Well kids, I think it is that time. My obvious absence over the past month has led me to decided to close this small but fun and interesting chapter of my life. I just don't have the time or energy to write in a blog even every once in a couple days. So I have decided to end it all and Send the Pain Below, lol. I will say that it was a fun time and there were a couple of interesting entries here and there, as well as some memorable arguments with Mr. Olstad, but it's just time to be done. There are other things that I need to devote my time to and this just doesn't fit in anymore. But I was never one for long winded explanations or reasons so I will simply end it by saying thank you to all who have ever read an entry on this blog over the past 15 months and I wish everyone luck on whatever life journies you may encounter. If anyone is ever in St. Louis feel free to drop me a dime.

But what's a zmuh11 entry without a couple links?

Please feel free to visit, view, or even comment on these two videos. They represent about half the 3d work that I've done over the last 3-4 months. The video titled "Deep Sea Wonders" was my first fully rendered scene in Maya while "Winter" was my second. They obviously both have their flaws but for the first couple tries they worked out pretty good.

1. "Deep Sea Wonders" by Zach Haugen copyright 2008
http://vimeo.com/2637675

2. "Winter" by Zach Haugen copyright 2008
http://vimeo.com/2808234

And with that and for the last time

Peace Out
Zmuh11

How I Am complacent Listening To Send the Pain Below by Chevelle

I'm not back. I'm just gonna perpetuate a couple of cool links that I have found/been introduced to over the past few weeks.

A lot of stuff has been going down, both good and bad.

Good - I got my first freelance job
Bad - My arms are shaking because I'm so tired, and from doing 60 push-ups, argh.
Good - I've got a couple 3D scenes rendered, including one that's fully composited and will be on youtube soon.
Bad - Waiting 14 hours for 180 frames to render :)
Good - The semester is almost done
Bad - There is a ridiculous amount to  be done before then
Good - I go home in 13 days!!!
Bad - 13 days
Good - I saw Bolt tonight
Bad - Vic is pissed at me

I'm done

Links, thanks to Scott and Blender the open source 3D program

1. This is a really cool 3D short I ran into the other day while perusing Blender's website.
http://www.responsibilityproject.com/films/lighthouse/

2. Thanks to Scott for showing me this cool flash game called Auditorium. !Warning! don't play this game if you have homework because it will never get done.

http://www.playauditorium.com/

With that said, I'm tired.
Peace,
Zmuh11


I'm not back

How I Am exhausted Listening To Lucky Denver Mint by Jimmy Eat World

One of the aspects that I always enjoyed about myself is that when there is a new big hit, big drama, I have to stop all life to watch this show, television series I always tend to simply ignore and shrug off the current TV trend. Shows like Lost, Heroes, and 24 I never got into, and to this day the only real television series I still enjoy watching are Law and Order and Star Trek TNG. This is based on a number of reasons, one being that I don't have time for television and two I enjoy watching movies much more than Television series. DVDs have no commercials. Another reason that I hate series like Lost is that you can't follow that shit if you miss one or two episodes. It isn't a TV show that I can enjoy without having seen every single episode because the storyline is just ridiculous. With shows like Star Trek and Law and Order each episode it's in own little mini movie that doesn't depend on other episodes, excluding the occasional two part stories. It makes these shows easier to watch and enjoy.

Now I can rant on and on why I hate Lost, but that isn't the point of this post. The point of this post is to say that I've found a series that actually hooked me into itself, and it's not a series like Law and Order it's a series like Lost that if you don't watch all the episodes you might not understand the entire story. The show that I really enjoy watching now is Prison Break, which started back in 2005. Now in it's 4th season I've really became a big fan of the show. One night about a month ago my roommate borrowed the entire season 1 DVD's from a friend of his and started watching them. It kind of became a nightly ritual for us to do our homework and then watch an episode. Soon though I was watching more episodes than he was, and in only six days I watched the entire first season. Then I was able to borrow the season 2 DVD's from another friend and those were watched in another 7 days. Then the second half of season 3, which is only 13 episodes, was online so I watched those in 2. Then all of what I missed of season 4 was online until now I am completely caught up with the story including tonight's brand new episode. 

