Cessen Speaks

First up: I have a job! Yay! I’ll be working at Airtight Games on the game “Dark Void”, starting on the 18th.

The interview process at Airtight was long (over three hours), but it actually wasn’t grueling at all. They really seemed to just want a chance to feel me out and get to know me. See if I would fit with the team. I was really nervous at first, but a fair amount of the interview actually ended up being normal conversation. The vibe of the whole place felt really good to me, and I really liked the people there. Plus, they’re making a game with rocket packs in it, so how can I go wrong?

The position is a temporary contract position, though, and only lasts until the end of December. But honestly, I’m fine with that. I suppose there’s always the chance they’ll bring me on permanently at some point, but I’m certainly not assuming or depending on that. The company is new, relatively small, is working on their first game, and is an everyone-knows-everyone kind of place. All of those things appeal to me greatly, and I’m happy to be taking a temporary position there even if just for the experience of it.

So yeah, wish me luck on that!

Second topic: I’m leaving in a few hours for SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles. A subset of the Peach team (me included, of course) will be giving presentations on Big Buck Bunny at both SIGGRAPH and Disney Animation Studios. We’ll also be visiting Dreamworks and possibly Rhythm & Hues. I’m really excited!

The presentations will be fun to give, I’m sure, and I’m really looking forward to seeing all the cool stuff at SIGGRAPH (which for me means everything except for the trade show, which over-excites my annoyance neurons with marketing hype). I also plan to attend the job fair, of course, to look for possible opportunities for after my contract with Airtight.

I got a video camera! It’s a Samsung SC-MX10, which is really well suited to my purposes: it’s small, convenient, flash-based, records progressive-scan video, and has 34x optical zoom. It also allows manual exposure and focus via the menu, as well as a fast shutter mode for high-speed motion.

The nicest thing about it from my perspective is that it acts as a USB mass-storage device when plugged into a computer. This is extremely convenient, especially as a Linux user. Capturing video via Linux is typically annoying, but with this I can just plug in the camera and it pops up as a drive on my computer. Each clip shows up as a video file, and I can just drag and drop them onto my computer. Hurrah!

This camera also has a very simple and easy-to-navigate menu system which is a definite plus. I don’t find myself having to navigate through a maze of menus to find things like I do with a lot of consumer-level cameras. The whole camera is very intuitive.

Over-all this camera seems nearly ideal for shooting animation reference. My only complaint is that I wish it could zoom out further. But really, I can hardly expect wide-angle footage from a consumer-level camera.

In any case, I now have yet another tool in my animation toolbox (and an important one at that).

And for those that are curious, I got the camera plus a tripod for less than $300. Hell, I could spend nearly as much on an iPod.

I ran across this today via slashdot. Apparently the Department of Homeland Security can now take your laptop (or other digital devices) from you indefinitely, without even suspicion of wrongdoing. Yet another drop in the bucket. It’s so much fun watching the USA slowly but steadily turn into a police state.

This is my favorite bit from the article:

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism.

Ah, good ol’ terrorism. I love how it’s become a catch-all excuse to do anything.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need a video camera. Nothing fancy. In fact, it can be really crappy. Just so long as it’s digital and I can get its videos onto my computer easily.

The reason I have this need is animation. Reference material is very important for animation: just like you would look at pictures of horses and study their anatomy in order to draw them really well, you also need to study real motion to be able to animate well. And in cases where you need to study something very specific about human motion, or play with acting decisions, the best thing to do is break out a camera and film yourself.

But, alas, I lack a camera. So for now I’ll have to settle for scouring the internet for second-rate reference material.

It seems that Viacom has won a suit requiring Google to turn over all their YouTube logs, short of real names (not that they’re verifiable anyway). This includes IP addresses and the viewing and upload histories of all users. More here: Google Must Divulge YouTube Log

This seems like such a blatant privacy violation of all YouTube users. Something is really, really wrong with our courts.

So now that I’ve graduated I am faced with the task of moving out into the “real world” and finding a job and a place to live. I must confess to being a bit scared. Although I have Big Buck Bunny under my belt, all that really does is elevate me to the same status as all of the other qualified people in this industry. It hardly guarantees me a job.

I’m also a little edgy about finding a place to live. My primary requirements are that it be reasonably well maintained, and within easy walking distance of both public transit and a grocery store. Ideally I would also like it to be small (I’ve come to appreciate small living spaces, oddly). And, of course, the biggest requirement is that it be well within my budget, which probably means as cheap as possible.

I suppose this transition feels a bit like walking across a rickety bridge. I’m stepping off of solid ground in order to reach more solid ground on the other side. But the process of getting there is a bit uncertain.

Right now I’m looking for jobs/housing in the Seattle area. A friend of mine has been kind enough to let me stay with him in Redmond while I look. Ideally I’d like to end up in the Seattle area. My second choice would be Portland. And beyond that I’d just like to avoid anywhere with hot weather, little rainfall, or poor public transit.

