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.