Walking Squid

Tom Servo Blog!

2010-10-11T10:06:00.001-07:00

http://tomservosays.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-earth-just-in-time-for-halloween.html

Squid Spring Semester!

2010-02-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

Spring Semester sure is cold. What is up with that? And how about that airline food?! Haha, I'm so funny.

Well Spring semester has started now, and I am taking Animation to sound and Publishing Independent comics. And as awesome as these classes are, they are very demanding. I will have to spend even more hours outside of class this semester on my projects, but I am up for it! (Even though each class is 7 hour long...) At the end of my animation class I will have a 2 min long animation with sound and I have to print and sell my comic at the end of my comic class. So there should be a lot to show at the end of it all. Also during the summer I will be taking 9 credits of a mix of English and History to catch up.

I have started an independent project alongside these; a webcomic. I was going to create it as my comic for class, but then decided to collaborate with my good friend Adrienne and work on one of her awesome short stories and do a more detailed and complex comic for class.
To work on this project I went ahead and got myself a Wacom tablet. I have wanted one for a while and the new Bamboo is under 80 bucks and works AMAZINGLY. I have made some mock up banners of some of the characters:

It took a while to get used to drawing on the tablet and having it show up on the screen, but for only having it 2 days, I think things are moving along well.
So this is the webcomic I want to get up and going. It is called Stressed Asian Guy and I am really hoping people don't find it racist as almost all the characters are Asian and I think it might be hard to avoid a few stereotypes. We will see. It is about a guy working in a small office and his many attempts to kill himself due to his annoying co workers. I hope I will have more time for it during the semester, but I am skeptical.

I am happy to be back home, but I miss Arizona and my family and the nice weather. Work is going smoothly, but I am thinking of looking into something else. Maybe waiting at a higher class restaurant now that I have some experience under my belt. Making more and being able to work less would be great. But I think we can all say that!

Other than that not much is going on. A friend gave me a very large amount of oil paints and canvas board so I have also been playing around with mixing the mineral oil and turpentine. Messy stuff. I might just stick with acrylics.

I will leave you with this wonderful French 3D animation my teacher showed me.
http://www.vimeo.com/6913172

Hello squid world!

2009-12-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

Hello world! It has been a mighty long time. I promise to keep this updated more often. Pinky swear! Well, finals just ended, as in I am at lunch for my last class right now. My final animaiton came out okay, and people in my class seemed to enjoy it.

http://vimeo.com/8211651

And there it is!

Today Annie and I are picking up some furniture that we bought form our friend Lauren from my work. Yay! More furniture! Our house is so baaaaren! Also, flat screen TV! She is allowing me to make 3 payments on it, Hoooray! I can't wait to go to Game Stop and get a cord to hook up the Super Nintendo and play! PEW!

I am working a lot over the winter break, which is great because I need to save up some money, but I also want to paint a lot with my free time.

Annie and I will be down in Arizona from the 8th of January to the 17th. For the first week we will be in Cali with our friends. I can't wait to have a break and get out of this weather and see all my family and friends. I'M COMIN' HOME Y'ALL!

Here is a sketch I did based on my love of Alphonse Mucha's work. I am painting it over the break. Man, paints are so expensive...

Run Squid!

2009-08-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a bit! There has been a lot and then also not a lot, going on! (haha)
Annie and I have been doing a lot of exploring around and even went swimming finally.

I loved swimming in the lake, it was so wonderful.

I also got the job at Samah the Hookah lounge. Hooray! It is a job like I have never had before though. It is more like a waiting job, which is a whole new experience for me. But I love it so far!

I have done a few very quick paintings recently too:

These are just some sketches on cardboard with watercolors. Easy and fun. I don't have a lot of supplies right now, but what I do have is a bunch of cardboard boxes in my house, and this is what I'm doing to them. The one on the very bottom is not done yet, but is the best so far, the sketch is detailed, but I still have to go in with another color and finish it up.

Time just feels like it is going by so slow waiting for school to start and my job to enter full swing.
Other than that I am really just dealing with a lot of school financial stuff still, and we will see how it turns out. Really there is not much more to report! I was also really happy to see Maddy's pictures from Seattle. Hope everyone is well!

Lake and Job Hunting

2009-07-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

It has been an eventful last few days!
Annie and I walked over to lake Michigan after stopping at a small produce store we like to get Coke's imported from Mexico. They have the real sugar in them. Sooo good.

The lake is so beautiful. I can't wait to go swimming in it.

We have been doing a lot of job searching, seeing as funds are dwindling, I was really worried about it, but luck has been on our side. I went to a bunch of Hookah Lounges in the neighborhood and got to talk to a lot of owners and workers. I dropped off a few resumes then went to a lounge recommended to my by a woman at one of the other lounges called Samah. It is well known for being a high class hookah lounge right by Wrigley field. They have very nice silk pillows and curtains with beautiful decor on the walls. They also serve drinks and appetizers. I dropped off my resume and a few minutes later I got a call form a manager asking if I could come in for an interview! I went (today) and a few hours later they called me back and asked me to come in on Monday for training! I don't have the job secured yet though, there are four of us coming in and they can only hire 2-3 of us. Yikes! I know I will knock their socks off with my knowledge and people skills.

