Mike King

Learning to fly

It all started with this puppy. (Actually, this a photo I grabbed from the Internet, our plane is blue.) An Air Hog Aero Ace I grabbed for $40 while on a shopping trip for a birthday present for one of my daughter’s classmates. It flies really well when there’s no wind. Unfortunately, we get a lot of radio interference or something, especially on sunny days. So it’s not that controllable when we’d most like to use it. But we did fly it enough to get both me and my daughter hooked.

Then last weekend we went to see some RC jets flying around. And a friend of ours showed us his RC helicopters. I’ve always wanted a helicopter. My daughter wanted to show off her flying too, but the Aero Ace wouldn’t respond at all to the controller. We had to give up and she was very disappointed. Which brings us to this weekend…

A trip to Hobby People over in Pasadena yielded this the Rookie ($30) and the Sabre ($99 on sale!). The Rookie flew great, but it needed more space than we had in front of our house. The Aero Ace could do okay in the limited space, the Rookie needed a field. We went to the park last night and this afternoon and got some good flying in.
The helicopter is one of the easier to fly ones. But I’m still having a tough time learning! I managed to get off the ground last night for a few seconds. And today I tried again. I lost control and crashed and broke the main rotor and popped the rotor head off its bearings. We had to go back to the hobby store for replacement parts. Boy was I upset with myself. Should have given myself more room to fly. Fixing the helicopter was frustrating because I couldn’t get the blades balanced. Only one original blade broke, so I just replaced that. The other must have been damaged too, because until I replaced it as well, the helicopter was unflyable.
A simulator would help avoid loss of control and crashes. But it’s $200! I found a shareware sim for my Mac here and while I can’t actually hook up my transmitter for practice, I’m finding it useful just using the keyboard controls and getting used to controlling the helicopter from different orientations. It’s going to be a while before I get really good at flying. It’s very fun.

The Skillfull Hunstman

I found this concept art book at Vroman’s over the weekend. Click on the picture for the publisher’s site.

It documents the visual development of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale at Art Center College of Design by three of their advanced students. I’ve found it to be inspiring and insightful. It’s stuff like this that makes me wish I were less technical and more artistic so I could do stuff like this more often. Or at least be better at drawing than I am.
Here’s the blurb from the site:

Entertainment Design Director at the Art Center College of Design, Scott Robertson said, “Several years ago it struck me that people would be interested to witness the creative visualization process we undertake within the entertainment design discipline.” His interest in education and his desire to share the amazing things that were occurring in his studio classes at Art Center led him to the creation of this magnificent book.

A tale from the Brothers Grimm provides inspiration for three gifted students from the world-renowned Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For fourteen weeks, Khang Le, Mike Yamada, and Felix Yoon were guided by their instructor, Scott Robertson, to create original design solutions for the environments, characters, props, and vehicles found within The Skillful Huntsman The trio’s sketches and full-color renderings thoroughly document the creative process of concept design, revealing a host of intriguing places ”from sci-fi cities to castles” and people from giants to royalty. A running dialogue between Robertson and his students also lets readers in on the behind-the-scenes action of one of the world’s leading entertainment design schools, as they discuss the ideas and techniques used to create this stunning collection of artwork. This exciting book surpasses the typical story-art book in that it takes the reader on a step-by-step journey in the creation of a fully realized vision. Using digital and traditional media, the artists and Robertson reveal some of their visual tricks of the trade. A must for artists, aspiring entertainment designers, comic aficionados, and anyone interested in the creative process, The Skillful Huntsman. offers insight into the mysterious world of the imagination.

Jane’s Joke Recognition Guide

Check out some of Jane Espenson (tv writer and Buffy alum) and her blog entries on writing different kinds of jokes. Great insight for anyone wanting to write funny.

• Reversing intent of a cliche
  
• Unexpected analogies
• Again with the grilled cheese
• Silent beats (aka chirping crickets)
• Throw aways
• Repeated words
• Reference jokes
• Sounding written

Online hit ‘Broken Saints’ joins DVD canon

cnet.com has a story here about Broken Saints getting a DVD distribution deal with Twentieth Century Fox. Broken Saints is an online graphic novel that caused some serious waves on the Internet during its 3 year run.

I’ve watched some of the trailers, and the story/art isn’t my cup of tea. But I am impressed that they managed to create and execute an idea that so many viewers found compelling.

Now if I could just get off my butt and work on my own project some more. This kind of news always inspires me and depresses me. It inspires me to see that someone pulled off something cool. And depresses me because I can’t seem to bring any of my own projects to completion.

Anyway, here is a link to the Broken Saints official site.

Ashes and Snow

www.ashesandsnow.org

Took a field trip last Friday with a bunch of folks from work to see an art exhibit over at the Santa Monica pier. The piece was called “Ashes and Snow” and I thought it proved that you could have too much of a good thing.

The photos and films are really cool. But a whole exhibit of this stuff, plus 3 films (one of which runs for about an hour) was just too much. With every photo and film sharing similar themes and style, there was no contrast. So despite the beautiful images and stylish presentation, I found myself becoming bored about halfway through.