First of all, let’s all wish a huge happy birthday to our coworker & friend Ben Dansie! Well to be honest, his birthday is ‘tomorrow’…but he’s so far away on the other side of the planet that, as of his time, he is now 23 years old! Not quite a quarter of century, but already such an amazing artist. We wish you an happy birthday Ben!!

On a more serious (but still fun!) note, I’ve started giving Blender workshop/classes at the ‘Société des arts technologiques’ (Society for technological arts) in Montréal. I gave my first class on last Saturday and everyone seems to have enjoyed the class quite alot! It was a very basic class about blender. I lead them through the interface, explaining why stuff works like this or that in the Blender world. The classes are obviously given in French, but if enough english speaking people register, there is a possibility that I could give the class at another time in english! So if you live near Montréal and would like to attend the classes, make sure to go on this website and check out the schedules for the next one!

http://sat.qc.ca/post.php?id=8&post_id=1375〈=fr

Here’s the schedule as of now:
Blender 1 – Blender basic- December 6th 2008 (already given)
Blender 2a – Modelling tools preview (3h class) – December 18th 2008
Blender 2b – advance Modelling (6h class) – December 21st 2008
Blender 3 – Animation & Shading – January 2009

I’ve also been working on a short movie for school. Well the pre-production is done (I’m finishing the animatic as of now), and I’ll be starting the real production by next week. The title of the short movie is ‘Escape Velocity’ and it’s the story of an Office Worker who try to secape his desesperate and sad situation. Here are two renders of WIP elements of the short movie. I started the character this morning and the car/moto is mostly a doodle of what the end product will be!

Stay tuned for updates!

Js.