The Standing Desk Adventure: Day 1

I've been longingly looking at standing desks for a couple of years now, especially since reading a number of articles/blog posts over recent years reporting that sitting is the new silent killer. I don't know about all that, but working on my last project, I could feel the energy draining out of my body as I sat for hours at my desk fighting the desire to doze off. So I looked at a standing desk as a possible solution for maintaining my focus and energy level (or at least not having them drop off so precipitously).

A reservation I have going into this is that just about all desk transition anecdotes that I've found have been for people who do pretty conventional office work - writing, web research, answering phones, etc. It's been difficult to find examples of artists who've made the switch and their impressions. Animation, in particular, is incredibly time consuming and my worry is that I'll be trading off sitting's sedative effects for fatigue and constant foot/leg pain. So with that in mind, I'm not about to spend $500 on a proper standing desk. Rather, I set out to find the least expensive path to converting my current desk to a standing one, just to try it out and potentially knock it all down if it doesn't work out. And y'know what? Cinder blocks are pretty cheap. For about $10, I now have a standing desk

The pants are there to keep the cinder block debris off the carpet.

cinder blocks x 6 = about $10. 

I'm average-sized for a Filipino guy, meaning that I'm short for an American guy. The cinder blocks raise the desk by 12", which raises the keyboard shelf to about 38" off the ground, which is just about perfect for me.

Standing at it for the first hour, I was like, "Man, this is nice. I dunno about all that 'leg pain' stuff  those internet wussies were complaining about'

After about two hours, I was like, "I feel like my ankles are going to collapse into my heels"

So I went out and bought this 29" bar stool from Target for about $27. The cushioning is a nice touch, but the compression actually makes the stool's height closer to 26". That matters. 

Drawing while standing feels ... different. I can't say that it's that much more uncomfortable than sitting but I haven't done much more than a few sketches. Foot pain is a real problem, though - my heels really hurt, and I expect that to be the case until my legs become accustomed to bearing my weight for extended periods of time. I hope my legs become accustomed to bearing my weight for extended periods of time. 

Lastly, here's a sketch of me drawing while standing, which was drawn while standing. 

Watch 'The Turtle and the Monkey'

I've just made my De Anza College student film, The Turtle and the Monkey available to watch on vimeo and Youtube.

I figured that it's probably time, after about a year of trying to get into all of the free festivals and a few of the paid ones. I wasn't as successful as I had hoped, but you take your lumps, learn from them, and move on. If I could do it over, I'd probably make the film considerably shorter.

That Sporting Life

I was looking through a folder of warmup sketches and found some stuff that I might not have been feeling at the time, but I think look kind of groovy now. First off, some sports themed sketches.

Continuing from yesterday's post, here are a couple more Sacramento Kings ... fan sketches, I guess, from earlier this year. I don't know why I find Isaiah Thomas to be a good subject for practice with distorted perspectives. The second drawing is of sharpshooter Predrag 'Peja' Stojakovic from the glory years of the early 2000's. I was probably humming John Tesh's 'NBA on NBC' theme as I was drawing it.

 

And this sketch is my attempt at drawing boxer Nonito 'Filipino Flash' Donaire in the style of Masanori Morita's 'Rokudenashi Blues' manga. As a teenager, I admired the hell out of Morita, especially how kinetic his fight scenes were, using lines to convey motion blur. But as far as likenesses go, this doesn't look at all like Donaire. 

 So yeah ... basketball and boxing. I'm hella Filipino.

They're playin' baaaaasket-baaaaaall

October means the NBA season is starting up again soon. Here's a drawing of Isaiah Thomas of the Sacramento Kings, minus his tattoos.