Brave

Determined to make her own path in life, Princess Merida defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. Granted one wish, Merida must rely on her bravery and her archery skills to undo a beastly curse.

After so much inspiring work, we are starting to see the end approach. Brave is coming out this Summer, and it seems like the end of an era. People are starting to wrap, and the new projects are ramping up and taking on a lot of technical directors and artists.
 
I am one of the few here at Pixar, it feels like, who have never worked on this project directly. After Toy Story 3, I moved on almost directly onto La Luna and then Monsters University. Now I am working in the Tools department, where the software the artists use day by day is made. 

Hence, I have carefully avoided spoiling the story by seeing the reels in a long time. I want to see the movie in all its splendor, with untainted eyes. I can hardly wait.

La Luna is nominated by the Academy

Congratulations to Enrico Casarosa, and the whole Luna team for this nomination!
I couldn't be more proud of our work or more fond of the time I had working on it.

Now... no pressure Enrico, but it looks like Pixar rests on your shoulders this year!

Brave trailer is out

Finally, the trailer of upcoming adventure from Pixar, Brave, is out in the open. Enjoy!

Piazza dei Mestieri

I am back home, in San Francisco, munching on some delicious chocolate covered lemon zests. Thanks to all who got out of their way to come see me at View. It was great to see you all!

 Where do those zests come from? Other than my two regular presentations, I was invited somewhat last minute to meet and teach a workshop at an unusual school, called Piazza Dei Mestieri, in the heart of Torino. This school helps youngsters to learn a profession and there are many, diverse disciplines. Each discipline has a production workshop and that is how the school maintains itself, for the most part. In fact, tuition is free, as long as students can show their progress. There is a brewing school, as well as a pub. There is a hairdressing school, with a low-cost studio for the students to practice. There is a chocolate workshop. That's where the zests I am nibbling on come from.

Of course, if I taught a workshop there, it is because there is a specialization in computer graphics too. I am no master brewer or chocolatier - although I would not mind becoming one.

The campus is remarkable, it reminds me of an old piazza surrounded by traditional businesses and a cute restaurant on the terrace, that in the summer must be really nice. That same restaurant is where all the presenters of the View conference celebrated, with a gala dinner, the final evening of the event.

Should you pass by Torino, it is probably worth giving the pub at Piazza dei Mestieri a try. As far as I could tell, the beers they brew on site are worth it.

For those who haven't seen it yet, here is a teaser/extract from La Luna. Enjoy!

View 2011

It was at Siggraph conference that I met Maria Elena Gutierrez. For year now, she has been in charge of organizing the ViewFest and the View Conference in Torino (formerly known as Virtuality).

I remember Virtuality very well. Me and my friends, still studying or working on music videos, got inspired and compelled to push our skills so much because we wanted to be like the amazing people we saw there. 

I remember we sat at a pizzeria in the evening after this event, wishfully predicting what we were going to do in 10 years. One will be in Pixar, one in Dreamwoks. Maybe the other will be in Digital Domain or in Weta or perhaps in Japan. Cheers to that! I still remember the excitement in our eyes.  We did not sleep much. The following weeks were spent trying to work on some crazy project, like a sculpt project, a gutsy simulation or even a short about Evangelion, full CG, fully realistic. 

The short did not happen. But 10 years down the road, sure enough, one of us is at Pixar, one at Dreamworks, and one married a lovely Japanese lady and started an international business in Torino.

That is why I am excited to be on the other side this year. I'll be the one presenting at View. On the 22nd I will talk about the emigrant experience of a shader writer. And on the 24th I will teach an advanced workshop on shading on SIMD architectures.

I hope some of you can make it.

A coherent noise for non photorealistic applications

I hope you attended this year's Siggraph. It was in the enchanting city of Vancouver, and the weather was deceptively good, so much it probably helped the companies that were aggressively hiring there. I had several reasons to go this year. I am working on the integration of the 3d painting tool from The Foundry, Mari, as well as Autodesk Mudbox and Disney's Paint3d. So I had plenty of meetings to attend. I also presented a paper this year, my first one in fact. 

It was very exciting - read nerve wrecking - to be presenting the fast forward session. Twenty five thousand amazing people, the cream of the intelligentia in our field - were looking at me at the same time. Despite some technical issues with the videos in the presentation, that nobody seemed to notice, it went pretty well. 

Enrico Casarosa also presented his first work as a director in Pixar: La Luna - not to be confused with another short that also came out this year: Luna. I had the pleasure to help out a bit on this one, shading the stars, animating their effects, and a painting and shading a few props on the boat. 

