And We're Back!

We now resume the regularly scheduled episode of The Word Smith!  New page found here.  Of course, when I say "regularly" I most likely mean "sporadically", but what can you do?  Whilst I'm going to try to get back into the once-per-week update schedule, it may be a more "it's done when it's done" type of thing.  Not, I'm sure, that there's anyone waiting with bated breath for the next page, but whatever.

In other things, FASS is over again for the year.  I had to wear a suit and tie as my costume this year which was quite traumatic, considering I haven't worn a tie in six or seven years and it's been even longer since I've worn a full-on suit.  As a result, I felt the need to draw the following, warning of some of the many perils of wearing a tie:

It was quite cathartic.

Whelp, until next time,
Freak Out

-TFitC

The Cat's Meow

Hey, look, page 9 of episode 4 of The Word Smith is online.  It may even be a thing, or whatever.  Regardless, it looks like everything is going according to plan.  Hopefully page 10 will be ready for next week, but there's a chance there might be a slight delay or an interlude instead.  I blame FASS (and so should you.)

And now, on to today's sketchbook entry:

This is a bit of a redesign of one of the characters from the occasionally mentioned Kyoujo RPG.  In particular, this is Mirayrl Aiyew Prurrj Trelarrl, who is basically a supporting, though playable, character.  I seem to have been doing some updating/redesign of some of my FR and related characters of late (especially some of the less frequently drawn ones) so there's bound to be some more of them showing up here in the future.

In other news, FASS is over, I have survived it and life returns to some semblance of normality, whatever that is.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Sweet Freedom!

"By Hrothgar, I thought we'd be trapped in that labyrinth until Grendel devoured us..."

FASS of the Titans is now over! The show seems to have gone relatively well and the running time was at about 3 hours (well, except for the Friday heckling show, of course) so I'm fairly happy over all. This also means that my FASS responsibilities are pretty much over. I will still be the past CSW for next year, but as that's mainly an advisory position it will be much less work. I'm looking forward to having more time to devote to my own projects now.

Since the show is over, I have also opened up the FASS 2011 writers' wiki to be world readable, which can be found here, should anyone feel like perusing it.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

My Year as CSW

As my readers probably all know, I spent April through December of 2010 serving as the Chief Script Writer (CSW) for FASS, a local, annual, amateur theatre production that I am involved with. I haven't blogged much about it because, well, for the most part there isn't really all that much interesting to say - I ran weekly meetings where script related stuff was discussed (brainstorming, scene & song writing, editing), took notes, and sent regular reminders to my writers to tell them to make sure to send me stuff by established deadlines. Oh, I did some writing too, but then, so did a bunch of other people. Overall, it was largely a bunch of administrative type stuff that isn't really all that interesting to write about nor, I suspect, to read about - at least not on a regular basis.

I was fairly heavily involved in writing the previous year's script as well (for the 2010 show) and being CSW didn't really feel all that different, except for the added administrative tasks and the fact that as CSW is wielded supreme veto power. The main difference was that I had more to do for the last couple of months during editing.

Overall, being CSW was an interesting experience. Were I to go back and do it again, I would probably approach a couple of things differently. I would probably swap the focus on a couple of the plot lines during the second act and I would probably also spend a bit more time thinking about specific characters that we wanted to use and potential character arcs back in the brainstorming phase.

Now that my work is done, I'm planning on how to use my new extra free time, though as I am still acting in FASS this year I will still be somewhat preoccupied through to the first week of February so I won't be able to go full tilt on my various personal projects until then.

Anyway, until next time.

Freak Out
-TFitC

Projectile Blogging

The FASS AGM was held over this past weekend which is where I officially became CSW and included the final theme selection for next year's FASS. Theme selection is done by a voting process after presenting the top four or so themes that were selected at the Theme Meeting. Four themes were presented this year and the one that emerged victorious was "Myths and Legends" which should make for an interesting script. I'm going to try to work in Jason and the Arrrrrrgonauts somehow, and possibly also the Ninjas of the Round Table.

I have also been working on my final project for the non-photorealistic rendering course. My project is on simulating Greco-Roman style mosaics. It is still very much a work in progress, but here's a sample of my interim results:


There are obviously still some problems - holes that need filling and whatnot - but it should give the basic idea of what the end goal should produce.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Pot For Me?

So, a few things happening lately, some larger, some smaller. First off, the big thing is that I seem to find myself as the Chief Script Writer for FASS 2011, which means I'll be guiding the script writing process for the next several months. Yay me? I dunno, I may be a touch crazy to do this, but I figure since I'm all done my course requirements after this term that it should be manageable, for the most part, without driving me too insane. We'll see, I guess.

