strawberry

It wasn't any kind of plot point, but when we were working on our film we came to choose a pie type for each of the characters.  Pete was apple - the quintessential American classic - even the stunt pie standing in for him in the live action scene was an actual apple pie.  Sheriff, we decided, was a meat pie.  Narrator came to be a strawberry pie.  Of course, by that point, it only seemed proper to outfit him with an appropriate bandanna.

airplane drawings

tiny squares

making drawings move.

dress-up

Key Lime was such a minor character in our film, really she was just a background character who played into a couple of gags.  Since she wasn't all that important and never got much screen time, not a whole lot of time and concern went into her design beyond the initial phases.  Upon entering 3D though it quickly became apparent that we had some issues to resolve and decisions to make.  Since Key Lime is a "flat top" pie she is very close to Quiche structurally and the structural problems were consequently solved through Quiche.  Her dress however wasn't.  We were stuck with the simple short hand we had used for her in prepro, but that simply wasn't translating into the world we were building, so it was back to the drawing board.  These are my notes from that whole bit of trying to fix her and how to adapt a showgirl's dress from a person to a pie.

jest

Guess which one I own.

don't cry over spilt milk

Not everyone catches this little gag in our film, it goes by pretty fast, but you can catch it at 1:14.  I did the lighting in this shot, Uri did the comp, and then I painted the milk residue and drop animation in photoshop to layer back on top and finish off the shot.  Since Blue is really the only thing that moves in the shot we were able to simply layer it on instead of having to map it or anything.  For consistency, the drop residue was painted in and then duplicated and erased as I animated.  Also, her refraction in the mug is a total cheat, which let us get it to look the way we wanted.

red bull kluge

Recently I had the pleasure of working with the fine fellows of Syyn Labs on the Red Bull Kluge, a giant Rube Goldberg Machine combined with some wonderfully talented athletes (check it out, it's an awesome video!)  My main role in this was creating storyboards to help communicate what was going to happen and help plan the path of the main camera capturing it all (which by the way was an ultimate arm, the sickest camera rig I've ever seen)  There were lots and lots of other cameras on set too, including a small army of go pros.  When I wasn't doing drawings I was helping out however I could with the machine.  A lot of people worked really hard to make this all happen and it was great to be able to be a part of it.  On shoot day I didn't have a fancy camera phone like these guys, but I did enough foresight to bring along my sketchbook. (:

Drew Bezanson on BMX

The Skaters, Ryan Sheckler and Joey Brezinski, were tougher to catch in action but I was able to get a couple of decent sketches of them and some of the other guys around set.

Danny MacAskill up on Fowler's green.  You couldn't stop that guy, he was a true artist with a bike.  He rode on just about everything around the site including Brezinski's manual path, the skate/BMX ramps, and even the forklift.

Danny & Clay, chatting on bikes.

Things that fly!

(Red Bull helicopter and a Black Phoebe who I caught darting around our corner of the air hangar.)

We did this shoot out in Irvine and had some really beautiful scenery around us.  On shoot day there was a 40% chance of rain for the morning but fortunately not a drop fell.  Instead we got the great combination of lots of fluffy white clouds and bright sun.

And at the end of the day when we could all finally breathe and had dinner under the light of the jennys.

around town

e pieribus omnom

So you know how in our film we had that coin?

 

 

Well, it was one of my favorite props to work on!  I came up with the basic design and painted the displacement maps for it.  This is the only shot where you get a good look at it, and the only side you really see - but thanks to the internet you can now look at both sides!  At the same time!  Try doing that with your Susan B!

 

beaches are the best

Beaches are the best.  They've got all the best things, like little girls with afros and footballs

birds!

folding chairs

and lots and lots and lots of water - even waves!

relic

I was poking around some zdrive backups and found this.  I'm not sure, but I've come to think it's a really angry cat.  Timestamp reads 1/6/2012 12:44 AM and my foggy memory tells me that I was in the 24 hour labs using ms paint.

Now that I've got my desktop back up and working, things scanned, and pictures dumped there will probably be some updates on here as I start sifting through things.

orange shirt, blue sky

Looking at books by Lois Ehlert and working outside under the bright sun of Irvine.

dragons

d is for dragons all up in dis manuscript.