This year has been a good one for me, I've managed a lot of
output for clients and it saw both highs and the occasional low. (But yet again what is life without contrast?) So let's go through the list and see what I actually
managed to get done.
'The Lost Reel'
I started the year by putting out what was the 1st pass at a
demo reel that never got released due to me starting work as 3d Supervisor on
Last days on Mars. I suppose it helped people realize I was still alive and
,kicking after a somewhat quiet period at the end of 2012.
Finishing working Last Day on Mars
I did my last day working on the film Last Days on Mars on
15 march this year, it's a period I'll always look fondly back on as it meant
meeting a lot of now very good friends.
We managed to get a crazy amount of people done with a core team of
about 7 of us in 3D, and no matter what you think of the film I will stand by
what we managed to get done till my dying day.
It allowed me to finally show how things can indeed be sped up by sometimes
throwing out every rule and trying things
a different way. It was 100% a
team effort.
The VFX protest
A video that I did while in Dublin taking off the 'video
persona' and spelling out a few home truths.
Ironically it suddenly caused ww3 to break out a few months back on a
certain forum after being 'rediscovered' by someone on a forum and a lot of LA
and industry types having a major hissy over it all. What I found most ironic is they were more
concerned with my accent than the actual content. Opinions are cool it appears as long as you
have one that the mainstream want you to have.
Although I didn't comment on my blog about that whole thread at the time
(as to be honest I found the reaction bloody hilarious), I felt those people made the
exact point I was outlining valid.
March saw me put up 'Wayne's 15 step guide to working in
post production'.
Those 15 things till
hold up well and are worth a read if your new to post production..
Facial Motion Capture / 'Mask'
In April I started the very early experiments in what would
eventually become my markerless facial
motion capture solution 'Mask'. After trying everything out there, I came to the
conclusion that I could do better myself and so 'mask' was born. Although it's not ever slated for release and
is purely an internal tool of mine, its eventual results speak for themselves
and I'm currently going through the patent process for it. This period saw a lot of test animations
while I refined the app. What popped out
at the end was a 'no clean up needed' facial motion capture app I am more than
happy with.
Academy FX
On the 21st April I opened the company Academy FX to move a
lot of my R and D and large client projects to. This enables me to keep an element
of separation. It's still going and I do
not promote it in any way as those who need its services already know about it,
if they don't then chances are they don't need them.
The End User Event
The end of May / June
saw me lecturing at my favourite event of the year the end user event. After missing a year due to having my stroke
2-3 years back I wanted to come back in full force and did so with two unique
lectures. One on digital double creation and the other on my facial motion
capture solution Mask. I also managed to slip a joke about dildos in at the
very end of the last lecture lol.
'Beast' Hybrid scanning technology
Under the Academy FX banner I developed the hybrid 3d
scanning suite 'Beast' which approached 3d scanning a whole new way and gave
amazing results arguably better than anything else out there. This is also undergoing the patent process
and is yet another internal only tool for use by clients.
A Digital Wayne
After about 4 other attempts over the years I finally
produced a hand sculpted digital double of myself that I was happy with. A personal project that I enjoyed more than
just about any other.
Back to the Music
I started recording my music again in earnest, it was some cajoling
by Rudy Sarzo that convinced me to start again with a passion that produced interesting
results by the end of this year.
'Monsters' Episode 1
'Monsters' was an animation I did intended as the start of a
multi part series of shorts. Episode one
was well received although I did cut a few corners on the rendering side that
made me a little less than happy with it.
Up to date I have done episode 2 3 times and am still not happy enough
with it to release it. So episode 2 will
see the light of day but only when I am happy with it. Plus rendering out 4 minutes of facial animation
on a single machine is not fun. In case you're
wondering, it is the character design and making sure it fits with the script
is what I have not been happy with.
Max scripts
I released a few max scripts for people,
'Waynes Nitrous
Tools' and
'Waynes Morph renamer' they
both did what they said on the tin and joined later by
'Waynes Morpher Switcher'
for use with facial animation.
'Bigfoot'
I decided to do a bigfoot bust, but didn't want to just go
down the 'make it look cool' route (which is always a way to easy route to
take). I wanted to treat it more as a zoological
study of what it may look like if it exists.
The resulting model was a 3 way blend between gigantipithicus, humans
and a gorilla. I think it works well and
ended up being used in 3d world magazine a little while later.
The 'Brainkiller' EP
A sort of 'test the waters' release of an EP of nightcore
remixes of music of mine. I discovered the
musical style of nightcore, liked it, deconstructed it and mixed the entire EP
in one night. I made the decision to
release it for free online.
The 'Make an Album in 14 days' challenge
One of my better ideas for a personal challenge outside of
3d was to try to produce an entire album of music to a professional standard in
14 days using only my time off on an evening (about 3 1/2 hours a night). I
managed it...but only just. Many of
these would make it onto my 1st commercial album.