Annie and I set up new bank accounts today and I am waiting to hear back on my Private Loan for school. I was able to get even more money through the Federal Loan recently, so for that I am very great full. But I might have to start looking into other banks or finding a co signer since I am not currently employed to take out the rest I need in Private Loans. Thank goodness for Financial Aid counselors too! The woman at SAIC helping me is so patient and kind! Did I mention yet that I get health insurance? That is going to be a great help to me. I will also have to pay for a larger portion of my laptop than once thought, and they make you buy it. Ugh. Oh well. It will be an amazing tool to have. Especially for all the digital work I will have to do.

Anyway, enough about money and how un fun it is.

Annie and I had a nice little lunch at Roscoe's cafe in Boys Town today. The gay district of Chicago is so colorful! Haha! Our fabulous waiter kept telling Annie how pretty she was, then reasuring her he was gay. We will definetly have to go back to the bars some night and see the shows. I am loving finding my way around this city. We also had Vietnamies food the other day that was realy great.

Tonight we are just relaxing with some Video games and Vietnamies rice crackers. A nice break after a few days of runnig around looking for jobs. I feel things are going well and am keeping optomistic.

I can't wait unti Grandma Wally comes up to visit!

Love you all, and I will post again soon. Hopefully with some new art!

2009-07-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

Here they are! Pictures of the apartment before we put any of the boxes in it.
At the top we have the kitchen which is at the end of the apt. It has a pushed back area in it too for a table. I love the checker floors don't you?!
After that we have the un insulated 'yellow' room. It is a rather large room that is a patio/storage area. It leads out the back to the yard and alley way.
Look at my neat-o bathtub!
We then have the master bedroom that is attached to the bathroom and the hallway. The windows in this place are all new and are very easy to open. Yay!
Then there is the second bedroom that is the studio. It has a red 'arizona' room attached to it which will serve as more storage and a walk in closet for Annie.
Then there is the second living room that is just for the TV and video games. The studio and kitchen open up to it. We have a super long hallway running through the apartment, it is very long and narrow.
The we come to the best room! The main living room with its domed front. This looks over the street. We are making this a reading den of sorts with just art and books. I love this room.
SO that's about it! It has all wood flooring, new windows, it is 14,000 square feet and the ceiling is super high. I also love cooking with a gas stove. Very fun.
Tomorrow I will upload pictures of us at Lake Michigan! It is so beautiful, I can't wait to go swimming in it!

The Move- Part One

2009-07-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

Annie and I have successfully made it to Chicago and are now in the craze of unpacking.

The first day of driving we hit a huge storm in Kansas with the most amazing and terrifying lightning. We made it through it and spent the next day with my Aunt Liz and Uncle Bob. It was really fun to show Annie everything I had been talking about Freshman year when I lived with them. Khannah is now 13 and after six years of not seeing her it is amazing to see what a wonderful person she has grown into.
We did some sight seeing in Dodge city with my Uncle and Khannah. Annie loved all the old houses and we took a tour of one called the 'House of Stone'.
I wanted to meet up with my old friend Mallory, but unfortunately never got the chance.

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. I did however start to read a book given to me by an old friend called 'The Animators Survival Kit' by Richard Williams and it has become indispeciable to me. Richard Willams was the Director of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' and his life work was 'The Princess and the Cobbler' which was taken over by Miramax and turned into 'The Theif and the Cobler' and also turned into a musical. I loved that movie as a kid and it was awesome to go onto youtube and see his original vission for the film. It was also Vincent Prices last role. If anyone is ever interested in learning about animation, this is the book to have.

The apartment is huge, and met every one of our expectations. Except that it was a little dirty. My Aunt Tina put it best when she said that the apartments in Rogers park are long and narrow, you could open a one lane bowling ally in them right down the middle of the house. It was not an easy task moving everything up three flights of stairs though. Thank goodness my friends Michel and Stealth were visiting and came over to help in exchange for pizza. It has the most amazing domed out living room that we have made into a reading den. The hard wood floors and high cellings are nice, but with the cats it will be a challenge to keep clean. Being on the thrid story is going to spoil us, along with this amazing weather. We also have fireflies in the back yard. The neighborhood is quite the melting pot and there are many neat looking restaurants and shops near by that I want to explore. We haven't ventured into town yet but we will tomorrow so I can go finish up some finances with the school. I am still unsure of how I am going to afford my books and Laptop, but hopefully that will all get ironed out tomorrow.

Today is Annie's birthday so I am going to go start breakfast for her.
I hope to post more in the next few days about SAIC and the artwork I will be making and the small comic I have started and the hopefully larger comic I will be starting with Adrienne.

This post is kind of boring, but I promise to zazz up the next one with some jokes, and maybe some interpritive dance. Maybe.

New Adress is: 7423 N. Winchester Ave. #3N Chicago IL 60626