Procrastination.............that's the word of the day. I've got this wonderful set made, I've got my characters imported into Maya, and I'm ready to start blocking out the previs animation in my scene. Yessir, I'm ready to go!!!

Yessir................anytime now. Okay, time to jump in. Five, four, three, two, one.............GO!

Doesn't count. This one will for sure..................five, four, three, two, one................WOOHOO GO!!!

Still doesn't count.

Oh man...........coffee just hasn't kicked in yet. Or I'm just too tired to tell. Mind you, that's what I get for staying up until 6 in the am working on the junkyard. So much stuff to do with that, yet. That's okay in a way, since I do love losing myself in the details after the big stuff's done, but sometimes Mr. Clock has a way of not telling me when its planning on putting its own hands ahead when I'm not looking. The good news is that I've got plenty of time left before I'm bringing it in, but thanks to my obsessive sense of 'git 'er dun!', I feel like I'm a million miles behind. Of course, adding 40 ounces of concentrated caffiene probably doesn't help the anxiety levels much. Propping my eyelids open with toothpicks isn't really effective either.............looks kinda creepy too...............like pink beaks open wide and waiting for momma to regurgitate worms into them. Ew.

Thankfully, I've got a decent storyboard to work from that John's checked over. That was a huge relief, to have that approved. All I really have to do is stick to my dope sheet timing and maintain a decent camera angle/move, and life will be grand. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to go through this.

But knowing that sucks. I start bargaining with myself, and the deals aren't really that great. Oh sure, short time gain in the form of some Doom 3 time (appeasing myself until the fourth title comes out), but the long term sucks. Now is the time for discipline, and where that little annoying green bug in a top hat sits on my shoulder and thumps my ear with his cane every ten seconds and screams moral obscenities in my eardrum. I'd squash the littler fucker...........well, that is...........if he wasn't right. I could get him to shut up, and I know it would feel better to just do it, and get it over with, then spend the rest of my weekend (my week doesn't start until tuesday nite at 7pm........night class) enjoying Doom, Halo, or a Star Wars marathon on the big screen with all of the above on the 42" inch. Input.........tons of input.

Okay..............five, four, three, two.......................

I was encouraged by this story, as it does have some connection to my past. [link] Not so much in terms of any sort of compensation, but the healing that's being acknowledged. I know that largely this is government lip service, but in truth it's good to see some history actually being taken seriously in this matter enough to want to try and discover some numbers of just how many unclaimed, unmarked graves there are out there. The trouble is, there wasn't a decent system in place with checks or balances in the residential school system for the First Nations children that were put into these damned places, nor was there an accurate accounting of deaths that were unnaturally high, far higher than schools in the public system of the day. I don't know if any families will be lucky enough to get to have a gravesite to visit, or remains to claim, since many of the native children were often buried in mass graves, with their numbers or English names usually listed with pigs and chickens that died that week or month as well.

It's good to see Professor John Milloy involved with this, since he has studied ad nauseum the effects and the aftermath of the residential school system for decades.........I read his book 'A National Crime', and needless to say, the system was a nightmare for anyone that had to go through it, or lost family members to it. Unfortunately, I lost my dad to it, but his was a slow painful death that lasted about 62 years before alcohol finally claimed him. He never did tell me any of the stories..........I had to hear them all from my Uncle Bob (his older brother), who filled me in on a lot of details on their day-to-day life in the Father Lacombe school in Alberta in the forties. Needless to say, a lot of it included some archaic child tortures that were rather inventive, if they weren't so reprehensible. Suffice it to say, it was enough for a grown man with a Christian upbringing refer to nuns in that particular institution as 'cruel bitches'.......something you don't hear so much. My dad didn't like to talk about this stuff, even with prodding.......his childhood wasn't really a topic of discussion. It was his choice ultimately, but whatever had happened had definitely stolen his voice, or his desire to acheive anything barely past just providing for his family. The rest of the time was his, largely to sedate whatever ghosts were haunting him.

I don't imagine for one second that the school was the sole reason for his silent and slow suicide, especially after hearing some of the stories about my grandmother from my dad's youngest sister. But it sure didn't help, considering that he and my uncle were abandoned in that place by my grandmother for a few years.............what would a six-year-old mind think of something like that? Left in a hell-hole by someone that's supposed to be your guardian, your protector, and your centre of life. It would be one helluva thing to have to deal with. It would be hard to come back from.

That headline brought up a lot of this stuff in my thoughts, largely because of how that system touched our lives. Granted, we're Metis, and my dad wasn't a true aboriginal, since his mother was a half-breed, so it's not as if there will be any peace in having a grave marked, or having any remains returned (if such a thing is even possible, considering how difficult it will be to forensically identify anyone in a mass grave from fifty to a hundred years ago), but there is a sense of comfort that perhaps these atrocities will become more mainstream in knowledge. I truly don't think Canadians, as a whole, know just how bad those places were, or how bad a lot of the kids were treated when they were 'converted into good Christians', forbidden to visit with family members, forbidden to speak their language upon punishment (depending on the school, I've heard practices that involved nuns sticking pins into the tongues of children that uttered any native words), and taken from villages for the duration of their young lives. Often, they were returned to their tribes with only teachings of isolation, fear, punishment and depression........virtually with no ability to raise and nurture children of their own. Needless to say, when I hear about a First Nations person that flips out on the reservation in a drunken rage and beats his or her children, I think of the great 'gift' given to them a generation or three ago that provided for most of that even happening in the first place. Suffice it to say, many tribes didn't strike their children when they were correcting them........that was a gift from a white society that relied on fear and intimidation as a teaching method.

