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Showing posts from 2008

Thoughts on workflow...

Random note... If your going to Macworld... I'll be speaking at the Final Cut Pro user group meeting thanG. I was re-reading this book and it struck me as odd that in the workflow section they advised modeling before making an animatic... I would advise not modeling anything until you have gone through a few animatic revisions... the story could change, characters could change or get removed so then you would be spending time modeling for nothing which can hurt morale... its a good book though with lots of details about making 3d films thats really not written about anywhere else... except maybe here ^ ^ In this production I removed a main character and about 7 minor ones with an animatic revision... I'm glad I didn't model them yet cause then my wrist would hurt even more... That being said... I'm getting tired of modeling characters...I've done about 30 so far... but thats how things go... and the great thing about doing everything yourself is that there is alway

MadhouSe ftw

I started watching the new "Casshern Sins" series produced by Madhouse and I must say the d00ds at Madhouse just keep getting better and better... the imagery in Casshern is some of the best I have seen... the use of glows, selective focus, diffuse lighting and desaturated color palettes really makes it stand out to me... not too mention the awesome framing and blocking... Just have to say that I luRVE teh images. Color is something I've been thinking about a lot lately as I have a tendency to crank the RGB values ^ ^ BUT the first episode of Casshern Sins is a good thing to learn from... all the colors are desaturated except for the occasional glowing eyes or other things for effect like blood of red robot innards... because if the colors "pop" all the time then you can't use color as an effect because it will have no impact... no contrast... So I believe that you should only have a character talk when they have something to say... don't just have them

From the past...

I was looking through some old hard drives and came across this text file from 2003... --------------- 8-25-03 349am It all starts with an idea..a single spark that will hopefully smolder and catch aflame... and roll and roar through all doubt until it is as you have envisioned it in that fleeting moment. Long hours and sore necks along the way I know.... hot sweaty frustrations and spinning, shaking headaches when youre starving at 4am...it is all good. Pressure... time causes pressure... I have felt a great sense of urgency to create something of the worth the past few years... I thought perhaps my musical album would have staved it off for a bit but it swallowed it whole with no hesitation. So now I am on a new mission, a mission to create this animated film from an idea. In my mind this is the one, it always seems to be the one but I am assured that this will be more powerful than anything I have ever created. The script has been finished for about a month now. I was trying to asse

On technique and preparation

So after finishing the 2 best character models I've done so far I've decided to call it a day... and I had some thoughts on my workflow... So with WATS I was so nervous about 3d modeling and all that or for whatever reason I used reference drawings when I modeled..So I drew my characters on graph paper then put them in the background of my viewports and modeled to the design... and NOW I'm just freestyle modeling... I just launch Zbrush with a certain model in mind and I see where my imagination takes me and so far so good ^ ^ The great part of this freestyle modeling is that you can't "mess uP" since there is no plan to follow you can't do something "wrong" as you are experimenting the whole time... this way is far superior compared to how I was doing it before... I would waste so much time trying to get the 3d model to look like the concept art... if I would have just not been so careful I probably could of came up with something better BUT all

Damn I need Dis RAM

So I got those 2x4gb RAM modules for my new only 2 dimm slot board but they workin...and I need all 8 gigs... As I export a Displacement Map from Zbrush, compress a huge HD video in Quicktime while continuing to model and do test renders in C4d at the same time... its using 5.50 gigs right now DAMN! So I'm glad to have it back... I've been making some pretty interesting models for the film 0_o Welcome to your new nightmares ^ ^ I'm glad I can be of service! M dot Strange fashion designer has been working overtime designing all the clothes and what not for all these characters... there's close to 100 BUT I'll be using characters sets and templates like they do in games...Ya know using the same geometry for several similar models...like Soldier 1-8 have the same geometry for they bodies but different textures and faces... when you start mixing SPD maps and color maps you can get a lot of variety... So I'm right on schedule in case you were wondering... On another

The first feature film in 720p on youtube is We are the Strange ^ ^

The first feature film in 720p on youtube is We are the Strange ^ ^ I saw some press release where some Hollywood studio was making a big deal about posting theY feature films on youtube in the future and I was all ...I already did that in 17 languages?! whUT?! So to set the bar even higher for them to reach to catch interweB wacko's like myself I have decided to post We are the Strange in it's entirety in 720p. The film was made in 1080p but Youtube doesn't support that yet.... but when they do I'll post that too ^ ^ but I'll probably be done with the new feature by then and I'll have some crazy new ideas as far as what I'm going to do with it.... Am I afraid that no one will buy my SD DVD if they can watch it in HD for free? Not at all... Why? Because my films are made with passion and they cannot be duplicated or replicated... I put my heart and soul into my films...Hollywood just puts....money.... and today my friends...I say thats not enough!

