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That Avalanches Video
2002-05-24 17:14:48
is just out of this world insane. Purely Psycho-somatic of nothing.
I was beside myself with amazement. Every sample. Every freaking sample from the kid to the record scratches to the horse to the damn Mexican band represented by someone onstage.
Just. Brilliant. And stupid. All in one effort.
Damn. -
Goin' golfing this weekend.
2002-05-24 12:55:31
Which is odd, because I usually only golf with my Dad. It's a bonding thing, and he helps me learn to play better, because I pretty much suck. I've got the swing thing down, but knowing which club to play, how to play the ball, etc. are all unknowns to me.
But golf is really boring if you're not playing it, and even sometimes when you are, so I'm shutting up about that now.
I hope I can find some more time to rip stuff for the Spike vid this weekend. I'd really like to finish it so I can get on to the After Effects retooling of it, but I'm still only about 1/2 done. Argh. I should have picked something other than a 6 minute long song. Ugh.
Oh!
EK: Nudes that are classically drawn or rendered should never be considered taboo, even in a professional portfolio. As a professional artist who actually has a say in hiring people from time to time, I like to see nude studies in portfolios because that tells me that the artist cares about studying the human figure. I can understand wanting to make sure the site is safe for the kiddies and the workplace, but maybe you could put it as a seperate page with some sort of a "warning: non-erotic nude figure studies ahead" thing?
And that email had me laughing out loud. JUST DO IT, OK?!?
OH MY GOD. I almost forgot to talk about the WEIRDEST TEN MINUTES I've had in recent history on Tuesday.
Went to store to buy copy of Morrowind. Wanted collector's edition. Found collector's edition. Picked up collector's edition and realized that from the weight and heft of it, that the game CDs were missing from the box. Opened it. Sure enough, no game CDs. Someone returned it without them.
Went to customer service counter. Asked them if I could swap out disks from regular edition to throw in collector's edition, since I wanted the collector's edition (concept art book, game soundtrack CD, and stupid figure included). No big deal. They throw in the game CDs.
Start driving home. In my wee little Civic. White convertable Mustang pulls up along side of me with two teenagers in it (Daddy's car, to be sure). My windows are open an inch on both sides. The kid riding shotgun yells "Race 'im! Fucking race 'im!" The hell? I'm driving an *obviously* unmodified civic. Racing me is only one step above racing a kid on a tricicle. So I lean back and stare right at the driver, letting him know that yes, I heard your friend, and no, there won't be any racing going on here today.
Then I'm halfway home, and I recognize a song playing from the car next to me. The beat's fast. I'm starting to remember it. It's Lords of Acid's Voo-Doo you! The hell? Acid-Techno-Sex-Rock coming from a car other than mine?!? So I look over expecting to see some guy or a disgustingly hot woman, and it's some homely-esque woman in a four door sedan. And not a nice cool sexy sedan like an Acura or an Accord or something. It was some American early 90's P.O.S. So now I'm laughing hysterically in my own car because it's such an image-breaker for me to see a woman not wearing black patent leather or something listening to the Lords. It was just so very very odd.
Peas Awt. -
Not much to say lately.
2002-05-22 16:14:59
I've been working up a reply to MCWagner's forum rantings and ravings about the whole non-smoker/smoker debate, but I'm wondering if it's even worth continuing. I guess I have to evaluate if I feel passionately enough about the subject, which I do, to really have anything to add to the discussion. I just don't feel much like debating anything lately, even if I *do* have good points on the matter. Maybe I'll just email it to him. ;)
Oh, and for the record, MC, everytime I say "MC" in my head, I must also immediately repeat it with "DJ!" There's this great track from a group called Cirrus called "MCDJ" It rocks most hard.
Oh, and one more thing. I also debated responding to this one because there's potential "creep out" factor involved, but it's all in good fun.
EK: I don't know what 17 year old boys you're talking about. When I was 17 I could unclasp bras from a girl's back with just three fingers on one hand from the outside of their shirt, if need be. Unfortunately, not many took me up on the "challenge." Now I can do it with just the index finger and thumb! And no, this doesn't appear on my resume.
