Flash project in progress

as you can tell, I am very busy with projects. I have one week left before finals week and 3 huge projects. None are completed yet and in addition I have to write a research paper for Biology. I chose to do it on darwinism and Nazis.This is a project I am working on in a program called Flash. Most little internet advertisements are done in this simple vector program. It is a lot of fun. I think it is great for simple kids animations.

Again, I will try to keep those of you who are interrested updatetd on my progress.

After Effects Final Project in progress

I am trying to keep those of you who are interrested updated on my progress. This is my project I am currently working on in a program called After Effects. It is going to have some more edits and text added to it. It is supposed to be a title sequence for a show about a Jazz singing cockroach Diva called Coco (inspired by Chicago jazz singer Coco Taylor). Here my final project work in progress...enjoy

Teenagers

We did not make many pictures during that time ...the family had broken up and I think Papa was done with taking family pictures.This is when we were all teenagers. I am guessing, Sabine 18, Tanja 16, Oliver and Markus 14....Sebastian ?

Eating disorders

This is me probably at my fattest. I was 17. This was our Christmas picture for 1986.

yep, I said it Eating Disorders, ....what a subject and a lot of people can relate. When or better were does it start? Do I have an eating disorder?

from the web site http://www.mirror-mirror.org/ed.htm

"When most people hear of someone with an eating disorder they almost automatically assume the person has a problem with food. Eating disorders are not a sign that a person has a problem with food, rather eating disorders are actually only the symptoms of underlying problems in that person's life. With proper treatment, people can fully recover. "

well...that is were my problem with definition begins...I truly believe that I have a problem with food, not with anything else but food...I am sure therapists would say, that I am in denial etc. but I believe that I eat too much in relation to my output. I love the way food tastes, makes me feel, smells...I could stick my nose into a freshly baked baguette and die suffocating on it.

I have been up and down in weight all my life. I do believe though looking back at pictures of myself as a child, that I was told that I was fat way before I even became fat ( Being called "Miss Piggy").

OK I am about to contradict myself lol

I can pretty much pin point it to one event that made me fat, well...at least that is what I think and what pictures of myself tell me.

And yes, it probably had nothing to do with foot but my emotional state.

Mama and Papa got divorced and I got fat!

So I got up to about 180 pounds when I was 17.

My Dad told me I was fat and he had his own issues with me being fat and seemed pretty hurt by my obesity. I decided I needed to lose weight for whatever stupid reasons, probably none were the right ones: getting Dad's love and acceptance, getting siblings acceptance, feeling pretty, wanting to be pretty like sister and Mom, bla bla, boohooo me.

Self petty, disgusting....

any-who...my aunt, who also wanted to lose weight, and I took "before" pictures, went to a "fat clinic" and got powders in 3 different nasty flavours that could be turned into cookies, shakes and other nasty, slimy, gooey substances.

I lost about 10 pounds in one month, but I was so disgusted by the nasty stuff. Just the thought of another shake made me nauseous. But I was determined to lose weight...

so I stopped eating. I bought a bunch of juices and vegetable drinks and started fasting...that's at least what I called it, but really, I just didn't know what else to do to lose weight , then to stop eating...that went on for a few months and I lost about 70 pounds.

Yeah me!

I got lots of compliments, even got my first boyfriend at the age of 18....well , we kissed.

Needless to say once I started eating normal again my starved body sucked it all in and I gained again.

I never got as fat again, but pretty close...

I think I am finally at a good place , working out (Yoga 5 times a week) and eating healthy is what got me sane, I am still "thick" ....oh well, I am pretty sure I will never be skinny, but I am finally healthy.

So here are those picture

So what got this crazy rambling on started are some pictures my dad found of me. These are pictures he took after I was officially done with the diet. I didn't stop there though and lost some more after that.

I will post the fat pictures as well, if Papa finds them.

Bill looked at the skinny pictures and said " your knees are going to give you problems , you will probably get back pain because they are uneven andyou are bow legged".

Bless his heart, he doesn't see skinny Tanja, he sees Tanja through the eyes of love with concern for my long term health history, well.. he says he wants me to be around.

I love him so much.

One more wrestling dog movie

this is what's been going on non stop for the last 2 days!

Cody and Luca

This is Cody, we are watching him for a couple of days for the Thanksgiving holidays. Cody is part Shit-Tzu part Poodle. Luca and him been having a lot of fun chasing each other through the house...for the dog lovers here are some pictures and movie clips...

Here are Cody and Luca chasing each other

Cody and Luca playing in the basement.

Luca and Cody enjoying the first snow fall of the season.