The rituaL

I noticed that when working on a film my day becomes a number of different rituals...routines... and if I break these routines I feel lost and am unable to work... Those tech problems through off my routines but I hope to get back on it tomorrow... I called Tyan tech support and if I RMA the board it will take 5-7 biZ days to get it back...soooo... add in taking it apart and putting it back together etc thats about ten days... I really don't want to take that system apart so I'm to get two 4gb sticks of ram... I have two working dimm slots so I'll have 8gb's again... if something else dies on the board I'll use one of my render nodes as a temp workstation by popping in that 8800gt I have sitting around and use that till the main system is back in action... AND I can still use those 4gb sticks to give me 12gb of ram... Strangely enough... coffee, yogurt, bicycling, DS and manga are part of my daily ritual... Oh yeh I finished the 7th revision of the animatic...its ri

Multimedia MagicK

"Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so is consciousness. Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking, the truth is- The unknown" Aleister Crowley -------- How odd... I feel the same way about "film" ^ ^ Some d00ds theorems that have helped me immensely in my life...

And yeh it gets worse...

So tonight when I booted up my workstation the screen kept flashing and was running really slow... soooo... after doing tests... It appears as if now instead of just DIMM slot 1 being dead... now slots 1 and 3 are dead which makes sense cause they are on the same channel... So now I am down to 4gigs of RAM and yeh now I really have to return this POS... Also one of the sticks of RAM went kaput as well... it works but shows up as 1024mb's and its a 2gb stick! I tested in all the slots and of course none of them work in slots 1 and 3 but this stick only shows up as 1gb in the working slots... They don't sell this mainboard model anymore...maybe this is the reason why?

The true fiLM.

At version 1.7 of the animatic for my new film I will make some radical changes to the story... I'm taking out a main character and a subplot because it didn't add much to the emotional impact of the film... Ya know the same thing happened to WATS... a few months ago I found the original script ....and the original premise to WATS was actually really awesome I dont know why I didn't do it? Well maybe someday I'll create the original beginning so you can truly understand what wats was really all about because it wasn't about ice cream... thats the great thing about animatics... you can keep editing and reworking them to find the best film within... So by making this major change to the HSM story the true premise will reveal itself... I probably changed wats because I felt it was too personal... the way it was before... but I won't hold back with this one... Someone once described what I do as "personal cinema" and I think I will break new ground in that

Badr Hari is the besT.

This will seem like a strange post but since I'm making a film about fighting I've taken an interest in MMA and K1 fights... I just finished watching the K1 final from Japan... it had my favorite kickboxer in it... this d00d from Morocco named Badr Hari... He's known as the "Devil Prince" in Japan... cause he's all like WHUT?! and has mad skill... In the final he was disqualified for "poor sportsmanship" because he stomped his opponent when the opponent was on the ground..... It always strikes me as odd when people are outraged by such behavior that is "not in the rules" but as a fighter your out there to harm your opponent...why would you know want to stomp his face? I mean your out to knock him out the whole time and thats ok... Its a fight... thats what people came to see right? 2 men fight? So how am I going to tie this into film? Well lets say that to fighter there are two parts... the savage part... the one that wants to destroy your

Ugh memory problems...need some advice...

So as I was working away tonight I looked over at the task manager and noticed it said I only had 6 gigs or ram?! I was like wtf I have 8!??! I did yesterday?! So I rebooted checked the bios... 6 gigs of ram it said?! I opened up the case and reseated the ram... still the bios and windows reported 6 gigs... Then I took out all the dimms and left one in the slot #1... system would not post...just error beeps... Ok I said its either this dimm or this slot... moved the dimm to slot #2... system booted fine... So it must be the slot I say... put the other 2 dimms back in... system wont post?!!? Clear the CMOS... system posts... put all 4 dimms back in hoping clearing the CMOS fixed it... Nope..bios and Windows only see 6gigs of RAM... Mainboard has 4 dimm slots supporting 32gb of ram its a Tyan S5392... well now apparently I only have three working slots... So I have to return the mainboard?! NO I cant!! This is the second one I have gotten...had to RMA this first one cause it was DOA from

Building a world...

I forgot how much time goes into building a 3d world... I'm almost finished with one of the sets for HSM... but like being "almost finished" can last for awhile because I'm always adding stuff or changing the lighting... I'm like expecting to build a whole set in one night ^ ^ but thats not how it is... I was building whatever I wanted the last few days but starting tomorrow I'll be back on the plan... Had some weird stuff happening with Cinema 4d but copying and pasting everything into a new scene file seems to fix the weirdness... Sometimes the object manipulators stop working when I try to grab them... or just now... this scene with only 343,000 polys and 742 objects got SUPER slow in the viewport... I copied and pasted it into a new scene and the viewport was fast again?! I da know....just glad I found a workaround... THERES ALWAYS a workaround ^ ^ You just gotta grind and find it... apply it... then move on and keep working... Oh yeh one of the people I m

I can haZ never meet defeaT!!!

