New metaXLR8 image

I am honored to have been brought onto the metaXLR8 team as an artist. I look forward to seeing what develops with this project in the future. This image is my first contribution. Click here.

The Documentary For WUSL

I finished the commission job for the documentary. I was very confined during this project due to the severe timeline. To create one animation in a few days is pushing it, but to create more than that, is all consuming. I was experiencing lack of sleep, visual phenomena, frequent headaches, dreaming in animation and waking up to the immediacy of trying to develop a couple animation pieces in a mere few days. It was challenging, it was.... fantastic. Initially, aware of the short timeline, the producer had asked if I had any stock animations for sale, but, I was fortunate enough to convince him to let me generate his specific needs. We both knew what this meant, he has over 15 years experience as a film editor and has worked with animators before. We worked together well and it was truly a pleasure. This project was for a movie covering emerging health care technologies at Washington University in St. Louis, MO in collaboration with the Children's hospital to generate 150 million dollars (no where near what I was paid of course) to fund research for developing new treatments. I was commissioned to create animations for Dr. Wooley's research on nanotechnology polymer work that may one day enable drug delivery systems relevant to the centers direct treatment of cancer and related illnesses. I was very pleased to be involved in something that could provide a visual for further understanding of what nanotech means for the future of disease, and of course, hopefully one day, a world without it. Here is my webpage where you can read more about the project and download the 3 animations.

Artpad

Take a look at an animation I made from a free online program (very similar to lovely artist Lady K's discovery). View my movie by clicking here and then make your own!

Wish my animations could be this easy to create.

It's hard to draw with your mouse, maybe I should try it with my tablet PC next time ....

Thee, thy hermit

I got a commission job for a documentary on some actual nanotech research. I'm in a crunch since there is a deadline of the 16th (only a week away) to create three scenes of animation. So, I might be in hermit mode until then. But, I'm very excited!

Fireside Reading

New movie for your viewing pleasure: Fireside Reading.

This was a footage and composite project. On Monday I had been thinking about footage and voice dubbing, naturally Mr. Ed came to mind and I recalled hearing a rumor that they had used peanut butter to get Mr. Ed to move his mouth rapidly so he appeared to be speaking. My poor dog had no chance. To my surprise, as long as I gave Tearsa the peanut butter, she did not mind the scarf, the glasses, the sitting still or the recording one bit. Some of her nuances amazed me, I am confident that my star will be nominated for an Emmy this year. I must commend her patience as she was worked overtime due to my neglecting to have the book prop in the first track, thus the need to shoot the scene again, with the book.
The dogs voice track was edited to sound deeper and more sluggish than the original to match up with her physique. I gave the intro and exit narration the old college myself by just using an accent. I did have to do some clean up on the audio as well as the footage.
On Tuesday I put it all together and of course the rendering was the most excruciating, since this actually ended up being a rather long piece (over 2 thousand frames) I had to wait a lot. I thought it was worth it since I really did want there to be some substance in this video. Then of course I noticed glitches (I had to cut out a spot that I wish I didn't have to as it rendered out a couple frames of what looked like water had been spilled?) and had to keep going back in.
When I was filming I over filmed so that I would have some room to pick and modify, which I did for her footage alone first in Vegas and then introduced into Combustion where I imported the book zoom in and added the text (which by the way looks a lot better in the uncompressed version which you can see in the still). I rendered this footage out together and then pulled that back into Vegas where I added each of the voice tracks, and the music and did some final touch ups. I rendered again and compressed for download and did some minor color alterations in QuickTime before I uploaded. The work was completed around 3 am in the morning last night.

Click here to go to the download page at my website.

P.S. The green screen has not arrived yet, but I did have a dream about it last night.

Poochie

Today I took the dog out to the back yard and when she was standing at just the right angle I really got a good look at her assets.

Happy New year!

Come download my animated New Years card.

Click here to be directed to the page.

Also, click here to see a star before his big break!

PC Magazine Corrections on stands now

The January 2006 issue of PC magazine with the "excellence" cover has the correction for my Dermal Display image from my animation (that I mentioned in earlier posts) on the right bottom corner of page 73. It's so small compared to the original, but it's there, my name, my url and the image I asked for.
Click the image on your left to enlarge.
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