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Blog. It's been a month since my last confession. Uh, update, rather. This one's gonna be short, and focus just on Once a Thief. There's other stuff happening but right now I really want to update but it's two in the morning and I'm exhausted.

I've done a hell of a lot of work in that time. Well, actually my team has done a hell of a lot of work finishing up all the half assed stuff I started. The past week we've started animating actual production stuff, starting with the lock-and-load scene in Flambeau's room. The vault is almost finished now so we'll get that done (and it's also worth a good half of the finished piece so it'll be good to get that over and done with ASAP). We're not going as fast as we should be, though, and I foresee a lot of sleepness nights in the near future as we try to complete everything on time. We're having rendering and lighting issues too, which is always difficult (lighting in mental ray in Maya is basically just trial and error) and it means we can't even start rendering anything now.

Here are some screenshots of the room with Flambeau in (no textures there though), and one of the vault which Li has basically finished now.

I haven't had a great deal of time to blog over the last few days - there's been lots of visual effects work, picnics, traveling and just about tonnes of other things slowing me down. I've almost finished the project - and with a week or so left to do it all in, hopefully I'll soon have it uploaded here.

Apparently we have to create a showreel for another module, which will be a bit of a pain considering I have really nothing good to show at the moment. But whatever. I'll put everything together as best I can and that'll do.

To be honest, I'm really updating this blog for the sake of updating it. Here are some pictures my friend Alice commissioned from me for her own project. Soon, I think, I shall write another short story or something.

I shall leave you with this great piece from Hugh Laurie's upcoming Blues album, from Jools Holland:

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So the blog turns a year old today,  or rather, has been a year old all day, and will, as of 20 minutes from now, be a year and one day old. Here I put in something it being funny the way time just flies like that. 

And what have I accomplished? I think it's safe to say quite a fair bit in a year. No long stories like I had hoped (I remember having supposed to have done loads by 2008) but whatever

So, to celebrate, here's a picture of some dude I drew the other day. Because I was thinking, you can never tell who the man behind the mask is, even if he's hideously disfigured