So yeah I kind of became a Prison Break freak. I don't know I really like the show. All of the complex planning that the main characters go through to achieve each seemingly impossible task is a lot of fun. Plus the emotional situations that all of the characters experience, especially the love between the main character Micheal and Sarah is incredible. Though this show isn't without it's flaws. I mean after 4 seasons of planning you would think that Micheal and his brother would eventually get caught or something would go wrong. The show does throw the brothers plenty of challenges but seriously every plan that they've done has succeeded one way or another. Which leads me to believe that this season is the final season, and personally I think it's gonna end with one of the brothers dead, but we'll see if that happens.

Needless to say I like the show a lot. Only two other shows that I can think of really enticed me into obssesively watching them. One was Survivor which I and my family ritually watched every Sunday for 4 seasons, and the other was Avatar the Last Airbender simply because I'm a nerd and it's the only Nicktoon to have any freaking closure.

So yeah Prison Break equals awesome go out and watch that shit.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am cold Listening To none

It's been busy this week folks but some exciting things have been happening.

One, I turned 21 on Saturday!!!! It was an awesome night and trust me I lived it up to the fullest extent. That's really all that should be said about it. Drinking for the first time was a little weird, and beer did not taste like I thought it would. But after trying a couple different kinds so far my favorite beer is Guinness, and do I regret waiting to drink till I turned 21? No

Two, a while while back I posted that I might be doing a freelance job modeling and texturing some robots. Well I thought that was going to fall through because it had been forever since I heard back from the guy but I finally got a message the other night and hopefully will start working on something soon. I don't officially have a job yet but it's getting close.

Three, I've been unusually productive this week so far and I hope that trend continues.


So yeah that's been me the past few days. I've been meaning to tell you all about my obsession for Prison Break, but I think that will wait until next Monday night.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am hungry Listening To Closure by Chevelle

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!


Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am happy Listening To Get Some by Chevelle

Here is some 3D work I've been hiding. This project is going to hopefully be an entry to my school's animation festival at the end of the year. Keep in mind it's still a work in progress, but hopefully I'll have a whole underwater scene going with this.



Enjoy

Days till I turn 21.........................................2

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am tired Listening To Audtodesk Maya 2008

Another cheesy title I'm aware. That's something I'm not very good with. This was another for fun photoshop piece I've done recently. Another of what I hope is many to follow. 


I'm in a Japanese/Mind and tradition class for school and one of the aspects we are studying is the Japanese aesthetic of simple beauty. So I followed those rules to create this. The seven words you see are the 7 tenets of Bushido, another aspect we are studying. I also wanted to incorporate something from Japanese nature and since I love Japanese maples I had to use a Japanese maple leaf in my design. What I'm really proud of is creating the Samurai sword I used in this piece from scratch. That was a lot of fun, but after a few days I think I could have done a better job on it. I'm happy with the design as a whole though. It wasn't quite what I had set out to create. Originally I wanted to create a piece with a lot more elements but since I wanted this piece to be simpler that wasn't an option. The next one will have a lot more elements. I think my goal will be to just keep adding stuff until there is almost to much, and then add more :)

Days till I turn 21..........................3

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am tired Listening To none

Last week one of my professors brought in some images to our bi-weekly SIGGRAPH meeting and gave us a short tutorial about how to make two planets collide. Of course I took the tutorial a lot further than intended, and I'm sure glad that I did. I've always wanted to create an image like this but I've just been to afraid to really give it a try, but apparently with the right content/images I can make really awesome images.

So check out my latest work, Intergalactic Merger, like the title? yes? no?


I'll have another one for tomorrow, a very different image though.

Peace out
Zmuh11

3 Days

How I Am blank

Closure has come..........to me..................myself...................you will never belong.......................to.............me.


I feel like the past week I've been living by that song by the good old boys of Chevelle. For some reason I have been missing my home friends so much that it's actually quite pathetic. However it is usually around this time that I do get a bout of homesickness seeing how it's my birthday in one week and I won't be seeing a single person from home for it. Sure I'll get a call from my family and those few home friends that still really care about me, (this has devolved into me typing out how sorry I am for myself, good lord), and of course I'll get a million facebook "happy birthdays" from people I haven't spoken to in a million years but for some reason they felt compelled to send me a quick message, argh. I'm also feeling really down because Vic is in MN vising a friend from Chicago who goes to school in Winona, and I'm really depressed that he is there and I'm not, but hey only another 8 weeks and I'll get to see people from home again. And this homesickness I feel will most likely dissapate after my birthday comes and goes, which by the way I'm really excited for, yeah turning 21!

You may see some more artsy/fartsy stuff this week.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am cold

After promising you 3D stuff I finally get to deliver.

