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Showing posts from September, 2010

This must be the best eh?

So the new Blender project film thing is out... From the end credits looks like about 100 people were involved... and apparently it took them about a year of production... seems they had some funding as well... So this must be like the best a small group of artists can do today right? This must be the "high water" mark for a team of amateur artists numbering 20-100 strong eh? I mean what could ONE person do compared to the work of 100!?! One person spending a year of production to do a two hour film instead of 15 minutes... I MEAN HONESTLY AN INDIVIDUAL HAS THEY LIMITS!!! SORRY thats just me being a jerk ^ ^ but hey I can't be a bully cause its like whole teams of people vs. lil ol me ^ ^ POOOOR little ol MEEEE! haha SideNOTE about character: I believe for a film to live on.... its the strong UNIQUE memorable characters that live on long after a film is over not the easily understood "story" If a film doesn't have such characters the memory of the

The rising new super power of animation: FRANCE

If you are an animation geek you've seen the torrents of REALLY WELL DONE mostly 3d shorts coming out of France from school's like Supinfocom but also from individuals like Yann J...I really liked his last film "BErni's doll" It seems every year the 3d short films coming out of France raise the technical animation bar a little higher for independent production...  as far as a whole country goes they OWN independent 3d animation production... This was on the front page of Cgtalk... it was done by 3 students from France in a year... If you know the process you can't helped but be REALLY impressed by the technical mastery and complexity of the animation/production... It's pretty easy to see right? If groups of 10-30 of these hella skilled animators got together and formed lil production companies and made original shorts and features there would be like 100 little Pixars in the world kickin out 3d animation and every month... and games too eh? OH YE

How awesome is this!

So as you proB know there are a bunch of law firms working for the media congloM_whorebag's suing individuals for "pirating" er whatever... NOW the internetS has aimed they lasers at one of the law firms and scored a big WIN ^ ^ Check out this article about a law firm getting PWNED bad ^ ^ And THIS is what "crowdsourcing" is all about... People DO have POWER when they work together in these ways... AND I do believe that the TRUTH will all come out in time caused by things like this... all these greedy douchebags in power who are some of the WORST humans there is will ALL be exposed in time ^ ^

Extra's

So I'm animating the prologue for the film now while the fx shots/redo's are rendering... I should finish the prologue stuff in a week or so... Every once in a while I get offered lil animation gigs but because of the film work I have to turn them down BUT I got offered something this week that I couldn't say no too... so I'll be doing another music video for that crazy Jimmy Urine guy ^ ^ I'll have that out in about a month... I'm going to do it in a style different from HSM but I had about 6 characters left over from HSM that I never used so I'll probably use them in this music video... so my 3d models that ended up being "extra's" need not fret they will also get they shot in the spotlighT... Here's a few animation_E thangs I'd like to share... Here is the new masterpiece of horror and mayhem by my paL Screamerclauz... Screamerclauz has also joined the voice cast of HSM Here is what I think is a trailer to some Japanese d0

Fx exports/fixing done+ notes

So I finished going through and fixing the shots that had proBs or needed object buffers or mattes exported for fx work... all in all it was 212 shots which will take awhile to render... I'm guessing 2-4 weeks... theres a few shots in there that took 3-4 days on they OWN and it will take longer now that I can't render 24/7 since the power company here PG&E installed these "Smart Meters" and they charge you insane rates if you use a lot of power during "peak hours" which is between 12pm and 6pm so I have to turn all the render nodes off except one during those hours... My next focus will be on compositing... I've been thinking about how I'm going to handle the color correction for awhile now... or let me rephrase that... how to make sure my blacks are really black... I'm concerned about the gamma and not the colors... last time I borrowed a friends MacPro and NTSC monitor....and Blackmagic Design was nice enough to give me a card to hook it

Undone fun from teh Past

Found some old music stuff as I was looking on backup cd's for some files... So for a lil while I was in a band called "GO ROBOT TEAM" from like 2003-2005... we played a bunch of shows for NOBODY most of the time but we had TONS of fun... we NEVER managed to record a whole album... but we did almost finish this track from 2004 or so?... it's Me, Stuart(WHO did the voice of ORI in WATS) and Joe (who did the sound design+mix for WATS) Stuart- hella rapping and singing (voice of ORI in WATS) Joe-guitar+production:( Sound design+mix on WATS) Me- hella rapping+beats Here's some CRAZY ^ ^ GRT videos on youtube We did some pretty crazy stuff.. like a "Public Toilet Tour" and we often had this morbidly obese 72 year old insane woman act as dancer and MC some times.. and we had this guy giving speeches about bacon or something before each show while we played the star spangled banner.... We had a ton more stupid vids we did that I have t

