July 2007 Archives

Last night there was a productive meeting about the state of a VFX union in Vancouver. While I was unable to attend, there was a good number of attendees, and hit the link below to see the minutes from the meeting. All visual effects artists in Vancouver should at least read the minutes, and see where they stand. As well, there is a draft Letter of Understanding, as well as a draft Constitution. They are both PDFs. If you're in the industry for the long haul, I urge you to read the minutes, and contribute to your industry.

So what is it? The Dark is Rising? The Dark is Rising. The Dark is Rising. Because the Dark could be Falling. You never know. We're moving quickly in this show, which has a very accelerated schedule, hopefully ending near the end of August. Not sure of the number of shots, but we've got a hard hitting team of compers here, which will make short work of the plethora of shots. There are some other big shows in house, but surprise, IMDB doesn't list them. No worries, because the Digital Domain site has them listed In Production. They include The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, Speedracer, and The Golden Compass.

Siggraph is coming up next week! I'm planning on being down there for a day, Wednesday. On Wednesday a bunch of Tippett folk will be down, so it would be great to meet up with them and catch up. Digital Domain will have a large-ish booth, where there will be presentations covering some of the techniques that were used during the production of At Worlds End and Flags of our Fathers, as well as some other shows, which you'll have to show up to see! I don't know if we have any presenters in the panels or sketches this year.

If you're looking for a compositing job, Digital Domain is currently hiring compositors. Check out this post over on VFXpro. The current requirement is a minimum of four years compositing experience. I also want to add that there is a steep learning curve. You definitely learn a lot in a very short amount of time.

Congratulations guys! The nominees for Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series.

Battlestar Galactica • Exodus, Part 2 • Sci Fi Channel • R+D TV in association with NBC Universal Television Studio
Tom Archer, Lead Compositor
Brenda Campbell, Lead Compositor
Doug Drexler, CG Supervisor
Michael Gibson, Senior VFX Coordinator
Jeremy Hoey, Lead Matte Painter
Gary Hutzel, VFX Supervisor
Andrew Karr, CGI Supervisor
Alec McClymont, Lead CGI Artist/ Animator
Adam 'Mojo' Lebowitz, CGI Sequence Designer

Eureka • Pilot • Sci Fi Channel • NBC Universal Television Studio
Elizabeth Alvarez, Visual Effects Coordinator
Jamie Clark, Lead CGI Artist / Animator
Jarrod Davis, CGI Supervisor
Ben Funk, Lead Matte Artist
Robert Habros, Visual Effects Supervisor
Lane Jolly, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Darren Marcox, Special Effects Supervisor
Matthew S. Gore, Visual Effects Producer
Tom Tennisco, Lead Model Maker

Grey's Anatomy • Walk On Water • ABC • ABC Studios
Mike Cook, Lead Visual Effects Animator
Diego Galvieri, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Eric Grenaudier, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Al Lopez, CGI Supervisor
Sam Nicholson, Visual Effects Supervisor
Anthony Ocampo, Lead Model Maker
Val Pfahning, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Scott Ramsey, Visual Effects Supervisor/ Producer

Heroes • Five Years Gone • NBC • Tailwind Productions in association with NBC Universal Television Studio
Gary D'Amico, Special Effects Supervisor
Diego Galtieri, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Ragui Hanna, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Mark Kolpack, Visual Effects Supervisor
Daniel Kumiega, Lead CGI Animator
Chris Martin, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Jon Rosenthal, Lead CGI Artist
Mark Spatny, Visual Effects Producer
Cedric Tomacruz, Lead Matte Artist

Rome • Philippi • HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with the BBC
Daniel Acon, Special Effects Supervisor
Gary Brozenich, CGI Supervisor
Barrie Hemsley, Visual Effects Producer
Merrin Jensen, Visual Effects Producer
Duncan Kinnaird, CGI Supervisor
Doug Larmour, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
James Madigan, VFX Supervisor
Anna Panton, Visual Effects Producer
Paula Pope, Visual Effects Coordinator

Continue on the link below to see the nominees for Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special.

It's been a week since my last entry, and it's time to add another one on this main page. Unfortunately, not much exciting news these days. It's the summer time, the slow time before the storm. I am on a small show which delivers at the end of August called The Dark Is Rising. There is a possible name change in the future, as this movie is based off of a series of books, which they hope to continue making. This fall is going to be much more exciting, with lots of really great films to work on! I might get a chance to touch upon four films before the end of the year. Time will tell. Siggraph is approaching quickly as well, and I hope to attend. I'll probably head down for a day, most likely the first open exhibit day, which I think, is a Tuesday. It'll be my first Siggraph attendance in a while.

I've been working with some of the VFXTalk crew into having a gathering at the Santa Monica library hopefully near the end of August, beginning of September. Thanks to Saeed for suggesting a vfx usergroup for the LA area. We'll keep you informed, and be sure to head over to VFXTalk for details, which are coming soon. Topics of discussion are still being decided, as are presenters and support.

My first Nuke plugin was a success! Yesterday I spent some time with another technical comper, and we went through and figured out how to pipe color information into separate channels. Yay! Unfortunately our instruction was very short, overall it was four hours, including two hours of C++ introduction. The last time I coded was in CS class back in high school, and we were doing PASCAL and Fortran. My, how times change. And of course, C++ isn't the easiest to pick up, especially after only two hours. But now I know the workings of how Nuke uses the code to create plugins, and I'll be going through the NDK extensively to see how everything works. It's a little bit greek to me, but it'll change as I get more in depth with creating tools. Sometimes it seems that plugin creation isn't necessary, as the gizmo creation in Nuke is very powerful as it is! I'm hoping that if I can create plugins, they'll work quicker than the equivalent gizmo. We'll see.

Ah.. It's been a while since I last posted an entry. There's really not much to discuss at the moment, as I'm waiting for At Worlds End to come out on DVD so I can add some of the work to the gallery! I've also got a shot breakdown of one or two of the shots I completed, from beginning to end! Brian suggested that one in my Open Call posting almost a year ago. Feel free to add suggestions to that posting, and I'll add it on my list of to-do items for you guys! Like always, there's not an ETA for any of the suggestions, but I do try to address them!

I've starting creating some C++ plugins in the downtime, while we're semi-slow here. So far I've written two, very simplistic plugins. One converts a string to uppercase (woo) and another asks a question and returns it with a comment (woo!). Very tame stuff! I'm hoping to incorporate the techniques I continue to learn into creating Nuke plugins with user feedback. We've got a Nuke SDK class tomorrow to go over how to incorporate C++ with the SDK. Most likely all of my tools that I'll be creating will remain inhouse, but if there's something useful down the line, I'll write something at home and put them up here or there. In show news, I'm possibly moving onto another show very shortly, but the logistics still need to be worked out.

Unrelated to visual effects, I bought another toy! This time it's a motorcycle, my first one. It's a Suzuki GS500E. And yes, it's yellow too. Same as my car, but not of my own volition. That's all they had at the dealer that was less than 500ccs and under three grand. I took the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) Basic course a couple of weeks ago. Now I have my Class C and M1 rating! Now all I need is an A and B class license! Why? Oh, just to have. Maybe I'll become a trucker, and leave visual effects behind. Right.