Weblog

This project has been up a while, but it has been linking to an...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:23:00 -0500

This project has been up a while, but it has been linking to an outside gallery. I finally got it integrated directly into the format here. Also it’s one of my favorites, so it’s nice to give it some late breaking recognition.

Check it out here!

Down With The Grain

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:46:00 -0500

I’ve always been interested in working with wood but haven’t really had the means to mess with it in a while, living in a small urban apartment and all. However I finally decided “So what?” All you need is a few saws and clamps, and with enough patients and a little improvisation, it doesn’t necessarily matter what kind of workshop you have. I decided to try my hand at some dovetailing, and in the mean time create something practical.

A few years ago I bought an old wooden trunk that I discovered to be from the 1890s. It has ledges for a removeable tray, but the tray was long since missing. Over the last month or so I’ve been building a new tray for it.

My coffee table was the only work surface I have. It sure did make a mess, but nothing a good vacuuming and perhaps a Stain Marker won’t fix.

I used only hand tools for all the cutting, chiseling, and sanding. The only time I used a power tool was to get the handles started by drilling a 1” hole with a cordless drill. That allowed me to get the coping saw in there to cut out the openings for the handles.

Here’s all the pieces laid out. Since all the cuts were done by hand and eye, I did have to do quite a bit of test fitting and trial-and-error filing/chiseling to get some things to line up perfectly.

Beginning assembly, I used a rubber mallet to fit together all the pieces. Some slid together easier than others, so I used a bit of wood glue to make sure things don’t come apart.

A little rough around the edges, but everything fits together like a puzzle. At least the imperfections help make it look old, like the trunk…

I tested a variety of Minwax stains, and “English Chestnut” ended up being the winner on this particular slab of pine. Initially I was disappointed how poorly the pine seemed to evenly absorb the stain, even after 10 minutes of soaking, but I was much happier once I got it in the trunk and noticed how aged it made it look.

For now it holds some gaming controllers…

For some additional photos of the build process, check out the full album here, or for more information on the trunk it’s self you can read my old blog post about it here.

Here’s some of our latest work at Digital Kitchen. For...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:12:00 -0500

Here’s some of our latest work at Digital Kitchen. For the Middle Eastern fragrance “Mystique” from Estee Lauder, we created a full CG film capturing the seductive female form while still respecting their sensitive culture.

The character animation, cloth simulation, set construction, and rendering were all done in 3D Studio Max & VRay. Although we spent some time experimenting with Maya nCloth, we found that the cloth simulation in Max was much more attuned to our fast-paced pipeline, allowing for many more iterations and nearly real-time tweaking as we moved from shot to shot.

See more information, a previz animation, and the credit list in my gallery here.

It’s hard to describe this video, this shop, this guy....

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 03:37:00 -0400

It’s hard to describe this video, this shop, this guy. Really the only word that comes to mind is…awesome.

It’s about a guy in Copenhagen who runs a barber shop / arcade / vintage toy shop. Can’t really get any more unique than that.

Been a while since I made a post. Figured I might as well...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:02:34 -0400

Been a while since I made a post. Figured I might as well upload this I created earlier this year. It was created during a testing period of various cloud rendering techniques. This one was rendered entirely using VRay Fog which was being driven by Bercon Noise. Works for fast paced far/medium shots, but falls apart quickly on closeups. FumeFX ended up being the winner for closeup shots of clouds (NOT pictured here).

“How Animation Works” is a tongue-in-cheek video...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:47:00 -0400

“How Animation Works” is a tongue-in-cheek video about the production process of a CG animation. It does a good job though of shedding light on some aspects the process that might be otherwise hard to understand by those not knowledgeable of the industry.

On this day, May 30th, Carl Faberge was born in 1846. 166 years...

Wed, 30 May 2012 23:35:00 -0400

On this day, May 30th, Carl Faberge was born in 1846. 166 years later, he is honored by a Google Doodle and also, by happen-chance, this blog post announcing a very long awaited addition to my website: the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas Faberge Egg branding moment. We at Digital Kitchen completed this in late 2011 but it just never trickled onto the web until now. Check it out.

As if the movie Avengers wasn’t already amazing enough,...

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:47:00 -0400

As if the movie Avengers wasn’t already amazing enough, these stunning ending titles by Method Studios were the perfect icing on the cake.

Finally got around to getting the sculpture/mixed media page up...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:57:09 -0400

Finally got around to getting the sculpture/mixed media page up and working on my site. Check it out.

Slowly working on the other broken items in Miscellaneous also…

Finally got some stuff in the “Stuff” page (visible...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:34:00 -0400

Finally got some stuff in the “Stuff” page (visible up at the top of the site). This section will be collection of stuff and things that don’t really fit into my portfolio section. It is reserved mostly for non-digital art related things, which will often be on-going and take the form of a blog.

