M dot Strange's blog

Here is a quick list I rattled off before work in regard to solo 3d feature filmmaking... THESE are my OWN PERSONAL ones... I'm NOT trying to tell you that these are THE RIGHT WAY... this has just been my way that's worked for me...  they aren't in any particular order cept the order I wrote them in. ------------------------------------ M dot D00000nt'S Don't spend over $1500 on your workstation (not including monitors) Why spend $3000+ on a workstation now when you can buy one for $1500 then afford to upgrade it in 18-24 months when new tech is out? Don't buy your render systems until you actually need to render Don't try anything in production WITHOUT TESTING IT FIRST… don't send anything out to render as a final without doing render tests first to look for potential issues Don't upgrade your hardware/software while in production (unless render times are insanely slow) Don't create complex rigs…only build in the controls you NEED..keep

Ya know I've been thinking about where 3d animation is heading... its been getting easier and easier to do and yes eventually it will be so easy "anyone can do it".... NOW anyone can do it today WITH ENOUGH DESIRE to sit down and learn! NOW I know theres people out there who say "I'm just a storyteller...I just want to tell stories and I'll wait till its easy enough to do so" Now if you ask me THEY LACK DESIRE... So using my awesome MatH skills I'll be like NO DESIRE = CRAP WORK... Having said that I'm sure some kids will create some ILL STUFF with these new super easy tools but they won't do so because its the easiest thing they found...it just happened to be the current state of technology when they got the desire to tell stories... BUT if your an adult today and your using this "I'm just a storyteller" excuse... WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE?! You have none other than because your lazy and you lack desire most likely... I see people

So I'm pretty much spending the whole month on ONE page of the script... I'm almost finished with this crazy page... what I've been doing is not even the whole page its like a few sentences ^ ^ It's like X character fights these guys then like this army and giant monster attack.... Its the part of the film where in my head I'm like THIS HAS TO BE THE MOST AGGRO SHIT IN THE FILM and apparently crazy epic aggro stuff takes forever too make 0_o I'm going to spending 3 days on the last shot of this sequence as its the most complex shot of the film... GOOD THING my film ideas aren't totally full of mindless action or else it would take me like 12 years to make one film... Just so yall know... as my current computer setuP will be adequate for my needs for another 2 years probably... HSM will be completed before the end of 2010... it will be on display in various ways in 2011... In 2011 I will be in pre-production on my next film... then I will take 2012 to produ

NOT a complete filmography... this isn't even CLOSE to being all the shorts I have made it's just the stuff thats on youtube... I will update and add new shorts to this... I_AM_IN_HELL_AND_NO_ONE_CAN_TELL (2009) I_A_B_THATS_LYFE_POW(2009) M.O.B.B. (2009) (MUSIC VIDEO) Animal: MIndless Self Indulgence (2008) XMAS MESSAGE (2008) (MUSIC VIDEO) Black: RABBIT JUNK (2008) FACE(2008) PNOK (MUSIC VIDEO) 2007 WHERE THERE ISN'T ANY LIGHT (2007) THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE (2006) KEEP IT REAL DOG (2005) GUH_NOME DEATH TRAIN (2004) REALLY REAL! (2002) FELLATIO: THE HOLLYWOOD STORY (2002) INSANE UNTITLED SHORT FILM (2002) POMP_ASS PAMPERED POSER (2002) POTATO PHONE PROJECT (real life thang) (2002) TEXTBOOK RELATIONSHIP SITCOM (2001) YOU TOO CAN BECOME A CORPORATE ZOMBIE (2001) NAR_RATIONAL (2001) HEAVENS GATE W/GOGGLES (2001)

Here's a few little free plug-ins that I've found essential to my workinG on shots everyday... Xs-tab : Doesn't seem like a big deal BUT when you have to open a menu to switch between project files everytime like all day you'll appreciate this one PLUS you get to see all open projects at a glance...I have it at the bottom of the layout near the status menu...check out his other scripts and plugs too! Object 2 View: Find it in the "goodies" section of his site... again seems so simple BUT when your working with big scenes and your camera isn't pointing at 0,0,0 this thing REALLY comes in handy when merging new objects into the scene that you want it in front of your camera OLX: Older versions of C4d used to let you populate the Object menu with your own objects AND this lil thang lets you do that with its own popup menu... I have it's icon on the top of my main window... I store all the objects that I use on a regular basis in it for easy and

