9/5/15, 10:58 PM PDT
Today, Kayla, Christina and I traveled to the mythical world of Dungeons and Dragons.
Hell yeah.
Or, rather, preparing for the mythical world of Dungeons and Dragons. Basically, we scoured Kayla's room for figurines we could use, a grid map we can use, and dice.
Dice seems to be the biggest problem right now, since all we could find were two metal D6 that Kayla had, but we had no problem looking for miniatures to use.
Granted, they weren't exactly the uniform-looking D&D miniatures you normally see, but a figurine is a figurine. Instead of knights exploring a large medieval landscape, we'll instead be little jaundiced Lego people aimlessly roaming a world of Pokémon and multicolored frogs and whatever the fuck this guy is:
I'm not kidding. We really have one of these guys.
My sister and I also went to Daiso to buy some college dorm stuff, specifically a coin bank for me to put the loose change that I will inevitably gather in LA. They had a few interesting looking ones, especially this one that I really liked but thought would be a little too intimidating for my roommates.
Because nothing...
says badass...
Quite like a can designed to prevent you from spending your change recklessly.
So I opted for this neutral looking yet still aesthetically-pleasing blue can.
I have no idea what it says.
Later, we went to Target and discovered what it sounded like to strangle Snoopy.
RFotD: While I was filming this, a man was apparently laughing behind me and staring while I was mercilessly shaking Snoopy. He started cackling right after I saw him.
9/4/15, 11:20 PM PDT
So for the past three days, I have essentially been nonstop editing for the next VFX weekly. I wanted to try some compositing with 3D elements, so I decided to try and animate some Star Fox vehicles into my neighborhood.
Thankfully, to save me a ton of modeling time, I managed to find a 3D model of an Arwing, a Landmaster, and a Wolfen online. Bless whoever took those from Brawl, because if I had to model this thing...
...then this weekly would probably have become a monthly. I've only been playing with 3DS Max for about two months and modeling is still ridiculously hard for me. Thankfully, animating is still basically the same as it is in After Effects, so I had no trouble doing that. The only thing that was super difficult about this project was rendering. It took EIGHT HOURS to render, and it basically overworked my laptop in the process.
But I am very happy with the outcome. Take a look.
More importantly, however, let me tell you about the socializing habits of the rare and elusive Filipino mother. Upon the retrieval of their child at another Filipino family's house, such as Samantha's house, the two mothers partake in an elaborate social ritual. In the native Philippine tongue, it is called "wag ka tatahimic" but its closest English translation is "conversation." Though conversation, in the Western sense, is nothing compared to this.
The two Filipino mothers initiate the ritual by first gesturing to the other what appears to be a goodbye wave at first glance. However, between the two women, it is actually a signal that says "I want us to talk for an indefinite period of time in order to delay the work that both of our children have to do for as long as possible." From that point, the two women quickly jump from conversation topic to conversation topic while their children wait awkwardly outside of the car for them to finish. Which is what Sam and I did.
Eventually, when their conversation hit the 45 minute mark, we tried to play a trick on them. Sam snuck into my mom's car (my mom stayed in her car the entire time she was talking to Sam's mom) and she hid in the backseat while we waited for them to finish talking.
We ended up waiting an additional forty minutes, meaning their entire "farewell" conversation lasted an hour and a half. But eventually, my mom drove off.
She didn't notice that crouching in the backseat in the fetal position was Samantha, hidden from view by the back of the passenger seat, her occasional chuckles covered up by the hum of the engine and the guttural hyena-like roars of laughter that my sister was screaming out.
My mom immediately started saying that she could talk to Samantha's mom forever, and I just put myself into autopilot, saying "yeah" to whatever she said. At one point, my mom said
"Samantha's mom talks a lot though, huh?"
She asked that question at an incredible time, right at the point where we reached a stop sign and the sound of my sister laughing stopped for a few seconds. And, with equally perfect timing, in a perfectly silent car, Samantha said
"Yeah, she does."
My mom immediately looks in the backseat, notices that Samantha was still in the car with us, and IMMEDIATELY turns back around to Samantha's house, right as Sam's mom exits the house in panic mode, searching for her daughter.
We explained the situation and even though the entire car was laughing, Sam's mom was panicking. Upon exiting, Sam gave out this weird chimpanzee "WOOO!" howl and raised her arms in the air like Donkey Kong about to throw an invisible barrel.
