Manchester here comes your new T(ea)D(ude)
It seems I am a TD now. Never thought of myself as a TD yet. Compositor, sure. 3D guy specialized in lighting and rendering, sure. But somehow my brain never made the connection that the combination of both skills could mean being a TD. I guess I will find out in about 5 days if that logic works as I will be starting at Red Vision VFX in Manchester next week.
I am going to try and keep this blog updated more often during my time there. Photos, stories, etc.
Read More...Music Video “From London to Berlin” Gets a Review
The Doncaster Road End blog has posted about the Infernal video we re-did for the world cup (you can read about it in one of my older posts). In their post they review several songs that were… er… well… mutilated to make a quick buck of the world cup. “From London to Berlin” actually made a reasonable standing. Thanks guys!
I am aware that this was no high quality piece, but believe me, it was at least a challenge from the technical side. And I actually think it works better then the original version. In this new one the story tells better and clearer.
Anyway, thanks for the review.
Shake Support Goes On
It seems like a niche market that had to be filled sooner or later. After Apples decision to quit the development — and with it the support and maintenance — of shake with version 4.1, there is a big hole in the support area of shake. Of course, there are the normal forums like fxshare (formerly highend2d) or cgTalk, but for deep down support it is always nice to have the developers at hand, because only they know, what really goes on inside the code.
Well, I was not the only one who had that thought. Billy Woody, the primary support engineer from Apple, said goodby to Apple and hello to the shake community. He will be supporting shake users from his new base at shakesupport.com.
Read More...UPDATED: Musicvideo “Var Minut” by Emilia Finished and Online
Remember Emilia? She did this song called “Big Big World” about 7 years ago:
Guess what? She is back, with her new song “Var Minut”, which means “Every Minute” and is the usual thing about love I guess. I can’t really tell though, because she is singing in Swedish and I don’t understand a single word of it. ;-)
Anyway, I was VFX Supervisor on set and also the main guy to do the VFX in post. Time was short — as always — so the quality is barely enough for TV but should be bearable for the web. There are 8 greenscreen shots and 7 fire-only shots that we had 5 days to work on.
Read More...Eggington Productions Is Hiring for a TV Series
Hi everyone, I know I have been absent for while (again). It just seems to happen in my life every few weeks. I guess that is just how this blog will work.
Anyway, my friend William Eggington of Eggington Productions is in the pre-production phase of an animated CG TV series. For the final production he is looking for animators, riggers, texturing and shading artist, TD’s, compositors… well, basically the whole pipeline of CG productions.
Read More...Solo - a Danish Documentary
Hello everyone, I have to make a completely selfish plug for a movie I worked on lately. It is called Solo and is about Jon, the first winner of the Danish Popstars show. I don’t speak a word of Danish — well, at least not enough to fully understand the movie — but the critics seem to love it and it is a big success for us so far.
Me and my team worked on several things, some which made it into the final movie and some which ended up on the cutting floor. We had some nice effects and compositings in there, but the director decided that it is a documentary not an effects movie. A good decision if you ask me, although it is a pity the effects never me it into public.
What is left is a few name removals from signs and some other invisible effects to increase the quality of the material like degraining or resizing and reframing, etc.
We are shipping the DVD which has English subtitles (Yay! I finally can understand what I contributed to!!!) over the company website and through the normal DVD stores beginning of June. So just grab a copy and make the success even bigger, will ya?
Cinema 4D Artist Wanted
Hello dear readers, my friend and mentor Udo is searching for a Cinema 4D artist for 4-6 weeks in Munich.
Requirements are
- Required
- Cinema 4D knowledge with experience in TV broadcasting workflows is required
- nice to have
- shake experience
- 3D tracking experience
For more info look at the full article.
Read More...VFX Coordination for Pixomondo
I have been hired at Pixomondo Images in Ludwigsburg to work as VFX Coordinator for some of their recent projects. This is an exciting opportunity. The company size is considerably bigger then most companies I have worked so far and I have to handle several smaller projects instead of one or two big projects. That is a new challenge and I am looking forward to master it in the coming weeks.
Being a part of Pixomondo makes me proud, as this is a very professional, yet cool company to work for. I have a chance to stay with them for a longer time if I am not messing up the first 1,5 test months. Wish me luck.
How to Work Efficiently
A lot of times I hear people complaining how slow this or that program is. “shake is so slow”, “motion is total crap” or “why is this taking so long?”
Well, guess what, there is actually a solution to it. And the magic word is workflow. We are working on pretty heavy projects most of the time. HD material (even if the output will be PAL in the end) or lots of layers or 3D layers. All that stuff is by definition slow. Especially if you work in a more complex setup then one or two layers. Add to that, that we are working in a network based environment and you get a workflow slow as molasses.
Read More..."Prisoners of the Sun" Put on Hold
It is official now. The production of "Prisoners of the Sun" has been put on hold. All employees and freelancers have been laid of as of 30th April 2008.
According to rumors, it seems the legal situation of the movie was not researched thoroughly before going into post production.
It is a pity, because we were at a stage, where all the pipelines were set up and we just started our first two full CG shots. We were actually starting to have some good old VFX fun. But not anymore. Now we have 20 people hunting for jobs again.
It really makes me sad to give up a great little company. We had a killer team. Thanks to all of you for being so great.
P.S.: If anyone has an open position for a compositor or VFX producer let me know.