Sugar In Argentina

                                                                                                                                                                                         Sugar and Carbs..  Thats seems to be the majority diet here..  Steak and potatoes..   no veggies  unless you ask for it..  GO to a crocery store and take a look at the cereal aisle All sugary cereals..

  SO let me ask.. How do they stay so thin here.. If you had this same diet in the US these people woulld all have diabetes..  !  ( BTW  the gelato here is .. amazing.. I have a new addiction) 

 We decided to go to a night club and check out the scene here IN BA

 This one was called the CroBAr

The thing about night clubs here is that they dont get started until 2am !!  That when they close in Los Angeles.. !! When I left there were still plenty of people left  I was so friggin tired I said goodbye to my colleagues.. 
I didnt get home til 5 am'.  I walked home because the taxi driver wanted to go ff the clock and charge me a prvce I  KNOW he was cheating me on .  I t was a good 20 minute walk.. I had a hang over the next day.. I wont be doing that again!!

"and he doesnt understand a word we are saying..."

Fede feigns interest.. 

Your lips are moving...

Jon charming the ladies..  Como se dice...?

Party!!  ( I am too old for this) 

Ivan and gf Jon and Fede!!

 

the Dancing crowd
 

Sade In Buenos Aries

Miguel has a thing for Sade.. and so he bought a ticket for OCT 15th..  I really like her alot so I said what the...  I might as well too.  Got Great seats!! it cost a penny  but I never go to concerts so I splurged..  why not..

 

The venue was in Belgrano next to a huge CarrFour  a Walmart type store I never seen such a huge store.. I I gotto visit  that store someday.

 Here she is on this rising platform.. Thank god she didnt slip and fall

 Closing acknowledgements to her musicians.

The jumbo tron

Another stunning background.. Th visuals were stunning.

Here you can see her singing..  Great performer..  WARNING  lower the volume of your speakers.. the bass was so loud that it overpowered her voice sometimes..

Buck Lewis in Buenos Aries

Buck Lewis and I

Buck Lewis and Argentinian friends

A get together in Palermo Hollywood

Barbecue

Ignacio Albert Me and Jon

Jonny -- everyones favorite son. 

Last week we all had a small evening dinner which turned out to have 20 people show up..  Buck Lewis was down in Argentina to visit on behalf of CTN to interview a famous Argentinian cartoonist.. ( I forgot his name )  SO he and his possie came to have dinner with us and just talk art politics and culture.. I felt like I was in Paris having art discussions much like Picasso would have have with Braque, Modigliani, Cezanne and whoever..   Did you see Midnight in Paris??   It was alot of fun.. Buck Lewis is character designer and visual development artist for all the major studios including Dreamworks and Pixar.

  

Animation rant

Ok, this is for the animation crowd, inside discussion on work flow and software..
I have been used to Dreamworks' proprietary software for animation called EMO.. Granted there are some issues with Emo but in all I came to really like th graph editor..  NOW I am back with Maya 2011
and its driving me crazy..  WHat would take me only moments takes me a life time with Maya's graph editor.. I have to constantly adjust the curves with the bezier like handles.. The curves NEVER behave correctly right off the bat like they do with EMO and what takes me one click in EMO takes me 9 clicks in Maya!!  Dios Mio!!.
so in all my progress is slowed down by almost half..  Or at least it seems like it..  I want to get faster but it is impossible with this archaic graph editor..  Just picking and isolating the curves to edit is a pain in the arse.. 
Next is not having phoneme mouth shapes.. I have to recreate the mouth shapes each time by drawing it out..  I mentioned this in a meeting and it seems like they like the idea and will create a library.. If they do this the workflow for blocking in phoneme shapes for the mouth will accelerate at least three times..There are so many ways to speedup the work flow with the correct software fixes and plugins it would be worth it to make those changes..

Bezier handles up the wazoo.. you have to edit each one!!  Well sort of -- for the most part.

On Monday Miguel and hung out the whole day exploring Recoletta and neighboring barrios..  We visited the Evita Peron government house, which was brick red, making it stand out  amongst the rest of the buildings.. That was in the Plaza de Mayo..-

 

  All around were vendors in the streets in the nearby theater section where I bought a silver ring and some leather wrist bands.. This is the place to go see a Tango show.. As a matter of fact we actually saw some tango dancers demonstrating in the street.. Watch below.. 

Close by were some very old buildings  ( churches) that date back to the 1570´s  ( wow  thats about 430 years ago) Amazing..  As you can see by the architecture the city has a European flair .. Many  beautiful buildings and history here..

Unfortunately you see this kind of thing throughout the city..  Trash everywhere.. It seems so easy to keep this place cleaner by finding a more efficient way to pick up the garbage.. 

 

Here are some of the architecture around BA.  Some of the buildings like the ones shown are beautiful.. A throw back to what you might see in Europe.. 

   

We visited the Hardrock Cafe and I had a hamburger.  but for some reason the hamburgers dont taste as good as at home.. I have had three burgers so far here and  none of them seem to taste all that great.. I dont think they know how to make a good burger.. !!




















We took the subway back to Palermo and went to the Cinema  ( Multiplex)  very nice cinemas and equipped for 3D!! .. The seats were very comfortable.. Felt like bucket seats you would find in a Mustang..  We saw the Hugh Jackman movie with the fighting robots..  pretty good movie I must say.. Iron Giant meets Rocky with rockem sockem robots..










Then I see all these posters for Animated movies in 3D.. Where did they come from... Top Cat!!???  Apparently Top Cat is very popular in the Spanish cultures..  Did you see thisn the US? 
 

We also came across these trees with the unusual root system..  Reminded me of Giger art from Alien..