I spent the last week in the Vancouver Film School Summer Intensive course on Animation and Visual Effects. It was very interesting to be in the same environment regular students live on, which was precisely the main goal of this course. To me, the most interesting class was perhaps the life drawing class in which we made several drawing and at the end the whole group drawn a collaborative animation of the model in a Matrix like turn around. But all the classes where interesting, we made a couple of classical animation exercises (an athletic flour bag and a walk cycle), a couple of very basic exercises in Maya (path animation and texturing of a still life scene), and a bit of history of animation, in which we watched some very interesting shorts. While the course we had similar privileges than regular students, like 24/7 access to computers laboratories to finish our assignments.
I would prefer that the 3D computer animation and modeling classes were more advanced, but the level of the group was irregular and we simply had not enough time.
I also had the opportunity to meet some friends like Steve and Mark Kaufmann and Ed and other Vancouverites (see pictures here).
martes, 21 de julio de 2009
domingo, 21 de septiembre de 2008
Earth Fair and September 19
Last week we celebrated the Planet Earth's Fair in the high school where I studied 25 years ago. The fair was a complete success; all conferences, movie debates, expositions and video game sessions were crammed with students.
In the aperture ceremony I was representing the organizer committee and I shared the table with the president of the International Year of Planet Earth in Mexico, Dr. Jaime Urrutia, the director of this High School, Lic. Jaime Suaste, and the director of the CCH High School System, Rito Teran. The CCH High School system (Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades, or Sciences and Humanities High school) is an alternative system in the spirit of the active school systems. At the beggining it was experimental but I was very happy there, being tired of the oppressive traditional system of my junior high school.
One of the most interesting days was Thursday. Almost all day was dedicated to Earth's movement. The first conference was about plate tectonics. The speaker was Dr. Gustavo Tolson, a remarkable geologist and educator, who is also the director of the Geology Institute. The next speech was by Dr. Carlos Valdez, chief of the National Seismologic Service. His conference was about seismic activity in Mexico and about things people should do to mitigate the risk. He also analyzed the recent devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, and all the mistakes the remiss builders made. But the gist of the day was the earthquake that shook Mexico City in September 19, 1985. After the conference, to give the students a break from the overwhelming (but quite interesting) amount of information of the previous conferences, we projected a short film titled "Bajo los escombros" (Under the rubbles), made by my friend Carlos Davila, about a medical student that was stuck in his room in one of the hospitals that collapsed, and survived for several days until he was rescued.
We in Mexico City are so used to seismic activity, that an earthquake of regular magnitude doesn't excite us, or at least that was the case before September 19, 1985. That day we had the most devastating earthquake of the 20th century. Many old and not so old buildings fell down, including hospitals, schools and multi-family apartment buildings. Many people died, including celebrities (Mexico's largest TV Network, Televisa, lost buildings too). There are many touching stories, good to fill years of tutor Julie's Read Aloud daily sessions, but for some reason nobody has made a good movie about it. Carlos is planning to do it. I hope he will.
The next day we had other conferences and activities. The closing act of the fair was a musical performance made by students of one of my former music teachers, who still keeps numbers of the students magazine I directed when I was there. They even dared to set an act from Carmen's Opera, very well done by these amateur singers.
In the aperture ceremony I was representing the organizer committee and I shared the table with the president of the International Year of Planet Earth in Mexico, Dr. Jaime Urrutia, the director of this High School, Lic. Jaime Suaste, and the director of the CCH High School System, Rito Teran. The CCH High School system (Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades, or Sciences and Humanities High school) is an alternative system in the spirit of the active school systems. At the beggining it was experimental but I was very happy there, being tired of the oppressive traditional system of my junior high school.
