What/Who's Up?

How are all you Insomniacs doing? It's pretty quiet here, what's everyone up to these nights?

I've slipped back into animation-land and have been spending many a long night there. I've got 500+ hours of work in on my next animated short, The Girl and the Ghost and it's really starting to take shape!

Come on, Squad! Let's have some updates!

Back to the Night

Well, my period of sleeping like a "normal" person seems to be coming to an end for now. Funny thing is, it appears to be happening unintentionally.
I'm getting re-acclimated to the quiet, watching some movies again (tonight was Spirited Away, loved it), and trying to gear up to be creative again.
I finished animating my last movie in December and haven't done much (aside from a little writing) since. Suddenly, I have a handful of new projects clamoring for my attention, all requiring me to step it up to the next level. Once I figure out how to approach these, it'll mean many many all-night animation sessions.
Insomnisquad, Sir Drake is back.

The City That Never Sleeps

Greetings, insomnisquad!

Wow! It has been awhile since I've posted--as well as others--guess we've all been sleeping well, or probably just working on other things that keep us up late.

Anyway, a friend just said to me, "New York is the city that never sleeps and apparently neither do you."

How appropriate then that I'm in the process of moving to the Big Apple!?!? All the excitement of my new gig with Rocketboom and moving cross-country is keeping me up. Well, those two things and this little guy from dinner...


I know better, but...I couldn't help myself! Hope you're all doing well.

With love from your Squad Commander from the insomniac's playground!

It's Been A While...

Hi Leah, and the rest of the 'Squad! It's been a while since I've made a post here. I have had nights of imsomnia, but kept forgetting to type up an entry. In any case, my lack of sleep tonight is due to the hopefully exciting week ahead, and the fact my mind won't shut up.

I've been looking for work locally after graduating from Lethbridge College for three weeks. Nerds On Site finally got back to me, and I should know if I'm hired by the end of the online interview on Tues night. Technology is my passion, so to work on it and write about it through freelance journalism is my dream.

Otherwise, if 'Nerds' doesn't hire me, a construction company has said they'll hire me, and a couple of other labour positions look promising as well. I'll still look into par-time freelancing So, it's an exciting week!

The plan was to go to the gym later this morning, but now I need to raincheck to catch up on sleep. I hate when that happens.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, it's http://twitter.com/kevinlcc

A Bit of Imagery

Like Leah, I've been absent from the 'Squad for a while. I ended up in the hospital for a couple days back in March. Ever since my hospital stay, I've been on a "normal" person's schedule.

But, as I mentioned on my blog, I had some "interesting" dreams, thanks to a combination of medicine and dehydration.
I recently decided to whip up a visual recreation of one of my more freaky moments, where I saw my hospital room's wall turn into a hellish tunnel with an old lady holding a cat.
I must have been really dehydrated.
Anyway, at least it made for a pretty cool picture. At least I think so.

Click to see bigger.

Thoughts?

We're Still Here

Though I have been sleeping like a normal myself, tonight the insomnia is back in full force! Of course, I did drink a cup of black chai tea at 10 pm...probably not helping. Please keep contributing to the site and share with your friends! I always enjoy reading what the community puts up. Makes the early morning hours a bit more interesting. Now to start the day only to sleep later...

- Leah

Penny for your thoughts...

So I'm starting a new project, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. I'm still working on the site, but here's the Purpose of the project. (Leah, I'd especially love to hear your thoughts on it).

Purpose:

After a long night discussion at Shakey's Pizza, Christina and Z had concluded that the best option to take a silly idea out of their heads was to act on it...

A penny: 1/100 of a dollar. It's the atom that makes up the molecule known as the U.S. dollar; and, unless you are a scientist, the atom means very little to anyone. It's often overlooked for what they represent: the means to an end. Everyone cares more about the end than the means. And so, the penny is often considered irrelevant all over the United States of America--unless you are a frugal individual, a scientist, of course.

Like a penny, our project has two sides...

On the surface of a penny, President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, is portrayed in profile. It's an artistic interpretation of the most popular president of the United States of America (http://tinyurl.com/3jqr3z), and in the same way our surface project is our artistic representation: Christina will collected the pennies and turn them into art pieces.

She will keep you up-to-date on her current art project on her twitter blog (@findapenny) or through the Progress page in our menu.

On the opposite side of the modern penny, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is featured. What many people don't realize is, if you look closely, you can see the silhouette of the Lincoln statue inside of the Lincoln Memorial.

In that respect, our project will also have a secretive, ulterior motive: it will attempt to prove to the world that, behind it's external hard representation, the internet can group people together to make something (an end) out of the smallest donations (the means). That is, if given the possibility to group together for something positive, like art, the internet population can motivate itself (due to altruistic, novel, passive, or forced reasons) to join in becoming a contributor. The internet population just needs to be given a chance. A chance to prove itself beyond the worlds fear mongering expectation.

Z will, therefore, collect information from people who have donated a single penny (or more if they wish), and compile a list that will be presented in our Acknowledgement Page and on his twitter blog (@sendapenny) to show the world that one person, one penny can contribute to something larger.

Ultimately,

The goal in collecting these pennies will be to assist in helping Christina and Mr. Z pay for their absurdly high college loans. Christina and I felt that you, the donator, should not be lied to when it comes to the ultimate purpose of this project. We, therefore, promise each donator that we will not use any of the donated money until we finish all of our art and social experiments. Thank you for your donations and time.

-J. "Z" Aguirre