message from the digital mines...

Caught and banged and buffeted by that annual end-of-the-year down-the-drain time dilating vortex... Other clumps caught in the maelstrom that I am periodically dashed against are some chunks of work, bits of socializing, present shopping and (hopefully I'll actually get to it soon) delivering, and the self-imposed beating known as my holiday Santa animation...

In the home stretch of the Watch-A-Thon, I told myself that I should be okay with taking a "bye" on the Santa animation this year. That I was doing some good, solid, charitable goofing off instead of brainstorming and building for a decent bit of holiday Santa-mation, and that should be totally acceptable...

And I bought it...

...for a while.

But y'know what I was doing on the T the week after the 'thon? Sketching little 3-D Platonic solids that might get mashed together to make a Santa Claus face.

I usedta sketch and doodle a lot. For the last few years it seems that I only really get into it around December, and it's all crazy Santa Claus stuff. Can you say, "Issue?"

What a weird word - i s s u e.

Ever seen REINDEER GAMES? Some of Affleck's finest work... which I know doesn't mean a lot =). Really, friends know my feelings on Mr. and Mrs. Damon, and Ben's skills are quite limited. But, well, forget about Ben. See the movie for all the other fun and ridiculousness in it. What a gorgeous opening five minutes... All those Santas... =)

I had a bunch of proto-ideas skippin about in my head, but one seemed not-so-crazy enough and sorta fit me pretty well and I started to walk around with it on my mind all the time, right after that cool chick who told me I should take the stairs every other day instead of the elevator, and two weekends after the 'thon, after some fun tournament volleyballing w Earth-Shattering KaBOOM, I found myself cracking open some old school Mac software on my laptop to start building a dumb model of Santa Claus v.2005. And since then, every other late late night has dialed into early morning with me clicking and modelling, animating, Photoshopping, or rendering bits and pieces of my silliness. How or if it will all come together in a decent way, and in time (before I leave town to do Christmas w the parentals in Jersey), well, I don't know just yet. I foresee lots of Diet Pepsi, Chips Ahoys, pajamas, and sleep deprivation in my near future.

I've got a couple loads of laundry running now, so that I don't hafta take dirty clothes home w me this weekend, and also ray tracing some animation tests in the background on this machine. It's such a weird, sometimes creepy, zone, where working on computers intersects living... if you can call it that. Mostly the zone is filled with tangled wires and dust hippos sharing desk space with potato chips and cookies in tupperware and several cans of soda in various states of consumption and temperature, FAMILY GUY, FUTURAMA, and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT on the tube, not-yet-wrapped Christmas presents, and cool spots on pillows. Note that this particular flavor of the zone manifests when your computer is in your bedroom.

Gotta go check on that laundry in a few...

Keep on keepin on~