Beauty Approximations

As I got offered a one year contract at DNeg there was the following question in what I was to work with. The company hasn't defined a plan for me but it seems like there is an invisible game in who get to do what. It's partly the law of the jungle but I've put this as my first priority in my negotiations and it seems to give results. To my surprise I might end up doing crowd simulations. More precisely -I might help designing a pipeline mainly using CHOPs in Houdini. This is very interesting as this is the tools by which you connect music and graphics. When this is 100% certain I will probably decrease the focus on colour and environment in my animation and emphazise the musical and motion aspects. Also, the other two guys involved in this seems to have a lot of experience from this and it will be a great oportunity to learn from them.

Doing the background fully 3d and proceduraly was rather pointless so I simply drawn one in Photoshop instead. That together with some fiddling with the settings in the comp gave me this new test . I've got two things left to do with this, insert small lights on the spheres when they fall off the tree. Reanimate them and give them their individual colour. Yes- it will be red, green and blue. Perhaps I'll also do a new round on the backgound, as the painting proved to work so well it might be worth it. Might need to introduce some clouds int the background. But I need to move on pretty soon. Tomorrow I have a new contract renevalmeeting with my company, that's probably where I need to take a stand to get the chance to work with a big growing plant. Knowing that kind of stuff would be very interesting. VJ Krute got a post about it here . When thinking in a longer perspective in how I through work slowly build up a library of artistic techniques I feel that there's a huge ...

Just after a brilliant and funny concert by Chow Chow I got an decent idea for musicvideo. Two persons in a typical slacker room, each with laptop, slighty sped up playback. They're communicating but you don't hear what they say. When one does something with the computer a sound appears, when the other does something with his computer a visual event spawns in the room in respons to a sound in the music- the light switch, the fireplace burst out a flame or the wall vibrates. The music, video and conversation evolves into some connected story, maby the characters start to disagree and start fighting with the music/video, maby the surrounding world is trying to annoy them and they find ways of overcome the problems, maby the song is taking over and they try to protect themselfs from it. Speeking of film ideas. Here's one from the pub yesterday. A drunk farmer puts a dynamite into the behind of a pig or another funny animal, whatch it run away on a open field in the silent lan...

The current state of the intro shot. I will make the background appear with the same technique I draw out the curves with. I've decided that that this flowing look will hold the overall feeling of the animation. I like that these ribbons have an absolute form but in groups they create a loosely defined shape. This together create a sense of abstraction. I use the sense of recognition within the work to give a sense of alternative reality, that there are physical laws in this world but not the same as in ours. Travel and a friggin good concert by Dave Matthews got in the way for any progress the latest time. Also got back to work were I'll do some "white wizard" shots for the Potter film. Weird to do exactly the same thing as in Stardust- transforming people to fog and back. I felt a lot more free when I approach it this time which feels good but it got me thinking that maby the effect lies very well with the time/technology right now and that we will see a number ...

The computer graphics community has gone through periods of artistic revolution when it comes to both motion and form. It is widely known that if you want to be able to model on a screen you should first go through a lot of time with pen or clay. For the animators the 2d cartoons with Disney's "wise men" in the front has worked as an authority. While this kind of influence has imensly sped up the evolution for the pioneering practicians there is still genres in the cg proffesion who doesn't have any clear paths to follow and therefor still handles the new tools rather clumsy. An example of this is my own area, visual effects. In my short experience, the people in it clearly percepts it as a form of art or craftsmanship and not science. This is very important as the opposite would be a hopeless ground for art to grow. However, we may be the first group of people that looks for beuty in explosions, plasma or other phenomenons and we have no maps over this new terrain. ...

Feeling what's "free" in "free art". Working without deadline or target groups is like standing up after a long car ride. As the board is set I am now playing out the pieces against each other. The curves for the chaossphere in movement is shown here. What you see is curves being drawn from points flowing around on a animated object. As if a dozen pencils ran around on it and drew a line in thin air. I like the way the object's shape gets more definied when it's resting and then turns undefined and flowing when it starts to move. (Like the dude in "Riddick", but better;). The idea is now that I will use the lSystem I previosly done and animate this along it's developing branches and then form a shape in the end of a tip of a branch. This shape then be the "seed"/chaossphere/blimp. Test of the flowing here . This test confirmed what progress should do, state more questions. I need to think about timing, this mostly comes down to m...

Trains must be the best cubicles ever, and no fancy london office can beat that view. Got the hang of the shell to the chaossphere. Only got this short and generall test. The setup gives some interesting looks when you alter the directions and noise in the movement which gives me exactly what I need- a design which can be reacurrent without become boring. So I need to make a longer test where I go through some of it styles. Found this old curve test, I liked the rythm in it's movement so I post it here as a note to self.