Labor(ing) to Create

September 6th, 2010 | Filed under Blog, Life, Photos, Travel, Work

Teressa’s off at an auction finding all kinds of lovely treasures and what nots that are 99% what makes our house the way it is. We were looking around and the only thing in our house furniture wise that was built in the last 10 years is our couch, and one shelf.

EVERYTHING else is older stuff that she’s found via antique dealers or auctions, so I can’t really complain when she’s going out sleuthing on a holiday morning.

Instead, I’m sitting in front of the computer, watching Nuke render out my latest daily, enjoying some alt/folk and sipping my coffee. I love iTunes’ ability to make up the ultimate morning/coffee playlist complete with Andrew Bird, the Decembrists, Rogue Wave, Bon Iver, Wilco, Eliott Smith, Death Cab and Bob. It turns into a crank every stereo in the house and knock some things out morning. Doing laundry while the computer churns, and I’m nodding along to my favorite contemplative tunes.

The reason I’m brain dumping now, is that I’ve realized I need to write and post more of my progress. If I force myself to post that means I have to a.) post more pics to go with it and b.) post my progress on my personal projects. Since I can’t link to most of the work stuff, I have to feel like I’m adding something out the interwebs.

Although, I did find the disney ad I worked on last winter on the youtubes the other day. It’s for EuroDisney (Disney Paris) and I worked on 2/3s of the roto you see in and around the cabin. Here’s the link.

Also, here are a couple of nature photos. One is of this amazing spider web I caught in our backyard, and the other is from the Fieldstone Orchard from last fall. This past week it’s been feeling like fall is just around the corner, which means picking our own apples and Teressa’s amazing apple pies.

Last but not least here is the latest daily in my super project. I’ve done a lot of roto (cutting people out of the frame) over the years, and while it’s an incredibly manual process, I challenged myself to key and roto this shot without a single keyframe of animation. Instead I used the 3d track from before, projected my rotoshapes onto 3D cards and ran it through the 3D camera solve. Turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Just needs a little touch up where the street lights pop and a railing, but way easier than rotoing 1600+ frames of buildings. You may be asking what in the world does this accomplish? Well, two things really. One, I can perform a sky replacement now and punch up what was a pretty blah sky. Second, I can now animate objects so they look like they are passing between the buildings. Exciting stuff I know. Next up, I promise something a little more thrilling than red outlined building, but this is just another step in creating something good.

A Move, a Trip and a Camera

August 22nd, 2010 | Filed under Blog, Family, Film, Friends, Lawrence, Life, Photos, Travel, Work

A Move

First up…WE MOVED!!!

Two blocks.  Down the street.

Teressa found this adorable rental house that just so happened to open up when we needed it. Fate really. That was back in February, and we moved in late April.  We’ve been spending most all of our free time painting, gardening, settling in and building furniture (more on that in a later post).  Oh, and obsessively catching up on This Old House. Tom Silva is turning into my personal hero.

It’s a great house, and we’ve just about got all of our stuff where it needs to go. Best part of the house?  Teressa and I both have our own workspaces, so now we can both burn the midnight oil on projects and not annoy each other.  Although, I do kind of miss being able to spin around in my chair and annoy her with some thing on the internet…but now I can just yell it out around the corner.

A Trip

In early July we both made a trek up north to Chicago for a joint, but separate, bachelor/bachelorette party for our good friends Zach & Cortney. Since we were already booking flights we decided to stick around for a few days and check out the Chicago scenery and finally drop in on Ben & Martha.  As per usual I forgot to take pictures of the people we went to visit and got hung up taking pictures of the environment.  Here are a few photos from the fabulous architecture boat tour, couldn’t recommend it enough.  I ended up spending most of my time focusing on the gorgeous bridges and towers that line the Chicago river, and pushing them a little further than normal, but Teressa is already planning on framing a few…so mission accomplished.  What can I say, I’m really just trying to impress her.

A Camera

Which brings me to my new favorite gadget.  While Teressa probably wouldn’t admit it my gadget lust has subsided over the years. I’ve been more interested in what I can do with the things I have (ala Merlin and John), and not so much on the latest and greatest.  However, Canon has been introducing stills cameras that have a built in HD video mode…and I finally had to break down and buy one.  The t2i to be exact. It’s fantastic.  I’ve been shooting video personally/professionally since I was about 10 years old but I’ve never owned my own video camera.  One word; revelation. I can get up a 6am and run around town shooting magic hour sunrises and I have zero permissions to obtain to do it.  Well, except for Teressa’s…but I tend to make up for that by bringing back bagels.

If you can’t tell I’m super excited to be able to scratch this itch again, and I can’t wait to show you some of the actual results.  But patients…video/mograph is a dish best served slowly in this regard.  To tide you over dear reader, here is a daily from my matchmove test on some footage I shot from the river.  Now I just need to roto, animate, composite and color correct it.  Who said technology was making things easier again?  Freelancing/Day job tend to get in the way of me making pretty short films for fun..but trust me they are coming.

There’s an update on what’s going on around here.  I’m going to quite promising to post more work/freelance related stuff on here until I’m ready to post it.  Creating impressive demo reels is hard, and I keep getting distracted by actual work (thanks boundaryvfx guys), but I promise it’s coming soon…if for no other reason than my mother might finally be able to understand what it is I do for a living.  It’s something with computers and cameras I think….

Christmas 9000

January 18th, 2010 | Filed under Blog, Family, Photos

So, I finally had some real free time this weekend to catch up on person projects and cull through the batch of family Christmas photos. I did some database upgrades to the LAUG and Teressa’s site, as well as a good bit of reconfiguring of this site. Hopefully that means they’ll be some upgrades to this site from a professional standpoint, but I keep promising that and…..you get the drift.

Anyway, just thought I throw up some photos and post an update around here to make sure all my switcheroos are working properly.