All albums now Live on spotify and amazon

All 3 of my recent albums are now live on Spotify and Amazon as well as iTunes.  A few of you had asked, so now you know.

On a side note the main site is getting hammered the last few days by a very 1990's style 'mail bomb' attack.  I didn't know anyone still did those.  But as even outside of email I am very easy to contact, its no biggy.  Just bare in mind that until this idiot (whoever they may be, or whatever motivation they think they have) that emails may not arrive as this nut job is filling up the mailbox by sending about 600 emails an hour.

I fly back home this evening from my month and a half here in Dublin, Where I get to spend until the 30th November before heading off to lecture at CAVE in las vegas.  A busy old time.

Release of my Classical Concept album:: 'The Ballad of Jonas Scrim'

 

I started writing the album that would become 'The Ballad of Jonas Scrim' back around 1995 / 1997 as a soundtrack to a script I have been working on for many years.   So after about 17 years (Although to be fair I did take about 8 years away from it) its the album I am most proud of.  Its fair to say that musically its my baby.

It also breaks the whole class system divide where its assumed only rich upper class white dudes can write a classical album.  I may be wwhite but I am not rich and definitely not upper class as anyone who has met me will tell you.  Bassically a lad from a  tiny town in the north east of England isnt 'meant' to do clasical music.  I see that as rubbish.


So what is it about then?

Without giving too much away (should by some miracle the script ever see the light of day), its about a man Jonas Scrim who while considered a fantastic stone sculptor suffers from serious mental illness and in many ways is a study in psychosis.  While Jonas is doing sculptures he is sane and normal and his symptoms are minimal.  When he stops or cannot for some reason they get a lot worse and Jonas is convinced he is living in a blade runner-esque universe where he is the last organic life form.  In reality he is descending deeper and deeper into psychosis.  He sees beings he names the 'screaming leprachauns' who in reality look nothing like anything remotely you would imagine.   These increase as he gets worse and worse unable to sculpt.

Now to cut to the chase here his mental health problems get so bad that he runs away from his family and everything he knows.  Although he is never seen, marble sculptures start appearing at auction houses around the world over the next twenty years at a rate of 1 a year.

When Jonas Scrims son hits the age of 18 he goes to try and hunt down his dad who is convinced is still alive.  Meeting  a girl in a coffee shop along the way he spends the next 2 years hunting down Jonas.

Of course he finds him and is surprised to find him living in a tiny caravan in the Montana wilderness... it turns out to keep his mental problems in check, Jonas sculpted over a period of 20 years a 400m long cave full of sculptures that is best thought of as a Sistine chapel of sculpture. Jonas son is amazed but his father becomes alarmed at his sons plans to turn it into a tourist attraction.  Jonas blows up the thing keeping him sane and we end seeing him in a secure mental unit with his son leaving him  forever seeing his dad now past all hope.

The big reveal of course is we then go back to the cave Jonas blew up containing his sculptures and pan to the left 500 metres.... and see a 2nd far larger unfinished cave  contains a battle field scene called 'The attack of the screaming leprechauns'   (which have been a metaphor for the symptoms of Jonas illness all along.)

A story that explores psychosis from both sides and how everyone cam be affected.  That boys and girls is what the Ballad of Jonas Scrim is about.

So go and buy it on iTunes... there's  a lot of work went into it...and do ya know... I don't think  its half bad ;)

2nd Commercial Album release: 'Inferno of Bullshit'

Buy it now!  (or ait until it show sup on Spotify if your Broke lol)

Now I'm not sure if 2 albums coming out for commercial release in 3 days is a sign of insanity, a midlife crisis or just common sense. I'm going to go with the latter as all 3 of the albums that will be released before years end are linked.

Inferno of Bullshit is a bit more controversial in its content, while its not full of swearing like a lot of 'Fat Funky Bastard' is, it tackles some themes that some people might find offensive.   Musically there are songs on there that were recorded about 17 years back that I have remastered and remixed, mixed with recent stuff.

So there's everything from songs about religion and its use by some as a tool of control, to racism, homelessness, governments love of control to peoples need to achieve something and leave something behind after they are gone.