Thanksgiving

Bill and Tanja's Thanksgiving: Blockbuster marathon, we watched a ton of movies, turned our livingroom into a huge coach-bed campside, we ate ribs, chicken, butternut squash, stuffing, green beans, biscuits, and cheesecake. and the first snowfall came just in perfect time with Thanksgiving..

Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

The original...My Dad loves DaVinci, especially the Vitruvian Man

south park version

you get this when you google German woman.

Celebrating Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, Mayoral Candidate George Davis bares all to God and country outside the entrance to the Mayor's Office (room 200), at San Francisco City Hall following the first 2007 mayoral debate earlier today. Davis, a Buddhist nudist, is running on a single-issue platform to designate areas of Golden Gate Park 'clothing optional.'

Nancy Grace gave birth to twins

OK , trust me I get it, we wait and wait and then suddenly it is too late...or is it not? Common 48? Nancy Grace is 48 and gave birth to twins and... surprise surprise...complications.

New Mom Nancy Grace Is Hospitalized
1 day ago
ATLANTA (AP) — Nancy Grace, who gave birth to twins earlier this month, has been hospitalized with blood clots in her lungs, a complication of her recent pregnancy.
The 48-year-old Headline News talk anchor sought treatment Sunday after she experienced discomfort and began having trouble breathing while on her way to church, said CNN spokeswoman Janine Iamunno.
"She was brought to the emergency room in Atlanta," Iamunno said in a statement Tuesday. "Her doctors found two blood clots in her lungs, which occurred as a result of the pregnancy. She is currently recovering and is expected to be released by the end of the week."

well..and then Frieda Birnbaum who is 60 and gave birth to twins...

Woman defends decision to give birth at 60
Frieda Birnbaum, who just had twins, says she wants to be role model

Those who believe it is wrong for older women to bear children need to get in step with a society that is living longer, a 60-year-old woman who gave birth to twins this week said Thursday on TODAY.
“It's wonderful. It's wonderful,” Frieda Birnbaum, who delivered healthy baby boys on Tuesday, said during a live interview from a New Jersey hospital. Birnbarm is believed to be the oldest woman ever to give birth to twins in the U.S.
“I think those people need to get ready for what's coming up in our society. Whenever there's anything new, people cannot comprehend or have difficult getting comfortable," she said. "There are a lot of middle-aged women [having babies] — 40s, 50s, now I just turned 60. That's going to be acceptable. They have to just keep up with what's going on with society.”

The evidence is in: Old mothers live longer and are smarter than the rest of us.

BY MICHELE Y. PRIDMORE-BROWN When Virginia Woolf was told that female brains were smaller than male brains and therefore less capable, she retorted that science was infected with the patriarchal virus. For centuries, this virus not only rendered female brains unworthy of study, it also influenced medical and popular attitudes about pregnancy and motherhood.
Not that long ago, delaying motherhood to pursue work or an education was viewed with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Concerned grandmothers were likely to take an aspiring careerist aside and stage-whisper that, if she put off babies for her work -- or God forbid, an advanced degree -- her ovaries might just shrivel up. In the early part of this century, medics intimated that delaying motherhood could lead to all kinds of nervous diseases, including false or hysteric pregnancies known as "puff" babies. Teddy Roosevelt singled out mothers of big families as the ultimate role models for young women. In a 1903 presidential address, he claimed that any woman who balked at having children was a "criminal against the race" and an "object of contemptuous abhorrence."
Women can heave a collective sigh of relief that sociocultural mores about late motherhood have changed, thanks largely to the women's movement. Still, some gray-haired mothers who find themselves panting after toddlers may still wonder what shape they'll be in when their kids hit the teen years. After all, don't young mothers sail unscathed through pregnancy and the postpartum period with rubber band waists, while their older counterparts face a higher incidence of varicose veins, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and other complications? Is early motherhood better for your body? Not necessarily, according to a series of recent studies on aging and reproduction. They suggest that it behooves women to do what growing numbers of them are doing anyway: Have children late and infrequently.
European researchers, drawing on 12 centuries of genealogical records of the British aristocracy, have shown a clear tradeoff between early childbearing and longevity. In an article published last December in Nature, two gerontologists at the University of Manchester found that women who delay having children until their 30s and 40s, and then have only one or two, are more likely to live into their 80s, 90s and beyond. Female longevity, they say, is linked to the number of children a woman has and her age at the birth of her first child. This study comes in the wake of another carried out in the Boston area by a team of Harvard researchers led by Thomas T. Perls. It showed that centenarians are four times more likely than the general population to have had their first child in their 40s.
Consider the late Madame Jeanne Calment of Arles, France. Despite eating two pounds of chocolate a week and smoking until the age of 117 (when she reportedly stopped because she could no longer light up unaided), she managed to make it to a record-breaking 122 years. University of Georgia gerontologist Daniel Promislow speculates that her long life may well have been due, at least in part, to her having only one child.
Reading these studies, I also found myself thinking of my 80-year-old mother, who is still out on the tennis court lobbing backhands past opponents half her age. In the past, I had attributed her seemingly eternal youth to her hardy Swiss genes -- though her parents died young and looked their age. But maybe the answer lies more in my belated entrance into her life: She had me at the age of 45.

