BacBlog

So I was talking to my friend Nick Stevens (hi Nick!) out in LA recently, and he decided to spill his guts on the very basics of modern stereoscopy in post-production. Zero Parallax Settings, negative/positive space, and interoccular offsets oh my! Seriously though…I thought I had a pretty firm grasp on the optics behind stereoscopy, and that kind of hubris never fails to deliver brain-exploding evidence of the contrary.

In the middle of the conversation, Nick did point me to the blog of “The Godfather of Stereoscopy” Lenny Lipton, (bonus points, he originally wrote puff the magic dragon!)

http://lennylipton.wordpress.com/

I’m sure all those main points I’d butcher trying to retell from my previous conversation are illustrated with far more clarity in Lenny’s own words. From what I’ve read, It actually seems to be pretty personal and well-written…I’d love to be so comfortable writing out here that I could just go into poetry.

luckily for you, I’m not.

thanks for reading kids!

O_O

I’m late out of the gate on this one, but I don’t feel I’ve really given credit to the astonishingly well directed psychological/action/thriller short that is “Dix” (French for “Ten”…quit giggling already! )

The Mill has continually completely rocked my world recently with their expertly crafted animations and shorts.  Hell, even their iPhone color corrector app knocks my socks off…I really can’t begin to say how much I enjoy this short…it’s got some striking visual similarities to another well known short, World Builder, consequently produced by my boss, Bruce Branit.

I think the thing that consistently amazes me about The Mill is the beautiful, cohesive style of their directors and artists.  They have a firm grasp on what looks great, and they’re not afraid to push the boundaries on the application of those techniques.  It really feels like everyone on their team is always firing on all cylinders, unceasingly aiming for one goal, and one goal only…to create one incredible final image after another.  So often, the danger of our industry is the ever-present desire to follow the meandering path of “How do I make this work?”, while the real question lies in “how do I make this APPEAR to work”.  I, like many young VFX artists now emerging on the scene, have grown up using tools and techniques that are totally unrelated to the visual effects realm.  While having a firm grasp on dynamic simulation tools and radiosity controls are incredibly important, relying too heavily on these tools may drive you down a nightmarish chasm of technical precision, and underwhelming visual impact.

This short video segment provides a good opportunity for a little realignment in our way of thinking.  Effects that today would take teams of hundreds, and potentially require heavy simulations of dust and debris were once created by hand with some incredible results.  I think it’s important for all modern production artists to really understand the history of their craft, and to understand, as does The Mill, that a little ingenuity and attention to the end product is often times, the best and only way for studios short of a team of hundreds (or double digits for that matter) to pull off the incredible.

What I really enjoy about this spot is the beauty that close-up inspection yeilds, without the use of overplayed scale trickery.  Speed is usually the most “maluable” property you’ve got when attempting a mixed scale scene (all you 90s kids out there, think about how the power rangers always fought in slow motion when the megazord was towering over the shoddy cardboard tokyo…slow = big and lumbering, while fast = tiny and mousy).  What I really appreciate here is the very conscious effort to juxtapose the closeups with cinematic pacing against the wide shots that really embrace the ‘RC’ quality.  Really great dynamics work going on here…even the scale of the dust rolling off the car as it blows out of the cardboard box sits in a perfect zone of “not too small, not too big” Overall, great commercial work from Mass Market.

thanks to Eric Alba for the find
www.twitter.com/alba

Howdy all! I’ll be updating this blog more frequently from here on out, hopefully with a little more ‘editorial’ content, as well as a consistantly updated “best of recent memory” roundup. Good things ahead here!

For now, I’ll leave you with this stunningly beautiful outro from the new beatles rock band game.

(edit: thanks to viacom for pulling the youtube video douches)
Long Live Vimeo

what else can I say but really incredible attention to detail on these renders…especially the exploding/blooming flowers…that cloth sim is 100% spot on.

As most of you hopefully are aware, next Friday has been dubbed “Avatar Day”, and for good reason.  Available for just under 9 hours at the time of this entry are free tickets to your IMAX theatre of choice to catch a 16-minute preview of James Camerons’ new movie “Avatar”.  With all the hype surrounding this work (as well as the veil of secrecy so heavily enforced), it’s bound to fill up fast!  Click the poster for locations and showtimes, as well as links to sign up!  If you’re in the KC area, let me know which theatre you plan to attend.  We’ll geek out.

I can’t wait!

So my personal  work has always been a little dark, and this quick project (flea model = 1 day, scene = 1.5 hours, CC = 15 minutes) is no exception.  We’ll see where it leads!

Forgive the shaky-cam, this was most likely shown off at comicon, and the footage speaks for itself! “Mission control” as the I/O room was dubbed, is a colossus of computing power. Storage space amounting in the hundreds of terabytes is required for such detailed mo-cap data. Stunning!