AM Week 507

I've already got my critique on this work. There are plenty of changes to make but they are all minor tweaks. I've decided for now to get ride of the new credit sequence that I added this week.

http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/507anamatic_ex.mov

MTB Race

This past Sunday Lisa and I did our very first mountain bike race. It was more fun than a barrel full of monkeys! The race was the second race in a series of 9 races held down in the Fort Ord area (south of Santa Cruz). We both entered in the beginners race which was three laps around a 5 mile course. The course was pretty flat but when you are racing hard and a short steep hill can be really painful. I was a little worried that Lisa wasn't going to finish well and then swear off riding a mountain bike ever again, but I should have worried more about myself. Lisa finished 6 out of 12 with a time of 1:29:37. I finished 14 out of 17 with a time of 1:17:17.

I would have finished a little higher and quicker if it wasn't for some technical problems, my chain got jammed in the front deraileur three different times. Once it took me almost a minute to get it unstuck again. My bike computer read 1:15:29 but I didn't check it until about five minutes after I stopped riding, so I'd guess my total racing time was somewhere around 1:15:00 which would have put me around 11th or 12th. If you want to see the results for yourself go here http://www.cccx.org/mtb/2007/race2/2007_CCCX_MTB_Race2_Beginner.htm

I'm not too concerned about my time though. I hadn't done any riding at intensity so I'm glad I just survived. We plan to race again on March 31st and I plan to throw in some intervals to get some snap in my legs.

I'm a strange duck

I did these four pen and ink drawing for Joe Koski, Glen, Joe, and Josh. The inspiration came from the documentary "How to Draw Bunny" the life story of artist Ray Johnson. I mailed out these puppies to my friends just like Ray did with his art. Each drawing is also inspired by the person I gave it to.


The Godzilla rip off went to Joe Koski. Joe is a youth pastor who likes monsters, so what better to draw for him than a giant lizard terrorizing a town.
The B movie brain monster went to my brother Josh. As a seminary student he often spends 14 hours a day studying Greek. My brain would grow tentacles and attack me too if I had to do that.

The most graphic drawing went to my brother Joe. As a San Jose police officer he trains long and hard for the inevitable zombie invasion.


Last but not least, and probably the weirdest out of the bunch went to Glen. What's that you say? Yes it is the same Glen from the amazingly creative thegato.net. The signing bird was blatantly stolen from one of his shirt designs. The fanged cloud came from . . . well there's just no good explanation for that.

The lastest. And greatest?

www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/505anamatic final_ex.mov

Here's what I turned in for class 5 week 5 assigment. I'm still ahead of schedule. We only had to turn in the first half of the anamatic but I got the whole thing done. I figure this way I'll get more tries and getting the whole thing right. Next week we get to do a walk cycle with our main character. That should be a lot of fun.

Head Gags

Hey people here's some head gags I've been working on which two are your favorites?

www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/head gags_ex2.mov

Acrylic Painting

I've started to play around with Acrylic paints. Its a lot of fun and a totally different experience than painting in Photoshop. I really like the messiness and imperfection of paint. In Photoshop everything looks too clean and you really have to work to get any kind of personality or character into the color.

The trade off with Acrylics is it's really hard to get the color you want. I must have repainted the orange guy seven times before settling with that orange. It isn't the orange I wanted. Although the scanned version looks a little better than the painting. But the blue background in the scanned version looks worse than the painted version.

Final Pitch and 1st Anamatic

Here's the last pitch I'll do for the short. From here on out it will anamatic's and layout. For thoses of you who don't know an anamatic is kind of like a comic in time where one still image will reprsent the action. The video pitch is about 12 MB and the anamatic is 2.5 MB.

http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/504 enemy head pitch ex.mov




http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/504 anamatic ex.mov

There are many things that I'm trying out here.

-The first two drawings are supposed to be a pan. Also with this shot I think I want to start closer in.
-I think I want to switch the toilet bit with the weapon bin bit. I'm not sure about how I reveal his solution for hiding the head. It might be better just to show him swapping the vase and the head.
-I went with this different ending with Mr. Viking running across the screen at the last minute. I might go back to the ending with Mr. Viking sitting out side in the snow with the head.

What do you guys think?

Snow pictures

I forgot to post the pictures from the Kalsbeek brother's (and wives) ski trip this year. We stayed at the Lyerla cabin again this year and we had power the whole trip. I won't blab on too much and let the pictures tell the story.


When we first got to the cabin there wasn't any snow on the ground but luckily it snowed that night.Not so lucky for me I caught some weird 24 hour flu and didn't get to ski the first day. Boo!
I felt better the second day but due to high winds Bear Valley was closed. Boo!

So instead the five of us went for a hike.
Yes that is my thumb in the upper right hand corner.
They teach you how to pose like that at the San Jose police accademy.
What snow hike would be complete without a spur of the moment jumping contest.

Jump Lisa! Jump.Josh won but his title was revoked after the drug test revealed he was dopping. You'd be suprised how many seminary students are taking performance enhancing drugs. Sad but true.


Josh giving the camera the evil eye after being stripped of his jumping title.

Watch me make a fool of myself!

So here is the winning pitch. The over all idea is going to stay the same but after getting my critique from Pepe (my mentor) this week I think I'm going to tweek the ending a bit.

http://www.jakekalsbeek.com/AM/head pitch_ex.mov