This is not the post you are looking for.....

No doubt your all busy playing with the new versions of Mudbox, Maya, 3D Max and Softimage etc that were released to public a short while ago. For me the Mudbox and especially the 3Ds Max release were really strong this time round. If time allows I'll do a few vid's on each with some interesting stuff in them.

VIDEO LINK (Coz I'm not uploading it yet again!)

I was asked a short while ago to take part in a viral campaign the 3dmax team instigated called 'I'm max' (You can see my particular video, which is one of many, above). As it was a weekend and my kids were off school this meant dragging my chroma rig (the travel version not the full George Lucas orgasmatron version) to my brothers while he was out and setting up, filming the piece against the green screen (with no lights as mine had went 'bang! some time back and I haven't replaced them yet), packing up and getting everything back home, keying and editing and grading the footage and uploading to their server. I managed it in just over an hour and was a serious rush job to get it done.

Things have been progressing on my short, I'd love to say smoothly but that would be a blatant lie lol. But progress of any kind is good and I've got about 4 shots done up till now and have mainly been doing the environment stuff for it. There are a lot of funny and not so funny anecdotes I can dine out on for years once it's done that's for sure. Until now the shorts costs have been ...wait for it....£25. I don't foresee at the moment it rising much higher than that as most of it is down to software I already have and skills I either already have or have needed to brush up on, the main cost is time though. Every waking moment I'm not working on a project for someone else is spent on this short, stress is not as high as you may think as I know one way or another this will get done by the end of June supposing I have to move fucking mountains to do it. (There's a private joke in that last line.)

Today and for the next few days I'll be tracking, , colour grading and otherwise making look awesome the back plates I had done. (the awesome part is meant in irony as at this stage nothing is set in stone, hey for all I know it could turn out shit.) Although looking at these plates it'll be a shame to have to down res them to 720p as they are beautiful shots and exactly what I need. Now I do still have a few holes for the short that I haven't been able to either block out or fill at this stage, but I'm crossing my fingers those will sort themselves out over the coming weeks.

Should I, by any miracle, have time left over for my deadline I will spend that time making it look as good as humanly possible. This is the one thing I've done in CGI and film making that I want as near perfect as I can humanly manage in the time available with a budget of £25. I will tell you one thing about it....it's not a horror and it's not going to be a 'monster fest'.

Death of a Drive

Today was what is technically known as a very bad fucking day. At first it started off a what I assumed would be a boring day mostly consisting of waiting for a few emails before I proceeded with work on my short. But it fast descended into land of the bad. This was as the drive containing the majority of my models and all but one or two from my short so far died on me. Without going into the techy details so far I've spent since about 10am this morning trying to get any data from that drive or recover it in a number of ways. So far it's all failed.

Now if it turns out the other ways that a few people have recommended to try also do not work I'm up shit creek without a paddle. It will mean that the 3 weeks plus work I've done on my short is all lost apart from a character model I was working on and 1 enviro piece. All back plates and everything else....gone. So cross your fingers as I really would like to make this short the way it must be made to match the version I already have playing in my head.

What if it fails? Does this mean I'll give up on it and move on? Nope. I'll have a rethink certainly and probably have to change things round a bit or even use an alternate story idea of mine so I can keep on track time wise, but give up? Never. But one way or another this year the short I was working on will be made, hopefully somehow I can save the work on it, if not its rethink and adapt.

To those of you who have been trying to help, I'd like to say a massive and very sincere thank you, your help in trying to get that data back is appreciated trust me. What else is new? Well I have been approached by a firm who wish to put a series of my models out for people to buy as figures / physical prints. It's in the early stages and they are on printing out a proof of 2 models as a test right now. Although 'The Dentist' model still remains 'un printable ' in a 3d machine, this time capable of a resolution of 3 microns. (Which should give you an idea of the sort of detail that that model had!) I've always said it's a perfect test model for 3d printing technology as if it can print that...it can print anything. (..and I'm talking about the polygon reduced version put through my app ReDucto.)

Now the loss of a lot of my recent models is a bit of a blow, but it's happened once before and I came back a lot stronger and a better artist as a result. So even shitty stuff has a positive side sometimes. Also a big thanks to the guys at Autodesk for sorting out the problem that had occurred accidently where I was no longer entitled to free software lol. They sorted it out in no time thus saving my bacon yet again software wise.

Some of you know I've grown a beard the last month, and yes a large part of it is grey due to my wicked long houred caffine fuled lifestyle, Will I keep it, to be honest I'm not sure, part of me actually likes looking middle aged, but the other part (at the moment safely locked away lol) hates it and wants rid of it. Eventually that part of me will win, or I'll hit my midlife crisis which I'm sort of looking forward to if it means I get to buy motorbikes , wear leathers like when I was 16 and act like a total dick (in comparison to my current behaviour that is lol)

Project Insanity: Teaser backplate

Above is a test back plate from the short I'm working on, there'll be a lot going on in this shot one of about 70 to do. Everything apart from the sky is 3d and will be in 2.35 aspect ratio at720p (so the render farm we've been lent doth not explodeth lol.) This is probably one of the easier shots, and curenty lacks set dressing, grading and final lighting. So call it a previs.