More werk to doES

So I finished filling out the fix/fx shot database... I've got 201 shots to add fx to or fix... that may sound like a lot to some but its not really... all I have to do is open the shot file in C4d...make the adjustment and/or setup object buffers/additional passes for the fx and the like and send it to render... So I can proB do like 25 shots a day... I also have to animate the Prologue and Epilogue as well as the intro credits... which is another 40 or so shots but its really simple stuff... So I should be able to do all the fixes and everything this month...I go back to work on that on Monday... I don't know what to do with my life when I don't have a quota of shots to do every day 0_o So I'm going to do all that stuff this month to completely finish ALL 3d work for the film... Then yes! In October you will FINALLY start to see what I have been creating here like the mad media scientist that i R ^ ^

The next step after completing animation

So now that all the "creative" work is done...I must fix, refine and add the visual fx... So now what I shall do is... I made a lil database with Bento 3... just a form that contains the shot #, checkboxes for the type of fix required as there are a few common problems is the shots that need to be fixed... a check box whether it is fixed and rendered... comments and a place for a still image of the shot.. I'm making this so that I'll be able to track all the shots that need work... I could have done it on paper but this way is a lot more organized and since i'm an ORGANIZATION FREAK when it comes to my work I'm going to do it this way ^ ^ So now I'm going to sit and watch EVERY single shot of the film and fill out these forms for the shots that need work... Once I have that... then I will make a new schedule for this fixiN and visual fx... and get to work on that... I should be able to have it all done by the end of this month... FIXING is WAAAAAY fas

HSM Animation COMPLETED!

I shall return soon! The strangeness you love in a new film with a new style! So I just finished the last shot of the film... shot #1372 So production ended up taking less than a year as I started October 2009... I finished 3 weeks ahead of schedule... It's been really HARD for me to NOT show anything to anyone BUT I think it will be worth it for yall... Making this film was 9000 times easier than making WATS... EXPERIENCE is INVALUABLE and you can't gain experience making an animated feature ALONE unless you make one alone ^ ^ Thank you for your patience and your support!

ACTA: Final Boss of the Internet

Since yall are in the know you probably already know about ACTA It's pretty much the end of the internet as we know it... its an attempt to lockdown and control the internet much like what was done to radio and television in the past... It's being created right now in secret meetings AND it affects the whole world... Its pretty much like the last gasp FINAL ATTACK by the old media companies... if they succeed then they win and turn the internet into a controlled wasteland void of freedom and filled with CRAP like television and radio... if they lose.. they are DEAD forever... I'm just an animator d00d in a room so I don't know what can be done to prevent ACTA from pwning everyone... but I do know that ACTA combined with the Net "Neutrality" funny business goinGs on recently doesn't bode well for online "freedom" in the future... Online freedom is one thing... here in the U.S. our like real world freedom is leaking away slowly if you follow w

If yer doing live action don't lie to yourself

If yer doing your own live action stuff today YOU NEED to get become a compositing ninja... and a little 3d helps too... I'd seen what this one d00d was doing with After Effects, Photoshop and a little 3dsMax awhile back... And then he made a new film called "Monsters" that comes out soon... NOW I haven't seen any of the films so I cannot comment on them as films BUT you cannot discount the guys technical ingenuity! With all the tools available today people say "You could do this" "You could do that" BUT this guy is DOING IT! I saw a thread full on aint it cool news about his new film and it was FULL of people who are "indie filmmakers" er whatever and they were whining about how his film was a LIE and there was NO WAY he could have made it for $15,000...there were like "you couldn't even PAY the effects artists to do that with 15k" So I guess they missed the part where the d00d does ALL THE FX HIMSELF... and he SHOOTS

Love your villainS

As I'm working on the last scenes of the film with of course some type of final showdown with the "villain"... I realized that I really love my "bad guys" I love them almost as much as the "hero" characters... I mean they are portrayed as "evil" but I'm kind of evil myself so I relate to them ^ ^ My darkside goes into them... The borinGesT films are the ones with the one dimensional "bad guys"... like they are so bad and they plots are so ridiculously evil NO ONE could ever relate to them so there's no interesting gray area too ponder..and that's what makes films AND arguments interesting... if both sides of an argument are well balanced the conversation continues...its is ridiculously one sided the conversation ends quickly WITHOUT DRAMA... Imagine your film is a conversation... yer bad guy comes out and is CLEARLY %100 evil cause they doing cliche "evil" things... the conversation about them is OVER...its l

Keep it undercoveR

This is why I haven't shown anything from the new film..and why I won't until it is complete... How many times have you seen it... A person announces they are going to make some animated film and they release still images, a teaser trailer and all that stuff and everyone goes "Omg thats AMAZING etc" and then the person NEVER finishes it? I've seen it MANY MANY TIMES...Rustboy COUGH... Delayed gratification is the BEST... you keep working harder and harder until the day is upon you to finally share the thang yer workin on... don't get desperate and show something to get some attention and praise...just keep grindinG