Jimmy

I don’t normally blog on other countries’ politics because I don’t want to seem like an arrogant American, but as a consumer of media and a user of the Internet, not to mention a computer scientist and a hopeful future content creator (and, well, because I’m bored right now), I gotta jump in to the debate raging across the pond in England in regards to music piracy and how to deal with it. The recent deal announced that will target illegal file-sharer’s Internet connections and reduce them “to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional” (after two warning letters) is such a stunning invasion of privacy and overreaction that I don’t even know where to begin.

First, let me say that I don’t pretend to think that just because it’s possible to very easily share media files over the Internet without compensating the original creators that it should be categorically allowed. As someone who hopes to create the type of content (films, in this case) that is daily massively shared around the Internet I see the problem. I do. For every torrent of Bones or whatever downloaded, that’s a few cents those awesome artists aren’t going to see. So, first point can be summarized thusly: just because you can download it for free is no reason to be a dick to the artists.

Secondly, show me the post offices where they open our mail and make sure we’re not sending illegal stuff or making illegal plans via letters and I’ll support this plan to track Internet users’ traffic and “shape” it. Show me the highways where there are roadblocks (outside of Iraq and the Mexican border, I mean) to check for people smuggling illegal goods and I’ll support this plan to cut off users who’ve paid for broadband service. Show me the phone company that taps our phones to make sure we’re not using the wires to do illegal things and I’ll support this plan to tap every broadband connection in England to listen for file-sharing traffic.

ISPs have one job: deliver us an Internet connection, and in return we pay them a ton of money. It’s a good agreement for both parties (usually) and in return both parties keep out of each others way for the most part. That means the ISP doesn’t tap my wires looking for “bad” traffic and I PAY THEM EVERY MONTH. If I want to game 24/7, that’s between me and Blizzard. If I want to download from iTunes all the time, that’s between me and Apple. If I want to illegally file-share, THAT’S BETWEEN ME AND THE RECORD COMPANIES. I can’t think what the ISPs involved in this deal are thinking. It’s got to be massively expensive (though less than opening all our mail, checking all our car trunks or listening to all our phone conversations), and for what in return? A big bag of money from the record companies? I suppose they’re hoping this will noticeably lessen the traffic on their networks, but the users are paying for that bandwidth. Plus, if they really succeed in cutting down the Internet connections of 7 MILLION PEOPLE, isn’t that gonna kinda make that 11% of the population really, really, really, really PISSED? I don’t know what over a tenth of the entire population of a country being pissed because they just lost their broadband looks like, but I can’t imagine it’d be pretty. So, second point in summary: just because it’s technically possible to track and attack people’s Internet connections is no reason to be a dick about it.

I don’t really have a lot of ideas for fixing the problem, but one thing I do know: the Internet has changed the game and nothing (NO THING) is going to stop people from sharing. What we need to do is redefine the model from one of paying for the actual content to one of paying for what’s around the content. This is already what happens on TV. TV viewers don’t pay money when watching on the TV, but they do pay (in time) for what’s AROUND the content: the 17 minutes every hour of advertising. The small field of web comics also embraces this model: the actual comic is free, but fans pay by looking at ads on the website, buying books, t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, posters, etc. and by making the occasional paypal donation. Only a handful of web cartoonists are able to live full-time off this model, but it’s an idea. The equally small field of web series’ is also actively creating a new way of making content free of charge. Most people who’re looking more than 5 or 10 years into the future understand that the current model is going to be dead and rotting very soon. The RIAA isn’t scaring enough people (and never will be able to) to reverse the ongoing evolution and (as Shakira puts it) “democratization” of the music and movie industries. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I think at the most basic level it will involve the content creators getting closer to their fans and in a lot of cases the “middleman’s” role being drastically reduced if not completely eliminated. This is obviously what scares the RIAA and the like, but it’s really exciting to me as a fan (I’ve had personal interactions with some of my favorite cartoonists via Twitter) and as a hopefully future content creator. I think because this new model is going to be decentralized, it will take everyone each adding a piece to the puzzle to the BUILD the new systems of income for content creators. The world is full of awesome creative people. How long until someone who has not a lick of musical talent but who’s awesome at finding business models on the Internet teams up with a few budding musicians or bands and becomes their personal manager and helps them create a gainful income via a model that bittorrent won’t undermine?

It’s 3:30am and I’m getting really tired. I’m gonna leave this post here and apologize for all the typos (for which I know there are many, as I’ve fixed quite a few dozen already). I also apologize if this doesn’t make as much sense and/or flow as well as I think it does, because I’m pretty tired and might be reading it completely wrong.

‘k enough apologizing. Not gonna apologize for calling a ton of pirates dicks or for calling most British ISPs dicks. Both well deserved titles.

