As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, I’m very used to seeing [...]]]> One of my favorite blogs for helping me become a better professional artist is the Accidental Creative. They do a really great job of coaching on how to maintain creative excellence and deliver a product on time.

As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, I’m very used to seeing artists burn out and become bitter after many years. Listening to the Accidental Creative has really helped me maintain my excitement and inspiration about creating art as part of my job.

Their latest post about developing an “effectiveness obsession” kind of relates to the posts I’ve been discussing recently about quality vs quantity and dealing with time management. While waiting for my next post on finding the intent in your shot, I highly recommend you read Why We Need To Develop An Effectiveness Obsession, and check out some of the other posts at Accidental Creative.

Enjoy!
-jason

Another georgeous and awesome cousin Zeva Bellel has a great site called Paris By Appointment Only.

Now, one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family has started this [...]]]> I happen to have some incredibly talented cousins.. you’ve all heard about my fab photographer cousin Erica Berger.

Another georgeous and awesome cousin Zeva Bellel has a great site called Paris By Appointment Only.

Now, one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family has started this really cool project called The Grok Project.  Starting in november, Ian is going to spend three years steping through the entire history of science and technology by re-creating and experiencing as much of it as possible,  blogging about the whole thing (yay internets!).

Some of the cool things he plans on doing to “grok” science are:

• Make stuck stone tools
• make copper tools
• make woven cloth
• visit a copper mine
• impress cuneiform writing on clay tablets
• Measure earth’s circumference/diameter using eratosthenes’ method
• make a blowgun
• build hand-cranked rotary fan
• build a trebuchet
• measure the speed of light
• hot air ballooning
• assemble an internal combustion engine
• scuba diving
• build a telephone
• build a vacuum tube
• extract/splice DNA
• build a humanoid robot

and more!

Check out the project as it moves forth.. I smell a TV show coming on!!

Right off the bat I am definitely liking the ability to quickly add tasks using the simple “a” hotkey.  You can [...]]]> Now that I’ve done a week of using GTDAgenda, I thought it would be good to try another web-based todo list and compare my experiences.   This week I’m using the AJAX-based todoist.

Right off the bat I am definitely liking the ability to quickly add tasks using the simple “a” hotkey.  You can also organically add contexts as you work by simply typing something like:

Email ron@happyhollow.com about the backpacking adventure @email

and it will quickly add the context for you.  Very handy!

You can also have nested projects, and you can color them to make it easier to tell them apart. Below, you can see my task list for the next 7 days.  Notice how clean it looks?  I love the nested projects, the clear color separation, the projects & contexts.  It’s just clean and easy to read.

Now this doesn’t mean I don’t have any issues with how todoist works currently.  Firstly, switching a task between projects isn’t as easy as it could be.  Currently you have to click on a little down arrow, choose “move to another project” and then choose that project from a list.  It would be better if you could just drag it to the project.. after all, it’s listed right there on the left!

Also, you can’t do group edits yet, you have to edit things one at a time which is frustrating.

When entering a task, you have to click on the date field.  I wish I could just tab over to the date, or just enter “wednesday”.. but right now I have to click on the date field.

Of course the biggie.. there’s no mobile application for it yet.  Arrgh!

The place where I snagged this one is: http://www.webdesignlessons.com/

I tend to look at new themes quite often, testing them out, seeing how they work, and ultimately deciding [...]]]> I’ve had a number of people request the name of this new theme, so I figured I’d point you to the wonderful site where I got it!

The place where I snagged this one is: http://www.webdesignlessons.com/

I tend to look at new themes quite often, testing them out, seeing how they work, and ultimately deciding not to change mine.  However, this one I felt was really fun and nice, and I love the featured blog post up at the top of the page.  Definitely go check out some of their other themes!

Oh, I did make one slight hack to this theme, and that was to add a link to the comments from the little bubble next to the post.

That was done by taking this line:

<h4><?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?></h4> 

and replacing it with this one:

<h4><?php comments_popup_link('0', '1', '%', 'commentslink'); ?></h4> 

.post-top h4 a {

     color:#cdcdcd;

}

I think.. I believe.. that I’ve fixed it.

See, I read in passing that people [...]]]> So suddenly THIS site started getting malware errors.  Determined not to let the hackers punt me out of my own website AGAIN, I went on a rampage.. investigating and trying to figure out what was going on.

I think.. I believe.. that I’ve fixed it.

See, I read in passing that people like to use iframes to include hidden pages.  So I did a quick search on my site for iFrames, and found a post that had one in it that I wasn’t expecting.  So I removed it.. and now I’m not getting those errors anymore!

Sweet!

