When I got home from SXSW I started drafting this heinously long blog entry about my experience there.  We're talking 12 year old girl excited about the pony she got for her birthday sort of excited rambling. I talked a lot about the things we learned in the panels and in our interactions with other people. However, seeing as how SXSW has released podcasts of many of the panels and discussions that inspired my blabbering, that blog was rendered useless before I could even post it. I'm a slow wordsmith like that.

So! Instead of that long thing...here is the abbreviated version. 

SXSW Podcasts - Awesomeness Abounds.

Also, I also learned the following:

A business card doesn't cut it, but a custom Moleskin gets the conversation going. In networking, quality of connections should always trump quantity of interactions. Creativity is a choice and we can make ourselves better at it. Use Twitter more often, because it can get you face to face time with awesome people if used properly.Say "HI!" to people in line, and give random strangers rides into town if you have a rental car. Speaking of, don't rent a car. Reserve a room downtown, and reserve it early. Also, a great business partner is worth his/her weight in gold.

And finally...and most clearly illustrated below....SXSW is exhausting.

Several weeks ago I decided I was going to travel to Orlando for this Horror Convention. I was a little hesitant of the idea at first. The weather was pretty awful and the idea of being trapped with costumed enthusiasts seemed that it was going to take its toll. Brian Oakley (a talented animator friend with a fondness for musicals and clowns) encouraged the idea. He convinced me after several “This is going to be Awesomes!”. Bill was on his honeymoon, so why not. I will make this about business, I said to myself. So I packed a bag, made sure there were some demo reels and cards in it. After the bag check, we left for Spooky Empire’s “Ultimate Horror Weekend”.

When we arrived to the Wyndham Orlando. There were weirdos everywhere! Slashers, Zombies, Killer Clowns, Half naked ladies of all genres, I could not help but smile. These folks were into this! These costumes were absolutely incredible. There was a line of them wrapped around the building. I made my way into the line and joined them. I guess I could have passed for a thirty something wolf man. Better than Zach Galifianakis. Once in the Hotel, the spectacle continued. Celebrities only several feet away, wonderful art and more interesting costumes.

So the highlights of the weekend were meeting Kristin Bauer (Pam, from True Blood). She was really nice. I gave her a Dripsblack sketchbook. I heard that she was an artist.

The Lance Henriksen Q&A was great. I have been a fan of his work. Tons of Near Dark questions. Met the Chiodo Brothers. Brian lost it! We chatted for a bit. They have our reel now. Maybe we will work on the Killer Klowns sequel! Fingers crossed. The Killer Klowns Q&A was fun!

Brian also met Mariana Klaveno (Lorena, True Blood). I think she has a crush on him…? There were tons of other cool people and neat events. Malcolm Mcdowell was there. Jake Busey was hanging at the pool party while I believe RATT was playing. Sensory overload! I think they were all orange! Wait! Brian ordered a drink from long legged lady.

The Panels were also informative. I met some nice folks in the Horror Film world. I also met some great artists. One of those was this very talented comic book artist, Amanda Rachels. Amanda was out promoting and supporting her book “ Clown Town”.

For more information about Amanda's work, please visit: http://www.inversepress.com/

I also purchased a print from Mike Groves. Beaker!

You can check out Mike's work at: www.poopbird.com

I had a blast that weekend! I recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror and science fiction. You will definitely enjoy it!

For more information about Spooky Empire visit: http://www.spookyempire.com

I've loved Terry Gilliam's cut out animation since I was a little kid, thanks to a good friend of mine who introduced me to Monty Python. His knack for making a comical story out of the most obscure materials has always resonated with me. So I was pretty excited today when I found this clip of him explaining his techniques on Cartoon Brew. Sure they are 30 years old...but the ideas and thought processes still work today.

Late last year I made a blanket statement that shooting greenscreen with a 5D was just asking for a headache.  While I still believe the camera's extremely limited color depth makes it an impractical choice for productions with any sort of budget...I recently watched a podcast by the ever insightful Mike Seymour and FxGuideTV that has got me thinking that there is hope for this camera yet. 