Ya know I realized the art and the stories that I love the most are BOTH in manga... NOW like these 3 of my all time fav's which I think are 3 of the best EVER...Berserk, Vagabond, and Battle Angel: Last Order... the thing about these "manga artists" they are not only awesome artists with MAD technical skills and also SUPER creative they are ALSO master storytellers creating they own worlds... Ya see I don't understand why people who just paint random paintings get so much respect as "artists" THEY are NOT telling stories... they are not creating worlds... they are not creating realistic characters and saga's that live on in the minds of those who read them... NOW if like the painters were THAT MUCH BETTER ARTISANS over the manga artists I'd be like ok BUT THE ART IN THESE MANGA's DESTROYS like most all contemporary painters and artists 0_0 So why aren't art galleries filled with the art from these manga's instead of some d00ds random

Sometimes I spend 8 hours on like 42 frames like yesterday 0_0 I don't know if I explained it here yet BUT.... my normal quota for the film is about 7 shots/day but this month for this CRAZY sequence its only 2 shots/day....Why? AM I LAZY!!?!? ^_^ The shots are so complex and dense I can barely get through 2 a day and even then since the scenes are so big with so many characters and sims going on and all this crap my computer gets so unresponsive I started pounding the keyboard... I HATE TO WAIT ^ ^  The thing these shots dont take very long to render the render nodes handle them fine its displaying them and manipulating them that takes forever... c4d has a great multithreaded renderer but a lot of the things I'm using in the scenes Mograph fracture objects with hundreds of things inside with modyn on...I even created characters to be destroyed by separating they body parts and putting them in a fracture object...of course I had to use constraints to re-attach the separated mes

The shot that is rendering right now at about 6 hours per frame takes 22.7 gigs of ram to render 0_0 I cached the dynamics sim and optimized as best I could but its still nuts... I couldn't even preview it because it locks up with a hardware render and the software render takes 6 hours per frame so I just sent it to the farm.. hoping it is right... Actually I've been working a lot like that... after completing over 1000 shots now I work intuitively... I can animate by just placing keyframes and manipulating they f-curves without playing it back its like after all this time I know hows it going to look.... as you should right? I remember the first time I read the animators survival kit I couldnt understand the little spacing charts but now I speak they language ^ ^ So this week I'm been locking up C4d many times a day as I'm pushing it to see how far it can go... ModyN is amazing...its so easy to use SO of course I'm going to enslave and abuse it ^ ^ So far so good

Continuing on from that Miyazaki post... it got me thinking... NOW if yer a consumer whore that creates nothing original... or even a drone that creates copies of other things... now how will you be remembered by people in 20 years.... lets say I didn't do what I do and instead I just worked some normal job and bought all the newest gadgets... how would I be remembered?? "OH yeh hey remember that guy Mike? Oh yeh he bought all the newest gadgets oh yeh he always had the newest things and played with them he was so awesome because he was able to trade currency for all the newest tech stuff someone else made... he even waited in lines for them... yeh remember when he was all look at this ipad app I downloaded it does things and then it did things... yeh that was great.... oh yeh and he was on facebook all the time he left the best comments...I heard he was a level 70 paladin on warcraft too yeh he killed lots of monsters and stuff... what ever happened to him? I don't real

Seems I'm in good company with my hating of consumer tech whores like my rant about the ipad a ways back... Uber MASTER animator/director/storyteller/artist Hayao Miyazaki was recently quoted saying this about the ipad... I’m sure there are many people who want to become omnipotent by getting their hands on this iWhatever. I’ll tell you sir, there were once a bunch of people who wore radio cassette players (those bulky things) wherever they went in the sixties. They wore it like a priceless emblem. They’re mostly probably living off of pension funds now, but you and them are the same. You jump at the newest gadgets, and all you do is relish the pride in owning one as some consumer. You must not becomes a consumer. You must become someone that creates.  I think Picasso said some Thang about the importance of creation too...but yeh a consumer whore is gonna be a consumer whore... but if yer on the bubble think twice... spend yer life clicking on a screen creating noth

