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| Today started off grime — last night Tefft handed to me the job to take the elements we had already and do something with them. I had a vague idea of what everyone had in mind – but most of it was BLANK. As almost looking at it with writer’s block I started at the empty After Effects software. I made a dissolve test to send off to Tefft, but afterwards I laid down to pretty much avoid the computer. My mind was racing – I had so many things I could be doing right now — why am I just laying here — I finally calm myself down, and reminded myself why I enjoy compositing. It’s has it’s own form of art. So I decided to push off all the politics and simply create something. As I looked over the elements and created new elements, in the beginning it didn’t look good. As I rendered out my first complete attempt. I walked over to Nikki’s to have a bit to eat and a drink. As I came back to my place and viewed the finished rendered piece — it look horrible, but I saw something in it and continue to gather new pieces and adjust others push timing in directions and added audio sound design to it. still rather rough, I rendered out my second complete attempt. I had something now to show — it was working. As I emailed the video to John Owens he called to let me know that Tefft’s ideas where voted down and that we were still on the original concept. He soon got my email and he liked it as well. Energy was now boosted back into the project — we had a good blue print to work from now. …and I have to say I felt good once again with my talent and abilities. But it is not just talent that will let me succeed, but that is what I am trying to learn now — and these projects are giving me experience of what I will be getting myself into. |
Artist Inside 0
Plumb and Balance 0
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For the 3rd class of John Brown’s – he went over plumb and balance. He spent the class discussing the industry and how to use telescoping, telling a story, about your character’s mood and personality with gestures and body shaping in your sculpture. He used fellow classmate Rachel Mark with her tall slender body to show us the body’s plumb line for balance and how crucial it is to have in your sculptures. He tempted us to break up the lines of the body, head, chest, hips, arms, to give the sculpture more appeal. By simply moving the hips, chest and head in different directions can can bring more life and appeal to the sculpture. Then he went into how to focus on the outline or silhouette of the piece here in the beginning to make us more aware of the shape and not the detail. |
A Step Back 0
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| I took today off from Imagexperts, a vacation day, to work on the Gnomon’s project: Steven Spielberg Tribute, but found that most of the elements were not ready and none of the backgrounds were done. So I took a nap in the afternoon, and had some incredibly intense dreams. First one I found myself back in a industry kitchen and everything was burning and I was getting all stressed out. I believe that was to show me that I can not go back to that line of work. I worked in a kitchen in my younger days to pay for the toys I wanted to play with, and I didn’t know any better. I also took this also as a sign that it is time for me to move on to the next stage of my life. I have gotten so comfortable doing ‘photo lab’ stuff, just like I was comfortable doing ‘kitchen’ stuff — but in time I will find that I will look back and say ‘why did I waste my time doing that?’ Second dream revolved around my car. I was talking to two very attractive girls when one goes all berserk and pulls her keys out and keys my car right in front of me. I grabbed her and dragged her over to a cop who comes back to the car. As we are talking the girl jumps into the car and drives it literally into the ocean. As I watched the engine be submerged with water. I looked in terror that the car was totaled. As I woke up in shock, realizing it was just a dream. I thought how much I really do love my car, but now that it is eleven years old. How much am I willing to hang on to her?Around 4pm I drive over to Gnomon in Hollywood to see how things are going. Still no backgrounds – and I am beginning to get doubts about the project. I went to my sculpture class from 7pm to 10pm, then after we had a production meeting with Tefft Smith, who was not really pleased with what we had. As Tefft almost changed the entire project, John Owens and I looked at each other and a state of panic was felt in the room. I am use to last minute changes, and took it with a grain of salt. I would have felt better if I was trying to balance taking time off from my paying job, to do this volunteer job that has now put a shadow of – do I really want to make this change to a more hostile environment. Where the ones in power can get that I am better than you arrogance. Maybe it was the fact that it was already past midnight after a very doubtful day. |
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Terminator TV 0