Music wise this is a hybrid album of more than one style of music, we have hardcore mellow jazz, electronic hybrid styles, blues, almost folk sounding stuff along with heavy metal and some electronic stuff thrown in for good measure.  While  all three albums will work as a 'set' with the (as yet) unreleased classical album 'Ballad of Jonas Scrim' being the soundtrack to the script in my head, 'Fat funky bastard is what the son of Jonas listens to when trying to find his father, and this album is more what that word is like.  Consider it a slightly sideways glance at our own.   A world where religious leaders have turned to manipulating the populous instead of helping them, where the homeless are killed and rasicm is rife.  not a pretty place, but at times not far from our own.

The track I expect to possibly cause the most issues is 'Jonestown Massacre (Wayne V's the Rev Jim Jones).  Jim Jones of course was teh alternative cult leader who convinced an entire town to poison themselves. I took actual recordings of his 'sermons' and then did to him what he did to the religous texts he was supposed to be basing his sermons on. I cut them up and made whole new sermons saying things that he never said in his life.  But lets be clear that his is not an attack on religion, but ratjher on people who use any  heartfelt subject as a method of control.

All pretty heavy stuff, and far away for the happy stuff I normally put on my blog. But I would like to think that both other artists and clients can distinguish between the 3d side and the music side. (Although to me music is just sculpting using sound anyway, as pretentious as that sounds).

So next up will be the classical concept album 'The Ballard of Jonas Scrim'...the one I consider (if I have such a thing musically) as my masterpiece, as it has taken about 17 years to make.

My 1st commercial music album released on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify (and 2 more on the way)

 

Some of you know that I have been playing and writing music for a looooooong time.  For many years I kept it private and then stopped all together for a period of about 8 years.   Last night at 7.11pm (on the 11th day of the 11th month...seriously you couldn't make that shit up) my 1st commercial album was released 'Fat Funky Bastard'

 iTunes Link
Amazon Link
Spotify Link

I have to say the 16 year old version of me still hidden away in my head is rather pleased that my first album comes with the parental advisory notice lol.  This is the 1st of 3 albums over the coming days / weeks that I am releasing.

But lets cover a bit more about them:

Fat Funky Bastard (The electronic album)

Written and recorded over a period of two weeks a few months back, it also contains a couple of tracks off my next album on there as well.  All Three albums while different styles of music all live in the same 'universe' and revolve around the next album 'The Ballard of Jonas Scrim' .  So Fat Funky Bastard is the music Jonas's son listens to.

This is a very personal album for me as its covers a lot of my background and personal history, some very obvious, some not so obvious and some very much harder to work out.   So the songs are a journey on what went into making 'me' the person I am today.

The album is available on iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Spotify

and getting released very soon:

The Ballad of Jonas Scrim (The Classical Concept album)

I started writing the music to go along with a script I started writing back about 1992 or 1995, it then sort of went into stasis for 8 years until I started to finish it off last year and this.

This is hardcore 'proper' classical music and is my most complex work to date.  This is the one I am most proud of.   It accompanies the script about the story of a character called Jonas Scrim, a traditional sculptor who has serious mental health problems.   He goes missing and his son spends the next 20 years trying to find him.  I'll go into more details once this ones released some times before CAVE / AU in Vegas.  So while 'Fat Funky Bastard is what Jonas son listens to in his car when hunting for his father, this is the music that would in theory company the script itself.


Inferno of Bullshit (The Hybrid Album)



This is a weird one and contains a lot of songs in a variety of different styles and some potentially offensive subject  matter.  This accompanies the other two albums and  expands a little about the world Jonas and his Son live.  Which is a sort of side on view of our own.

Its got everything from hardcore jazz and blues to metal and more experimental combinations. I wont spoil it though.



Basically go and buy it (or if your broke listen to the first one on spotify).  Just remember...play it loud!

Ripper Street 'Phossy Jaw' Shot

Its not often that I am involved in a shot that I am 100% happy with, I have pretty high standards for my professional work and while there is never enough time on any project, sometimes things go very right.

