Friday 5 November 2010
Whistler Photoblog
My posting and general blog development has been slow recently as I have set myself up in Whistler. Thought I would give a little update in the form of a photoblog of what I have been getting up too.
The short version of the past 6 weeks basically boils down to: we have a house, jobs and a dog, some giant tetris outfits but most importantly the snow is getting closer and closer to the village. The latter suggests that my blog posts will become even more infrequent as I will be spending every ounce of my free time in between working and editing, cruising the pow and shredding the knAr (snowboarding). I have had the opportunity and the pleasure to meet and begin working with some fine production outfits out here so I will post some works soon.
For now enjoy the photos. Their permanent home is here on my photoblog page but I thought I would add them here just for kicks. Its a direct feed from a Flickr account we share (we being: myself, my beautiful Victoria and Mike) and the idea is we all post our photos from goings on and everyone gets an idea of what we get up to without long winded emails. Hopefully in 12 months time we will have a cracking library of our whole adventure.
Leave a comment, let me know if you like.
The short version of the past 6 weeks basically boils down to: we have a house, jobs and a dog, some giant tetris outfits but most importantly the snow is getting closer and closer to the village. The latter suggests that my blog posts will become even more infrequent as I will be spending every ounce of my free time in between working and editing, cruising the pow and shredding the knAr (snowboarding). I have had the opportunity and the pleasure to meet and begin working with some fine production outfits out here so I will post some works soon.
For now enjoy the photos. Their permanent home is here on my photoblog page but I thought I would add them here just for kicks. Its a direct feed from a Flickr account we share (we being: myself, my beautiful Victoria and Mike) and the idea is we all post our photos from goings on and everyone gets an idea of what we get up to without long winded emails. Hopefully in 12 months time we will have a cracking library of our whole adventure.
Leave a comment, let me know if you like.
[miniflickr photoset_id="72157625274366630"]
Wednesday 25 August 2010
Riding
A big big passion of mine is snowboarding and recently a few photos have come to my attention that I want to share. I have been riding for about 5 years now after learning with the Leeds Met Snowboarding club (now Snowsports) on legendary slopes of the halifax hills. I spend most of my time at Castleford Xscape where there is a thriving indoor scene and many an awesome session. I am a big fan of fun park setups and rail features, both of which are a regularly present on the thursday and friday freestyle night at Cas. I know I will be back a Castleford in the future, but for now as I leave for the hills, these photos are a fun reminder of some good sessions in the dome, gonna miss them.
Big shout out to Fear of The Park for letting me put the photos on here. They are doing a brilliant job of reporting on the UK scene and travelling the length of the country to get the reports on the best sessions and events. Also check out their Shred, Lies & Videotape podcast.
![[gallery link="file"]](http://www.thomas-wood.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Screen-shot-fotp.png){kind=link}
You can click on the images to make them bigger
Big shout out to Fear of The Park for letting me put the photos on here. They are doing a brilliant job of reporting on the UK scene and travelling the length of the country to get the reports on the best sessions and events. Also check out their Shred, Lies & Videotape podcast.
Sunday 18 July 2010
Page Turn in Cinema4D controlled with Xpresso
This is a problem I was presented with this week. A small animation to show a page turn for a virtual book. The actual final piece has gone into an after effects project and composited for use in a flash portion of a website. Unfortunately I cant show the final versions because its for a client and yet to be launched. Here is an example of what I have created:
[vimeo width="590" height="332"]http://www.vimeo.com/13310306[/vimeo]
There are a few way to achieve this really. One would be to use the
[vimeo width="590" height="332"]http://www.vimeo.com/13310306[/vimeo]
There are a few way to achieve this really. One would be to use the
Thursday 8 July 2010
CGI-Brows, Behind Brows
A while ago a friend of mine asked me if I could create some eyebrows on an actor for a short. I rolled my eyes and said "your looking at £50k minimum mate". Two weeks later we running tests in a living room with some cut up stickers and a camcorder. Its not the most hi-tech and challenging project I have ever undertaken but certianly one of the most fun and enjoyable. The Rocketsausage boys come up with some great ideas and this was no exeption. I'm not going to attempt to give a sysnopsis, just watch and enjoy.
[vimeo width="590" height="332"]http://www.vimeo.com/5552957[/vimeo]
Ok so its not the most sophisticated effect in the world and yes we could of gone down a route involving object tracking, camera projections, lots of morphing and hair and fur simulations.But that would of been entirely against the whole nature of the short. Normally I am a sucker for making things as complicated as possible because I really enjoy learning new techniques and simply doing stuff I've never done before, not that I have ever removed eyebrows off a priest.... We quickly realized that keeping it simple was definitely the way to go here. Not just for time or budgets sake, but because that was what was required to fit in with the character of the short. The main goals were to remove the current eyebrows from the actors. Cut out stills of their real eyebrows and track them back into position with the respective "emotional" animation included.
