Around Kapaa and coast

Some pics from around town and one from a broat ride.  I like broats. 

Digital Painting Study

Digital painting I did in Painter 2015 using oils and conte crayons.  The composition on this one is really interesting and having a non-right angle bend in the road is what gives it that tweak. Plus, there was a hell of a lot of stuff on this corner as well.  I spent a good amount of time pulling the details out of the boat bumpers and traffic lights learning my way around the brushes. The palette knife was a lot of fun to scape back down to white with, though I still have a lot to learn about the settings on that. 

Vincent Laforet: The Age of the Standalone Still Camera is Coming to and End for all but PROS

"And that’s the point:  it’s not necessarily about the search for the BEST camera, it’s the challenge to make the MOST POPULAR and WIDELY ADOPTED camera.   And the Smartphones have already won that battle.

So as you like;y continue to see the camera market shrink in the next few years, (remember those things called “Point and Shoot” cameras that we used to buy just a few years ago that you don’t ever see anymore…)  you’ll hopefully better understand that pros are going to increasingly become a niche market.   Long gone will be the days of huge conventions with massive camera manufacturer booths."

Interesting write up, but I would say they won at least two years ago. If it was not for the Fuji x100 I would not travel with a stand alone camera at all myself.  Can't think of the last time I took the DSLR out of the studio.  I am saying this as a good thing.  Here is a link to a few snaps I took with the Fuji just to show how good the quality is.  

The thing with me though is that I now spend more time working in CGI then shooting. So make some predictions based on that metric ;)

Total Finder for Mac

Found this little plug in on the Modo forums and so far I am really loving it.  It brings back the full color bar for labels in the Finder window instead of just the little dots. Some other nice features I like is that windows are forced to open in the same tabbed group and you can have it put folders at the top of a list. Overall makes the Finder much easier to work with when you have a large number of files / projects going on. Called Total Finder.

New Work in the Wild: BdRm Album artwork

Some album artwork I did was just released out into the wild.  Jeremy Wilkins recorded some lovely instrumental piano tracks he released under the name bdRm.  I really enjoyed the music and came up with this atmospheric piece that I felt meshed with the music well.  The subtle branding was a bit daring to do as it is reaaaaaaaaallly subtle but once again, I believe that it echoes the subtle nature of the music. 

You can get it on:

bdRm on iTunes.  bdRm on This World is Against Me.  BdRm on Bandcamp.



Personal work, Office and Ice Study

Worked up two CGI personal projects this weekend.  The astronaut "Office Hell" image was to work on interior lighting, dynamics as curves and some simple UVing. Also shattered the helmet a bit to get those cracks which is always fun to do. Then I brought it all into Painter to explore some treatments in there.  I wanted to take it away from the fully clean CGI look and grunge it up a bit.

The Ice Flowers was done in responce to Makoto Azuma's installations which are awesome looking.  I wanted to see how close I could come to those using Modo. Besides some work on modeling the ice block I am pretty happy with how it came out. Fairly minor post in Photoshop adding some slight grain and darkening the foreground. Took 8 hours to render that out using 38 cores.  

Kubricks' 2001: One Mans Incredible Odyssey

Awesome blog post on the VFX in 2001 a Space Odyssey.  Great read. 

Kubricks' 2001: One Mans Incredible Odyssey

Doug Trumbull:  "Filming of the 'Dawn of Man' sequence took place entirely on only one stage at the studio. Distant backgrounds for all the action were front-projected eight-by-ten Ektachrome transparencies, using probably the largest front-pro…

Doug Trumbull:  "Filming of the 'Dawn of Man' sequence took place entirely on only one stage at the studio. Distant backgrounds for all the action were front-projected eight-by-ten Ektachrome transparencies, using probably the largest front-projection device ever made, and constructed specially for 2001 by Tom Howard.  The projector consisted of a specially intensified arc source with water-cooled jaws to hold the oversized carbons, special heat-absorbing glass, giant condensing lenses which would occasionally shatter under the intense heat, special eight-by-ten glass plate holders and positioning mounts, an extremely delicate semi-silvered mirror, and a specially built nodal point head so that the camera could pan, tilt, and zoom without fringing of the image."

Holiday Half Study

Wanted to do a little project for Sara since she just ran the Portland Holiday Half and this is the result.  Wanted to work on my text chops. 

Uberball by Richard Yot

Awesome video and free Uberball from Richard Yot to help work on your shaders in Modo. The scale slider is really useful for me personally.

Made with MIschief

The Foundry, makers of my fav 3d program Modo, just released a sketching program called Mischief and so far I am having a ton of fun with it. While I would not consider myself someone who draws stuff from scratch I do enjoy it and have been dabbling in Painter and different Photoshop techniques to do hand drawings for years.  So far this program is the simplest and most intuitive to use for me. Just the other day I tried showing Painter to someone who is a  accomplished painter and it's just too freaking complicated to easily use for anything.  With Mischief if you want a bigger brush, zoom out. Smaller brush?  Zoom in.  Kind of how it should work.  Plus, you can zoom in forever without any pixelation.  It is the most bizarre thing to do and really awesome. This is the first thing I did in it last night, once again I am not a drawing type of guy but it was easy to use and sketch in.  I could really use this when concepting or storyboarding.   Oh yeah, bonus, there is a free version and a $25 version.  You really can't say no.

Personal Work: Modo Stencil Study

Was working with stencils, replicators and volumetric lights last night and pulled this one off. The volumetric light started breaking up into almost a plasma type feel.  Included the AO render as well so you can see the model without the volumetric light turned on. Interesting shape there as well. 

Work: New / Old work in the Portfolio

Bunch of stuff came out of embargo and I have been slacking on updating the portfolio so I build up a few more examples and posted them this week. Some older some newer. Made some fun gifs as well. If you have a sec go take a gander.