VFXhack

With all the crazy hours us VFX peeps slog through on a regular basis, certain activities can get swept to the side. Reading seems to be at the top of that list. After a long day chained to the desktop it’s hard to do anything at home but veg and try to unwind. And carving out a hour or so a night for reading just doesn’t seem like the thing to do considering there are several more songs left to be unlocked on Guitar Hero (or maybe that’s just me). Lucky for me I have a about an hour and half commuting time to catch up on my book learnin. Of course holding a page full of printed words up in front of my face while I wind my way down Laurel Canyon every day might prove to be a bit problematic. Audiobooks to the rescue. Now I know some of you are saying “Audiobooks? That’s not really reading.” Well, I hate to inform you that you are wrong. All of my friends who are avid listeners have decided that as long as you listen to the whole audio program in it’s unabridged form, you can say that you have read the book. So there, print snobs. Here are my five picks for great listens picked especially for my VFX brethren.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman-

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks that are read by their author. Hearing Neil Gaiman recount many of the short stories he’s written over the years is pure magic. The tales the gamut including examples of Gaiman’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror and even a bit of poetry. There is a story set in the world of the Matrix and novella that features the continuing adventures of some of the characters masterpiece American Gods. A lot of the stories are bite-sized and easy to finish off if you’ve only got a few minutes to kill between renders.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson-

If you are a know-it-all like me, you must read this book. It gives you just enough info on about this rock that we live on to be dangerous, or at least completely annoying over cocktails. Bryson covers a wide range of scientific discoveries that you alway thought that you should know about and presents them with a mater of fact sense of humor that even makes them interesting. A word of warning though. This book shows how humans scientists use their powers of reason and observation to create “theories”. Intelligent designers might be offended.

Star Wars (Dramatized) by George Lucas-

Imagine watching the original Star Wars (episode IV, in case you just arrived in a time machine from 1976) without any visuals what-so-ever. I mean just the audio and a blank screen. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it would be a tremendously boring experience. So when, Lucas commissioned the for Radio version of his Sci-Fi classic in 1981 he made sure that it included expanded scenes not featured in the film to flesh out the radio play’s 6 1/2 hour running time. The result is a must for any Star Wars fan and includes great performances from Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels.

World War Z by Max Brooks-

I’m not a huge fan of the alternate history genre. I really couldn’t give a crap what some history nerd thinks the world would be like of the South actually won the civil war. But if you are like me, you have spent countless hours thinking to yourself “Now what would I do during a Zombie apocalypse?”. Well World War Z gives you a ground level view of what happens when the dead roam the earth on search of human flesh in the form of first person accounts from the Zombie War. If there is one thing I’ve learned from this book, if you are ever in the front lines of a confrontation with the undead, stay away from large bodies of water.

The Areas Of My Expertise by John Hodgman-

Hodgman himself reads his Farmer’s Almanac meets The Onion send up of a variety of topics from Lobsters to Hobo Matters. You’ll probably recognize Hodgman from the Daily Show and as the PC on the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials. Be careful though if you are listening on headphones while other people are around you will laugh out loud and appear to be an insane person to other join your vicinity. Take note that the list of 700 hobo names is available for free from Hodgman’s web site and takes over an hour for him to read.

LINK to hobo drawings at e-hobo

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 7:56 pm and is filed under funny, opinion, vfx, visual effects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.