I mean lets be honest its not just shooting on greenscreen that shows the chinks in the armor...grading the material can be a pain and really shows the lack of latitude.  The standard settings that make the footage look best straight out of the camera do this because it crushes the blacks, sharpens the hell out of the edges, and saturates all three channels.  The camera effectively bakes a look into the footage and makes it hard to adjust the look after the fact.  So along comes cinema giant Technicolor who says, "You know...there has to be a better way."  Turns out there was.  With a lot of cooperation from Canon, Technicolor released the Cinestyle Plugin.

Cinestyle basically takes the RAW signal from the camera and uses it to create an 8bit image that optimizes the contrast and sharpness to a psuedo linear color space. The plugin loads directly into the camera and is accessible where you'd find all the other Color Profiles or Picture Styles are found.  It also comes with an s-curve LUT to load into whatever post system you're working with that takes the flat linear looking image and lets you see it in its final punchy saturated form without having to bake it in.

I'm not going to pretend to be able to explain this any better than what Mike covers in this podcast...so go check it out and get it straight from the source.  I will however say that it makes me rethink the possibilities and gets me excited for a test or two...

FXGuideTV - 112 - Technicolor Cinestyle

Our friend Brian Oakley posted this link the other day and I've seen it making its rounds since then.  Its a tumblr dedicated to what I think is definitely one of the most interesting and often ignored aspects of animation...the smear.  The smear was a widely used trick to simulate motion blur in the days of traditional animation before it could be applied as a filter in post.  Check them out!

Smears, Multiples, and Other Animation Gimicks

Aside from admiring that animation genius...we've been working on creating some of our own.  After sitting on a dusty shelf for almost 5 years, we're bringing Rusty back to life.  He's getting his hair cut, shoes polished and honing his space exploration skills. Should be a fun little nod to childhood imagination.  Perhaps we can start to show some progress on the blog once we get things a little more organized.  

We've been wrapped up in creating the Addy Presentation Reel for a while now and have been chomping at the bit to let the secret out.  Truth is we've known that the State of the Re:Union promo video won a Gold Addy for a couple weeks now because obviously we had to have a list of all the winners before hand.  So we can finally say that we are extremely grateful for the award and for everyone involved in making that project.  Big thanks to Al Letson and Ian DeSousa for letting us run with some crazy ideas.  Thanks to Jon Shepherd for shooting the green screen material and helping us direct our little skeleton crew.  It was project that started a long time ago...and makes me feel very nostalgic and hopeful for the future.  But for now...my optimism will take a backseat and nostalgia reigns with behind the scenes photos!:

Good times.

When Adobe introduced the Rotobrush into CS5, I was pleasantly suprised by how much time it shaved off the usually tedious and annoying task of rotoscoping.  But the part that I found to be the most helpful was the matte refining tools that are added to the rotoscoped footage.  I thought it was pretty freaking cool that it would add motion blur back into the edges of a shot without bluring the core of the material.  

So, to the point at hand.  Recently we shot a bunch of greenscreen material for the local Addy Awards show.   It was a limited budget so we shot it on our HVX on a pretty small screen.  It was always our goal for it to have a Lo-Fi cheese factor, so we accepted the fact that we might not have time to really treat the edges of the key and it would probably look like poorly keyed stuff on really cool painterly backgrounds.  When I sat down and started keying, however, I stumbled onto an effect that I hadn't noticed quite yet.  Turns out Adobe brilliantly took the Refine Matte tools from the rotobrush and added it as a separate effect under the Matte menu.  

Now I'm never one to say that anything in motion graphics or VFX is a push button solution...or that the same process will work for every situation...but this thing has just saved me a ton of grief with just a little tweaking.  My process was pretty straight foward: garbage matte, core matte, and edge matte.  Then I applied Refine Matte to the edge matte only.  With a couple little tweaks I was getting results that looked a ton better than anything I'd ever gotten from a straight key on HVX footage.  The reason it looks so good is because it decontaminates the edges by extending the color information out passed the edge of the alpha, then smoothes out any chatter in the alpha.  Of course you can't go too extreme with it, otherwise your matte looks TOO smooth. 

After that, I just did a really soft key for the hair detail and tucked that under the core matte.  

I'll try to get some examples up soon, but if you've got some suspect green screen stuff and your edges are giving you fits...give Refine Matte a shot...could save you a headache.

