Met with a professor at NLC to see about teaching a web design class there.
Found some books at Half Price Books.
Ate at Bavarian Grill for lunch.
Got a transcript at UT-D for that teaching position.
Read about the SMU Guildhall in this weeks Dallas Observer.
Finished the modeling part of 2nd project for the 3D Animation class.
Still rendering. On frame 27 of 300 frames.
I still need about 5 other shots rendered and then assembled in Adobe Premier.

Still rendering. On frame 62 of 300 frames.
I am going to go to Nadin's class.

Rechecked out some books at the Irving library.
The books were on Duchamp, Lichenstein(sp?) and Arp.
Reading to prepare for project 2 for Nadin's class.

Went to the "Short Guys" meeting at CCCC.
Two people presented on storyboarding.
Someone from the SMU Guildhall presented.
Afterwards I spend about an hour at 75% Off Books.
I bought about 20 books.

Tony "The Tiger", Kat and I met to present our Nadin Project 1 to each other.

Nadin was sick so there was no class. I did not know and showed up anyway. Then went home.
I headed over to the Biblical Arts Center near Noth Park Mall to see "Prayers of Dallas".
The play needs a little bit of punching up.
I appreciate the effort that went into the writing.

Went to the Kremerata Baltica Orchestra concert at the UT-D conference center.
Great stuff. I liked the first 2 pieces better than the last piece.

I attendced the Kartasi performance.
The video screen was slightly dim.
I wonder what people who had not read the script thought about it?
I would guess that it was a bit confusing for them.
I thought that the intergration of text titles and credits, video, 3D, audio, light show and live acting was inovative.

Turned in my three posters for Kartasi performance.
The ones I did were not high tech and somewhat Matisse-ish.

Put my project 1 for Nadin's class on-line.
He wants us to self-evaluate our project.

I attended the Computer Game Conference (www.computergameconference.com) The head person at Gearbox Software said they are begining the C.O.G.S. Program where new game developers can get a paid tryout period at Gearbox Software. If they fit in, they could be made an offer for permanent employment.

I was thinkin' about what to do for the 2nd project in my 3D Animation class. I was thinking about making objects for a java 2D game.
I need to begin work on the project 1 paper for Nadin's class.

I attended the Computer Game Conference (www.computergameconference.com)
Nadin gave the keynote. He had some keys and some notes. There was a good presentation on getting a job at a AAA Game Design Company. He said he would rather break the rules than fit in to the gaming industry.

The Modeling Project 1 was due. We reviewed the submitted rendered images. Most people had bad looking wood from Maya's wood procedure texture. I was happy with my project. It was a canvas with easle, a palette with paint daubs, a jar, 2 paing brushes and a table.

Nadin offered to get tickets to a classical music concert for people who want to go. Nadin said someone had stolen his laptop. Nadin discussed Edward Tufte and powerpoint.

Attended the Kartasi Visuals meeting. Everyone is making good progress; but, time is precious. Chris E. says we need to be finished by November 1, 2004.
I am supposed to do 3 MK propaganda posters and 6 phrase title animations.

In Nadin's T&V class, one of the students who is a doctoral candidate presented on Congnitive Science. I learned something. Cognitive Science grew up with Computer Science. Cognitive Science ask how humans "know" (and think).

Nadin asked how our projects were going. My project's working title is "A Description of an Efficient Means for Computer Generated Fine Art". I will describe a process for Generating Fine Art and then provide some examples that are Java applets that will run in a Browser. I will be getting into the murky area of defining Fine Art.

Here are some notes.
Fine Art is made by artists and bought and collected by Museums.
Fine Art is desired by Fine People.
Fine People are either wealthy, upstanding or sophisticated.
Aesthetics is the study of Beauty.
The efficients means of Art Generation involves a heavy dose of Randomness.
Steal color from other pre-existing works. I believe this is free of all copyright restrictions.
The human is still the evaluator of the computer generated art.
Set up sprite/parts and allow the computer to randomly place the sprite/parts to make up the whole.
You will have better acceptance of your fine art, if it is bigger than teh size of the average monitor. I will guess the size of the average monitor is 19".
It is easier to start with geometric shapes when starting to learn to control Computer Generated Fine Art.
There are a couple of artists that can inspire the human creating computer generated Fine Art (CGFA).
What if Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Alias Maya had a button with the label "Generate Art" or "Generate a Visual". Would you click the button? I would. What if what it generated was now owned by you and in fact you could call yourself the artist of this piece of art.


