the digitalgypsy VFX Blog

Modern Warfare 2.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:45:00 -0800

It's been nine days since my last post, and it's been crazy. We've a trailer delivery running around now, so expect a new trailer of the show in the next couple of weeks!

Today is the day that COD:MW2 comes out. After spending countless hours in COD4:MW in MP, leveling up, and enjoying the hell out of that game, I can't wait for my copy to come! I'll most likely be spending a lot of late evenings playing it.

November, November.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:45:00 -0800

Two months left to go for 2009! It's been an amazing year. Lots of interesting opportunities and a fair bit of travel. On Friday evening the Digital Domain Halloween Party was held. While it was not as huge as previous years, I still had a good time. Kogi BBQ catered the event, which I have grown to become a fan. We actually stayed until the end and started barhopping along Main St with some festival goers!

We've got about another three weeks before Thanksgiving, during which time I'll start introducing the intern into more elaborate Nuke tools. I think I'm pretty on point with the curriculum, as I'm hitting everything that I wanted to hit in the 11 week term. The show has filled up with compers, and we're now about 18 strong. I don't think we'll be getting more, but we'll see. There's still a lot of work to do by our deadline. My workload at the moment is pretty heavy. I've been tasked with quite a few number of shots, several of those are pretty big. I think I have around 25 shots, two of those are.. uhm.. BIG. Working on a Sunday is fairly invigorating, as I can get lots of work done, the farm is empty, and I can blast The Bloodhound Gang.

Speaking of music, last Sunday we hit up the U2 concert over at the Rose Bowl! I've never seen U2 in concert, much less been to a concert in a long time. It was fun! We drove to Pasadena and hung out in the park from about 1pm until 7, and then entered the arena to our seats. Getting out was another matter entirely! We spent an hour in the lot trying to leave. The concert ended at 11:15, we got home at 1:30am! What a night.

I am going to try and write more relevant vfx topics in the future, but it's been extremely busy between DD, Industry Wages, and other personal items that I have not had as much of a chance to update DigitalGypsy.

A new week of excitement

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:18:50 -0800

That's the way the beginning of the week starts. New problems to solve, new agendas to set, new things to do. Over the weekend we hit up the San Diego zoo. If you've never been, it is quite spectacular. Last year we went to the Wild Animal Park and bought a season pass for both parks. The Zoo is huge, the enclosures are very nice, and they put a lot of work into the park. If you haven't been, I highly recommend it.

The past week I've introduced the intern to keying in film. This is one of those topics that should be addressed in a vfx course, or at least some methodology, some examples, even some actual real moving film footage to try out. Unfortunately, long gone are the days of perfect bluescreen and greenscreen. Now we're lucky if we get screen at all! Often it's all up to the roto and paint department to help us through this. On this show we've gotten some good greenscreen, to an extent, and it really helps us out. Tom is deep into his third keying test, which amps up the difficulty a little. All the keys that he is pulling for his tests are also keys that the eventual compositor on the shot will start using.

Expanding into Florida.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:45:53 -0800

A news article from today.

Digital Domain Expands Into Florida

--Plans to Develop Original Content for Games and Animated Productions--

Venice, CA - October 13, 2009 - Following the recent announcement of its new visual effects studio in Vancouver, BC, Academy Award-winning digital studio Digital Domain announced today that it is expanding its business with plans to develop a digital production studio in Florida.

Digital Domain is working with parent company Wyndcrest Holdings to build a new digital production studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida. The new studio will create original content for animated feature films and video games. Plans are in the early stages, and Digital Domain expects to begin operations in Florida next year. Initial operations include building a creative development team as well as training and recruiting artist and production staff for animation and video game development.

The new studio project is being financed with a $50 million investment by Wyndcrest. The project is also receiving support in the form of a grant from the state of Florida's Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development and an incentives package administered by the city of Port St. Lucie and St. Lucie County.

Digital Domain CEO Cliff Plumer said, 'Developing original content has always been a key part of our strategy, and a natural extension of the artistic and creative talent that the company has developed over the last fifteen years. We have identified a set of promising projects that are ideally suited to the Florida studio and look forward to getting started.'

Digital Domain will announce specific projects and the leadership team for the Florida studio at a later date.

John Textor, Chairman and CEO of Wyndcrest, added, 'Digital Domain brings our studio a great breadth and depth of experience in filmmaking. Cliff and his team have experience building studios all over the world and we welcome them to Florida.'

There's more to read over on Variety.

Paying off?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:42:31 -0800

With all this news about the Vancouver office of Digital Domain opening up soon, I decided to check IMDB for any other news that might have been released about the company. The latest news just lists a new branch in Vancouver. Just for shits and giggles, I checked their main details page.

