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May 2nd 2010 - Just wanna post a few updates!

1. For starters, my very first game is finished! (minus the highscore table..) Play it here!

2. Lets post a few screenshots. Currently under the codename of Project N.I.N.J.A. Me, Zach Striefel, and Jesse Dale have been working on this for a few months now, we have a long way to go yet, but its getting somewhere.

OMFG WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHERE DID THEY COME FROM!? It'll all be explained soon :)

April 24th 2010 - So Skills Saskatchewan has come and gone, and guess who won gold?! Skills Canda is a Trades and Skills competition open to any highschool student in Canada. Rachel and I were a team competing in 2D Character animation. This was my 3rd year competing, and Rachel's 2nd. We won gold and snagged the 2D animation spot on team Saskatchewan (again) going to compete in Skills Canada (Nationals) in Waterloo, Ontario May19th-25th! At Nationals there will be the gold medal teams from every province in Canada, so we'll be going up against the best highschool team of 2 from every province in Canada! Provincials was one 8 hour day -- 1.5 hours for character deisgn/storyboarding, 6.5 hours for animation, but Nationals is spread over 2 days. 1.5 hours for character design/storyboarding then 6.5 hours for animation -- the first day. Then on the second day we get an entire 8 hours to animate!

Anyways, on a side note, I've been working like crazy. I work for a company called Vaiz Enterprizes. (www.vaiz.org) and they've got me doing a ton of stuff, from designing logos, business cards, websites, and programming flash banners, image gallerys etc! It's definately helping me grow as an artist and designer.

On another side note, 3D ANIMATION IS COOL! I've been learning it in school using a program called Lightwave 3D, and that program is super cool! I had a slow start with it and it was frustrating at the begining but I think I've gotten the hang of it. Now I think it's super cool!....Although I feel like I'm betraying flash just a little bit :P

TWO MORE! I've developing a flash game in my comp sci 30 class! I'll post it when its done, but it's just a "simple" side scrolling space shooter. I say "simple" because it's a simple concept, but I'm trying to build it properly using AS3 OOP which is something I've never done before. I'm at the point where I'm pretty sure I've gotten the hang of it very nicely too. The game is almost finished, just have to do a few more things to it, but its been put on hold as I learn how to make a highscore page for it. Which means integrating PHP, mySQL, and AS3. GASP! I've never touched mySQL or PHP before, but It's comming quickly. Within 15 minutes I had the database set up and PHP connecting to it.

ONE MORE! I'm thinking of re-designing my website. So it's more functional without the use of Dreamweaver, because whenever I wanna upload a file or even add another one of these posts I gotta do it ALL through Dreamweaver, and It's a hassle. I don't really mind ftp'ing the files to my server, but the post thing gets on my nerves (and is the reason I do these so rarely lately). BUT thats something I have no clue how to do, looks like I'll be doing some research soon! I wan't to also give my site a new, clean, less amature-ish look. I think I can do it with the newly aquired designing ability I've gained from desiging some websites. :P

February 3rd 2010 - So, long time since I wrote something here, and since I was looking around at my website today, I thought why not make another post, here comes a huge one. :)

Honestly, lately, I havn't been animating like, at all. I've been doing ALOT of programming stuff. I'm in the process of making a tetris game in flash right now! Other than that, on the programming side, nothing new really. I've finally got a pretty decent grasp on AS3 by now, and if I complete tetris, it'll be my biggest programming accomplishment. All in AS3 too!

Now on the animation side of things. A few days before christmas, so like two months ago. (Wow, its been that long already!) I finished my christmas/winter-flash-off piece for Newgrounds.com. I should have spend alot more time on it, but I wasn't really feeling the story, and It's hard to give it all you got when in the back of your mind you don't want to work on the project very much. But I got it done in a few weeks, and I was pretty pleased with some of the animation in there. We didn't place in the flash-off, heck, we didn't even make it to Newgrounds front page, (but I blame that on poor planning of the story, the animation was pretty good!). but on December 28th, I won a Medium Bamboo fun on Newgrounds 20th "Tablet Giveaway".It's been like 5 weeks now, and I'm still waiting eagerly to get my tablet! Ps. Thanks Tom! Anyways, take a second now and watch my christmas toon.

Watch "A Piratey Christmas"

In other animation news! Again I'm working with the amazing Mr. Zach Striefel, but this time he's bringing a buddy of his along for the ride. We're working on a SERIES (gasp!). It's still in the storywriting and concept art stage, but I'm excited to get this off the ground, as my concepts look pretty wicked, and the story sounds even better. It's an anime series, based around modern day ninjas, mystery, and magic! And now I shut up or else Jesse and Zach will kill me for spoiling the surprise! It looks super cool though, and It's barely even off the ground yet, so just wait to find out how exciting it will be once it gets off the ground.

I also have a few ideas for some shorts, that I might try to squeeze in between doing concept art, school, and animating this monster of a series. (Right now, we're looking at a few (like...10...15 maybe) 10 minute shorts. But we're not in any rush, and the suspected release date for Ep.1 is in like 8 months. But I'll update with some screenshots every now and then.

Also! on a side note, if there are any effects enthusiasts out there who haven't picked up a copy of Joseph Gillands "Elemental Magic", I seriously insist you do. That book is the animated effects version of "The Animators Survival Kit". It's a must have for anyone whos seriously animating effects. I highly reccomend it!

Watch it here!