justin owens

I’m working the bake shift this evening/morning, Tues from 4am to 8am. It’s going to add up to a long day, but I’m excited to be baking pastries!

I’m working at getting some homework done at the moment. I’ve been pretty busy this weekend and hadn’t really gotten a chance to get much done in that department. On Saturday I helped cater for a wedding, that was a lot of fun, I hope to post about that specifically in the next few days. On Sunday maiki and I took a nice walk around Berkeley, sampling many treats along the way. Much conversation was had.

I had a simple exercise to do for my Advanced Animation 2 class, a basic ball (of the heavy variety) bouncing in place and coming to a stop, using the techniques learned in the last class. I did it pretty much as he wanted, but in the end I opened the graph editor and adjusted the curves so the ball had more apparent weight. Specifically, I broke the tangets of the curves to make the adjustments I wanted, though that wasn’t something he showed us. He had mentioned that technique can lead to problems when scaling an animation, but I didn’t really know of another way to get the same effect, without overloading on keyframes.

 

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I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable at work. I get nervous working up front at the register, I end up feeling more pressure when helping customers. I’m slow and worry about getting their order wrong or making their espresso drinks poorly, but it’s getting easier.

I spent most of the day yesterday in the back helping to prepare foods for today. I’m slow with a knife, but everyone has been really helpful in showing me tips. They all seem to understand that I’m coming in with no experience in that department and have been very patient with me.

My big story from yesterday was from dicing onions. The first few had me crying, but after a while I couldn’t feel it anymore…although I did feel a bit dizzy! I made sure to take breaks and drink water. ^_^ I felt sorry for the gentleman working next to me though. When Kimi came back to visit me, she said she felt the wave of onion from five feet away. She kept her visit short!

I started a new job today at The Bread Workshop. Kimi has been working there since the end of June, I’ll be working there on a temporary basis. That works for me, since school will be starting September 4th.

Today I was learning the basics of opening and how to use the registers. I was also making espresso drinks, which was a bit stressful. I really didn’t want to mess up anyone’s drink! They make all their own breads and pastries fresh each day, I hope to get in on that. I’ve always wanted to work in a bakery ^_^

I’m really looking forward to getting back to school. I’m excited by most of my classes, I’ll be taking advanced animation two in which I believe we’ll be focusing on facial animation. I also have an intro to 2d animation class, that should be interesting. I hope to get a lot of drawing practice from it. I’ll have a intermediate figuring drawing class, I hope to make it to more workshops this semester. Finally I’ll be taking a class called gestures and emotions in art. Kind-of an acting class for animators.

On Monday Kimi and I drove over to the Compusa in Emeryville, they’re closing down and we wanted to see what sort of deals they might have. As it turns out, not a lot at that point. We’ll check again in a few days and see what we can score.

A half block away we saw the Pixar Animation studio. It was pretty grand looking with a big archway and everything, I felt chills. I’ve always been so impressed with their storytelling and seeing how close they were to where I live really made the place seem approachable. I’m thinking of trying to get a job there. I do have some qualms about working for such a large company, but I’ll talk about that at another point.

I’ve always had a hard time disciplining myself and it has hurt my progress in the arts. I want to get better at drawing and animation, but I don’t put serious time into working on those skills. Instead I sit at my desk and think how much I want to be drawing, but I don’t draw. I have a mental wall that keeps me from getting started.

If I want to have any chance at working for a company such as Pixar I really need to focus. And so I’m going to try and do that. I have some story ideas I’ve had percolating in my mind that I’ll use as a training ground.