Daily Doodle

Simple quick paper cut out thingy with cloth draped over it. Working on my vellum chops on these mostly ATM.

Just a balloon lighting study. No politics I promise!

Todays doodle took way freaking longer than it should. Just could not seem to land on a concept that clicked. Luckily it was a lovely day out here and I got a nice loooong walk in as well. Wanted to play a bit with just changing up the lighting for different feels. Mylar balloon was modeled in C4d as I just could get it to work in Houdini. The string is another Vellum simulation that was fun to quickly knock out. Stuff like that is why I am focusing so hard in Houdini. Whenever you want some kinda of element like smoke, string, cloth or what have you, you can just bang it out in the scene. It’s really nice.

Yikes, be safe peoples....

Daily Doodle on some current news here. CoronaVirus is no joke it seems.

1,000 confirmed cases of infection.
8,420 people are reported to be under observation.
Lockdown acrossthe province of Hubei, 35 million people.
Buses in cities of Chibi, Xiantao, Zhijiang, Qianjiang, Xianning, Huangshi and Enshi have suspended services.
Ezhou city has shut its train stations.
70,000 of the country's cinemas will remain closed this weekend.
Shanghai's Disneyland also announced that it would not open its gates.

Pretty seriously scary stuff.

Technically speaking, this piece was pretty interesting to me because I incorporated Volumes for the cloths and Vellum for the cloth. Using the FBX loader from Calvin Atorr to load the mask as well.

Seriously? This is how repubs are gonna play it?

I can’t believe the shit the republicans are pulling. What a bunch of jackasses….

A little Houdini therapy for the daily doodle today. Text in C4d because text in Houdini is Terribad.

See that little “unpack” node in there? You NEEED that shit when working with ABC!

Pearl Jam?

Huh, did Pearl Jam just somehow make themselves relevant again?

Houdini Particle Doodle

While not trying to do the “Daily” thing, I do wanna try to do SOMETHING in Houdini everyday as a learning exercise. Last night I got into some particle effects which was super fun. Using only three nodes and no code I was able to come up with this movement. I just did a bunch of keyframing in the popAxisForce, popAttract and popWind nodes.

Rendered out in Redshift and then I threw some sound design on top of it all in Davinci Resolve. Pretty fun little piece for a quick little doodle.

Some Personal Renders messing around with Houdini

Just some of the instagram images I have been posting as I mess around in Houdini. Might have to switch to some High Key imagery for a change of pace… lol!

Impossible Pork?

I dig the burgers, but in our opinion they are still a treat and not something that is “more healthy” per say. Be interesting to see the nutritional breakdown on it.

Animation point cloud study

Here is the animation I have been working on for the last few days. The first time really getting into camera movements and editing and I really enjoyed the process. Looking forward to doing more in-depth animations like this soon. Sound Design by We Are Parasols. All done in Houdini and Redshift. This blog post has some more stills and shows how it was built out.

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.