Make sure you see it when it will be shown again, ahead of Brave in theaters!

"It gets better" - love, Pixar

Hello friends,
 
My friends and colleagues prepared a message that I found touching, and would like to pass on.
 

 
I hope you like it, because these are some of my best friends and some of the best, real people I had the honour of working with in my life.

Cars 2 first peek

 

First peek at the next movie my friends are working on. Enjoy!

Journey to the Center of America

Following the trend I started for myself last year, I made Siggraph be a part of a larger trip. I have been together with an American girl, Cynthia, for almost a year now, and in that period she spent a couple of months in Costa Rica. That was the chance I had been waiting for to visit!

Also, I found interesting that a tiny country like the central American republic had a wealth of six visual effects and animation companies representing it at Siggraph. Italy, with a population larger by one order of magnitude, had none. Needless to say, that tickled my curiosity.

If you expect a warm country to be a sunny country, without consulting when the rainy season happens, you'd be sorely disappointed. It rained every single day of the two weeks I spent there. Still, the Sun managed to poke through the clouds most mornings making sure I woke up early most days to enjoy the beautiful landscapes and fun action that was awaiting me.

Costa Rica truly is a beautiful place. Most of it is covered by verdant jungles and green hills, and the coasts can boast some fantastic beaches, where sea turtles seasonally lay their eggs. Small and medium coastal towns flourished (according to some got spoiled) because of western tourists and surfers, attracted by a stable democracy, awesome waves, and a cheap currency. 

I suppose we blended right into that category, although we were no surfers. We tried to keep out of the most beaten path where possible, and visited small towns. After Cynthia spent some weeks studying Spanish in a large and modern botanical research facility, we got to visit it, and learn a lot about coffee, cocoa, and the many local and unique species of plants of Costa Rica. The next stop was a long and strenuous white water rafting trip down the river towards the Pacific Ocean. Now, that was a lot of fun, even though Cynthia fell off the our boat and we had to fish her back into it. We did more snorkeling and saw fascinating mangrove forests, as well as whales and dolphins. But before I left, I had a chance, before heading back home, to visit a charming coffee farm up on the cliffs of Monteverde.

 Food is usually simple and filling. Rice and beans are omnipresent, as well as fried platanos and tropical, delicious fruits. Portions are huge and it is easy to get used to eat a lot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, obesity is a problem in Costa Rica too. 

Although the population of the country is relatively small, people are very different from place to place. Most people are devoted catholics and we arrived right in the middle of a great, huge pilgrimage. People from all over the country walked to Cartago, where a relic was being shown to people. Traffic in the only large city, San Jose, reminded me of the worst driving practices of us Italians, while the coastal regions are a true pleasure to cruise and the people there are way more laid back. 

As I think with pretty much everywhere I go, I wish I had more time to spend and explore this place. Unfortunately I have a limited amount of time to spend away from home. Fortunately, I love what I do at home, just as much as I love traveling.

Done, and done

Thanks to all who came to visit me at the Pixar booth. In such a short time it has been really hard to catch up with everyone I meant to, and I predictably failed to do so. Still, it has been great to see you all, even if only for such a short chat.

Being at the Pixar booth you get to meet all sorts of people. Other than old friends coming to say hi, most people came to ask about the giveaway of teapots and Toy Story 3 posters. There were many students who were trying to show their reels, and a few people interested in purchasing licenses of Renderman. Then again there were people that were just creepy. A recruiter told me there was a guy standing a few feet away, not approaching but never ceasing to stare at her. Another guy, which I will call "The Creep", came just to complain about the teapot design this year, and to interrogate me on my culture on the teapots. The Creep was easy to spot: fairly old, crazy Einstein-like hair, Toy Story shirt over a fake tattooed skin colored shirt. The Creep was at every party I was at and probably many more. He pretended to be a bouncer at The Foundry party, randomly attempting to reject people, including me, before disappearing. He also tried to crash the Renderman User Group. He did not make it because they recognized him for being the one escorted out the previous year for harassing the ladies attending the user group.

It also was a very productive session this year. This is perhaps the first year my primary purpose is not to find a job or to see the cool new papers and courses. I was there to address specific issues related to 3d painting, which is what I am working on now, and I was successful.