And speaking of courses, even though I'm only taking two courses this term, somehow everything still ends up being due at the same time so I'm spending a lot of time finishing things up this weekend. A lot of it is done already, but it still takes time to do the write-ups and deal with all the little details and tweaking that manage to pop up. The same thing happened for my last set of assignments too - both courses were due on the same day. At least this is the last batch of assignments, though I've still got a project to do for each course.

In unrelated news, I've been playing a bunch of Dissidia: Final Fantasy (fighting game involving characters from various Final Fantasy games for the PSP)- when I haven't been working, of course - and have been quite enjoying it. Chaos, the "end boss" was quite tough - far tougher than any of the other fights - which makes me inclined to say the developers may have gone a little overboard with him. Even having beaten Chaos, though, there's still lots left to do in the game, which is good since, as I said, I've been enjoying it (despite Chaos being a cheating bastard).

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Cake is NOT a Lie... And Other Oddiments

So, it's been about a weeks since FASS 2010 rolled it's final credits and, over all, I think it went pretty well. We seem to have had the most ticket sales since sometime in the mid-90's (including largest crowd for opening night since around that time too) so hopefully that is a sign we were on the right track. And despite some of my complaining in my previous post, I did end up having fun with my part - though getting the second role added (the Wise One) helped a bit. Plus for both roles I was able to wear a costume that wasn't just jeans and a t-shirt which is always nice. In fact I think that the Kirby costume turned out rather well and for the Wise One, well, it's always nice to have an excuse to wear my cape (and I got a funny looking robe). Also, the Friday Late audience suitably amused me this year.

As seems to be becoming a post-FASS tradition for me, I hosted a small gathering at my apartment today since it is, in fact, the third iteration of "Wear You Under on Your Head" Day, also known as "Why I Voted for the Provincial Liberals" Day or also, more officially yet more boringly, as "Family Day". I made some home made pizza and a couple of tastey cakes. Or rather, one cake in two parts since I made round cakes but did not layer them as is traditionally done with the round cakes. And now that I think about it, why is that, exactly? Why doesn't anyone make single-layered round cakes like one would with a regular rectangular cake, or non-circular layered cakes? Or, if they do, why aren't the more common?

But that's really somewhat tangential to the real matter which is to show pictures of my two half-cakes:


I made a Kirby cake! The lettering on the cake is Kirby's first line in the show. His fate, in Final Fassity MMX, was to shut himself in the bathroom and eat himself to death (a la Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs). Here we were able to eat him one last time, and he was very tastey.

Originally, I had planned just to do the one cake, but when I realized that the circular pans are only about half as big as the rectangular ones and that I'd have half a cake left over I decided...


...that I could make a Pac Man cake as well! The letter here says "Do you like falafel? Nom nom nom..." because in the penultimate scene, Pac Man kept going on about setting up a falafel stand. I actually iced this cake first since I figured it would be easier (and it was).

Despite that my cake decorating skills are clearly underlevelled (I've never been able to get the icing satisfactorally smooth, in my opinion) I think they both turned out ok, especially considering this was my first ever attempt to actually try to decorate a cake. In any case, they both served their purpose and amused and were enjoyed by all.

In a way, I feel a little bad eating such adorable cakes, but now I get to eat Kirby and Pac Man (or what's left of them) for the rest of the week.

Anyway, that is all for the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Doing Time

We got our third piece for the orchestra this week. It's from Barber - Second Essay or something like that, not a memorable title, really. However, as I was playing through it, I found myself often uttering things like "this is so strange", especially regarding the time signatures. The piece changes time signature fairly often - not really an uncommon occurance, but this seems to do so more frequently than most of the stuff we've played - and while most of the time signatures that are used aren't really all that strange, there's some less than common stuff in there like 12/8 or 5/2. But the one that prompted a "that's so bizarre" was a single bar of 7/4 on the last page. Fun stuff, that.

In other news, the first performance for FASS 2010 was last night. It seemed to go well with no noticable major gaffaws (unlike skipping 20 lines in scene 1-4 in the dress rehearsal) and the audience was larger than is typical for opening night so that may be a good sign. The audience named the Silent Protagonist "Balthasar" last night which is respectable choice. Tonight we have the double feature, including the infamous "Friday Late" which will make for a long night.

