June 15, 2010
CGI & Rendering, Compositing, Lectures, Quotes, Reports, Technology, films, on set
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On the second day we all got late to the first lecture and missed “The VFX of Iron Man” and instead enjoyed the breakfast at our value-priced hotel whose every room was kept in shape for the whole place looked like a museum of 1970′s rustic dwelling. Mrs. Zheng apologized for not having boiled eggs and I downed every bit of orange juice that was left on the buffet because I almost died of thirst the night before. Mrs. Zheng didn’t like seeing me drinking eagerly directly out of the jar but left it at a sullen glance this time. Then we drove off to the Haus der Wirtschaft once again.
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On the second day we all got late to the first lecture and missed "The VFX of Iron Man" and instead enjoyed the breakfast at our value-priced hotel whose every room was kept in shape for the whole place looked like a museum of 1970's rustic dwelling. Mrs. Zheng apologized for not having boiled eggs and I downed every bit of orange juice that was left on the buffet because I almost died of thirst the night before. Mrs. Zheng didn't like seeing me drinking eagerly directly out of the jar but left it at a sullen glance this time. Then we drove off to the Haus der Wirtschaft once again.
Post is Prep
My Access Pass, originally uploaded by Phil Strahl.
Still a bit drowsy I planted my ass in the front row of the König-Karl Halle and knew I wouldn't be getting up for a long time, not even for Pixar's Career Gears (they don't need compositors, I got the message last years). So at 11 a.m. "The Role of Visualization in th
May 17, 2010
Animation, CGI & Rendering, Compositing, Lectures, Quotes, Reports, Technology, films, people
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I awoke after a terrible night of too little sleep (thank you, insane entertainment-industry sleep-cycle!) and was greeted suspiciously by Mrs. Zheng, the hotel manager, on my way to the hotel’s breakfast premises where the ongoing conversations ebbed as I entered. Too much eyeliner, I thought. But I had other things on my mind. In fact, I was so excited that I ran a red light on my way to the conference.
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I awoke after a terrible night of too little sleep (thank you, insane entertainment-industry sleep-cycle!) and was greeted suspiciously by Mrs. Zheng, the hotel manager, on my way to the hotel's breakfast premises where the ongoing conversations ebbed as I entered. Too much eyeliner, I thought. But I had other things on my mind. In fact, I was so excited that I ran a red light on my way to the conference.
Haus der Wirtschaft, originally uploaded by Phil Strahl.
I was eager to first see The Foundry's presentations on Mari, their programming approach and a tech demonstration of the recently acquired Katana, I was so excited about last year in Sony's presentation, but had no exact clue what it really was.
Paint that dinosaur!
Once arrived I got me a seat pretty close up front and was ready for their presentations to begin. Jack Greasley, who worked at Weta Digital on King Kong and Avatar and Zoe Lord, Senior Texture Artist on Avat
May 4, 2010
Reports
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As the years before I’m going to blog about the ongoing FMX convention in Stuttgart also this year, starting with day zero, the day of my arrival. I am one of those guys who plan and prepare for everything, sacrificing some vital sleep for the event just to get my dyed hair freshed up for three hours prior to departure. It was in the Europark mall where I picked up Donsch Gröstlinger.
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As the years before I'm going to blog about the ongoing FMX convention in Stuttgart also this year, starting with day zero, the day of my arrival. I am one of those guys who plan and prepare for everything, sacrificing some vital sleep for the event just to get my dyed hair freshed up for three hours prior to departure. It was in the Europark mall where I picked up Donsch Gröstlinger.
Donsch had been hauling his luggage-caddy for four hours before I picked him up and we put the thing in my car. Then we picked up Paul Baaske in Salzburg downtown and off we went. That was around 4 p.m. so already quite late in the day. And it got worse: Thanks to some unfortunate truck blocking my view somewhere on the German autobahn I took a wrong turn and we lost about an hour while Steffi, my GPS-navi, guided us back on track.
The sun had reappeared on the cloudy sky again, this time below the clouds, rendering the whole land into an almost cheesy orange/purple concept painting as we finally entered the city-lim
April 13, 2010
Reports
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I’ve always wanted to avoid to get involved with dealing hardcore with insurances, taxes and all that hassle one gets when not being employed. But, well, I don’t get any younger, my spending sprees on the web don’t get any cheaper and I realized that I just frickin’ can’t stand a nine-to-five job. So that’s why I decided to register a business here in Austria.
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I've always wanted to avoid to get involved with dealing hardcore with insurances, taxes and all that hassle one gets when not being employed. But, well, I don't get any younger, my spending sprees on the web don't get any cheaper and I realized that I just frickin' can't stand a nine-to-five job. So that's why I decided to register a business here in Austria.