One of the most interesting days was Thursday. Almost all day was dedicated to Earth's movement. The first conference was about plate tectonics. The speaker was Dr. Gustavo Tolson, a remarkable geologist and educator, who is also the director of the Geology Institute. The next speech was by Dr. Carlos Valdez, chief of the National Seismologic Service. His conference was about seismic activity in Mexico and about things people should do to mitigate the risk. He also analyzed the recent devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, and all the mistakes the remiss builders made. But the gist of the day was the earthquake that shook Mexico City in September 19, 1985. After the conference, to give the students a break from the overwhelming (but quite interesting) amount of information of the previous conferences, we projected a short film titled "Bajo los escombros" (Under the rubbles), made by my friend Carlos Davila, about a medical student that was stuck in his room in one of the hospitals that collapsed, and survived for several days until he was rescued.
We in Mexico City are so used to seismic activity, that an earthquake of regular magnitude doesn't excite us, or at least that was the case before September 19, 1985. That day we had the most devastating earthquake of the 20th century. Many old and not so old buildings fell down, including hospitals, schools and multi-family apartment buildings. Many people died, including celebrities (Mexico's largest TV Network, Televisa, lost buildings too). There are many touching stories, good to fill years of tutor Julie's Read Aloud daily sessions, but for some reason nobody has made a good movie about it. Carlos is planning to do it. I hope he will.
The next day we had other conferences and activities. The closing act of the fair was a musical performance made by students of one of my former music teachers, who still keeps numbers of the students magazine I directed when I was there. They even dared to set an act from Carmen's Opera, very well done by these amateur singers.
miércoles, 30 de abril de 2008
Earth Day in Tlatelolco
April 22 is a day to celebrate our home, mother Earth. It was first proposed by an American senator, Gaylord Nelson, as a nationwide environmental protest. That first year, 20 million Americans
participated.
In 1990, 200 million people joined in a worldwide Earth Day celebration. April 22 is also my mom's birthday. That day, in 1990, I was very angry at her and I decided to both join the first Earth Day march celebrated in Mexico, and run away from my mom's birthday party. I spent the whole day marching, protesting and listening to environmental speeches.
This year, 2008, we had lunch in a nice restaurant with my parents and sister, to celebrate my mom's birthday (yes, I am no longer angry at her). Later I went to the Gregory Colbert's Nomadic Museum, "Ashes and Snow" at the Zocalo (central city square), and admired his amazing photographs and movies. Two hours later I went to "Animasivo", an Animation festival with environmental themes like Global Warming. All the works have an environmental message to spread to the world. Among all levels of quality, there were very interesting graphical proposals.
On Sunday, April 27, "Gala de Gea", another party, was celebrated, "a posteriori" to allow whole families to participate. It took place at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Three Cultures Square), named that way because it is surrounded by historic buildings from three different cultures and times in history: Aztec pyramids, a colonial church (from the time Mexico was a Spanish province) and a modern skyscraper. After the official inauguration and speeches, Julieta Fierro, a famous Mexican astronomer and science popularizer, ran a contest of mambo dancing. The team that moved a seismographer the most won. My team did it.
But the icing on the cake was when the crowd played a giant loteria (a kind of bingo game, but using pictures instead of numbers). All the pictures were photographs of natural scenes, like volcanoes,
glaciers, rivers, caves, and so on. The pictures were on big 4x4 boards on the floor. Instead of chips, people jumped on the squares when the name of the corresponding picture was called by the host. It was so fun that people wanted to keep playing, even after the prizes ran out.
After the game, several documentaries and videos were played on a giant flat screen. Most people were paying attention to the videos with great interest. It was good for my self esteem, for I participated in the production of some of the videos.
It was a nice, memorable, sunny day.
participated.
In 1990, 200 million people joined in a worldwide Earth Day celebration. April 22 is also my mom's birthday. That day, in 1990, I was very angry at her and I decided to both join the first Earth Day march celebrated in Mexico, and run away from my mom's birthday party. I spent the whole day marching, protesting and listening to environmental speeches.