Slightly related to that, I've had a cold this week and, as a result, did not sleep well at all on Tuesday night (or that's what I'm blaming, anyway) which meant I was veeeery tired on Wednesday. Tired enough that I had a nice two hour nap when I got home. I felt nicely rested afterwards, but was slightly disoriented as it felt a little like Thursday morning and had to check my watch a couple times to reassure me that it was, in fact, still Wednesday. I figure that was at least partly because when I woke from my nap I basically went through my typical morning routine: turn on computer, prepare food, eat whilst surfing the web. Ah well!

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

You wait... time passes.

So, it's been about a month since I last blogged, though I can't say I've had a burning desire to say anything into the ephemeral winds of the internets in that time. The last year ended, a new one started (as they are wont to do) and stuff has happened.

January is usually, at the very least, a slightly busier time of the year for me due to FASS. I'm not going to say too much about that at the moment. I was somewhat disappointed with my part (again) as it feels like I'm being type cast which I'm not sure I like. The part itself is not really a bad part, per se (it's in one of the scenes I wrote, after all), but it's not interesting enough or significant enough for me to look past the type casting and the fact that I'd really just rather have had a different role - there's quite a few parts I'd have preferred, actually. But as it turns out, as of yesterday I'm also doing another (small) part that was vacant after the original actor dropped out. I hope that it didn't come about as a result of me complaining to certain people, though I suspect that may have played a part. Ah well.

School has, of course, started up again as well. I am taking two classes this term, one in non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) and the other in computational photography. The first assignment for NPR was due yesterday so here's a link to my write-up: here. Most of the pictures are on the results page if you just want to look at some images (some of my readers may see some familiar faces in there) rather than worry about the technical details.

Since I actually need to be on campus five days a week this term, unlike the past couple of terms when I've been able to get away with only going in every other day, I decided to buy a bus pass for the term. Part of this was also because I decided in December that I just didn't feel like walking during the winter (I know, I know, my reader(s) in Edmonton will say I'm a wimp), but that aside, my walk is long enough that I'd be rather foot sore at the end of the week if I walked in every day. A plus to taking the bus is that my commute time is shorter and I'm generally in favour of shorter commutes, though I do have to set aside some time to go down to the exercise room now that I'm not getting my exercise through walking, though I don't view that as a problem. On the down side, I do have to schedule around the bus, but that hasn't been too bad so far and it's also cheaper than driving and parking every day would be.

And, of course, the orchestra has started up once again. This term we're doing Brahm's Symphony #4, a Rachmaninoff piano concerto and probably one other thing that hasn't been decided on yet. We have a small cello section again this term, but I suppose we'll manage.

Anyway, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Work in Progress

For the graphics course I'm TAing this term, sometimes one or another of the TAs puts a shirt together with an image of the good puppets and ray tracer images. I'm currently attempting to create a t-shirt image and thought I'd show a preview of the work-in-progress. As I'm not adept at any 3D modelling packages, and there seems to be no good way to import the puppets into any such program (at least not in a reasonable time frame) I've decided to go with something that is, essentially, an exercise in image editing:

Not all the puppets are there because I have to get larger versions of the screen captures of them so I don't have to scale them up too much for the shirt image and I want to get different poses for some of them (including a couple of the ones already in the image).

The reason for the Tetris-like background is because the first assignment for the course is, essentially, Tetris (which I believe I mentioned in a previous post). I managed to fill an 8-by-8 grid of Tetris pieces and have associated each puppet with a piece that sort of, but not quite, approximates the shape of the puppet - or that's the idea, anyway. However, there is one extra piece since there were only 15 puppets so I think my evil snowman will be putting in an appearance to fill up the last one.

To those of my readers who are familiar with the FASS script for 2010, note that I have associated Luigi with an s-shaped piece.

I haven't decided what exactly I want to do with the background - if I should leave it white, use some uniform colour (like grey) or fill in each square according to the colour of the associated Tetris piece. I'll probably make a few different versions and see which I like best. The final image will also have four ray tracer images across the bottom.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Someting Weird's Going On

Yesterday I listened to nearly my entire collection of Weird Al CDs. The only one I didn't listen to was Straight Outta Lynwood, which was down in the car and I didn't feel like going to get it. That was 10 CDs that I listened to in total, which means I have 11 Weird Al CDs.

I did this for two reasons: one, because I hadn't listened to some of the CDs in a while and decided I wanted two, and two, to serve as background music whilst writing my latest FASS scene and doing other assorted chores.

It's interesting hearing not only how Weird Al has developed over the years, but how the popular songs and styles have changed over the years since each Weird Al CD more or less gives a snapshot of the popular musical stylings of the day.

