If you’re reading this and wondering what the heck is SXSWi, I’ll break it down for you. In 1987 South by South West (SXSW) was started as a Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas. In 1994 they added Interactive (the “i” in sxsw) and film portion. We (Daniel, Ro, and Giannii) go every year for a couple reasons outside of amazing barbecue, parties, music, panels, and beer. It’s a chance for us to get in touch with many of our publishers/commenters and have quality (for the most part) conversations.

So if you happen to be in Austin, TX this year for SXSWi, leave a comment with “yes” or something clever and we’ll meet up. We’re also doing something fun too so I’ll send you some information about that as well.

-Giannii

Super hero

I like to think I’m one heh.. During the non vampiric hours of the day (for the most part) I work for a company known to most humans, monkeys, robots, and hamsters as Disqus.

Disqus is a better comment system for your site. Hundreds of thousands of sites, from small blogs to large publications, rely on it to power and manage their discussion communities.

To briefly touch the phonetic pronunciation as it’s a common verbal error made by mostly humans. It’s not Disc-us (although I do play ultimate frisbee) or Dis-goose  it’s simply Dis-cuss. As in having a discussion or conversation.. I’m sure at this point you’re either face palming or calling me names I would never say in front of my mother.

What exactly do I do at Disqus? That’s actually kind of a difficult question as I wear multiple hats. Currently I command the marketing, community development, and the single handily manage all the support. Yes, all support requests go through  just yours truly. During the weekdays I receive several hundred emails, tweets, and the occasional crazy phone call from someone trying to sell me better internet. I received several emails over the past couple of months asking “How do you personally respond to everone?”. It’s quite simple, I have several robot assistants powered by hamsters  jogging on wheels, it’s more green this way. It’s quite a challenge to keep up with everything but tools such as heavily modified Zendesk (support system) and an intuitive user interface within Disqus helps guide our publishers and commenter’s to the right information. Needless to say I type a lot and rarely open my mouth…  Although in the office I bet anyone would argue that statement saying  ”Giannii has a huge mouth and mostly inappropriate things flow from it usually in the form of bad jokes”. Fact.

I just had to see how fast I was… ha

Ugh, it’s been a rough 3 weeks for Uncle G. Immediately after my previous post I was plagued with a head cold, nasal virus, and something I rather not talk about. *cough* Once my body was clense of all evil’s, I continued upon this journey of moving illusions. I do however need to take a moment and thank my cheerleaders Phil Kauffold (Lead Animator) and Tina Hunter (Writer) for the constant motivation and putting up with my bul-skata. (skata = shit in greek)

Before getting into the thick of it, I feel it’s important to understand the fundamentals needed to get started in this type of gig.

“Art, in many instances, requires transcendence of it’s own medium; it speaks on its own accord“. -Derek Derakhshani

You really need an artistic mind, patience, and to be savvy with math if you want to get extreme about scripting but artsy is a good place to start.

What are the stages of Pre-Production? Well simply..

• Le Script - Most of the time animation scripts are written without dialogue.  Why? Animation is somewhat of an abstract art and dialogue can sometimes spoil the writing/creation process in the beginning , depending on your team of course.
• Storyboards - Breaking apart the script from words into a storyline of rough drawings that portray the script visually. Honestly they could be stick figures but I prefer something slightly nicer.
• Concept scribbles – We never really know what we want until we start scribbling it down on paper and tweaking it to our liking. It’s actually very rare to know exactly what you want.

The Wall of Night

The Wall of Night is a 3D/2D animation short (5-6 minutes) that I’m working on with Phil and Tina. It begins on a planet that does not rotate, this causing one side of it to be continually night and the other side day.  Lynn (a girl) ventures far beyond her village boundaries foraging for food and stumbles upon a forbidden altitudinous wall separating day from night. Reaching this wall has started a chain of events will forever change her life.

Mind you I’m not the greatest  synopsis writer but that was my best effort for today at least. =) So far Tina and I have almost finalized the script. This weekend I’ll be working on storyboards + concept scribbles and we’re planning  to have the storyboards and concept art done by the 22nd which is pretty realistic date. Oh yeah, to create the concept art I’m using Corel Painter 11 on a Cintiq 21UX. In my opinion Painter 11 is the only drawing software that gives you realistic results, as if you were drawing on on real paper. I do have a couple rough drafts handy but I’d rather finalize a couple of them before I show ya. Maybe early next week I’ll post a couple of them.

-Giannii

P.S. Apparently, I’m Sexy: Top 10 Sexiest Geeks by Violet Blue

We humans dabble with many things during our lifetime in the name of happiness and rarely do we ever find something that leaves us with nothing but a glowing smile at the end of the day. For this entity, animation brushes my cheeks with that red warmth. The only bad part is I forgot how to do most of it! Ha

Back in the early 2000’s, ya know the days of the Back Street Boys and all. I attended an art school pursuing a degree that encompassed all areas of digital and traditional art. I never did finish but for a good reason outside of horrible tuition. In summary, an opportunity arose that I could not pass up but I’ll save that story for another day.

Today I embark on journey to learn Autodesk Maya 2009 (3D Animation Software) over the next 6 months and release a animated short 8 months from now. The book I will be starting out with is entitled “Introducing Maya 2009″ by Dariush Derakhshani.

Dariush Derakhshani is a creative director and head of CG for Radium|ReelFX. Needless to say he has been in the industry for a long time and has plenty of experience. I plan to learn from his experiences depicted in this book over the next 3 weeks.

Goodbye halcyon nights.