Hey everybody. This blog has been pretty slow lately. Hopefully that will change soon. That being said, I am about to start school on Monday. So we’ll see how much time I’ll have to keep the blog updated. I don’t expect it to slow down too much, but who knows? However, I do update my twitter feed several times a day. So if you’ve got a hankerin’ for some Dan tweets, there’s plenty of ‘em.

Pixel Corps is a unique training and networking resource for digital artists. Looks pretty sweet. I’m sure I’ll be taking advantage of this in the years to come.

From the Overview page of their About Us section,

500 Years ago, craftsmen rarely worked for a “company”. They were contracted for a period time and then moved on to the next contract. To remain competitive in such an atmosphere, many formed “guilds” or organizations designed to provide networking, ongoing training, standards, certification, and even some social services among their members. Kings did not post jobs in the “classifieds” to find craftsmen, they contacted guilds who did not compel the employers to hire their members but simply were the only ones who could produce the work.

As the industrial age emerged, many of these guilds faded as machines replaced much of their work. For 100 years, workers “contracted” for much longer periods of time (we called this employment), often their entire career, to one employer who took care of things like development, health care, etc.

Today, the current job market, especially in the film and TV arenas, has returned to “contract” labor and we are much more akin to “craftsmen” than to employees. Many of us work as subcontractors…we work on a brochure, a website, a game, a film, or a TV show for 6 months and then move on. Our ability to continue this cycle depends on our ability to network with others in our field and continually learn in a rapidly evolving industry that seems to transform itself every 6 months. Skills valuable today may be worthless next year. [Read more]

Kiss Of Death ., originally uploaded by Younglings ( no available ).

Echochrome

and Portal

I haven’t had the good fortune to play either of these games yet, but a 2D Flash version of Portal is available online, as is the original game on which Echochrome is based, OLE Coordinate System.

This made me chuckle,

Artist Vladimir Nikolic has taken photographs of cars, along with self portraits of himself mimicking the emotions and expressions of the automobiles.

View the entire slideshow here.

via Drawn!

Crazy. From Wired,

Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it’s a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he’s considering replacing is not a working one — it’s a prosthetic eye he’s worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

“If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?” he asks.

I always thought it was just a matter of time before something like this happened. I guess the next step is to somehow connect the camera to the brain so that the person can actually “see” with it. And if the camera/eye thing isn’t enough, I give you: body swapping. Perhaps one day we actually can be John Malkovich.

Continuing with the post I wrote several months ago titled Get on a path and stay on it, here’s an update on my animation education situation:

I recently enrolled in a new school in downtown Chicago called Flashpoint Academy and will begin my studies next month. It is a two-year certificate program focused entirely on digital animation and visual effects. There is little to no training in traditional forms of animation; everything is digital digital digital. At first I was slightly trepidatious about the fact that the school is 100% digital because, for the sake of mastery of the craft of animation, I wanted to have some exposure to working with traditional animation. However, my reasons for going to school at all are mainly centered on career development and technical know-how. I’m attending school solely to learn how to use the tools and to build a foundation on which to build a career in animation. Artistic development is not really part of the picture. In other words, I’m going to school to learn the craft and the trade of animation, not the art of animation. The art of animation (or art in general) is not something that I believe can be taught in a two-year certificate program, or a four-year bachelor’s program for that matter. Learning the art of something is a very slow and often elusive process. Some say art can’t be taught at all. And even if I could learn the art of animation through a two-year certificate program, being a good artist doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be an employable one. I’m going to school to become an employable animator, to learn how to supply what the animation market demands, so that I can make a living. I have very little interest in being a starving artist.

Here’s a short video tour of the school:

Cartonlandia by Ana Serrano.

via Drawn!

While we’re on the topic of education, another change in the educational system that would be immensely beneficial is the inclusion of financial literacy in the curriculum (Matthew, brace yourself. This article doesn’t espouse a positive view of the study of Latin). It seems like a no-brainer to me, and it would make it less likely that this could ever happen again.

Bonus! Below is the half-hour version of the film I.O.U.S.A. Watch it.