Its definitely goingto be an easier shot so if Rob and myself go 100% CGI. Don't ask as I won't answer any questions, this is a teaser...that's all.

Wayne out....

The nightmare trip to London

I travel around a fair bit as you've probably gathered if you're a regular reader of my blogs over the years. Each year I have one trip which ends up being s complete nightmare for any one of a number of reasons. As I had to pop down to London last week to have a few meetings it should have all be straightforward...but oh no! That'd have been way too easy.

The 1st day went great, did a few meetings all went well, bumped into Robert Llewellyn who was doing some voiceovers and had a short chat with him about the 'Mad in the Med' Tv series he's done narration for and that I worked on for Danny John-Jules. Afterwards I had a few drinks with a mate from Cinesite. Yeah I was at a bit of a loose end on the night-time after that but it gave me a chance to rest for the next day. The next day was a bit worse a few meetings were cancelled due to some internal stuff meaning I had the day to myself...cool eh? Well it would have been if I'd been able to get in touch with anyone and it hadn't been pissing down with rain lol. So I had a walk around baker street that night and spent the rest of the time in a hotel room where the window faced a bloody wall. So that day was a washout and I was bored out of my head as those of you who were reading my twitter stream will already know.

But this boredom paled into insignificance next to the next 2 days (you'll know about the 1st of these 2 days if you were on Facebook or twitter but not the latter which is a real doozy). I woke up the next day and needed access to my emails and to send some files to a client so as my phone was physically dying and saying all sorts of crazy shit, including kaleidoscope screen and all manner of crazy stuff I went out on the Edgeware road to buy another.

I went out aiming for an android phone and came back with an iPod Touch 4th gen lol. (As I only needed my mails etc and had a spare crappy phone at home I could use when I got back.) Apart from the iPod being blank and needing activation (resulting in a 1 1/2 hour wait in the fucking apple store off oxford street), things weren't too bad, I had a new toy to play with and life was ok.

Around 1pm things got more 'complex' as I went to the cash point at the bottom of Baker Street to get a couple of hundred quid out. On the way back to my hotel a guy right in front of me dropped something I slammed into him and when I check a short while later the money was gone and I'd been pickpocketed. I felt like a total idiot as that the oldest trick in the goddamned book! But that'll teach me for having my mind on other things.

As a side note to explain why this screwed me up a fair bit.... I always leave my credit cards behind whenever I travel back at home with my wife as it's more important she can buy stuff like food, pay the bills etc than for me to have money to dick around with,. So I use a prepaid card for when I'm away, which has the added advantage of if it get lost or stolen it's no big thing. So while my card was safe in a zipped pocket, the money was not. In fact I normally break it up into different pockets which is what I WOULD have done if I'd actually made it to my hotel with money intact.

So I was stuck with 2 more days in London and only 40 quid to my name which is not good., This meant no trips to nice places when I had time and basically 2 days of boredom to look forward to.

The last day I was there I had a meeting to do with Danny John-Jules (if your American etc and don't know who Danny is look him up on Google.) I have to admit when Danny tore down the street to where I was for the meet grinning his head off on his Harley Davidson roaring away it did make me smile, the guy has this infectious happiness that seems to radiant from him. The 1st thing Danny did on arriving was to check I could get a train to Kings Cross for my trip back, everything looked fine and no track problems and I should make it on time.

So after buying me a nice meal and getting the meeting done we did few pics and some film and I went for the train, only to find it wasn't running! I quickly I jumped in a cab and tried to get to Kings Cross on time. My heart sank when the cab driver said 'Son you're not going to make it for 3pm even if you had a fucking helicopter!' But I thought 'hey, I'll be ok I can use my ticket on the next train to Durham right?'....WRONG!!!

So I was stranded in London with at this point about 20 quid to my name, no cards and no way home. The battery on my dying phone was depleting fast and I had a massive problem. Luckily a Danny came to the rescue and sorted things out , now I should point out this took quite a few hours , a lot of phoen calls and the guy went way beyond the call of duty, I honestly don't know how many other people would have put as much time into trying to get me back as he did. With a bit of fast talking from me and being very nice to the train people on top, I made it back.

In between all this due to the stress of me thinking I as stranded in London I'd left my canon 550D and the equipment in a bag in the waiting room!

Now like anyone who has a realistic outlook on life I thought there was zero chance I'd ever see it again, but did the rounds asking if anyone had handed it in anyway...no luck. I was about ready to jump off tower bridge at this point as the day couldn't get any worse could it? Thankfully it didn't I went back into the waiting room...and there sitting exactly where I left it AN HOUR LATER was my camera bag with a lot of money's worth of gear in it. So there are still a lot of honest people about in London, which I have to admit surprises me in this day and age. So off I went for my train happy and smiling that at least some things had went right in the end.

Although they've stopped the free WIFI on the east coast mainline now for all but 1st class passengers..the bastards! But it was nice to get back home, and hopefully that's this year's nightmare trip out of the way. (Last years BTW was Iceland, but that's a whole other story!)