November is over... even though I missed 6 weeks of work traveling... Your pal M dot still finished his scheduled work... I met my quota ^ ^ The first phase of construction is finished... it was mostly props but I did model 8 characters.... rigged 2 of em cause I just had to see the creepy things move ^ ^ Rigging etc is in phase 3 btw... This stuff is not really what I had planned BUT it is unique and... well... insane XD Just thought I'd like yaLL know I'm right on track...thanks for your support! NotE: Since no other artists are working with me on HSM it is more me...which means more disturbing and raw... I use Cinema 4d's Bodypaint to texture the models but in my hands its more like finger paint ^ ^

Characters that never diE

I just watched the new Dragonball Z special (Just torrent it)... I haven't watched any DBZ for a year or two perhaps... but when watching this the characters were as endearing, lively and exciting as they ever were... The characters history came with them so I instantly reconnected with them... It got me thinking about characters and how Disney used them... and how Tezuka used them... Ya know how Mickey Mouse or Astroboy starred as themselves in other comics or animations? Hmmmmm... Hollywood is so obsessed with pre-sold franchises these days.... films based on comics, games...remakes, "Reimaginings" blah blah... People like what they know it seems... BUT also as a creator you like your characters because you know them sooooo.... hmmmmm... You might see some familiar "actors" in my new film ^ ^

Them Days...

Its 4:39am and I'm just starting to model right now... My new mainboards came in today so I was installing hardware/software all day/night... Even if you aren't able to get much work done its good for your morale to do something everyday...chip away... so I will chip righ noW... Just me and the Zsphere's......

C4dcafe tutorial guide

If you didn't know... I learned Cinema 4d by following the tutorials at c4dcafe.com I owe my C4d skills to 3dkiwi! ^ ^ Thats the guy who makes the tuts... A lot of people ask me how to learn cinema4d and I say "go to c4dcafe and watch the tutorials" then I get asked "which ones?" I realize I've been on that site since it started so there weren't many tuts back then... and now there's like... a hundred... So this is the order I remember watching the tutorials... so if your an absolute beginner you might want to try them in this order... Before you go anywhere in 3d you need to learn how to navigate in 3d space... these 2 are good for that... Navigating Cinema 4d Using Cameras Now you'll probably want to model a little something... Model a chess pawn OMG my chess model is so WIN how do I texture it? Applying textures If only I knew how to light this chess pawn Basic lighting This chess pawn needs to live how do I animate it?! Intro to animating BES

Thinking too much...

So I FINALLY started modeling some minor monsters and characters for HSM and I must say I have been thinking TOO MUCH about it because once I started modeling I just like... made some awesome shit haha... I can't fight my own style... So I'm not going too... ALSO if something looks good after 10 minutes of modeling move on... don't tell yourself... "I only spent 10 minutes on it... it can't be good" So yeh this is some e_vile str8nime shit... There's going to be some people that wished that I never upgraded my 3d skills and learned Zbrush cause I'm making some seriously fucked up stuff haha... So my workflow goes like this... Zbrush: Make base model from Zspheres--->Export OBJ Cinema 4d: Import OBJ... Additional basic modeling... Run Bodypaint to create UV's--->Export OBJ Zbrush: Import OBJ... Subdivide and sculpt---> Export Displacement map Cinema 4d: Add displacement map using SPD to model... Run Bodypaint and texture model c4d+Bpaint+Zb

AlmosT TheRRRRR

Based on a recommendation from someone at the cgsociety "technical and hardware" forum I ordered an Asus board... Installed everything... all 8 gigs of ram recognized... seemed like everything was alright EXCEPT the onboard gigabit LAN has no XP 64 driver so its using some old lame default one and running at 100mbps....sigh... yeh and I ran em all at 1000mbps last time... need the bandwith for the render farm etc... soooo... I'll be ordering 4 trendnet gigabit cards when I order 3 more of these Asus boards... I checked and the Trendnet cards have xp 64 drivers... Ah FahGET all this tech shit for today...I'm gonna update the animatic and modeL....

Animatic version 1.6

I just finished the 6th revision of the animatic... Every time you go over the animatic you get more in touch with your characters and the heart of the "story"... I mean because the animatic IS the film...just a crappilY drawn, all voiced by me version of it... I'm starting to throw the chains of "concept" off of myself... for some reason I've convinced myself the visual style of the film needs to have some concept rather than just doing whatever I want... I don't know where the whole concept thing came from but yeh I need to exorcise it... Sooooo with the concept goes the %100 3d thing ^ ^ So except crazy mixed media madness....again. I'm gonna need some humans.... Soooooo I didn't do any modeling while I was gone the past 4 weeks... and in my schedule it calls for me to complete the "easy" group of models by the end of November....sooooo I'm gonna GRIND HARD till the end of the month and catch up by finishing all the models... I&#

Pwned by lyFE

Some things I learned by being pwned by life this month... NEVER buy computer parts then leave the country for a month without testing them... My incompatible main boards were purchased more then 30 days ago so I can't return them... So I eat $400 for this mornings breakfast... and need to spend $500 more to buy the right mainboards... Always check your bank account balance online instead of running a tally in your head especially if foreign currencies are involved... I know its probably common sense but I' an animator that is pretty useless when it comes to real world stuff... Oh and foreign ATM machines cannot display a minus sign when showing your balance... cough... so like don't keep withdrawing money...cough... ahem... So yes... I was pwned by life in November 08... I could let it get me down but I'm too stupid too ^ ^ So I'm going to the bank now to take money from my film account to cover my personal money hole...