I came across this doc about peeps addicted to MMORPG's As I was watching it I was like "THAT sounds like me?!" I fall asleep in front of the computer... I'm on for 10-15 hours everyday... I don't have any other "life".... BUT I'm working on my film creating stuff...so in the end I'll have something to show for all my grinding AND it can open many doors for many other thangs... So when I see those gamer people grindin I'm just like DAMN if they actually used that time to LEARN and CREATE they would do some ILL SHIT... but I also know those games are like TV 2.0 an interactive one but its close to the same effect...you sit on yer ass and spend all your time in this fantasy world cause some big companies are making money off your time... reminds me of this great David Firth short... You NEVER get your time back...THE YEARS ARE GONE FOREVER so be careful what you spend it on... We all grind on somethin... whether its ASS at da cluB, World

DIS may be the most important thing so that you can go from a blurry shot# 385 in Jan 2010  Its blurry I know SorrY.... and now because of Teh_NAH_CITY I'm on shot@1099... AND I learned how to take pics in FOCUS... NOw there were a lot of tough times when I just wanted to go to sleep instead of animate cause I was so tired.... there were a few times early on when I felt like I didn't really know what I was doing and I thought what I was doing was phaiL... BUT by having TEH_NASTY disposition with my work and when thinking about doing anything else or going anywhere I was all TEH_NAH_CITY and refused.... and everyday my TENACITY won't allow me to quit until my quota for the day is filled...I'm still going... SO WHAT AM I SAYING?! Sometimes you might feel like politically neutral dog when everyone around you is giving you advice dog advice... but those are the times when you just got to grind it out and become INSANE WOLF!!! AND by killing of course that means getti

So I've finally come to shot #1098 and his pals 1099,1100,1101,1002 and 1004... these are the biggest "crowd" shots of the film OR what can I say I like armies marching into battle ^ ^ So I've been screwing around with techniques to do this for awhile now... only a few of the closer shots need actual 3d models in the scene... I did these 2 shots last night... To make things faster I stripped out the rig from the character, deleted all expressions and morphs... and set up the charS geometry hierarchy so I could animate it with FK... created a spline path for them to walk on... put the 4 different soldier types in a Mograph cloner set to object mode and turned on the automatic animation magickal switch to make them move along teh path... I used a random effector with a small time offset of 3 frames to add some variation to the march... NOW it almost kILLED my pc to do a test still render ^ ^ The characters are about 8000 polys each and there like 250 of them... NOW it w

Now if you've got any audio geek in you... you know about the death of dynamic range in modern recordings... stuff from the 60's wasn't BRICKWALLED to DEATH like most everything is today... Now its LOUD LOUD or QUIET QUIET... BLACK or WHITE no beautiful subtle shades of grey... in my mind DOE I see how this has happened in film as well and I'm not talkin about the sound though you could argue that film mixes have suffered the same fate...BUT I'm talking about the things in the film itself... the characters... they are either GOOD or BAD... none of those tweeny people who are MORE REALISTIC and 9000 times more interesting... the stories are also missing those shades of gray...its all black and white and wrapped up in plastic for you by the time the end credits roll... what happened to the dynamic range? The play? The breaths? The subtly? Its all like this now .... BANG EXPLOSION...EXPOSITION... BEST LIVE EVAR BANG EXPLOSION FROM BAD GUY and so on... Alas the ART is

Sorry I haven't written here more... the "u" on this Xombie laptop doesn't work so it makes it annoying to type as I have to click the u key on an on screen keyboard...but anywAR... its been in the 90's this week and my main lil computer has been getting so hot I r running it with the top oFF AND today I have my first "out of memory" error on a shot for the film... didn't happen till shot # 1077... this shot caused about 30 freezes while I was working on it too 0_0 It has 3 characters interacting in a huge set... a ton of particles, dynamics sims and crazy volumetric lighting...in other words it was too much to render in one pass... So I just used an object buffer to isolate the fg chaR and rendered the CRAZY render killing stuff as a separate pass away from the chaR animation... I'm looking forward to killing all these ChaRs with the slow riGS... Luckily the main CHaR's rig does like 60fps in the viewport so animating him is fun... I proB