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| Bringing Terminator to TV sounded risky to me. I really liked the the original James Cameron Terminator franchise, and now they are going to take this to television. Meanwhile they are in pre-production for the fourth installment of the movie ‘Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins‘. Featuring, rumorly, Batman Returns’ own Christian Bale as John Connor. Back to the TV series, the first thing that came to my mind was – the visual effects better be good. Because if the effects go all SciFi channel ‘cheesy’, I’m not on board. As I looked at the line up I could buy Lena Headey, 300 ‘s Queen Gorgo, as Sarah Connor. She has that tough girl thing going on, but Summer Glau as a Terminator??? Huh? We’re talking about cute little River Tam from Firefly, but even though I am still not really buying it. It is nice to have a cute terminator protector for a change. Nothing against our governor Arnold Schwarenegger. As long as Thomas Dekker‘s character John Connor doesn’t have an affair with the machine. Because that would be taking this series into a direction I really don’t see. But in all seriousness Thomas Dekker also fits in just right for his character, which is a good thing. The Terminator that plays the actual terminator doesn’t really have a defined look. He simply looks like Joe Blow acting all ‘machinery’ to me – in fact are there multiple Terminators after them. See I didn’t get that part. Which sucks because i thought the terminator was the coolest thing in the movies. For awhile there I thought they were going to keep the Terminator in it’s exoskeleton state. Which would have been the coolest ever, but wow that would be an expensive shot each time. So as for the visual effects they are quite good, television set aside, they hold up. It looks like James Lima has been the Visual Effects Supervisor so far and the main house is Zoic Studios. So I was pleased to find that out. I tip my ‘Zoic’ cap off to you all – get it – I am wearing a Zoic Studios cap — because I am a fan of the Studio. Never mind. I like the show and will continue to watch – well – the nine episodes they where able to put in the can before the Writers strike. |
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Sunday Hangover 0
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| Oooooooh why did I drink so much Saturday night. It took me quite some time to get rolling along this morning. I knew I had a lot of work to do today, but I had to let it slide because of how much fun I did have last night. So once I got my ass moving. I finished up bending and constructing the overall pose of the armature for the Safari Girl riding the tiger. I still haven’t finished a good render of what the over all sculpture will be – but I have time. I needed to go right into figuring how to use this Video Gogh plug-in for After Effects. So after I composites the 3D characters in Shake. I began to play and play Video Gogh — hey, it doesn’t look good. Crap I am tired and going to bed.I did remember to look outside around 5pm and notice it was going to be another cool sunset, so I grabbed the camera and ran out to my backyard real quick to take this snap shot. |
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Saturday Night Out 0
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A friend of mine Jeff Albert, who I haven’t hung out with for awhile decided it was time to catch up. We met up at Nikki’s and had a few drinks. Margeau made an hilarious impersonation of Jeff in his fast talking matter of ordering his third Red Bull. Jeff’s friend Ly showed up from a funeral – yea – I am not sure why either, but he was cool. Then in the mist of my tipsy state I saw the most adorable girl. She was this petite, black haired girl with deep blue eyes who was so attractive. Wow – I honestly think I got to a point I was staring. I know better than then to do this, but there was something about her… Ly finally broke the ice and introduced me to her. Her name was Annette, she wasn’t a local. I believed she said she lived in the Hollywood area and was going to be moving to West Hollywood. She was incredibly nice and for a second I thought how cool would it be to go out with her. She adorable, friendly, nice and witty. So Ly ended up giving her my email address, but as he gave it to her I knew she wasn’t going to contact me. Something this perfect doesn’t happen to me – sorry. So I do vividly remember looking over at my iPhone wanting so much to capture the moment with a picture. But I didn’t let myself do it – because I thought it might come across strange. Even though everyone that knows me – knows I take more pictures than I know what to do with. Case in point I snapped this one (above) of the bar in it’s busy state to add to the Nikki collection, and the bottom one to show the rainy rainy night we had. Though I have to say I got a little more drunk than I usually do, I had a great time. Even my friend Jeff emailed me the next day stating “Alright, that bar is cool. I could hang out there more often. Did Annette email you?” |
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Armature Working 0
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| Saturday Morning was all work as I needed to finish and clean up the images of the job I shot of Nikki’s Bar in Venice. Then it was straight over to finishing up the Safari Girl armature and maping out, cutting and twisting the tiger armature. Around 5 pm I told my friend Jeff Albert that I would meet him for a quick bit to eat and a drink. |
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Cozy Inside 0
