August 8th, 2008 Ahmad Al-Mahir
The moment has arrived boys and girls! I’m booked on the 11am Cathay Pacific Airways flight on the 8th of August 2008. I’m spending a week in downtown L.A. and it should be an amazing eye-opening experience. I’m also bringing my laptop so I’ll try to post as much as I can about my adventures in The City of Angels and SIGGRAPH 2008. Keep a look out for some touristy pictures and hopefully the occassional drawing or three (if I can get around to it).
Aight! Catcha laters, peeps!
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May 3rd, 2008 Ahmad Al-Mahir
Wow. It’s been a hectic few weeks since the semester started and I’ve been to busy to blog. Anyways, I’m trying out some cool stuff in my animation modules and already I’ve spotted some solid animation potential in some of my students. This makes me happy indeed. It’s still early so I can only hope it all gets better and even more of my students get a good grasp of the basic animation principles as the weeks go on. We’ll see.
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OK. Here’s the SIGGRAPH-related news I was hinting at in my last post. I’m officially going to SIGGRAPH 2008 in L.A this August! I’m so looking forward to 1 week of incredible unforgettable experience. There’s a possibility my good Mexican friend from the MA course I took in Bournemouth will be attending as well so that’s double the coolness! Of course, it’s actually more like a business trip (I suspect I’ll be too busy understudying to attend some of the programs there) but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Let the countdown begin!
FYI, the trip is actually possible due to my involvement with SIGGRAPH Asia 2008. I’ve been appointed the Student Volunteer Program chair for the event happening in Singapore this December, and that means I’ll soon be busy with the recruitment, scheduling, delegating etc. I’m already slowly wading through the waters and getting to grips of what’s involved. No way I’m giving the opportunity up though. This is a fantastic chance for me to get more involved in the CG industry. And I’m getting tons of help. I’ve been blessed.
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I watched the “Iron Man” movie when it opened and suffice to say: IT ROCKS! Perfect casting of Robert Downey Jr. as billionaire playboy-turned-hero Tony Stark. The rest of the cast delivered solid performances too. Great origin story, good mix of fast-paced action, poignant self-reflecting moments and witty banter, with a pinch of social awareness message thrown in to boot. I was half-expecting it to disappoint given recent comic to movie projects I’ve seen. I recently caught “Ghost Rider” and “Superman Returns” on cable and had my fears realized. I’m glad to say “Iron Man” has returned some of my faith. Now, I’m definitely looking forward to the inevitable sequel. Easily one of my favourite (if not THE favourite) comic to movie adaptations ever. Maybe “The Dark Knight” will extend the good comic-to-movie run. And then maybe the upcoming “Hulk” movie will actually turn out good this time around? Anyways, go watch “Iron Man” already!
Iron Man in the classic armour design I remember best.
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April 6th, 2008 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I’ve been taking the train practically every day this past week to work and am enjoying it very much. I try to avoid the really heavy peak periods for the most part so I have been able to avoid the crazy sardine-like crunch that I hear people complain about so often. And I didn’t have to rush to get to my destination so the 5 or so minutes wait between trains and the travelling time weren’t as long as I’d expected otherwise. I must admit I’ve enjoyed the experience quite a bit compared to my usual drive to work. I don’t have to worry about navigating traffic, get to catch up on some reading (a rediscovered joy) and if I find a seat I might get the opportunity to sketch. It’s also relatively cheap.
I haven’t decided to give up my car at all in case you’re wondering. There are pros and cons for both modes of travel, especially if you have a family in tow. I doubt I’d enjoy taking the public transport with my wife and 3 boys (and the almost mandatory stroller) if I can help it. I have made up my mind to take the train more often to work from now on though. The pros simply outweigh the cons. We’ll see how I feel about it a few weeks after we get into the school semester proper with early morning classes and increased commuters.
Here’s a sketch of some passengers I spotted:
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There are a couple of major CG events happening this year: SIGGRAPH 2008 and SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 - the former being the major conference any CG enthusiast worth his salt should be aware of. SIGGRAPH has been annually attracting large turnouts of international visitors and contributors for a good number of years now, so it’s not such big news really. The topic this year is “Evolve” so I expect some new exciting changes happening. I’ve always wanted to attend the event, but the overall cost and its faraway location means it’s just been a pipe dream for me. Now, in addition to the annual event in USA, there will be another similar conference and exhibition in Asia (the first to be held in Singapore) at the end of the year. I’ll hopefully talk about some exciting developments related to these events in my next post. Exciting to me at least!
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My Icelandic friend Haukur, from the Masters course I took in Bournemouth is getting married late June over in Indonesia and we’re making preparations to fly down. Much as I’d love to spend a few additional days exploring Jakarta with the family, it’ll just have to be a short weekend trip as the semester has started by then. A few ex-classmates have indicated they will be attending too so it’ll be great to meet up with them and catch up on old times.
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March 7th, 2008 Ahmad Al-Mahir
My 5 year-old son Adib has outgrown his massive bus obsession (from collecting toys to surfing bus-related websites to drawing buses to riding them - as often as he can regardless whether we needed to or not - to reading bus-stop signs) and is really into bugs nowadays. Just pictures of them for now that is. We’ve bought him a few educational books on the creepy crawlies and his current favourite is “Pocket Spotters Insects”. It’s quite small and thin enough for him to bring around easily and I’m pleased to see its pages are well-worn from countless perusing. Before now, he’s been mainly looking at the pictures, reading the bug names aloud and assigning insect identities to his brothers and assorted family members (e.g. today he’s a seed bug, and his younger brothers Amil and Atif are a praying mantis and an ant respectively). Tonight, I saw him go a bit further and actually start drawing a few of them using images in the book as reference. I believe he gets additional encouragement to sketch from one of his presently favourite cartoons, ChalkZone. And I must say I’m pleased as Punch. Usually if given a piece of paper and a pencil, he’ll write down words and construct simple sentences. Now maybe he’ll grow to love drawing as much as I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy with him loving words too!
Check out that smile on his face!
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March 5th, 2008 Ahmad Al-Mahir
I’ve installed the latest patches, reset the gallery and finally got the affected pages up and running properly again. I’ll try and upload some new content soon.
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