Greasy Pig Studios :: Arvin Bautista

Remove/Hide Yahoo! News Story Comments

Arvin Bautista — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:54:30 +0000

I swear the reason I haven’t posted much is because I’ve been so busy doing such cool things, and not because I’m constantly procrastinating… but today’s post won’t dissuade you from thinking that.

Yes, I still get most of my internet news from Yahoo!, but recently I’ve come to realize that reading the comments get me too riled up. So I wrote a greasemonkey userscript to hide the comments (sadly they still load the comments into your browser, you just won’t see them). Download below:

Remove/Hide Yahoo! News Story Comments

For Firefox users who don’t have greasemonkey yet, check here. Chrome users can apparently install userscripts without an extension. Check here for instructions.

Backups with Carbon Copy Cloner

Arvin Bautista — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:51:44 +0000

Backup solutions are one of those things that get the short shrift for freelance designers, like health insurance. And like health insurance, they seem like a waste of money until something terrible goes wrong, then you curse never having obtained it.

Incredibly I haven’t had major data loss in the past five years (despite switching from a custom-built Windows PC to an iMac to a Macbook Pro), but that doesn’t mean I’ve been skimping on data storage.

My current favorite solution is Carbon Copy Cloner, a free app for OSX that makes backing up a breeze. While I still use Time Machine for system backup, I use CCC for backing up my work and maintaining my archives (I have two hard drives with two clones each, totaling 6 internal hard drives hot-swappable via two firewire-enabled hard drive docks).

CCC allows me to schedule backups based on a clock or whenever the drives are mounted (I use the latter). I have two original backup drives: the first backs up my current work and projects, taking them off my laptop’s hard drive, and keeping older versions archived as space permits; the second drive are for finished/archived projects, which I put there manually. CCC then allows me to keep perfect clones of both drives so I have 3 identical copies always.

Just earlier today I had a project that required a major redesign and rerender of 3d elements, only to have the changes recalled at the last minute. I had overwritten the original project elements already, and rerendering them as they were before would’ve amounted to hours of rendering time. Luckily CCC kept copies of those old prerenders which allowed me to drag them back to their current status.

WordPress as a portfolio site

Preorder DVD of Archie’s Final Project now!

Arvin Bautista — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:18:10 +0000

Well lookee what we got here… Archie’s Final Project will premiere in Los Angeles on September 23rd, and expand to about a dozen cities in the following weeks, but for those of you who want to make room for the DVD on your shelves, you can now preorder the movie on DVD via Amazon!

The Archie’s Final Project DVD has a release date of December 6, 2011, presumably including digital methods like iTunes, Netflix, and who knows where else. But only on the DVD can you hear my drunken ramblings on the commentary track.

Great Food Truck Race Titles and Graphics

Arvin Bautista — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 06:05:17 +0000

In 2010 Greasy Pig Studios had its first true broadcast television debut with the map graphics for the first season of Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race, showcasing the different locations across the United States traveled by the competing food trucks. For Season 2 production company RelativityReal tapped Greasy Pig Studios to do the map graphics again, but also the entire series’ graphics package.

The title sequence was originally just a redo of Season 1′s graphics, featuring a montage of photos introducing the different teams (increased to 8 from Season 1′s 6) and locations, with 3d animations of the trucks themselves. Unfortunately, time constraints forced a recut of the title sequence where only the final title resolve was actually used on the show. C’est la vie. Luckily in a Greasy Pig Studios exclusive, I’ve included the full title sequence up above.

In addition, Greasy Pig Studios also did lower third graphics and bumpers for segments called “Speed Bump,” “Feeding Frenzy” and “Truck Stop” which were challenges that were presented to the competitors during the competition. These graphics utilized the map motif also used in the map graphics and title sequence.

Added to Portfolio: “Coming Home” and “Picker Sisters”

Arvin Bautista — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:40:04 +0000

I’ve been having a hard enough time just telling people when stuff will be airing, much less actually create portfolio pages for all the multitudes of projects I’d been working on. So now that stuff’s kind of slowed down I’d like to alert you to two projects I just put up on the blog:

1) Coming Home, which had a hugely successful run in the spring on Lifetime, for which we did the entire 13 episode season’s graphics package, and

2) Picker Sisters, which is currently enjoying a nice run, also on Lifetime, for which we did the main title design and a logo.

Click the links above for project summaries, behind the scenes trivia, and of course video and screenshots.

Picker Sisters Main Title and Truck Logo

Arvin Bautista — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:53:42 +0000

Picker Sisters is a semi-official spinoff of History Channel’s hit reality show American Pickers. Airing on Lifetime , Picker Sisters is produced by RelativityReal, with whom Greasy Pig Studios has now worked on over two dozen projects, including several series.

