Shaky Animation

Aye Caramba.... another one.....

Limited Fertility

The more you limit yourself,

the more fertile you become

in invention.

-- S.Kierkegaard

Yeah, but Soren didn't go to all the effort to borrow a killer camera, read the whole *&%$ manual, go to a garden show, set up perfect shots.... BUT neglect to check if the camera was set to shoot in RAW at maximum quality. Limited photos below. Thank gawd for photoshop or these would look disposably over-exposed. There should be an entire subsection of Murphy's Laws devoted to me. *$&%! Ah well.................

Mathimation

Were it not for the "mathy-ness" of animation (the measuring, the counting, the pacing, the timing, the exactitude, etc), I don't think I'd put up with how *&$^% much time & effort it takes. Here's a little three second wonder that only took about three weeks to draw!

Life and Arts

Kelowna had an outdoor festival (Life and Arts) and ... we went!

There was this amazing troupe of vertical dancers called Aeriosa Ballet --- who danced on the side of the library building --- the troupe is headed by this upside-down chick, Julia, who used to go out with one of my friends back in the Winnipeg days. She looks exactly the same as she did when she was 20 (she was always upside-down back then, too!)

Dread-locks + Stilts = awesome

Tim enjoyed the stilted goddesses who were walking around, blessing us with their ribboned wands......

Jamination

Press play ... view cartoons.... revere me... yup!

Tiny Cartoon

Another four second cartoon that took about six painstaking hours to create. No wonder animators are raving maniacs.

It's title: "Mighty Mask".

It was a class assignment. Honestly.

Flowers in February

Valentine's Day, for all its hype and commercially-driven crap, is still one helluvan excuse for flowers in February. Ahhhhhhh.....

After ten years, the best husbands understand how gorgeous a bird-of-paradise bloom looks beside a sunny sunflower.

Hatching of a Cartoon

Here's my first offocial six seconds of animation. Zippity doo dah....

What Condo?

So... Christmas at the condo (Cove Lakeside at this link here), was quite nice.

Lotsa relaxing in hot tub, watching movies, eating massive amounts of gouda, chevre, brie, and every other kinda cheese one can name...

Worked a little in my "office" (the extra bedroom, at right) - getting some drawings ready for my cartooning class!

We found a massive hill to climb and almost made it to the top. Our condo is the far away building that's atop Bailey's head in photo above.

We discovered, tho, that it will still be a little while before Tim can thoroughly enjoy spending time at this all inclusive type retreat. We didn't need to cook (restaurant downstairs), no driveway to shovel, no wood to chop, no house to clean .... in other words: bored husband. He needs to be cellared a little while longer before he's ready to just sit around & be mellow!! But, when the time comes, this is probably where we'll be relaxing.....

Yes but, can he stack it?

I guess if you chop 'em down, you might as well cut 'em up! For those keeping track ---> this is the new log splitter! ... timmmmmmberrrrrrr!

TIM...brrrrrrrr.....!!!!

We went tree hunting this weekend and..... we found a big one!



This massive pine was standing dead (and lovely!) about 80 feet up a hill, above the access road. Tim spotted it and sprung into action!

The video below documents "the kill"! Too bad our camera doesn't have sound. Suffice to say... it went BOOM!



Here's the trunk of the tree. We estimate it to be about 3/4 of the length of a "Red Dog" in Diameter. That's a lotta wood in these parts....

Luckily, the father-in-law/father believed us when we yelled TIMBER since the tip of the tree did, in fact, hit the road .... look out~!!

S-nap!

I entered an end-of-the-year "fall festival" photo competition out in Seymour Arm at the Community Fair and: (um...) I won!

Well... I didn't win in EVERY single event category but... I did place quite sweetly in the more - shall we say - "influential areas", which awarded me enough points to be crowned the Best Overall Photographer at the Fair!

These first four photos captured the coveted "Best Collection" prize .... (those other submitted entries of local logging fires and flower gardens just didn't cut it, I guess...) (click on any photo to enlarge it, by the by)....

























Also "capturing gold" was this old photo of the vintage hotel (below -- now closed) which stands at the centre of Seymour Arm's town centre (if you can call it that)....







Now here's the kicker ---->> my favorite photo (below), which I've entitled "Mad Cow", actually did NOT win in the "Wildlife Photo" category.

Some silly picture of a squirrel won!

Life is so unfair....

The rest of the photos, below, are just part of my general Seymour Arm photo essay that I created over the summer.

I'm pretty sure this was the best summer of my life. Lots of good people, good books, great food, good times and creative endeavors. Guaranteed recipe for fun..........

MonkeyButton

Seymour Arm continues to be a place of peace and purposelessness...

We finally made our way up the road a bit to visit the Seymour River falls ---- they're much more spectacular than the video implies but... I'm just excited to have figured out how to embed videos on this blog (look out!)



At the end of July it was time to fly down to San Diego & celebrate the births of my brother (40!) and SaoMai, the MonkeyButton (365 days old!)

We visited San Diego's zoo and petted goats and watched floating turtles & hippos and all kindsa striped (and smelly!) animals....

Sao Mai especially loved the underwater tone poems being danced, interpretively, by the zoo's hippo (video below)!

She's sooooooo close to being able to walk & I tried my best to encourage it. ....

And now it'll be back to Seymour Arm for most of the remainder of the summer. Tim spends his days putting together these crazy-big beach houses and I spend my days, um...., 'not' putting together crazy beach houses.

See More Arms

The tree fell down.

My dad came to visit and, while hanging out at the creek, he looked at our leaning tree and asked, "when's that thing going to fall down?"

It fell down the next morning.




My dad & I took a roadtrip north to visit Tim & Walter up at their worksite in Seymour Arm --- or, as my dad calls it: "See More Arms"

Shaggy's parked snuggly beside Walter's lovely log cabin. Everyday, Tim & Walter head down to the lake and piece together posts and beams and decks and other parts of the houses they're building. When it gets too hot, they head ten feet south & hit the beach.

I'm looking forward to spending an Okanagan summer at this quiet bend in the Shuswap.... it's a mellow place to hang out & stand still like a hummingbird.....