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.