For this big reveal shot (and one that made a lot of people squirm) myself, John O Connell and Joe Courtis really pulled out our A game as far as I am concerned. 3D Tracking was by the 'terminator of tracking' Mr Yanko Slavov. (Who I was most remiss in forgetting!)    If you missed the shot then I should be able to share it publicly once the breakdowns have been done after this series of ripper street finishes.  The VFX Sup was Ed Bruce here at screen scene.

But suffice to say its one of those few 'cool' shots that you get to do where there is enough time and everyone is mentally in the right place.   I hope you all enjoyed it. if you missed it or dont live in england, then you'll have to wait until my next reel then :)

6.2 Million Views

I did a quick check  a few minutes ago on my overall video views on Vimeo, and I got a helluva shock... when combined with YouTube its up to just a shade under 6.2 million (6.199).  Which isn't bad for videos on a pretty niche software (allegedly).  I was only checking as I was waiting on something here at work.

This means either:
1-  There is a Chinese family of 4 spending day and night watching my videos who thinks they are a weird western soap opera...
2 - More people are using Mudbox than anyone thinks.
3 - No one is using Mudbox but for some reason they like watching videos on it.
4 - That by trying to be low key and not post everything on forums all over the net I have actually managed to do the exact fucking opposite by mistake lol.

Pretty sure about a year ago my views were at 2 mill or so..... either way that's a helluva jump in  1 year! (A year in which I haven't done as many videos ironically).  Its also rather interesting that vimeo now is providing me with far more watchers than youtube..... interesting and didn't see that one coming.

Last Days On Mars : Mini Breakdowns

A few animated  Gifs showing breakdowns of a small selection of the shots from the film Last Days on Mars that I was 3D Supervisor for here at Screen Scene, Dublin have surfaced over on www.edwardbruce.com. For any clarification feel free to get in touch with Ed on twitter @EdBruceVFX.  Although as 3D supervisor all 3D shots always had to go through me, I'll only mention things I directly had a hand in (there is far more cool stuff from this to come in April BTW).

Lead VFX Supervisor Adam McInnes, Peter Hartless VFX Coordinator, Keith Mason VFX Editor. Sarah Mooney, VFX Producer, Amy James & Nicholas Murphy, VFX Coordinators and Kenneth Coyne, VFX Production Assistant. 

The main 3D Team I was lucky enough to have were:

John O' Connell

Garloff Langenbeck

Daniel Rath

Giacomo Cavaletti

Martin Naydenski

Yanko Slavov

Glen Southern

Also lots of credit should also go to the matte painters and Comp Department run by Grainne Freeman

So without further ado here's some images all from Ed's site I cant go into too much detail about what and how things were done but I can post a word or two:

Lighting, placement etc

The main rover R and D Shot that everyone worked on at one time or another....  

Martins epic dust storm

1st shot I was responsible for lighting

lighting, placement etc by me, dust storm by Martin

Martins epic dust storm again , (I just did a few sculpted mountains for collisions on this)

digital doubles are mine done in 1 day each, lighting and Rover animation by John O'Connell

Digital doubles, lighting

Lighting, dust etc by Garloff Langenbeck

'The Pit' one side sculpted by Myself, One side by Glen Southern, Lighting by me

'The Pit' one side sculpted by Myself, One side by Glen Southern, final pass and lightingby me

Lighting wheel dust by Daniel Rath, 3d tracking by Yanko Slavov

Lighting, placement by me, matte painting by Lino Khay

Lighting by Giacomo Cavalettie

99% of the wheel dust was done by Garloff, and most of the 3D tracking by Yanko. Rover model by Daniel Rath

Those of you heading to CAVE in Vegas in December will notice a few of the load of digital doubles I did in the above shots.  At Cave I'll be outlining the next step on form the workflow I used on Last Days on Mars to create digital doubles fast and to a high quality.

Main Site Changes

You may have noticed that the main site front page has a few minor changes and links to some of the other things that I do.  Over the years I have repeatedly been advised not to have anything other than my 3D stuff on my website.  The reasons have ranged from 'people might get confused', to 'it makes me angry to come to a 3D site and see non 3D stuff, there fore I must shout at you'.

