2011 Retrospect

Weeee! 2011 is almost over! I'm going to miss the moments that has been experienced and savored, the opportunities that has been offered, and all the people that I passed by and met.  It's been a very fruitful year indeed.  And just to wrap up the year (before I start to get busy with holiday activities and such), here's a historical look at what happened to me and what I experienced this 2011.

• January
  
  The passing away of my grandpa reunited our family once again.  He was a great man and has lived to share life's lessons. The sadness I felt from his loss has probably paved way for me to get social in the internet and to channel this emotion into something 'artful.'
  
  The last photo I took of grandpa was chosen as one of the featured images in their Last Week in the Gallery section at Renderosity (http://www.renderosity.com).
  
  

  

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  I have been contacted by YouTheDesigner (http://www.youthedesigner.com) to team up with them in producing quality CG tutorials and articles.
• February
  
  I was given an opportunity by PacktPub to review one of their Blender books and so I did, with much honor and pleasure.
  
  On another note, I have been able to play around with Blender again, after a few weeks of absence, and was able to create a small clip for our photography group LytMunkis.
  
  
  
   Few family activities has been attended to as well (some of which I miss the most).
  
  

  

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  And to finish up the month, I doodled around with Blender again and created a few experiments.
  
  
  
• March
  
  This month gave me so much Blender headache but taught me so many lessons as well.
  
  To wrap up the month, I did some experiments with Blender again.
  
  

  

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• April
  
  To give myself a little break from CG, I indulged myself into a month-long photography journey.
  
  And just to reminisce the CG effect, I wrote a post that month looking back on all things CG I've done.  Check it here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/04/personal-cg-and-animation-retrospect.html
• May
  
  I started the month by creating something joyous;
  
  
  Then a few days later, we saw our dear cat 'Butter' heavily wounded.  Until now, we don't know how the accident happened.  But we're lucky that he did not die and has fully recovered now.
  
  Additionally, the burden of work is starting to dawn on me.  But everything will be alright. ;)
• June
  
  Awesome Blender features are starting to sprawl, one of these is MiikaH's dynamic paint waves, which shocked the community definitely.
• July
  
  I was surprised to receive an email from Jason Van Gumster to join and participate with them in the 48-Hour Film Project.  Without hesitations, I agreed to join the crazy project together with other crazy talented artists ang engineers.  To sum up the experience: it was soooo much fun! Less the brain stress.
  
  This month, I also got an email from Ton Roosendaal to be one of the judges for Blender 2.59's splash screen.  I would say this was one of those difficult-to-decide moments I have had.  Luckily, Ben Simonds and Hjalti agreed with our selection.
• August
  
  I was very very lucky enough  to be included in Blender SIGGRAPH demoreel compiled by Mike Pan himself, with my work Flame, alongside with other jaw-dropping demos.
  
  Here's my original 'Flame' video:
  
  And here's the Blender SIGGRAPH demoreel it was included in:
  
  


• September
It's my birthday and me and my girlfriend's 6th anniversary! Yay!


• October
  
  I finished my Blender short film titled 'Sunshine.'
  
  Thanks to too Aniboom for feature it in their channel http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/11/sunshine-featured-at-anibooms-channel.html
  
  You can see more info on my blog post at http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-blender-short.html
  
  Here's the video:
  
  


To wrap up the month, I also finished my Halloween vid


As well as updating this blog's template, which now previews a wider view plus some visual enhancements and what not. ;)


• November
  
  I uploaded my first Cycles render ever! It's titled 'Happiness.'
  
  

  

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  Followed by a few more stills:
  
  

  

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  And some videos: 



In addition to these, I was also able to do some simple tests with Blender on achieving LoD (Level of Detail) on meshes, that would otherwise be useful for realtime visualization and what not.  For the full post, you can check this link http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/11/blender-mesh-lod-test.html Also a huge thank you to Renderosity for nomitaning me as artist of the month; this means a lot to me.


• December
  
  And finally, the last month of the year has arrived.  Aside from the shear excitement that I experienced, I still am able to extract the juices from the previous month to create some output for this month.
  
  I finally decided to give Andrew Price's BlenderGuru competition a try and thinking it over now, it was worth the experience; I learned tons of insight from this competition.  Thanks to the crits! This was also a great opportunity personally to benchmark the recent Cycles render engine and gauge what it is capable of and not.
  
  Here's my BlenderGuru Christmas Competition entry:
  
  
  
  

  

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One of the nicest gifts I have received in advance was the selection of my image 'Childhood' as the splash screen of the latest Blender 2.61 stable release. I am very humbled and honored to have been the lucky selection. Kudos to the whole Blender community! 





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And to prepare for 2012, I setup an adequately powerful computer rig.  Hopefully, I can utilize it for more Blenderish stuff. ;)

Thanks so much to everyone who has taken part in this arduous yet wonderful journey. ^_^

-Reyn