I'm quite ready for the weekend to be here, even if it does mean more work for me. I'm very tired, and I think I might be getting sick. Curses, I have no time for illness! XP I need to buy some orange juice and other foodstuffes with lots of vitamins in them, and drink lots of water. As soon as I get home, I'm plopping down with the internet on my lap, a movie in the DVD player and something yummy to eat and relaxing. Just an hour and a half more...

My family left today to go backpacking in the mountains of Idaho. They should be fine, although truth be told, I'm kinda glad I'm not joining them...I don't think I could handle any mountain-climbing at the moment. ;) However, that does mean that I get to take care of the dog and houseplants while they're away. I'm going to try and have Sunshine over at my house for a few days, and see if she gets along with the cats okay. If she does, great; if not...we'll get to that later.



A really, really big change from the first movie; I chose Dinosaur mostly because I hadn’t seen it in so long. It was nice to see it again, and of course, the animation was amazing. It’s a shame the CG character-live background technique hasn’t been used more, since it’d probably be even more effective with today’s technology. The fur techniques for the lemurs still needed a little work; I don’t think that was really perfected until Monsters Inc. However, the texturing on the dinosaurs was terrific, and their movement was very convincing.

I think the reason this movie didn’t take off the way other Disney movies did was 1) because the animation technique itself was new and a little iffy, and 2) the characters were rather generic. Most of the personality fell to the comic relief lemurs, leaving the lead dino, Aladar, a little flat. There was your basic man vs. man conflict (Aladar and Kron butting heads) and man vs. nature conflict (the threat of the Carnotaurs.) Both got resolved through your basic lessons of teamwork and loyalty. I don’t know why; there’s no really solid reason why Dinosaur shouldn’t have been a classic, but for some reason its characters didn’t stick.

That aside, it was a very pretty movie to watch. I think it’s the sort of movie I would have enjoyed working on. I actually thought it would have been very interesting if they had not had any talking characters at all: if the story had been told entirely through the looks and actions of the dinosaurs. I certainly think they were expressive enough to have accomplished this. While I think it would’ve improved the movie significantly, I guess they chose not to do since it wouldn’t have held the interest of kids. Which is really a shame…I would’ve liked to see how kids would reaction to a "dinosaur movie without words." It definitely would’ve been very experimental for Disney.


Scanning status: On the last page of act 3, hooray...

Half-Blood Prince completion status: About halfway through chapter 11 now. Am definitely going to spend all of my time at work tomorrow and Saturday reading more. The other intern in the office also just started. ;)

Drawing: Spent today drawing a comic making fun of the new Organization member. XD Will probably head on back to RSOM 6 thumbnails once this is done.

Writing: Ehh, nothing so particular at the moment. Spent yesterday geeking out over KH2 with Reb, which was fun. XD