M dot Strange's blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.