Wait.. What? I'm listed as third? How strange.. So I click to get into it for more detail.

Well, I'll be darned. How the hell am I ranked third in the company? Well, according to IMDB at least. How cool is that? Unfortunately (or fortunately, which ever way you look at it), I don't have as much say as any of the other listed executives at the company. It does show however, that I'm definitely putting my name out there! Is it paying off? Who knows, and to what end. I don't know what the payoff is. I just found it interesting! One thing I didn't realize is that DD has a Chicago office too? Wow.

We're about, oh, four (or is it five) weeks into the internship program here, and things are going pretty well.. Tom is on some color correction and roto duty on the show, and he's pulling his weight. One of the vital things that I've tried to do is let Tom try and work his own way, and fail in the process. He gets some direction from me, and then he's off to his own devices for half a day or so. It's not a bad thing. Only with failing in production will he learn how to cope with the problems, and will remember the solutions. Hand-holding is not something I do. A compositor must be self reliant and problem solving, but also be able to work well in a team, take direction, and know when to push the right buttons, as well as know when to not push the wrong ones.

DD Vancouver

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:10:02 -0800

Yes, as some of you already know, Digital Domain is starting a Vancouver-based visual effects studio that is an offshoot of the main branch here in Venice. The Vancouver Sun has a post about it here. The employees here were notified a couple of weeks ago, after there was a rumor circulating around, and then the subsequent job postings on various boards.

What does this mean in the short run for me? Nothing, really. I'm still going to remain here in Venice for at least the short term. While DD VanCity is hiring local Vancouver talent, there are a couple seniors here that are going up to set up shop and the pipeline for Tron:Legacy. I still envision heading to Vancouver in the long run, but that's still a little ways away. The good (great!) thing is that there is now a Digital Domain in Vancouver!

A new update today as well.. VFXTalk has recently upgraded to the forums to a new version of vBulletin. Less spam, more goodness. Be sure to head on over and check it out! Lots of great discussion, a new look that's a little grayer than before, but it will insure that you don't get a flash of color while working in the dark!

Weekly happenings

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:55:00 -0800

It's the beginning of October. Can you believe it? Time is just flying by. Let's start this post with purchases. I ended up buying the ZuneHD 32GB version off of Amazon a week or so ago. It was backordered a couple days, but got it last Friday. This is my first PMP, and I'm pretty impressed with it. Fast and responsible UI, great OLED screen and excellent sound quality, given the mp3s that I've thrown at it (320kbps)! It doesn't do OGG or AAC (that I recall) but I don't mind, as most of my collection is in mp3 format. A good tech purchase for me, and I don't do them very often.

Last Tuesday morning I was contacted by Lee from FXMogul, to redo an interview that we had tried a while back for FXMogul radio. It was their second interview, and there were some technical difficulties, if you remember the show. This time for their tenth interview, the tech was more stable, and we were able to have a good 30 minute talk about the work that I do and have done in the past. I talk a little about GI JOE, my schedule, interns, 3D and 2D environment integration, and the status of VFXWages. Click this link to listen to my lovely voice for 30 minutes! Feel free to post a comment here if you have any questions about what I talked about.

Whoa.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:09:37 -0800

Yes, it has been that long since I last posted.. Around two weeks now! There have been quite a few items on my plate in the last couple weeks. A new compositing intern at DD that I'm responsible for, new shots to finish for the show, and new deadlines for the business. Let's start backward, shall we?

Max at PAX.

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:06:30 -0800

Many of you already know that I'm hyping up my brother's company, CoinApp, and their inaugural game, Max Blastonaut. While they're putting the finishing touches on the game, they've been chosen as one of six finalists in Microsoft's 2009 Dream Build Play competition! Their game will be show to the public for the first time at PAX in Seattle this weekend. If you're lucky enough to have a badge and some free time, check it out!

There's a full list and critique of the six finalists over on G4TV.

The Daily Grind.

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:40:00 -0800

As I progress in my career, I often wonder where the time goes, and what I spend it on. After conversing with my brother, who also has a full career and barely enough time awake as it is to do all the things he does, I quickly wrote up my daily routine.

up at 6:30am
6:45-7:45 gym
7:45-8 prep for work
8-8:15 commute
8:15am -7:15pm DD vfx
7:15-7:30 commute
7:30-8 dinner
8-8:30 or 9 relax with the spouse (or play games)
9-11:30 side business work (if I'm feeling lazy I'll play or relax some more)

That's about 17 hours, almost nonstop. What's your daily schedule? Is it similar to mine?

