So my wife just called my blog boring…..Such loving and encouraging words, especially considering that was only my FIRST blog entry. Hehe. Man, I tell ya, she is my toughest critic. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that she is! Seriously, every time I’m working on a school project or even just a simple sketch, I always get her to critique it. SOMETIMES to her it “looks good”, but most of the time she’ll pick something out right away. And then I’d spend the next few hours, sometimes days trying to correct that little mistake. Imagine if she had the critiquing powers of the Dreamcrusher…I’d never get any piece of work done. But hey, that’s what you’re supposed to do right? Get some critiques on your work. I try to get critiques wherever I can. Whenever I show my work to my classmates, practically the first thing I ask is “Can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”. Although, I think everyone in class is still kind of at that stage where they may be a bit hesitant to crush my dreams hehe. But then again, there were times when we were viewing some past students’ demo reels and once someone got the ball rolling, man everyone would tear that reel to shreds. Scary…So now I’ve added another piece of motivation to excel in this Digital Animation program. And that is, not wanting to end up in the “crap” pile of demo reels that the instructors love showing to the future students. The horror…..

Anyway, I guess I gotta spice this blog up a bit. After reading all my classmates’ blogs, I noticed most write about what they did in school. Which is probably why a certain someone said that my blog was the most irrelevant. Thanks Sharon…Hehe just kidding, it’s all good! Again, I welcome any critiques. Sorry to disappoint though, but I still won’t focus my blog on school stuff (maybe only part of it). I’m just going to throw a few more things into the mix, aside from just anime (which I GUESS, could be boring to some people, obviously not me).

And what else do I fiend for? Music! No specific genre. I’m pretty varied in my tastes, although I have heavy influences from hip-hop, beach house, chill out, lounge, acoustic, and some R&B. If you like any of the above, then you’re in luck. So I think every week I’m going to introduce a dope track, album, or whatever. This week, I’ll start with one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in my life. Yeah, it’s THAT good! It’s a Japanese song titled “Shiki No Uta” (Song of Four Seasons), sung by MINMI (who does such an awesome job on the chorus especially…beautiful, beautiful voice). And the jazzy chill out hip-hop beat done by Nujabes is out of this world! Here’s a link to the lyrics (Japanese and English) if you’re interested: http://www.spookhouse.net/angelynx/comics/champloo-endthemes.html. And yes, this song is from an anime series called Samurai Champloo (don‘t let the somewhat corny sounding name fool you, this is an excellent series…definitely gonna talk about it in the future). If you want a more instrumental version of this, the beat actually came from Nujabes’ earlier album, and the track’s called “Beat Laments The World”. And by the way, this song is gonna be the soundtrack to my demo reel, so nobody take it! Hehe.

And of course, I’m not gonna forget about my anime pick. From one of my favorite songs of all time, we move to one of my favorite anime movies of all time: Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time). It’s a subtle comedy, and the title really speaks for itself, so no need for me to go into detail. Otherwise, I might ruin the story for anyone who’s actually going to go and see it (hey, if you like spoilers, go check out Wikipedia or IMDB…they’ll be sure to give away the story in the first few lines). But again, there’s brilliant storytelling in this movie, and the animation is pretty good as well. Like Paprika, it’s in 2D though, so that might disappoint some people in our 3D Animation Program. But I say, if you really are a fan of animation, it doesn’t matter if it’s in 2D or 3D. As long as it’s done well. So here’s the trailer:

 

So that’s it for now. Wow, I’m on a roll today…more than 700 words already. I wonder if I can use this for next week’s blog quota…Hehe just kidding. Time to do more homework. See ya in a week!