This is a walk cycle of the 1st 3D character that I've modeled, textured, rigged, animated, and rendered on my own. I've done all of those things using other models/rigs, but this is the first character where I've done all of it, and needless to say I'm pretty damn excited. I've learned a lot since coming back from LA and from this summer, but I still have a long way to go. I got some great feedback from another animator I know and I have lots more work to do. Animation is actually probably my weakest area and that's where this walk cycle is suffering right now.

Let me know what you think. The character is a robot that comes to Earth in prehistoric times to learn as much as he can about Earth so that his race can move to our planet, which gives him an uncureable sense of curiosity........

Anyways, here is my first character's first walk cycle. I should have more for you soon........



Any comments/critiques are always welcome.

Peace out
Zmuh11

PS. The new Less Than Jake album is awesome, I finally checked it out the other day and I really like it.

How I Am amused Listening To There's a Devil in my DNA by Less Than Jake

One of the few times that I'm actually put up something that I promised you all.

I found a cool photoshop tutorial the other day that goes over how to turn a new photo into a more old-fashioned gritty type photo, and of course with me having a million photos of old things I thought I would give it a try. This was my first run at it, and to tell you the truth I'm not quite happy with the final result.

Check it out


It doesn't have the cool effect that I was going for. Though in this case I followed the tutorial pretty much step by step. I think I'm gonna go back at it now and try to do my own thing and make it really grungy/dirty.

Here is a link to the tutorial I followed if you want to try it out for yourself

LINK

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am disappointed Listening To nothing at the moment

Over the time that this blog has been in existence I have linked to Scott's LJ Innerbeats at least two dozen times. More often than not it was during a futile arguement about underage drinking or politics, among other things. For more than 2 and a half years Scott has updated his blog nearly every night. Often times sacrificing both sleep and social status to do so. There were many a time me, him, and Jesse would be hanging out and as we would leave at 3am Scott would say, "Damn now I have to update the blog," but he was always diligent about it, and for a long time Innerbeats has had a prominent place on my RSS feeds.

Unfortunately as of October 1st, 2008 Scott has stopped updating Innerbeats. The stress of trying to update a blog with quality updates every night just didn't fit into this lifestyle anymore, and fraknly I don't blame him. The longest streak I ever had with this blog is what 30-40 days? Scott did it for two and half years!!!! Well he missed one day here or there, but never more than two days at a time max, and if he ever was gone he'd find someone to blog for him. Something I once considered doing here but then I realized what this blog was actually for. Still Innerbeats was always something I could turn to every morning for an interesting read. Now it has come time to remove it from my feed.

Fortunately Scott has not dared disappeared from the blogging realm, oh no. His new blog "Ghost Do Not Scare Me" is every bit as good as Innerbeats but I feel this new blog will be much less stressful for Scott.

So to say goodbye to Innerbeats I will link it's last post to this one more time.

Innerbeats - The Last Post

In other news I will have something to share by the end of the day tomorrow. It won't be 3D unfortunately, (that comes next week and it's going to be awesome), but I will have something photographic/graphic tomorrow night.

Also, check out this artist by the name of James Tu. I've been looking at his designs a lot lately and got really inspired by him. His piece titled "Expansion" is now my new desktop. Check him out. Here is a link to an interview abduzeedo did with him.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am sad Listening To Let It Die by Three Days Grace

Check this out, and tell me how awesome it is.



For those of you who don't know, and if you don't wtf, this image is a representation of a certain french techno duo otherwise known as Daft fucking Punk. When I saw this on abduzeedo I'm immediately like, "desktop now." So feel free to follow this link and make it your desktop to.


There have been some interesting developments in my life in the past 24 hours. Developments that if played out correctly could change how I spend my time over the next few months. So stay tuned for those. Also, I know I've been promising you all some 3D stuff, and I promise I'm working on stuff, and learning a lot. I'm just waiting to be completely done with the things I'm working on before rendering a few final images and putting them on Flickr then here. So be patient.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am cheerful Listening To Show Me How to Live by Audioslave

Check out this video for the new Wario Land Shake It video game coming out for the Nintendo Wii. It's pretty fantastic.

WARIO LAND SHAKE IT video

Yes there is a reason I can't embed the actual video, but here is another video that tells the back story of the new game.


Will I ever play the game?



Probably not, I just thought the video was a cool idea.

PS. After you watch the video the first time click back on the start and watch it again to keep playing!

