Messing around with a new animation in Houdini

Taking a class on VEX and I’m applying some of the ideas from it in this animation I started yesterday. I want to add in some camera movements yet before I render it out. Hoping to get to that today…..

Alienated, Alone And Angry: What The Digital Revolution Really Did To Us

10-20 years ago if you would have asked me about killing off the internet somehow I would have fought you tooth and nail. Now though, I think many of us agree, the internet has become a hellscape and it kinda needs to be changed or go away. So sad to see what so many of us hoped would improve the world be corroded in such a way. This article does a good job of summing up a lot of my feelings about where we are.

“Which brings us to the new economy of freelancers and gig workers, precarious, unprotected, and connected. Hourly workers fry their brains with images no one should ever see — information detoxification — working to meet bizarre and inconsistent standards handed down from a distant authority, and then melt down in filthy bathrooms. Harried subcontracted delivery drivers feel so desperate to meet overnight shipping deadlines they get in deadly crashes. Uber drivers, some of whom sleep in parking lots, have separate bathrooms than Uber corporate staff. These people, it stands to reason, might be alienated. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Meanwhile, the median home price is San Francisco is $1.4 million. This is where the Digital Nation mostly lives, in the most beautiful place in the country, profiting directly or indirectly off our participation in the alienating world they’ve built. Many of these people don’t want their children using the products and networks they build and sell. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.

Still, they’ll listen to you and spy on you for law enforcement. They’ll use that data, which they may or may not protect, to get richer. They’ll build special privacy schemes for themselves. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. Disempowered and unsure how to express it, you may take a strange comfort in the fact that there is another alienated human on the other end of your device. You’ll never meet them, but at least they will hear you.“

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.”