Modo Kit bashing
I decided that it was time to also have a 3d app that was
outside of the Autodesk sphere so started using Modo as well as my other apps. I also ended up making two things for
Modo
that as yet I've not released. One is a kit bashing set for cathedral and
gothic architecture the other is something under the radar. One or both may see release at some
point. I also donated a anatomically correct
human skeleton to a challenge for Modo users to create one for use as reference
on the
Luxology / Modo forum.
Mudbox / Modo
pipeline test model
Knocked out a quick model to test the pipeline between Mudbox and Modo... it worked well.
My 3D World review of 3Ds Max 2014
A review of mine of 3Ds max 2014 was in the September issue
(or was it the October issue??) of 3d world magazine. An in depth double paged review that ironically
I never found a single copy of in my newsagents I went into lol. So I don't have a hard copy of it :)
Trailers, posters and mini breakdowns for Last Days on Mars
Various Last days on mars stuff got pimped such as the
trailers, the poster and some mini breakdowns.
Although the main breakdowns and stuff won't come until April next year. By which time I will have been 13 months form
finishing the end of that film lol.
The Black Rhino
Sort of a sad one this..without realizing it I did what was probably
the last photo real model of the black rhino before it was declared extinct. I picked the subject at random for use by a
client for demos.
The Autodesk Cave video Interview
I was asked by Shawn Hendricks to do a online interview about the stuff I would be
presenting at Cave / Autodesk University in Las Vegas . The outtakes would have been hilarious to
see. :) We had a great time recording
it.
Mudbox Plug-in: 'BlendWiz'
I released a small tool for those handling blend shapes for
facial animation to make life a fair bit easier in Mudbox. I never did release the mac version I meant
to... or MudWalker X2 that has been sitting on my drive with a new feature set
for a year now. (not enough free time).
The 6.2 million views thing
While waiting on a render on 17th of October I did a check
on how many views my videos (well the ones still there, which is about a 3rd) have had on YouTube and
Vimeo combined. I was dumbstruck to find it was 6.2 million views! Which was very humbling and made me ask
myself how this was possible.
Ripper Street series 2 'Phossy Jaw'
It is rare that I am 100% happy with a shot I have been
involved in, in post production time is always too short, and you often never
have time to get something done the way you would like. This shot was one of the exceptions. It turned out pretty damn well and was a sort
of CGI 'showcase' shot that I can say without any doubt will be at the start of
my next reel. Also there were a few
shots I worked on in the penultimate episode of Ripper Street such as the diamond
mine crowd shot and a few set extensions.
Releasing 3 Commercial Albums in 4 days.
I am still not sure if this was a sign of insanity or just
really good planning. But I finally bit
the bullet and did something I swore I never would do: release my music
commercially. So in my usual eclectic
/breaking the rules style I released 'fat Funky Bastard'
(the electronic
album), Inferno of Bullshit
(the hybrid
album), and The ballad of Jonas Scrim
(the classical concept album, which exposed some of the 'class system in clasical music as apparently a lad from Consett isn't supposed to either want to or be able to record an classical album). I gave them no publicity outside of a mention
on facebook, my blog and twitter and they did well and were very well received. It was nice to show I do have talents outside
of 3D that people were not aware of.
There will be more albums next year at some point. All are available on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon
BTW.
'Las Vegas' (Cave /Autodesk University lectures)
Finally the time came around for me to go to Las Vegas to do
my lecture on digital doubles (where I showed my workflow that enabled me to get
a film quality digital double out in 24 hours), and also took part in a live
video for 3 December on the 'Phossy Jaw' shot.
I had a great time and it was great to not only see old friends, but
meet new ones and finally meet face to face some I had only known for years
online.
Facial Blendshapes workflow video for the Autodesk
Just a few days ago a video I was asked to do for Autodesk outlining
the workflow for sculpting facial blendshapes in Mudbox for use with facial animation
went live on The Area. It's been very
well received so far and goes quite in depth.
I've not had a whole lot of free time this year (or last!) for recording
3d vids so it was nice to get another long video out.
Still to come before the end of the year:
The TV movie/ mini series 'Moonfleet' shown on Sky over xmas that I
worked on. I can't say what I did until afterwards though. So you'll just have to watch and guess until
I can.
I asked my Mate Zap Andersson earlier in the year if he minded if I took the
song he recorded 'Its Christmas Time' and wrote with his band 'Beat Symphony' and brought it up to
date a bit. So I finished that last
night and added in a full orchestra (all parts played by yours truly), new
electronic synth parts and a complete re-master and remix. I also found time to do a nightcore remix as
well that probably won't see the light of day as it was just for messing
around. What makes it interesting is
that the instruments on the 2013 version were recorded 14 years apart..some by
zap the others by myself. So keep your
eyes peeled for either zap or myself uploading that at some point.
So all in all not a bad year, this doesn't mention the things I'm not allowed to put out publicly including one especially cool one that unfortunately is under a permanent NDA. But if next year is as good, then I'll be very happy.
Have a great xmas and a fantastic new year.
Wayne...
