140th Birthday Party

Went to a 140th Birthday Party today - actually 2 people who's ages combined = 140.  Lots of fun with musicians, storytellers, food and people, and they did it as a fundraiser for two 3-Day teams (Breast Cancer walk): Babes with Boobs and the Half Racks.  Good fun on a beautiful day.

Yard sale

Neighbors are setting up for a yard sale - looks like mostly clothes:

Meanwhile, my landlord is replacing the towel racks in the bathroom, and is using the lid from the toilet as a shelf on his tool bucket:



Some sketchbook pages...

Still scanning, but here's a few pages:

Tonight's sunset

A decent end to a hot day:

Lot's to scan...

I've got loads to scan, but here's a preview from my sketchbook.  This was just hanging out at Robson Square:

A surreal kind of day

I went to the Surrealism show at the Vancouver Art Gallery today – a pretty amazing show.  Something like 350 works and no, it’s not travelling, so you have to see it here.  Well worth the trip.  There’s quite the variety of works and they borrowed from all over the globe.  One of my favorites is a work by Paul Nash “Harbour and Room” that you practically fall into.  There’s also some great titles like “Murderer on a fine autumn afternoon” and “Vegetable Delirium.”  I was rather surprised to find Magneto (or is it Boba Fett?) in a Man Ray painting (I’ll let you look for that one).  Miro made several appearances, as did Ernst and Tangy.  There were also sculptures, photography, and films. There was even some native northwest masks, which I had never realized that these guys collected.  It’s a great show, and the Gallery has a great café, too!

After the show it was out to explore the city some more, and I stumbled upon some sort of festival with music and food.  More importantly, the Olympic flame was lit!  Very impressive, and darn hot.

Granville and some beaches

Today I took the Aquabus over to Granville Island.  The aquabus is a floating tin can that makes the 2-minute journey every 5 minutes.  (The island isn’t exactly remote.)  The island itself is a sort of tourist market – Pike Place times five.  Lots of produce and meats a number of crafts vendors, and of course the musicians.  There’s the local coffee – including such flavors as “Harbour Blend Decaf” and “Creekside,” both of which say “low tide” to me – and the fish market – including an option to buy the heads, tails, and other unsavory parts (for compost?  For reasons I don’t want to know?) – and the Granville Island Broom Company, which makes brooms that Harry Potter could fly.  There’s a number of artists studios, including the FunkSui Atelier.  The best part is the people watching and the musicians.  Crowded as all get-out by noon, so I took off shortly thereafter.  Here's some pointing-and-shooting at my sketchbook:

Then it was a long walk along the water – lots of sunscreen since there is no shade on this side!  The tide was coming in and by the look of the beaches there’s a huge difference in the tide line between low and high tide.  People were out in hordes.  There’s an awesome trail that’s essentially flat that goes all over everywhere and nicely separates wheels from feet.  Tons of people on bicycles and walking and just hanging out on the beach.

Then it was a relaxed dinner.  Cloudy tonight but last night was a fabulous sunset:

Tomorrow is art museum day.

Another SIGGRAPH come and gone

Great sessions on Kung Fu Panda 2, Rango, and more.  Technical sessions and talks, cool weird stuff in The Studio, and ran into some folks I haven’t seen a while.  Today  rented a bike and rode around the headlands – awesome!  A great trail and a great ride – just wish it were on my own bike and I was wearing my bike shorts :-).  Then I headed down to Robson and Granville and had a pizza while watching the world – steel drum band, ultra-conservatives, girls in dresses too short in both directions, spray paint artists, and the ice cream man.  I think things are just getting started, but after a 2-hour ride and a long walk, I’m about finished!

Five t-shirts and eleven pens

That’s right, today I did the trade show.  Not many toys (one squishy ball) but plenty of pens and t’s.   I hit up the NVIDIA sketch match again, and drew a frog with logo leaves:

At the end of the day I won a copy of Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro – cool!  Other prizes were things like an NVIDIA Quattro Pro card and Adobe Creative Suite, but hey, I’ll take it. 