For a few years now there has been the feeling that Siggraph talks are getting less and less interesting. Or at least, less groundbreaking, addressing problems that have been already solved and improving on current techniques. I loved last year's keynote by Rob Cook, in which he said that while research on computer graphics for motion pictures might have slowed down, there are a lot of unexplored challenges that fall straight in the original definition of what Siggraph was born for: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. Fields such as augmented reality, mobile gaming, social networks, are still in their infancy, and other fields we haven't even started to explore are waiting ahead. I am looking forward to see what research will bring us in these terms. Still, this year was very focused on improving current computer graphics solutions, so not as exciting as it could have been.

Parties were pretty good. I got invitations and joined the ones from Lucas (thanks Diego), Pixar Renderman, Siggraph Vancouver Chapter, Blur (thanks Alessandro), The Foundry (thanks Rob). It was interesting to see how different companies spent differently their party budgets. Pixar spent it on nice food and wine and a huge, quiet, conference room. Lucas hired a very nice club right next to the conference, with open bar and lovely ambiance. The Vancouver Chapter party coincided with the opening night of Blizzard Starcraft II, so both parties were held in that location, not far from the conference either, but the location was a lot less nice. Blur instead decided to limit invitations, hire a much smaller location, right in the middle of fashionable Hollywood, and enhance the show with gogo dancers and flaming shows and two open bars that required an hour of wait. Parking in Hollywood, however, was difficult and expensive, and the staff was surprisingly unfriendly. The Foundry, finally, were pretty smart and hired a very cool theatre near the convention and used most of the evening showing their technology and, when they were done, they put on a locally known DJ that prevented any further discussion with the volume of the music. A quieter upper floor with a separate bar was provided for those who wanted a productive business talk.

It is that time again

It is Siggraph time! And this time it happens to be close to home too! Los Angeles, one of the most populous metropolitan conglomerates, and one of the most loved and hated cities in the world. I feel like I belong more to the second group, since I love compact, walkable cities such as San Francisco, but still, Los Angeles has so much to offer, and I am not going to miss out.

I will be around, checking out some of the events, I will attend the Renderman User Group and, on Tuesday afternoon, I will be helping out at the Pixar booth, so if you have a minute, please come say hi!

Cars Toons

A week after coming back to the US, a lot of things have happened. I have learnt that the paper I submitted, together with Michael Kass, to the Siggraph committee fell just short of being accepted, although it will be adjusted and published on ACM Transactions on Graphics. 

I changed project, and started working on three shorts. Two of them are related to cars, and the series is called called Cars-Toons. They will not be released in the theatre, they will rather be available on DVD and on Disney Channel.

Some of them are actually already available on the net! Check them out:

Look forward to seeing the next ones!

Adiós

Its been a few weeks now, and I had time to think back on my week in Brazil. It has been great in many ways. I have met some really warm locals, I have caught up with some of my best friends, who gathered in Salvador from all over the world (Italy, UK, New Zealand, United States) to share this happy event with Alessandro and Taise. I tried as much as possible to make time to see the place too. And Salvador is certainly a place to see. In many ways.

The city has many faces. A pretty historical district, dotted by colorful houses, a high city and a low city connected by an enormous elevator. There are some touristy and pricey areas near the beach, those areas that host one of the craziest Carnival parades in the world. The city population is mostly black, although it is not hard to spot some beautiful mixture of races.

Poverty is a big issue. If I thought San Francisco had a lot of homeless people, Salvador definitely beat it it its richer city districts. Then there are the poorer city districts. We walked near one by chance, while trying to reach a local market. Taise refers to it as favela. And definitely, it met the expectations I had to see unsafe, old buildings, dirt roads, people sitting around. The city council did not seem to care, since they built a structurally questionable viaduct right above it.

As one might expect in a poor city, crime rate is high. Especially in the richer areas. Everyday I spent at the hostel I had a chance to hear about people being pick pocketed, or mugged, not just in the dark alleys we would tend to avoid anyway. That worried me a bit, since I already had lost my luggage, and easily stood out as a tourist despite my attempts at buying local clothes.

The beach was so beautiful though, and every morning you could see people of all ages working out there. Kids playing football, youngsters playing Frisbee or foot volleyball (which is amazing to see), adults jogging and seniors doing pushups, right there by the sea. I have to say, coming from the US, watching these people bodies felt like seeing the next step in human evolution. Although it was probably more like the previous step in human involution. 

