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Showing posts from April, 2010

%65 done now

SO I just finished this months work... AND I must say my work is definitely is getting better as the film goes along... I think it will really show the advantage of making a film in sequential order...at least thats how I do it... its like NOW after doing over 1000 shots I have finally like figured it all out... like all the right settings for lights, materials, etc... So when I'm done with animation before COMP I'll go back and update and re-render the shots from early on that don't live up to the standards I have established now... thats also why I have comp'd anything yet because I knew that if I did that there would be a lot of wasted revisions and recomping and comp renders as I update the 3d renders... I have DEFINITE deadlines for myself to FINAL the film... BUT I'll tweak and try to shine it up and as "perfect" as I can until that time comes... I know nothing is ever "perfect" but I believe you have to do your best to try to get to wha

Do what feels right or DIE

Hey hey I'm talking makin films here not real death... so "death" would be failing to complete it or making complete fail... It can be so confusing and GUT, FACE, and MIND wrenching to make a feature film... while like a good one... or maybe even a great one... there's so much crap out there about screenplay structure, pacing, story elements etc etc... that your always like WAIT am I doing this right? Does my film have what these "great" films have? WAIT AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?!?! ^ ^ There's a BILLION different ways you can go and there isn't ONE or even FIFTY rules for success meh thinks not... BUT if you DO follow all the rules you'll probably just end up making something safe and mediocre.... not bad but not great...ultimately forgettable... to me that is fail... SO yeh after all teh madness and research and constant reevaluation and editing I have to say that you just need to do what feels right... the real films inside you are NOT going

Grind Grind Grind

GAWD this week has been a GRIND.... grueling shot after grueling shot... I'm really pushing the limits of my hardware+software+aching wrist ^ ^ So the scenes I'm doing this week have like 20 fully animated characters in them... dynamics sims, dynamic hair, particle stuff, heavy SPD + all kinds of shet in like 20 million poly scenes that take 12 gigs of ram to render 0_0 Today I spent 3.5 hours trying to get this mock softbody sim working but I never could so I just faked it with morphs and it looked fine... STRANGELY enough... these CRAZY scenes are rendering really FAST and they look awesome ^ ^ I turned all my render nodes off except one this week because I HATE PG&E and they HATE ME and because they are not needed for these shots... rendering with the one 8 core box is keeping up just fine.. I'll turn em back on when the shots get crazy and the queue starts stacking up... ALSO I'm doing April+May's work this month so its been kinda crazy... My mind is

Fawk teh tech don't be a whoRE

So ummm... I wrote the script with this screenwriting app on my iphone... then I created the storyboard with this storyboard app on my ipad then I used this other iphone app and this $1000 iphone accessory to take photos of the set with locked gps coordinates to share with the location scout who syncs the coordinates with her blackberry blah blah blah... YEH we shot on the RED... yep thats right 20,000 x 20,000 pixels of mundane ass run of the mill footage....uh huh and we had a 20 drive array to play back the uncompressed files... yeh we edited offline with Final Cut Pro on an 8 core macpro even though final cut only uses one core yep... we're whores...we buy any tech we can and use it in production because we're dumb enough to buy into all teh marketing hype so we believe we need the tech and some how our "film" is better because of it.... I think we NEED to use Autodesk Smoke to online and finish it.... OH it doesn't end there there days... Yeh so we built

Crowd Control

So I'm working on a sequence right now which is a swordfight with 15 "people" against one and its TOUGH... well actually its more like a melee but anyway... work on these shots is SLOW... a couple hours per shot which is LONG for me on this thang... toward the end I have some scenes with like five times as many people as this so I'm going to have to come up with a better technique... I already tried making a poor manS massive in C4d... I tried putting animated characters in a Cloner and using a step effector to offset the time... proB is it only offsets the animation from the root object and when you have a rigged character animated... theres tons of things nested in the hierarchy that are animated so that technique doesn't work.... also is SLOW.....if you all want them synced it works BUT some variation is best... I tried putting animated characters in a SplineSpread object as it has a time offset parameter as well but again it can only offset the root anima

Re:Music and dialogue + a good CHIP

I saw a few questions/comments about the music and dialogue... About a silent film... I wasn't saying I was going to make it a silent film...I was just noting that it worked as one... ALSO we have some big surprises in store for you if you think I will not be utilizing the voice actors in the film... ACTUALLY its quite the opposite... I made sure to let Endika know that JP is an awesome vocalist and that I wanted to utilize his death metal growl in the film... SO he integrated some of the dialogue into the score to be SUNG by the actors... OH YEH two of the voice actors are like professional Opera singers and stuff whom Endika went to college with.... so think about that ^ ^ About dialogue... I always believed "true" animation or filmmaking actually wasn't about the dialogue... in life... like in film I believe in SHOWING not TELLING so I NEVER like tried to make dialogue shine... I hate talky films myself... I can't stand anything made by directors like Kevin

The first music for HSM!

