Donut Man is a character I created mostly to try my hand at rigging a character in Maya. He's fully rigged for animation now, so I tend to use him for every test project I do. I was initially just testing the Fisheye camera function, but realized that this would make a pretty awesome animation. I've done a couple of camera moves and I might just make this into a 30 second disco dancing short. We'll see where it goes when I get some time. He sure looks great in a disco setting though!

To get a little more speed out of my Mac Pro from 2006, I decided to upgrade my system harddrive to a Corsair 128 GB SSD Performance disk. I had heard that SSD drives could boost system performance by quite a great deal, and wanted to try it out. At 500 USD, it was a bit pricey, but worth a shot. It's a lot cheaper than buying a new Mac Pro anyway.

Installation was super easy. The drive is 80 grams in weight, and pretty tiny. I just put it inside my Icy Dock 2.5 SSD to 3.5 SATA drive converter, flipped the cover down and swoop. It was connected. I screwed it onto the Mac Pro's hinge and it was ready to go. I initialized it in OS X, and just ran an OS X install directly to the drive. Easy.

Shut-down/Boot up time:
To get this 100% accurate, I decided to use the restart function to gauge boot times. Basically this also shows how much time the computer uses to shut down and then restart.

Standard harddrive: 1 minute 26.6 seconds
SSD harddrive: 26.7 seconds

Application start-up time:
I also did a test of how much different the application startup time was between the two harddrive types.
All running Snow Leopard, no plugins installed.

Adobe Photoshop CS5
Harddrive: 22.6 seconds
SSD: 4.4 seconds

Adobe Illustrator CS5
Harddrive: 21 seconds
SSD: 5 seconds

Adobe After Effects CS5
Harddrive: 35 seconds
SSD: 29.9 seconds

Autodesk Maya 2011 64 bits (1 plugin)
Harddrive: 30 seconds
SSD: 8.3 seconds

As you can see, some of these apps launch at incredible speed on an SSD drive compared to a standard SATA harddrive. Maya actually takes 22 seconds longer to start on that drive. So far, this is looking like a very good upgrade to my Mac.And it worked a lot better than the voodoo curse I tried putting on it last week.

So to sum up:
Superior SSD Technomonology 1 - Voodoo 0.

KARVT just released my artist series Macbook Skin. Laser etched onto authentic fine quality wood, ready to attach to your Mac for $50.KARVT is the product of my friend Kurt Barbee and his business partner/designer Sean Herman. Truly quality products, made with great finesse.

Buy one here:
http://karvt.com/store/bard-standal-ninja-pandas/

I am not entirely sure how my Pirate Pandas became "Ninja Pandas", but that's cool

Deinos is now ready and available for sale at
http://deinos.hellobard.com/

It seems like my Skulliphant BUD toy has been released to the world's designer toy stores. Like the excellent Rotofugi:
Skulliphant BUD at Rotofugi

I even found them on ebay:
Ebay auction for Skulliphant BUDs

Awesome ^--^

Fukoko is a creature that brings good luck from Japanese mythology. So here we are, a quick 3B pencil drawing of the little guy. I then boot up Maya!

After a little work, the cube I started out with, is starting to take shape.

There we go, modelling nearly done.

And here we are with the UV-mapping and texturing done. Next up, animation!

Finished and animated, ready for my new portfolio site

A box of 50 Skulliphant Bud of the Month from JAMUNGO! just arrived!

This is my first production toy that will be sold around the world. Edition of 800 normal colors and 200 clear. Really happy with these, they look so great!

I've got a bunch of Spotify Invites up for grabs, so feel free to use one or give it to a friend:

New invites:
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XGjEGUi2FEkBzDgN
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H2zbTVR6T8jqMqH4
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Heeee's the doooonut maaaan and he likes to daaaance - daaaance - daaaaaaance!

See it here:

Donut Man Director's Cut from Bard Vandal on Vimeo.

'The Birth of Deinos' is my solo show in New York City, on the 15-19th July at Ouchi Gallery in collaboration with Shadow Plastic. The five first Deinos figures will be sold here along with a selection of giclèe canvases and prints. If you'd like to get ahold of a Deinos toy, this will be the only chance for the next two months.