Cheers,
-j

Frequent readers may recall I posted a video last spring of the little character I’d modeled in 3D for my 3D Animation II: Character Design class. This semester we students are using the same characters we made last semester and building little environments for them. First up to learn about is lighting, and we’ve spent the last 3.5 weeks on that so far. We’re trying out all kinds of different types of lighting on our characters, and I’ve rendered still frames of some of my favorite lighting environments so far. Read on…

First up is: setting/late evening sun

(Click on any image for larger version.)

And the obvious follow-up to that is: dusk

I can’t remember what we were actually doing here and I’d done something wonky with the texture/color of the floor of the room (made it bright blue and reflective) so it came out differently from what the prof was expecting/wanting/demoing, but I liked the result, which I’m calling: ice palace

Again I can’t for the life of me remember what my prof called this, but at least it came out the way he was expecting this time. For lack of any better name, I’m calling it beaming fire

I’ve really enjoyed looking at lighting so far (despite what I’ve said to my family on the occurrence of not being able to simply take a walk at night anymore without noticing all the different colors of lights) and hope you, fair reader, have enjoyed seeing some of my favorite lighting scenes as well. We’re also working on building whole environments for our characters (I’m modeling a circus tent) and I’ll try to post pictures of that sometime, as well.

Cheers for now,
-j

It’s 2am and sleep is not really in sight. Well, sort of, but iTunes e-mailed me and told me that my pre-order of Green Day’s new album 21st Century Breakdown was available for download and I just started listening to it and damn it’s good and who stops listening to such a good album in the middle? You’ve got to hear it through all at once to fully take it in, and so I’m left with needing to find something to do for the next 1.2 hours. (OK, since doing the math tells me that that takes me ’til 3:30am maybe I will have to cut it short mid-album. But we’ll decide that later.)

Anyway. Final exams are over and I’m pretty sure I failed at least two of them, and quite possibly both the classes that said finals were in. But I don’t really care. I got a much better grade than I was expecting in another class, so that’s awesome.

So I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with my summer. Because sleeping 12 hours well into the afternoon is awesome for only one or two days. So that was today, and now it’s time to move on to bigger and better things (hopefully things that don’t entail sleeping quite so much of the day away). I’ve been feeling for a while that I’d like to focus more on teaching myself more about filmmaking, from actual camera-work and stuff to editing (I loooove editing, but I don’t feel like I know Premiere Pro nearly as well as I could) and post-production stuff (After Effects, anyone?), so that’s something to do with the summer, but then the question becomes what kind of structure to put it in? E.g. what kind of raw video footage do I use for my editing adventures? old family vacation footage, or shoot new footage? If so, what?

Those are the questions.

Enter the awesome web video series that I found yesterday called The Guild created by the awesome Felicia Day (Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, anyone? She was in that). While watching all 24 6-8 minutes episodes of this little web video that won three awards at the Streamy Awards, I got to thinking: what about spending the summer creating little web video episodes? Obviously this brings up as many (or more) question than it answers, but at least we’re going in the direction of making progress on the question of what the shrack to do this summer. And to help answer some of those questions, we find that not only does Felicia have a blog, she’s currently posting on how to do a web series and make it work. One begins to wonder if this is some sort of sign.

(Click “read more” to read more of my middle-of-the-night rambles.)
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I posted a still image of my almost finished 3D puppet a few weeks ago, but here now is a short animation of the final puppet.

I’ll admit that I can’t take credit for modeling the fire; one of my classmates did that for me.

3D puppet from Jimmy Bouma-Holtrop on Vimeo.

This was my second and final project of this semester in 3D Character Design class. I’ve had a blast in this course this semester, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the few posts I’ve made on it. I’m continuing my 3D modeling/animation coursework in the fall, so look for more posts starting in September.

Meanwhile, as this semester is just about over (last week of classes just ended, now it’s just 4 days of finals next week) I hope to be able to devote a little more time to blogging again and hopefully post more often than once every 1 or 2 weeks. I’m not 100% sure I’ll have more blogging time, but I’m gonna try.

Cheers.

-j

I posted a still image of the model way back in February, but here finally is the actual animation. For some reason the sound didn’t convert, but if you just imagine the sound of a wind-up toy while you’re watching it’ll all be good.

3D Wind-Up Toy Animation from Jimmy Bouma-Holtrop on Vimeo.

Cheers.

-j

Here’s a picture of an early/not quite finished version of my current project in 3D Animation: a self-portrait Muppet-style circus performer puppet.

Let nobody say that my professor is not creative in his assignments.

I should probably go back to my Visual Basic homework now.

Cheers.

-j

Howard Tayler, as you might know, is the creator, author and artist of the truly awesome space opera webcomic Schlock Mercenary (can you tell I love this comic?). Well, yesterday he posted a news post that one of his recent story arcs (The Body Politic) was nominated for a Hugo Award (awesome, huh?) he mentioned in the post that although there are only five other nominees he doesn’t think he is going to win. Specifically he says:

I’m the only solo-act (writing and illustration all coming out of the same person.) This probably explains why everything else on the list is better illustrated and/or written than my own work. It also makes me extra super-happy to have made the ballot at all. I suppose this is what it would be like if I were going to swim in a race against Michael Phelps. No way can I beat him, but at least I made it to the pool, right?

