pixels the viz hamster

so last winter me and a friend made a video for our upcoming "viz-a-go-go" spring showcase.  our concept was to do a totally over the top Art commercial, a sort of parody of the zales diamond commercials and the like.  it was the most developed of our ideas that we came up with one night, and since the idea of "hamsters" kept creeping in, we decided we had to have a hamster in this video (i also got a cake in the face, which was awesome....)

brandon bought a hamster from the local pet store (after we checked their return policy....) and i grabbed a friend who happened to be walking the halls and who had nice looking hands and had her help with the shot (she did great.)
everyone was in love with the little white russian hamster (including me), but when one of the faculty started calling him "pixels" (which, brandon astutely noted, is the cutest name you could give a hamster in the viz department), well, attachments started to happen.  our hand model decided she wanted to keep him, but she was going out of town that weekend, so brandon and i were soon at the store that evening, buying a cage, food, bedding, and everything else.

since his owner is on an internship this summer, pixels is living the back room of the viz lab.  one of the girls has taken it upon herself to take care of him (which i was very relieved to hear; i've been quietly wondering about that all summer...) and sometimes we take him out and let him roam the lab in his plastic hamster ball.

for the heck of, here's our video.  i don't think it's amazing, but dang, it was fun to set up lights and a camera again.  (we converted it to black and white, which was a bit of a sacrifice, since the colors were so beautiful, as you can see above....)