questions and answers
Jul. 23rd, 2002 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashI pretty much resolved to not put the results of those 'What [blah] are you?' tests in here. Or long lists of questions.
However, I feel an urge to answer some questions. So. For a limited but unspecified time, I will answer any and all questions about myself posed as comments to this entry.
I reserve the right to answer them in a nonsensical manner, or to evade the question if I feel it's going into places I'd prefer not to travel, but I will attempt to make my evasions amusing, and possibly even to contain a nugget of truth.
I got the idea from someone else's lj, but I have no idea whose it was.
I'm curious to see what people may be curious about regarding myself.
However, I feel an urge to answer some questions. So. For a limited but unspecified time, I will answer any and all questions about myself posed as comments to this entry.
I reserve the right to answer them in a nonsensical manner, or to evade the question if I feel it's going into places I'd prefer not to travel, but I will attempt to make my evasions amusing, and possibly even to contain a nugget of truth.
I got the idea from someone else's lj, but I have no idea whose it was.
I'm curious to see what people may be curious about regarding myself.
no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 12:44 pm (UTC)I was born in and grew up in New Orleans. I think I've done some growing up; I try not to let myself get old but I've gotten over some issues.
I still think of myself as being from New Orleans, except when I go back for a visit and it looks dowdier and backwatery than ever. Then I'm from Los Angeles. It's kind of weird; I'm not sure if I'm really 'from' anywhere any more. I think LA does that to you.
The thing I like best about living in Los Angeles is that I can actually attempt to have a career here. Animation work is next to non-existant in the rest of the country. The fact that my allergies really quieted down is a big plus, as well.
I most detest how spread-out LA is. If you don't have a car or motorcycle, getting anywhere takes forever: regardless of whether I take the bus or bicycle, it currently takes me about an hour each way to and from work, sometimes more if I get unlucky with late busses.
Touristy stuff? I have no clue. Growing up in a tourist town and being misanthropic makes me tend to want to stay away from tourist-full places. Disney World, I suppose; some friends recently came here and spent a couple days at Magic Mountain riding tons of coasters. The La Brea Tar Pits. The Dudley Do-Right Emporium. I've heard going up to the base of the Hollywood sign is a bit of an adventure, but never tried it myself. Spümcø, if I'm working there at the time. One of the many portions of coastline.
I went to SF once, years ago, but don't remember anything in particular about it. I'd have to do a little research on it to come up with an answer to that question. I'd probably want to visit places friends worked to see what kinds of cool things they were creating for money, but that's debatable as a place to see on a tour.
If I won a lottery, I would either buy a really nice computer, or a 'classic' car. And then the other one, in short order. Then I'd get the car gutted and re-built with some kind of electric engine, so it's almost like a ghost from the twenties, driving with next to no noise.
I'll have to ponder that last one and come back to it. It's not something that's even begun to cross my mind - I'm not always comfortable with myself, but I don't hate myself enough that I've really desired being someone else.
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Date: 2002-07-23 01:10 pm (UTC)Regarding the last question, it was more of a "if you could still be you, but ride around inside someone else's mind for a day & learn about them from the inside out" who & why.
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Date: 2002-07-23 03:03 pm (UTC)I'm assuming this is riding as a passenger, not as the driver - it's not 'Who would you like to have in the title role of your own version of Being John Malkovich?'.
I think I'd most like to see the inner landscape of... an ordinary person. I'm a lot smarter than most people (this is not intended as bragging; I was identified as 'genius' early on in life; most of my troubles in school were from vast boredom caused by waiting for everyone else...) and thus just can't understand the motivations and mental landscape of an ordinary person.
Someone who actually enjoys 'popular culture'. Someone who isn't creative. Someone who is content to work a job they loathe.
Because I've always wondered if people without all these whirling thoughts and obscure discontents and occasional cosmic worries are, well, happier.
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Date: 2002-07-23 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 12:53 pm (UTC)<lies>
Jim Groat. One look at him and I just want to strip naked and launch myself into his arms, crying 'Take me now, you virile lump of man-flesh!'
Oh, wait, how can I forget Captain Packrat? He just makes me all shivery!
And then there's Mark Merlino. Chirp! Need I say more? Purrrr.
</lies>
There's just so many to choose from.
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Date: 2002-07-23 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 11:40 am (UTC)When and how did you discover Furry fandom, such as it isn't?
Do you think having your father pass away fairly on gave you any perspectives or abilities to deal with life and families that you wouldn't have otherwise had?
When and why did you decide to go into traditional character animation, rather than into stop-motion, 3d, or into some other area (effects animation or comics)?
As memory serves, when you started at Spumco you were selling yourself with a portfolio, rather than a demo reel. What sort of stuff did you have in the portfolio that said here's someone who can animate?
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Date: 2002-07-23 01:10 pm (UTC)I discovered that other people were doing semi-serious work with animal-headed people sometime in the mid eighties, when the B&W indy comics were booming. I'm not sure when I discovered the weird society of people who obsessively consume and create the stuff. I was already familiar with general SF fandom, so it wasn't as much of a shock as coming to it cold would've been; just a little further out.
I think having my father die early (on my twelfth birthday, for those of you who haven't heard that particular lovely fact of my history - fine the night before, then dead on the kitchen floor when I got up the next morning from a cerebral anyeurism) fucked me up. It drove me deeper into self-imposed isolation - I was already weird, bookish, and socially maladroit - and made all future family gatherings pretty damn miserable. I don't think it made me a stronger person or any such bullshit; it just made me glummer.