Just when you think you know (geek post)

So I started building my render boxes which I've written about before here... So I put the first box together... powered it on... NO POST Unplugged stuff ya know tried to isolate the problem... it has 4x2gb RAM sticks in it so I took two out as a test... It posted... Hmmm I said.... and started to google stuff.... Now the reason I chose this MainBoard is because it was like the only one that matched all the specs I needed... Its a Gigabyte GA-EGG43M-S2H So after doing research I've found out the MBoard will only support 4 RAM modules IF they are single sided... The modules I bought are double sided apparently... when looking through RAM specs at newegg or other online stores it does not even list whether they are single or double sided... So I wanted to use all 8gb's of RAM because the Mboard supports it BUT it won't work with what I purchased....sigh.... So my options are to either... Return the RAM (if I can?!) and look for single sided 2gb modules and buy those... or

Wait....wait...I make films?

My like 6 week international travel thang is over now as I is teh brain dead FACED... The last stop was the Waterloo animation festival... it was weird cause like in the screening there were WATS fans who knew all the lines and were screaming at the screen... I asked the projectionist to turn the sound up so loud the right speaker blew oops... during the Q & A someone asked me to totally "bust rhymes".... without hesitating I spAT a few baRRRS in the dark theater... thats the first time that has happened... but wait wait... I'm supposed to be making a film right? Not freestyling in Canadian movie theaters?!? As far as HSM goes... I reworked the schedule so that the travel didn't put me behind...AND I've made some breakthroughs with it that have been raising my like animator confidence power leveL somewhere near 8,892... I keep reworking the animatic which is making the film more WIN each time... So I'm back and will be writing in here regularly again... I

Thanks to yoU

Thanks to you all for the comments on my last post... Its like sometimes I forgot who I am and what I am supposed to do but you reminded me... I'm in Rome now and stopped stressing about modeling everyday... When I get back to the states I'll get all the modeling done while doing whatever my crazy mind wants to do... You know what was holding me back? It was the thought that HSM is a "samurai" film taking place in "feudal Japan"... there are too many rules and its too rigid if I were to do that and after wrestling with it for awhile I've come to the conclusion that its not worth it... Your not going to watch the film hoping its like historically accurate... you want to see some crazY shit!! Right?! So now I'm just going to let my imagination reign and do whatever it wants... cause thats who i IS and whaT i'S about... So now the film will take place in some world I made up... And yeh when I get back I'll build the render farm then just focus o

Suggestions not explicit details

Last night as I was modeling some stuff with Zspheres in Zbrush... I got to finish a low poly/subD version of the figure I was making... it was rough...like 300 polys or something.... I liked it... but for some reason I didn't move on... I subdivided it... then added details then subdivided it again and again till it was like 3 million polys and I didn't like it anymore... I realized once I had gotten the basic form... the suggestion of what I was going for my inner artist was like ok cool move on... but my geek mind was like more polys because you CAN! Lets use all 8 gigs of RAM!!! (Steve Ballmer woo) Thinking about high poly... high detail stuff hmmmm... I HATE working with multimillion poly models in a scene...it makes everything so slow its NO FUN at all to animate... BUT I came up with that solution to use low poly models with high res SPD maps right? YES but... those do take some time to render... I haven't done a test to see what a scene with a bunch of characters an

Why we do what we dO

So I'm back in CalifaS for four days before I go off to travel again and I must say I really missed being here with my computers... a place where I can realize my ideas freely with all these computers and monitors... Working with my laptop on the road is ok but I feel handcuffed..... Like when I was in Slovakia I spent most of my time working on my 3d models or watching Anime on my laptop ^ ^ WHY WOULD I DO THAT?!?! Because those are my favorite things to do... I realize the world inside my head which I can realize through my computers is more exciting to me than the outside world... that's why I do what I do... I like to live in the world my imagination conjures up and then I try to flesh it out using computers so I can share this place with others... Would I rather watch some awesome new anime episodes or explore a new physical place... (cough) anime... I already answered that question ^ ^ Thats why I do what I do... thats why I lock myself away and click on and on for years

Testing my own principles...

