VFX Work for Rothon December 16th, 2009
One of the great things about the Internet age is having the ability to network with other like minded individuals throughout the world. Through the visual effects (VFX) training website fxphd.com, I’ve made many new friends interested in filmmaking and VFX. One such individual is Brannon Shiflett who is currently working on a short film titled Rothon with the production company Take 29 Productions. Recently Brannon asked via twitter if anyone would be interested in helping with a few VFX shots. Knowing that Brannon and company are serious filmmakers, I thought it might be fun to give a try.
fxphd Special Ops Submission August 1st, 2009
Online visual effects training site fxphd offers their students more then just videos to watch. They also have a program, titled Special Ops, that gives students the opportunity to work on real productions. Two terms ago, fxphd staff recruited program members to work on the visual effects team for the UK mini series Red Dwarf. For those invited to participate, it was an excellent opportunity to be a member of a globally distributed visual effects team. I did not take the time to prepare a submission for Red Dwarf, and regret wasting a chance to participate. When fxphd announced another Special Ops program this term, I made up my mind that I would not miss this chance.
Shooting Background Photos for Matte Painting May 27th, 2009
I often stop to take pictures of a demolition site. The piles of debris make great fodder for matte paintings. For example, suppose I wanted to create background plates for post-apocalyptic Earth shots. The type of images found at a demolition site are perfect for creating the illusion of a fallen city.
Camera Projection plus Dogman February 27th, 2009
I decided to do another camera projection exercise as part of the challenge posted on The Challenge Jar website. I visited Houghton Lake earlier this week where I had taken a lot of snowy landscape pictures. The image I chose for this project was taken at Hartwick Pines State Park. This time my goal was to create a camera projection from the snowy woods image below.
Camera Projection Test February 21st, 2009
Camera projection, also known as camera mapping, is the process of creating a 3 dimensional scene from a still image. There are two fundamental steps to creating a camera projection. The first step is to breakdown the image into pieces that can be physically separated in 3D space. The second step is to reconstruct the image in a 3D environment and map the image pieces onto simple geometry.
Matte Painting #1 January 31st, 2009
This is an exercise from the matte painting class I’m taking from fxphd.com. We were given still images that encompass a target area. The goal is to utilize Photoshop to combine the images, remove the people, and add in some additional tents. We were given an image from the video edit that shows the target area. The first step is to line up the high resolution photos with the offline video frame.
Beauty in the Chaos January 3rd, 2009
On New Year’s Day, I drove around Fort Wayne, Indiana, looking for interesting buildings to photograph with my Canon G9. With Photoshop I can cut out pieces of buildings from the pictures and combine them to generate imagery of a fictional city. I plan to use this technique to create backgrounds for my Fallen Angel film project. This practice of combining photo references to create the illusion of a new environment is known as matte painting.