when reality becomes fantasy

Imagine a future where there isn't a way to shoot photography of glaciers, or to shoot in hawaii, or Thailand? Where almost every environment has to be matte painted because everything has to be shot on a soundstage?

We call real environments that exist but need to be faked "invisible matte paintings".

I was reading No Impact Man's blog today and it got me thinking about this. There's alot we can do to lower our footprint on this earth. Here's a few low impact ideas that my wife and I have used:

• Use glass. The benefits are that you're not exposing yourself to BPA and not contributing to the rising cost of oil. Plastic is made from petroleum. Any time we buy something to drink at a restaurant or fast food joint we try to get something in glass that has a wide mouth. SoBe bottles make for great waterbottles. POM jars are great glasses, so are mason jars.
• Shop more frequently at the grocery store and but buy less. That way you won't waste alot of food. Use cloth bags instead of plastic ones to carry your groceries around in too.
• Keep the tabs off of pop cans, and then give them to a kid who's school who will use them to recycle and trade for cash. It's a little thing but can add up quickly and "can" (pardun the pun) make a little kid's day.

I would hate the day that everything becomes a "fantasy matte painting" because so much of what we find beautiful, no longer exists.

The Greatest Adventure

UPDATE: Songza song removed...sorry!

Thank you Glen Yarbrough

The Pass update

My recent update to "the pass" matte painting. Still not finished yet but I've made some great strides. 

Happy Father's day VFXers!

If you are living your dream, working in visual effects/film. Then you have given your child one of the most important things they can have...a positive role model.

Someday your child can look at your career and say, my father followed his dreams and shot for the stars, I know that I can too.

Here's a big salute to you.

Big inspiration

My favorite scene from 3 Amigos. Just couldn't help myself...had to post it. It's too good not to.

Yes. This scene is a big inspiration for a project that is waiting in the wings.

Progress check!

Here are the updates from my "demo reel" work

Yo Momma

Bryan Woods has started a brushfire of "Yo Momma" jokes over at VFX Talk, and since I check for new posts inside my Google Reader, I couldn't help but see it and smile. I quickly chimed in with a Joke of my own. 

"Man, Yo Mamma so fat, we was talkin about node noodles and she grabbed a bowl."

One of my favorite VFX blogs has joined in with:

"Yo Momma so fat she broke my clipping plane!"

Seriously that one made me laugh out loud.

Hack has posted a news post on his blog about the "event" here.

I love the photo of that bear. I seriously would have never thought that anyone could have found a more fitting photo.

Woot! He fav'd mine. 

accentuate the negative

Zoic is famous for faking it and adding to the realism of shots.  The camera movements in Cloverfield were built off of it. You see it more and more in matte paintings. 

Sloppy camera movement. Despite sounding bad it can make a shot look more "real".  

My good buddy Cliff Berry  suggested that I ditch the stabilize nodes and go for a more "handheld" look. 

So I did. 

CGTalk2

Again, this is just a garbage composite, but I wanted to re-comp this and see how it looks. It desperately needs some motion blur to match the original footage's blur, but I'll work on that later. It's back to work on my "coastal city" and "road to hell" matte paintings

Dreaming

I've been trying to think realistically about films or properties that I might get to work on.

Typically, matte painters get their start working on sequels to big franchises. Dylan Cole was lucky enough to start with Time Machine so there is the ability to get started on a "smaller" (relative) production.

So here's my list. This is what I would love to be working on or after 2010.

• Terminator 6 (Terminator 4 is currently in production)
• Avatar 2 (Avatar to be released in 2009. And if anyone knows me ...they know that I have been looking forward to this film since 2005)
• A Lucasfilm property involving fantasy elements...Like Willow
• Any video game (or FILM!?) involving Ragnar Tornquist
  
• A Dirk Pitt film (Preferably starring Matthew McConaughey)
• A sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick
• James Bond 24
• The next Serenity/Firefly movie (Please Joss!?)
• The He-Man film
• Iron Man 3
• Unbreakable 2 (please?!)
  