So as of yesterday I hadn't gone out and interacted with the outside world for about 10 days... I had to go to the bike shop to get a new rim... where I saw this awesome d00d and his amazing bike ^ ^ So I met up with Endika and went to his studio... he played me the temp version of like the first 10 minutes of the movie... we watched it along with a rough cut of the scenes... it was the first time I have heard any of it.... and it was AMAZING! He's not trying to make great "music for film" he's just making AMAZING music PERIOD! I was going to record a video or something with it BUT I realize his music is totally original and awesome and I wouldn't want some talentless hack to steal his melodies and shet before its released because THEY ARE GREAT seriously... I wouldn't go on and on about his music if I didn't think it was the best.... seriously... this score will be greatest music he has written yet and his first like serious classical he has written

The ANSWER

So I wrote about Seth Godin's new book "Linchpin" a few weeks ago after I heard him interviewed on The Accidental Creative... and I must say after going through the whole thing WOW! Its like all the choices I made in life that everyone around me FOUGHT with me about and told me were wrong my whole life were apparently the best choices I could have made according to master marketeer all around awesome d00d Seth Godin.... YOU MUST read LINCHPIN!  All this stuff I've been ranting about and dancing around in regard to being an artist and living in this current world full of backward thinking people... dis book is all about that... BUT he breaks down the history...the whys, the hows... people got like they are now... and WHY being an "artist"... is the best thing you could be doing right now in this changing world... BUT to survive you have to be a REMARKABLE artist... So yeh go checkout the book or audiobook I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT TO EVERYONE Here's a SUP

%50 done/2 hours of film- How did that happen?!

See that little thang... thats all the clips from the film on teh edit timeline.... Click to see full size The red markers denote hour points...  So I'm a little past the %50 mark of the film and I already have 2 hours of clips??! Now I'm kinda perplexed as to how that happened... The script is 95 pages long... the animatic is 122 minutes... so why does it seem like when I finish I'll have a four hour film?  As I've been working I've been adding breaths to the pace to have stronger builds in the suspenseful moments AND I've also been taking out a lot of breath when I felt things were too slow... overall it doesn't feel as if the pace has changed much from the animatic... POssible Reasons - to make the edit more flexible I've been adding heads and tails to each shot... treating it like a live action shot wherein the actors have some idle time before and after each shot... they are NOT frozen they are actively passive like a real actor would be waitin

Anyone a Logic or Sibelius expert?

So the composer for HSM... Endika is writing and orchestrating the score right now... he's never used Sibelius before... he's doing his best to learn it but the manual is not so great... So he's writing the music on paper than transferring into Sibelius... He's having a hard time getting Sibelius to understand the timing of the music... Then he's going to use Logic to record and mix all the music... If any of yall is like an expert with Sibelius and/or Logic and can help out Endika please contact him at Panthelion (at) gmail I'm trying to help him as I'm doing my work but I don't understand all that fancy music stuff ^ ^ So I'm just like uhhhh.... lets get some tutorials ^ ^ So yeh we would appreciate any like expert help we could get! Thanks and Best!

WATCH THIS right NOW!

Its beautiful, mysterious, and amazing and it was made by one Korean guY! This really raises the bar for "one man show's"! I really love his style! He just posted it like whatever on youtube so I think we should let him know if we appreciate it ya know! I did ^_^

If your not down with the IRON SKY crew you should be!

These d00ds from Finland are the preeminent "internet filmmakers" they were doing stuff that didn't become buzzwords in Wired magazine till years later....I met Timo Vuorensola director of "Star Wreck" and the upcoming "Iron Sky" at SXSW in 2008... I almost met the awesome Brian Chirls at that SXSW too... Sup Brian! He was the guy that was teh tech genius behind all the FOur Eyed Monster theatrical mappings and all that.... he just launched a new site called CrowdControls which opens it up for everyone else and features IRON SKY as one of the projects.....back to teh Iron Sky d00ds..... We got to hang out again at one of the great Power to the Pixel events in London in 08....I've never met Samuli who is the hardcore 3d guy behind Star Wreck but his story certainly inspired me to do what I do.... You can follow the making of they new film "Iron Sky" on they youtube channel  the behind the scenes stuff is really well done and informa

A guD artist weirdo mantra

Half the difficulty of being an artist weirdo is keeping the flame of passion and individuality inside of you alive as usually most ALL around you in life will try to crush and extinguish it... I used to get beatdown by other peoples cynism and negativity when it came to the things I made BUT then I turned into a monster and used intimidation so they would keep they mouth shut... once you show people how SERIOUSLY you take it they won't fuck with you believe me...  think about it like this... in the end with your art YOU ARE ALONE... youre the one that has to GIVE IT LIFE... without you it is DEAD... so these people come up and try to poke at you and stab you... if you live or die they go on... they don't care... So you have to be ready to defend yourself and defend your art... now I realize most aren't as aggro as I am ^ ^ but this Hed Pe song popped up on my itunes and I thought these lyrics summed up being an artist and trying to do something different in a mediocre cyni

AVOID THE MIDDLE GROUND!

