IN OTHER NEWS...

After a long hard day of feeding homeless people today, Seth, Kevin, Aisea and me decided that we fancied a much earned a hot-tub session... so we went to one of the posher hotels in town, pretended we were staying there and used their ridiculously nice hot tub. 

It was ridiculously nice.

KARAOKE!!

Korean style Karaoke is wicked! we had so much fun. Though I don't think I sang  single note in tune the whole entire night haha. It was a great way to say goodbye to everyone, man I love those guys. 

Lots and lots of fun was had by all.

LAST DAY

Today is my actual last day at BL:ND. 

Feels pretty strange.

It's been a great week though; on Monday I went to North Hollywood with some guys from risen who I didn't know that well to see a band I'd never heard. We had such a good time! It was wicked to hang out and the band, Bon Iver, absolutely blew my face off! ... they were amazing! I've been listening to their CD on repeat everyday since. I absolutely love it. They were inspiring to see live. 

So that was great. Last night we all went out to a wine bar as the first of apparently many going away parties, It was wicked. And today at Blind we're all getting together for a big lunch to say goodbye and then this evening we're heading to Korea Town for some Korean BBQ and Korean -style Karaoke! haha, cant even wait. 

I'm looking forward to going home a lot. I've missed my friends and family loads. Also, recently I've come to realise more and more how much I love my life, especially recently and just how much I have to be thankful for with the amazing people I seem to be surrounded by wherever I go in the world. It full on blows my mind. I hope I never take it for granted.

So I guess this small chapter of my life is over, its been more than amazing. 

SECOND LAST WEEK!!!

                                   

This week has been busy in weird ways. We're still working on the Honda spot and we've been staying late almost every night. This is definitely the most exciting project I've worked on - I think because it's an actual production, not just a pitch or boards and also the clients are cool, they seem to be up for anything we do! (which seems to be rare) Frustratingly though, I've been rubbish on this project! I've been designing mostly but also animating a few test pieces but I'm really not happy with what I've produced at all... and its taken me ages! haha. it's wierd.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about whether or not I'd even consider actually working here. Before I came I assumed that working for a company like BL:ND would be an ideal job - fun, exciting, good location, good pay, good people, creative, inspiring... etc, and I guess it totally is but there are little things that make me hesitant like the fact that all day from monday to friday I would live at a computer in an office... indoors. I think i'd find that pretty hard. Also, the hours are long and it's a competitive market; people who do this seem to never go home and their work becomes their lifestyle, I think one of the main reasons I'd find that hard is that because it's adverts... d'you kwow what I mean. I don't know if I'd be up for helping companies sell people stuff they don't even need. 

ah, I dunno.

It is really fun though, perhaps I'm just more interested in the production side of it... going places and doing more physical things.

Anwyays, so this week I went to gymnastics with Seth. We were inspired by the Olympics so we went to Culver City and joined in on an open gym session. They took us through a warm up, similar to Taekwon do and then said "Do what you want, you can use all the equipment!" and they had everything from a sprung floor for tumbling, to one of those foam pits you can land in, they had the bar thing that you swing around on and trampolines, crash mats, the whole set up. It was great. So we did that for a few hours, went out out a meal after and then went to Seth's and watched the mighty boosh (old greg... hahahaha "I'm old greg!". funny) I ached so badly for the rest of the week though, I can even still feel it a bit today. wednesday was the worst.

Last night (thursday night) I met up with Seth, Trevor and Kevin and we went to this crazy weird party where there was free food and drinks, met a few interesting characters and then, because it was near by, Seth showed us around his work (he works for an ad agency called RPA, RPA have been clients of BL:ND in the past). it was wicked, and interesting to see what it's like on that side of the industry.

this morning, I woke up at 6am to meet up with my friend tim. He took me rock climbing! we went to Malibu to a nice, empty beach with a tall rock face next to the sea. Tim does it all the time so he had all the gear, even those funny shoes that never fit. It was great fun, we set up, abseiled down and did a couple of climbs. I'd forgotten how tiring it is and how much it hurts your hands! this particular rock had very small cracks and ledges to hold on to. it was a great start to my day, I loved it.