Reading the press (yes, I found that I can read Portuguese), and watching news on TV, I got the feeling that Brazil is a country full of great people, proud of their country and of how quickly it is becoming a world power. I was saddened by the little sustainable it is though. People were boasting about finding some new oil reserves, and despite the widespread usage of biofuels, the origins of it can be partly connected to the destruction of the rainforest around the country. More in general, there seems to be little respect of an environment they have for so long taken for granted. Then again, as a westerner, who am I to throw the first stone.
 

What about the food? The local cuisine of Bahia derives its roots from Africa, more than from the rest of South America. Muqueca is definitely something to try. It is something between a Spanish paella and an mild Thai curry, made with African spices and coconut milk. It looks like a seafood soup, served with flour and rice separately. Something common to the rest of the country, they love their meat. Things as a churrasco are visible in many places, although they seem to be very much of a luxury meal, more for the tourists than for the locals. More in the everyday menu is the carne ao sol (meat dried of a day or two in the Sun), served with a delicious manioc and cheese puree. My drinks of choice, good for rehydrating from the burning sun, was almost always a raw coconut, which I recommend to try with the local liqueur, Cachasa.

Biem-Vindo

About a year ago my good friend Alessandro mentioned the fact that he was going to get married. And gave me about a year notice. So no excuses, although I´m pretty good at missing these important occasions, I was not going to do it this time.

There are really no good flights between San Francisco and Salvador - Bahia. All require at least two connections. To be safe, I planned extra time for the each and did not put anything too important in the checked-in backpack - with the notable exception of the suit I am supposed to wear at the wedding.

And of course, things went wrong. After an excruciating eight hours wait in Atlanta, the delay was long enough that I missed my connection in Brazilia. Besides, they also lost my luggage, and I still do not know its location at this time. The replacement flight from Brazilia to Salvador was also late. But it´s ok because I waited for my ride (which I am grateful for) for another hour at the airport. So overall, the trip took about 35 hours. And without my stuff.

It wasn´t all bad though. I had plenty of time to peruse my portuguese lesson podcast and to catch up with the world news. And once I got there, starving like a velocyraptor, I had two dinners. One italian, and one Brazilian.

  

So here I am, in Bahia, stuffed with carne ao sol, enjoying the sound of the waves and the comfortable couch of one of my best friends.

Circkus Animation

Ever wondered what on the world it is exactly that I do? CirkusProductions recently posted this cute video on Youtube which makes computer animation a bit more understandable for those who do not live with it every day.



Easy, isn't it?

Congratulations to the Up crew!

The Oscar night was fun! I was glad to see UP win the Best Animated Feature Award. It is so rewarding to see the hard work and incredible talent of all my friends and colleagues be recognized yet again. Congratulations as well for the Best original score. I really love and am moved by the soundtrack, written by Michael Giacchino.

I would like to take a minute to congratulate Mauro Fiore, for his Best Cinematography Award with Avatar, and thank him for representing with pride us immigrated Italian artists in the world. All the talented artists and technical directors at Weta in New Zealand did an amazing job with the movie, and greatly deserved the Best Visual Effects Award too.

I was a bit sad to see neither shorts "French Roast" or "Lady and the Reaper"  - the first Oscar nominated animated work from Spain - or the new Wallace and Gromit be rewarded for their fantastic job.

Finally, I think "Il Divo", my favourite Italian picture in the last few years, should have been in the short list for Best Foreign Movie Award, rather than for the Best Makeup Award, where it found itself unrealistically competing with sci-fi flicks like Star Trek.

What did you think?

Waiting for Oscar night - Legend of the Guardians

Friday night at Pixar I had a chance to see Alice in Wonderland. Other than being a very visually appealing movie, I was looking forward to that because before of the movie, I knew they would show the first trailer of "Legend of the Guardians" in 3D.

Only 6 months away from the due release, this movie from Zack Snyder and Animal Logic changed its name from "The Guardians of Ga'Hoole", the original books title, to avoid conflicting with the current release name of the new Dreamworks movie "The Guardians of Childhood". I had a very minor part while working at Animal Logic on this new release, and I am looking forward to seeing it in theaters. It will probably be contending for the next year's Academy Awards.

So here is the new trailer! Look forward to it!

Enjoy the Oscar Night!

New Toy Story 3 trailer

Here it is!

My first movie here at Pixar is getting closer to be finished, and a new HD trailer is now out.

A lot of story and new characters are revealed, so be warned!

Say cheese...

Ever wondered how mozzarellas are made? Lately a friend of mine wanted to find out, so we got together and tried. Several sets of instructions can be found online and the do not always agree on amounts. They do, however, agree that the heating temperatures must be precise if you want it to work. Which is especially hard if you have an electric stove. That is why we had to get a thermometer for food. Ours in particular was designed for frying and for candies (not sure what those two have in common other than being tasty and unhealthy).