Well I didn't mean to buuuuuut... when I talk about how I made WATS and the principles I try to follow when it comes to making films the way I do... I would always say "You can't have a life and make films this way" What I meant was that you must dedicate most all your time to the film.... So as I am now... for the next few weeks I will be traveling for speaking engagements... so that would be having a "professional life" I am here in Bratislava for one more day... now it hasn't all been ummmm...lively here BUT I have fallen behind on my construction quota while I've been here... I haven't been able to see any sights or tourist stuff while I've been here and its my last day here as I leave tomorrow... So I can... A) Spend the day seeing the city and buying stuff for my friends back home etc... or B) Go back to my room and make 3d models until I catch up with my work Since I have already screwed around too much while I have been here I will ch

OLD system thinking makes meh ANGRY

So I'm Bratislava for this festival and just now some American video artist d00d from the 1960's was lecturing... well he was really just showing other peoples videos and sitting in a chair making high art commentary (cough)... BUT then at the end the festival organizer asked if he could copy the guys videos from the DVD the guy was playing... Some video art DVD put out by some New York city gallery or some shit... it was all meh... BUT the guy was all "No I can't allow you to copy the other artists videos without paying... its illegal to copy that" And every 5 minutes you would stop his lecture and say "Your sure your not copying it right because I can't let you do thaT" Now the guy was already talking about how the videos play in these art galleries and that they are not online... So that told me that this old fool is living in the past and no real people see this shit... So I had enough... So this guy was all uppity cause he thinks he's some g

Advocate yes Procrastinate NO

So I'm giving like 6 hours of lectures in Slovakia this week... and since I always do my best I had to spend some time working on them... time I would spend working on the film... BUT I'm doing my best to get my HSM work done after the other commitments... Just finished exporting the displacement map from Zbrush for the last object I had to model to hit my quota for today.... I'll try and work in between flights at the airport and while I'm on the plane... but that might be pushing it haha... how good of a model can I make sitting in a cramped seat on a plane? While I'm about to find out I guess? Normally I would have turned these speaking engagements down... if they were only for money I would have said no... BUT the d00d in Slovakia asked me to come on an "Empowerment mission" haha so I couldn't say no... I love trying to rally people... trying to get them to break out of they're shell and do some crazy insane creative stuff... AND a film is one

My four new best friends

I get way too excited about building computers... So my stuff came in... So those four four-headed d00ds will be responsible for rendering the next film you see from me. I'm happy to have them on the team... hopefully we get along and don't have many arguments.

M dot's mini render farm choice for September 2008

I figured it would be helpful if I show you what I chose and why for those interested in doing the same... I was originally going to use an Ikea Helmer cabinet to house all my render nodes but once I found some cheap cases w/PSU's that were cheaper than the PSU's alone for the Helmer setup I decided to just go with 4 separate boxes... CPU: Intel Q9300 = $260.00 - gotta have a quad... could of went with a Q6600 yes but I wanted the lower heat and power consumption that comes with this 45nm chip seeing that its going to be on forever... not planning on OC'ing either RAM: 8 gigs DDR 800 = $130.00 - My workstation has 8 gigs... I matched it so whatever my workstation can spit out these nodes will be able to render it... I'm doing lots of SPD with big textures so need the memory HArd Drive: 80gb Seagate = $40.00 -Nothing special here..just get the smallest, most reliable drive you can find Mainboard: Gigabyte Micro ATX = $104.00 - Why so expensive? Well I needed one that

Filmbaby ftw!

If you ordered a WATS DVD online you probably got it through filmbaby.com.... I just have to say that my experience with them has been nothing short of WIN... The guy that runs it, Jamie... is super cool and like... on it trying to make money for the filmmakers he works with... I didn't do any special deal with them just came in like anybody else would and I am now funding my new animated feature film through my sales with filmbaby... So I just ordered my new mini render farm right now... 4x Q9300 boxes with 8gb RAM for the geeks interested... I was only able to do so because of filmbaby retail sales... This is the way it should be... I mean I did bust my FACE authoring the DVD's and doing all the design etc... but once that was over I spent ZERO time or money on promotion outside of me mentioning it on youtube every once in a while... That allows me to do what I'm supposed to do... make films! I could have spent a lot more time trying to promote it and trying to work spons

Now your playing wiF PoweR ^ ^

Thanks for the D-Cinema link RandomFactor! So on the topic of production thangs that used to be hella expensive droppin down to affordable prices... First lets look at the wraptor... I didn't know about this so thanks RF... When the movie industry switched from FILM to DIGITAL they could of used a NON-proprietary format to make it open to all filmmakers BUT they did they usual bullshit and chose some proprietary format and process that cost the same as printing to film... so in other words its still too expensive and locks everyone but the studios out..... It seems this $700 plugin will create a D-Cinema ready file...something that costs like $80,000 otherwise... $700...$80,000...WIN SHOOT3d single camera mocap system Since Cinema4d 11 has new NLA options I'm looking at different ways to build my motion library... of course mocap is used a lot in the film and gaming industries BUT before I found this product the cheapest solution was about $30,000 and you needed at least 4 cam