Her mom threatened to smack us, but it was totally worth it.
RFotD: I feel bad that our little joke made Sam's brother panic too. Her brother's cool, he didn't deserve that kind of fear.
8/31/15, 10:57 AM PDT
Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of updates, but with the VFX weeklies I'm doing and how often I'm out of the house, it's pretty hard to find time to blog every single day. I might just transition to doing these in big chunks so that the "Boring" tag doesn't get exhausted.
So first of all, I finished another VFX weekly!
That was my first time working with 3D and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the results. You can see some flaws, like how the light from the buildings near the end of the video sprawl out onto the mountain and the light leak from near the lake, but other than that, I'm very happy with the results.
I also got my driver's license! FINALLY. My driving examiner really reminded my of an Italian version of Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park, and he was kinda rude sometimes (especially in the beginning of the drive) but it didn't matter since today my brain decided to be a decent driver and I passed anyway.
After that, a BUNCH of stuff happened. We went to Viet's birthday party and played hilarious games of Spyfall and heads up, then the next day Sam and I volunteered for the San Diego Film Festival and tailgated the Taylor Swift concert, and then the day after that, Christina, Angela, Kayla, Nick, Ken and I went for sushi, followed by GTA V/the most INTENSE game of "Sorry!" ever at Kayla's house, which ended in a victory for Angela because for some reason she was blessed by the probability gods to always draw "4" cards when she leaves the starting point.
And now I have something to say.
I'm sorry that I haven't updated this as frequently. But to be honest, these past few months have been pretty up and down, and after a lot of time writing, I realized a month or so ago that I don't find much fun in blogging anymore. For the past six or so years, it used to be an outlet for me to be creative while having a log of all the things I did during summer. But this year, it felt more like a chore than anything. It's really visible in my writing that I didn't like this year as much as I did the past years, I mean it's pretty apparent that this year's entries weren't as funny as they were in the past years (if they were even funny at all).
So what happened? Truthfully, I don't know. But if I had to guess, I would say the main culprit is probably the fact that I feel like every entry on this blog has to entertain other people, as opposed to just being something that I do for fun. And because of that feeling that I'm required to write stuff that appeals to other people, I can't be honest 100% of the time on here. No matter how depressed I feel on a given day, I still have to churn out another post and I still have to put in jokes and mildly funny captions in every post or else I would have failed as a writer. You might not have read it, but I vented about it before and those feelings have not changed.
I really want to change that. Because truthfully, it's not a great feeling to have to sugarcoat everything and pretend like every day is nothing but sunshine and rainbows even if I have days where I'm too depressed to even leave my room, or days where I'm exhausted after hanging out with my friends and staying up an extra three hours or so to write does not seem like it's worth it.
And then there's the feeling that this blog takes away from the time that I spend with my friends. I've heard some people say that I "only do things for my blog" and not because I want to spend any actual time with them, and I've also heard that I tell this blog more things than I do my friends. I don't want this blog to be something that takes away from those things, I want to actually enjoy the time I have with my friends, not worry about what I'm gonna write to the Internet. So if you're one of those people that have complained about how this blog has been more important to me than the time I spent with you was, then I'm sorry. And I will change that.
I love the idea of having a record of everything I do during summers. That was the main reason why I started writing summer blogs when I started doing them way back in 6th grade with daily emails. But this year, it became less of a summer vacation chronicle and more of an attempt to please other people online. And I think that has poisoned the blog. So something has to change.
So what now? I'll still be updating the blog periodically (maybe even daily if I feel like it ), but with a different focus. Long time readers will know that six years ago, my purpose of writing this blog was to entertain you. But I think that mindset put a lot of pressure on me to try and write things specifically to appeal to other people, as opposed to writing things because I like to write about them, and that mindset that I had to write to entertain other people was what made me not like the blog as much this year.
I want to make the blog what it was in the past years: a simple record of the stuff that I do in summer, with no obligation to impress anyone. I think if I do that, I'll end up liking the blog way more again, and the content will probably improve along the way too. But no more sugarcoating. If I'm depressed, I'll write depressing things, and if I'm happy, I'll write happy things, and if I don't feel like updating the blog then I won't.
I hope you guys understand. I just really want this blog to be something I enjoy doing again, even if that comes at a cost of viewership.
Okay, thanks for reading my little vent, I'll see you tomorrow.
RFotD: Blogging while I was on vacation in Europe was the worst.