This year, 2008, we had lunch in a nice restaurant with my parents and sister, to celebrate my mom's birthday (yes, I am no longer angry at her). Later I went to the Gregory Colbert's Nomadic Museum, "Ashes and Snow" at the Zocalo (central city square), and admired his amazing photographs and movies. Two hours later I went to "Animasivo", an Animation festival with environmental themes like Global Warming. All the works have an environmental message to spread to the world. Among all levels of quality, there were very interesting graphical proposals.
On Sunday, April 27, "Gala de Gea", another party, was celebrated, "a posteriori" to allow whole families to participate. It took place at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Three Cultures Square), named that way because it is surrounded by historic buildings from three different cultures and times in history: Aztec pyramids, a colonial church (from the time Mexico was a Spanish province) and a modern skyscraper. After the official inauguration and speeches, Julieta Fierro, a famous Mexican astronomer and science popularizer, ran a contest of mambo dancing. The team that moved a seismographer the most won. My team did it.
But the icing on the cake was when the crowd played a giant loteria (a kind of bingo game, but using pictures instead of numbers). All the pictures were photographs of natural scenes, like volcanoes,
glaciers, rivers, caves, and so on. The pictures were on big 4x4 boards on the floor. Instead of chips, people jumped on the squares when the name of the corresponding picture was called by the host. It was so fun that people wanted to keep playing, even after the prizes ran out.
After the game, several documentaries and videos were played on a giant flat screen. Most people were paying attention to the videos with great interest. It was good for my self esteem, for I participated in the production of some of the videos.
It was a nice, memorable, sunny day.
domingo, 20 de abril de 2008
When a teacher dies
In my not so long life, I have known about the passing away of people I admire, those that have had real influence in my life. I call these people "teachers" for the valuable things I have learned from them.
When I was a young physics undergraduate, the main hero among my classmates was Richard Feynman. He was a prominent physicist, Nobel prize winner but perhaps most famous for his demonstration of the flaws that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. His life was an inspiration for many physics students. I thought "if I am serious about being a physicist, I have to meet this guy". One cold winter day I read about his death. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious physicist?"
When I was in junior high school, there was a TV show named Cosmos, conducted by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. It was my favorite TV show, I admired the beautiful images, the very appropriate selection of music, and the clarity and easy acumen of his explanations about intricate subjects of astrophysics. When years later he came to my city to give a speech, my undergraduate classmates brought their favorite Carl Sagan books to be autographed and went to the conference. I can't remember why I did not, perhaps I was busy with a project, I was insecure about my spoken English, or simply I was lazy. I thought, however, "sure there will be a better chance to meet him, I will be able to communicate better than today and I will follow his steps for writing about science and filming awesome science documentaries". Years later, when I was just finished my master on computer sciences, I read about Carl Sagan's passing. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious science popularizer?"
I never have been a fan of soft popular American science fiction. I enjoyed superficially the action and special effects of some shows but at the end there was always something that left me unsatisfied. I disliked the monotony and visually unappealing scenarios in Star Trek and the lack of real science in the essential Star Wars plot (almost just the typical medieval story about the knight that saves the princess from the dragon claws, but with laser swords instead of steel). I hated to find that an Hugo prize winner (the Nobel of American Science Fiction writers) got honors for stealing ideas with a lower quality result from an Eastern European writer not very known in the USA.
But I love the work of some international hard science fiction writers, like Polish writer Stanislaw Lem and, specially, British author Arthur C. Clarke. Yes, the one that helped Stanley Kubrick to create "2001: A Space Odyssey". The life achievements of Sir Arthur Clarke deserves its own writing (and many books). But for now I just want to say that he is my favorite classic hard science fiction writer. His stories not only are backed by real science but are very well written; his prose is close to poetry and makes you feel almost like if you were there. My first experience on doing a website was my translation to Spanish of the Unauthorized Arthur C. Clarke Homepage during the mid nineties. In 1998 I translated to Spanish this sentence in the Contact page: "He answers all his letters, sometimes he writes the response himself".