• Hellboy 3
• The Hobbit 2
• GI Joe 2
  
• The Flash
• Lord Baltimore (Based off of Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire) (I would also want to assist witht the concept art and art direction on this film)

There's more but I can't think of them at the moment.

Shake comps

Here are my first comps in shake. Mind you, these are both garbage comps, just meant to give me an idea of what I need to work on. 

Lost World

CG Talk Challenge

Better luck next time.

I created a new rule for myself last night. Do 10 pushups before sitting down to do any matte painting work. Did I follow it? No. :(

On a better note I did my first compositing and tracking in Shake this weekend and had some awesome results. More updates as I have time to post them.

Feng Zhu Quotes

I've kept these two quotes in my journal for quite some time and I've found them to be very inspiring.

"there is no secret to drawing. The more you do it, the better you'll get. It's all about mileage. A lot of people try to look for shortcuts, but there aren't any. Just bite the bullet and do the work. There is no easy path."

"You are 29? Not a problem! It's never too late to get into anything. Here's a little story that might inspire you. If you have the Art of Episode 3 book, look for an artist named Sang Jun Lee. Believe it or not, he didn't do any drawings (and I mean none), before attending college in the U.S. After he got an internship at ILM, he drew like crazy. Within only 2-3 years, he has reached the level he's at now. which is pretty amazing! He draws like a seasoned pro. What a great inspiration huh?"

NHM Challenge

Just comped this out quickly. The original plate was from a CGTalk challenge and I never had time to finish. I was cleaning up the plate but now I have finally put my concept onto canvas.

Swatch set

This is a swatch set I've been developing for both matte painting and web. Hope someone finds it useful.

Panoramic matte candidate

Richard Cave (aka: RockHopper) is a fellow matte painter, but he's also an amazing photographer, embeded photojournalist, and a nice guy to boot. 

Richard has been experimenting with handheld panoramic photography. He's received much better results than I have (as to be expected) but I promised to post the results of an image that I shot back in June of 07 in St. George, Utah. 

I've just decided that this might be a good candidate for a matte and will have to test it with the groundplane painted in. 

The original image is 6841 x 2730 and 180 ppi. 194 MB

Sleep deprevation training

It seems that my sleep schedule is now perfectly acclimated to a job in visual effects. I've been working 17 hour workdays every day for the past two weeks.

My current schedule:

1. Open eyes to alarm clock going off at 4:30am, snooze cuz I don't know what else to do
   
2. get up at 5ish
3. leave the house around 5:50
4. carpool w/ Lee Glasgow and Dustin Boston
5. start work at 6:45
6. leave work at about 3:30pm
7. get home at about 4:30
8. start working on freelance project at 6:00
9. finish up work for the night at about 1:30 (give or take of course...mostly take take take)

wash, rinse, repeat

Our lonely experience

I read this quote this morning and found it quite insightful. Leave it to one of the great spy novelists to talk about loneliness.

"Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen."
- John le Carre

Hook Island

Here's another sketch I did for a game concept by my brother. It's good that I finished this sketch because it made me realize that not every angle or perspective makes for a good matte painting. I might rework this general concept but I don't think I'll be taking this sketch any farther.

Epiphanies

Epiphanies sounds too epic for posts like this but I don't know what else to call them so that's what they'll be. 

In 2007, about 6 months before my daughter was born. I had a breakdown one day. I was frustrated with my web design job and felt as though I might never push myself hard enough to become a matte painter. I began to think that maybe it would be best if I gave up my dream and focused on the reality of life as a designer. 

But thankfully I realized that I would not be setting a good example for my daughter if I gave up. How could I expect her to follow her dreams if I had not?

Every day she gives me new strength to pursue a career in matte painting.  

3d render/sketch

most of this painting is from a vue render, I took the time to re-work and piant over some of the elements. It would be great for a shot from inside a building, looking out windows, but otherwise I'm not sure where to go with it.