I recently watched a Ted presentation of Dan Pink giving a talk about social science and motivation; autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He describes how the traditional risk and reward of dangling more money, more financial incentive, in front of employees, is a step in the wrong direction. It's very eye opening, and vital for the future of small business (and big business too!), especially my own. If you have 18 minutes to spare, be sure to check it out. This is only more apparent in visual effects, where there is a defined goal in mind, but the artist is reliant, to an extent, in their own technical proficiency. This technical proficiency comes with time, as does maturity and mastery, a vital requirement as you move up the ranks. Autonomy only gets more desirable with age, which is one of the reasons behind Industry Wages.

2009 SVE Nominees

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:30:00 -0800

This year I didn't get a chance to select the five nominees for a SVE Emmy, but here they are!

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series
Battlestar Galactica • Daybreak (Part 2) • Syfy
Fringe • Pilot • FOX
Ghost Whisperer • Ghost In The Machine • CBS
Heroes • The Second Coming/The Butterfly Effect • NBC
Sanctuary • Sanctuary For All • Syfy

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Generation Kill • The Cradle Of Civilization • HBO
Into The Storm • HBO

Quite strange that there are only two nominees in the miniseries category. I guess there weren't enough entries to warrant more, or the group decided that these two were the only ones they felt were excellent enough. If you want to read who was nominated within these programs, head on over to the Emmy site and search via this link.

As many of you may know, there's a raging firestorm just northeast of Los Angeles in the Angeles National Forest. It's the worst it has ever been in 60 years. A VFXer was able to capture some timelapse of this event, check it out here. It's a crazy sight, and it is getting captured quite a bit in photography. Check out the rest of the pictures that people have put up on Flickr. It's also been extremely hot the past week, which has been hindering the firefighting. Luckily, the Santa Ana winds have not picked up, or this could have been far worse. So far around 140,000 acres have burned, with only 22% of it contained. They estimate it will be fully contained by September 15th. Check out this map of California to see how big this thing really is.

Two weeks ago I ended up getting a new cell phone! I retain the same cell plan, 20 bucks a month for 60 minutes, but I did add texting for $5 extra. I don't really talk all that much on my cell, or do anything else, but it's there as an emergency. I upgraded my phone to the Nokia 5610 Xpressmusic, which was free with a 2 year extension. Of course, I have changed my technology plans concerning phones, so I usually never upgrade as frequently as two years. It's a nice little slider phone. We'll see how long the slider lasts based on my usage.

Next Tuesday, our first batch of DD interns starts. I think we have about five or six in various artist professions, and another five or so in production and support services. Total, I think the count is 12, but don't know for sure. I'm looking forward to seeing how they progress during their time here!

Interns.

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:26:16 -0800

Yesterday I got a chance to help interview several potential compositing interns for a position here at Digital Domain. It was the first time I've been a part of the hiring process, albeit an intern position. Just to give you an idea, each session was about 30 minutes long, and we delved into all aspects of the work we do, and what the intern might be tasked to do over the course of their internship. These phone interviews are a vital step in describing your talents, hopes and dreams to the recruiters as well as senior artists which may be conversing with you. They are also very fluid, and while there are a set of questions I set up to gauge the level of commitment from the intern, they do vary based on the responses that they give. We'll be calling the selected interns this week, for a start in two weeks! It's going to be pretty interesting.

My fancy Drobo (2nd Gen) came last night in the mail, along with two terabytes of storage (effectively one terabyte when used in the system), and it was a cinch to set up. Very plug and play, which I have started to like over time. Basically, you take your SATA II HDs, put them into the drive bays of the Drobo, and use FW800 or USB2.0 to connect it to your computer. From there it's just another external drive recognized by the system. I really like the redundancy it provides, and the simplicity of its upgradability. One of the drawbacks, for me, is the lack of an ethernet connection. This can be solved by buying the DroboShare product, but unfortunately that connects to the Drobo via USB2.0, not FW800. USB2.0 is the bottleneck here. The Drobo itself is very much a JBOD, and the firmware (hardware?) of the product seems to do a good job of providing RAID 5 performance and managing the data redundancy without much user intervention. Here's a review from two years ago that Engadget did with the first gen Drobo.

A Productive Week

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:40:00 -0800

Here we are yet again, at another payday. The visual effects work on the film I'm working on is coming along nicely! We've still got a lot to do, but the production on this show is going very well. Just regular hours at the moment, which is nice! No 12 hour days, yet. I'm sure that'll happen eventually. We'll see!

