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1306am

Web Design

By teach

Most of my life I’ve been close to technology, either in the form of a walkman, a video game or a computer.

I remember very well my first week of school, there were a bunch of kids my age that seemed to enjoy everything from it, not me frankly. Most of the time I was scared of being bullied or something, the toilettes there didn’t have doors at first so that was horrible, I couldn’t go. But the best thing of elementary school and high school for me was the “Computer class”.

By the end of the 90´s my school got their first computers, a bunch of brand new Apple III´s. I could not understand how it worked but you were able to control the interface and interact with the machine. Those computers were there not for so long. The next set of computers were IBM running either an earlier version of MS-DOS or a version of Windows 3.1, better graphics. I remember very well that some one installed Wolfenstein 3D, and in a few years they put all the computers on a local network, that helped us play “online”.

When I was in 9th grade for some reason the school took us to visit a college where one of my cousins studied (later I would go study there and later work there). There was a room full of computers and every one was talking about something called “The Internet”. Using netscape instead of Internet Explorer was so hip and the .gif of The Simpsons where Homer converts to 3D was all over the place. That for me was incredible.

I soon went to high school, it was different, no more games but they were teaching this cool thing called HTML. I discovered Macromedia Flash by mistake (I thought it was a video game) but the program for me was the best thing that could happen and you could easily connect HTML with Flash. But the most important thing for me using Flash is that I could finally do animations.

A lot of people on my class was struggling with HTML and I would be that guy that could help them, a lot of them told me that I should study Computer Science.

I started listening to those suggestions, the final year of high school I learned Visual Basic, it was so simple. I did a whole word processor with a calculator included, Flash animations in it and an installer.

When everyone started having 56kbps Internet at home, everything changed I could finally have a Geocities or cjb.net hosting service and I could start uploading my crazy animations. Most of them where interactive.

Later I went to study… You guessed it Computer Science! While there I became the guy that could do interactive websites, I learned how to do java, javascript, php and css.

VFX

By teach

My approach to VFX has been always a guerilla style, learning through Andrew Kramer´s Videocopilot and reading a lot of books related to After Effects, I had some commercial work that needed tracking, rotoscoping, particle simmulation, keying  and color correction so when I got invited to teach a VFX on 2009 I was really excited but at the same time it was a very big challenge.

Since that first iteration I´ve been refining each year my own techniques without following any tutorials just studying the original shots from scenes from Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (more the series rather than the movies).

Here are some examples.

Stop Motion iWeek 2021

By teach

The Tec de Monterrey´s iWeek has become a staple  in the student´s education, it is a week where every course gets paused and you dedicate a whole week to take a complete different course from the ones you have selected for the whole semester. It´s a fresh breath of air for the students and educators.

This time for me it was the first time that I gave a whole week Stop Motion course along with my colleague and friend Luis Pacheco. Luis has a channel dedicated to Playmobil stop motion animation, and for me stop motion is very a very special and loved technique because it was how I started doing animations, with a very old Web cam connected to my computer, and shooting animation with the use of lemons and toys.

We taught this course for 15+ plus students, none of them with an animation background. They were architecture, communications and industrial design bachelor level students.

During the week they were going to animate different exercises and develop the pilot of a web series including an animation test. The course was aimed for them to learn the tools and software of the Stop Motion Studio app, and to immerse themselves on the principles of animation, using toys and tools they had.

In my case while I taught a lot of the techniques, I developed this 3 little pieces.

Rubik´s cube

Banana matchbox

LEGO Iron Man flight

The soundtrack of my life

By mystery

Since I was little I was  attracted by music, thanks to my dad´s walkman I could go to sleep listening to some music by Michael Jackson, the TMNT movie soundtrack and Def Lepard.

But it was not until 1999 that I got my first computer with Internet access that I came across Napster, mp3.com, music blogs and even myspace.com that I discovered a new and fascinated world. For me discovering a lot of bands through this services and websites it was like catching new Pokemons.

I soon got my first cd writer and from then I started building a big collection of mp3’s, many years later the introduction of the iPod was a big thing and I got rid of many CD´s and now a days the introduction of services like Spotify it´s so revolutionary because you can have everything you need (music wise).

I’ve been building some playlists over the last few years, they are listed by years, and there you will find tracks that I came across that are not necessarily from that year but because I still found them on those years I decided to include them.

Now this is the soundtrack of my life.

SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE

yo teach!

By teach

Ancient History 101