My 2007 Recap and 2008 Primer.

I find it odd that my very first post for the year 2008 is being written here in Quezon City, the Philippines, on an iMac that is not mine but my Mom’s.

But here I go. Welcome 2008! My wife Liza and I, as well as almost all of my wife’s clan in Calgary, flew back to Manila last December of 2007 to attend my brother-in-law’s wedding. It’s been a joyful, happy and hectic homecoming! It would have been more exciting had I not contacted some kind of cold virus that took me out of commission during the last four days of December leading to the New Year. It even downed Liza too! Both of us spent New Year’s Eve holed up inside my Mom’s room coughing and sneezing up a storm while the rest of the Santa Ana family enjoyed the fireworks and festivities outside. What an ordeal that was!

The good news is I am feeling much better this New Year’s morning. As of this writing, Liza is just sleeping off last night’s ordeal and I suspect that she is on her way to a swift recovery.
Before I go on, there is one thing I would like to confess about the fabulous wedding that we attended: I fully regret not bringing my camera along with me! There were so many great photo opportunities inside the Manila Cathedral that up to this hour I am still kicking myself in the butt for deciding not to bring my camera with me inside the church and missing out on so many great shots! Aarrgh, Randy, you can be a bit of a dumb ass sometimes! What’s the use of buying yourself a brand new DSLR when all you did was leave it in the car and miss out on the highlight of the whole trip?

Okay, I can stop kicking myself now. There’s still this matter of my sister-in-law’s wedding coming just a few more days this January. I can still redeem myself, so there!

Now that I’ve gotten that blunder out of my chest, I can now freely look back at 2007.

I started this blog on July of 2007. My initial intent was to tell about how I ended up working in the animation industry and come up with some tutorials on how I do my work. The tutorial section started out well, but it eventually bogged down when work started to demand more of my time. Hopefully, I can find more time this year to add more content to the tutorial section. That section seem to be the one that generates more interest and traffic.

2007 was also my first full year of operating under my company name, 1254754 Alberta Ltd. During my initial rush to get a business name established, I decided to go with a numbered name instead of a real company name, say like “Randy Santa Ana Animation Studio” or something. I hope to have my company name re-named this year, if time permits.

I was able to complete a number of wonderful and exciting projects for Studio B Productions during 2007, some of which I started to work on during the latter part of 2006. To start off, I was able to do animation for The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers, a 2D Flash Animation series about three brothers, showmen from a fictional Eastern Country. They travel around the world staging these ridiculously hazardous stunts. These guys do not care about making a living out of what they elaborately stage; they just wanted the adrenalin rush!

Next up was posing work for Ricky Sprocket – Showbiz Boy, another 2D Flash series about a celebrity boy struggling to grow up in show business. Juggling and managing the schedule of doing animation work for Adrenalini and posing for Ricky Sprocket may be hectic for some, but it was a blast for me!  I was having so much fun working on them that I may have made a permanent impression of my behind on the seat cushion of my chair!

Finally, I got the chance to work once again with my favorite series of all, Being Ian, a series about a boy and his highly wild imagination. I got to do posing and animation, which was really a great treat for me because I just loved doing this show!

It was a great feeling to cap off 2007 by completing Being Ian. That show has great significance for me: I started out in Flash and learned my chops working for Being Ian, way back when I was still working as a Flash consultant and instructor for Top Draw Animation in 2003.

And there we have it. So far, my more than two weeks of stay here in Manila is the longest I’ve gone being idle and not doing any work. I am enjoying the luxury of free time and relaxation, but honestly I just can’t wait to get back to work!

Until then, there is the matter of my sister-in-law’s upcoming wedding. I’ll make sure NOT to leave my camera behind this time!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Read Full Post »

Shooting Pictures in Manila.

Wow, it’s been a hectic two weeks since we’ve arrived here in Manila.  So much has happened that I don’t know where to start!  I’ve added a Flickr widget at the sidebar of my blog.  The direct link can be found here.   Feel free to check out some of the pictures I took during our stay!

Read Full Post »

Back in Manila!

My wife and I arrived in Manila midnight of December 17. Boy, it sure was a long and tiring trip! It took us almost all of 15 hours of flying before finally landing here, and that does not even include all those hours of waiting at the boarding gates.

We had to fly back to attend my brother-in-law’s wedding, which will be held in Manila. There would be two weddings, in fact: my brother-in-law this December and my sister-in-law on January! All the members of my wife’s clan who are now living in Calgary agreed to take the trip back home to attend this double celebration.

Days before our scheduled flight, I was able to complete my animation commitments. My wife took care of all the packing, so all I had to do was make sure I wrap up all my scenes and check with my director if I still had some revisions left to do.

My wife and I, along with my two brother-in-laws, were the last of the vacationers to take the plane for the trip back to Manila. To be honest, I was secretly relieved that there were just four of us; it would have been more stressful for me if the party I am with were anything like the earlier wave of vacationers who had more family members in the group, and with kids even!