At our first batch we tried an easier version of the instructions found online. Add the citric acid, then the rennet, heat, separate, swirl, separate more, drip the whey and keep the curd and so on. Once it seems separated enough you can work the cheese like a pizza dough. That's the fun part, because, depending on how much water you took out of it, it can be worked into fun shapes. 

So how did it turn out? Well... we forgot the salt. And a couple of hours after making it, it was incredibly squeaky on the teeth, like Haloumi. The next day it still did not look like mozzarella, but both taste and texture got surprisingly close to a nice Scamorza cheese. 

At our second batch we felt confident enough to try a trickier verision of the instructions, that required more time at each step. We hoped to get much closer to a proper mozzarella. But the curd never did set and we ended up making just a lot of Ricotta. It was not all bad though, because the ricotta that we did not devour immediately with honey and fruit, ended up going into a delicious Rigatoni al Forno, with homemade ragu and bechamel. No, I did not take a picture of the Rigatoni. We just ate them.

So, all right, the cheese never turned up the way we wanted it, but it still tasted good. And a significant part of that "good" was because it tasted like something we had made from scratch. It tasted like we earned it. Still, I have to try that mozzarella recipe again, then you'll see the amazing pizzas I will make with it!

Up nominated for 5 Academy Awards

Congratulations to everyone at Pixar for the five Academy Award nominations on Up. In particular for Best Animated Picture and, hear hear, Best Picture! Wish us good luck for the Night of the Oscars!

Here is a little thought that Pete Docter shared.

Also congratulations for, in my opinion, the most visually experimental and undoubtedly charming Animated Picture of the year: The Secret of Kells.

Le delizie del Piemonte - part 2

I spent a good portion of the rest of my holidays going out to local osterias, where I had a chance to refresh my memory of what is available around Torino.

One of the things I had forgotten is how common it is to find meats that are sometimes very hard hard to find elsewhere: roe deer, boar (real boar, not "wildened" hogs like here in California), guinea fowls, hare, chamois, donkey, rabbit or horse. Yes, horse, do not cringe my friend, it is relatively common to eat them in Italy.

Another thing that I noticed is how few ingredients are needed sometimes to make the most exquisite and flavorful recipes. And how the same ingredients sometimes taste so much better, being grown under the sun, with little or no use of pesticide or petrochemical fertilizers, with no need to boast how everything is organic on the menu, when that is the norm.

Well... at least until recently. Unfortunately industrial agricultural methods have been creeping into Italian farms too. There are more McDonald's in Torino than in San Francisco for example. Some crops are discarded in favor of a bigger, uniformed, more resistant or more productive ones, sometimes genetically modified, drenched in chemicals and often almost obliterating the production of some others. Farro for example, nowadays is hard to find even in Tuscany. I remember going to visit some small farms a couple of years ago during Christmastime. To be able to survive and to maintain their traditional, healthy ways of growing their food, they had to convert their business. It is called Agritourism. Basically they make a touristic attraction of their own life, work and food preparation. Their big country homes become charming guesthouses and the visitors can enjoy an idillic landscape and maybe even try to help on the farm, or simply hike, relax and enjoy delicious meals.

Have you ever heard of Slow Food? It is a movement born as a reaction of the spreading of industrial food production (represented easily by fast foods), who serve overprocessed food, sometimes containing toxic, unregulated compounds and, willingly or unknowingly, promoting social injustices and environmental degradation. Founded in 1989 by Carlo Petrini, and counting over 100.000 active members in 132 countries, the Slow Food movements acts to promote education and preservation of local traditions and recipes, ecodiversity and social justice. "Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable". 

Why do I bring this up? Because there are a few restaurants here in the Bay Area that belong to the Slow Food movement (notoriously, Alice Waters' "Chez Panisse"). And because Torino hosts the first Slow Food center in the world, a hybrid between a food retailer, a series of restaurants and a cooking school, called Eataly. I have been there a few times before and every time it is great fun. This time I brought my parents for a steak, but the highlight of the day was definitely the fountain of molten Gianduia Chocolate. At the first taste I melted like a smiling block of butter.

Le delizie del Piemonte

Christmastime came and went quickly this year. I managed to get a late flight, due to an unexpected change in my holiday plans, and decided to go back home, to the usually icy Torino after a short visit to the unusually frozen London, instead of celebrating in the warm Californian Winter. While I was at it, I also determined to find out more about my own regional culture and food, and asked my friends to help me with that.