I hope this happens, and although I'm not a big fan of re-using names or parts of other names of incidents or titles in another, I thought the word 'holocaust' certainly applied. Apart from creating an entire race of people that seemed so displaced that they no longer seemed to have a place in the world, they attempted to destroy their history as well. I recall reading that at some point, the indigenious population of North America was conservatively estimated at about 9 million........by the beginning of the 1900's, that number had dwindled to about 500,000 or so, due to warfare, disease, and active/passive extermination. I don't really know what magic number defines the use of that word, but it seems that the lost lives, in both death and a living death, tend to qualify its use.

Sorry..........stirred up old thoughts. RIP Dad.

Man, it sucks to lose a half hour. On the way to BCIT getting a ride from the missus, I had another grand mal seizure. It's one of those things that really messes with your mind, and it's not something I'd really wish on anyone. All I know is that I came out of it, my wife was coming down an offramp heading to the highway, and she said "You had a seizure." I was confused as usual, with no memory as to why we were on the highway to begin with, and at first I didn't recognize anything. The hills, the trees, the buildings around didn't seem familiar at all for a minute or so, until I saw the highway sign that said the next offramp was Gaglardi Way........which was pretty surreal, since I did recognize the name but not the terrain.

As usual, my memory started to slowly come back. The Port Mann bridge seemed more familiar, but I still didn't really know why we were out on the highway to begin with. Then she mentioned that I should probably email my teacher, and I came to the conclusion that I was on my way to class. When we came to the 200 st. offramp in Langley, I remembered that it was Saturday, and it was Ken's class for texturing that I was supposed to be at.

The most unsettling part of those things is the weird sense that everything is unfamiliar, that my life is somehow wrong, or my place in it is out of kilter with the rest of the world, and everyone around me knows it. Generally, my instinct is to find somewhere safe to hide. Fortunately, my wife took me home, and made sure I was okay before she left for work (she's a nurse, formally specializing in neurology, so this stuff is old hat for her.........well, although with this particular case, it's a loved one so it's not just a cut-and-dried situation of just another patient). Another half hour later, I started to remember the details of where it was we were heading, why, and where it was that my memory stops. It was just under the overpass of Kensington Avenue, and seeing the sign is about where I leave off in my thoughts, which was the last one before our turnoff to BCIT, so somewhere in the space of about 3 kilometers is where it happened.

Well, so I missed another class.........texturing, and that sucked. I love that class, simply because texturing is one thing that was a bit of a bugaboo for me. Oh, prior to the course, I had the basics and the concepts understood, and totally had the grasp of the bump map and alpha channel, but dealing with UV maps and using the best available methods for UV unwrapping. Fortunately, Ken always does a recap of the previous class, so hopefully I'll get the needed info, or at least get pointed in the right direction. He usually has some good reference stuff to play with, I should be okay in that regard. But, sadly, I was looking forward to submitting my junkyard stuff in person. I'll have to be satisfied with the email. Not that I'm looking for a pat on the head or anything, but as an entertainer, I do like to see the reactions of an audience, be they good or bad. Getting useful critiques is something I count on, too.

Well, that's enough babbling for one day. Back to work. Cheers to all.

Finally began the actual process of animating in XSI, and I gotta say, even though it's work intensive, it's a lot nicer than the drudgery of 2D. Timing, squash and stretch, and strong posing principles are core beliefs that definitely need to be taken across from the 2D world into 3D, but in a way it's nice to be able to see your pose from a lot of different angles rather than picturing them in 2D space (even though I can, and have no problem with 'drawing through', or creating volume on a flat surface). Today, I finished up my marine character, and using an 'over the shoulder' shot, showed him edging along the wall of a destroyed building, checking around the corner to see if the coast was clear, then bolting across the yard to a burned-out church and taking cover against the other wall with a really cool soldier-dude roll (sorry.......I'm sure it's got a name, but I'll be darned if I can think of it right now).

Granted, it's all just simple blocking out of moves with breakdowns right now, but the movement is pretty solid so far, and for the most part, my dude hasn't blown apart too badly other than some dragging geometry that occasionally seems to need some weight painting. I'm gonna ask the teacher about that issue, and how to fix it. Considering that it's the first time I've ever animated anything with a skeleton, I'm pretty happy with the results. Now, I need to make it AWESOME! instead of just neat. But that's coming. As soon as I can afford a website with video hosting ability, I'm gonna put this stuff up. If anyone knows any free sites that can do this, I'd appreciate the link, though. I haven't rendered anything yet, but I do have some 2D stuff that I've done that's sorta amusing, so I could always stick that up for now. I did try YouTube for one of my animations, but I couldn't upload it for some reason.

Spazwerks.........I like the idea of building a website around that name. I suppose I should buy the domain name, unless it's already been taken.