Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Big Ugly
Not long ago Man vs Food came to Indianapolis to face the Big Ugly Burger at local establishment Bubs Burgers. I had to give it a shot. I went with some friends, most notably Ryan who had defeated a single burger before and was return to face down the two burger challenge.
I only went for a single burger and here's why: it's a full pound of beef after cooking! I did manage to finish, it but next to Ryan's accomplishment, it looked like I did nothing.
All told I got a little picture of myself put on the wall somewhere featuring the worst hair I've ever had. Meanwhile Ryan got a full 8 by 10 looking like a champion
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Cr-48!
This is the coolest thing ever. The notebook is completely blank of any markings or stickers. It has no caps lock key and the surface is a perfect matte black. It's the antithesis of the shiny over-designed stuff you see at Best Buy today. I'm so proud to be a tester for Google. It's like a Christmas Miracle!
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Cornfield Car
I used Apple Motion for a now canceled project at work. Here's the point at which it was canned. Imagine an animated Indianapolis sprouting up at the end of the road.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Fake Album Covers for Joanna
I created fake album covers for Joanna's class project. These are those.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Awesome Hospital - Fire Pro
Dr. Dirtbike VS Dr. Guitar Solo VS Exigieron La Mascara in Fire Pro Wrestling Returns.
Check out Awesome Hospital by Chad Bowers, Chris Sims, Matt Digges, and Josh Krach.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Clean Bill of Health
'Of course he is.'
I'm hooked up to an EKG.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
El Gorgo vs Eddie Devil Video
In response to my last post Mike McGee, co-creator of El Gorgo tweeted: “Oh man, you guys, @ewzzy made the best thing: El Gorgo Vs. Eddie Devil!!” Little did he know I was working on this. Expect formulas for these guys posted in the near future so you can recreate them in your own FPWR games. You all have FPWR right?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Fire Pro: El Gorgo vs Eddie Devil
I’ve professed my love for El Gorgo and Eddie Devil before. Last time it was in Freedom Force. This time we see them in Fire Pro Wrestling Returns.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Minecraft!
I just started playing Minecraft for the first time. It is one of the best games ever. I’ve built a quaint home on a hill (now used as a quarry) and an epic castle. Nothing I’ve done compares to the REALLY EPIC works available online, but I can’t help posting my own little creations.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Quest For Glory!
Joanna and I hit up Birdy's to see the Quest for Glory Tour! Here are the pictures I took, Joanna will be posting her much better ones soon.
We gave the girls a bottle of Jose Cuervo as a thank you gift for coming to Indianapolis. Making friends with three of my favorite musicians made tonight one of the best nights ever.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
EwzHealth Month #1
You don't get to see the first 10 lbs I lost because I hadn't had proper measurements but the starting spot would have been ~310lbs. That is to say, I've lost 20 pounds in the last month. It's a step in the right direction, but I've still got a long way to go.
I didn't discuss this on the EwzHealth site, but I have a big problem setting goals for this. Mostly because the publicly supported method for deciding ideal body weight, the Body Mass Index, it bullshit. No, it really is. [NSFW links]
You see the Body Mass Index or BMI was never meant to be used for what it's used for today and it shows. When I started my plan I was ~310 which is a 44.5 on the BMI scale. That's obese. 20 lbs less at 291 and I'm at 41.7 which is still obese. That's fine. I know I tip the scales and that 20 isn't all that much at my current size. But here's the thing: to be "Overweight" and not "Obese" I would need to get under 30 on the BMI scale. To reach that I'd need to lose a total of 100lbs. Doing that might kill me. (no really it wouldn't be healthy to lose that much) The next big hurdle would be get out of "Overweight" and in to "Normal Weight" which is between 18.5–24.9 on the BMI scale. I would need to lose another 50 lbs to be at my "Ideal Weight" by BMI standards.
The end result of that would be me (at 5'10") weighing 150lbs. I would be half my starting weight and it would incredibly unhealthy to make that big a change. In fact it might not be possible to do without outright starving myself. The amount of work it would take to lose that much weight would lead to muscle mass which the BMI scale doesn't take into account. That is why my current goal is to reach 240. It's a great number to be at (it's on my driver's license) even though it counts as "Obese".
