Happy Feet

A week ago I arrived in Sydney. The first day I checked in to what will be my new home for the next month. It's a lovely Old-Terrace style home in a nice part of the city. After that my first stop was Bondi Beach (pronounced bondai in Australian). It's the coolest beach I have ever been to. It's got it all. Sand, waves, boardwalk, coffee shops, sweet skate park, grassy knolls, and even a pool on either end of the beach (2) that are carved into the rock. Last Sunday I bought a surf board and surfed for the first time in over 10 years.
On my 3rd day here I got to see the movie Happy Feet from begining to end. It's pretty good. I am not a big fan of musicals but I really enjoyed this one. I think the soundtrack might be worth getting. Happy Feet, in a nut shell, is a computer-animated-penguin-tap-dancing-musical. The main voices are done by Robin Williams, Elija Wood and Brittany Murphy. It will be the first film to use motion capture on non-human characters. My job is to fix/enhance the penguins motion capture data.
The company Animal Logic is located in Fox Studios. This place used to be a movie studio theme park like Universal Studios in the States. It failed, and about 4 years ago half of it opened for business as a real movie lot, where movies such as Superman Returns and Star Wars were shot. It's funny that I just finished workin on SR in the States and now am working right next door to where it was shot in Australia. The other half of the complex is open to the public with shops, resturaunts, a bowling alley, theater and park. Today, at lunch time, I broke my personal lifetime bowling record: 144.

Here is the latest Happy Feet trailer for your enjoyment.

Superman Trailer

The new Superman Returns trailer just came out. Enjoy :)

Join the countdown to June 30th premiere at BlueTights.net where you can also watch Bryan Singer's video blog.

Noah in LA

Like I said in my previous post, Noah spent the week with me in La La land. We had a great time.

Like I did when I was young, he loves cars. I got him a 5-car-pack Hot Wheels the other day. He picked it out as soon as he saw it. From then on he called it "my race cars". The amazing thing is, even after the drive and a nap at home, he remembered all their colors even though the cars were still in the bag ever since we left the store. When he woke up from his nap and I told him he could play with his new cars now. He suddenly remembered: "oh! I got new cars! The orange one, and the grey one, and the red one, and the green one and the blue one!"

I couldn't believe he remembered all the indivdual colors of the cars 2 hours after seeing them for the first time.

Today there was a car show in Culver City. The downtown area was closed to traffic and there Noah got to see some real race cars, customs, and cool vehicles. My favorite was the trikes. Noah's was a military helecopter which was converted into a limo. The wings and propellers were taken off of course. He kept asking to go back in it. When ever I said let's go, he would ask "Is it ok? Is it ok dat we stay in da airklane all the times?". I love how he says "airklane" (that is not a typo).

In a few hours I need to get up and leave for Katie's house 400 miles away. I won't be back here for another 5-6 weeks. So this post is about to end.

But first Happy Mother's Day mommy!!! I love you.

Animal Logic

Okay, so I just finished up on Superman Returns and unfortunately am not moving on to any shows at Imageworks. Even though they have Beowolf, Spiderman 3, and Surfs Up in production they don't need anyone else on those and are actually letting go of alot of people. I am not stressing though. I got paid some extra pay to cover me until I leave for Australia. That's right, Animal Logic the company working on Happy Feet still want me. I turned them down in favor of Superman late last year. Since my father asked here's some details: they are offering me a nice salary, one month worth of retirement contribution, full relocation expenses, housing for the duration of my stay + a week, and even a sign on bonus to cover my rent back home so I don't have to move my stuff into storage. So yeah, it's basically a paid vacation where I have to work 26 days and get 4 days off (I hope).

I am happy that I got this week to spend exlusively with Noah. I drove up to get him and back home last Saturday. A round trip of over 800 miles. Since I live right by downtown Culver City we mainly walked around. I mean I could have driven him to places like Disney Land and stuff, but I think quality liesure time out and about is better then a couple of hours of driving, commercial madness and hectic time tables. We visited several playgrounds. Noah absolutely amazed me that he remembered how to say playground in Hebrew (Gan-Sha'a'shu'im). I taught him that 2 weeks prior and haven't mentioned that word since. He definitely learned some new Hebrew this week, and showed that he can retain it very well :D

Next week, assuming I get my passport in order, I will leave for Sydney for 5 weeks and do some Motion Editing on the motion capture for Happy Feet. Then I have a week and a half before my '06 trip to Israel. This time Noah and mommy are coming with me. A whole month in Israel, with the family. Should be interesting ;)

p.s. The new Superman trailer is out. And by the way 5 shots in it are mine.