Some WATS numbers

Now there are videos on the interwebZ with like 30-40 million views so my little numbers are like meh compared to those... BUT given the fact that I am making bizarre material for a super small niche I think the numbers are kinda inspiring... and also WATS doesn't have any b00bs, cats...nothing to do with celebrities, politics, pop culture or anyone hitting they balls... So as of right now... WATS in languages besides English total: 446,525 views The English version has 687,974 views... so thats 1,134,499 total for a film that old dead bastards and generic sheeple walked out of at Sundance... After looking at the youtube insight for all the versions... Over %50 of the people watching WATS on Youtube are under 18 years of age. So 20 years ago NO ONE would have seen WATS after what happened at Sundance... because there was no interwebs... no way to reach the people who might be interested in it... So I exist only because of this cyber place... If it was up to the rotten bastards who

UnholY

WOW Hollywood has stooped really REALLY LOW now... Remember how I was telling you about how the Weinstein Company guy wanted me to direct a Ninja film and I told him I as doing a Samurai film.... There is something in those old Samurai films from the 1960's that the Hollywood of today could NEVER replicate but they don't care about heart or soul they only care about the bottom dollar... Sooo.... It saddens me to see that they will smear another great movie.... The Weinstein company is remaking SEVEN SAMURAI to be released in 2009 Look at this quote from a press release... "The film company founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein said that it hopes to impart a "Western sensibility" to the productions in the hopes of producing movies that appeal to both Asia and the West." Haha by "Western Sensibility" they mean we will rip out all the heart and soul and replace it with mindless sex and violence to be perpetrated by whatever plastic flavor of the month

Creating and Being...Living and DyinG

I've been lucky enough to be invited on several paid for speaking/screening engagements all over the world in the past year thanks to WATS.... I got to talk about aliens and mind control in front of bewildered Brazilians in Sao Paolo... I got to start a presentation in Amsterdam with a slide that read "Brief pretentious intro"... In Warsaw, Poland an old man who was a musicologist was all teary eyed after seeing WATS when he said "I think in colors and this is the only film that has spoke to me in colors"... I got to act like a maniac when I got wasted and crashed the Berlinale closing party with rogue Dubliners in Berlin... there were some other great times in other countries I'll write about later.... BUT while on those trips I was thinking to myself...This is fun but I have to get back to work.... and I kept saying to myself I should say yes to these trips because there will be a point in the future when I stop getting invited... So I already have speakin

A book oh yeh

So I've been kinda workin on a book here and there for the past 2 years... but never got too serious because I had no way to publish it... Then I found this recently... Seems like a real easy way for me to distribute a book... So what I've been writing recently is kind of a manual for the "M dot Strange style of visual cinema" or something like that where I'm breaking down why I do what i do...and I have some other stuff I wrote for "Rebel without a cast OR crew"... its kind of a creative manifesto as well... Since you don't have to pay to make any books ....even if only 6 people buy em its aight... So I want to know... for the peeps that read this blog... What information would you want in a book if I wrote one?

Samurai/Ninja film galore

You will notice that in 2009/2010 the Hollywood studio system will put out a number of Samurai/Ninja films... Including Frank Millers "Ronin"... "Ninja Assassins" by the Matrix Brothers/Sisters...that "Bunraku" film I wrote about before... there's also a ton of Anime remakes coming out... So I guess its a new fad for the studios... I will tell you.... in late 2007 I was in talks with the head of production of a major Hollywood studio... they were interested in having me direct a live action Ninja film produced in the same way 300 was... ya know live action actors/green screen/cg fx.... I said.... well I am doing a samurai film next... he said that they were interested in "ninja" films... "Hard R with asian appeal" those were close to his exact words... Short story shorter...I wasn't interested as I knew no studio backed film would be intense, insane or honest enough to hold my attention... yeh there would have been a lot of mone

Fitting Zbrush in the pipeline

Ok after wrestling with it and reading tutorials for a a week or so I'm starting to find the right place for Zbrush in my workflow... I was deforming the geometry WAY too much before and expecting it too look good AND I didn't know I had to flip the UV's vertically when I brought the Displacement map back into Cinema 4d... So I just exported a sphere from Cinema 4d... screwed around with it for 2 minutes in Zbrush... If used correctly combining Zbrush and Cinema4d can do some pretty awesome stuff... So I exported a sphere from C4d and sculpted on it real quick... then I tested SPD maps on 3 versions... a 266 poly version, a 1000 poly version and a 4000 poly version... I tested them with different SPD levels to see what SPD level/poly count would give the best combination of quality/performance... Here is the 266 poly object with no SPD map applied.... 266 poly object with SPD levels 4,5,6,7...didn't bother doing 3 looked to crappy Here is the 1k polygon obejct with no S

HyphY and realitY

So now that ipods come in all the colors of the hyphy rainbow which I lurve to use in meh designs I'm all like whoa.... these colors used to be too bright for normal grown up folk application but now they are in teh mainstream in places besides kids crayons?... FUCK how much further do I need to pump up my RGB values to stay on the edge?!?! ^ ^ I put Itunes 8 on my laptop and the new "Jelly" visualizer is pretty much like single cell Str8nime organism fireworks... Colors Colors Colors... My colors aren't cutting edge anymoreS OH NO What will i do NOWS?!?! XD FUCK So being an all around animation-video-film-audio-gfx geek and seeing that I have a long history of twisted live action productions... I've been following the tiny CMOS HD video cam thing... I finally made the leap and got a Canon HF100 which costs under $700 but shoots 1920x1080 24p video onto SDHC cards... No capture! Awesome I said... No tape?! Awesome I said...HD not SD! Awesome I saiD!.... So then I