Greasy Pig Studios’ first assignment was back in the fall of 2010, to design the logo to be printed on the sides of the Picker Sisters’ scavenging truck (the series is about Tracy Huston and Tonya McQueen, designers on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and their quest to find junk all over America and convert it into high-end furniture for sale in their Los Angeles store). You can see the logo, resembling an interstate sign, on one of the screenshots.

Next was to design the main titles. Working first with photo references which were slowly replaced with footage (as the show transitioned from pilot to series), the idea of a scrapbook of the girls’ travels was always there from the start. As elements and footage was locked, the scrapbook pages were grunged up and dirtied, creating a lived-in texture that complemented the show’s rustic tone.

It’s important to disclaim that Greasy Pig Studios did not design the final logo reveal of the two women mounting their logo on the wall, but everything up to that moment (including the scrapbook cover frame) is ours

Archie’s Final Project theatrical and DVD release dates

Arvin Bautista — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 05:14:59 +0000

It’s almost surreal that after more than five years (for me at least… even more for the others), Archie’s Final Project, formerly known as My Suicide, is finally being released to the public. Interest is slowly building, thanks to a viral campaign via YouTube, Facebook, and Eventful, where you can actually demand the movie show in your city (any city that gets 500 demands will automatically get the movie shown in their city with cast and crew attending!)

Meanwhile, here are the guaranteed theatrical release dates so far:

September 23 – Los Angeles, CA

September 29 – Portland, OR

September 30 – New York City, NY

October 7 – Santa Fe, NM

For more up to date information, including ticket sales (Los Angeles tickets are now available), please check out Eventful.

Meanwhile, the Facebook page recently announced a date of December 6th for the North American DVD release! Presumably Netflix and iTunes will be available at around that time as well. You can already check out some of the DVD featurettes on the YouTube page, and it will also contain two commentary tracks: one with director David Lee Miller and star/co-writer/co-editor Gabriel Sunday, and another with the crew, including yours truly.

Greasy Pig Studios site hacked, should be fixed now

Arvin Bautista — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:33:49 +0000

Probably as a result of my not keeping my wordpress installations up-to-date (along with the plugins), this site (and my other blog project, X-Cards the Spot), were hacked about two weeks ago, sending out spam, redirecting links, and God knows what else (my computer’s been acting weird lately too but that’s probably a coincidence). I think it’s all fixed now.

Thanks to the Exploit Scanner and Bulletproof Security WP plugins, as well as Sucuri.net for helping me diagnose and treat these problems, and my sincere apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced during this ordeal.

And please if you notice any other abnormalities with the site, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or send an email.

Archie’s Final Project featurette: “Animating Archie”

Arvin Bautista — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:14:55 +0000

Well, news has been few and far between on the My Suicide front, both in actuality and in me wanting to filter the “maybes” and “if we’re luckys.”

This time out, something resembling a real release seems imminent, with an acquisition from Big Air Studios, a DVD audio commentary track we recorded two months ago, a title change to Archie’s Final Project (that should come up on the alphabetical list sooner!), and a series of featurettes on the ArchiesFinalProject youtube channel (presumably these’ll be on the DVD as well).

This one sticks out to me because, well, it’s got me in it, talking about animating Archie:

Stay tuned for more Archie’s Final Project info!

Keyboard shortcut to twirl open a layer’s Audio properties in AfterEffects

Arvin Bautista — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:15:48 +0000

The past few days I’ve been editing a teaser to a pilot to a webseries I’m directing (more on that soon), and inevitably after I get a rough cut together in FCP and bring it into AE for finishing I inevitably end up doing editing tweaks in AE. Very unrecommended, but old habits die hard.

Since AE isn’t meant to function as a non-linear-editor, simple functions like editing audio aren’t as simple. Most specifically, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out the keyboard shortcut to twirl open a layer’s audio properties, seen below:

Keyboard shortcuts are a godsend in AE since it’s so full of features, and twirling down layer properties really save you time and screen space (quick tip, if you didn’t know: p twirls down position, s twirls down scale, r twirls rotation, m twirls masks, a twirls material properties in a 3D layer, u twirls any properties that have keyframes).

Well, finally today, one day late, I found out my answer while reading an article on aefreemart.com regarding sound design in motion graphics. Courtesy of Cassidy Bisher:

“when you bring in your audio track in AE, press, “LL” and that will give you the Audio Waveform.”

Incidentally hitting L once will bring up the Audio Levels.

Now to just figure out how to twirl down Layer Style properties…

Greasy Pig Studios :: Arvin Bautista

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