It's been crazy lately. I've hardly been painting because I've been working on a freelance web site (I did some matte painting type stuff for that but it doesn't count), met some friends and one of my heroes in California, got a private tour of a great animation studio, met one of my biggest heroes here in Arizona, worked on some Photoshop javascripts, realized some of my weaknesses, and generally had fun with my family.
I met Mike Bogen during my trip to California and he is a ray of sunshine in the compositing world. He had a lot of great stories to share and he constantly smiles. Mike is one of those guys you'd love to have on your team. Not only does he have some great experience (He has used Matador...I kid you not...Matador) but he's constantly learning. Mike is currently looking for work and has just learned Nuke and set-up a studio in his home to accept freelance compositing work. If your digital show or small production needs an awesome compositor, He's the
guy to call.
While in California I also connected with one of my heroes. I won't say who it was (because I'm sure he'll recieve countless requests after I tell you this...), but he is an amazing VisDev artist. I was originally going to just get our families together but he was too busy, and instead asked if I wanted to take a private tour of the animation studio...could I say no? I spent about 2 hours seeing the visdev dept at this studio and I was enchanted and amazed. It is quite possibly the closest thing I have ever seen to a dream work environment. I can't wait to apply there.
Fast forward to the middle of Sept. I'm very close to finishing up the bulk of work on a freelance gig. I'm going to ask if I can post some of the work here. I used some of my matte painting skills for some of their photography and had some great results.
Recently I also had the GREAT pleasure of meeting Syd Mead. He held a lecture at ASU. I was surrounded by industrial designers and architects. Hardly any artists were in attendance, and I don't think there were an digital concept artists/digital painters there.
Syd is a true gentleman artist. His work has inspired almost everything we consider cool and interesting today. A lot of his ideas from the 1960's are starting to see the light of day today and we will continue to see some of his ideas see fruition within the next few years.
When I got home from the Syd Mead lecture, I couldn't sleep. I was inspired by some of the shapes I saw in his work. I am working on a random shapes Photoshop script, that generates landscape friendly shapes, directly within photoshop and with LAYERS! I got up from bed at 3:00 and painted with my shape generator till about 4:15. Here's the result:
I have ordered a prelim copy of my printed portfolio and should be receiving it within a few days. Hopefully everything looks good and then I'm going to order 10 more to send out to my top 10 list of companies I'd like to start my career with.
Without wax,
Matthew Scheuerman