Thoughts on workflow 9-9-08

So I've been teaching myself Zbrush the past few weeks.... its been going ok and I've done some tests with it and Cinema 4d....here's some of my observations... Zbrush is really good at sculpting fine detail and creating organic forms that would be impossible to replicate in a non 3d sculpting app... Zbrush and Mudbox are the only two I know of... On the other hand to create the fine detail the Zbrush object get really high poly like 3 million polys+ Its not practical for me to use such a high poly model inside Cinema 4d for animation.... I really love painting my models in Bodypaint... Bodypaint DIES when trying to work with these mega million Zbrush models even on my mega machine... Zbrush can be used to output a low poly model and a displacement map so that all the fine detail from the millionpoly model can be added at render time... So far I haven't gotten this to work correctly.... BUT even if it did work I would have to paint on the displaced model which can be do

The struggLE in three dimensionS or is it four?

Since technique and pure aesthetics excite almost as much as moods and stories... I simply cannot create HSM without redefining my visual style...and by redefine I mean make it more complex ^ ^ I excel at creating super blocky raw looking paint splattered 3d characters like the one I used in the Rabbit Junk promo... or the dancing block man in the PnoK video I did... If I were to make HSM look like that the only thing I would be thinking about right now is the HSM story... but I like challenges and I love learning and trying new things... Soooooo... I've been studying and practicing to extend my 3d skillset and utilize techniques I have never done before... I mean I could use a semi-toon shaded look like I did with "Blue" in WATS but there isn't enough dynamic range in the color space with that technique to get me excited... Here's the thing... before I started creating the models and the like for WATS... I envisioned it being a very dark and serious film... So I

Automated call center advice

So my heatsink was supposed to come yesterday but UPS never delivered it...and when I tracked it...the status said there was an "exception" So I called the UPS 800 number and it was one of those automated call center things... and I went through the options and got to a point where there was no option for talking to an operator.... so the automated voice was all... "Please choose an option" and I was all "FUCK..... YOU" and it was all "We're sorry will you please repeat that" then I said it louder and creepier "FUCK... YOU" Then it was all "We're sorry will you please repeat that" and even louder and creepier I said "FUCK YOU!!!" then there was a pause....then the automated voice said "We're now transferring you to an operator" So I got what I wanted initially by just screaming "FUCK YOU" over and over....Gawd Bless America..THE END.

I didn't think I was cool enougH

So after getting the major work out of the way with my new workstation now I'm starting to nitpick ^ ^ The stock intel fans are loud and when rendering they whine up and down...and they don't do that good of a job of cooling... So since I am going to be in a prolong relationship with these CPU's I have to make sure we are both comfortable... So I ordered two of these... Its the Thermalright HR-01 X....And I got two quiet 120mm fans to put on them... there actually isn't much choice at all when it comes to finding coolers for socket 771 CPU's... I already tried some Dynatron ones but they were LOUD.... so hope to get those by the end of the week and be at peace with my workstation.

For you one man armY types out there...

As I was working on WATS and wasn't the battle scarred feature animation filmmaker I am today ^ ^ I found these tips in 3d World Magazine VERY helpful at the time... I don't think this text is online so I will post it here... These tips were written by Michael Hegner, the director of "Terkel in Trouble" This is from issue #54 of 3d World Magazine... I reread them recently to reinforce the microstudio ethos... I omitted some steps and text cause like I had to type it all... track down the magazine to read the whole article.... ------------- Michael Hegner 3d world magazine issue #54 1- Match your visual style to the budget you have available. Photorealism is very expensive and from where I'm sitting, its not a lot of fun either. Whats more interesting is creating unique characters and worlds. Its important to appreciate that you can create really good looking CG with a low budget, and that it doesn't have to involve lots of effects or long rendering times. To

Bruno 9Li

This d00d does some awesome stuff... met him at the Anno Domini gallery back when we both had exhibits up in there... Here's a video about him I thought it was win... I have the same ultraman toys on my desk haha He was in town recently for another show and I asked him to do a quick drawing on my DS in Colors ^ ^

Production Notes 8-27-08

-HSM will be %90 3d animated with none of the remaining %10 being stopmotion animation... So there will be no stopmotion character animation in this new animated feature film... - The film will be 120-140 minutes long... - Str8nime will not be used in this new film... a new technique is being developed instead... - A 3d "We are the Strange" sequel episode that will follow Rain and Ori is planned for release with the DVD of HSM... - I will be releasing 2-3 new music videos for various artists over the next 5 months... - I like computers.

