Lou Romano was kind enough to drop by Platt College in San Diego to spend the day speaking with students and visitors alike. Lou is a native of San Diego, so this was quite a homecoming for him as it was his first time doing a presentation of this sort. I attended the last of the day, so he had a better handle of doing things this time around.

Lou began with a quick overview of his art career. He spent two years at CalArts between 1990-1992 before becoming an intern at Turner Entertainment, working in effects on "The Pagemaster" and "Cats Don't Dance." He would then be among those merging into Warner Bros. Animation, where he met Brad Bird in 1995. While most other animators aspired to work in character animation, Lou was more interested in design and visual development. He showed off an example of this through a personal piece inspired by Greek mythology, Poseidon in particular. After doing work on the shelved "Ray Gun" project, Lou would get to know Brad a little more while doing work on "The Iron Giant."

Lou would leave Warner Bros. and manage to get work at Pixar for the first time, taking part on one of the company's many failed attempts at in-house game development. Pete Docter saw what he liked and enlisted Lou to work on visual development for his film "Monsters, Inc." He would work on the project for six months and when he was done moved down to Los Angeles. He took part in doing storyboard art and background color design for "Dexter's Laboratory" and "The Powerpuff Girls."

In 1998, Brad Bird began to develop the idea for what would become "The Incredibles" and enlisted Lou to be on the project. Lou would end up becoming the film's production designer as he was already heavily involved in the project. It was at this point that Lou would spend the most of his presentation on in showing off the designs he did for the film.

He began showing off the early designs of the character who would become Mr. Incredible, looking at the different ways his mundane appearance would look. Among them was one where the character was very bald, glasses, a mustache, and grandpa socks. This would lead into a series of designs that would explain the color contrast between the mundane world and the world of the amazing. How the mundane would look cold and boring while the amazing was filled with brightness and excitement.

On explaining his method of doing a finished piece after a series of roughs: "Crystalize the idea."

Being a designer, Lou explained that his illustrations would be loose and rough while being clear enough to project the idea he was going for. From there, he showed designs of the early stages of a proposed antagonist. The various creatures were named Moltar, Arachnis, Black Saber and Crustaciss. He then explained that Brad would ultimate decide upon basing the character more on the actor Klaus Kinski, showing a picture to further show the idea was going.

After a series of designs of the villain that would later be shelved, he showed off the various ideas for the logo. Among them included one Brad Bird did on a notepad he got while working at Warner Bros. Lou explained the major design idea for the world the characters would live in was based in the 60's and 70's. "The peek in modern design," he explained as he showed off what were recognized as the four iconic production pieces.

Lou then showed a series of "Bob at work" designs to show off the bleakness of the mundane world that Mr. Incredible longs to escape. He managed to sneak in a design he said was done by renounded production design Ken Adam, showing the simplicity of the shapes. A picture of Edith Head would lead into a series of designs for the character said to have been one of the more difficult to create, Edna Mode.

Through the craziness and the zaniness, among them including the idea that she would have two pet dogs, he moved into a series of photos of an employee whose hair was used to model for Violet. From there were a couple of shots from the art reviews they would conduct, the shots shown showcasing their study of a Violet maquette. Lou then showed off color scripts, production designs that would set the tone for the look of the entire film from scene to scene. He then compared the designs to the scene from the film that closely resembles as well as shots from various films like "Oliver!" for examples of the color palette to use.

Lou would near the end of his presentation, showing off a series of designs that were used for lighting studies. The comparison to the closest resembling film frame were shown before he ended the whole slide show on a rather humorous note. Designs for Jack-Jack. He explained that one of the original ideas was for Jack-Jack to morph into ooze, but the animation was not working so they had to come up with new ideas. The last image shown was of the whole family with Jack-Jack in monster form towering over them. He noted that Brad Bird said, "Does Jack-Jack have to be bigger than everyone?"

The presentation was given a proper end by showing the "Magic Highway USA" clip from the 1958 "Disneyland" show. The Questions and Answers portion was mostly based around his working in Pixar and the benefits. When asked about the potential of a sequel to "The Incredibles," he said that the possibility was there but that Brad was busy on other projects. I asked him about "Up," which he is art director on. He said that he couldn't reveal too much since it was still mostly top secret, though he had just completed work on the project since he first came on in 2005.

He's asked whether or not he has a blog, which he does over at [link]. He noted that he was "behind technically." Once all the questions were asked, there was a raffle for some school related materials like T-shirts and mouse pads along with the grand prize of a signed copy of "Ratatouille," which Lou did the voice of Linguini for. With the presentation properly over, a number of people hung around to further ask him questions and get an autograph.

I got my picture taken with him and asked him a couple questions about his voicing Linguini before asking him about the difference working on a television series versus a feature film. He mentioned that because television shows required faster and quicker outputs, they generally take the first design he would sketch out and run with it while feature films would see him spend lots of time refining his piece. I shook his hand and couple times and made my exit.

Clubs:

I wake up Sunday at around eleven in the morning. Or maybe it was noon. Whatever time it was, it was mid-day. I had finished one of my first closing shifts as a newly promoted Shift Leader, and not having to work again till Tuesday I was sure as hell gonna take it easy. I laid in bed for a little longer, watching some TV out of sheer boredom. I noticed the winds outside were blowing quite hard as the branches from the tree outside were slapping my window a bit.

