Back at it

Hello dear readers! It's been a little while since the last update, and for good reason. The last week and change I've had some downtime, where I had a chance to relax and do some little side work unrelated to visual effects. But now that time is over, and I'm back at Digital Domain on a new project for the next several months. No hints or tips about it yet, but suffice to say, they'll be out mid next year. It's shaping up to be an interesting year or so, with some interesting career opportunities (Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, Charlotte's Web, and these two unnamed features).

During my time off I did some sculpting/modelling. Not in the CG realm, mind you, but with clay. On this side project it's required that the item I'm making be prototype-able, so all little nuances in the clay must be retained, but also be easily formable within a mold. It's pretty neat work, but I've hit a roadblock which I'm trying to pass. While doing this clay work, I accidently removed some clay from the model, and I immediately thought, "Where's the undo button?", immediately cursing under my breathe that there wasn't one, and I had to redo that feature from scratch. Doh.

I've had the chance over the last couple of weeks to attend some VES screenings here in the Santa Monica area. So far for Little Miss Sunshine, and tonight, for The Last King of Scotland. This year they're actually doing it in a place that's close to home, and at a time that I'm able see the films (evenings and weekends, yay)! A couple ones that I'm eager to see are The Good Shepherd and Children of Men. Those are next month, which will be here shortly!

Pictures from our Flags wrap party will be up later this week, as will some interesting ones from the annual DD Halloween party as well. That happened over the weekend, and it was extremely impressive; dancers in cages, kettle corn, food, psychics, open drinks, awesome costumes and music. Just, wow.

Hopefully most of you have seen Flags of our Fathers. What did you think? At the moment it's at 73% over at Rotten Tomatoes. It was third in its second weekend here in the States. This weekend will change that, with Saw III and Catch a Fire premiering. Remember that other film that I finished up at the beginning of the year? Charlotte's Web? That comes out in less than two months, on December 20, and I'm eager to see that film too! It's definitely more family friendly, but the characters within the film should be great. Tippett did some excellent work on the rat (Templeton, voiced by Steve Buscemi) and the crows Brooks and Elwyn (André Benjamin and Thomas Haden Church). Check out Meyemind for some new posters for the film!

I'm slowly checking out the new threads over at VFXTalk, CGTalk, and the PixelCorps forums, so I'll be answering the questions that need some help, or contributing when I can. All your posts in the Open Call entry do help, so continue to post away! It'll give a number of topics for the rest of the year that I can go over.