an unbelieveably full day

Today has been eventful in a way that becomes difficult to process in retrospect. Underlying it all, I am working at Pixar, which is enough to keep me energized even after the second week. Today, though, has been one remarkable thing after another.

Pixar's original "1984" image demonstrating motion blur (lo-res)

At lunch I attended a talk by Tom Porter, a prominent contributor to early computer graphics research. Way back when, he produced a famous image of billiard balls that demonstrated motion blur for the first time in 3d computer graphics. The talk I attended was mainly an anecdote about the life of that image and how he almost lost it several times, only to resurrect it with the help of some cool people. I often take the portability of information these days for granted, and to hear how this incredibly significant piece of technical art traveled and was stranded was exciting. The images we make can be treasure, there's just a lot of treasure around these days. So two fun facts:
1. The original high-resolution image was effectively non-existent from the late 1980s all the way up to 2007. This is an image that is used in many college computer graphics courses, and yet always in a reprocessed, degraded form. Seeing it in its full grandeur was eye-opening in that it looks incredible for being over 25 years old.
2. The reflection map in the billiard balls was partly hand-drawn by John Lasseter, and was possibly the first piece of art he produced for Pixar even though it was mostly just as a favor to Tom Porter. I was inspired by how casual that retrospective factoid was.

great movie

Later there was going to be a lecture on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which happens to be one of my favorite movies, a statement similar to "I happen to really enjoy delicious food." As I searched for the free, pre-lecture dinner that was promised, I accidentally wandered into the new art exhibit that had just opened upstairs. Guess I need to write about that now. I will never get to this story that leads to this other story.

The exhibited art was part of a charity project revolving around a sketchbook. The sketchbook was passed in person from artist to artist, each one contributing a piece to the book. Tons of people worked on it including famous film artists like Hayao Miyazaki and Glen Keane. Case in point, this was a happy enough accident.

ilya
(approximation)

Now let's talk about serendipity, and by the way, apologies for this rambling mess (oh, it gets worse, don't worry). I got the job offer at Pixar around the same time my best friend ilya accepted an offer to start his Ph.D. at Berkeley. For the first time since high school we are now located in the same area, which is incredibly, enjoyably serendipitous.

Back to the art exhibit, I had heard that a Double Fine artist named Tasha Harris had left to work at Pixar again and was starting this week. I had been reading her web comic for quite awhile (still do, ugh, verb tense), so I was excited to be working in the same place. Add that to the list of famous people I was already seeing around who had previously been names or faces on a screen, and add that to the coincidence of my friend moving here to get a sense of the unreality I had been processing. I am going to start the next sentence with so.

Tasha Harris's first comic via Double Fine

So I am standing in front of a drawing at the art exhibit, having JUST finished admiring a drawing by Scott Campbell (another Double Fine artist), thinking "man, it's cool that Scott C. is in this show, I did not know" when I turn to see someone standing next to me who looks suspiciously like Tasha Harris. Having never met Tasha, I quickly devise a brilliant way to find out if it was indeed her without weirding out a poor woman who might not be. "Excuse me, would you mind telling me your name?" I bizarrely ask. Turns out it is Tasha, so I tell her I enjoy reading her comic and in about 30 seconds we have already covered "ha, first/second week at Pixar" pleasantries and "oh I was just looking at Scott's work over there, yeah there's a cool cowboy on a rabbit one by it too." Then I get this thing in the back of my head reminding me I am late for this film lecture on top of "what the heck is going on, I am talking to Tasha about artwork by Scott at Pixar." So I suddenly can think of nothing else to talk about and bail with a "well it was really nice meeting you," and walk off in the wrong direction. I could double back on the floor below and I ran into a friend going to the lecture on the way, so it worked out.

Scott Campbell's first comic via Double Fine

Afterward, I wished I could have communicated my interest in Tasha's work beyond "oh, I read it." I guess it would be difficult to convey what it is like to have averaged three hours of sleep a night for a couple of moths straight working on a publication deadline for my Ph.D. (a situation that happened more than once), and how for a period of time I had been escaping to the Double Fine site and the mental sanctuary of her and Scott's web comics in the wee hours of the morning. But I should have at least said something encouragingly enthusiastic like "I really hope you keep doing the comic!"

This post is already obscenely long, so I'll try to wrap up the last part. My friend Colin and I had rewatched Eternal Sunshine the night before to prepare for this lecture. We had a really great discussion about the film, which was exciting and turned out to be better in some ways to the actual lecture itself. To be fair, though, the lecture discussion did not include a full screening of the film so we were fresher and ready to skip synopsis-talk. The lecture itself provided another opportunity to geek out about the film with other people who love it and thinking critically about movies. It was a lot of fun, possibly oodles, but definitely invigorating.

Done. But... no, done.