Another time it’s been way too long between updates. Again much has happened, I was too busy to author a thorough blog post of general interest. And honestly, I still am. So I will give you a short run down on what I did recently. And if you want to see some shading/texturing going on, to witness the power of the almighty bump-map that still does its job well and without the annoying purple eye-cancer-causing colors of a normal map, read the rest…

After posting the last blog post I…

• …worked on some station ID motion graphics as a compositor at Fresh FX. Lovely place!
• …took a week off, hoping to get anything done with my diploma thesis.
• Instead I am working on a rather secret project on lighting, shading, rendering and compositing. Oh and I got me a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. As soon as I produce something worthy I’ll let you know. But I already know how much I love that black brick already.
• …did an elaborate video tutorial for AEtuts+, that’ll go live this week or so.
• ..enjoyed two weeks of heavy duty Nuke compositing for Fresh again, complete with long hours and weekend shift.

Now I’m back to not writing on my thesis and continuing on the secret project, codename Trailblazer.

Some of my colleagues already know about Trailblazer but for those of you who don’t I’ll have a little riddle. Look below, this is a small part of the project I shaded today — w00ts for Photoshop! All I can tell you it’s from a movie that was released nearly 20 years ago. If you can guess it from the detail: Damnit, you’re better than good, you’re all knowing! So you’re either god, the anti-christ over the über-nerd. Either way I am happy that you spend your precious time reading this little blog entry!

License Plate Shading from Phil Strahl on Vimeo.

And don’t bother googling, it won’t help you here — hehe!