Up For Air

Things (by which I mean school) have been a bit busy of late with various deadlines coming and going.  Having just recently done my second (of three required) PhD seminar talks I have a bit of a respite before diving back into the next deadline (a paper submission for a conferece) which is about a month and a half away so not immediate but still all too close.

The draft of the script for the rest of episode six of The Word Smith now exists, though it may be a while yet before work resumes on it in earnest - likely after the aforementioned paper is out of the way.  Hopefully, though, there'll be an interlude or two up in the interim.  One such interlude is currently in the works, pencil version below:

And with that, dear Freaks, I bid the until next narf.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Post-It Post

I thought I'd take a bit of time to talk a little bit about my PhD research. I'm currently preparing a poster to submit to an upcoming computer graphics conference (being held in Toronto this year) and, since my research relates to comics, I figure doing a comic-style poster would be fitting. Here is one of my drafts:I've done a few different drafts so far, but I think this is probably the layout that I'm going to go with. Take a look at it, hopefully it's relatively self-explanatory.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Babble, Babble, Babble

I'm working on my "comp II" (not right now, I mean in general) which I've mentioned before - it's one of those requirements for my PhD. Every now and then, I get stuck with a bit of writer's block. When that happens, I sometimes just start typing random babble, stream-of-conscious type of stuff, in an effort to try to get things started again, with varying degrees of success. If nothing else, it usually leaves me with something somewhat strange to look at for a bit.

Since there hasn't really been much blog-worthy stuff happening of late (though I should probably do a final write-up for the comic workshop), I figured I'd inflict a couple of the more recent stream-of-conscious eruptions on my one or two actual readers so that they can boggle at it. BOGGLE I SAY!

Here's one from a couple of weeks ago (or thereabouts - I don't timestamp them):

...while also being a contestant on Jeopardy!, but not Wheel of Fortune (which is for dumb people). There are two rules for every yard stick, most notably the inevitability of walls to be solid, at least when yellow. Foreasmuch as nine bricks forms a collection, there is a sparrow that drinks tea and sings ballads about walruses in tutus. There is nothing in so much as there is something, but when those notions become palatable, it is really for the best that they be shelved with the mustard. This I know for I have worn socks, but not because I have hands on my feet. That would just be silly. It is my esteemed thought that the whole of the part is nothing that cannot overcome the adversity which you now face, which is nautical.

And the most recent one, being the one from just before I made this post:

Content. Like a table. Flat and made of wood. Ergo: bording, dull, insipid -- you get the idea. Or do you? Idea's are, after all, rather ephemeral, you can't get them like you can get, say, a cold, or the bubonic plague. Not that you can actually get the bubonic plague these days either, but, well, that's really neither here nor there. It's over there. Maybe under. Like underground. Which is where you might be if you had the bubonic plague. Or after, I suppose. But I digress. Or perhaps regress. Or even depress. Although what I press, that's harder to say. I certainly don't work for a newspaper and there are no big red buttons around either. Not to imply the buttons are necessarily round. Or red. Or big. Big and red even, like a dog, except that I don't like dogs so I won't go there. But maybe over there. And there we are, again, back over there. What's so fascinating? Is it like a train wreck, or one of those trashy talk shows? Though how those work I couldn't say. I mean, you can't show talk to someone, after all, it's just sound -- it's ephemeral, like ideas. Unless your ideas are announced by a big glowing lightbulb appearing over your head out of nowhere. Maybe you've got word balloons floating over your head -- then you could show those to somebody. They might still think you're crazy, but it would be a start. It would be like you're at a race, or something, but what would you race? Stuff? Or things? And who would win? Well, I suppose that would depend on who had the fastest stuff -- zero to stuff in sixty seconds. That's a minute. Not minute which is to say, small. Well, I suppose your stuff could be small, but that's none of my business so I won't pry. I won't even try to pry, though it might be wry. Why? I won't lie... because I'm not really sure where I was going with that so I'll just let it fly. Like a house.

And that is that. I'll have to see about writing up a finale for the comic workshop in the next few days or so.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Under My Thumb

I just noticed that I forgot to commemorate my 111th post. Fortunately, since it was my previous post, it served to point out something suitably bizarre for such an auspicious occasion.

The point of this post, however, is not to dwell on interesting numbers. As I have mentioned previously, my PhD research is related to comics and, as such, it seems that trying my hand at making a comic would be a useful experience. I wrote up a short script back over reading week and this week I have undertaken the first step on that journey - namely, creating the layout thumbnails. Here are the results:

Basically, thumbnails are meant to be rough sketches showing the layout of the panels and also of what will go into said panels. The level of detail in the thumbnails seems to vary widely from artist to artist. The above page of thumbnails shows four comic pages. I hope the division between pages is relatively clear, otherwise the image might seem a bit confusing. (Top left is page 1, top right is page 2, bottom left is page 3 and bottom right is page 4.)

