I've been working on painting her skin textures and made a test render. She will be part of a full scene once she is finished.

Anyone who has ever done anything creative and posted it on the web has heard from "ugly feedback guy." They are many who carry the same name, you certainly know what I mean, ufg looks for every opportunity to say bad, and some times mean things about the work of others. And of course ufg never does anything creative himself, just carries an attitude, the world owes him something and is most certainly jealous because he has no real talent himself.

No one knows for sure what ufg looks like, but I always envision him as weighing close to 400 pounds with bed sores on his rear end because he rarely gets it up off the couch.

Mostly due to my personality, and partly because of ufg, anytime that I provide feedback for someone it is usually positive and or constructive. I know how much work it takes to make a video, write a story, produce a piece of art, or any of the other ways people may choose to share something of themselves, I appreciate that.

One of the digital art communities I belong to, Renderosity, is kind of like the polar opposite of ufg. Nobody ever leaves any bad feedback at Renderosity. Initially that might sound like a good thing, but I really have to say, not so much.

It's kind of one of those deals, that if you leave feedback for me, I'll leave feedback for you. Which seems fair, but the result is a lot of one word feedback, "wonderful", "excellent", "stunning", all fairly meaningless. And of course the people that do this a lot, tend to get a lot of comments on their work in return. Guess what? Renderosity posts "top lists", the most views, the most comments, etc, so you see the motivation there.

I guess you could say its mostly harmless, but I've formed the opinion that it tends to encourage poor and sometimes bad work. I can say if the only goal is to render a 3D scene, its not all that difficult if you don't pay a lot of attention to the way the final product will look.

Last night I was browsing the gallery, I should say there are some amazing artist there no doubt. But I came across one piece, it was in the realism category. The person who posted it, has over 400 images in his gallery, so been doing this awhile. The comments ranged from "Awesome, fantastic render" to "Incredible work of art", six people had added the image to their favorites list.

The scene was outdoors, the main character was dressed like she should be on the beach, the scene was like a nearly deserted downtown. The lighting gave the mood of it being overcast, the sky was clear blue. The character looked like she was made out of plastic and the shadows from the character did not match the background. In a nutshell, it was awful.

I wanted so badly to give the guy some constructive feedback, but the first thought that came to my mind, was I would look like ufg by doing so. So I took a pass. But honestly, its what I would prefer others do for my work. I have a passion for this stuff, I don't want the meaningless ufg comments, but something that will help me grow and improve, isn't that what every true artist wants?

As I was growing up and in school, I frequently thought it was a waste of time being required to take English classes. I mean we already spoke English. The answer I received when asking the question was, "it is important to have good communication skills by learning how to speak and write correct English, otherwise you will never be employable."

That response was not exactly an overwhelming motivator for me at the time. It was not because I did not care about being employable, it was because, with a lot of things at that age, I failed to see the connection.

Later in life, especially with written communication, it did begin to sink in and for me has become something that I am continually working on to improve.

It is also something that tends to drive me absolutely crazy, when I read something written in very poor English. I cannot help but gather the impression, when something is written in very poor English, that the author is not intelligent. Items such as not using proper tense or numerous misspellings. This would include my own writing, and something that also drives me crazy. I frequently have issues with the thoughts in my head and having my fingers follow along as they are typing. This results in words that I had every intention of saying, however somehow forgot to type them.

Going back to the original thought of this post, the importance of having good communication skills in order to be employable. Is it just me or has the importance of good communication skills diminished in recent years?

A large percentage of people that I work with, and granted English is not their first language, possess extremely poor English skills. It is to the point where a brand of Pigeon English is used to communicate in my work place. I work in an industry where good communication is important if not vital. Yet there is no encouragement nor effort I see to improve English skills. And it is not only my business, I see the same thing daily with other companies that I interact with. Have we reached a point where good proper English is no longer important? I am also curious as to the response elementary school students receive today when they ask the question, "Why do I have to take English classes?"

First an update on Fred the missing cat who lives in my backyard. It's been three days now and there's been no sign of him. It's been really cold and dreary out the past few days, I hate the cold, so he might have found a place to stay warm. I've just been very sad since he's been gone. I hope he is ok and at this very moment bringing someone else some joy, that's a thought that makes me smile.

On a positive topic, I know they have their critics but I think Starbucks is a cool business. As compared to the post I made about walmart a couple of days ago, Starbucks is 180 degrees in the positive direction.

A lot of people will say their coffee is over priced, you could certainly make it yourself much cheaper, but that's missing the point as far as I'm concerned. This might be contrary to most people's point of view, I don't go there because I like the coffee. The coffee is decent, but mostly I go there because I like the customer service.

It's become my habit, as I'm commuting home from work on Friday evening to stop at the book store to see what's new. That stop always includes a visit to the Starbucks attached next door. It's one of the few businesses I actually look forward to visiting.

It's kind of like the whole week I've been putting up with the piles of BS and fixing peoples problems, so it's a recharge to start my weekend. The people that work there are friendly without being overbearing. And if I decide to hang out for awhile, the atmosphere is pretty cool too. Starbucks is a company that gets it from my point of view.

At this very moment I'm rendering a new animation. It's got 150 frames in total. It's been going for three and a half hours and only up to frame 55 so it will go all night looks like.

The project started out as a still image for another contest I was going to try and enter. Along the way of modeling the scene it started going off in a direction that was outside the constraints of the contest, so I just kept following that path. Some time late last night I realized that animating it might actually make for a decent hypno themed thing, so that's what its going to be. It's been over a year since I've done any hypno themed projects, we'll see how it all comes out.

For the past couple of months a stray cat has been living in my backyard, as in out there almost constantly. He is the friendliest cat and I've grown quite attached to him.

This morning as usual he was clawing at the back screen door to be fed, and I fed him his breakfast. A few minutes later I heard some noise from the backyard, when I looked out Fred was gone and the neighbors dog was in the backyard eating Fred's food. I chased off the dog and put another can of food in Fred's dish.

When I got home tonight, Fred was not waiting by the front door as he usually does. And when I went around back to put some food in his dish, the food I had put there in the morning was still there :(

I'm hoping that he's just off on a side journey to someone Else's yard, but I can't help worry that he's hurt or something.