Band Photo for We Are Parasols

Did a fun shoot and CG set build out for the newest We Are Parasols EP release. Going for something a little different then the last moody ones.

Late night cloud study

Messing around in Houdini last night and felt like doing some cloud work. Here’s the result of that.

William Gibson

“After “The Peripheral,” he wasn’t expecting to have to revise the world’s F.Q. “Then I saw Trump coming down that escalator to announce his candidacy,” he said. “All of my scenario modules went ‘beep-beep-beep—super-fucked, super-fucked,’ like that. I told myself, Nah, it can’t happen. But then, when Britain voted yes on the Brexit referendum, I thought, Holy shit—if that could happen in the U.K., the U.S. could elect Trump. Then it happened, and I was basically paralyzed in the composition of the book. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block—that’s, like, a naturally occurring thing. This was something else.””

Good interview with William Gibson on the New Yorker.

Aside from that, I am pretty burnt out ATM so not a lot going on. When I am not working I want to get as far away from computers as I can. Since all my artistic output happens on computers… well…. my art output has been pretty low as of late. “Burn out” is real, people.

Book on CG cinematography

I found this really awesome online book that covers many aspects of CG cinematography. It covers everything from Color Theory, Gestalt Theory, Lighting Principles and so much more. I have been reading a chapter a day trying to absorb it all. This is a serious knowledge dump here with some excellent examples. He made it so I can’t copy any of the text somehow so just take my word for it and click the link.

Landscape Concept Study

I have been playing with this landscape piece in Houdini for a while now and finally got it to an interesting place. It’s my first landscape in Houdini and using Quixel Bridge has been amazing. It is integrated with Houdini in such a fluid way. They made it one click to import everything ready to go in Houdini and Redshift. I still struggle with so many little things in Houdini and take classes CONSTANTLY, so to just be able to click on a plant and have it import with scatter nodes and materials all set up is a crazy time saver.

Another little mental leap for me was being able to art direct the smoke how I wanted without bashing my head against the monitor for a day.

Did some post work in Photoshop of course. ;)

New Ep cover art to share

Just finished up this illustration for a upcoming EP from the band We Are Parasols. C4d and Redshift on this one. Put some VDBs in a cloner instead of going into Houdini and making the smoke / clouds from scratch. Pretty happy with the outcome.

Marvel Universe Maddness!

Just posted a some illustration / retouching I did for Marvel Universe in the Portfolio. Go check it out!

Some recent stuff

Been kinda messing around with all sorts of things lately after doing a deep dive into Redshift. Worked up a vellum grains simulation in Houdini, a cityscape concept in C4d,a cat skull abstract piece and a more playful grapich coffee thing. Next deep undertaking is going to be doing more of a study on how to make abstracts in Houdini. Gonna dive into particles and messing with geo on a deeper level.

Music and life tips

“your path for achieving success is two fold: 1. play great. 2. in all things, be easy to deal with.

reconcile yourself to these facts every waking moment of a tour, or other business engagement of any kind within this scenario. if you forget the rule for even a very short time span, there's going to be static. you can also reverse engineer this, detect some static? have you remembered our little rule?
there are some that will never get these concepts, there are some that can learn them, and sometimes people come along that are pretty much born for this role. you can easily determine if you are in the first group by taking an accurate inventory of your self-centeredness. folks that are really all about their own trip are miserable in this role of sideman. and they make everyone else miserable as well. i'm not intimating that this type of person is bad or anything, however, they might should consider forming their own band.”

Skull Study

Messing around with volume meshes in Cinema 4d today and came up with this little study. It’s fairly tricky to work with Redshift materials in the C4d window though. Can’t see a damn thing in the viewport. Just basically keeping adding shapes into the volume till you get the shape you want.

Splish Splash!

Little water study while trying to maintain some readability.

The Fasting Cure Is No Fad

“Fasting is one of the biggest weight-loss trends to arise in recent years. Endorsed by A-list celebrities and the subject of a spate of best-selling books, it was the eighth most-Googled diet in America in 2018.

But fasting shouldn’t be dismissed as just another fad. At the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, I’ve employed what’s called intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating, to help patients with an array of chronic conditions. These include diabetes, high blood pressure, rheumatism and bowel diseases, as well as pain syndromes such as migraines and osteoarthritis.

There are different ways to go about it, but I advise patients to omit either dinner or breakfast, so that they don’t ingest any food for at least 14 hours at a stretch. That makes lunch the most important meal of the day. It also reduces the time spent each day processing food and lengthens the period devoted to cleansing and restoring the body’s cells, both of which have positive health effects. “

I started practicing this this year after doing Whole 30 in January and I find it really helpful. I am down almost 20 pounds for the year. Highly recommend it.