News and Bloggs

First semester all wrapped upp!

Well this is it. It´s friday night in south california. I am sitting in my room after having finished my last day of this semester at Calarts. I have been eating cakes, cookies, pizzas, chocolade and much more all week in all classes. Had a good time with a lot of teachers that have poured me full of wine, beer and wisky. Well... this is after all an art school and the teachers are pretty cool, as are the fellow students and my friends here. Now I am just waiting for a pick up to go to a party in Silverlake near downtown LA. A fine day to party... there are parties all over and not enough time to attend to all of them. Dammit!!!

But other strange things are that most of the people here are going away during the holiday so it will be pretty lonly and empty here the days before I go to new mexico during xmas. The school is starting to remind me of the Overlook hotel from shining with it´s long empty halls, big empty dining areas and wispering in the hallways as lonly ghosts roam the hallways lonly and thin after this years brutality and hard work.

Oh yesss.... it has been hard and a LOT of work. But in the end after cutting communications with most of the outside world I think I came through pretty well. The teachers like me, I like the classes, I get to hear very good comments from them about what I have been upto and very good tips on how to finish up many of my work in next semester.

But here is a new short film that I did for Animation Techniques class and got very good review from fellow students and my teacher. I was one of the few that made it into a finished product with my own sounddesign and all. You can use this link >here< to download it and see it. I just wish I could upload in more quality so it would be more enjoyable. But I kinda like the little film..... it´s simple, rough and raw..... most of the others are much better drawers than me so I just tried to use the talent I had to make that work for me and I hope I did. So enjoy :)

Utopia (22MB quicktime)

Until next time.... If I will not go mad in this now deserted and lonly place......... wuahhhhhh!

P.S. I wish I could see all my Icelandic friends during the christmas and have a real good party with them and just hang out. But I will see them next summer.... so have a good holiday and cheers, skál, gonbee, salamati, salud and whatevah.... Don´t judge me for poor spelling in korean and farci ;)

16.12.05 - Friday

Hellooooo to all my friends out THERE!!!

So I am not the best blogger in the world. But thats ok because I am doing so much other cool stuff that I don´t always have time hehe.... Now that there are only 2 weeks left of school I kinda feel often a little bogged down and tired because of stress and a lot of work and half finished projects. But I guess that being in a top school demands that you pay attention to it and try to do your work well.

I will perhaps post some of my work in the end of the semester. But just to let people know.... I am doing just fine in the school. I have to many ideas, to little time to do them all, a lot of things going on, perhaps a few music videos to make for a few bands. And then also a lot of friends to hang out with and work with.

Yesterday I was playing around with my friend Mocherz doing a perverted puppet theater movie in 16mm black and white and one roll of color. That was hilarious. We had our fellow Dillong helping us a little and the whole band Totally Rad. All male crew playing with a lot of cheesy string puppets in multi-colored light with a roaring Icelandic heavy metal playing loudly to get us into the right mood. All crammed into the pencil test projection room.... yeah that small space and using the 16mm projector as the light source. That was a lot of fun and none of us had any idea that you could do THAT much with simple string puppets.... and that string puppets could be soo perverted in their behaviour. The black and white might be developed now and the color hopfully soon. Will be a blast projecting it in our film class playing norwegian blackmetal to get the mood right.... hell yeah!

Other things to talk about..... I have been working a lot on my puppets for my first year project. It´s going alright.... very very sloooowly but it´s all going in the right direction. I have rounded up ballerinas and cello players to help me out in the movement and sound field.

I am currently also doing a drawn animation, drawn frame by frame in flash with a tablet. Yeah it´s also hard work in flash. It´s going so and so cause I am not that skillfull drawer. But it might be interesting and I will post the small film here when it´s ready.

I also have to make some "bad art" for next monday Ex-periment class. And I was thinking that a landscape painting of the Valencia suburbs would be pretty bad. And perhaps to make it even worse to blend in some pictures of "before and after" diets, plastic surgery and all that kind of stuff. With the beautyful Valencia in the background as the boring dream town it would be pretty bad and horrific. Well.... it´s a thought. If I manage to finish it I will post it here to show of my bad painting skills ;)

More work comming up are a small stopmotion film under one minute that might be filmed early next semester as a warm up project. It might be a pretty funny film to see.

I will also be trying to take my Californian drivers license test next week. Wish me luck!!! I am going to New Mexico during christmas... to Santa Fe to spend the christmas at my friends parents place. So I will have to help him drive all the way. It will be an interesting and cool road trip through the real cowboy country of america. I have always wanted to go that way and see it with my own eyes. Yeah... I guess I am a cowboy fan down under ;)

So I will unfortunatly not be spending christmas with my friends back home in Iceland. But I will be there next summer and I hope they will be avalable for some good times!!!

Hmmm...... I will not have this much longer as I can smell some korean brunch comming up. Yummy!!!

03.12.05 - Saturday

This is how my friends see me ;)

A rather awsome drawing by Leah. She is very skillfull and has been helping me sketching some character designs for my upcomming stop-motion and animation projects.

By the way. I am putting up an album with photos from my first 2 months at CalArts. Some images of my, my friends, the hollywood sign and halloween. I have not been to trigger happy with the camera though. But I might try to change that in the future :)

The Way to the gallery is HERE!!! Or go to LINKS and find some galleries and webpages manually.

16.11.05 - Wednesday

Hi everybody. I finally put up a HTML software again!