I eventually got out to the car sometime at around two. Nothing unusual. Hopped about a couple of stores like Wal-Mart and Target, looking at the DVDs along the way to see if there was anything to add to the collection. Made a mental note about a title that I wanted to get that was on sale this week. Next, look to see if there was a buffet around that could eat at for my sole meal of the day. It was when I hit the always packed Home Town Buffet on Palomar and just off the I-5 when I noticed it. Tiny pieces of ash were falling. Guess some place was on fire. Would have to look into it. Went to the Godfather's Pizza on Broadway and Oxford. Nothing on the TVs mentioned anything about a fire, so I didn't think too much of it.

Didn't think too much of it the rest of the day and when I went to bed.

It was when I woke up Monday morning and turned on the TV did the fires really take shape. In San Diego, the two main fires at the time were Witch Creek and Harris. Harris was just due east of Chula Vista. The eastern portion of Chula Vista was made up of the Eastlake community. I lived in Eastlake Shores. So you could tell which fire I was paying attention to. My mom, who lives in Hawaii, called to see what was up. She also mentioned that dad was already in San Diego, which was news to me. Dad eventually called me up and we had dinner at the grandparents place while keeping tabs on the fires. I got back and started filling up the car with as much stuff as I could, ready to go in case I needed to evacuate.

I turned off the lights and looked to go to bed at midnight. Then I noticed that there was an orange glow outside my window. I opened the blinds and saw Mount San Miguel on fire. Oh boy. Mount San Miguel was not that far away from Eastlake. Eastlake Shores in particular. This didn't look good. I kept the TV on and was paying attention to the ABC affiliate, since they were the only ones who didn't shift away from the news for the night. I eventually feel asleep as my body required it.

Woke up Tuesday morning. Was not sure whether or not I was going to work, and since I was part of opening shift I really didn't know. I was getting ready to head out the door when the boss called to tell me work was closed for the day. So I stayed glued to the television, at this point the CBS affiliate since they were covering the Harris Fire more than the others at this point. A couple hours later, I watched as a line of fire was beginning to approach a neighborhood between Mount San Miguel and Eastlake Shores. I was prepared to bolt the second any sort of announcement would be made requiring me to evacuate.

Fortunately, no such message came. Instead, the television showed me helicopters beginning to make their water drops on the Harris Fire that began threatening the Eastlake areas. It was later noted that the costal winds came a lot earlier than previously forecasted and it allowed the choppers to make their runs. Fortunate smiled upon the eastern area of Chula Vista, thereby preventing the fire from touching any of the local neighborhoods. So another dinner was planned with my dad and my grandparents. We were going to the Mexican place near my place, but they closed for the day because of the fire so we went way down to the one just off the I-5. Once I got back, spent a great deal emptying my car. Once everything was out by midnight, I was sweating badly.

Wednesday wasn't all that fun in that my body ached, I had a huge headache, and I was closing shift that night. In fear of coming down with a fever, I made a run to grab some Advil. Thank God it helped at the very least eliminate the body aches and calm the headache before I started my shift. Because we closed on Tuesday, we knocked a vast majority of the late fees. I was supposed to be the only lead closing that night, but the boss dropped by because he had to fix up Monday's paperwork and set it apart from Wednesday. Aside from the more than usual customers, a normal Wednesday night.

And so, that's my story of the Harris Fire threat I faced. Didn't seem all that much, but believe me when I say my heart was racing that Monday night watching how much bigger the orange glow seemed to be getting at times. The packing of my stuff into the car and then having to take them out, while a pain physically, allowed me a chance to fix my room. Still working on it as I write this. I occasionally check out what's going on with the rest of Southern California to see how they're doing in containing the fires. Other than that, not much else.

23 years...

Has it really been that long?

Dunno why, but some of my earliest memories end in a fog.

It seems that time goes fast, and then it seems that time goes slow.

At least I have yet to be some regular Joe.

Growing and learning along the way.

I am no longer a dependent, or so my parents say.

Hoping to one day land a position in life that will satisfy

Now if only those damn interviews can start coming in on the fly.

Perhaps you've noticed by now my inability to write poems.

But that doesn't matter, because neither one of you are gems.

You all will bow and worship me.

For today is a Happy Birthday to precious me.

Now gimme some money or you will all die!

---

I just noticed I'm less than a 100 views away from reaching the fabled 10,000 page views. I'm willing to go out on a limb and do a special piece specifically for the person who helps me achieve that mark. Of course, you need to send me photographic proof that you are the 10,000th viewer. Send that in to me and if I deem your's is real, I'll let you pick any character to appear in my 10,000 view piece. If no one wants to participate, then oh well. I just feel 10,000 page views is pretty big for me, considering I don't get that many as it is, and I wanna share it with y'all.

Clubs:

Just a few days ago, I completed my latest animation class. The whole goal of this particular class was to build a character that would be suitable for video game usage and animation. This meant a limited number of polys in modeling and I had to apply the rigs meself. Six to seven weeks later and I got myself one damn fine looking animation of my fantasy character Zemnar Westford. When I get the chance, I'll pose a high res video of the animation on my web page (which I've been meaning to update for the past several months). In the meantime, I was able to post a low res version on YouTube and I posted the stills (as required amongst the things to turn in) here on deviantArt. Enjoy:

[link]

Clubs:

Last night was the last night of my first of six consecutive animation class as required for my Bachelor's Degree. The class was Organic 3D Animation and I spent four hours for four nights during five-six weeks modeling my head, applying textures, and animating it to the best of my abilities and from the information taught by my instructor. I think I did pretty well, even though there are certainly areas I could improve upon.

It's a three second clip, with sound, and I give extra points for those who figure out where the quote comes from. Comments and critiques are welcomed, although if you just simply say, "It sucks" and nothing more you will be vaporized.

[link]

Clubs: