Back to the pixel mines?

A quick update here on a bunch of stuff. First off, the pregnant cat update.

Latest update: the pregnant cat is still pregnant. Poor Taxi. She’s just waddling around. I think we’re pretty close though – within 36 hours.

I’m going for a job interview later today, which may not sound like a big thing except that it’s proven insanely difficult of late to even get to the interview stage. This would be one of those nutty creative-type jobs, so I’m really hoping that I’ve got a shot at it. I’m at the point where I need to be doing something, no matter who or what it is, to bring home some money, so I’ll be lucky if I can land the kind of job that I don’t mind going to in the morning, as opposed to stocking shelves. (Not that anyone seems to be hiring for that either.)

I’m still working on the Best of CGE ’05 DVD set, which has necessitated a little bit of a rethink on some things. This is the first thing I’ve done that’s all widescreen – menus, graphics, everything – so I’ve had to reinvent a few wheels. Case in point: lower third graphics. Rather than adapting what I’d used for Best of CGE ’03, I created something new that incorporated the logo and has its own internal animation (seen here). Those of you with HDTVs should enjoy this one. (Why is CGE ’05 widescreen when CGE ’07 wasn’t? Simple: one of my cameras is capable of shooting widescreen, the other isn’t. As I was going to cut back and forth between the two cameras for ’07, I went with 4:3. In 2005, I only had the one camera, and shot everything widescreen. There’s also a heap of raw footage – over an hour’s worth, though a good-sized chunk of that is a demo of a new Odyssey2 homebrew – all shot in widescreen. So none of this is “faked” widescreen or squished-down footage – it was 16:9 from the word go. I’ll be plugging away on Best of CGE ’05 with the aim of having it ready for Christmas whenever I’m not doing something for a steady paycheck. I’ll also be working on VWORP! during that time.