Zub Tales

Another week in the life of Zubby. Let’s see…

Through no choice of our own, we now have a cat. This cat kept camping out in our backyard and Nick and I befriended it. We don’t actually do much and we’re barely at the house at all, but it just sticks around and wants a little attention when we get in after midnight. I’m allergic to cats, so I do my best not to get too close, but it is darn cute. For now, Nick’s calling the cat Keane, after Glen Keane, the animator who drew Tarzan.

Teaching has been way relaxed so far with the Stampede on. Nobody’s stressed and yesterday’s staff meeting at the school entitled “Team Building” became “How to Kick People’s Ass at Quake 3”. I ended up winning the big match by the way, and that was the first time I’d played the game. Now all the staff are calling me “Killer”. Oh well…

With that schedule, I’ve continued laying out my comic book pages and I hope to have the breakdowns for the first 7 pages by the end of the week. They’re coming along at a decent pace and I’m really pushing myself to do detailed backgrounds and strong storytelling. When I have enough together to give an impression of what the story’s about, I’ll post it on my webpage for everyone to see.

WHAT I’M WATCHING:
I brought Beauty and the Beast- Work In Progress to show my class and I remembered how incredible it was. It’s a version of the movie with rough animation, storyboards and test sequences instead of the full color version you’d see in theatres. It really helps you appreciate that artists that work on this which becomes more difficult when it’s finished. I wish Disney would release more stuff in that form to increase the exposure of the artists. Inspiring and intimidating all at the same time.

Our composer should be back from vacation later this week and I’m looking forward to collaborating on some nifty tunes. On a whim he made up a theme song for one of our CG guys and I figure I should get myself a theme song too. Once that comes together I’ll get an mp3 file of it and post it up. It’ll probably be really cheesy. Maybe there’ll be a chorus singing “ZUB!”… I don’t know…

Lastly, my hair’s been pretty unkept since my cousin’s wedding and I was trying to decide what to do with it. I’ve got some ideas now, but it may be a while before it’s long enough to do what I want, which will result in that mid length yuck for a while. I’m thinking of cutting the sides and back short and having that kind of samurai ponytail with the top stuff. It’s neat and clean, but a little off the beaten path. I’m still weighing ideas. If I get sick of it in the meantime, I’ll probably just get it buzzed again.

Take care everyone and I’ll check in again next week.