Now I'm all embarrassed and stuff. -
ILM and CGI
2002-05-17 14:47:07
::VERY MILD Attack of the Clones DETAILS AHEAD::
::If you don't mind "general" descriptions (no spoilers, honest) and an old man nitpicking animation in a film he really loved, then read on::
::STOP READING NOW IF YOU ARE ON ZERO SPOILER ALERT::
MCWagner: Yeah, that "move" got a "woo-hoo!" chorus from our crowd as well. We *REALLY* loved the whole thing with him there at the end. I especially loved his kung-fu stances. I was literally giggling and laughing like a kid again. Honestly, I had a TON of fun at this movie.
Kyburg: Don't get me started on ILM's character animation. Oh wait, too late ;)
I've noticed a house "style" for ILM's CG character animation recently. And I by "style" I mean "crap." Don't get me wrong. I LOVED EP II. Anything further I mention about the animation is pure professional nitpickery.
Anything not human is usually done flawlessly. The creatures look fantastic. Yoda looks just like a CG muppet (the way he 'hops' when he walks like there's an arm inside of him trying to pantomime a walk). Those are perfect. It's when they attempt to do the human figure that just doesn't work yet for me.
And I don't just mean in AotC. Anytime they keyframe (as opposed to motion capture) human movement, it looks wonky. I saw it in Harry Potter, and Spider-Man (both had character CG by ILM (Admittedly, Spider-Man was the best of the three IMO)). They're weightless rubberbands. No proper mass or inertia. Case in point: Anakin circus-riding the creature in the hills outside of Amidala's house. It just didn't even look remotely real. Humans are such a subconscious expert in human movement. We're not easily fooled. Anakin lacked weight. There wasn't enough "reaction" time for his movements. When someone is being bucked around on a horse, for instance, some movements are fast (impacts with the butt of the horse) and others are slow by comparison even though the horse is moving fast (the back and forth movement of the person trying to keep his balance).
What I don't understand is why they didn't just have an actor and a horse in a VERY large motion capture studio do the move together like that? It would have been difficult to do, but ILM *DID* build an actual working conveyor belt for that sequence inside of the droid factory. They've got the money, and this is their flagship title, so why not do it absolutely right?
On the other hand, I thought that all of the mocapped...um...clonetroopers looked really really good. Evidently Jango Fett was also mocapped (and I thought he looked pretty good, too). I've since theorized that they motion captured these elements so we didn't have helmets wobbling like buckets on heads or armor pieces flopping around because they were just pieces of plastic velcro'd onto a black spandex jumpsuit. For the record, I thought this was an excellent idea. Not only does it make the armor look more "real," It allows for massive waves of clonetroopers marching en masse and not having to hire thousands of extras and spend gajillions of dollars on costumes (one guy marches for four or five different cycles, and you "clone" him in your CG ap to make him look like thousands).
To address your "moving objects against a moving background" concern, I agree with you. A lot of speeder shots really bothered me (from a professional, not a movie-goer attitdue). Admittedly, CG'ing a moving object over a moving background is one of the HARDEST things to make look right in animation (aside from Character key-framing). The reason it is so hard to make look right is because of a thing we call "strobing." And that doesn't mean "flashing."
Strobing is when your visible object is animated as a seperate layer from your background pan, and doesn't look perfect. I.E. any speeder shot where we have characters acting and visible (shot as live action) laid over a CG panning background.
What happens is that if the ship isn't *perfectly* matched to the background pan, it looks wonky. If the ship slips back a bit, our eye automatically makes an adjustment and says "hey, that ship's moving with the background!" and therefore is no longer making forward progress. Even if it only happens for a frame or across a few frames, our brain plays tricks on us. The same phenomena happens when you're at a stoplight and the car in your peripheral vision rolls forward an inch, and you slam on the brakes because you think you're rolling backwards. Even small imperfections in movement are interpreted by our subconscious as WRONG.
That might be why you get vertigo at the "ceiling" shots in that movie. You might have an over-tuned sense of balance, so when your eye and brain pick up on something moving oddly (like a shot where "we" (the camera) is in motion), and you're *not* moving (your inner ear is assuring your brain that you're still planted firmly in place), your system goes haywire and a vertigo symptom occurs.
At any rate, that's my two cents about the animation in AotC. Like I said earlier, I LOVED the movie. I had a great time, and seriously enjoyed myself. -
AotC Madness
2002-05-17 12:13:59
Probably going to see it again this weekend if I can. I like it more and more every time I think about it.
MCWagner: What motion was it you were talking about? I can think of a few, but nothing so specific. Email me with the answer so we don't spoil anyone. :)
JOURNAL: Bowler
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