Moving [posted 10/23/04 12:42:44][News]
I'm moving to Austin today. Production begins this Monday on Scanner. Updates will be sporadic for the next three weeks since I don't anticipate having much online access. If I can get online, it will most likely be a dialup connection. I'll be getting a cable modem installed as soon as possible.
I've been told that thirty animators were chosen for the project and there are five additional lead animators. For the first week we will receive additional software training and eventually animators will be grouped under one of the leads based on their strengths. This approach seems very organic and logical.
Parking seems to be in short suppy at the office too. I got an email indicating animators should consider walking, biking or carpooling to work. I'll be living 3.3 miles from the studio (thanks Mapquest!) so I'm considering buying a bike.
I'm looking forward to weekly paychecks instead of monthly ones. Can't wait to get started.
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More updates [posted 10/16/04 14:53:16][News]
I finally got the Links and About sections posted. I kludged the Links section by creating two different categories to create the individual columns, which seemed the easiest way to format those kinds of irregular tables. I'll look for a more elegant solution when I get some time. Working on adding the Images section next.
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Scripts [posted 10/13/04 18:41:38][News]
Got my script for the movie via Fed-Ex and completed reading it. I also confirmed that primary animation begins on the 25th of this month so I'm finalizing my moving plans.
I'm still hacking away at the scripting on this site. I've categorized my news stories so that PHP will only display the relevant stories on the proper pages. It's working very well for the text data. The "About" and "Links" sections are next to be updated. I'm still unsure how I will automate the "Images" section, but I have a few ideas. My goal is to completely convert the site over to PHP. Overall, I'm probably spending more time to automate everything than it would have taken to simply code everything in HTML in the first place. But that's not the point of this exercise now, is it?
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A Scanner Darkly, Update [posted 10/12/04 04:31:31][News]
I've been hired as an animator on the feature film A Scanner Darkly. [IMDB] The movie is based on the novel of the same name from one of my favorite sci-fi authors of all time, Philip K. Dick. It's being directed by Richard Linklater, who's previous film Waking Life played to considerable critical acclaim. It stars, among others, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr.
Like Waking Life, this film will be animated using custom software coded specifically for the project.
I'll be relocating to Austin, TX at the end of this month for the duration of the project. Unfortunately, since this is a full-time job I'm forced to put my own animated project, SPOOK on temporary hiatus. Since it has only moved partially though the design phase (with only 14 seconds of nearly-completed animation) I've elected to remove all SPOOK images for the time being. When I resume work on the project I'll repost them. While in Austin, I'll still be posting personal art and news to the site, as time allows.
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Website Code Updates [posted 10/11/04 18:09:44][News]
I installed a PHP news client to make updating this site easier. I chose CuteNews because it's compact, doesn't require MySQL (data is stored in plain text files!), supports RSS feeds and it was easy to install. I can now update this page directly from the web without coding HTML which will hopefully mean more frequent posts. The entire process was a lot easier than I expected. My last PHP experience was the Radio Comix Store which was based on the open-source project osCommerce. It's a great package but one still very much in development, so there were quite a few frustrated hours spent squashing some elusive bugs. However, now that it's up and running, I can't imagine life without it. I have similar hopes for this upgrade.
Lastly, some of the other pages on the site will be down as I consider how to integrate them into PHP or if I'll be leaving them as plain HTML. They should be up shortly.
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copyright ©2004 Pat Duke, all rights reserved.
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