3dfx Voodoo2 SLI (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:34:29 -0400

3dfx Voodoo2 SLI (Taken with instagram)

GUIdeBookGallery.org = Cool.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:59:00 -0400

Wow. So awesome. This site contains the history of all major operating system’s graphical user interfaces started with Amiga Workbench 1.0. It’s just so interesting to see all these side by side. Having started computing at a very young age with Amiga Workbench and grown up using early Mac & Windows releases, it’s very nostalgic!

I’m linking here to just one categorized list, but the site is MUCH larger with tons of in-depth screenshots of every feature of every OS.

On a similar note (which is what lead me to the site actually), I just dusted off an old Intel 433 and am in the process of decking it out for vintage gaming… First on my list to get WinUAE up and running!

Appeasing the Fanboys

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:12:00 -0400

If you’ve been following along, you know that in the past I modded GTA & the Sims, which is where you add your own 3D models to the game. Well last montht Bethesda, the game developer who created Skyrim recently released a tool called the “Creation Kit” which allows people to mod Skyrim relatively easily. I am learning how to use the Creation Kit now, and to test my abilities I decided to put one of the game’s main characters (group of characters), a Greybeard, into carbonite as a sort of joke/tribute to Star Wars.

Here is my creation in Skyim:

I posted the image on r/Skyrim just to see what people think. It’s rare in its self to get voted up at all on reddit, but the image ended up getting voted up to the #1 spot for most of the day. Yes that is cool, but it wouldn’t of been THAT big of a deal if Bethesda hadn’t caught wind of it. They put it on the game’s official facebook page, tweeted it out, and put it on their blog.

Here is the reddit page with comments and 2,700 up-votes.

Here’s Bethesda’s development blog post highlighting the image.

And here’s the Elder Scroll’s Facebook page post with 2,500 likes and over 300 shares.

I shared it with DK and they put it on their blog as well:

http://thisisdk.com/culture/log-b

If I had known it was going to blow up like this, I would have attached my name to it more haha. I would have hosted it on my own website to drive people there. I used imgur to host it, and the image that 99% of the people saw would have no idea it was by me. That’s ok though, It’s just cool to know that people see it and like it. Imgur stats reported over 200,000 views in just over 24 hours.

Nerds love it!

The Machine (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:24:12 -0500

The Machine (Taken with instagram)

The drink (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:11:58 -0500

The drink (Taken with instagram)

New Old Things

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:20:29 -0500

Recently I’ve been working vigorously to push my entire body of digital art to the cloud. Perhaps this is going hand in hand with my recent quest to organize & backup my terabytes of data and also start a RAID, but it is really something I’ve wanted to do ever since my first website. Computers and the Internet have offered me so much opportunity to really let my inner geek shine, but only a sliver of my ventures have ever made it to the web. I’ve always wanted to share it all, but found myself preoccupied with changing up my website interface quicker than I could manage to populate it with content. Now that I have a working design that works for me, I can really fill ‘er up.

Things are still very much under construction and there ARE broken links and other bugs, but make sure to keep an eye on my new Miscellaneous portfolio section. Once that is completed (and I still have the stamina to go on), I also plan to finally populate the desolate “stuff” section that has been idling by up top in the nav.

Although it’s just a simple logo resolve, this project is one...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:33:00 -0500

Although it’s just a simple logo resolve, this project is one that hits closer to home for me than most others I’ve worked on. Having always been a huge gamer and also a fan of Microsoft games, it is a privilege to see my own work at the forefront of all new Microsoft Studios releases. Forza Motorsports 4 is the first game released in 2011 to include the new logo animation.

Concepted by Elliot Limm and TD’d by Chad Ashley, I was in charge of conducting the animation and meeting the client’s expectations on this logo resolve. PFlow particles in Max were used in conjunction with Thinkbox Frost to create the ink path. Some tricky masking work in After Effects made the seamless connection between the 3D and 2D logo lockup.

Seeing the northern lights in person is definitely near the top...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:20:00 -0500

Seeing the northern lights in person is definitely near the top of my “Things to Do Before I Die list. Until then, however, I figured I could make do with engineering them digitally. The unique look and motion could be called abstract, but when you really study them you realize how particular their movement is. I discovered a great technique after a good deal of experimentation that involves projecting Bercon Noise patterns through a directional light.

Having had time at work to perfect the technique for use in a project, I was able to use the render farm to render long sequences and examine the motion. This video shows the raw un-color corrected renders and is just a small sample of my full results. More to come soon.

This is a new spot masterminded by Jeremy Stuart at Digital...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:48:00 -0500

This is a new spot masterminded by Jeremy Stuart at Digital Kitchen. The flowers are shot in time-lapse, but many might not realize that the bottle of perfume is entirely CG. My role was to assist my colleagues (credit list here) in 3D modeling the glass bottle and label.

Taken with Instagram at Sheffield & Belmont

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:56:02 -0500

Taken with Instagram at Sheffield & Belmont