So after a long hard think, and the fact that many people only know of one section of what I do I decided to say basically 'screw it' and put all the things that I do onto one site.  Now I'm sure people are actually intelligent enough to only look at the things I do that interest them without their brains exploding.  I like to credit people who are either clients or just interested and enjoy my art with enough common sense for it to be a non issue for them.

Now this is stage one of the site changes, there will be more a little further down the road and probably a full redesign and extra art content added. I have also linked to all the videos I have for free on MudboxLIVE.com as well.  My guess is that anyone who does have a problem, probably has bigger problems with me than just what is on my bloody website for whatever reason.

So hopefully many of you appreciate that for once it'd be nice to show all the things I do in a lot of often unconnected areas.  At the end of day day when you get right down to it, DashDotSlash isn't a site about 3D...its about me and I am more than just 3D models.

It worried me slightly that there are now people who know me for one thing, but have no idea of the other things, so there can be people who use my plugins, scripts and apps that have no idea I am a freelance professional artist.  In the same way there are people who like listening to the music I make who have no idea I am a 3D guy.

Mudbox Plug-in Release: 'BlendWiz'

I'm releasing 'BlendWiz' as of ...well the moment I post this really....yep yet again it's a freebie.  It is a cut down version of a very small (but important) part of my MASK facial mocap system.  It does one very, very simple job, and even if I do say so myself, it does it rather well.

Let me explain with a bit of background...

When you are using any Blendshape facial mocap workflow Mudbox is the one case where to be honest it makes the most sense.  Mainly as you can sculpt your blendshapes on different layers and then send to your host app and have your morpher system  / Blendshape system already automatically set up for you.   That part is very fast and a big time saver, however it has one great big time sink that eats up time.... making and giving correct names to every layer so that in your host app it is all setup for you.  Making between 70 and 300 layers that conform to a given naming system can take a looooong time.

Try it.... go on I'll wait....

Ok so 99% of you didn't try it.... but if you had it would have taken you a long time and you probably had to correct names a couple of times at least.  The larger the amount of layers, the longer that time takes and the more mistakes creep in. BlendWiz does a very simple job of creating the layers you need in less than a second, thus freeing you up to sculpt your blendshapes and vastly speed up the workflow.

While the version I have for use with my MASK system has its own special requirements, I've spent a little time expanding BlendWiz so it is far more useful for everyone else as let's face it...the only person with MASK is me until such time as the patent goes through..which could take an ice age lol. (If I hadn't it would have been the worlds most useless plug-in!)  So it ships out of the box with layer presets for FACs (facial animation coding system) based facial animation  / mocap, the Preston Blair Phoneme set, and even little old Faceshift that some people like to toy with. 

However...

It also ships with the ability to use a custom layer set...and also edit any layer set, even the presets on the fly while Mudbox is running. (Thus meaning that you don't need to restart it.)  So if you do plan on doing any blendshapes based facial animation whether it by motion capture based or old fashioned key frame animation based this simple plug-in will save you a lot of time.  Wether it be at a pro or hobby level.  While not an especially complex plug-in to write, it is a bloody useful one.    It means that a production can lock down all Blendshape names without fear of anyone inserting a typo by mistake and screwing something up further down the pipeline.

If you don't ever plan on messing with any facial animation, then chances are you won't need it .  The Mac version was supposed to ship at the same time as the PC version, but that's been put to one side until such time as a workaround can be found for a nasty little bug with the Mudbox SDK on the Mac.  It also would have shipped a Linux version but my laptop with Linux installed sort of blew up... as it was a ancient relic lol.  But they will come as soon as I can. 

Coming not long after this (unless I get a sudden slew of  intense work!) will be MudWalkerX2 which will have one totally unique feature that was slated for MudWalkers very first version, but I needed the ability to test it in a hardcore pipeline environment before I could confidently add it.  I did from September  last year to March this year while working on the film Last Days on Mars and it has passed every test thrown at it.

BlendWiz can be downloaded at my code site www.PsychoCore.com for Mudbox 2014 (PC version at the moment)

Black Rhino Turntable

The GI samples were a bit low on this one, but wanted to get this render out.  But you get the idea.  Bit of a change for the apps used in this one... Mudbox and Maya, as Maya was requested by the client.