It´s perhaps about time that I open my mouth again and tell tales about my adventures in my new home. I have moved to California since last time I wrote anything here. There I will be at least for the next 3 years and hopefully longer. My studies at CalArts are incredible fun and I recommend this school to everyone that have any interest in animation and combination with that to other artforms.

I have been here now for 2 and a half month and studying very hard and long. That might be one reason why I have been so lazy updating my homepage. I have met a lot of interesting and fun people and are making a lot of new friends here. If only I could combine my Icelandic friends and my international and american friends..... That would turn out to be a hell of a party ;)

I am going to split my return into two groups. First this announcement of my return to my webworld. And the other article will actually talking about what I have been upto and where I am heading. And if I find the time I will also put in a lot of images.

As you can see I am using the english language now and will be translating my webpage to english soon (hopefully) so all of my friends can eavsdrop and get to know what I am upto to fulfill their voyaristic nature.

So I will not have this much longer for now. But I PROMISE to put in a new article of what I am upto very soon. For now I must find some sleep to pay for all my waking nights of studying and socializing... hehe

15.11.05 - Tuesday

Hlynur voða þögull greinilega, en ánægður :)

Ég er víst búinn að vera mjög þögull sé ég.... En hei.... slíkt getur komið fyrir bestu einstaklinga. Ég er að spá í að vera ekki neitt ofsa langorður.

Ég er kominn inn í skólann offissíelt og mun fara út 5. september og skrá mig inn í skólann og campusinn. Hlakka geðveikt til að fá Tortímandann sem ríkisstjóra ;) Var að fá í hendurnar opinbert plagg frá dómsmálaráðuneyti bandaríkjanna þannig að ég er á leið í bandaríska sendiráðið að fá stúdentavísað mitt.

Að öðru leyti þá er ég að klára kennsluna. Núna er próftímabil og ein vika eftir. Þá verð ég laus úr prísundinni og get helgað mér listinni haha. Enda er ég kominn á kaf í nokkur verkefni bæði í leikhúslífinu, myndbandagerð og svo í samstarfi við alskyns sniðugt fólk. Hlakka mikið til sumarsins þegar ég get bara einbeitt mér að þessu og komið tvíefldur í nám í CalArts.

Ætli ég hendi ekki upp einu verkefninu bara núna... tilraunaverkefni saumastofunnar. Við erum ekki hætt sko... núna er í undirbúningi litla örmyndin Garnabarn.... kemur bara í ljóst hvernig það kemur út :D

Linkur á Eggjamynd. 5MB

09.05.05 - Mánudagur

Hlynur undirbýr ferð út í Víking

Núna er það komið á daginn að ég muni örugglega fá inngöngu í fínann skóla í Kalíforníu ríki Bandaríkjanna. Skólinn sem segist vilja hleypa mér inn experimental animation prógrammið hjá sér gengur undir nafninu CalArts og er einn sá virtasti á sviði lista og animation kennslu í heiminum. Þannig að vitaskuld er ég mjög glaður og spenntur þessa dagana og vona að dæmið gangi upp alla leið. Ég er þeim "eiginleikum" gæddur að trúa engu almennilega fyrr en ég er mættur á staðinn og byrjaður þannig að ég er ekki enn alveg búinn að meðtaka þetta. En glaður er ég og hlakka ofsalega til að hefja nám í sólinni í Kalíforníu. Flakka um á gullslegnum low-rider hjólum, surfa, skeita, horfa á sílíkon stelpur, fara á spring break, byrja í fraternity félagi (ef það verður í boði), setja upp listasvipinn og búa til animation kvikmyndir og tónlist og jafnvel skella mér í einstaka leiklistaráfanga í leiklistardeildinni í skólanum ef það verður í boði :)

Saga skólans er glæst og ekki ómerkari menn en Walt nokkur Disney og bróðir hans Roy sem stofnsettu skólann 1961 útfrá tveim virtum listaháskólum sem starfað höfðu í árabil. Í daglegu tali heitir hann CalArts, en lengri útgáfan er California Institute of the Arts. Virðulegt nafn fyrir virðulegan skóla með tengingu í rætur kvikmynda og listamenningar í bandaríkjunum. Meðal merkra manna sem farið hafa í þessa deild má nefna Henry Selick (leikstjóra Nightmare Before Christmas), Tim Burton, John Lasseter (eigandi Pixar), Brad Bird (leikstjóri Incredibles), Mark Osbourne (more) og fleirri merkir í heimi animation kvikmynda. Þannig að það verður erfiður róður að standa uppí hárinu á þeim snillingum. En verður litli Íslendingurinn ekki allaveganna reyna og sjá svo hvar maður endar :)

Má því segja að maður sé að fara að herja á kanann í almennilegum Víking og sýna þeim hvar Davíð kaupti ölið.

Annars ætla ég að nýta tækifærið og setja upp 2 myndir núna, önnur er nefnd Tóbakstréð og var gerð um jólin sem tilraunaverkefni með samblandaðri tækni. Hin er stutt gönguæfing sem ég notaði í kennslu í flash undir tónlist blackmetal sveitarinnar norsku Dimmuborgir.

Hér eru linkar á þessi tvö verkefni:

Tóbakstréð - 6,2MB (Windows Media Player)

Blackmetal - 1,4MB (Flash)

15.02.05 - Þriðjudagur

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