I could hardly wait until the winners got announced on June 16th … but sadly I didn´t made it in the top 2.
It would have been an awesome experience (+ fit my schedule perfectly to bridge over the time until October) to work with the folks at Framestore, MPC or Dneg. Nonetheless I am very happy for Sandro and Holly who made it!

Btw: London is still on the list and one day I finally get there … it just could take a little longer.

Must watch video of the day: ITFS Zoopraxiscope by Johannes Schiehsl

I´m going to study at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy … believe it or not!

And believe me, I myself haven’t realized it completely by now although the news is kinda old, the letter arrived on the may 29th. (Btw: the same day Germany won the Eurovision Song Contest.)

This time I concentrated directly on the environment assignment and completed a (more or less) straight forward 2.5 matte painting in the 72h time-frame (I worked at home again so I had to travel from Dessau to Ludwigsburg 4 times all together … 2000km of fun).

After receiving the assignments and kicking around some ideas on the way back to home I started immediately with scribbles and sketches. With the mental image of a graveyard scene (I wanted to do something like that for some time) the whole project went through the concept, layout and matte painting stage directly into compositing.

Thanks again to everyone who supported me! Special-thanks are going out to my mother who acted out a perfect gravedigger in front of my high-end greenscreen-stage

Long story short: I made it! Now take a look at the final piece…

A little background story I made up regarding this image (as you see it´s in German … I´m too lazy to translate, sorry)

In der nahen Zukunft hat sich die Menschheit weit über das heute bekannte Universum ausgebreitet. Zur Aufrechterhaltung der notwendigen Kommunikation werden so genannte hochleistungs CSBs aka “Contact Support Beacons” benötigt, welche an den Polkappen von strategisch günstig gelegenen Planeten errichtet wurden. Die zum Betrieb benötigte Energie wird in der wärmsten planetaren Regionen gewonnen und durch Überlandleitungen zu den CSBs transportiert. Gemäß dem optionalen Protokoll R28.3-Tonrd ist ein Austausch von mindestens 4 der 8 stationär eingesetzten Besatzungmitglieder alle 15-20 Standardjahre vorgesehen.

Straight forward Photoshop painting (took me a few hours … ). First rough mockup in grey-scale, added the details and “mood”. Afterwards color a flattened version of the image in a separate pass.

Done in:

• Photoshop CS2 with my custom-brushes
• Wacom Intuos A5Wide
• listening to : avatar score

Some of you may noticed it, but to make it official: Yes I am a huge fan of sparth and the guys from steambot studios. I you haven`t already go and get their art-books (structura and exodysseey, you will love them, I promise!

Way to much time went into this painting, that´s for sure. I worked sporadically on it, but all the detailling-crazyness went on over weeks and weeks (eventually month when I remember correctly). Non the less… it´s done (finally).

Done in:

• Photoshop CS2 with my custom-brushes
• Wacom Intuos A5Wide
• listening to : the dark knight score / technobase.fm

Maybe a little to fantasy-related, but I like the moody, dark feeling of the forrest. Regarding the techniques it´s nothing special. I went straight to color with this one (quite unusual for me) and the rest is simple photoshop custombrush – painting.

Done in:

• Photoshop CS2
• Wacom Intuos A5Wide
• listening to the LotR score

(If someone´s asking why I start posting paintings, it´s simply to force myself to post more regularly and (maybe) finally attract someone to my blog)

NO! Friday, the 22.01.2010 in London … The Foundry released the newest version of  Nuke! The long wait is over and finally all of us (exept the lucky folks on the beta-list) get the chance to play with the new release. Just take a look at the features :

• complete new roto&paint tool (oh jeah…)
• Keylight !
• even more python magic!
• fully integrated 3d tracker (Nuke X)
• DepthGenerator and LensDistortion tools
• FurnaceCore

I get exited just imagining what you people can pull of with this tools at hand!

Long story short: check it out! Head over to The Foundry right away for more infos like the release notes, the download page and a “Why Nuke X?” pdf.

PLUS: the new Nuke examples page. The Foundry surprised all Nukers out there with a whole set of video tutorials ranging the following sections: Basic Workflows, General UI, Python Essentials, Python For Artists and Production Workflows. In total 50 videos and couting (Nuke6 related vids should be available in the next days). That´s a whole new level of Nuke education available for free and for everyone. Kudos to The Foundry …

I´m just back from seeing James Cameron’s Avatar in 3D … hands down : it was awesome.

IF YOU HAVN`T SEEN IT – LEAVE NOW AND WATCH IT!! You will not regret it.Absolutely original, beautifully crafted and just jaw-dropping visuals + a decent story I must admit. Kudos to Mr. Cameron and the whole cast!

Great work delivered from the teams at Weta, ILM, Framestor, Hybride, Prime Focus, Hydraulx, Halon, Lightstorm, Giant Studios, BUF and the Third Floor just to name a few.

Oh man, I want to work and earn a credit on such a movie so bad…

Not long ago Imageworks was in the news because of they released a couple of their in-house developments as open-source (very generously from them imho) and now they´re again with a big unexpected deal with the Foundry. The development of Katana, the SPI proprietary lighting and compositing application is handed over to the company behind Nuke. The arrangement goes along with a Nuke side-license for the SPI (after ILM and WetaDigital were also adopting Nuke with a side-license), so they are also interested in seeing Katana tightly integrated into the Nuke toolkit (which shouldn´t be too complicated because both programs share a similar architecture.)

In my eyes this is a huge step forward for the Foundry in terms of relighting-technology. Hopefully it turns out to be the link between 2D and 3D we all wanted. The first integrated features of Katana should be incorporated into Nuke until Siggraph 2010…

Btw:  it´ll be very interesting how Eyeon will compensate this shortcut in development time from the Foundry.

2 links to check out:

• a very indepth article about the topic over at fxguide (with images)
• the vfxtalk thread (with some inside from actual SPI compositers)

Jet another blog about vfx, the industry and some random cool shit… aww jeah. But every now and then I´ll post some news about me and my work as a (currently) jr. compositor and that is what (hopefully) makes the difference.So feel free to

1. point out spelling mistakes … you know you want to …
2. post comments, opinions and suggestions
3. and of course check out my Demo Reel

Don´t expect regular updates… I´ll post if I have some time on my hands and only if theres something you guys probaly don´t know already.

stay tuned.

L-rac