Virgil Mihailescu

Yo yo yo!

Check out what I found. Well, actually, a friend of mine did :D Hehehe! It's called Weebly and it's a fairly new player in town, I think... It lets you build a hot ass website really easily with drag-and-drop widgets, and it gives you basically unlimited bandwith and only a limit to 5 MB uploads in the free version, and 100 MB uploads if you purchase the PRO version, which I did. The ubercool thing is that even if you're not paying for the PRO version anymore, let's say in a year from now, your uploads are still functional (at least that's what they say now...). The blog is not as advanced as blogger or wordpress, and there still are some limitations here and there, but for my needs it's purrfect. You can customize quite a lot and use custom html or java code inside widgets/pages, so it's not really a blackbox thingamagic where you can't touch anything. The major difference from a blog is that you can upload any kind of file to weebly :) and you can really do a lot with it :)

So I'm very happy I changed my server and all my website content over here (I had to btw, the bgsu mustec people kicked me out like a parasite hehehe... which I sort'a like really was, for over 5 years, ey?), I hope weebly has a long healthy life :D:D:D cuz I intend to stay here for quite a while now! I was thinking about buying a domain name... but I kind'a like this free virgil.weebly so I don't ever have to worry about changing my links again. Unless weebly dies on me... so weebly................................ don't die on me man, OK?!!

I made these simple drawings for a friend of a friend's wedding album...gift...thingy.

(today I have a poem for y'all ;) )

One - two - three - there were three kings
three drilling ducks of lordly swings
they drilled for very many things
like gold and oil and diamond rings.

One day they died and gold, oil, rings
went back to earth like all of things
and few remember now the swings
that swinged those duck drill lordly kings.

End!!!

Little Klick is sad... a little, because of people in Bucharest honking their car horns way too much... What are they thinking, Klick wonders? Do they not realize it makes Klick sad???

Yo, this is a puppet I just built, its name is Klick and it can dance!!! Check out its little dance!!!

(hihi, yeah, I know, I won't add this animation to my demo reel :D but it was fun to do anyway :-P )

This winter I reorganized a bit this website of mine, and I forgot to post something... to.... celebrate this.... change... There are 2 blogs now, one for fluff, meaning the one you're reading right now, and one for more meaningful animation entries. I felt like my animation entries, even though always featured as titles on a separate page, were still drowning in a swampy mess of non-animation related posts. So I though they should have in fact... a blog of their own, because they're more important than the rest (my true gems o' wisdom).

And I need to redesign the home page, the current one's just thrown in there quickly, just 'cause I needed something as my home page...

And a small random drawing to inspire people of all ages - along with the message - people, beat the crap out of your kids, mutilate the living soul out of them, that's why you gave them birth in the first place... (no, I wasn't a molested child, I just had my share of beating, a small share, but I always thought that beating your kids is absurd and abusive and I hate grown ups, including teachers, treating kids mean and/or abusive). So anyway, the text sounded funnier in romanian, and it reads: "I said GO to your place or I'll beat the SHIT out of you!!!" (a completely random doodle in fact that got nastier by adding this text to it... :-P )

Silly xmas concert gets delayed. The scene is done and ready to render, but I don't know exactly when I will have time to actually render it... next year probably :D Maybe I can post a small excerpt or a few images meanwhile.

As xmas gets closer (dangerously so), my project is also getting closer to completion. Let me introduce to you now the members of The Silly Xmas Orchestra (is the xmas silly, or is it the orchestra? Couldn't say...):

Let's start with the strings, which are always very, very important. You don't want to upset string players of the orchestra, they are a force. Cuz they're many. Well, not that many in my smaller, chamber orchestra, but anyway... first violin (and the only one, hahaha), Mrs. Andrea Coppola.

First guitar, Mr. Dude Darabont Labyrinsky.

Second guitar, Mr. Peter Leone.

On luth (oh yeah!), Mr. Serge Tarant

Viola da gamba (not a cello, but almost) - Mr. Vasile Spiel Berger.

The harp is not really among the strings group, but it's a stringed instrument... has a sort of a special place in the orchestra, slightly separated. I placed it in the special-instruments group in my orchestra, which is going to be introduced in a sec. So say hi to Mrs. Smiley Lucas-Hardcovsky.

Let's introduce now the woodwind instruments. On blockflote (btw, it's pronounced block-floete, not bloeck-floete :| ), the uber-talented Mr. Egg Forman.

Playing the oboe, Mr. Mihai Curtiz.

Playing the bassoon, Mr. Pine Apple Jackson.

Somewhere between the woodwinds and the brass there's a weird ass instrument, called saxophone... Say hello to Mr. Soft Lumet.

OK, moving on to the brass, we can start with the very important trumpet player, Mr. Hitch 'Weird-James' Copkins.

Cornet 1 (well, in fact, nobody really knows what instrument is that, but the players tell me it's a cornet... I guess it must be some kind of obscure conspiracy...), Mr. Scorse Shostacovic.

Cornet 2, Mrs. Fernanda Coen-Browriggins.

OK, should I introduce the percussion now? Well, all right. Here's the tambourine, graciously manoeuvred by the wonderful Mrs. Li Mei.

On temple block, Mr. Silly Singer.

Most important percussion equipment, the big drum (never heard of the Big Drum? You hear now! No, it's not a bass drum...), beaten to exhaustion by Mr. Rick Kube.

Last, but not least, the special, ethnic instruments: on bagpipes, Mr. Octavian Welles.

A combination of dulcimer and hammered dulcimer... played by hand by the one and only Mrs. Donna Demme-Binsky.

Aaaaaaaaaaand we need a keyboard to conclude. On the accordion, Mr. Nolan Nevins.

Coming from as far as San Antonio Tokyo, conductor and director of the San Antonio Tokyo Symphony, give a big round of applause to Maestro Tudor Kurosawa.

(very very last character that I absolutely have to present here - 7 year old, mentally disturbed and mentally disturbing, Johnny Fincher. He will sit somewhere in the back, trying to figure out what's going on...)

Here's some update on the xmas project. The scene is almost done, I've got an entire puppet orchestra set up, and ready to be animated :D The project is sort of big (long, in fact, somewhere around 3 minutes), and the whole look of it and the animation too are simplified. Liking the 'body art' I did for Rudolph, thought I... why not do the same sort of thing for the other xmas puppets? Anyway, I just finished drawing a bunch of textures that will be used as alphas on layered shaders - where you see white, there'll be shader 1, black is shader 2 ;) So it's all black and white here, but not on the puppets :D Of course, when projected on geometry they'll look a little different... so here's the whole collection so far - click the image below to open a page with a bunch of thumbnail-sized body-art patterns (the geometric ones will be used on rigid stuff, like instruments, chairs, stands.... yeah.... they get body painting as well... you have to see it to believe it... hehe... amm, yeah, ok, no big deal).

Since it's xmas around the corner, and t'is that time of the year when I feel most wooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooo, here's a first xmas toy I made in Houdini. Next, I plan to make a few more, and animate them in something like a silly symphony.