Some Other Cool Blogs

While looking around at other blogs that are related to mine, I came across these two sites.
http://www.xvivo.net/blog/
http://prep4md.blogspot.com/

(And in case you are curious, here are the comments I left)

XVIVO

So as someone who is looking into pursuing a career in 3d animation, and more specifically, in biological/medical animation, I find this post intriguing, encouraging and helpful. I’m an undergrad at the University of Southern California majoring in biology and minoring in 3d animation. In my drawing class last semester, my professor’s favorite phrase that he continually drilled into our minds was “draw what you see.” It’s encouraging to know that was good training for my future career. However, your post also brings up some questions. Are art fundamentals essential to every aspect of 3d animation? I understand how they would be important for some parts of the animation process, but not all. For example, with things like texturing, lighting, and rendering, it makes perfects sense that one would need to be well acquainted with light, shadow, value, etc.  But what about things like modeling, rigging, and animating? In my class yesterday, we learned how to build skeletons for out characters and then bind the polygon mesh to it and then “paint” skin weights so that the model moves correctly with respect to the skeleton. How, in your opinion, does “art vocabulary” fit in to these components of the animation process?

Prep4med

I might have just missed it, but there doesn’t seem to be any explanation for these “Pre-Med Student” tip movies. And I was wondering: who is this guy? Is he a doctor? Does he teach at a medical school? Some of his tips in these movies seem really helpful, (and on that note, thanks for posting them) but some of them are a little more confusing. For example, in this movie he talks about choosing a major and recommends choosing one like biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, or “anything that sounds like it’s science about people.” I’m currently an undergrad at the University of Southern California and some of my professors have said almost the exact opposite. They recommend having a major (or at least a minor) in a completely different area of study. Their reasoning is that this would set you apart from the rest of the applicants who are nearly all science majors. Also, they would say, it demonstrates that you are a more well-rounded applicant and shows that you are able to handle the stress of having lots of different types of classes–an ability which is important for med school. So, as someone who is already in med school, which of these sets of advice do you think is better?