Added a whole bunch of avatars that I had made using screen captures from the movie, Mirrormask. I did have more icons and stuff, but they are on my old hard drive, still waiting to be recovered.

Fixed up a couple of cosmetic issues with the Gallery. One was a table width problem. The other two were simply because I didn’t want certain things displayed on the Gallery. Looks better now so I’m happy.

Since last semester the animation department at my university has been undergoing a huge upgrade to the point that they have decided that each animation student now needs to have swipe cards to get in and out of the rooms because of the million dollar equipment, which always amuses me. We now have 6 Cintiqs, which, for people who don’t know, are monitors that you draw on with a special pen, similiar to tablets, except better and much more expense. The higher priced one is also textured to feel like paper rather than plastic. The animation computer lab are still running PCs, but will be converted by next semester to Macs running Leopard and hence will be dual-bootable. Oh and let’s not forget to mention they are giving us the nice, large Mac monitors. But that’s not all!

The network we will now be running on is greatly improved, and not just because of the 1 GB ethernet. Students finally will now have their own logins on computers with full range access to just about any animation, art and video editting program on the market. Also when it comes time to render, the department has set up a render farm so that students can add their files to a queue and then ANY available CPU from ANY campus will then render that file. Basically means that we don’t have to worry about sitting there, waiting for the file to render.

Now that the film department has its own building now (equipped with a 30 foot green screen, which they assure us animation students that we will also be allowed to use it, once they train us) their private editting suites are now fair game. Two huge monitors, TV, sound system… everything you could possiblely need to edit your movie and more, without the noise of the computer lab full of students.

Professor Craig Caldwell, our new head of Film School, has been quoted saying that the set up we have now is better than the set up Disney has. Makes me not want to leave in two years time. The studio has now exceeded the potential of my computer, which may mean I might be spending more time at university… willingly. Doesn’t mean I won’t still use my computer for smaller projects.

Every so often I add a couple of images to the Gallery, trying to restock it to actually be worth viewing, but there are conflicts involved. Mostly because the stuff is old and looks awful to me now. Such is the problem common with being an artist.

Semester is starting up again. Yippee!

MPsLair is officially reopened to the public. There are still somethings to be added so look for them soon.

What’s available?
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