Brian Selznick

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
My favourite children's book ever...I am so inspired by him.

Benetton

United colors of Bungardt-Price and here the inspirations to my version of the benetton campaign

Generations

Marlon, Markus, Papa, Opa und Uropa.....done by Papa

National Survivors of Suicide Day Nov. 17

Beate Bungardt 1945-1976

Tanja and Beate 1971

My mother committed suicide when I was 7 and I have not really ever dealt with it, thought about it etc, except talked to my Dad .
A college friend of mine told me that her Dad had committed suicide as well and that she would like to go to a "Out of The Darkness Walk" with me (this is a walk for people who lost friends or family to suicide).

I never even thought about joining anything about suicide survivors etc. But my friend really made me think about it. Maybe there are some issues I need to address? I didn't think that I have any issues I need to resolve but then...

...well I did cry when I saw this documentary about this mommy who had cancer. She had a little baby girl who she would never be able to get to know, because her cancer was so bad that she knew that she did not have enough time left to see her growing up. So she decided to make little movies about herself, telling her daughter who she was. This helped the daughter to get to know her mother who she never met. The mother made birthday, christmas etc. presents in advance that her husband had to give to her daughter every year. This woman loved her daughter so much and did everything she could to be able to let her daughter know how much she loved her. She desperately wanted her daughter to know who her mother was. This daughter was able to get to know her through these hours of video tape the mother had made prior to her death.

I am so fucking jealous of this girl.

I only ever had anger towards my mother for taking the easy way out and for being so selfish. I have always been convinced that she had no love for me whatsoever. Maybe listening to others who might have given it some more thought then me will teach me more about it?

Unfortunately I was unable to go to the last walk that was in Illinois, but I plan on going to one in the future. I also started reading up on it on this web site

http://www.afsp.org/

...and on Saturday...

Ninth Annual National Survivors of Suicide Day Preparations Underway

Program to Reach Over 135 Conference Sites Nationwide and Internationally
Webcast Available on the AFSP Website with Online Chat to Follow Program

On Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007, AFSP will sponsor its ninth annual National Survivors of Suicide Day, reaching out to tens of thousands of people who have lost a loved one to suicide. The day of conferences will connect survivors through a satellite and Internet broadcast, allowing survivors to share their experiences of loss.

How we met animation

found this on youtube, thought some other animation junkies like myself might enjoy this....

At the Pool awwwww

Papa, Markus and Marlon at the pool!

Honors Achievement Luncheon

Today we had the Honors Achievement Luncheon for The Illinois Institute of Art in Downtown at a Restaurant called Rumba. It was nice to be recognized for our achievements...
I got a little "verklemmt" right before I left to drive there. Bill was not able to go with me but he was at the car and told me how proud he was of me.... and I told him how appreciative I am that he is making this dream of mine a reality. I love school and I am so happy to be able to do this. It is not just the financial support but also the emotional support he gives me. I would have never thought I could go back to school and do this, if Bill had not pushed me. He is my biggest cheerleader and I love him so much. So this award is not only for me but also for him... Thomas Moore, Timmy (Wojtek Batko), Brian, Chris Blake (Head of the department) and Rob Rice

Bill Plympton

Joey, Angie, Ashlee and Paige...tired college students waiting to see "Idiots and Angels" Yep, I was dorky enough to ask for a picture with him! he is such an inspiration! He is so talented and such a nice guy!

The movie was great and it felt cool being one of the first people to be honored to be able to watch his almost finished piece.

Miami Ink Tattoo

For my Dad's and my birthday two years ago Bill flew us to Miami...and I got a tattoo! I will put up some more pics some other time...you can see my Dad in the background taking pictures.

Sabine and Ezra

It is great seeing my family all grown up. Here is my sister with her son. Fall in California...looks just like Fall in Chicago or Frankfurt or...

Bungardt Familie

Mama, Papa, Oliver and Markus all met for a Chili eating/ cooking thing as a thank you for the winter tire mounting on Oliver's smart car. Well, insiders know, that this is pretty amazing seeing my family together like this...definitely makes me warm and fuzzy inside...and I wish I was there with them.....

Fall

Fall in Chicago. Our house is at the end of this road.

Luca again, ...I don't know what's up with his tongue?