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Quest for Glory 2!
No it’s not a video game. That’s the name of the tour coming to Indianapolis that I am SO hyped for.
I have a mad crush on Allison Weiss and the fact that she’s coming to Indy has me freaking out. By freaking out I mean blogging. My emotional scale might not be set right. Nonetheless you should be excited too because if you are my friend you’ll want to be there. I’m not kidding. I paid real money for Allison and Bess’ albums. Do you know how rare that is?
Most important: go to http://questforglory.tumblr.com/ and plan to be at Birdy’s with me on the 21st.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Random Action – Extras
On the second day of Random Action Extras weekend I present to you first a rap song written and performed by our actor and sound guy, Nic Belmonte.
Isn’t that amazing? Our composer was none to pleased about getting the Puff Daddy treatment but it’s something I’ll always have over Nic.
Finally we’ve got the Random Action collection Trailer that aired before the showing of Without Troy. My good friend Matt O’Neal cut it together for us. He’s a talented guy and really captured the series well.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Random Action – Fight Choreography
It’s Random Action Extras Weekend so let’s get nuts. This was one of the original promised extras for the RAEP5 DVD that never got finished at the time. I finally got around to it this week. ENJOY!
Ah, but this isn’t the first fight choreography video I made. The last one was just a slideshow which just doesn’t earn the love that the above video deserves.
At this point in my life I get as much joy out of watching the choreography as I do the fight in the finished film.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Crazy Weezy Epilogue – Flex Dolla Dolla Bill
I made a final cameo as Weezy in this Random Acts video. Yes I’m ghostriding the whip. Sorry the video is LQ. I didn’t shoot this so I don’t have the HD video it was originally shot in.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Crazy Weezy Part 3 – E! True Hollywood Story
I wrote the first and second appearances of Crazy Weezy but this one I took a really hands off approach. The reason for that? I wasn’t in Random Acts at the time. I had moved on to new projects but I kept getting pulled back in for guest spots. I don’t have a lot to say about this. Un-fun fact: I dented my car by slamming myself against it in one scene. Yeop.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Crazy Weezy Part 2 – Study Guide
I thought I was done with Crazy Weezy but as the most successful character to come out of Random Acts eventually I would be pulled back in. It turns out that Crazy Weezy is just me plus 5 espresso shots. Those were real by the way. It takes quite a bit of caffeine to actually get me going that sure did it. Those reactions were only slightly exaggerated. The real problem? That wasn’t the only take. We did a practice one that I didn’t know was a practice so I did the a shot without the camera rolling and had to refill.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Crazy Weezy’s Used Cars
It’s Crazy Weezy Week here and that means starting here. This was the first sketch to use my character of Crazy Weezy and our first sketch to use all of RA on set. Turns out that makes it the most error prone sketch ever. You can assume the reason that booms are in all the shots, crew are in reflections, shots are overblown, and every other problem is because we wanted it to look like a bad used car commercial. Too bad that ain’t true. Coolest feature? That car was in the 2 Fast 2 Furious. That’s what makes this the most requested video Random Acts ever did.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Gang Hits St. Louis
Austin and Emily are getting married so we hit the spots in St Louis. The Brewery Tour, the art museum, the Arch: nothing is safe.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
The City Museum in St. Louis
The City Museum is seriously the coolest place in the world. It’s an adventure 100%.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Random Action – Episode 5
You’ll really want to watch this one in HD. 720p probably. 1080p starts to show the flaws too well.
This was a great undertaking for us at the time, like nothing we had ever done before. In HD no less! All of the other episodes were shot in a day but this one was shot over a month. Our crew was much larger, in that we had one. I’m particularly proud of our transition to color. Scene to scene we used color to create mood which was a lot of fun to engineer in post.
The fight scenes were a lot of fun to choreograph. You can even watch a slideshow of photos taken during our practice sessions.
The actual shooting was… interesting. There were injuries and interruptions around every corner. Tom gut hit in the head with a sword. “Gospel Fest” was in the next room while we shot the first fight. Somebody called the cops on us while we shot the last sign. I busted my ankle scrambling to the door to greet the cops on the roof.
