Latest from Wits End

Pre-production on the Twilight project has now taken half a year and may take another year or so at this rate. It’s slow but I’m learning so much. However, I am going to have to take some shortcuts, especially with the drawing, which ain’t necessarily a bad thing. Have found a new website called http://www.archive3d.net/ which has a huge repository of models and shapes which will help me in leaps and bounds. And they’re all royalty free and free to use commercially, which means I can use and adapt them for the set in my film.

Thanks to this I have made excellent progress drawing the managers office in the Twilight (complete with rehearsal piano). I had already made great progress with the auditorium and stage (including the Wits End Mighty Wurlitzer), Mrs Kepelwicks Village Store, The Severed Arms and the front gates. I still have corridors, fire-escapes and the main entrance/box-office to do and no doubt other bits and pieces which I won’t go into now. Once that’s all finished there will be fine touching, painting and compositing to do, not to mention experimenting with the greenscreen and finding the look and feel of the film before I return to the script.

Looking forward to watching the LIVE show of The Twilight Ballrooms  – I will be there on 7th August. Good luck to all those involved. The image of the exterior of the Ballrooms (above) wot I drew, appears on the poster of the live show! Yay!

On a downside, I’ve decided to loose the URL www.alifeofbrian.co.uk which finishes today. But don’t despair Brian fans (either of you) as the film will still be viewable on this site!

 

Another Vanishing Point experiment

Visited my dad today and was browsing some old photos. This one is of the road I grew up in, though taken long before I was born I might add. As way of demonstrating the effect to my dad I’ve had another go with this pic. It’s only rough and distortion is quite visible towards the end, but still effective. The first 4 seconds are good

Vanishing Point

Experimented today with something called “Vanishing Point”. There is much you can do with this Photoshop filter which helps you edit a 2d photo in a 3d environment. One of the cool things is when you export it to After Effects. (Check out this tutorial from Andrew Kramer) By moving the virtual camera in the import you get this. If edited right it can look like a perfect faked dolly/crane shot. This one is just rough, but remember, the original is just a flat 2D photo. Can’t wait to try some more test out.

57 Varieties

No, this has nothing to do with Heinz! But thanks to Google translate and a great plugin called gTranslate, this website is now viewable in 57 other languages. Cool eh!

Now this is where I welcome everyone from around the world in the various different tongues, but of course if you are reading this in another language, it’ll all have been translated! So it would just look like I was saying “Welcome” lots of times!

Greyscale Gorilla & C4 Cafe

A blog worthy of mention, Greyscale Gorilla This one covers all my favourite subjects on Post Production, namely After Effects, Cinema 4d, Photoshop and others. Some great video tutorials (video tutorials are always the best) and a competition called the 5 Second Project which is very entertaining, check out the superb entries, inspiring stuff. All this done by a fella called Nick Campbell (he is the gorilla) from Chicago, USA. Nice one Nick!

As I explore the demo of Cinema 4d even more, I have subscribed to c4dcafe.com – who have some excellent tutorials too.  However it took me 3 attempts to get my subscription accepted, (you can’t view anything until you have subscribed which is annoying) and once you’ve completed their rather interrogative questionnaire, they hint heavily for donations. I hope some day they take a leaf out of other sites more accessible walk-in setups and deal with their funding issues by advertising or selling their own products, such as my favourite site Video Copilot or indeed Greyscale Gorilla! Another brownie point for them!

Photoshop tutorials

This year I hope to be able to incorporate mattes into my videos, especially with the Twilight project. For this I realise I will need to swot up on Photoshop and what it can do. There are plenty of good sites such as psdtut+ which I’ve mentioned before on this blog. Here is another. Nothing sells a tutorials site to me more than some great examples of what can be achieved and to this end, this site will not disappoint. Time to get practising.

If you’ve got any more great suggestions for good PS tutorial sites, share them here.

Blowin in the Wind

Had a little learn and play with the Daylight System in 3ds-Max today. Made a little weathervane from scratch to render in it that I imagine would probably sit well aloft the Twilight Ballrooms main tower. Maybe we’ll see this shot again someday in such a context, though hopefully less plain looking (Come on, I quit Art when I was 12 years old. That’s what happens when your homework is pointlessly sticking bits of dry pasta to cardboard!)

And I’m excited about seeing Gareth Edwards movie Monsters soon. Saw an interview with him on the Culture Show the other day. The guy is doing exactly what I want to be doing (if only I had the money). He’s living the dream! And I want his big flat screen TV too. From what I’ve seen he’s really committed to the immense amount of work that is involved whilst coming up with some very imaginative stuff – though I’m pretty sure it’ll look low budget compared to my attempt here at a weathervane. Now they ARE scary!

Adobe Audition for Mac

I used to have an excellent piece of software called “Cool Edit Pro” which was sound editing software by a company called Syntrillium Software. It was considered to be the best, and was used by the best, in the business. In 2003 it was bought by Adobe and became known as Adobe Audition. However, it was limited to Windows only.

Only this month has a beta version been released for the Mac and you can download it for free at Adobe Labs. Indeed, Adobe Labs is a great place to go to try out new and emerging software ideas. It can potentially keep you ahead of the game and maybe save you a small fortune using developing software rather than buying a more polished product.