New Camera: JVC Everio GZHD3

Hey everyone, so yesterday I went out shopping for cameras, after a few hours and looking at a few different Best Buys I decided to swing by a local pawn shop.  At first their camera selection looked dull, most of them were non HD Sony Handy Cams.  Then I laid my eyes upon this

This is the JVC Everio HZHD3.  It shoots in 1440x1080 HD, has 10x optical zoom (up to 200x digital), optical image stabilization and shoots up to 7 hours of HD.  On top of that, it seemed brand new, I tested it out for a bit and it all worked fine.  It came with all the original equipment and everything.  It was price at $449, which was cheaper than the other camera I had already planned on buying.  So without checking the price at other locations I decided to go ahead and buy it.  Not really a smart move, but it turns out this camera is valued at $979.99 on Amazon, so I wound up getting a really good deal.

I feel like this was a really good investment, and it's definitely an upgrade from my old FlipCam.  I plan on making a short comedy sketch this Friday, but it may be delayed so no promises.  Also something to look forward to, I'm planning a meeting with a friend of mine who's a Junior year Film Student who's going to be directing our CreepypastaTV soon.  So hopefully that project will be kicked off within a week or so.  That's all for today, thanks for stopping by.

Current Animation Project

So recently I've been working on a short animation.  It's called Ragnar Danes: Space Warrior, as you can gather from the title it's a space themed adventure.  The main character, Ragnar Danes, was based partially on Zapp Brannigan from Futurama with some major alterations.  He has Zapps incompetence, stupidity and overall cruelness to his crew; while on the other hand he does actually know how to fight, and no he isn't a sexual deviant.  His first mate and pilot is named McQuirck who serves as the logical yet apathetic sidekick in this adventure.  The first episode is mainly dialogue between the two, which I feel does a really nice job showing their relationships.  It will be about 3 minutes long and I plan to turn it into a short series if it does well (or at least ok).  I had a lot of fun writing the script and the characters I want to introduce in later episodes are great additions.  It should be done in a few weeks, all of the voices are recorded, the characters are made, and most of the sets are done.

This is the sketch I drew a few weeks ago that gave me inspiration to make it.  This is basically what the characters look like (only colored, so they look much prettier).

If you want to see some of my previous animations, you can check them out here

Where I Stand on Art

So I thought it would be good to start this off with a little showcase of my current skills on art.  I recently got accepted into a Fine Arts major for college so my skills will be greatly improving come the school year.  I don't consider myself particularly good at art, but I think it would be fun to see my skills in drawing and illustration progress.  So here are a few of my favorite pieces of art that I've done.

So, this is a drawing I did for an elementary school walking club, long story but it's a Cougar riding a Flying Pig.  They put it on their shirts, it was pretty cool.  This was the first time I had ever drawn a pig, so I feel like I did a decent job here.

I call this one Quincy Gearbottom.  He came about because I wanted to draw a robot who was also a gentlemen.  Originally he was going to be fighting a bear, but I got lazy.  This was made in Flash CS3 and Photoshop Elements.  Took me about an hour to draw and two hours to complete on the computer.

So this is some fan art that I did for the game Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.  This is Link fighting Volvagia, the boss of the Fire Temple.  I can't tell if I actually like this one or not, but I figured I'd post it anyways.  This took me about four hours to draw and two hours to color and two hours to finish up in photoshop.

These are some characters I made for an animation I got too lazy to finish.  I like their chibi look which was going to clash with their mindless semi adult humor.  Maybe I'll finish it someday, these were all made in Flash CS3.

So those show what my current skills are pretty well, I've been drawing for five years now, I've never taken any formal art classes outside of art class way back in elementary school and I've never really drawn anything outside of a cartoon universe.  I'd really like to improve my skills and ideally be able to draw realistic pieces.  On top of that I've been contemplating buying a Tablet to make drawing on the computer easier.  I'm debating between a Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet:

1024 levels of sensitivity, 8.4" x 5.4" active area, $199

or the Intuos4 Medium Tablet:

2048 levels of sensitivity, 8.8" x 5.5" active area, programmable buttons to switch between programs, 60 degree pen tilt range. $349

The Intuos4 definitely seems like the better buy, but what I'm wondering is if it's worth and extra $150.  If any of you guys have any experience with either of these let me know if it's worth the extra money.  That's all for today, thanks for stopping by.

The Point of This Blog

Hey all, this blog will kind of be tracking my personal progress on my quest to making it in the entertainment industry.  I have always wanted to make a career out of videos and animations, but have never really legitimately tried.  Now that I am, I figured it would be nice to have a blog to share my progress with people and get their feedback.  I plan to release one comedy short a week, and soon I'm starting a project with some friends to convert creepypasta into videos.  I have a few videos and animations already made, I'll post a link to my YouTube and Newgrounds at the end of this so you can check them out if you'd like.  Some constructive criticism would be nice as I'd like my abilities to improve with each new release.  I'm also going to use this blog as a sort of comedy outlet, I'll try and post some humorous stories of my life, or anything funny that I think is worth writing about.  I hope to update this at least 3 times a week, so be sure to check back regularly.  It's my hope that you'll enjoy reading at watching my material as much as I love creating it.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DiscreteError
Newgrounds: http://sunaminot.newgrounds.com/