The great thing about the people I've met here, especially the guys from Risen is that they seem to use me as an excuse to do cool things - tims been great with the surfing, climbing and going to cool places to eat and Seth's every other sentence seems to be "we need to show stef...." and other people do the same. So we do all this cool stuff. I love it. 

THINGS

On wednesday I went to Downtown LA with Lawrence and Jason, two of the 3D artists at BL:ND. We were attending some master classes for Maya, I just left with the biggest headache in the world.

I took this photo last night. We had a crazy electrical storm with no wind and no rain.... it was wicked! 

I did, however experience my first bit of actual rain yesterday afternoon... it was literally no more than five seconds of really fat rain and then it was over and the sun came out haha. funny.

Apart from that I've been working on the new Honda project at Blind, writing songs and watching the olympics :)

ON SET IN HOLLYWOOD

Today I'm on set. Blind are shooting a Honda spot with

the red camera. It's very cool.

Unfortunately, like everything else I'm not allowed to post any images of the actual Honda itself because it's an unreleased model ... so here are some 'car-less' photos....

28 DAYS LEFT AT BLIND

It's the end of another week and now the beginning of August... this week has absolutely flown by!

We started and finished a small animation project for a pet store, it was fun. The big project at the moment though is for Honda, and what's really cool is that next week Blind will be shooting live-action for it in Long Beach using the 'red camera'... which is pretty flippin wicked. I asked Chris if I could come along and he said I could as long as I'm not in the middle of a big project if one comes up. Can't wait. 

Apart from that, this week Aisea (my room mate) was playing drums for a band called 'Northern' at The Roxy Theatre on sunset strip. Hollywood (from what I've experienced) seems pretty dirty. the band were cool though... Aisea did well good. 

Tomorrow I'm road tripping off to Santa Barbera with my friends Kevin and Seth. Great guys. Can't even wait.  

 

EARTHQUAKE!!

At first I thought it was Kenny shaking my seat from behind, but soon enough everyone was up from their seats. I went and stood in the doorway incase another one hit and I heard Chris Do shouting "Welcome to California Stef!" haha. 

funny. 

It was the strangest experience... pretty much everything just shakes. 

Apparently it measured 5.8... a 'moderate' earthquake. 

A BETTER PLACE

At the beginning of July I worked on a project called "A Better Place" ... we had just a week to start, design, animate and finish this 2 minute piece. It was a fun. If you want you can now go to www.blind.com and see it! it should be the first one on the homepage. 

I was responsible for the first 30 - 40 seconds, so everything up to where she says "better place is re-introducing the electric car for mass production" is my work... there were 2 other animators working on this piece too... a freelance guy and my friend Maithy. 

OVER HALF WAY

This week started with an early morning surf... my friend Tim lent me his board and drove us to a good spot for beginners. It was great fun. We surfed for about an hour in 2-3ft waves and then I cycled to Blind. 

It's a great way to start the day. 

Blind has been cool this week... it's still pretty quiet though. We finished the boards for the drug company on Tuesday, I heard back today that the clients really liked my boards which is pretty cool. 

Since Tuesday I've been 'tutorialing it up' again. I think by the end of my time here I will know every piece of software imaginable... today was Maya in the morning and Pro-Tools in the Afternoon. I clearly love it. 

I also got paid this week... which is always nice. Because I don't have a bank account and probably wont get one, Blind decided to pay me in cash! haha ... it was well funny. What was great was that it was enough to buy myself a nice new MacBook pro. So I did that... I ended up handing this pile of cash back to Chris who agreed to buy the laptop for me haha... It felt well illegal for some reason! haha

People at Risen love the Mighty Boosh... so I'm off to watch a few episodes now I think. 

It's a little bit funny.

TUTORIALS, DRUGS AND BEACH CRUISING

I had a great week this week... for the first 3 days there were no projects so I literally spent 8 hours a day learning things, researching things and doing cinema 4D, After Effects and Flash tutorials. 

I full on love it! :)

So that was great. For the rest of the week Tom started me on this new project... it's for another drug company, man there are so many jobs for drug companies! it's unreal... and it's all over TV too. They clearly love it.

