What do you want to be?

Do you want to be the snarky person sitting in the corner uttering short remarks that whilst they do provide instant gratification leave everyone else empty inside... Do you want to give what is known...make known what is already known yet in a shinier, faster "more hip" manner? Do you want to be the person afraid to go in depth into anything or anyone because you are afraid of those unknown depths within yourself.... Do you want to tell the same old stories in "new" ways? Leaving the cultural and mythical reservoir empty with only a few tired tumbleweeds rattling around the same territory they always do? Even though it may make people angry some times the truth is the best medicine... So as a filmmaker...artist...whatever... I believe its your responsibility to tell YOUR emotional truth... no matter how "insane, random, bizarre, disturbing or "pointless" it may seem to people...

This is where film has been FUCKED... FUCK the whole business thing... FUCK all the parasites and talentless, passionless fucking scumbags who have turned talented, passionate filmmakers into inane drones capable of only pleasing producers and test audiences... THATS NOT WHAT FILM IS FOR... its not about making "content" or a "product" to be consumed by mindless masses.... PEOPLE WANTED REAL EMOTION...REAL EXPERIENCE...REAL PAIN... REALNESS.... not the trite fake shit in all these modern films..... and FUCK YOU to the person thats saying "its a business thats how it is get over it" FUCK YOU! WE WILL DESTROY YOU AND YOUR WAYS... YOU who tells the young kid to "think realistically" and tells them there is no cinematic Santa Claus... as much as you fuckos hate it.... THE MAGIC IS BACK and MY FRIENDS and I M NIGHTMARE will unravel your boring repetitive pastel airport carpet of mediocrity you call "FILM"... I know some of YOU read this blog and I will say that as much as this whole DIY filmmaking thing may seem like a novelty to you its not going away.... your going away ^ ^

Now... now... passionate filmmakery people in the haus.... you must realize that your days of being the batch processing script to these pasty FUX is OVER.... that is IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS... do you have the GUTS to do what I do? If you don't have the guts you'll continue to be the batch of these biz folks... and you know what if you don't have the guts I dont want to see your films anyway because your probably one of the people mentioned in my first paragraph... The tech is here! The distribution mechanism is here! ITS UP TO YOU how you are able to survive... the audience doesnt care how or where you live they just want to see your film... So get that real honest raw emotion and make a fucking movie and show it to people... if its good the people will respond...then make another one...

Ya see it now? Survival of the fittest...

So getting back to my previous point.... FUCK YOU TO THE PEOPLE SAYING THAT FILM IS JUST A BUSINESS ^ ^ FILM is an ART... for a long time to make films you had to mix with the busnISSY people but that time is NO MORE... If you treat film as business and your film as merely a "product" you and your film will melt into the mediocre masses of bland product kicked out year after year... if your REAL and put real EMOTION in your film and you have fucking GUTS and dare to be BOLD the sky is the limit...

So to all you REAL peeps out there if you don't already know ....PLEAS... DO WHATEVER YOU WANT... THERE ARE NO LIMITS, NO RULES... DON'T LISTEN TO WHAT ANYONE TELLS YOU... learn the technology, study the craft, learn and do everything EVEN if people tell you that you cant or its "unrealistic" or whatever... make your own shit up... be original, passionate and real.... if you FAKE it and simply use the new tools and distribution methods to pretend and be a fake bastard and do the same old shit in a "more hip" way... well... YOU WILL DIE... INSIDE.

Now is this the time Mr. M dot Strange went insane and starting threatening like... psychological and emotional death? Nah... I've always been like... not ok... I've just had to smile and play sane to ease my way in... With HSM... there is no ice cream... there is only nightmare... there is no self censorship... there is no playing nice... there is only darkness... I know you probably think I'm joking but I'm not... I'm just a twisted man full of demons that plays with dolls alone in the dark in a room full of computers... the demons have been released from my mind and have entered the computers..... and in a little more than a year from now you will see what they have created... I hope your ready for it...

I laugh when I read the thoughts of other "indy" filmmakers on they blogs and they like... I laugh because they view of "film" is so far removed from my own... its like to them its just a job or a game or something... I remember back when I was 8 or 9 and my friend said "lets play fight"... I said "ok"... he smiled and got in a fighting stance like a pro wrestler or something... I lunged at him and started punching him in the face with tightly closed little fists... now a little 8 year olds fist can't do much damage... but a twisted grown man's mind can do a lot of.... D.amage O.ver T.ime....

Yeh you know meh Dee Oh Tee.... fire, poison, acid? Nah... HEART STRING MARIONETTE.