I wasn’t there the day the basement scene was shot. I would have stopped Jeff from looking like he was molesting Tom after he gets shot.
The Roof scene is my favorite part and I hope yours too. Suprisingly, it was the easiest to shoot as well. Jeff and Steve has such great chemistry that there’s no way it could have gone wrong. Such great chemistry that some of the fighting is real. Brothers.
We weren’t sure how the fall from the roof would work till the editing stage. We shot it a few ways and none looked good. We had a plan to take a cheaper camera and rigging it to a balloon/parachute to drop off the roof for a perfect shot of the fall but it didn’t come to be. I still think it could have worked but I have my detractors.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Available Now!
All available for download on my Freedom Force site. Yes, Freedom Force, the only game that lets you play as Axe Cop, Dr McNinja, and then combine them.
Random Action – Episode 4
There was a yearlong break between the release of ep3 and ep4, despite us having shot it just a week later.
Tom, Jeff and myself drove to West Lafayette to shoot on the Purdue campus with my friend Jarrod. He worked with me on most of my stuff from high school. In this case he plays El Oso.
We were forced to use a MUCH worse camera than we used on our other episodes and we shot after dark resulting in near unwatchable footage. I had a rough cut ready a week after we shot it but I couldn’t bring myself to release it.
The next year I had an assignment to do an open ended video project so I finished my cut and synced it to the Raveonettes and turned it in. At that point our parent series Random Acts had started a new season with a new title style so we adopted it resulting in a new color scheme.
I still have the footage for a secret non-cannon ending that has an old flame of Jeff’s save his life. She was played by Jeff’s girlfriend at the time. At the time the script was written at least. They broke up days before we shot it. The footage is so… so bad.
When we shot Episode 5 we changed the ending so that it’s Marlowe who saves Jeff. I still regret there being no women in the series but at least they were behind the scenes for episode 5.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Random Action – Episode 3
My good friend Tom Otero thinks this is the best thing we’ve ever done. It is the first time we used any literary devices in out story. It’s amazing how much a framing sequence to make a story seem so much more interesting.
- This is my only on screen appearance in the Random Action series. Adam Rickabus survives this video to return as High Pockets in the finale.
- When I first came up with the concept for Random Action, I didn’t know about Jeff Brown but I was friends with his brother Steve. When I found out he had a twin who would act for me every changed.
- That hubcap is hanging in my room in my Mom’s house.
- My glasses really broke on set so we had them fall off toward the camera. Lots of quick compromises were made to make this happen. I wish I still had the gumption to do that on all my projects.
- Music is by Scott H Biram. He is a badass.
- We bought a mattress at the Salvation Army to make landings easier. $24.
- After avoiding the NERF aspect in Episode 2 we really embraced it here with the NERF shotgun.
- At the 2:40 mark you can see Tom’s shadow fall across the actors when the camera spins. He feels he can never atone for this sin. I’m still upset about him hitting my knee on the one good drive away shot.
- Tom ran the camera for all of this episode and it really shows. He’s fantastic at getting really dynamic shots. I have an old joke about telling which one of us was holding the camera in a given shot. If it’s a low angle shot Tom did it. (He’s short)
- Steve speaks enough Spanish to correct my awful bit of writing at the end. Thank god.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Random Action – Episode 2
If you read my last post you now know more about Random Action that some of the people who were in it. You may ask yourself, what else could possibly be known about a series of student action movies? You may ask yourself, how did I get here? Well prepare to find out.
- The most important thing for you to know is that our poor attempt to shoe-horn in plot weighs heavily on us to this day. We’re still working on making a coherent storyline long after the series is done.
- So real the reason we shot in high contrast B&W is because we didn’t know how to white balance or get good contrast on the school’s camera. The Sin City motif didn’t was just a great excuse.
- The sword sounds were recorded in my dorm room by myself. I used a cheap hammer and a piece of metal. This was surprisingly effective.
- That is my robe that Jeff is wearing. Well, it was mine. I gave it to him as a gift at the premiere of episode 5.