Autodesk CAVE Video Interview

Here's an interview I was asked to do with Shawn Hendricks of Autodesk about what I will be covering at the CAVE conference in Las Vegas in December.  For more details about the extensive line up of lectures and other nice thingies visit here:  www.autodeskcave.com/ its on between the 1st and 3rd of December at the Venetian hotel Las Vegas.

The bloopers from this were pretty hilarious, and I have to admit we both had a great time before and especially afterwards.  At CAVE its going to be nice to catch up with people I've had the pleasure knowing already such as Neil Blevins, Terryl Whitlatch, Paul Neale & Craig Barr.  But also genuine industry legends such as Scott Robertson & Syd Mead, and of course those who need no introduction such as John Cleese & Neil Gaiman.   

I'm covering my own personal digital doubles workflow that I have been refining now for the last 2-3 years that enable me to get a digital double out in 1 day, fully textured, sculpted, with shaders set up and even lit... basically ready for rigging, animation and putting in a shot.   It a proven workflow that I've used on everything from TV shows &  movies to even the stuff I did for the London Olympics opening ceremony.  

The lecture will be application agnostic and should be able to be applied by anyone with knowledge of their favorite 3D apps.  So this is not a 'Mudbox' class, this is far more and something that is (even if I do say so myself) far more important than simply sculpting something that looks cool.  What I cover people will be able to take away and immediately apply to their own projects.

On a side note, I've been somewhat quiet online wise outside of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for a few years now.... a couple of things are pending release that I've been programming on the side, so don't expect that to continue that much longer. ;)

Odds and Sods

Character from next episode of 'Monsters!' that's also being used for upcoming demo by HDR Light Studio

Model created for HDRI Light Studio demo

Few new images this time, the two above are assets I'm creating for the guys at HDRI Light studio for a upcoming demo they have to give.  Now the green guy is the character from the next episode of my series of shorts 'Monsters!' who is getting a little run out early for some facial MOCAP stuff for them to use to demo the HDRI lighting that comes out of HDRI light studio.  The facial mocap is done as usual in my app MASK.
In this case in one helluva hurry due to a very short deadline for these assets.   So the facial stuff consists of a few bits of face pulling, which is whats happening in the frame above (although he does look rather constipated)  lol.

Whacked a texture set on this guy as I had a few mins spare.

While I was at it I found a few mins to stick a texture on this guy.  Originally he was going to be put on the back of the rhino with a old cane... but I realized he doesn't actually fit as a rhino is a wee bit too wide... that's why the rhino has a saddle and no rider BTW.

...and  the Rhino lit to a back plate with no HDRI, to show making one from scratch in HDRI Light Studio (slap comp) 

US Trailer - The Last Days on Mars

A fair few different shots in the US trailer.  Still not allowed to go into details about it yet.   I standby what we did with a tiny team on this.

oh and here's the poster.....

Trailer: Last Days on Mars

Well here it is at last the trailer for Last Days on Mars, the film I worked as 3D Supervisor for while at Screen Scene Dublin for 7 months.   There are a lot of my personal shots in there, fair few of the other guys on my team as well.

Don't think I can say what exactly was done, whats 3D , whats not etc just yet...but I'll add a proper break down of the core 3d dept I was lucky enough to have as soon as I am allowed along with the names of the core team (which was very tiny).  So I am looking forward to seeing it on the big screen.

Human Skeleton Anatomy Reference and Model

I think that diet went a bit to far!

I've had this knocking around for a while and as Modo have started the human body project I thought it as good a time as any to share this for reference purposes to you all.  I've put a 720p Turntable up as well as an OBJ, and FBX and a Modo LXO scene file.  Hopefully it'll be of use to some of you.  Now this is NOT UV mapped (as I have to leave some stuff for you all to do yourselves),  This is base poly modelling only

. 

I also would have also uploaded the 3Ds Max scene file but the rigging I did back then is bloody shocking! :)  Once I can track them down on my backups I'll also be uploading a high resolution scan I did of a human skull and one or two alternative human skeleton models of mine.

Download Links:


Human Skeleton OBJ format

Human Skeleton Modo LXO format

Human Skeleton Autodesk FBX format

These aren't to be used for any commercial use....