So I volunteered to help out my sister with Christmas lunch, making some appetizers. I made a few, looking for information online and for ingredients in the local markets where possible - unfortunately not as often as I would have liked.

So, my first creation was perhaps the easiest: hard boiled eggs, chopped in half and stuffed with their own yolk mixed with fresh parsley, mayonnaise, olives and capers. I had to give up to the hand made mayonnaise after trying with little success to beat it with a fork until past midnight the previous night. Next I prepared a simple baby squid salad, marinated in lemon overnight and garnished in a mountain of parsley.

Another thing I always wanted to try was the peperoni in bagnacauda. The first thing that needs to be done is the sauce: the bagnacauda. If you live in San Francisco, you may have heard of it when passing by or dining at the Stinking Rose. Don't go for it, it is a rip off and nothing like what it is meant to be. Get your crushed mountain of garlic, oil, butter and milk and cook the anchovies until it all becomes a cream. Then you may roast some colorful pepper sliced in long quarters in this sauce and finally pour more creamy and steamy bagnacauda on top of it all. It will look amazing. If you also remember to wash the anchovies (in case they were preserved in salt) it will also taste fantastic, unlike mine.

Next is a classic: I cooked for a long time a pot of polenta and then poured it into a tray. After letting it cool I cut it into cookie-like pieces and baked it for 20 minutes. When it started to get crispy on the surface I poured some gorgonzola on top, for a touch of stinky heaven.

Finally, I took inspiration from a recipe a good friend of mine uses, and made something entirely NOT from Piedmont. Pit some dates, fill them with scamorza (also known as smoked mozzarella in the US) and wrap them in some thick slice of prosciutto, and bake for a few minutes.

So, other than a couple of minor accidents, most things turned out good and we drowned it all with Bonarda, Barbaresco and Nebbiolo wines from our cold and beautiful lands.

Crippled in San Francisco

Ever heard of Freeline skates? It's a quirky ride somewhere between a skateboard and a pair of skates. The learning curve can be pretty steep as it was for me. The inventor is from San Francisco, and he came one day to Pixar to promote them. We have around a dozen crazy riders now at work, and you can see them along with the traditional scooter riders, should you be invited to visit the studios some day.

If you think they look dangerous, you are probably right. Once the craft is learnt though, riding them and deciding direction and speed is quite natural and safe, while you don't care about going fast at all costs - which is not a good idea in a workplace anyway.

Right, if you have read the title you have figured out by now that I have hurt myself. I can hardly blame the skates... Small but heavy as they are they fit easily in a bag... unless its a paper bag. Long story short, skating with fragile grocery bags downhill is a bad idea for at least two reasons:

• bags can break and disrupt your direction.
• bags prevent you from jumping as promptly when you are unexpectedly heading for a step (reason being the previous point). 

Having broken a foot, I will be on crutches for about a month. Now, obvious as it sounds being a cripple is not easy, anyone who broke a leg or a foot can tell you that. It gets harder if you live on your own and have to commute to work without a car. Despite all that, San Francisco is pretty well equipped for cripples - or for amazingly lazy people. Buses are usually equipped to allow disabled people on, and the historical trams on the F line have special ramps near each stop.

If you cannot leave home, or cannot be bothered, there are several websites for grocery shopping and delivery. Also, I found this (remarkably decent) food delivery portal that made my life a whole lot easier. Online food ordering is a lot less annoying than having to look up places, call, see if they deliver to your address, not know the menu, cope with background noise, have the change when they come, etc... Hiring a movie is also very easy, in the US there are portals like Hulu or Netflix that allow online movie streaming without having to go to the shop.

The best part is that, since I moved to the Research department in Pixar, I can sometimes work from home if my schedule allows it, increasing the value of all the above. Still, I cannot wait to be walking, running, dancing and especially skating on my feet again!

Halloween at Universal Studios

My friends and colleagues from Pixar had the awesome idea of spending the weekend at the Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. The park is located in Los Angeles, so we needed to hire a van that could fit all seven of us. The trip was fantastic, a brilliant excuse to drive down and to see places like Monterey and Big Sur, where the fog, the Sun and the wind contributed to providing an ever changing coastal landscape. The cliffs and the forests were at times breathtaking.