So the lesson here with Birdemic on some BBC news site 0_0 Is to AVOID THE MIDDLE GROUND.... either make something amazingly WIN or SO FAIL ITS UNBELIEVABLE AND AWESOME ^ ^ I downloaded and watched Birdemic after I posted weeks ago... and the thing I found interesting is that simple scenes... like one where a guy is seated by a waitress was so awkward and bad I lol'd watching 10 times in a row... NOW in a normal film that scene would just be whisked by and wouldn't be memorable at all...YET in Birdemic even simple scenes are entertaining because they are so awkward ^ ^ I'm sure it will have tons of "midnight movie" success... Birdemic director with Lynch in SAN JOSE in 2007 I was at Park City with WATS at Sundance at the same time 0_0 My friend went and got my book signed for me ^ ^ So if your making your own film you want to be "successful" with... whatever that means to you.... I say either go all out, take huge chances and make it amazingly good

An idea about sharing teh one man army 3d knowledge....

So as I'm already past the halfway mark on the film... DONT WORRY I'm still working away and not just posting CRAZY stuff on this blog ^ ^ I'm a little worried that I won't have time to make all the tutorials and the like to share the process with you.... as I haven't had the time to make video tutorials, work on teh "book" much OR do my radio show at all... SO I got an idea to combine all that stuff... What if when I start publicizing the film... I start a regular live video show like on Ustream with Ustream Producer? Where I can show you my desktop... so live video tutorials or sharing whatever people want to know... the producer app lets you switch between the desktop and the webcam... I watch a Cinema 4d live show like that and its great.... because you know there SO MANY things that can be discussed... but like if I did it that way... Someone could ask..."How to you animate a swordfight?" Then I could simply pop into Cinema 4d and show yo

Hmmm revolutions and magic happen because teh advertising says so?

So like I've learned a little about marketing and advertising the past few years.... and like many other things when your learning you think TOO HARD about the solutions you come up with...which are TOO COMPLEX when usually the way to get your point across is like the simplest and most ridiculous thing... Most people DONT CARE about the details these days... they just want TEH WORLD promised to them at a price they don't have to feel too guilty about... BUT even so... it still gives me a funny feeling when I see shet like this on Apple's site for the ipad So ummm... its "revolutionary" and "magical" because ummm the maker of the product said so? Before it has been released? ummm yeh... YA see that... MAGICAL + REVOLUTIONARY + $499... APPLE I see what you did there... SO why don't we all take a lesson from Apple and start talking about how magical and revolutionary the things we make are and how we are all amazing geniuses that can be bought for

THIS GUY IS AMAZING!!! Dr. Who Anime creatoR

If you haven't checked out the stuff from this ONE D00D doing this hand drawn Dr. Who Anime you must! Since I love Dr. Who and awesome anime I love it! I actually prefer his look and style of animation over most traditional Anime... I think he is doing an awesome job and I can't wait to see the finished thanG ^ ^

"How to train your Dragon" easily pwns other mainstream 3d features + a rant

So I did go see "How to train your dragon" and since I'm an action and monsters fan I can say that I liked it more than any mainstream animated 3d feature I've seen... I thought it was really well done and there were some great moments in it... my fav had to be of course the MEGA dragon vs. the lil cat dragon d00d at the end ^ ^ The cinematography and action with the stuff in the clouds was super tite... and the characters veered away from the stereotypes you see in most 3d films as they were more unique... they definitely worked the animal lover angle well as I cared for the lil cat dragon more than any other character ^ ^ It was like a "kids safe" film but it was definitely darker than anything Pixar has ever done which is encouraging... I listed to the Splinecast which features interviews with all these Pixarian d00ds and one director said that they don't purposely make the kind of light and fluffy films they do its just what they like making... I

Comp Calculations looking uP

So I had some time to do some After Effects render tests... I did a test comp of a 20 second shot that is like an average shot in terms of how much processing needs to be done too it... It has Frischlust lenscare "depth of field" applied to two layers... as I've found depth maps which have a really out of focus element overlapping a sharp in focus element don't look correct so you have to render the foreground separately and apply blur to them both.... let me mention again that Philipp from Frischluft is awesome ^ ^ The shot also had one iteration of RevisionFX motion blur applied....  Now here's some cheats... I like AE's "Add grain" effect BUT ITS TOO SLOW! So what I did was render out my own stock film grain ^ ^ By rendering AE's add grain effect tweaked to my liking applied to a black solid... its rendered to a png sequence so then all I do is bring that in to my comps and apply it over my comps using the Add transfer mode and it looks great

Its time to PWN and tech spider weBS

So I did my calculations for the past month... I did 190 shots in March... after doing 195 in February...  I was only scheduled to do 150 in March so I did 50 of the shots from April... after looking at the next few months I think I'll be able to save a whole month of time... Based on my projections I'll be able to do all of April and May's work in April... I'll shoot for that as my goal so that even if I take twice as long it puts me back on the original schedule ^ ^ The reason I want to work so fast other than to challenge myself is that because something tells me that rendering the final composited shots out of After Effects is going to take a long time... right now I have a month of time budgeted for that but since After Effects CS4 renders these 32bpc comps with 1920x802 Exr sequence so SLOWLY I think I should budget in two months of time for teh SLOW renders... I haven't even done the math but meh thinks its going to take some time to render 1600+ shots....