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
March 17, 2010
Compositing, Tutorial
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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!
January 30, 2010
Compositing, Computing, Dear Diary, Tutorial
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Wassup, y’all? I’m back! Back from the vault, back from grinding merrily away 20 to 30 hrs a day on my diploma thesis and back from LaTeX formatting hell. Through my veins still runs a little amount of blood among all that caffeine and so I’m announcing my new credo for 2010: Make Something Creative Every Day Week!
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Wassup, y'all? I'm back! Back from the vault, back from grinding merrily away 20 to 30 hrs a day on my diploma thesis and back from LaTeX formatting hell. Through my veins still runs a little amount of blood among all that caffeine and so I'm announcing my new credo for 2010: Make Something Creative Every Day Week!
There's quite a bit I have planned for in 2010. First and foremost I'll get busy on some new AEtuts+ video tutorials introducing Nuke to the After Effectors among you all and something I have in mind for quite a while now, working title: "The Art and Science of Rotoscoping". (Everything's "art" and "science" in visual effects, if you read the books.)
There's a new series for flickr that I have in mind by the name of "Austrian Details". There are so many things I encounter that are so typically Austrian in some way and that people from other places probably wonder about when they see it. When it launches I'll tell you here.
I'll also be holding Tutorials on the Salzburg University of Ap
May 10, 2009
Animation, CGI & Rendering, Lectures, Reports, Technology, games, people
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Traditionally the last day of every fmx is the games day and this year I was prepared for it: Yes, I was wearing my Half-Life² t-shirt proudly in any Electronic Arts lecture I could get in. “They save the best for last”, as AIAS president Joseph Olin put it in the beginning. Yes, there was a lot to come. As always I just wish I had slept more.
Read the rest…
Traditionally the last day of every fmx is the games day and this year I was prepared for it: Yes, I was wearing my Half-Life² t-shirt proudly in any Electronic Arts lecture I could get in. "They save the best for last", as AIAS president Joseph Olin put it in the beginning. Yes, there was a lot to come. As always I just wish I had slept more.
Pipelines of War
Greg Mitchell , originally uploaded by Phil Strahl.
The day started even louder than the fat guy jumping down the stairs above my room at 6:45am: With Gears of War 2 (GoW2) and how Epic Games thought up streamlined their production pipeline for those. Greg Mitchell a big guy, well presenter and Cinematics Director at Epic worked twelve years in television before he switched gears (pun intended) and went into the game industry. He already worked on the cinematics of the first Gears of War (GoW) but wasn't quite 100% happy with the outcome: Not all was motion captured and so
May 8, 2009
Animation, CGI & Rendering, Compositing, Lectures, Random Thoughts, Reports, Technology, filmmaking, games, people, photography, ranting, retro, video
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7:30 am and somebody walks downstairs. Good morning to me. My program for today was mostly about tracking and motion capturing and heavy duty compositing. You might have guessed: It was the day of Benjamin Button.
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7:30 am and somebody walks downstairs. Good morning to me. My program for today was mostly about tracking and motion capturing and heavy duty compositing. You might have guessed: It was the day of Benjamin Button.
After enjoying the breakfast a little too long I was rushing down Königsstraße in my car so I would make it to Pixar's RenderMan presentation. I already knew what it was going to be considering last year ("The Über-Sprite", the rocket, the fast-rendering motion blur) but Pixar is rather generous in handing out posters and presents and I wanted me to get another teapot for my collection [1. ...that consists so far of one Ratatouille-themeded teapot.]. I was too late, the room bursting with people. Obviously, word had spread that you get presents. People can be so greedy. I asked if I could make a reservation for the afternoon but it was in vain.
There I was standing, lacking a teapot and a clue of what I wanted to see instead. I headed to the biggest hall and ended up in "PhotoReal Faci
April 22, 2009
Compositing, Dear Diary, Reports, Seph Carissa / texx sound, filmmaking
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It’s been quite a while since my last blog entry. In fact it has been so long, that I had to think twice to recall my password for this sweet blog o’ mine.
You ask “What’s new? What’s cool?” and I tell you: A lot: I’ve been in the trenches with Nuke and fought After Effects so there’s a lot of stuff I want to show and tell what I’ve learned in the past weeks, not only about VFX.
Read the rest…
It's been quite a while since my last blog entry. In fact it has been so long, that I had to think twice to recall my password for this sweet blog o' mine.
You ask "What's new? What's cool?" and I tell you: A lot: I've been in the trenches with Nuke and fought After Effects so there's a lot of stuff I want to show and tell what I've learned in the past weeks, not only about VFX.
I recorded a couple of tracks for my upcoming album (release: summer 2009). The Samson G-Track is a sweet piece of hardware, it combines a condenser microphone and an USB-soundcard. Finally I am able to record my acoustic guitar and piano work without the "help" of my 5€-headset whose microphone buzzes worse than the wasp hive in Donkey Kong Country 2 and rumbles more than my PS2's Dualshock 2 controller that surrendered yesterday to material fatigue after nearly nine years of heavy duty service. Got me a new one today.
Between all my private creative work I am tackling 87 effect shots for our student short film "MOSKAU
June 1, 2008
Compositing, Reports, Technology, filmmaking, films, video
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Another convention report, my apologies! I haven’t thought that I would be on so many (= two) conventions in the field of digital film in such a short span of time. But attending the Digitale Cinematographie convention this Thursday in Munich was something way out of the ordinary because a little dream never dreamed came true: Seeing my work on the grandeur of a real IMAX theater silver screen.
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Another convention report, my apologies! I haven't thought that I would be on so many (= two) conventions in the field of digital film in such a short span of time. But attending the Digitale Cinematographie convention this Thursday in Munich was something way out of the ordinary because a little dream never dreamed came true: Seeing my work on the grandeur of a real IMAX theater silver screen.
Till, originally uploaded by Phil Strahl.
I have to yell out a big thanks to the head of the video department at the FH Salzburg, Till Fuhrmeister right here in the beginning. Thanks to his good connections he managed to squeeze four of my class' video productions into the screening at the Digitale Cinematografie. And it wasn't just a "normal" screening on a standard video beamer in some cheesy seminar room, not it was a HDCAM tape screened onto a huge screen in a former IMAX theater. Impressive!
With Zorica "Zoki" Vilo