Anyway, that is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Potpourri

There hasn't really been anything that I've had a pressing need to blog about lately - not that there is ever really a pressing need for me to blog about anything, but less so over the past couple of weeks than normal, anyway - so I'm going to do an essentially random summary of recent events. Yay for recap episodes!

I gave my first tech talk at the weekly lab meeting last week. Everyone in the lab takes turns and, given the number of people in or attached to the lab, it seems to work out to about twice per year. Since I've not started any actual research yet, my talk was about my Masters' Thesis, essentailly the same talk I gave at Siggraph five years ago this summer. Seemed to go ok, especially since I basically hadn't looked at the stuff since Siggraph. Hopefully I'll have my PhD research started by the time my turns comes around again.

Also finished the first draft of the scene I'm writing for FASS 2010 last week. As expected it was on the long side, but it seems like some of the stuff will fit in one or another of the other scenes so there won't be too much that's actually lost when I start to trim things down. However, this means I have to restructure the first half of the scene and it's not quite as straight forward as I had thought. Oh well, I'll figure something out.

Been a bit lazy on my RPG editing tools lately, but got a little bit of work done on them this afternoon. I've been a little hung up on how to go about managing some data, but I think I've got a workable solution (though it may get changed later on) so I can start making some progress. Hoping to have it to the point where a player can walk around maps by the end of the summer so I've got to get moving if I plan to meet that goal.

And lastly, it looks like I may not be taking any courses again in the Fall term. So far, there's no graphics courses being offered and nothing else really catches my eye. I know there'll be at least one graphics course in the winter term, but for now I may just TA two courses for the fall if nothing else shows up.

Anyway, that, as they say, is that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

End of Term Report

Classes have ended for my first term back in school. This also means that the termly UW orchestra concert was this past week. Overall, it seems to have gone pretty well. I know I slipped up in places and I think I played some things better during rehearsals, but still it seemed like things went well. Now there's a month before orchestra starts up again for the summer (presuming they do something for the summer) which means that my cello is more than likely going to be sitting in its case for the next month, despite my best intentions of pulling it out and playing a bit - I always mean to, but it never actually happens.

Also, today was the FASS AGM. Now, the AGM is kinda dull, really as it's mostly just business. The only particularly interesting thing is that the theme for next year's show is selected during the meeting. A theme brain storming meeting was held early during the week and a short list was presented at the AGM. We had 4 themes to vote on: Disney, King Arthur, Video Games and Zombies/Survival Horror. Video games won the vote (with Disney coming in second), so that's the theme for FASS 2010.

Anywho, that, as they say, is that, for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

P.S.

I'm happy that the Video Games theme won, as it's one of the ideas I've mentioned from time to time (I didn't bring it up at the theme meeting, but I have mentioned it in the past).

Something about FASS

Yesterday was the read through for the FASS 2009 script - the theme this year is "Spies" (Live FASS, Die Tomorrow). In all honesty, I'm kind of "meh" about the script this year. While there's definately some funny stuff in there, a bunch of the humour is also not entirely my style, shall we say - a lot seems picked more for the shock or "I can't believe they just said" variety. The plot is also rather thin and doesn't seem well thought out. Not that FASS plots tend to be fantastic works of literature or anything, but this one nonetheless feels like the weakest one of the FASSes I've been involved with, at least at the first read through.

I'm only in one scene this year (again), but at least I've got more than two lines. My character has about a third of the lines in the scene. No song, though, unfortunately. The scene itself is ok and doesn't have any of what I would consider the more "questionable" humour. The scene does, however, seem extremely tangential and really has no meaningful connection to the main plot.

As far as FASS roles go, my best one was, undoubtedly, Roman (2006), with Thurman (2004) being a close second. My 2007 parts probably come in third, with the highlight for that year being that I got to wear a costume that wasn't just jeans, a t-shirt and an accessory. Dr. Toolittle (2001) and this year's part are probably about equivalent, tieing them for fourth, making 2005 and 2008 tied for my least favourite. To be fair, though, in 2005 I was commuting from Toronto so all I wanted was a small part that year.

Overall, I think some of my disappointment with this year's script comes from the sense that there's some missed potential. I think there could have been an interesting, amusing and coherent plot in there, but it mostly comes across as a string of loosely connected scenes where people crack jokes, scheme and plot but in the end, not much happens.

All this is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Even without much of a plot there's stuff to laugh at, though that will vary depending on individual sense of humour. I think it would be interesting to know who was the main writer for each scene as I suspect there may be some correlation with the type of humour in each scene.

Anyway, I think I've rambled on long enough about all that. Should be a fun month, regardless.

Freak Out,
-TFitC