- You can see the bending of our plastic swords in several shots. We shot in order so it get’s worse as the video goes on. During the battle on the steps, Jeff is holding the blade so as to keep it from breaking off.
- We’ve talked to people who do actual sword fight choreography. I’d like to take this moment to apologize to them again.
- Finally, the last shot of Jeff getting hit by my truck is based on one of Robert Rodriguez’s 10-Minute Film School videos. The trick is to have the victim lay on top of the car and roll down onto the windshield. Brilliant right?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
@EwzHealth
I’m trying something new. New for me. I’m taking control of my health and I’m going to posting about it to keep myself in line. I won’t be clogging up my site or my twitter but rather I’m starting up a new twitter account @EwzHealth where I will be tweeting my weight every day. This will help me keep motivated to lose those lbs. BUT it will only work if you follow me and show support, so please follow me on twitter or if that isn’t your thing keep checking in here and follow my posts on the right sidebar.
Random Action – Episode 1
I just got a new computer and as such I’ve been able to do a lot more with video compression and finally put my old videos online in HQ. As such I’m going to upload them here with commentary. These certainly don’t exemplify what I’m capable of today, but it should be fun to see what crazy crap I made going back all the way to high school. We’ll start off with my baby the Random Action series.
A loose history of the Random Action series is this: In January of 2006 I read Penny Arcade’s Official NERF Rules of Engagement. The middle panel, which takes the absurdity of NERF guns and mashes it up with overdramatic noir style stayed with me. The April before, Sin City, hit theaters and as a big comic nerd I was hooked. That led to the Sin City style open for the 2nd season of Random Acts. Random Acts was a sketch comedy group that I was a founding member of at Butler University. Tired of doing just comedy my friend and oft-times business partner, Tom Otero, and I decided to do an action piece. I remembered an idea I had come up with the year before that would have featured future Without Troy star Kent Livingston. Kent was out and our new friend Jeff Brown was in. The title, naturally, would be a pun based off of our parent series.
The shooting of the first episode took about an hour. Right behind the camera people were walking to class so all of the voices were re-recorded later. Eric Weiher made his sole appearance as our ninja kidnapper. He’s a much better actor than what you see here. My co-director Tom makes an appearance at the end as the eventually named, Marlowe. Marlowe would grow to be possibly the most compelling character in the series due in no small part to Tom’s performance.
Music is by the amazing Tomas Diablo. He kindly gave us permission to use his music and I can’t thank him enough for that.
The Random Action series grew out a lot from here. It’s incredible how much it’s changed.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Robert Randolph at the Vogue
This was actually my first show at the Vogue. It’s a cool place.
The music was great. The opening band, Blue Moon Revue, deserves much love. We chatted briefly after the show. Check them out. I’m breaking my no linking to MySpace rule for these guys.
Robert Randolph was amazing. Seriously great. My only problem was the crowd around me. One girl was angry at another girl for dancing too much and so she poured beer on her back. Some people just want to cause trouble.
The real highlight of the night was Joanna getting on stage. Seriously. So. Cool.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Animals
I got stuck at an intersection because a flock of Geese were all up in my way. What’s the deal with geese? I know, it’s the ‘tude.
Next, while I was home for the 4th of July, I saw a kid terrified of a pony. This is all the courage he could muster.
That is all.
New Computer!
I am so pumped about this. I’ve been saving up for a new computer for work purposes. My laptop wasn’t exactly high end when I bought it and couldn’t handle exporting large projects from Indesign. My new Dell Studio XPS? Unstoppable. It’s name is Balder.
One little problem. The dang thing didn’t come with an OS! I promise I ordered one. This wasn’t a decision I made. Seriously check out this completely clean partition table:
That is an empty terabyte you’re seeing. After some wrangling I got Windows 7 installed on it and I love it.
St Louis Arch Panorama
I was in St Louis for a buddy’s wedding and I had an awesome time. I took a bunch of pictures and videos that you’ll be seeing here soon.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Santo Contra Los Clones
Friday, July 2, 2010
Iron Vampire
Demon in a Bottle is probably Iron Man's most famous storyline so it's only natural Marvel would want to pay tribute to it with their next line of variant covers. Last time it was Zombies, this time we get vampires. I would normally be skeptical of the idea, but using the non-reflection of vampires as the gimmick for the cover is brilliant. Kudos to Salvadore Larroca for his genius tribute cover to Invincible Iron Man #31.
