Blog entries of my experiences making this film
2008/2/16
@ 10:14 AM (9 months, 8 days ago)
This week started out very good. I am working about 65 hours per week on the film and the other 15 hours doing my Job at ILM kitchen. I started to animated the cg torso of the main character. hand animation is only working to a certain degree. I will have have to learn the matchmoving object tracking technique. Maya has a plug in called Live, but Realviz matchmover may work better.
More to come soon.
@ 09:50 AM (9 months, 8 days ago)
This week was a very good one. My professor from Pixar is wonderful. His Lighting and comping experience really help catch things that I may have missed in my shots. At the same time, things that I am doing are things that he would do as well. This is a confidence booster.
Read the rest of this entry ... (154 words left)
2008/2/1
@ 10:11 PM (9 months, 23 days ago)
This first week of school has been a fairly good start I believe. The new mac's have been steller. Rendering should not take too long which is good. I worked out a new rough cut of the film. Catherine was right about using the rough cut to help you determine what needas to be done. Very helpful.
Read the rest of this entry ... (112 words left)
2008/1/19
@ 05:42 PM (10 months, 6 days ago)
Tonight I met with my new Directed Studies Prof. He is a Lighter at Pixar but he is also a visual effects compositer as well. He works in Shake and has live action lighting experience thus, he will be a wonderful person to work with. I will also have the benefit of another good friend of mine who is Lighting Supervisor at Pixar. Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice, Catherine Tate, Lead Compositer at the Academy and full of all sorts of experience is backing me up in my other Directed Study.
This semester is starting out with all the right stuff! Now I just need an IV for the caffine drip and Ill be all set!
Time to Roto.
2008/1/18
@ 11:33 AM (10 months, 7 days ago)
So I met with my Professor yesterday and after looking at the amount of work that still needs to be done I managed to walk out of the office without having a panic attack.
Read the rest of this entry ... (40 words left)
2008/1/16
@ 09:29 PM (10 months, 9 days ago)
Yesterday and today were devoted to creating the mattepaintings that I am using to create the forest. I find matte painting enjoyable as it allows many of the disciplines used in compositing as well as painting. I was trying to shoot the footage live in the forest, however, I could not get the camera to capture the beauty or the depth I wanted. Thus, I shot many stills of the location and have been far more successful creating each background from scratch.
Shot 11, the shot where the woman in red will enter, is most definitely the most difficult. I have spent several hours just trying to find the correct composition of trees and land.
Tomorrow I will meet with Catherine Tate and we will go over where I am and formulate a plan of attack..
2008/1/15
@ 02:35 PM (10 months, 10 days ago)
This week I am working mostly in Photoshop. I will be finishing up mattepaintings and digital painting some of the footage. So Far Photoshop CS3 is working well. Nailing each shot's composition and getting it ready for Shake color correction process is going to help me move along faster.
I will post more images later this week.
Angie
@ 02:31 PM (10 months, 10 days ago)
The title of this blog marks the final stretch of my project.
Read the rest of this entry ... (276 words left)
2007/10/9
@ 09:57 PM (13 months, 18 days ago)
Hey everyone. I know I need to update my photos, I have many of them but it is just taking time to get them loaded. My apologies. But the good news is I finished the Neg mold of the entire torso. Using the overlap strategy I broke the torso up into 6 pieces, three of which will be glued together to make one piece. So I have one solid back piece then the two arm pieces and finally the front with sides. They will be put together in that order so that the overlaps will create a seamless look. At least, this is the theory. The Cowl worked out the same way. It is just a matter off sweet talking the silicone to do my bidding...
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2007/9/29
@ 08:38 PM (13 months, 28 days ago)
Finally things are moving in a positive direction. I have overcome the "negative" in the negative molding process. It was suggested to me a way to make molds for brush casting Silicone and it is working, By overlapping the molds I can brush the silicone so that I will not have any seams.. I had to divide the cowl into 4 parts and then glue them together to create two pieces. THis allowed me to hide the seams. Why 4 parts? So that I could seperate the mold without any issue with undercuts. THis is the only way I could overlap the pieces. How did I overlap? By using lots of blue pet jelly on the clay, (without hiding detail) It allows the ultracal to leave the clay intact when pulling it from the sculpture. this allows me to recast an area. So I can literally cast over areas twice. With this overlap I can blend out the seams completely.
Read the rest of this entry ... (130 words left)