And I want to say in response: don’t underestimate yourself, Howard. It’s been a while since I read The Body Politic (a few months, if I recall correctly) but I did a quick Google search to find out who else is nominated for this here award (you have to scroll about half-way down the page to find the Graphic Stories category) and I was intrigued to see that although I don’t think of myself as being a big graphic novel geek I had in fact read one of the other works nominated: Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews and Will Conrad. Now, not having read the other four works up for the award I can’t come to a hugely informed conclusion, but if the other works are near the same quality as Schlock Mercenary and Serenity I think that The Body Politic has a good chance of winning. I think that Better Days is a nice graphic story and all that, but I don’t think it’s all that much better than The Body Politic and I think the storytelling in Schlock is better (sorry, Joss).

So think positive, Howard, and don’t give up hope. You got nominated and that’s awesome, but don’t think it ends there, because if it were up to me, it wouldn’t.

Of course, it’s not up to me, so who knows what’ll happen.

Anyway.

Cheers!

-j

P.S. (2am Saturday) it would probably be best if I spelled Howard’s name correctly. I’m always thinking it’s Taylor when it’s really Tayler. Eeek. Bad me.

I’m looking for something, and I’m losing hope of finding it. I’m talking about the new Friday evening Fox show from self-professed feminist Joss Whedon: Dollhouse (some spoilers from the first several episodes below), and what I’m looking for is the strong, in-control, smart and sexy women we’ve come to expect from Joss in such ground-breaking (and cult-follower gathering) shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy, Willow, Faith, Dawn, Anya, Dru, Tara, etc.), Angel (Cordelia, Fred, etc.) and Firefly (who can forget Zoe, River, Kaylee and Inara?)

So far in Dollhouse we’ve seen a great deal of former Faith actress Eliza Dushku being sexy, but not a lot of the other things that Joss’ female characters usually are. Especially in-control. I understand that she begins to become self-aware, and I would be happy to be proved wrong about being disappointed in not seeing ANY strong and/or in-control and/or smart women on the show (OK, the women who runs the “Dollhouse” is probably all of those things, but she’s, well, bad. Where’s our fearless heroine who will save the day in the end?) but my faith is rapidly slipping away that it will happen anytime soon (e.g. in time for it the stick in people’s minds that Joss Whedon has created another show full of strong females). I think I see where the show is going: Echo begins to remember past her mind-wipes and probably takes down the Dollhouse, but…I don’t know. If the show goes the way of Firefly, we’ll never get to see that last part and all we’ll know about the world of Dollhouse is that it was a world where the only moderately strongish females were bad and all the others were helplessly enslaved to their male “handlers,” who show varying levels of concern for their personal well being (ranging from utter disdain to confused pity).

I was hoping I was wrong and that at some point Joss would show exactly why he calls himself (and everyone else calls him to a sometimes sickenly hero-worshiping degree) a feminist. But then I started watching Stage Fright (third episode, I think), in which the visuals were graced with an over-abundance of footage of a very scantily clad pop star performing. This alone did not shock me (anyone who watches CSI or any popular media today is bombarded with such imagery 24/7), no, what annoyed me is that this was coming from the one person I had come to trust wouldn’t do such a thing unless it was really relevant to the story. And I don’t see that in this case it was. It was just sexual objectification of women for the sack of entertainment, and that I don’t think any true feminist can engage in.

I find the Dollhouse story mildly interesting and I intend to probably continue watching the show, but I am very disappointed in Joss and in Eliza. I at times liked Faith better than Buffy while watching BtVS and I think she is one of the most amazingly strong female characters ever to grace our TV sets, and I think Eliza was the perfect actress for the job. What she’s doing playing Echo, I have no idea.

Cheers.

-j

I need the last panel of today’s Schlock Mercenary on a t-shirt. SERIOUSLY. My life will not be complete without it.

I love Petey so much.

That is all.

-j

I’ve been having fun in my 3D Animation II class so far this semester and I’ve just (or almost) completed the modeling phase of the first project: a model of a wind-up toy. Here’s a still image of part of the model (the final animation will be lit with an ambient light in addition to the spotlights, so it will be possible to see the entire model. For now this is all you get. *grin*)

I’m really proud of the textures I was able to pull off in this model. I have fairly low confidence in my drawing abilities but was pleasantly surprised by how well the flower petals came out, and the image only took something like 10 minutes to make in Photoshop (although getting the petals to that shape–arguably a large part of how well they look–took several hours of modeling in Maya). The leaf texture, however, took me almost 2 hours to make today. Lots of time notwithstanding, I’m really happy with how this model is turning out so far. I think I have a good handle on how I’m going to do the animating, too, so I’m really pleased with this project!

Cheers!

-j