Last Sunday, we hit up the theater to see District 9. Let me tell you, it's my new favorite film, and I think one of the first I'll actually buy on BluRay. Great acting, great story, great vfx! I'm still thinking about bits and pieces of the story even now! It just keeps with you, and the character work and direction are top notch. Neill is one to watch out for in the future. I'm really glad he did this instead of Halo.

A couple weeks ago, on a social site I frequent called SE, there was a comment about a beatbox artist who had an embedded Youtube link. I had never really heard about this artist (like most), but the music on Youtube had be rocking out, the beats are sick! I listened to his other tracks. He's a new favorite of mine. Check out DubFX.

The passion and dedication that he puts into his vocal work is truly great. Be sure to listen to Flow, which has some great sax work. If you go to his website, dubfx.net, he has his full album available for streaming. I liked it so much, I ended up purchasing it, as well some other CDs that they've put out. Speaking of other independent musicians, I listen to aurgasm.us quite a bit to get a feel on new artists or ones I've never heard about.

I was introduced last weekend to a new arcade game, Trials HD on XBLA. It's a new time waster! But my oh my, it's so much fun.

Early in the week I sat in on some reels for our first internship program at Digital Domain in a while. This is the first time that I really had a chance to see what kinds of reels a big studio receives. I was quite surprised that there weren't as many compositing reels. Most of the ones were generalist, which is a detriment to the applicant. While it's good to know a wide variety of skills, it's best to focus on one when submitting a reel to any large company. We'll be selecting several in the next week or so. Like I mentioned in my recruitment post four years ago, artists at larger companies are specialists in their chosen profession. There is seldom a jack-of-all-trades. I started posting a bunch of tips on twitter called #vfxprotip, so do a search for them, check it out, and subscribe. Right now I'll most likely post demo reel tips, but over time I'm sure other people will contribute and post greenscreen tips, keying tips, and the like in 140 characters or less.

ZOMG. ZuneHD!

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:50:00 -0800

As a little break from the monotony of visual effects, this DigitalGypsy post will be totally unrelated. Over the past couple of months, I've been thinking of picking up a new phone. First I was looking at the Nokia N97, and then the Palm Pre. Because I can't make up my mind, at all, I haven't gotten either. So I am still hanging out with my dilapidated Samsung e105. I'm not big on the iPhone, even though it's pretty, it's an Apple, and there's some neat stuff on it. I also didn't want to switch networks. I'd go from a $20/month plan, to something like $100+/month. It's just not worth it for me. So I'm still waiting.. The next phone I might pick up won't be a smart phone, or a fancy media player phone. It'll most likely be very similar to my current one, a simple clamshell, with excellent battery life and sound quality. Because of this, I decided to focus on a media player, and get a decent one that does everything that I want it to do. Enter, the iPods, Zunes, Sansas, and so forth.

I looked at the iPods Touchs. Very nice, but I couldn't imagine shelling out more for a little logo, when a Sansa would do the same. All I want was something that would play quality music files, maybe video. The Zunes were not for me. Didn't have the functionality I wanted. Then I looked at the Sansa SlotRadio. Pretty nice. It could take a SD card, so I could switch whatever I wanted into the machine. And then the ZuneHD was announced, and I thought to myself, I'll wait.

The ZuneHD, if you haven't been following the gadget blogs and tech news, is Microsoft's latest entry into the field of PMPs (Personal Media Players), like the iPod, Sansa SlotRadios, regular Zunes, Samsungs Yepp, and so forth. Their entry is pretty amazing, a great competitor to say the least. Here's why I think I've chosen this as my next tech purchase. OLED screen (nice, contrasty blacks, great viewing angle!). I still want to see how it fairs in the sun, since I've heard that OLED doesn't do so hot outside. Tegra chip. If you've seen the UI of the ZuneHD, it's an amazing processor! Fluid animations, hardware acceleration, to name a few. With the Tegra, it allows 720p playback to a HDTV! Nice, nice. Wireless sync and transfer. This was a big one. I know there's an app for that for the iPod Touch, but on the ZuneHD, it's part of the package. I can have all my music on my main machine, and sync wirelessly to it from the ZuneHD, and just stream music. I'll reserve judgement until I play with one in stores on September 15th, but I think it'll be my first portable music/video player. Seeing that Netflix and Microsoft now have an exclusive deal with Netflix on the Xbox 360, I have a feeling that in the future, we'll be seeing Netflix streaming via wi-fi to this little device! Can you imagine, 720p streaming wherever you are that has an internet connection? Nice.

