I came across Scott Squire’s blog while looking for more information about the VFX budgeting process.
He’s an effects veteran whose first job off the bat was designing the cloud tank effect for Close Encounters.
His blog is a mix of insightful podcasts/transcripts on a wide variety of Visual Effects related material, as well as some shot breakdowns for work he’s done.
Just read a bit so far, gonna read more of it when I’m more awake.
All done. This is where it gets interesting. Or not. Fingers crossed.
Team Gladius’s 48 Hour Film is finally up on Youtube. I’ve been meaning to take part in one of these 48 hour film competitions for some time now, so when I heard from Sarah this one was coming up I just had to join.
Most of the team (myself included) were kinda hoping for the Musical/Western category, which would have allowed us all to go completely insane with it, but we got Sci-Fi.. which made me utter the prophetic words “I’m so dead..” . During the discussions on Friday night it was like “We need Space” -Everyone looks at me- “And some space ships” -Everyone looks at me again.. Heh, anyway after a few hours of being locked in a room together we came up with the story.
The next day, while principle photography was being shot till 3 in the morning somewhere in Tanjong Pagar, I modeled a few spaceships and generally sat around waiting.. lol.. Then the whole team came together for the marathon editing/post production session. Lots of food from McDonald’s was consumed.
Many thanks to Eunice, Sarah, and Mike. Without their skills in After Effects and piloting of various classes of space vehicles I would have been swamped by the number of effects shots we had.
In all it was even more fun than I thought it would be, thanks to our stellar team of crazy people.
Looking forward to see the Director’s Cut..
Finished an unexpected VFX project over the weekend.. Azmi of SEJA needed some flying shurikens for his short film, which is how I ended up doing Shurikens Ver. 2.0. Thanks for having faith in my ability to get the job in time man, just.. maybe a little early warning next time yeah?
Process & Finished video after the cut..
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My first ever visual effects shot, done for my friend’s short film 4 years back..
Had a lot of fun with this, it came a long way from the innocent question, “Say, you think you could make thrown shurikens fly in slow motion then slam into the bad guys faces?”.. Hmm.. then again, I think what he really said was “Can you do shurikens?”, but somehow I heard different.
There are a ton of things I’d do differently if I had to redo this now, but it’s nice for what it is, a quick 2 second shot in dim lighting.
What’s different between then and now is back then I was distinctly bad at character animation so I avoided even trying things like digital double shots.. I suppose I saved myself from wasting time on even more amateur looking visuals, but from now on I’ll be pushing myself to push my boundaries and not stick to safe, easy stuff.
I’m looking forward to handling the effects on part 2, looking at lots of digital blood effects (the practical effects turned out rather weak, definitely getting a better air compressor next time..), impalements and set extensions to do.. Heh.. not until October anyway, have to work on my own stuff first.
Well, updates on my Mini’s paint job (or lack of) coming soon..