I hate flying. When we first came to Canada, I was greatly relieved when our plane finally landed in Calgary after that grueling flight from Manila to Vancouver. As I recall, there was a feeling of wonderment at first during the earlier stages of that flight, that being my first time to ride a plane. That sense of awe soon turned to discomfort as I struggled continuously during the course of the flight trying vainly to find a comfortable sitting position on that cramped airplane seat that I find oh, so confining. Add to that my nervous stomach, which would act up during those situation where access to a totally private and vacant toilet is not readily available.

My feelings about this flight was no different and I was gearing up for the worst.

However, as if to help relieve the stress, we were blessed with good weather on the day of our flight. When we drove one group of vacationer to the airport a week earlier, it had been snowing, so it was a welcome sight for all four of us to see ideal weather conditions on our scheduled trip. Since we ran out of family members, we had to enlist some friends to drive us to the airport, a welcome relief since taxi were hard to come by this close to Christmas.

We had to take a plane from Calgary to Vancouver, another one from Vancouver to Hong Kong and yet another connecting flight from Hong Kong to Manila. Talk about spending the whole day on a trip!

Checking-in our luggages at the Calgary Airport was a breeze. We arrived earlier enough to make changes to our seat assignments, getting ourselves some window seats. My wife and her brothers spent the time playing cards with each other as we wait to board the plane to Vancouver.

We had to wait three more hours in Vancouver Airport for our connecting flight to Hong Kong. It was lunchtime by the time we arrived in Vancouver, and our need for sustenance were dealt with quite easily for there were lots of food courts in that airport. We were able to make changes for window seats again courtesy of the helpful ground staff of Cathay Pacific. Once again, Liza and her brothers played cards to while away the time.

I had more time to look around and admire Vancouver’s airport this time around. The first time I was there, I was so anxious to get my wife and I to the next boarding gate for our connecting flight to Calgary I had tunnel vision!

The 13 hour trip from Vancouver to Hong Kong was not very pleasant for me. The moment the cabin crew served our first meal, I started getting air sick, for every time I would put food in my mouth, the plane would hit turbulence, making me dizzy and sick. I would try to ease the sickness by taking a nap, but getting to sleep was so hard to come by because of the cramp seats. Even my wife, who usually finds it easy to doze off during these long trips, found it hard to catch a shut eye.

On a positive note, taking one Imodium the night before our scheduled flight helped me control my digestive tracts; I only had to get up and go to the toilet to take a pee.

The trip from Hong Kong to Manila was the worst. We lost our treasured window seats courtesy of the usual mishap that I was not surprised at all would happen, especially on a plane full of Filipino passengers. We had to fill out this form for the immigration and the custom, which we did not have to do during our flight to Hong Kong. We also had to endure several minutes of wait still seated and buckled up in those cramp seats as our plane took forever to get us to the arrival gates, cause of delay unknown. Sigh, I must be on Philippine soil.

It was a good thing that my wife and her brothers are blessed with this pleasant and happy disposition. They took all the hassles that we had to endure at the Ninoy Aquino Airport in stride. It would not have looked that bad to me had I had nothing to compare this airport with.

By the time we got out of the airport and breathed in our first taste of that familiar Philippine air, I was ready to collapse to the nearest bed in exhaustion. However, the smiling faces and welcoming arms of my mother and sisters banished all discomfort of the trip away.

So I am back, and it’s still the same old Philippines I’ve come to know, love and hate and eventually leave behind!

Read Full Post »

Photo of the Day: Slacker.

I am just counting the days until I wrap up my animation work for this year. Boy, time sure flies!

I still have a couple of scenes to animate so I am not slacking around.

Which is more than I can say about these guys:

I should be finishing up that Corel Painter project I started, right? No, I would rather shoot and shoot with my camera. I now understand the meaning of “being bitten by the camera bug.”

Here’s another attempt at a self-portrait:

I desperately wanted to make the brand name, the camera model and the markings on the lens as sharp as I can get.  After numerous tweaks on aperture and shutter spead, I still can’t get it right.

I will improve!

Read Full Post »

Photographer Wanna Be: My New DSLR.

Aargh! I never got around to painting the project I started in Corel Painter. It’s because I just got myself a new toy: a Nikon D40. I am just going nuts playing with it.

Here is my attempt at a self portrait:

The image above is the result of countless attempts at getting it right. Yeah, it’s probably not much to look at right now, but I am trying. I didn’t even bothered to clean the mirror; you can pretty much see the smudges on the left.

I’ve been reading up on all this photography jargon like “shutter speed” and “aperture settings” and taking pictures here and there at the every opportunity. It’s really fun and I am enjoying it a lot.

I still have a lot to learn. I read in some forums that the only way to learn is to just shoot and shoot. That is what I am trying to do whenever I take a break from my day job. Shoot, shoot and shoot. I don’t have to worry about wasting all that film and getting them developed because all is done digitally! Thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious!

Here’s another sorry excuse for a picture. For some strange reason, I prefer to shoot pictures in low-light conditions.

I am not even sure if I got the exposure right, but I don’t care. I will learn!

Read Full Post »