I've been limiting my work output way too long to only a certain annual income so I won't have to pay (too much) taxes as a freelancer here in Austria. But that's over now. Since there's a new fiscal law in place in Germany since January (and I have German clients as well), I need a VAT-number -- or pay taxes to Germany, which would hurt. A lot. And the only way to get a VAT is from the IRS when running a registered business.
So I started researching on how to pull it off and stumbled across a nice website that helps people just like me getting started here in Austria. There's a big PDF of more than a hundred pages as a guideline which tells
April 5, 2010
Essay
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“What the fudge is that supposed to mean?!” I hear you asking, so let me explain. The »-symbol in the beginning indicates, that this post is going to be a story, an essay or some other kind of fiction; as opposed to the ♫-symbol, indicating music. “The Gift-Bearer” is the working title of a series of connected stories I am going to write and publish here. If it doesn’t make any sense to you right now, please bear with me (haha!).
“Chapter 1″ now is the first chapter in this series. Got that? Good. Then let’s begin!
Read the rest…
"What the fudge is that supposed to mean?!" I hear you asking, so let me explain. The »-symbol in the beginning indicates, that this post is going to be a story, an essay or some other kind of fiction; as opposed to the ♫-symbol, indicating music. "The Gift-Bearer" is the working title of a series of connected stories I am going to write and publish here. If it doesn't make any sense to you right now, please bear with me (haha!).
"Chapter 1" now is the first chapter in this series. Got that? Good. Then let's begin!
1
They didn't see me. I pressed my body as flat as possible against the old railroad ties and didn't move a bit. In the distance the two of them were looking for me, one was the bastard that had shot me. It was a stupid idea anyway to look for gifts in that old factory. Hell, I even was sure that some other people may had the very same idea the very same days, yet still I went. Damn, I had no other choice. Didn't even make it past the fencing rubble barricades when I was trying to a
March 21, 2010
Essay, Seph Carissa / texx sound
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Time for some music. I recently finished Mass Effect and was intrigued by the rather well drawn characters in the narrative as well as by the music which had such a familiar appeal to it, thanks to the 80′s synths in an orchestral setting. Again, I wanted to add my personal two cents to the dark voyage through the galaxy — plus some bonus material. And you can find both right here!
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Time for some music. I recently finished Mass Effect and was intrigued by the rather well drawn characters in the narrative as well as by the music which had such a familiar appeal to it, thanks to the 80's synths in an orchestral setting. Again, I wanted to add my personal two cents to the dark voyage through the galaxy -- plus some bonus material. And you can find both right here!
I was working like crazy for many hours straight on that song, the melancholic and desperate flair I was trying to achieve eventually made images pop up in my head, so I guess I succeeded in creating something evocative. In fact, the images and the feel was so clear that I wrote down a little story.
Ideally you click now the play-button and read the short story below.
Seph Carissa - Space Love. 2010.
[audio:http://philstrahl.com/downloads/audio/2010/seph_carissa_-_space_love_v03.mp3]
If it could rain in space it now would. I look across the capsule. I can see her, head down, her eyes a pale blue, pale as the
March 17, 2010
Compositing, Tutorial
1 Comment
Yay! Today my second tutorial for AEtuts+ went online. As usual, it was very labor-intense but from the first comments I got on it, it was really worth it. And that people like my hair.
Feel free to check it out yourself here, where you can also see the sneak peek of it. Now I gotta get some some sleep, just came back from holding a live tutorial on the FH Salzburg. Exhausting, but fun!
Yay! Today my second tutorial for AEtuts+ went online. As usual, it was very labor-intense but from the first comments I got on it, it was really worth it. And that people like my hair.
Feel free to check it out yourself here, where you can also see the sneak peek of it. Now I gotta get some some sleep, just came back from holding a live tutorial on the FH Salzburg. Exhausting, but fun!
February 21, 2010
donationware, fonts
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I said that I would post something creative at least once a week. That was more than two weeks ago or so. Well, in fact I was busy with my newest tutorial for AEtuts+ introducing Nuke to After Effects users, so you might want to check it out for. But those big projects aside there are always some small projects which are as interesting as versatile. This time: Another font.
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I said that I would post something creative at least once a week. That was more than two weeks ago or so. Well, in fact I was busy with my newest tutorial for AEtuts+ introducing Nuke to After Effects users, so you might want to check it out for. But those big projects aside there are always some small projects which are as interesting as versatile. This time: Another font.
The Backstory
Jürgen 'Jot' Brunner, a dear friend of mine is working more or less alone on a whole indie-game by himself, and since I played some betas so far I can say: I love its atmosphere and how its presented and I bet you'll think so too if you know Braid. And Jot was looking for some 70's computer-type font, that was technical yet playful. So I sat one afternoon in the café, caffeinated myself close to cardiac arrest and started painting glyphs.
I oriented myself on digital types, the old utopian computer fonts but tried to always keep the proportions a bit bell-bottomed. Lucky Jot liked as much as I the fact that a