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am drained Listening To Another by Savant Trigger

I haven't posted photos in a while. This set was taken when Ben Lee and Tim Sessions came to Webster on Friday night. I was lucky enough to be on the front rail, and therefore I got some really awesome shots. Of course I'm not a real Ben Lee fan. His music is the kind that is good live but I don't really enjoy his CD that much, not my cup of tea. Though I really enjoy the shots that I got. I hope you enjoy them to. Feel free to click on them and leave comments/critiques on FLICKR. The first shot is of Tim Sessions the opening act. The rest are of Ben and the guy he played with.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am cheerful Listening To none

Somebody buy me a DSLR so I can do


THIS

and THIS

and THIS

and THIS

Please?

The prospect of doing time-lapse HDR videos sounds so awesome to me. I had seen this technique experimented with a couple of times on Flickr, but never to the extent that I see in these videos. I really want to try and experiment with this new art form, but my old camera just wouldn't be able to cut it. If I tried to do something like this with my camera I would be constantly taking pictures for however many hours I decide to do. Aka if I did a 6 hour time lapse video I'd take one HDR every 30 seconds, which equals taking 5 individual shots in 30 seconds which wouldn't work. Now if I had a DLSR I could take 5 shots every 5 seconds if I wanted to.

Oh to have a Rebel Xti

Frowny face

So has anyone seen Scott Olstad in the past week? He usually updates his blog every night but hasn't update since September 16th. I'm starting to get worried.

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am calm Listening To Another Know It All by Chevelle

Just some stuff that I want to share with you all.

1. First and foremost please visit this website and download the free album by my friend Greg, aka Savant Trigger. The album is completely free but if you are feeling generous and awesome you can make a donation straight from his site. His music is awesome to jam to and to relax to. Check out his website and download his free album Terminal today!!!

Here is a video from Greg's first gig as Savant Trigger.


2. If you are from St. Louis then you that it has all kinds of fun, awesome places in which to see current art, theater, music, etc. Yesterday while driving around downtown St. Louis Vic and I noticed that an old church that had its roof destroyed by fire years ago had hundreds of lamps strung through its roof. At the time it was only 3 so the lamps were not turned on yet. But with our curiosity peaked we decided to return later that night. That night, on the way to a play with some friends we saw the church again with all the lights on, and it was amazing! Several hundred multi colored lamps lit up the church. After the play we walked to the church and actually found out that it was a part of a bigger project called "The Light Project," that included 4 large installations and an exhibit at the Pulitzer art museum. We walked around to view the other installations, the church was by far the best, then sometime next week we are headed to the Pulitzer for the exhibit. If you are a St. Louis resident I strongly recommend that you check out the Light Project. It's going to stay up until October 17th.

Here's a link to the Light Project website.

A link to the Church project page with all the lights.

Link to a somewhat decent pic of the church with the lights lit, not by moi.

I love St. Louis for stuff like this.

3. I also went to the St. Louis contemporary art museum yesterday. Right now they have two exhibitions showing, one by Lutz Bacher and one by Aidi Ruilova. The Bacher exhibit is ok but it doesn't really captivate you in any way. The Ruilova exhibit however does an excellent job of grabbing your attention and forcing you to watch more than a dozen television screens that flickered off and on with video clips that were both breathtaking and disturbing, and some that were extremely akward. Admission is free for these two exhibits so if you are bored and want to see some contemporary art head on down.

The museum's home page.

It was certainly an interesting day to say the least. In one day I went to a museum, walked around Forest Park, saw a hilarious play, visited more art installations, and downloaded some free music. Epic to say the least.

If anyone has seen Scott Olstad in the past week tell him that he needs to update his blog or I'm filing a missing persons report.

Peace out
Zmuh11 

How I Am cheerful Listening To Lady in Grey by Savant Trigger

Another fun video from abduzeedo.

LINK 


Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am bored

Enjoy


I hope to have something of the 3D kind to show off by the end of the week/next weekend. I've really been working hard at Maya and am really digging myself deeper into the program. Unfortunately the stuff I worked on over the summer in the Maya Personal Learning Edition can't open in Maya 2008 which means that all the work I had done I can't get to. Anyone know a wrap around to that? I'm gonna ask my Maya professor but I fear that the work may be gone forever.

Any tips?

Peace out
Zmuh11

How I Am blah Listening To Negative Sides of Optimistic Eyes by Less Than Jake