Please let me know if you see more malware warnings, and what page you were going to when you found them!

Thanks!

Wow.. my old office is now a museum!  Crazy!!

If anyone goes, I’d love to see photos.. I’m curious if my old desk is still there & if they have maniquins representing the animators “working at their desks”.  Is the ping pong table still there?

Please go check it out ‘cuz it’s totally awesome!

Some of you may remember a website called 10 second club which has been around for a few years as a great testing-ground for animators. The concept was brilliant.. every month post a sound file and then let animators try and do their best to come up with [...]]]> Originally posted: Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Some of you may remember a website called 10 second club which has been around for a few years as a great testing-ground for animators. The concept was brilliant.. every month post a sound file and then let animators try and do their best to come up with the most unique and entertaining animation for that audio.

Unfortunately, 10secondclub is no more.. but fortunately, some excellent friends have opened up 11 second club (it’s one better!) which is basically the same thing, except this time it’s hosted by AnimationMentor.com!

Animation Mentor has provided a completely rad prize for the winner each month.. an official eCritique from a real animation mentor!  That’s right.. it’s a chance for the winner to get a critique just like the ones that we give students at the school.. but not only that, everyone can see the critique and learn from it!

What I love about this is that it gives the animator a great tool to improve themselves, and it also gives everyone a chance to see what an eCritique actually looks like.

The first critique was done by the famous Victor Navone, a hugely awesome person and animator who is just so talented it almost hurts.

The second critique was done by yours truly.. a very fun experience & I hope that Kevin (the november winner) finds it useful & informative!

Anyway, go check out 11secondclub.com and enjoy the experience!

So I had some pretty strict commenting regulations when I started this new blog to try and reduce the amount of spam.. but I noticed that I haven’t been getting many comments at all.  So I’m easing up the restrictions a bit in the hopes that it’ll mean more people will comment.

If [...]]]> Howdy folks!

So I had some pretty strict commenting regulations when I started this new blog to try and reduce the amount of spam.. but I noticed that I haven’t been getting many comments at all.  So I’m easing up the restrictions a bit in the hopes that it’ll mean more people will comment.

If we get overrun by spam, then I’ll have to tighten it again to needing a login/password in order to comment.. but until then, hopefully we’ll get a few more people talking!

Of course, it could just be that I’m not posting anything worth commenting about. 

Oh yeah, and happy holidays!

As you can see, there were times when I wasn’t able to record what I was doing, especially wednesday.. a tough day.  But in general I got about [...]]]> So this week I tried to keep a solid log of all of my time spent throughout the day using the incredibly useful Toggl.com website.

As you can see, there were times when I wasn’t able to record what I was doing, especially wednesday.. a tough day.  But in general I got about 8 or 9 hours recorded.

You can also see that this was a very productive week for me.. over 15 hours of directly productive work.  That includes animating, giving reviews, etc.

Strategic mettings went well too, 11 hours of strategy.. planning for the future and making sure that I have stuff ready for.. you guessed it.. production!

Admin time is nice and small.. about 3 hours over the course of the week.  That includes email, time sheets, working on spreadsheets, etc.  You want to keep that admin stuff as small as possible, otherwise you’re wasting time!

And the thing I’m happiest about is the ME time.. 7 hours i was able to devote to bettering myself.. 5+ of that being gym specific time.  Some of it having lunch, or going for a walk.. VERY important to have that time when you can get it!

I’m going to continue the experiment next week and see how it goes!

I’m hoping that it’ll let me forgo the need for a true forum.. I’ve been having trouble keeping it up to date, as i just don’t have the time to really devote myself to a forum, but I do want people to be able to [...]]]> So there’s this new commenting system we’re using called disqus.com.

I’m hoping that it’ll let me forgo the need for a true forum.. I’ve been having trouble keeping it up to date, as i just don’t have the time to really devote myself to a forum, but I do want people to be able to post questions & have them answered..

The cool thing about disqus is that it can handle threaded comments, and it’s possible to view everything as if it were a forum.. sort of.. just not sure exactly how it works.

time to investigate, I guess.

Of course, bbpress will have to release the newest version (0.9) so it’s compatible with the current version of wordpress.. but hopefully they’ll do that soon [...]]]> With the new update to wordpress 2.5, I’m thinking that instead of going to drupal (my previous plan), I might just stick with wordpress and bbpress for the forums.

Of course, bbpress will have to release the newest version (0.9) so it’s compatible with the current version of wordpress.. but hopefully they’ll do that soon and I’ll be able to upgrade.

It’ll be nice to get away from joomla/smf and have something smaller, faster, and easier to work with.

In the meantime, here’s a photo.

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