The park opened at 7pm, just after sunset, and it felt very different than it did in other occasions. The darkness was made worse by layers of thick artificial fog, and within it numerous dark figures lurked awaiting for some victims to scare. These people were actually employed by the park to add to the experience, and it definitely worked, at least for the first half hour or so. Dressed in horror costumes and equipped with fake but realistic and loud chainsaws, the actors went straight for the careless visitors, usually resulting in fear, panic and eventually laughter and maybe a photo.

Only some of the rides were available at night, but a few themed haunted houses were added to celebrate Halloween, such as Saw, Halloween or My Bloody Valentine. Inside each of these there were a lot more actors attempting with remarkable success to scare the visitors. Sometimes some actors even posed as visitors, and were dragged into cabinets screaming and definitely spooking the people behind them. I wonder how many people actually worked in the park those nights!

To add to the horror of the night - they spared no expenses! - on our way out of the park we enjoyed the view of a few real fistfights (and probably real bleeding noses) at the bars of the Universal City.

Lovevolution

 

In the spirit of the Love Parade, a music and love festival started in Berlin in 1989, San Francisco created its very own version: the Lovevolution. DJs from all over the country as well as Europe, such as Groove Armada and ATB, came to the fog city to propagate their own love and gospel: music.

To enjoy this festival you really have to love Electronic music. Or at least not mind semi-naked or wasted people. The parade traced a good portion of Market Street, to finish into the Civic Center square. Each float, armed with beautiful men and women, transformed into a stage where several DJs were alternating awesome grooves. Several bars and food stalls were improvised, and the crowd was overwhelming yet very friendly. Do not be fooled by how little people were wearing. It was cold and windy. Dancing to the music, a few drinks and a good dose of penguin effect (everyone standing squeezed in a very tight crowd) were the best way to cope with it.

Waiting for Toy Story 3

While my job is done on Toy Story 3, the movie is not quite done yet. In the meantime, Pixar has released a double feature, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D, meaning that with some polarized or coloured glasses you will be able to see Buzz, Woody and the gang in three dimensions. I do recommend seeing it. Ironically, what makes it worth seeing in my opinion, is the hilarious ancillary animation that was inserted to fill the time between the two features, when many people will be looking away from the screen.

Even though this is not a new release, the double feature has been very successful at the box office, hinting that there is quite some expectation ramping up. If you can't wait either, I'll leave you with this nice mashup I found on youtube.

San Lorenzo

For many years San Lorenzo made me think of a sad poem that the Italian writer Giovanni Pascoli wrote. He spoke of a swallow being killed while trying to feed its toddlers. And he spoke of a man being killed by robbers on his way to see his family after a long travel. That man was his own father. The meteor shower that is visible in those nights was therefore seen by him as if the sky was crying, looking at the tiny evil atom the Earth is.

 

I went with my good fellow Pixarians up on the hills above Berkeley, on Volmert Peak. From there you could have a great view of this tiny atom of evil, from above. But the view looks not evil at all. The usual fog for once was far below us and the little cities of the East Bay transformed it into a misty sea of lights. We watched in awe this ocean below us, and the rain of stars above us. The sky did not seem to cry, it rather seemed like it was playfully trying to reach for us, and we playfully tried to catch with our glimpse as many stars as we could, while enjoying some drinks and playing virtual ocarinas until not long before sunrise.

The french quarter and all that Jazz

  Although Siggraph was great by itself, it also was a unique chance to see a unique city. As you will recall, New Orleans was flooded in 2005 by the hurricane Katrina. The city received an evacuation order but at least 100.000 people refused to do so for several reasons. The delay and sometimes inefficiency of the rescue operations caused many tragedies. One of them was the disorganisation in the evacuation of the Louisiana Superdome, that brought about the overcrowding of the very same Convention Centre where Siggraph Took place. The small contingent of the national guard were not able to control the 20 thousand people crowd and since the transport failed to arrive,  many people died and reports of murders and rapes started to emerge. These events later became a symbol, at least for the subsequent Democrat campaign, of the ineptitude of the Bush/Cheney administration.
 

 In 2009, those same areas show little sign of destruction. At least to those, such as me, who had never been there before. The only significant issue I found was the deficiency of the public transport. The city, however, still looked very beautiful. Unfortunately I had a very short time to spend as a tourist so I opted to see a small portion, but to do it properly.

 I had spent a few nights in and near the French Quarter during that week, catching up with my ex colleagues from London, Madrid or Sydney, or just getting to know better my new colleagues. The night life of that area rivals that of any city I have visited. Unlike San Francisco, bars do not close at 1am, and several things are legal that are not in California.