END psycho rant to go back to worK.

THIS plays in my head when I write this shit ^ ^

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The power of procedurals

I really LURVE using procedural animation... whenever I can I try to use it... Whether its Xpresso Noise driving Position or rotation... or C4d's own very useful Vibrate tag OR CStools VibrateNull or SineNull... and recently I bought a little plugin called smarttween That does a great job automating some simple animation tasks... I've already used it for some character animation in the new film.... I MEAN most "animators" would not use procedurals I guess if they prided themselves on they keyframe animation skills or somethin BUT I just make films... I love animation BUT I'm making films so I use whatever I can to get the result I want lest I spend a month animating one shot ^ ^

In the future I see myself using more and more puppetry techniques in 3d and procedurals... So that I can work faster... Eventually I'd like to create an animated feature a year ^ ^ K back to work for me....

Landscapes, forests, mountains in C4D

Things just keep getting better for c4d users making films ^ ^ The guy who made the ScoobyCam steadycam plugin and the Splinespread plugin...both of which I own...he is going to release this SurfaceSpread Plugin

It looks REALLY useful for building and filling out sets as it can distribute objects randomly and naturally with ease... it also builds the terrain?! Now I already finished building my sets and I spent MOST of the time laying out the objects trying to give them a random appearance... I used the plugin PaintonSurface on Mograph cloners in Object mode with random effectors and it worked pretty well but this new plugin is SO much faster... So now I can create set extensions with ease.... it should be released before August 14th...

ALL THAT and a new version of C4d comes out in August ^ ^ Pure WIN I say_EtH!!!

Linear Workflow....tech stuff

I've been following this thread on cgtalk about Linear workflow... I tested out the Linear workflow setup in C4d... you has to adjust the output gamma and adjust all the materials gamma to do this until that plugin comes out... and yeh its pretty interesting... the lighting is a lot more even and less dramatic than non linear NOW it seems this would be a lot more useful for architectural stuff or mixing 3d/Live action... since I'm doing an all 3d fantasy film I WANT it to be more dramatic so the mega contrast and hotspots works for me... I was thinking of going linear on HSM but then I'd have to apply a filter to every single material on every single file... BUT if this plugin comes out before I go into production I might check it out agains...

So next month NEW versions of Cinema 4d AND Zbrush come out....I go into production the following month....hmmmm.... it will be close but if there are some awesome new features in the new C4d that will really add to the production I'll have to jump in and upgrade... I'll DEF be upgrading to Zbrush 4 because its free and it can't screw up the production if its buggy nah mean...

With about a month until production.... I'll be tweaking rigs, optimizing characters for animation and rendering, tweaking set lighting and optimizing for rendering.. doing render tests over the network etc... lots of things to do... the busywork before the production starts and the "AM I READY?!? AM I READY?!?! AM I READY??!" inside my head 24/7 haha... The answer is never "YES I AM READY" you just have to be brave and jump in despite the ITCHY doubts and fears...

The rigging goes oN....

So I just finished the template rig for HSM... since I'm animating alone and I want to make HEAVY use of Cinema 4d's new NLA w/ Motion Clip system... I'll be using the same skeleton/rig for most all the characters... this way there's only one to rig/setup and I can share the motion clips with all the models...

With your generous donations ^ ^ Thanks AgaiN! I bought Cactus Dan's Character Suite of plugins... I used his Joints and Skin plug to create the joints or "bone" *cough* Then I used his C4DIK tooks to rig it all up AS I followed his FREE 4 HOUR video tutorial on how to set it up right....

I also LOVE C4d's visual selector... I used it a ton on WATS and will use it even more on HSM... So yeh... I'm also using Cactus Dan's new hand tags which allow you to store and re-use hand poses which will be... ummm... HAND_E...ha ha ha...ummmm yeh... but seriously I was able to make an easy to use superlight rig....

Since I'm away from studio strange at the moment as I stumble through Europe performing unspeakable acts of geek I'm doing all this work on my first gen Macbook Pro... the GFX card is pretty weak....this is GOOD though because if I can make a rig that performs ok on this old laptop that means its going to fly on my workstation...

I should say that I have done a lot of bone/skin/rigging in the past but it was all trial and error and I didn't really know what I was doing... and if I screwed up the rig I'd start over... now it seems I kinda know what I'm doing ^ ^ And I'm doing my best to make the rig and its controls as fast and efficient as possible... You want control YEH but not TOO MANY controls because it can really slow down the animation process... So I'm trying not to tweak out too much....