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| Now I don’t think I could have picked a better time to begin all these projects, as it has been raining since Monday Jan 21st. Which simply puts me all cozied up with my computer getting stuff done. I installed the video Gogh that we are going to use on the Gnomon/VES/ Spielberg project. It’s kinda cool, they used it back in the movie ‘What Dreams May Come‘ and I can install it for both After Effects and Final Cut Pro and it’s only $89. I also got the drawing for the tiger armature map/guide done and am watching two ‘class 01′, first week of the FX Phd training videos tonight. I might have to fall behind a bit on the on-line classes while I work on this Spielberg project. I keep having to remind myself that Steven Spielberg himself is definitely going to be watching my work — so i need to play out my A game. Trying to stay on target! |
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New Sculpture Pose 0
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| had my first real sculpture class tonight, last week was more of a meet & greet. Though John Brown misinterpreted my drawing and thought the girl was riding the tiger, which led to the change of me wanting the girl to be riding the tiger. I believe it will look so much better and much more of a challenge! So last Tuesday night I ran over to my friend Megan’s house (same girl I helped design the calendar for) to take some quick shots of her in the new pose for reference material while I sculpt. Quick tangent, she lives on top of a hill side, and I am so not comfortable driving my manual transmission car up a tiny winding hill side street. Then add the fact it was raining out. I ended up parking my car at the bottom of the hill and hiking up the entire hill side in the rain just so I could take these quick pictures. Having anxieties like that suck, but if you compromise I find I can get things done. okay finished with that rat-hole. Tonight John went over making the armature for the sculpture. Which is the wire skeleton that the clay is added upon. First you have to have an orthographical drawing of both the front and side view of the subject you are about to create. This provides a guide for the length of your armature wire. |
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| I had forgotten a couple of the steps. Quick note to myself next time I do this: |
| 1. take 1/8″ wire from shoulder to center point down below the pelvis, out the end of the hip, down to the knee and then to the ankle – leave extra wire then loop it back up. |
| 2. Place the wire in a drill and braid it. |
| 3. From the bottom leave room for a foot then mark the ankle, knee, hip, pelvis (which will be the bottom of ‘T’ position) then mark the top center point. without twisting the metal |
| 4. create the arms using 1/16′ wire. measure from the shoulder to the fingers (leaving plenty of extra wire – can trim off later) fold back and forth for the number of fingers. |
| 5. Place the shoulder end in the drill, and measure down to the wrist. Grip wrist with pliers and braid wire. |
| 6. take wire cutters and snip out the fingers leaving plenty of wire. Wrap the wrist and fingers with the galvanized wire. Just enough to hold the wrist in place and one wrap on each finger to give some texture so the clay doesn’t slip off. |
| 7. For the telescoping arms measure the brass tubing for the length of the shoulder, and cut the wire to, like, a 1/4″ of an inch. |
| 8. measure a piece of 1/8″ wire from the pelvis to the head (add extra- if you have a tail measure that too. double up the tail and braid it) |
| 9. Place your 3/8″ galvanized ‘T’ fitting to the pelvis area. Tape up the two sides and the head wire – determine what direction you want the tube to come out from. Cement that in from the open hole |
| 10. cement in the shoulder brass tubing to the armature wire. |
| 11. For the arms (with a smaller piece of brass tubing to fit inside the should piece) measure the piece to the end. Take one fold of the wire and wrap it around – making a stop point. cement the top of the arm to the smaller brass tubing. |
| 12. Take the 1/16″ wire and wrap the body together moving the head wire out a bit when wrapping the shoulders. Lead this wire wrapping up the head wire. |
| 13. curl head wire down to form the head. |
| But during the entire class this is not what I was overly concerned with — it was the tiger, and how do I build the armature for a quadruped? So during the lesson I was thinking it out and I drew something out and when John wasn’t busy I showed it to him and asked if this would work. He looked it over and began to go in a different direction, then stopped himself and said ‘no, do it your way . It will work.’ Which means I need to finish my human armature, create the tiger armature, and draw out the new pose sometime this weekend. |
| Picture of my armature |
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Gnomon Production Meeting 0
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| At 10pm Wednesday night I had a Production Meeting at Gnomon‘s on the VES – Spielberg tribute project. Where we are going to create a 30 sec to 1 minute intro animation for the Visual Effect Society award show’s tribute to Steven Spielberg. John Owens, the project supervisor, showed us the concept idea of a painterly feel for the project. He later showed me that they are using a plug-in in After Effects called Video Gogh. With Tefft Smith, the creative director, there – he advised us to pre-comp in Shake, then bring it into After Effects to apply the Video Gogh effect. |
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