I am K. Adam White, a senior undergraduate student at Brown University interested in digital animation and motion graphics, amongst other things. Welcome to my site. Feel free to poke around, and comment if you wish.
For my final project for CS128, I am going to be modeling and rigging the typewriter character I’ve been working on for the past few months. Since my two-dimensional sketches are more artistic than technical they have not been as useful for the 3D design process, so the first step I took in Maya was to modify the “dudebot” character I made a few years ago and combine his parts with a few basic typewriter elements (specifically the keys on his back) to block in the rough form of the character as he appears in my drawings. With my first love being sculpture, not drawing, this 3d mockup helps me get a much more tactile impression of the character.
I rendered this turntable out just to check that the overall proportions of the character are working. I will go back in and create new geometry for the main body elements later on, but I am pretty pleased with the overall shape of the character.
I feel like an era is finally over. Ollie Johnston, the last of the “Nine Old Men” of Disney Animation, died last Monday. I haven’t been very plugged in this week, and only just heard the news… I know he hasn’t been at the forefront of recent productions, but this man worked on Snow White. He worked on Bambi! He was the last living representative of the group of artists responsible for the most memorable films of my childhood. Sure, Aladdin and The Lion King are flashier, more modern productions, but dammit, I still cry during Bambi, and that just doesn’t happen in either of those newer films. (Well, Mufasa’s death is an occasional exception.)
I am graduating in May, and come hell or high water I am moving into the world of professional animation. I regret that it is no longer a world in which men like Ollie Johnston can take a part; that said, nearly every serious animation student I know has a copy of Ollie’s book The Illusion of Life (written with Frank Thomas, of course), so their legacy lives on.
Rest in peace—I hope I will live up to the high standards you have set for this art.
Around 4:30 yesterday afternoon the server this site is hosted on, the giant machine in our library embodying techhouse.org, was taken offline so root could migrate our services to a new, much more powerful machine. Around 11 some services were back online, including basic hosting and email, but not everything. I put up a temporary greeting page to explain why my webpage was down.
Scarcely two hours later, everything is working again. Thanks a ton for all your efforts, guys, I know how long you’ve spent working on this today and it really shows–the migration has been painless and awesome. Thanks for letting me print out my midterm before the printing services went down!
Semblare has been on my back for months, constantly asking me “where’s your comic.” Well, the last month of your college career is really not the best time to take on MORE projects, but here’s a quick teaser of a project I started recently:
I honestly can’t yet say when this project will really get to see the light of day, but I’ve wanted to do some kind of comic for so long that there’s really no reason to put it off any longer. See? Something good CAN come out of being laid up with a stomach bug: tons of time to draw! **grimace**
Also, this is probably a good time to issue a formal plug for Semblare’s comic Fortune Memories. Lyn’s doing a tremendous job so far, she’s incredibly dedicated to her work and it shows. The recent strips are beautiful, and I’m really looking forward to the rest of the story. Be forewarned: as she intends this to be a book eventually, some strips feel a little exposition-heavy for a webcomic. I recommend Whimsical for your one-off humor needs.
I may have survived Line-Con, but I didn’t quite manage a graceful re-entry into the routine of school following break. I appear to have contracted some sort of stomach flu, which struck Monday night while I was at work and continued to antagonize me on and off throughout the week. The major overhaul I was going to give kadamwhite.com is now on hold until I can get caught up in my coursework—teachers have been very understanding and accommodating thus far, but I don’t want to push my luck any further than I have to.
Despite illness, I did manage to make it to the screening of Aliens for my science fiction lit course. It was a helluva movie, I’m amazed I’d managed to get this far in life without ever seeing it before. It is a lot of fun for me to watch a film like that and suddenly recognize the influence it has had on other works I’ve enjoyed, everything from Starcraft and Halo to Cowboy Bebop… good times. If you are like I was and haven’t seen that film yet, please do yourself a favor and watch Aliens… the original Alien is fantastic too, but I feel Aliens is even more of a classic.