The thumbnails don't include (much) dialogue, so it probably won't be immediately obvious exactly what's going on, though I have sketched in where I think the speech balloons will go. Each page took about an hour to create the thumbnails.

As might be obvious from the thumbnails, the characters look a bit generic at the moment. That is by intent since I haven't actually gone and done any character design yet. I didn't want to be tempted to put too much detail into the thumbnails. So my next step will be coming up with some actual character designs, which I'll post about when they're done (hopefully in a week or so).

So far I'm enjoying this little project. I haven't really done much drawing since when I was doing my Master's degree and it's nice to have something to motivate me to do some drawing again.

Until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Grab Bag

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!

Today I actually started doing some programming related to my research. Nothing exciting yet, just laying down some groundwork. And, of course, since it's just getting started, it may all end up getting discarded before the end anyway. Who knows! I sure don't!

In much less exciting news, I will be going off to proctor in about ten minutes or so. I've probably said it before and shall no doubt say it again, but I - hate - proctoring.

Well, that is all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Drawring Time

This is about a week and a half or so after the fact, but I sat down and did some drawing recently, which is something I'd not done in a while but had been meaning to do. There was a reason for this, beyond just wanting to draw. I've been reading "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud, recommended by my supervisor as part of background reading for my research. (Incidentally, I think it's incredibly cool to be in a field where I can read about comics and call it "research".) Anywho, I decided I wanted to try to make some observations on how I drew stuff, so I sat down to draw something:


I decided to deliberately leave the drawing unfinished as I think it gets the point across. The notes on the image are more or less legible (should be able to click on it for the full size) so I won't reiterate them here, except for the one marked with a star.

Star: this arrow is pointing at the fold in the sleeve. I had considerable difficulty figuring out how the sleeve should fold and, I'm quite sure, got it completely wrong. This did, however, make me wonder how good people are at recognizing when something like this isn't correct. How much, if any, innate understanding of how fabrics behave to people have? In other words, how many corners could you cut in simulating, rendering or animating fabric before people noticed that something was off?

Also, there's something called the "uncanny valley" when referring to near-photorealistic renderings of human faces. The basic idea is that there is a point where a computer generated image is very close to being realistic, but not quite fully realistic, and it starts looking creepy because humans are very good at recognizing faces so we start picking up on all the things that aren't quite right, but when things are a bit less realistic our brains are more willing to tolerate the imperfectoins, presumably because it's working at a more abstract level at that point. Do similar things exist with other things, like the folds in cloth?

I don't know the answers to any of this, but it was interesting to think about nonetheless.

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

Full Spiral

Today was my first day back in school as I start my PhD at UW, having come full circle, in a way. It's really more of a spiral, though, since I'm not back exactly where I started, as my last time at UW was as an undergrad, so I am moving up in the world! In a manner of speaking, anyway.

The first day was largely uneventful, overall. I went on an epic quest to get office and lab keys, my student card and the like, going up several levels in the process no doubt. No classes today, since the class I've signed up for this term doesn't start until tomorrow, and I'll probably end up sitting in on some other classes as well before finalizing my courses for the term.

I had expected being back on campus for the first time in about eight years as a student to feel stranger than it did, but then I suppose that I'm on campus often enough for things like FASS, orchestra and CTRL-A that in a way it almost feels like I never left, in a way.

Anyway, it seems like I should have a reasonably slow first week or two to ease myself back into life as a student.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Wark! Wark!

It's official now - I've submitted my "two weeks" notice at work. I put that in quotation marks as it's really a month-and-a-half notice, so as to give them hopefully sufficient time to get a good start on finding a replacement before I leave. My end date is Dec 5, which will give me about 4 weeks off before starting in on my PhD, depending on when exactly classes start.

And that, as they say, is that.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Interesting Times - Piled Higher and Deeper

So, it's been an interesting week. More precisely, I've had two interesting Tuesdays in a row. Firstly, last Tuesday, was my anual performance review at work, which was somewhat unexpected. I say "somewhat" because it's that time of year so I knew it would be happening sooner or later, but when it happened it was more or less a "surprise! You've got a performance review in an hour!" sort of thing. Whatever. It was fairly painless and they decided to toss some more money at me (not literally).

What made last Tuesday more interesting, however, was that later that evening, I got an e-mail from one of the graphics professors at UW (University of Waterloo) inquiring about my PhD application and if I was still interested. Of course, I replied that I was, and I presumed that, since the prof had taken the trouble to contact me, there was a decent chance of getting an acceptance.

Well, this afternoon, being the following Tuesday, I received my acceptance letter from the department. So it appears that I will by starting my PhD (read: piling it higher and deeper) in January. Not exactly the normal time to start, but that's what worked out, and I'm not really complaining.

The somewhat ironic thing, is that I'll be taking a pretty hefty pay cut from my current salary, but then, if it was about the money, I wouldn't have applied in the first place.

Freak Out,
-TFitC