Ten years later, while working on a project based in part on his work, I thought "I should write Sir Arthur, maybe he will like the project and allow me to publish his recorded supportive message on YouTube". I was thinking on how to write this letter when, in a still cold Easter morning, a friend called me to ask about my feelings on Clarke's death. It was true, the news was in all online news papers and all online science fiction forums to which I am subscribed. Then I wondered: "Shall I be a good science fiction writer?"
Nah, I did not wondered that! I don't know if I will become some day a good "anything" writer. But I know that the chance to meet Arthur Clarke in person was not easy. For many of his late years he never left his adopted home in Sri Lanka, on the other side of the world. But there was a good chance to write him and to be read by him. I knew that for ten long years!
Apparently there is a lesson I had not been able to learn in my life. However, there are some teachers still alive, some are even younger than me. I admonish myself so that I will attain and learn
from my past bitter experience and do something about it.
I hope so.
When I was a young physics undergraduate, the main hero among my classmates was Richard Feynman. He was a prominent physicist, Nobel prize winner but perhaps most famous for his demonstration of the flaws that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. His life was an inspiration for many physics students. I thought "if I am serious about being a physicist, I have to meet this guy". One cold winter day I read about his death. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious physicist?"
When I was in junior high school, there was a TV show named Cosmos, conducted by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. It was my favorite TV show, I admired the beautiful images, the very appropriate selection of music, and the clarity and easy acumen of his explanations about intricate subjects of astrophysics. When years later he came to my city to give a speech, my undergraduate classmates brought their favorite Carl Sagan books to be autographed and went to the conference. I can't remember why I did not, perhaps I was busy with a project, I was insecure about my spoken English, or simply I was lazy. I thought, however, "sure there will be a better chance to meet him, I will be able to communicate better than today and I will follow his steps for writing about science and filming awesome science documentaries". Years later, when I was just finished my master on computer sciences, I read about Carl Sagan's passing. Then I wondered "Shall I be a serious science popularizer?"
I never have been a fan of soft popular American science fiction. I enjoyed superficially the action and special effects of some shows but at the end there was always something that left me unsatisfied. I disliked the monotony and visually unappealing scenarios in Star Trek and the lack of real science in the essential Star Wars plot (almost just the typical medieval story about the knight that saves the princess from the dragon claws, but with laser swords instead of steel). I hated to find that an Hugo prize winner (the Nobel of American Science Fiction writers) got honors for stealing ideas with a lower quality result from an Eastern European writer not very known in the USA.
But I love the work of some international hard science fiction writers, like Polish writer Stanislaw Lem and, specially, British author Arthur C. Clarke. Yes, the one that helped Stanley Kubrick to create "2001: A Space Odyssey". The life achievements of Sir Arthur Clarke deserves its own writing (and many books). But for now I just want to say that he is my favorite classic hard science fiction writer. His stories not only are backed by real science but are very well written; his prose is close to poetry and makes you feel almost like if you were there. My first experience on doing a website was my translation to Spanish of the Unauthorized Arthur C. Clarke Homepage during the mid nineties. In 1998 I translated to Spanish this sentence in the Contact page: "He answers all his letters, sometimes he writes the response himself".
Ten years later, while working on a project based in part on his work, I thought "I should write Sir Arthur, maybe he will like the project and allow me to publish his recorded supportive message on YouTube". I was thinking on how to write this letter when, in a still cold Easter morning, a friend called me to ask about my feelings on Clarke's death. It was true, the news was in all online news papers and all online science fiction forums to which I am subscribed. Then I wondered: "Shall I be a good science fiction writer?"
Nah, I did not wondered that! I don't know if I will become some day a good "anything" writer. But I know that the chance to meet Arthur Clarke in person was not easy. For many of his late years he never left his adopted home in Sri Lanka, on the other side of the world. But there was a good chance to write him and to be read by him. I knew that for ten long years!
Apparently there is a lesson I had not been able to learn in my life. However, there are some teachers still alive, some are even younger than me. I admonish myself so that I will attain and learn
from my past bitter experience and do something about it.
I hope so.
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