IS HI-LAR-IOUS!

how have i not seen this

I don't know who did this video, but i plan on finding out, and hi-fiving the shit out of them.
I didn't even make it through the whole thing yet but damn that is some fine animation.
Wait till it gets to about a minute in where the girl is dancing with a strobe light effect, it dosen't get any better ladies and germs.

So in my search for a green screen rig that will hold liquor bottles and hide easily*, I stumbled upon this:
http://www.arthousecoop.com/project/view/3
Its a pretty bad-ass concept if you aks** me. Kinda wish idda thought of that. As soon as I can wrangle up 13 bucks, im definitely gonna do it, even though i can't go to the opening in atlanta or probly ever see the other entries, I just think it would be cool of something as global and outreaching as this, plus it'll force me to brush up on my sketching/creativity.
I'm finding more and more of these conceptual art projects popping up all over the place (all fueled with the help of the internet) especially live painting/technology/dj/burning-man style events (http://current.com/items/88845458_hypercosmic_painting_jam)
and I get really exited, and intrigued every time. I REALLY wanna be a part or even put on one of these events, even though i have no huge talent to display, these just seem really really cool, and i think are going to be a large part of the future of art. . . the blending of art, technology, and community.


* -In group projects that you don't get paid for, you find yourself attempting to tackle odd jobs that aren't unnecessarily up your alley. A great exercise in learning and expanding, albeit a reminder of why you do what you do and not this other thing.

** -Since my realization that the DIY styles of old that used to separate forward thinking people from cows have now become the pop-art bullshit norm, (http://www.afflictionclothingstore.com/store/index.php). . . i'm going wigger

keeping up

Sorry about the utter lack of posts (like anyone cares, no one knows this is here yet)
I choose to pull the "i've been sooooo busy" card, even though it's no excuse.
So I'm interning at Zoic studios now and trying to turn that into a paying gig, so I gotta bust my ass and shine like platinum grillz. Also working at the saddle ranch to pay the bills. Also working on a group intern project for Zoic(more on this later). Also trying to rig a character my roommate just finished modeling. So i have been busy, get off my ass!
To tide you over I'm posting the coolest and most awesome piece of animation ever done, ever!
ladies and gentlemen: Def Leppard. . . . .

Getting started with MEL

Starting off with programming, be it MEL, HTML, Python, Java, whatever can be somewhat intimidating.But i'm finally finding format that works for me. For days I've been puttering around meaning to put together a MEL script to automate a leg setup that takes a simple joint chain and creates a IK/FK leg with a no-flip knee and a floating box that allows you to choose between left and right, as well as whether the leg would stretch or not.
I've been doing so much puttering that after 3 days, I was still looking at the same 50 lines of code that made up the floating box. Knowing i had over 500 more lines of code to write; of course i didn't want to start, its like looking at a blank canvas knowing you need to create an A+ masterpiece, it won't come.
So just like we were taught to sketch out drawings and paintings, i started to 'sketch' out the code.

All I really do (especially since its a macroscript that just automates function) is write down every part of the process that i need to script to make this thing happen, much like an outline for a term paper:

//Create the IK/FK switch
//Duplicate and rename the joint chains
//Create orient costraint-change interpolation style to 2
//Set driven key for ik/fk blend
//Return driver to 0
//Create the reverse foot
//Create groups and move pivots
//Set driven key for foot actions
//peel heel
//stand tip
//twist heel
//twist toe
//toe tap
//Create an if/else statement for stretchyness
//Find the end joint where the ikHandle is located.
//Find the start joint being affected by the ik handle
//Create a vector array to store the world space coordinates of the joints


Now all i have to do is go and fill in the arguments to carry out the actions, which is simple with a small macroscript like this. If you lose track or don't know what you're looking for you can always go into maya, do the process, open the script editor and just copy and paste.

//Change pole vector on RPsolver to [.1 0 0]
select ikHandle ($legSide + "LegIk")
setAttr "ikHandle1.poleVectorX" .1;
setAttr "ikHandle1.poleVectorY" 0;
setAttr "ikHandle1.poleVectorZ" 0;

//Change twist attr to 90
setAttr "LegIk.twist" 90;

//Create plus/minus average node
shadingNode -asUtility plusMinusAverage;

//connect knee attr to +/- input 1D[0]
select -r ($legSide + "footControl")

connectAttr -force "footControl.knee" plusMinusAverage.input1D[0];

//connect offset attr to +/- input 1D[1]
connectAttr -force "footControl.offset" plusMinusAverage.input1D[1];

//connect output 1D to IK twist attr
connectAttr -force plusMinusAverage.output1D | "LegIk.twist"

//change offset to 90, lock and hide
setAttr "footControl.offset" 90;
setAttr -lock true -keyable false "footControl.offset";

I'll post the entire script when I'm done, but i gotta quit procrastinating for now.