Yesterday was crazy busy, but good. Today was an epic war against technology that left we ultra-pissed off by mid-afternoon… if I feel like ranting I may post about it, right now I’m too irritated to even voice it.

Anyways, in the spirit of alleviating my annoyances from today, here’s my best sketches from the Royal Winter Fair yesterday

Enjoy:

More sketches behind the cut.

Being coordinator of the Animation program at Seneca means that I get all sorts of strange e-mails on my Seneca account. My Spam filter gets crammed with dozens of messages a day from advertising Junk Mail, porn sites and everything else because I have a public e-mail address.

But this one I just got made me laugh out loud because it’s not Junk Mail. It’s serious and to the point:

hello
are you looking for nude model?

thx

Crazy couple of days leading to a weird calm this morning.

Wednesday I scrambled to take care of a pile of college administrative stuff and then worked deep into the night on fixing up artwork.

Thursday I taught at the college, then drove to Oakville for my painting class, then worked on Udon projects until 4am.

Friday I woke up at 10am, worked on Udon stuff until 3pm, then I went to the dentist to see whether I needed a root canal or just a big ass filling on one of my molars. I lucked out with a filling and went to a business dinner last night with the freezing still fading on my jaw and tongue. Finishing up more work stuff at around midnight, I finally crashed.

Saturday seems positively relaxing in comparison right now. 🙂

Finishing my cold-ridden irritating day at the college, one more rant.

Please note before I begin this rant that most of my students are great. It’s the obnoxious 10% that frustrates me.

When you have a 2 week project (actually 3 weeks for a 2 week project when you factor in the Reading Week we just had), you should plan those two weeks out. Showing me your animation for the first time the day before the project is due doesn’t bode well. When I give you the critique you asked for and you have tons of things to fix before tomorrow, don’t act like I ran over your puppy. You did this to yourself, schedule-wise.

I know which students are actually working hard. It’s very easy to tell. Being at the college doesn’t mean you’re actually working at the college. Just because you hang out all day in the Animation wing doesn’t mean you worked hard. This holds true for pretty much every program. When I walked by the Seneca Library in the middle of the afternoon I saw:

9 computers being used to play Counter Strike.
5 computers being used to play Halo.
5 computers being used to check e-mail.
4 computers being used to play Starcraft: Broodwar.
4 computers being used to watch YouTube videos.
2 computers being used to play Nintendo emulators.
1 computer being used for some kind of Photoshop assignment.
1 computer being used for some kind of research.
The rest were not being used.

I’m not a cruel instructor or a slave-driver. I wasn’t a model student in college either, but I didn’t bitch when things got jam packed because I knew that I’d wasted my days away on other things.

Okay, rant is done. I’ll feel better soon and things will improve. Good portfolios and strong assignments will brighten my brain.

Internet was down ALL DAY, which made getting work done a pain.

I woke up with the slightly scratchy pre-cold throat, so I’m ODing on Vitamin C and soup to try and stop the sick before it really kicks in. After that crazy weekend, it makes sense that my body would rebel.

Anyways, enough blather… here’s the first peek at the Makeshift Miracle book:

Holy crap! It’s REAL. Hard to believe.

Matte finish on the cover, unbelievably sharp reproduction and lush colors (I know that’s hard to tell from a slightly blurry photo :P). I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better print of it. Erik is now understandably gonzo about using these printers for doing more Udon trade paperbacks, art books and special projects.

The main shipment is on its way, literally on the ‘slow boat from China’. As soon as they arrive, you’ll hear it from me loud and clear.

So damn happy right now.

The crazy Halloween Party and 2 wedding schedule was exhausting, but in the end it was really fun. Chris’ wedding last night was crazy-good with lots of dancing, socializing and celebrating. Most of the people there I’d never seen actually dressed to the nines, so that was a blast to witness as well.

My body ached when I woke up today, but considering the madness of the weekend it was actually way better than I thought it would be.

Then, when I finally started working this afternoon, Erik let me know that a Fex Ex package had arrived at the office containing a couple copies of the finished Makeshift Miracle book for us to check out. Well that got my ass in gear and I zipped up to check it out first hand.

The book looks GREAT! The paper quality, the reproduction and color – all of it. It looks better than I’d hoped it would, especially considering the art was originally done low rez for the web. It’ll take about a month for the full shipment to arrive from Hong Kong, but know that it is worth the wait.

I’m going to head into Oshawa at some point this week to finally tell my parents I have a book and give them the first copy. 🙂

Photos of the book and more Jimbo ramblings when I get home from the office tonight.

Considering how rarely I get dressed up nowadays… I guess I’m in ‘costume’ for tonight’s wedding too:

2 parties down this weekend, 1 to go… it should be quite a blast.

A few sweet photos from tonight’s wedding/costume party… more photos to come once I get the ones taken by other people:

Riddler and Tank Girl

The Groom: Iron Man

From left bottom: Catwoman, Riddler, Penguin,
Poison Ivy, Two-Face, Harley Quinn and the Joker.

I couldn’t believe how well the Batman stuff came together out of the blue. With no planning at all we had the perfect spread of Bat Villains with no repeats!

I can’t wait to get the professional photo where they take the green screen out and add in Gotham or something.