 One of the touristy highlights of the Quarter is Bourbon Street, the very same street that Sting wrote a song about. I have not seen it before the hurricane, but I have to say it gave me the same vibe as Pier 39 in Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Few locals, many tourists, pseudo authentic things to see. But very much more for adults. Strip clubs and alike are a common sight, as well as rivers of beer - and of very drunk people crawling on the street. There are casinos too around the city. But if you venture further along the Bourbon Street, in the darker and quieter area, you will find some of the oldest bars in the city, as well as some amazing Jazz concerts.

 

   

 Jazz, that is right. Not just in Bourbon's street, but all over Frenchman's street and further out of the French Quarter, this is the city of Jazz. The bars are built for it. Pianos are used as tables, the musicians mix with the public having drinks and celebrating another night of intense life. Be it Dixieland, blues or modern fusion, every band here seems to be so talented. The rhythm dragged us so easily into it, and made us one with the night.

 That is, until we realised it was 5am and we had to get up early for that day's conference. It was even harder for me since I was staying at a youth hostel, where the people kept partying even after sunrise - hard to resist the temptation to join them into the swimming pool and into the vibe that always surrounds young travellers.
 

 On Friday, after the conference, I had the luck of being hosted right inside the French Quarter, by a fantastic Couchsurfer named Daniel. During the last two days I got to live the life of the area as a local, surrounded by locals. I discovered some interesting things. It turns out the architecture of the French Quarter was actually lost a long time ago in a fire. What we can see today is the result of the reconstruction that the then Spanish authorities performed. That perhaps explains the remarkable similarities with the architecture in Andalucia and the frequent tiles with the names of the streets in Castellano.

Yet another great discovery was for me the food. I certainly had heard of the delicious Cajun food. Therefore I did my best to try out as many local recipes as I could. And I have to say, I was not disappointed at all. Very spicy, very tasty. I should say quite unhealthy too, given the amount of oil and fried things. But hey, so delicious. It is not easy to describe, the combination of herbs that characterise these dishes is not too rare elsewhere, yet it is so distinctive here. I had Cajun food before but having it here was a whole different experience - just like it would be to have an authentic Brasato in Monferrato regions of Piedmont. Since I cannot describe it properly, I will leave you with this: a picture of a blackened catfish. Now you have to go there and try.

Siggraph 2009

How did changing department affect me in the short time?
 

I had started on a Monday. On that Tuesday I was told I really should go to this year's Siggraph. On Friday I was supposed to go to Vegas (see previous posts). And on the next Monday Siggraph was already on!

Since I had already paid and committed to go to Vegas, I decided to find some flight from there to New Orleans, where the conference took place this year. I took a red eye on Sunday night and slept a few hours on the plane and at the airport. I arrived to the conference just on time for the Siggraph 2009 awards. It was important that I could make it there on time because two out of three prizes were awarded to my coworkers: Rob Cook and Michael Kass.
 

If you work in my industry, Rob really needs no introduction. Among his great achievements, he was the co-architect and primary author of Renderman. He is also Director at Large for ACM. Michael is also a very remarkable man. I got to know him a little better during the conference and at the parties that took place in those evenings. His award shows again how some individuals can excel in completely diverse skills. Other than being an eminent research figure, he is a world-class ice dancer and a juggler. As a side note, Michael is also working on my same project at Pixar.
 

I was thrilled to see the talks that would take place after the awards. In their acceptance speech, both Rob and Michael faced head-on the apparent crisis that Siggraph is going through. Less and less people showing up year by year, and some say less interesting publications too. The main issue is: has almost everything been discovered already? are all the new discoveries going to be just slight improvements on the established techniques? 

The points that were brought up were very relevant. Perhaps also because of Pixar's achievements, Siggraph conference in its history has deviated from its original scope, computer graphics and interactive techniques, to just computer graphics. According to Rob Cook, Siggraph crisis is an identity crisis. He quoted how physics were thought to be almost entirely discovered at the end of the 1800s, before the theory of relativity, quantum physics and other very major discoveries. He finally listed a number of unexplored problems that may and will keep researchers busy for the next three decades at least. 

Michael focused on what the attitude of the panels that select the papers to be published could/should be. There is a delicate and sometimes arbitrary balance, between being strict to avoid watering down the quality of publications, and being relaxed to catch original approaches and not restrict the field Siggraph spans, otherwise missing out on the next great discoveries. Not an easy task.