Career Day

Well I know it's been forever since I updated this tech blog, but I thought it would be a great opportunity to tell you about the career day I attended recently at Don Mesendick Elementary school in glendale.

I was able to go last year and they invited me again this year, it's so fun to talk about graphics and animation with kids in elementary school, they get so excited when they see all the possibilities available to them.

I gave 5 presentations, each to different classes, and each had to be about 45 - 50 minutes. So it was a lot of talking but it was worth it to see the look on those little faces when I should something about animation and they would just light up.

I learned from last year as well that the students send out thank you notes to all those that attend and give presentations, so I'll really be looking forward to that this year.

Enlightening the minds of the future is fun, and little kids are impressed so easily.

Anyway, Happy Computing!

Last Minute Preparations

This month has been great, and I'm excited to start teaching soon, I've learned allot over the past month or so and school has only just started today. My first time teaching a college level course will be tomorrow night and I hope all goes well. Animation is really a joy for me and I hope I can share that joy with the students in my class.

As the semester goes on, I hope to post some of the lessons I've learned and some of the tutorials I've given, who knows if no one else really reads these posts I can always come back later and use them as a history of sorts. Anyway hope your all well, and as always..Happy Computing.

Prep for Art 348

Well it's official, I will be teaching Art 348 "Animation Motion Studies" at Arizona State University starting spring of 09. I picked up some great DVD style tutorials to help me prepare from Digital Tutors. They have an excellent teaching staff and great work flow ideas. I now have over 70 hours of Animation Instruction that I'm going to be sifting through and preparing my self to teach next semester. My plan is to work up a series of tutorials that will help lead my students through all the principles and techniques of animation that they need to learn. I have high hopes that my class will be able to produce excellent works of art through animation and Maya.

It's really great to be given such an awesome opportunity to teach others and I look forward to all the great things that I'll be learning along the way.

I wish you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! and as always Happy Computing!

I do hope to post some of my tutorials here in the future for all you budding animators out there.

Big News!

So for those of you who haven't yet heard, I just had some big news this last week. The school of Art at ASU has asked me to teach their Upper Division 3D Animation Course! I'll be starting for the spring semester of 2009. I get to teach all by myself and I'm also putting together the curriculum too. It's gonna be tons of fun and heaps of work, I'm really looking forward to it and grateful for the opportunity. Thanks to all of you who have sent your well wishes, it nice to have so many great friends and family.

Happy Computing Everyone!

Wii bit of Fun

So recently my wife and I decided to get a Wii, and let me say it's been really a lot of fun.
We only have Wii Sports and plan to get the Wii Fit soon, but it's been actually a bit of a work out for us. The sports keep us entertained and make us get a little competitive too.
I must admit when I first heard of the Wii my thought was "Oh, That's not new, that's old technology" which it really is when you think about it. The Wii uses two infrared lights that are held in the sensor bar by the tv, the Wii remote is exactly that, a remote. It picks up on the infrared and then determines the postion of the controller. The controllers also house an electronic geospacial gadget that tell the controller at what angle it's being held. All of these are old technologies, but it's the first time they have been brought together into one place and then commercialized. I shouldn't say for the first time, because people have been using these technologies in other applications for at least the last 20 years or so.
So....am I impressed with the Wii....Yes and No. I think it is possibly the best console system out there for encouraging more group participation, and getting people active. I think that some of the technology could have been implemented a little better, but hey they didn't ask for my advice before marketing it so I won't give it.
But we do have a ton of fun playing it and hope to continue playing it for a very long time. Once we have the Wii fit I'll be excited to track my BMI and be able to better help myself stay in shape.

Tutorial Beginnings

With my Graduate classes in full swing I haven't had much time to post here, but now I will. :)
I wanted to share a small tutorial that I completed as a project for my web authoring class. It focuses on Preparing Photos for the web and what steps you need to take to make sure your photos are nice and crisp on the web. You might not have access to Photoshop, but most image editing software is the same and has the same size dialogue boxes and web prep options. The main point is to be aware that these exist and don't just throw any old image onto the web. Prepare it, take pride in it. Anyway here is the link, I hope some of you can benefit from it.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~tgarner/Project4_Multi/tutorial.html

Enjoy!
Happy Computing!

Big News

So I have some news, I was Recently admitted into the Graphics Information Technology Graduate Program at ASU. That's right I've lost my mind and I'm going back to school again.
Here is the link if you'd like to see what it's all about.

http://technology.poly.asu.edu/dtm/git/

It's actually really exciting and I see it really helping me to further my Career in the Future.
It'll be fun to focus on the Business end of Graphics and Info Technology.

Hope your all doing well.

Happy Computing.