Mike Milo’s Journal

You go into a room and instantly forgot why you went in there in the first place. You call someone and forget why. You’re driving and pass up your exit. You eat too much ice cream because you forget you’re on a diet. No, wait that’s probably just me… anyway, I know I am guilty of these things and so are many people I know. What’s interesting is that it just might be our food that’s doing it to us!
When I first moved to California I worked at a studio called Sierra Online which eventually became Sierra Games. While there my job was to animate characters traditionally as they were trying to get away from pixel pushing animation.
Anyway, One of the people who worked there was the sister of a man who worked for the Nutrasweet company who told her that in no way should she ever consume Nutrasweet; that it had caused brain damage and forgetfulness in testing. I confess I mostly forgot about that over the years (Aha! Nutrasweet rears it’s ugly head already!) until my wife sent me an email this morning talking about the dangers of Nutrasweet and specifically Aspartame. Granted the article below has been disputed in a number of places but then I go back to my friend’s brother’s claim. Truth or Fiction; an email verifying website mentions that David Squillacote, MD Senior Medical Advisor for Multiple Sclerosis Foundation issued a retort that the letter was unfounded and grossly inaccurate. Snopes also claims this is false but I still wonder. (more…)

Here’s a new caricature of me for 2008 that I did for a forum I belong to…

Here’s some renders of a mall I built and textured in Maya. It’s really hard to get the light to look right. So much math involved…

Very cool breakdown of the Writer’s strike and the details behind it… by Tim Kazurinsky!

Woohoo!
I’m finally allowed to say something about this but Sketchbook Pro is being updated! The new app was announced at Autodesk’s 2008 World Press Days We were hoping it would be called Sketchbook 3 but it looks like it will be called Sketchbook Pro 2009 to keep with Autodesk’s current naming convention scheme.

Sketchbook Pro 2009 will be released on April 2nd and will be available for Intel Macs as well as PCs!

I was lucky enough to be part of the beta team and although I can’t comment specifically on what the new features will be, the crew at Autodesk has added some nice features to an already awesome program!

I am very excited about his development because Sketchbook Pro consists of 80% of my drawing arsenal these days.

Yay Autodesk!

Cool!
Out of Birmingham AL, comes Milo’s Hamburgers!

They even have a cool jingle!

Milo’s jingle

I always wanted my own restaurant…

Until recently I’ve been using the same animation desk that I used in art school- a drafting table with a hole cut in it and a light under it. Last year a friend of mine was selling a Hanna Barbera desk which is really cool as I know that stuff like Dexter’s Lab and Powerpuff Girls was drawn on as well as many other cartoons. Anyway I brought it home but never really set it up until my brother helped me fix my studio up a bit.

I swear I have the modern day version of Termite Terrace.

Milowerx Studios 2008

Another shot of my studio, You can see my house in the distance to the left.

Anyway, I reorganized my studio and setup my tablet PC on the Hanna Barbera desk- sort of old meets new. I love it!

Here’s some pics…

This was my original desk bought in 1987

Here’s a shot of my portable tablet on the desk in the Family room at my house…
I do this every night because my Father-in-Law sleeps in my studio at night…

Another shot of the Portable Tablet PC on my make-shift desk

Here’s a shot my new setup in my studio ( converted Guest house).
This is the Hanna Barbera desk I bought for $100! Sweet huh?

Another angle on my Animation Desk Setup.

Yet another angle on my Animation Desk setup.

Here’s an opposite angle looking from my animation desk. This is my basic PC setup.
Nothing special but it ain’t bad. the guest house is about
600 sq. feet which is pretty good for what I need.