But I guess I’ll just have to see where this goes.

Wish me luck.

So here I am, sitting on one of the three couches in the living room of Sean, Chris, and Bob. I just officially graduated on Thursday, and we had a little celebration (of the inexpensive low-key kind). I’m definitely glad to be done with school. Now I can go on and do more real learning. ;-)

People here at Cogswell certainly seemed to like Big Buck Bunny. And they also seemed to like my presentation, which I tried to make as entertaining as possible. I got a lot of questions. And one or two people I didn’t remember even recognized me and seemed really psyched about me. Felt a bit like a celebrity, but not really. It was fun anyway.

Being officially graduated doesn’t really feel different at all. I guess I get a piece of paper, and the looming college requirements are behind me, but I felt like I had already graduated in the important ways when I left for Amsterdam and when I was at the premiere of Big Buck Bunny, so there aren’t really any feelings of transition now.

But, in any case, congratulations to me. I got an A+ on my senior project. :-P

And of course I got to see my friends down here in California, which was the most awesome part of the trip!

As I’m writing this blog entry I am sitting on the couch at the Blender Institute, acutely aware that I will never be able to revisit this part of my life again. Peach was a truly remarkable experience, even if I can’t remember half of it.

At the beginning of the project I had high hopes, and was aware of a larger context in which the project was happening. I talked of new business models, and how the media industry was changing right under our noses… and how the big boys were going to have to change with it, or get out. I talked about how media production is becoming more local, and how media distribution is becoming more direct.
But during the actual production of Peach I forgot all about that stuff. We were just making a short animated film. It completely slipped my mind that this project was related to those things at all.

Now that the fog of production is clearing, these thoughts are sifting back through my mind. And although Big Buck Bunny certainly won’t spark any sort of instantaneous change — or indeed, any change at all just on its own — it’s nice to know that I’ve helped create something that is a part of this change, even if it’s only a small part.

On a slightly different subject, the premiere of Peach was pretty awesome. We got a standing ovation from the audience. It was enthralling. Although I must confess that I’m holding out to see the results of the online release. The premiere consisted largely of people that were already interested in and supportive of the project, so even though they were strangers, the ovation had a tinge of that parents-at-a-school-play feel. They were there to be supportive in the first place, so the ovation means less. But it was still an amazing feeling, and it did still mean something.

Most of the Peach artists have already left. Andy left a few days ago. William and Enrico left not much later. Sacha is still here, though I’ll be gone before he comes in tomorrow. Same goes for Brecht and Campbell. The dynamics of this group felt quite unique. We almost had a little subculture of our own going here. I’ll miss that.

However, I certainly will not miss the stress and long hours. I’m ready to come home.

Big Buck Bunny is finally on its way to be printed to film (in Norway no less!), but the road there was more than a little bumpy, as outlined by Ton here.

I wasn’t there for most of it, because unlike the heroes that stayed up all night, I was sleeping. But it was crazy last-minute stuff. I wonder if all movie productions go this way; in almost all the movie projects I’ve taken part in, things were pushed right up to the last minute.

Anyhoo, now I can finally breath again, and take a break while working on the DVD.

I accomplished something exciting tonight. At least, exciting for me. You see, one of the very last things that was keeping Windows on my computer was the lack of good audio and video tools for Linux. Being a film maker at heart, there’s no way I could abandon the tools that let me make movies.

Tonight, I finally patched together an entire audio/video pipeline that takes me all the way from video capture and audio recording, to video editing and audio mastering. Not that I did this all in one night. I’ve been looking for these tools for a long time, and slowly collecting software and taking note of what works and what doesn’t. But tonight the last piece of the puzzle fell in place.

The tools I’ve assembled are as follows:

• Kino
• Audacity
• Blender
• Ardour
• xjadeo
• JACK
• ffmpeg

I don’t want to bore you too much with the details, but here’s a quick run-down of what role each of these play:

Kino is for video capturing. (In theory it’s also supposed to do video editing, but I’ve never found it useful for that.)
Audacity is for audio recording and sound cleanup (noise removal etc.)
Blender is for video editing (I find it amusing that the best open-source video editor is primarily a 3D animation program…).
Ardour and xjadeo are for audio- sequencing/mixing/mastering/etc. Ardour does the audio, and xjadeo displays video in sync with Ardour.
JACK is a little difficult to explain, but it basically links audio software together in cool ways. For example, it’s the intermediary that Ardour and xjadeo use to stay in sync. But it can do much much more.
ffmpeg is for converting video and audio files to different formats, and for doing final muxing and encoding.

Now it’s important to note that some of these programs are not for the faint of heart, and many of them require command-line knowledge to use effectively. For me that’s perfectly fine, but for less technically inclined people that’s a serious problem. But this pipeline is for me. So… wootz.

For those who are curious about a few of the details, read on.
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