The tradeshow had the usual variety: There were a handful of 3D printer folks showing off their stuff, NVIDIA and ATI, several different flavors of 3D monitors (both glasses-free and requiring glasses) and motion capture.  Plus ADSK, Z Brush, Pixar, Digital Domain, etc.

I went to some sessions in the morning, one was the production session on the final battle in Kung Fu Panda, which covered every aspect from the art to the fx.  Earlier it was a series of talks on lighting.  When they went into the complexities of the number of passes it required in the computer, the fine artist in me thought “geez, I could paint it by hand faster than all that!”

Yesterday was a session by Marvel on Thor and Captain America, and it was interesting to see all of the different studios that worked on the films up there together talking about their different roles – I want to learn more about asset sharing and workflow on this.

There was also the early-morning technical talks on modeling human motion, which was amusing due to the fact that these guys can simulate locomotion using a combination of complex mathematical formulas, but can’t figure out how to get their PowerPoint onto the big screen.

I got to spend a little time at The Studio, and need to go back to that.  There’s the DIY 3D printer, and the lenticular floor with the dizzying patterns that cause you to veer to the right and thus avoid collisions.  I liked the MoleBot – a coffee table with a simulated mole underneath knocking things over.

Yesterday was a full day with the Computer Animation Festival screening in the evening followed by the dessert reception – nothing like a plate full of desserts at 10pm after a long day of cool tech!  The reception was at the convention center, which has a nice outdoor area and a view of the city and the giant orca (lego?) sculpture.

Tonight it's a cup of tea and a sunset!

Sunset and fireworks

OK, there are two advantages to this new room: The sunset and the fireworks show!  Wasn't expecting th latter, but I'm not complaining since it was pretty awesome.

Vancouver, the Sydney of the North

Spent the day walking all around the Harbour, and I must say the city reminds me tremendously of Sydney.  But with a mountain range covered in pine trees across the water.  The city itself is filled with shiny skyscrapers that appear to be residential, and there’s a wide path along the water for pedestrians and cyclists.  I’ll need to rent a bike after the conference.

I walked all the way around to the aquarium, which could do with some benches.  They have a really cool frog show on right now, and they also have beluga whales and dolphins, but I primarily stayed to the indoors.  They have a rainforest area that’s really humid, and contains quit possibly the largest, ugliest fish I have ever seen.  It also had some tentacle snakes, longsnout tubefish (which are really cool in a school), jellies, and a tank full of piranhas with a skeleton at the bottom (and it’s not clear if that’s just decoration).  The caimans haven’t changed since the age of the dinosaurs –and I don’t think they’ve moved, either.  They get a fake thunderstorm complete with thunder and lightning every so often, and the only movement was in the eyes when the water cover layer went up.  A few small children completely freaked out, but the dinosaur didn't move.

Back in the hotel I’m in a new room – the first one had an A/C problem (it was 22 degrees – centigrade), so now I’m on the 28^th floor with a view of the water.  I rather liked my city view, but I’m OK with the sunset over the water and mountains, too.  J

A few pictures from the point-and-shoot: 

The Winking Judge

Well, the Canadians sure know chicken and mushroom pie better than tacos – it was delicious!  I found my way down to the pub for a real meal, and it was a winner.  The décor was true pub décor, complete with old signs and a pheasant.  After dinner I just went for a walk – it’s turned into a beautiful evening.  I found Robson street and wandered down there, and was going to turn around when I saw the chocolate place – they have some good chocolate here too! 

View from the hotel room:

Sketches from the pub:

Canada, eh?

The train ride to Vancouver is fantastic – even on a foggy morning it was quite beautiful.  It’s worth the business class ticket for the priority disembarking – you get through customs with shorter lines!

My hotel is one of these huge things with multiple towers and I think I’ve walked from one end to the other several times already.  My room is in a corner with wonderful views of the city and an ad for Vida Spa which “induces a near catatonic state.”  They say that like it’s a good thing.

So far I found a bank and got some colorful money and had some Canadian Mexican food.  I must say that taco salad was about what you would expect from a taco salad in Canada between a pawn shop and an Esso station.  Maybe I’ll try a pub for dinner…