Wanting to be an animator is something that has its roots so far back I can't find them. One of the few books I have that's falling apart is a much-read copy of Leonard Maltin's history of animation, 'Of Mice and Magic'. I've just always found it fascinating. 3D and effects animation seem to be the domain of obsessive detail freaks, which I am not; my strength as an artist, for as long as I can remember actually having anything I really liked about my work, has been a sense of kinetic life, not tight observation of details. Traditional character animation also appeals to my love of flat, graphic uses of colors. I can appreciate other forms of animation, but just don't feel drawn to their particular magic like I do to drawings come to life.
I ended up kind of backing into my job at Spümcø. I came in originally to do Flash programming, not animation, brought in by my ex-roommate because he knew me and my skills. Somehow I managed to slide over into Flash animation. I'm still not drawing for a living right now, just manipulating other people's images and applying my animation knowledge to make it work. *sigh*
more questions
Date: 2002-07-23 01:57 pm (UTC)Ahem! Did you go to some sort of art or animation school? :)
Re: more questions
Date: 2002-07-23 02:16 pm (UTC)Yes, I did. After giving up on a computer science degree at the University of New Orleans, I got an 'associate of arts, commercial art' degree at a community college, then came out to LA to go to an animation school that has since vanished.
The best thing I learnt in said animation school was how to really use that basic construction you see in the Preston Blair book and the like, to everything - cartoon or realistic. My figure drawing took a huge leap in quality once I started to approach life drawing the same way I'd approach a cartoon character out of my head.
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Date: 2002-07-23 04:06 pm (UTC)Hopefully the person who asked that question can see the response. I'm not qholly sure how this little feature functions.
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Date: 2002-07-23 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 04:34 pm (UTC)No apology or flagellation is neccesary. Unless you, you know, like the flagellation part.
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Date: 2002-07-23 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-23 08:52 pm (UTC)They were mostly greyish. New Orleans is an overcast place. Even clear skies have clouds there. It rains every afternoon all summer long.
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Date: 2003-08-07 03:32 pm (UTC)What sort of serpent would you mail, and to whom, if you were mailing a live serpent to someone? Why?
What would your coat of arms look like, if you were making one for yourself? Why?
You and your army of fearsome entities can invade and control one current terrestrial city. Which one, and why?
What book do you reread the most? Why?
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Date: 2003-08-08 12:55 am (UTC)If I was forced to mail a live serpent, I would want to mail the Rainbow Serpent.
I had to make one as a school project back in third grade or so. ALl I remember is that it included a swipe of a Charles Addams cartoon to manifest my Weird Sense of Humor. Nowadays, it would probably involve black and green spirals. The Latin motto would translate roughly to "Go Away". Perhaps in a less polite form.
Peoria, IL. Because it's one of the five standard backwater towns; nobody would believe reports of it being used as a base for an army of global domination.
I'm not sure I can point to one in particular; I don't put a notch on the cover of a book every time I read it. These, however, are the ones I'm pretty sure are the major candidates:
Tim Powers, "On Stranger Tides", because there's just something about the dying of magic, pirates, and voodoo.
Iain M. Banks, "Use of Weapons". Strangely involuted space opera with multiple narrative streams; the only book I've ever read in any order than the traditional front-to-back.
Michael Swanwick, "Stations of the Tide". It's just so kaleidosopic and multilayered.
There's probably some other book that is actually the book I have re-read the most, by a long margin, which I would be completely embarassed to find is the most-read.
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Date: 2003-08-08 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-08 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-07 10:41 pm (UTC)Kinda boring question, so I apologize in advance... but I was wondering how you found yourself in the career you are now? You had said earlier in this thread that you had always been interested in animation, but was that your goal in college? And how did Flash enter the picture?
Oh, and one more... where would you like to see yourself in five or ten years (not a personal question, but I mean job/career-wise)?
Thanks!
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Date: 2003-08-08 01:04 am (UTC)I didn't think of animation as something to actually do for a living until people were boggled by my senior project in college, which was re-shooting and coloring a short animation I'd done in a computer graphics class a few years earlier. So I came out to LA for more schooling.
Flash was accidental. This question sort of touches on how I got started. After the game was done, I came back to Spümcø when 'Weekend Pussy Hunt' started, and wound up as one of the Flash directors because of my combination of animation and technical skills. After that, a year of the horror of 'Booty Call', and the Boo Boo cartoon, I've had more than enough Flash to last me a lifetime.
I can usually barely plan a year in advance, much less five or ten. Hopefully by then I will have been involved in something that has actually made a decent chunk of money for myself, much of which will probably have gotten invested; thus, I won't have to live from paycheck to paycheck like I do now. I'm not sure if I'll still be in animation. I will probably have departed and returned to Spümcø several times.
If I ever get off my ass and do my comic, I might end up with a show somewhere on the strength of that; that would probably end up about five or seven years from now, given the rate I work and the projected size of 'Drowning City'.
I'd like to see myself fabulously wealthy and semi-retired, but I won't hold my breath.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-09 08:07 pm (UTC)One question:
Date: 2003-08-07 11:04 pm (UTC)--SPEICU
Re: One question:
Date: 2003-08-07 11:32 pm (UTC)I can't remember anything good about that day.
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Date: 2003-08-09 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 12:37 pm (UTC)