From the reading of Civilization of Illiteracy, Nadin compares literature (words) with movies and tv. I don't think any of this is not obvious; yet, because it is obvious, it is sometimes not considered. When you consider it, it becomes a catalyst for future action.

I spent like $70 at Half Price Books on some 3D and Game Industry books. I got a recent (2003) book on Mel for Maya for Artists.

Worked on my Java animation library and applicaitons.

Worked on my Java animation library and applicaitons.

I say in on the video shoot with the Kartasi actors and the blue screen. Chris E. did the directing.

Worked on my 3D Animation class project 2. I am modeling a painting canvas with an easel, a palette and a brush and a jar.

I was thinking about how I wished I had attended the Beta Test 2 performances. I will make a point to attend next year.

I still do not totaly understand the parameters of Project 1 that we are suposed to do for Nadin's class.
I want to do a proejct discussing the issues with generative (fine) art or learning to paint and draw like John Singer Sargent or Matisse. I wrote down some notes on this subject before Nadin's class yesterday. I will make a html page containing these notes.

Nadin's class was held. I am thinking that his teaching style is that we are to think, present and interact. He gave thoughts on graduate students should not be inactive and initiate learning and define our own areas of study and expertise. Read in Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin

Coding Java 2D game/animation stuff.

Went home to see the season premier of NYPD Blue. It was a good episode with intersting new conflicts. NYPD Blue will run without repeats for the next 20 episodes.

Coding Java 2D game/animation stuff.

I happened upon some interesting generative fine art results from my coding. (I was trying to refactor my animation framework.) I have generated a pop art, interactive, generative, random, not random, programmed type web art. I think it is derivative of Mondrian, Duchamp, Jeff Koons and Jenifer Steinkamp.

Coding Java 2D game/animation stuff.

Worked on the project 1 for Nadin's class. This is going to be a guess the pallet of selected paintings game. Lots of work for such a small game; because, I am designing as I code and factoring out the framework.

I bought some books at Half Price Books where they are having a 20% off sale for the weekend.

D. B. has been using many of the computers in the 3D Lab to do rendering for the upcomming "Beta Test".

In class we modeled a table with extrude.

Worked on the project 1 for Nadin's class.
Read in the book Flash Games Studio by Glen Rhodes, et al.

Worked on the project 1 for Nadin's class.
Read in the book Civilization of Illiteracy: Book IV

Worked on the project 1 for Nadin's class.
Read in the book Civilization of Illiteracy: Book IV

Read in the book Developing Games in Java by David Brackeen. This book is pretty good at giving one ideas, tricks and workarounds for programming games in Java. One downside is that the book focuses on Full Screen games and not applets. Some of the tricks discussed are how to do active rendering, how to get an invisible cursor how to turn off the default swing "tab" key gui navigation and how to write a configurable key and mouse input manager. He covers 2D and 3D games. I am continuing to read a number of the Java and Flash Games books. So far I have not gotten into 3D yet.

Went to a meeting for Plano Java (www.planojava.org). The topic was on Java Reflection given by two people whose book on "Java Reflection in Action" will be coming out soon.

Nadin's class "Technology and the Visual" is an exploration in the topic/phrase "The Efficiency and the Visual". This is vague and not vague on purpose to get each student to internalize it.

I am digging these vague classes. Last semester I had a vague class named Meta Media Lab. I dig it when I can bring my thoughts to a topic.

We were given that the 1st project should reflect the theme "Visual Acquisition of Knowledge". I am thinking of doing some kind of art Java applet. I have recently been thinking about the colors used by Matisse, Leroy Neiman and Thomas Kinkade. I actually like some of the so called "sell out" artists. I am thinking about a Java program that will simply show the pallet of the paintings of the above painters. Of course this is available in Fireworks for gif images. I may have to vary it a bit perhaps a histogram of the hues in the images. Eventually, I want to have a program that will swap the colors of a photograph and use the colors in a reference images. For example, a photograh of a friend with the colors of a reference Matisse painting.

Nadin held class and gave out the syllabus. We introduced ourselves. There are about 30 people in the class.

I am thinking that I will do some kind of Java Applet since we requested to do visual projects and have to post them to a public web site.

I spent most of the day at the HRA building working through lessons 1-3 in the "Learning Maya" textbook.