The Flying Trapeze
I’m sure that I posted this before but I’m now convinced that this image is the greatest picture I’ve ever taken. Here’s the story: I was spending a lovely day on the Santa Monica Pier when two children walked up to the fence in front of the flying trapeze. They were both wearing capes. Capes! These children wear ready to fly. I wish I was better equipped to capture the moment but my camera phone did its best. Liberal use of Photoshop has enhanced the photo to printable quality.
The Flying Trapeze by Andrew 'Ewzzy' Rayburn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Pokemon National Championships
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
New Freedom Force – Part 9 – Mantra
An eternal warrior named Lukasz was reincarnated, to his shock, into the body of a woman, Eden Blake. In addition to being forced to deal with life as a woman, Lukasz also faces the particular challenges of Eden's life — in particular, her two children and her ex-husband. For the first time, Lukasz confronts the fact that for 1500 years he had been destroying families by stealing men's bodies and forcing them to walk away from their lives. He fell in love with her soul, which still existed within him.
DOWNLOAD MANTRA
Freedom Force - Eddie Devil
Meet Eddie Devil.
DOWNLOAD Eddie Devil
Freedom Force – Penny Devlin: Woman Of A.C.T.I.O.N.
Meet Penny Devlin.
DOWNLOAD WOMAN OF A.C.T.I.O.N.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Nerdiest thing? Freedom Force texture compression theory.
It may not be immediately obvious but what I’m getting at is that Minute Man, the main character, has gotten worse looking between the games. The problem is that all the textures in FF1 where at 256 pixels while FFV3R were at 512 pixels. The original characters weren’t upscaled for the sequel but they were compressed in the change to DDS from TGA. I ran the texture from FF1 through a professional level upscaler to 1024px and then compressed to DDS. This is what should have been done when FFV3R from the beginning.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Freedom Force – El Gorgo!
Meet El Gorgo.
DOWNLOAD EL GORGO
I made that…
Now that Axe Cop is available and you can get Dan McNinja here you can have the ultimate battle of mustaches.
Freedom Force - Axe Cop
Meet Axe Cop.
DOWNLOAD AXE COP
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
If my major doesn’t work out, I’ll just be a plant photographer…
My boss sent me out to our medicinal herb garden to take some pictures to use for an in-house display. I figured they weren’t half bad, so I thought I’d share :)
You might know this plant as clover! It’s actually the current background on my computer. I made use of the Macros function, and I’m pretty proud of how my camera performed :)
This bee is hanging out on a Purple Coneflower. This plant (Echinacea) is used for cold and flu symptoms.
He wanted to be friends. I was hesitant.
This Rosemary looks like a person, right?
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Golf 2010 Slideshow
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Garmin Nuvi Fun – Dracula
DOWNLOAD DRACULA FOR NUVI
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Willmington Update 4
At least it's a beautiful day out.
1. My shot has only been used once thus far today.
2. The first shot was a perfect chip-in.
3. My tripod was locked at the time.
Willmington Update 3
Garmin Nuvi Fun – Crash Bandicoot
Yes, I put together a Crash Bandicoot vehicle. The sprites are pulled from Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart a generally awful Mario Kart clone for the GBA. If you thought this was a surprise wait till Friday.
DOWNLOAD CRASH BANDICOOT FOR NUVI
Yesterday was like a vacation but today is for working.
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Garmin Nuvi Fun – Donkey Kong
Have you ever listened to the music in Donkey Kong Country? I mean have you listened? Seriously stellar stuff.
DOWNLOAD DONKEY KONG FOR NUVI
Wilmington Update 2
Wilmington Update 1
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Garmin Nuvi Fun – Bowser
Bowser involved a lot of ‘shopping up before he would look good on the Nuvi. The original sprite was so faded and ill-colored that it need significant alterations. But hey, that’s what I do.