This month I've been trying something new at the gym, Wendler's 5/3/1 Program. It's a four day a week program, focusing on the big, compound lifts. The deadlift, squat, bench press, and military overhead press. So far (I'm only in week 2) it feels good. Last week I was able to push out a lot more reps, and I think it'll help to increase my volume. The first week of squats I ended up doing 245lbs by 12, and this Saturday I'm hoping to match it at 265. Every workout is less than an hour, and I still get a lot of volume done, and it definitely feels good. Do I feel stronger? I guess. It's a long and arduous road, and I've got plenty of time to build up to my goals! My hope is that I'll be doing 315lb squats, 405lb deadlifts, and 315lb bench for reps, sometime in the future.

A month of two ago, I did an interview with 3D World Magazine, covering my company, Industry Wages. Like I mentioned previously on this blog, we're focusing on creative industries, and will be branching out into other ones eventually. This interview has now been printed, and is in the August issue, #119. I'm still hard at work writing the business proposal, and my frequent meetings with my SCORE counselor are helping. We'll hopefully have a decent proposal by the end of the week, and I want to start sending it out to VCs by the end of the month.

In other Inversin company news, my brothers company, Coin App, just entered their first game, Max Blastronaut, into Microsofts 2009 Dream Build Play contest, with the possible prize of being on the XBox! Pretty fancy. I'm hoping that they make a splash.

More than halfway.

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:55:00 -0800

It is now August, the eighth month of the year, and it seems like 2009 is just flying by! Time just gets shorter and shorter, and I feel that the work I have left to do just keeps growing. Two weekends ago I got together with Saeed, who some of you may remember from 2007, when we presented the VFXTalk Users Group at the Santa Monica library. We caught up as much as we could, talked about the work that lay before us, and hoped that the recession would pass us by quickly! With several of our coworkers out of commission and looking for work, it's a tough time, as evident by my six weeks off as well. Last week I got a chance to sit down with Donald, a vfxer I met online (from VFXTalk and Twitter), who came out from Florida and Full Sail to come work on the West Coast at Luma Pictures. I gave him a quick tour of Digital Domain, and we headed out to lunch to talk shop, and just shoot the breeze. It's very interesting to see how people start their careers, what they look forward to doing, and how they plan on accomplishing the tasks that lay before them.

We saw a couple movies since I last wrote.. They include Coraline, which came out earlier this year, and the cast and crew screening of G.I. JOE. Coraline was visually amazing. It definitely felt like a Gaiman film, the tone was surreal, and I was a little put off by the button eyes, which freaked me out for a bit. I mean, look at this. Doesn't that scream crazy? Overall, I got used to it, and the animation was wonderful. The traditional stop motion was quite nice to see again. I'm eager to see a new Aardman film!

On Sunday we saw G.I. Joe on the Paramount lot, and I didn't have high hopes for this movie. I was expecting something crass, unexciting, and just very cheesy. It did not meet those expectations. It was actually pretty good. Dialog was solid, acting was decent, and most of the FX were great (well, yeah :)). The action sequences were pretty well done, and the sound design for a lot of what we did was excellent. The majority of our work was at the beginning of the movie, which I'll mention more of when the film actually comes out on Friday! I'm looking forward to it doing pretty well this weekend. There's really nothing else up against it. If it does well, this year will be a trifecta! Three movies I worked on this year with amazing box office returns! Star Trek (Latest gross: $379,661,846), Transformers 2 (Latest gross: $810,189,320), and GI Joe (we'll see!). If it does pretty well, expect to see a sequel! The studios that worked on it include Digital Domain, MPC, CIS Hollywood, Frantic Films, Framestore, and CIS Vancouver. Speaking of Vancouver, a former classmate from VFS was featured in Sundays LA Times for his upcoming film, District 9. Neill was also an artist in Vancouver, and we were nominated the same year for different shows that we had worked on in Vancouver. I am eager to see how the work from Vancouver looks in this film. You may remember Neill's short, Alive in Joburg, which was the basis for this new film.

Here he is, pictured below, standing next to me back in 2001. I'm behind the beautiful lady in blue, he's standing to my left, with the white tie.

I sincerely hope that the work done for District 9 by The Embassy and Image Engine will continue to put Vancouver on the map as a place to accomplish significant VFX work. From the numerous Emmy nominations in VFX (and its first win in 2007 for Battlestar Galactica), Vancouver is creeping forward!

On the Industry Wages front, I am extremely close to finishing this primary proposal with numbers gleaned from the web and government documents. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is extremely helpful! Hopefully sometime this week I'll be able to send it for review by a SCORE counselor, and then hopefully ship it off early next week to VCs and angels. I'm anticipating that we receive funding for 2010, which will allow an accelerated rate of growth for the company and its sites!

This week is also Siggraph in New Orleans! Lots of great stuff there this year at the Nuke UG, which happened last night. FXGuide has a Day 1 review, check it out!