Blog

  • Guide Layers Visibility Toggle Extension

    Sitting here tracing images with my stylus, and using guide layers for the outlines. However, the outlines are loud colors on purpose to help me outline the image. If I want to see my progress, I have to keep turning all 11 of them off manually, and then back on again when I want to continue working.

    Not anymore.

    I wrote these 2 scripts (packaged as 1 extension), to toggle all guide layers on the current timeline on or off.

    One additional thing this does to help is when your animating, and your using motion tweens. Typically, you don’t want to see the actual motion tween while your testing your animation inside the current symbol, so this will turn those on and off, too.

    Hope it helps!

    JXL Guide Layers Visibility Toggle – MXP | ZIP

  • Good MP3’s

    I like long mixes when I work. So, here are some good mixes I’ve been listening to lately and hopefully you’ll like one of them, too!

    Progressive Breaks

    Hybrid – DJ Set At Two Tribes Melbourne (2004-03-07) Part 1 & 2

    Their Tokyo mix is pretty hot too at 29:00 minutes… they just show off their audio sillz. The levels are kind of low, though.

    Low Key Progressive Trance

    Way Out West – Proton Radio Featured Artist Mix (2004-09-08) Part 1 & 2

    I personally don’t like part 2 very much, but 1 is off the chain in some parts.

    German Drum & Bass

    My co-worker, Frankie Loscavio, has been turning me onto a lot of Drum and Bass artists I’ve never heard of before. I wasn’t really into a lot of D&B or Jungle, but some of it really is pretty good when your not in a happy techno mood, and want something more edgy, angry, and not so scripted via a 4×4 house beat… beautiful chaos.

    Supposedly this German’s site keeps going down or whatever, so I’m hosting my favorite mix, and an additional one. His stuff r0X0R$!

    DJ_G-I-S_@_Essenchal_Mekaniks__2004-07-10.mp3

    DJ-GIS In The Mix.mp3

  • Submitted MXDU 2005 Papers

    I missed 2004, but I am not missing 2005. It’s been tough to really think about new and ground breaking things to speak about; the suggestions come freely when I ask the community, so maybe I’m holding my standards too high?. I submitted what I think is cool, and then utilized the new teaching opportunity they are offering to deal with the things everyone else requested (majority). I submitted 3 potential sessions and 3 potential, half-day classes. We’ll see what bites by the end of next week, hopefully, so I can plan modifications, travel, feedback, etc.

    More info on MXDU 2005.

  • Sky Captain & The Forgotten

    No spoilers.

    Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

    It was ok. I dug the whole 50’s, bluish feel, the soft tones, the grandiose, yet dark feel of the filming. I liked how air superiority was a truly expounded concept in this flic.

    However, I thought a lot of character development was not very well executed. I found it hard to really attach myself to any of the characters, aside from a minor one they encountered in Tibet. They jsut didn’t have much too them, and although they weren’t shallow, there just weren’t enough quirks. The personification of the plane was another example towards the personification side of things; the plane could of been taken soo much further. Remember the Batmobile in Batman? It had character, it had style, it WAS a personfied part of Batman. I think the plane was almost there… but the relationship between pilot and craft was on the extreme of indifferent. The flip-side would be like Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars… now THERE was a relationship.

    Worth $8? Wait for the DVD unless you have a student/company discount.

    The Forgotten

    Fuggin’ awesome. Basically, a mother’s lost her son in an airplane crash, and is trying to emotionally deal with the loss, which is obviously hard on her. She’s in therapy, in a nice house in the city. However, certain “forgetful”ness things start to happen. It starts with a cup she thought she had just placed on a table… to forgetting the location of objects, to pictures not looking the same as before. Things go deep from there…

    It’s one of those flics that has the calm intensity of Pitch Black, the ability to rouse a theatre out of their seats more than once (only saw that ever happen in Signs and the original Scream), and make you feel pretty small and insignifant, yet hopeful at the same time. Great date flic… better than Sky Captain. It is Sci-fi, but doesn’t have that as the overall tone, blatant enough to sell itself as it, so non-sci-fi’ers may still find this one approachable.