The transition to cooler weather here is usually one of my favorite times of the year because my allergies don't bother me anymore. This week, as the pollen count dropped, I got a cold, so I felt kind of crappy for a few days. Especially Sunday, when I had allergies and a cold. Monday night I quarantined myself in my apartment to get healthy again, and got a fair amount of reading done during that.

I saw Corpse Bride, the new Tim Burton stop-motion movie. The character design is incredible- like, Studio Ghibli incredible. Each character has a distinct way of moving that conveys the vocal performance very well. The story comes from a Russian folktale, hence it doesn't really follow the story pattern that we're used to. I don't know how this movie will do in the long run- it's a thinking movie in a pretty wrapper. It's also a musical, which I did not expect.

I figured out how to use simulated cloth in Maya this week. It's all physics-based, so there are a bunch of variables to play with. That, and the effect happens without keyframing anything, so the material just reacts to whatever happens in the scene. It looks darn cool. I'll probably be using this in my animation project this semester. I like my animation instructor- he's more art focused than Matt was, so I think they could have worked well together. One of my geekier tendencies is that I keep an all-star roster in my head of academics from the different institutions I've attended.

Tonight I'm going to go see Serenity with at least one other devout fan of the Firefly TV series. I'm all geeked out for it, too. I read the comic mini-series over the summer, and if I knew how I'd be swearing in Chinese to express my anticipation.