Anyways, today is saturday... I'm at home on Ocean Park and 28th and listening to Nizlopi. It's wicked. Aisea has this beach cruiser (google it) that he lets me use, so everyday I arrive at work in ultimate style. 

Today I cycled around loads... I went to Westwood and back this morning and then down to Venice beach later on. I really like Venice beach, it's got a lot of character. They've also got this wicked awesome road made specifically for bikes that's literally on the beach and goes all the way along the coast from west santa monica all the way past venice. 

So next week is more drugs... it's fun actually, I think Tom liked the stuff I was doing. Which is nice.   

MAD WEEKEND

So I was having a normal kind of weekend... I got some photos developed and generally just sorted some stuff out. Then in in the afternoon I got a call from this guy Aisea, the worship leader at Risen Church (where I go on Sunday evenings). He was was like "hey man, you want to go to a party?" and I was like "yeh". So on Saturday evening he turns up at my place in his jeep (proper full-on jeep with absolutely no kind of roof, just something that resembles a roll-cage)... man, it was wicked... riding on the freeway going  80 mph, it makes your face and hair go absolutely mental. So we get to this party and it turns out it's for this charity called Rise-up (go to http://riseupinternational.com/main.html it's a pretty cool website) and they're all about getting poor and abused kids from third world countries off the streets and into homes... this party was to raise awareness. It's pretty cool, they make and sell t-shirts and artwork and give all the proceeds to their cause. So that was really fun, there was live music, free drinks and I bought 2 T-shirts. After the party about 10 of us went to a thai food place to get some food. It was good fun, I ended up crashing at Aisea's friends place.

The next day Aisea and me just hung out all day and did a bunch of stuff... he took me to this well nice restaurant for lunch called Houstons where we had sushi and the nicest burger in the history of life, apparently a bunch of celebrities go there all The time.  After that, we went to this place called guitar center. Man, if you're a musician or a sound engineer you will love his place! ... it's this huge, multi story shop with guitars, drums, PA stuff and all the sound proof practice rooms you'd ever need. It was great. I was there to buy some drum sticks and a guitar tuner but Aisea ended up paying for it all! what a legend. So that was great. After that we went to the church at about 3pm to set up for the meeting (I was up for playing drums again) ... the meeting was great. If anyone's interested, they should go to the risen church website ( www.risenchurch.com ), my friend Trevor gives a really good short talk every week that you can listen to online... they're actually wicked. After the meeting, we all went out for this guy Paul's birthday... about 25 of us for mexican food. It was great fun, what was great too was that Paul paid for all of it! haha.

The most mental thing about the weekend was that I ended up moving house! ... Aisea was all like "man, it's not cool that you live so far out... if you want you can come live with me, rent free" ... So I was like "yes please!" so I did... we went and got pretty much all my stuff from my place and I moved in to his place! the most surreal thing ever. It's great tho, his place is nice and it's pretty close to work and everything. man, it's mental... So yeh, I moved house and saved a month of rent! 

Best thing ever.

BL:ND PARTY

It was Christine's last day so we had a small party. It was great. This is me, happy to be holding a beer after an intense week at BL:ND. 

From the left this is Tom, Christine, Maithy, Megan, Paul,  Sakona and me. 

Same people, same place. Lots of fun :)

LUNCH

These are the guys I go out for lunch with every day, almost always for asian food. It's wicked! (from the left) Paul, Maithy, Tom, Christine, Kenny, Jason and Thai. They're all wicked guys. This was Christine's last lunch.

BETTER PLACE

It's been a mad and crazy week. But also very fun. The job was to produce a 2 minute animation promoting an electric car campaign for 'Better place'. My job was to animate the first 40 seconds. We started animating on monday and today we've finished. It took missing all my lunch breaks and staying in the studio till 1am one night and then 11pm the next but I got it done. It was pretty fun though. 

COOL THINGS

This week has gone really quickly... probably because it's finished a day early. it's the 4th of July tomorrow so everyone gets a day off.

Last weekend was a weird one... I spent most of Saturday and Sunday walking around by myself, going to the beach, buying a drink, going back to the beach, going to the apple store, buying a drink, going back to the apple store... Until 6pm when I went to this church. It was so good!