Aggregated feedZ

So I totally aggregated all meh rss feedZ...So in this one handy like feed thing you can get... -Meh blog posts -Meh EXCITING Facebook status updates (ex. "I'm so FACE") -Meh youtube videos -Meh Vimeo videos -Meh Blogtalk radio episodes - and much more (actually just like some other xml code that i don't understand) Just subscribe via this link and you can get all that for a low low price of...oh wait it's totally FREE ^ ^

End of geek weekend....

Just so I could sleep at night knowing I made the right decision I tested the 8800gt vs. the 4850 in Xp64... Here are the results compared to the same tests in Vista64... And since its easy to do in Pages here are the graphs ^ ^ In the real world tests the scores were very close for simple scenes... one character dancing around for example... but in the heavier scenes with detailed backgrounds etc the ATI nearly doubled the performance of the Nvidia card... This is reflected in Furmark as well as Furmark is a very intense test... Final Observations: The Ati card is more powerful than the Nvidia and they are at nearly the same pricepoint...How? Well the ATi card at stock idles at 80' but its very quiet... a fan hack is required to up the fan speed which increases the fan noise but cools the card down to 55' idle... The 8800gt has a huge heatsink and fan which keeps the card cool at all times... the ATi has only a cheap fan... So since the ATI is a higher spec card they kept the

Goodnight Vista cause its time to go...

Goodnight Vista cause its time to go... Back to Xp64 windows cause you act like a HOE... do do do do doooo Fucked up my drivers for the last motherfucking time do do do do dooooo Whoever made this $hit has committed a crime... Ballmer woo's as they sell wannabe Os X garbage that wastes all my time!! do do do do dooooo Yeh thats right my Vista experience is OVER...back to XP 64... I turned off all the visual bling and was running everything in XP compatibility mode anyway and it still found ways to make me want to kill myself... it would not connect to my other PC's even though the XP one's could see it...and the Mac's didn't work at all with it... SO reinstalling Xp64....yeh....

Makes no sense but........

It's 3:35am now and I've been running tests on the 8800gt and 4850 since like....8pm 0_o First thing I learned is that Cinebench is NOT a reliable Open GL testing platform on Vista 64.... Every time I quit and relaunched it the scores would vary wildly... 5200...4500...4000....4200...5000... stuff like that... so I was thinking that maybe my power supply was faulty so I decided to investigate further... I monitored Gpu-Z while cinebench was running...The Cinebench OpenGL test never pushed the cards past %20 capacity which I thought was weird... I use Cinebench because it is based on the 3d app I use... also Cinebench uses standard OpenGL in its test...and I have learned through my other tests that using Enhanced OpenGL in Cinema4d yields higher frame rates... So I got two other popular benchmark apps that test opengl.... Lightmark and Furmark... First I ran Furmark and monitored gpu-z... Furmark pushed the cards to %99 capacity the whole time AND every time I ran it the scores

Nvidia/Vista64 driver MADNESS

So I'm running Vista 64 on my rig with Aero and all the visual bling crap turned off... I have an MSI 8800 GT... Weird stuff happens... I've documented the Open GL performance weirdness on this blog before... I got decent Cinebench Open GL scores with version 177.26 of the nvidia drivers BUT I get some weird screen tearing in Cinema 4d and other 3d apps crash a lot... video apps and 2d apps are fine... except Open GL freaks out in After Effects from time to time.... So I decided to try other drivers to see if I could find a performance/stability sweet spot... Here's the drivers I've tried to far.... 169.02 Poor OGL performance 169.28 Would not install 175.16 Poor OGL performance 177.26 Good OGL Performance Sketchy stability 177.66 Poor OGL performance 177.73 Poor OGL performance 177.79 Poor OGL performance 177.83 Poor OGL performance 177.89 Poor OGL performance Decent Stability The difference between Poor and Good OGL performance is about %40 by the way...so it makes se

Its NOT glamorous

If you want to make animated films the way I do you must know its NOT glamorous... for example right now... its a Saturday night and its like 70 degrees outside and for the past 2 hours and probably the next 2 I will be installing gfx card drivers..benching them... uninstalling them... installing different versions...benching them...uninstalling them....etc etc.... I was going to make a new animated video test tonight BUT these nvidia drivers on Vista 64 are buggy as FUCK so I'm trying to find a combination of performance and stability with these drivers but.... there's lots to go through Hope your having fun ^ ^

%10 of the budget of my new film is from youtube!

Well tonight my projector broke in a freak accident involving the paper clip that saved my laptop from robbers a few years ago...but anyway.... being desperate for money I checked into my youtube partner payment account which I never had done before annnnnnnndddddd.... I was surprised to find some money in there?! So now payments from my youtube partner account will cover %10 of the budget of my new animated feature film now in pre-production... My budget is next to nothing and I posted it here before so you can figure out whats in my YT account ^ ^ BUT I just think its WIN that a portion of my budget will be paid through youtube profits... As things move along in this whole self distribution/new media/1000 fan/longtail thanG it would be great to have %20-%50 covered by YT profits and other audience generated revenue.... but I'm thankful for anythang and happy to be able to just make my films my way....