So...you've got an awesome idea that requires a green screen...and a 5D to shoot it on. For the love of all that is holy....just don't do it. Well at least don't do it unless you know what you are in for. Consider this your fair warning.

A few weeks ago, we got called in to help pull a key on some unruly 5D green screen footage for a music video. I'm not going to pull punches here...the shot was a compositor's worst nightmare. A 2.5 minute single take, a uneven green backing of different materials, a reflective piano, a bunch of semi-transparent confetti, and worst of all artificial rain. I know this is unfairly stacking the deck against the 5D, because even a much more suitable camera would struggle with all of this, but my quarrel with the footage began long before any of those things really became a factor.

Consider these stills detail stills from the footage.

The Raw Sample:

Now...just to set this up...thats supposed to be a fast moving hand.  The image clearly got destroyed during A/D conversion, and I'm assuming the weird green halo is a by-product of the 4:2:0 compression in the h.264 codec. No amount of core matting or hand roto is going to fix the fact that there just isn't any data there...so without much recourse, I pulled the key as it was.

The Result:

Keylight did a decent job in the solid areas, but like I said before nothing is really going to fix the lack of data where there was heavy motion blur. I know motion blur is a pain, no matter what camera you use to key, but I've never quite run into anything this bad.  So I soldiered on...

The Comp:

This actually isn't the real final comp, because we only delivered footage with alpha's, but its close to what you could expect to see in a comp with some edge treatment and a little light wrap. I'm not even going to get into what happened once the rain and confetti started falling...

So can you easily get a decent key from a 5D? Sure...if the subject doesn't move a lot...if the green screen is perfectly lit...if there aren't any semi transparent objects...and if there aren't crazy reflections. That's a lot of ifs.

I'm not a 5D hater...I'm actually a huge fan of the image that it can produce when you work within its limitations. In fact, Charlie Harrold shot Bouquet for us on a 5D, and I think its gorgeous. We worked with the tools strengths, and got awesome results.

For more information on the strengths and weaknesses of these new DSLRs check out the Zacuto DSLR shootout. Its a lot to take in...but well worth the time.

Hello friends,

Here goes my first entry. I thought it would be fitting to discuss fundamentals in drawing and design. Almost everyday either in the office, on location, or in my studio. I’m challenged with decisions in my creative process. Usually I will find myself going back to   drawing and design fundamentals more so than trend. It’s funny how often I find myself thinking about my college days at the School of Visual Arts Savannah campus. I think about the small group we had and how much of a blessing it was to have a dedicated group of professors. They loved being Artists and they were so passionate about sharing their knowledge. One of those Artists in particular, Jeff Markowsky I would like to share with you folks. Jeff has been on my mind lately, possibly because I have been reconnecting with old college pals and working towards a group show at the Cummer. He also has come up in Citrus Cel discussions. Bill and Brian (Citrus Cel Directors) have both had him for a life drawing class at SCAD. It’s kind of rad that we have been all influenced by the same cat.

When I drift into those memories about Jeff’s classes, I think about how much routine and discipline was instilled. Looking at everything, squinting, paying attention to the masses of the form. It’s years later working in a fast paced environment majority of the time that I can really appreciate all those sessions. Those fundamentals help me make wise creative decisions.

Thanks Jeff for pushing me to be a better Artist.

Jeff has a Life Drawing Blog that is greatly informative. I would encourage my creative friends out there to follow it.

Drawing The Life Force
http://drawingthelifeforce.blogspot.com/

Note that these images are from Jeff's blog.

I've really been in the mood to make a blog post about the principles and elements of animation, and how I think they are universally applicable to any one in any motion based medium.  But why reiterate whats already been covered by a much better teacher than I?  

While we were working diligently to build Citrus Cel 2011 into a bigger event, I reconnected with my animation professor from SCAD, Larry Lauria.  Turns out he blogs pretty frequently for Animation World Network.  It really is worth reading from time to time.

Larry Lauria - Always Animated

The most recent post about Overlapping Action is a perfect example of why we want him here...teaching Citrus Cel attendees what makes a simple animation awesome.  Seriously...how many people are going to give you illustrated guides like this?