Lost in the Plot

At the moment, feed readers and fancy personalized pages are just aggravating me, so I quickly put together a start page with links to things I want quick access to. I’ve put it online, so when I’m at work with a spare moment, I can just pick a link to catch up on. Visited links are darker so I can see where I’ve been each day.

Reading content casually in the context of its original site is preferable to me right now over bulk feed aggregation, and I’m picky about how a start page looks and feels so this is the best solution for me.

Just saw Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which I really enjoyed. Visually stunning, more intelligent than it appears from the outside, and of course very entertaining. It’s quite long, but not necessarily in a bad way, and despite a few little moments I would question, on the whole is a really great film. And although there’s been talk of studio disagreements over the ending, and of Luhrmann shooting multiple versions, I felt the last 20 minutes was some of the best stuff in the film.

It inspired me to post the above photograph from a hiking trip in the MacDonnell Ranges - an amazing place that I would love to return to.

Check out the Australia trailer, or the interesting Set to Screen podcast series from Baz Luhrmann.

Something from way back, but still a favourite of mine. This and other works like it are on cheap canvas, and done with permanent marker, which don’t always fare well over time. I hope they’re doing okay, stored away in Australia somewhere…

It occurred to me that no one had made a site dedicated to the inspiring artwork produced by the artists at Pixar - so I’ve made one at www.theartofpixar.com.

It’s by no means going to be an exhaustive resource, since I don’t want to infringe on any copyrights and start scanning art books etc. It’ll be more of a collection of stills, publicity shots etc already available elsewhere online, but now collected into one easy place! Check it out, enjoy…

Being sick at home, though miserable and not very productive, has brought me back to my industry environment project. Just some modeling progress above (larger version), slowly adding detail and today I made a nice fairly high-poly tree. Also, below is a quickly sketched color exploration, though now I feel it’s way over-saturated and not really the look I’m going for.

An afternoon of exploring the industrial streets in Greenpoint today- I took a bunch of photos, mainly the different textures and surfaces, and just absorbed the architecture and atmosphere. Above is a rough concept, (larger version) inspired by what I saw, for an environment I’m planning to build as a 3D exercise.

I’ve been doing some general 3D work in Maya, mostly just to keep learning and stay focused. This image of a tree (larger version) was an exercise mainly in UV mapping and texture painting, and was also a bit of an exploration of Mental Ray’s shading, lighting, and rendering.

To conclude four frustrating days at home with the flu, I decided to do something slightly productive. Taking advantage of my newly refreshed computer with nice new software, and my sadly underused Wacom, I painted this night scene with a cabin in a forest. Definitely rough, and a sign of my inexperience with the proper use of brushes and techniques, but it’s a start. It’s also an exercise for me in posting rough work, which usually I like to keep hidden away! Here’s a larger version.

To go along with a new edit of my reel, I needed to create a new DVD to present it. I worked quickly to get this done, since I know how easy it is to get bogged down endlessly redesigning a personal project. I based the interface on a random motion graphics experiment I created a few weeks ago- a collage of photographs of a tree, layered and blended and then subtly animated using Apple’s Motion.

I made a 30 second loop from it in Final Cut, then built the menu interfaces in Motion. I also made brief animated intros for the menus, which are nice, though DVDs just don’t seem to be capable of switching between menus or tracks quite quick enough to make the effect seamless.

Anyway, now I can finish working on the presentation of my reel, and get back to actually creating new stuff!

I updated my online portfolio to include a new edit of my animation reel. I just wasn’t happy with the old version- it was put together in hurry, and I included things that in retrospect weren’t either necessary or appropriate. Seeing several of the excellent talks at Siggraph earlier in the month, especially those hosted by Animation Mentor, helped me make better decisions and edit a reel I’m more happy with. To summarize the process I’ve gone through: remove work that isn’t great, edit down unnecessary length. It’s obvious advice, and I’ve heard it many times, but turns out it’s been a slow process to really do it, to be ruthless, and only leave the strongest stuff.