M dot Strange's blog

Another day... another X number of shots for me on my way to completing X film... that's kind of the way I've come to look at time and the like... the only bearing time has on what I do or on my memories is in regard to what I was creating at the time... 2004-2007 WATS 2007-2008 IDEAS 2008-2011 HSM 2011-2012 IDEAS 2012-2014 NEW FILM and so on.... I spent a fair amount of time in 2007-2009 traveling which can eat a lot of your time without you being able to get much done if your not careful BUT I did my best to use even my travel time productively... I revised the script while eating early breakfasts in some hotel in Berlin....I modeled some of the things for HSM while looking out the window of my hotel room in Slovakia... I modeled some other things while on break in Iceland... I modeled a few other things while in Scotland, Ireland and France and probably some other places I forgot... I always tried to keep the project alive as time passed because it can slip away from you a

 (This is practice for leading my misanthrope cult in the year 2016 as I was programmed to do by Black Ops commando's in the mid 80's as part of an international secret cointel project co-opted by reptilian humanoids and the U.S. Department of Defense) seriously ^_^ The wise-man, the ascetic, the sage, the shaman.... These once sought after and heralded figures who were valued for theY knowledge and experience in normal life and the beyond... where are they now? Who are they now? Who would they be today in a first world country? Some random homeless guy who lives in the forest outside of town? Yahoo answers? 0_o It's been odd to me as I've grown up and have seen that it is just assumed that someone is "wise" just because they are older...that's not always the case... I know some pretty wise 16 year old's and some pretty fucking ignorant 70 year old's whose faces I want to headbutt until they explode into a burst of plasma and cartilaginous

I finally got what I wanted for XMAS! Brought to you by MAGICAL GOATS INC.         So after getting HIGH on MEGA DEEK on XMAS I stopped my bike by slamming into a concrete wall and grinding my shoulder into it until it was a bloody mess... I had to do that to protect the leader of the free world of course! The MEDSUN makes it look gross SORRY BUT did that stop me from working?! Another Xmas gift somebody gave me ^ ^ So I was compositing while bleeding feeling particular_LEE hardcore AND THEN After Effects SELF DESTRUCTED THE END! Actually that wasn't the end... Oh yeh I started throwing ideas around for the first trailer... so that should be laying waste to yer mind sooner rather than later.... I'm scheduled to finish compositing on January 9th... I'm through approX 1200 shots as of right now... 1660 total... but I'm getting close to the PSYCHO ACTION FINALE near the end of the film so that's going to take some time to do because of all the

So since I wasn't able to kick out a trailer by Xmas as I planned I figured I had to do something special for peeps that follow my stuff so I drew these Xmas cards for the people that emailed me to request them... a few requested audio recordings from Vladko and I just sent those out now... IF I drew an Xmas scribble for ALL the people I think I should it would take me like a whole month 0_o Here they are in all they M dot can't draw glory ^ ^

So as you can see teh compositing is moving along quite well... I should be finished the first week of 2011...then on to the edit... I was originally planning on releasing a teaser trailer of some sort on Xmas but I've been so busy I haven't been able to work on it much besides a few brainstorming sessions before I go to sleP... since I didn't do the trailer I'm drawing lil Xmas messages for peeps instead...if you asked for an audio message I haven't forgotten! I'm going to send them after all the drawings are done... On the tecH front: So some of my renders just fail....to render...after trying to isolate the causes to no avail I went back to the old last resort when rendering in AE... using the "secret" prefs to purge the memory every "1" frame.... I already had to turn off multiprocessing as it was causing errors even after I tested it with various memory settings... but in my experience if the comps won't render even with purging

So with the sequence I finished today I'm halfway done with the compositing...rendering is a little behind.... %50 in regard to the # of shots, all these sequence are not equaL So I've done 830 shots now.... I would say that the shots are looking better as I go further... so since I'm doing them in order it should be a natural progression of win as you watch it ^ ^ I can't wait till the compinG is done and I get my hands on the music so it can change from a shot by shot affair into a living breathing action packed menagerie of mysterioso! In the comP phase I've totally changed the way it looks and feels... I had my bi monthly meeting with Endika this week where we talk about everything but the film ^ ^ and I was telling him through the compositing it has become like a physical place...it feels like a real place now... not just a foreground and a background... but a real place with its own atmosphere, and its own rules... its really dreamy looking... a lot

So I've been using a hella old 23" Apple Cinema Display as my main display on my workstation... I knew the color on it was funky as it was a defective product from the get go but just learned to work around it... I WAS going to get a color calibration device but got confused when like all of em had horrible reviews online so I never got one IF you use one like the Spyder3 or Eyeone or Huey please let me know about yer experience with them... So I was checking some renders on this laptop when I noticed that the shots that were supposed to be bluish were pinkish... and after doing more testing sure enough...because of my faulty hardware and lack of color calibration gear my shots are all off color ... for example.... This is what is output But this is how it appears on my CRAP monitor BUT this is a corrected image and how I want it to look So yeh all the shots I've comped have they color screwed up... Also I've got some extra Xmas presents this year ^ ^