Before I came to California, Cat found out about this place called 'Risen Church'... so I looked them up when I got here and it turned out they were just down the road from blind. So I went along on Sunday night and the first guy I meet is called Seth. It turns out that Seth works for an ad agency who have worked with blind... so I was all like "yes, a connection!" and it was cool, we had a lot to talk about. The second guy I met was Travis... I saw him and he was like "I know you man".... and I was all like "what??" .... and then he was all like "yeh, I met you the other night" and I was like "oh yeh!" and it turns out that he works with my room mate and I met him 2 nights before at a bar. man, it was the weirdest thing. but very cool. 

The best thing about the church was that they were so, so genuine... just such a wicked community of people you know. It was great.

Once again I realise that God is looking after me.

this week at Blind has been mixed... monday and tuesday I was working on a brand new pitch for a drug company. Didn't like it. Found it really, really hard. But then we got the all clear to start working on this electric car thing... that's been great so far, just fun animation.

Takes ages though.

We had a staff meeting today... was the best thing in the world. Chirs Do is my hero. 

It was wicked... like the BL:ND family getting together for a chat. There's a great atmosphere here. The meeting was pretty much about trying to be more energy efficient and Chris inspiring everyone to research, develop, learn and experiment. 

It was really cool.

 

ANIMATION FUN

So today, after finishing my animation project, I got called to the conference room. Apparently there's this big project with a tight deadline that they want me to do next week! It's great, I've been getting a lot of positive feedback so it's really encouraging. 

The project is a 2 minute animation promoting the use of electric cars... looks really cool. The only thing is we only have a week to do it! which is mad. from what I understand it will be me and one other person working on it. Fun.

I'm going surfing with my flat mate tomorrow, can't wait.

Fun fun fun

WORK STUFF

I heard back today that the client we were working for last week loved our ideas... which was nice. What I didn't realise was that we were in competition with a bunch of other design companies and that we won! so that was pretty cool. 

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to post any of my work. So never mind.

The next project is for AT&T... this time I'm doing the actual animation for an already approved board. Which is pretty cool. 

... I also heard rumors of a big music video project coming up. Sounds wicked. 

 

IMAGES AND STUFF

A palm tree. There are a lot of these.

My living room

The view from Ocean Ave.

            

Basketball on the Ocean front

 

This is my desk.

WEEK ONE

My first week at blind was wicked awesome. 

I loved it.

I have been assigned a creative director, his name is Tom Koh and he's an absolute legend!

I love him.

Tom is the guy who did all the 'Dogtown and Z-boys' and 'Riding Giants' graphics... the wicked thing is that when I saw 'Riding giants' - that made me want to get into motion graphics and thats the reason I'm doing animation. So there you go. I'm working for the guy who originally inspired me. 

pretty cool. 

So yeh, last week I was working on an "end-tag" for a network company called 'cellularsouth' I basically did some boards and test animations. Was good fun. 2 of my ideas were put forward.

 

I went to venice beach this weekend... very, very cool.

I've forgotten what clouds look like and I'm used to a steady 35ºC. My kind of weather. :)

hopefully I'll add some cool photos and videos soon.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

So far I have arrived, found my apartment, done a load of paper work and spent way too much time, money and energy on walking around, discovering there's not much public transport and then getting a taxi home for $40!! sick.

Apart from that it's pretty wicked here; the people are friendly, the city is massive, it's sunny, hot, things are cheap and drinks at blind are free :)

Bl:nd is cool so far. I haven't actually started doing everything but I'm starting to get a feel of what it's like to work here and in this industry. My boss, Chris Do, took me out for lunch yesterday. We had Mexican and talked about a bunch of stuff. It was great.

The office is pretty cool, it's small but smart with pictures of the work bl:nd has produced about the place. I have a dual monitor power mac that is mine for the 3 months I'm here. can't wait to start actually using it. A cool thing they have here is a library full of books, magazines, references, CD's, tutorial DVS's... pretty much everything you would ever need for design and motion stuff. At the moment I'm trying to learn cinema 4D while I wait to do my first project. Hopefully I'll get one soon.