Danny Mate, I owe you one ;) (The Lamb was great)

'Bedlam' TV Series Burning Man Model

Click on image for fuill sized 1080p version. All rights on this image are reserved by the owners.

The above is a model I did for the guys at Space Digital for the TV Series 'Bedlam' shown on Sky Tv over here in england. Without going into too much detail they asked for a partly burnt male head ( it had to be anatomically correct for the burning stuntman see throughout the episode who story wise it may or may not be and have white eyes.) This firstly meant matching the stuntman seen 'burning' in the episode in a high res sculpt in mudbox before taking this detailed mesh and creating the 'crispy barbeque version'.

It also meant working with some seriously nasty reference material, looking at dead burnt people is not my idea of fun but if you are to model something you must have appropriate reference material. The Model, textures and shader set up were done by me...basically everything but the composite itelf into the shot.

After spending over a week with the references of various burn victims and corpses I needed a bit of a break from scary stuff for a while. Needless to say that although reference material of that sort isn't my favorite thing in the world to work with, it is essential if the model was to be both belivable and correct for a body burnt for that length of time. The last thing I wanted it to look like (or them) was a big black lump of charcoal. So this is how a human head would look if burnt for the period of time set out. This was then camera matched to the back plate (a dummy in the burning skip BTW)

Eventually when they have time the lads at Space Digital have promissed to sort out a video breakdown of this short shot, when I have it I will of course stick it on here.

Project Insanity

No art of picture this blog I'm afraid. Mainly as what I'm working on at the moment is for a project that's a long term one, and while I could show you, I'd rather wait till it's done. So what is this mystery 'project' a few of you will have seen me reference in a very vague way on twitter and Facebook? What I'll get out of the way straight out of the gate is I am not going to tell you everything as I do what things to be a surprise, if everyone knows exactly what to expect a lot of the potential 'wow' factor may disappear.

Myself and my good friend Rob Angol have started work on a very complex (and some would say very stupid' ..and they may well be right) project, that is a short film. Now what makes this a bit different is a few things, one its scale and scope is the stuff normally only attempted by a large studio (and hence not two guys) on a budget of zero (and I do mean zero, there will be no hiring or money paid out for anything, only our time and expertise in software we already own.) Plus we'll be doing this in our free time and fitting it around our jobs and freelance work.

Every single shot in this short is a very complex one and there's not one shot that only contains a single model, but a vast array of them of just about every type you can imagine. We are to be blunt aiming for movie quality, anything less is unacceptable. Are we reaching too far for what 2 guys can do on a zero budget in 2-3 month of free time? It may well be possible that we are, but as with a lot of things in life, there's only one way to find out.

So why are we doing it? There are a few reasons, firstly it a great way to show what we can both do when we pull out all the stops on a single project. Secondly it means we get to try in a production environment a few new ways of doing stuff that's well outside of the norm without screwing up existing pipelines, thirdly it'll also act as a far more entertaining 'demo reel' than anything that would normally be put together it we want it to. Fourthly, its something we've talked about for over a year now and I suppose its either do the damn project or shut up about it lol.

So far I've done a lot of typing and told you sod all about it. What I will say that while I am off to do quite a lot of shoots for some back plates, that this short will not have a single frame that doesn't have bloody complex amount of models , added mattes, come shot siht complete CGI enviroments and god alone knows what else. A conservative model count would probably be about 50-70 bare minimum, but probably the final model count will be far more than that (and that's not counting any instancing we do). Shot composition is king and nothing will be put in just for shits and giggles, overall as well as being something nice for 3d people to spend a little while looking at once done, it will also hopefully keep non 3d peoples attention and show what can be done with some hard work. (Although I would be the first to admit that the plot will not win any awards, mainly as a certain amount of paranoia means that as every character will be photoreal CGI..and yes that included humans. So I don't really want to push it too far from a performance angle and hit a massive uncanny valley.)

We have been worried about one very big deal...the actual rendering as we're not talking stuff that's going to be possible on a desktop machine. We did think that we may have to scale its scope back due to that, which would have been a shame and have basically pissed on the whole reason for doing it. Luckily a friend of mine Francesco Faranna who owns German FX firm Breitbild vfx offered out of the blue to lend us some of their render farm for this. This means we don't have to do pulling in mates and families pc's to render this damn thing once done. Will this have a story? yes. Will it have photoreal characters, complex environments and animation...yes. Will it have a shit load of other stuff that no two sane person would try and do for 'fun...yes. It allows us to push the envelope and also to show a few skills that maybe people don't realise we have. But its main reason above all else....because we think it's fun to do.

Now of course, it is possible that something real life gets in the way or some other crazy shit mean we are going to have to put it to one side. But fingers crossed we can get it both done, rendered and out by our deadline which the end of June this year. By far the biggest problem is some places we have to film would normally require permits so Wayney boy here is going to have to do some serious guerrilla film shooting, let's just hope I don't end up getting into shit while I film lol. I have booked my nervous breakdown for july as a result :)

Are we certifiable? Probably

Will we get this done on time? Probably

Will it look nice and be entertaining? Yeah we're pretty sure that ones a yes ;)