[caption id="attachment_172" align="aligncenter" width="590" caption="Tests, Trackers, Eyebrows"]
[/caption]
A couple of tracking dot tests on some DV footage confirmed
[vimeo width="590" height="332"]http://www.vimeo.com/5552957[/vimeo]
Ok so its not the most sophisticated effect in the world and yes we could of gone down a route involving object tracking, camera projections, lots of morphing and hair and fur simulations.But that would of been entirely against the whole nature of the short. Normally I am a sucker for making things as complicated as possible because I really enjoy learning new techniques and simply doing stuff I've never done before, not that I have ever removed eyebrows off a priest.... We quickly realized that keeping it simple was definitely the way to go here. Not just for time or budgets sake, but because that was what was required to fit in with the character of the short. The main goals were to remove the current eyebrows from the actors. Cut out stills of their real eyebrows and track them back into position with the respective "emotional" animation included.
[caption id="attachment_172" align="aligncenter" width="590" caption="Tests, Trackers, Eyebrows"]
[/caption]A couple of tracking dot tests on some DV footage confirmed
CGI-Brows
A while ago a friend of mine asked me if I could create some eyebrows on an actor for a short. I rolled my eyes and said “your looking at £50k minimum mate”. Two weeks later we running tests in a living room with some cut up stickers and a camcorder. Its not the most hi-tech and challenging project I have ever undertaken but certainly one of the most fun and enjoyable. The Rocketsausage boys come up with some great ideas and this was no exception. I’m not going to attempt to give a synopsis, just watch and enjoy.
[vimeo width=“640” height=“360”]http://www.vimeo.com/5552957[/vimeo]
Ok so its not the most sophisticated effect in the world and yes we could of gone down a route involving object tracking, camera projections, lots of morphing and hair and fur simulations. But that would of been entirely against the whole nature of the short. Normally I am a sucker for making things as complicated as possible because I really enjoy learning new techniques and simply doing stuff I’ve never done before, not that I have ever removed eyebrows off a priest.... We quickly realised that keeping it simple was definitely the way to go here. Not just for time or budgets sake, but because simple was what was required to fit in with the character of the short. The main goals were to remove the current eyebrows from the actors. Cut out stills of their real eyebrows and track them back into position with the respective “emotional” animation included.
A couple of tracking dot tests on some DV footage confirmed that we could get some good tracks and sufficiently cover the dots up with some simple skin roto painting. With such a talented makeup department involved, removing the original eyebrows practically, using a mixture of liquid latex and foundation, made a lot more sense than trying to remove them in post.
On set we stuck small tracking markers to the main body of the hidden “brows” and took reference photographs of each actors eyebrows pre-brow removal. To keep color consistent the reference photographs we taken under the same lighting conditions as each actors main scene performance.
It was great being on set and watching a s16mm crew run though a shooting schedule of various camera moves, not to mention working with the beautiful footage from out the other end.
We chose to do the work in after effects mainly because we knew there would be some key framing involved with the eyebrow emotional movement. Tracking of the dots was relatively simple after some contrast tweaks to the footage. The actual eyebrows were cut out in photoshop from the reference photos taken of each actor. Once dropped into after effects they were repositioned and simply parented to null’s from the tracking data. Parenting kept the individual position and rotation free to reposition the brows into the desired emotional state, but keep the actors facial movements.
As far as the explosions and text goes, well I played around in fume fx (3ds max plugin) for a while trying to create an explosion worthy of removing eyebrows from a face. Fume Fx is a great plugin and I got some awesome results. How ever the simulation and render time was just too much for my old system. So after many hours spent playing in fume, I found some awesome pre matted explosion plates from detonation films which worked an absolute treat. The text is just some 3ds max extruded text with a chrome material an a custom HDRI map for reflections. Since working on CGI-Brows my Cinema 4d skills have come on leaps and bounds. Given an opportunity to recreate these titles I would of certainly created them in Cinema 4d and used an Xplode plugin for the text fracture at the end and mograph for some slicker animation.
All in all technically it was a pretty simple workflow. The beauty of this spot is in the concept and the premise not the effect. Attempting to make an effect look good but bad at the same time can actually be very challenging, but I think we pulled it off. The short has received a small amount of success winning the peoples choice award at the Virgin Media Shorts competition, being broadcast on the Virgin media network, shown in cinemas throughout the country and taking a spot in the BBC’s online film archive. Not to mention creating many discussions throughout the digital ether as to wether this is a serious working concept (god help us). Oh and I was well chuffed when it got a staff pick on the Vimeo homepage.
All that is left to say is a big thank you to all the guys at RocketSausage, the cast and crew, my effect co-conspiritor Graham Gallery.
[vimeo width=“640” height=“360”]http://www.vimeo.com/5552957[/vimeo]
Ok so its not the most sophisticated effect in the world and yes we could of gone down a route involving object tracking, camera projections, lots of morphing and hair and fur simulations. But that would of been entirely against the whole nature of the short. Normally I am a sucker for making things as complicated as possible because I really enjoy learning new techniques and simply doing stuff I’ve never done before, not that I have ever removed eyebrows off a priest.... We quickly realised that keeping it simple was definitely the way to go here. Not just for time or budgets sake, but because simple was what was required to fit in with the character of the short. The main goals were to remove the current eyebrows from the actors. Cut out stills of their real eyebrows and track them back into position with the respective “emotional” animation included.
A couple of tracking dot tests on some DV footage confirmed that we could get some good tracks and sufficiently cover the dots up with some simple skin roto painting. With such a talented makeup department involved, removing the original eyebrows practically, using a mixture of liquid latex and foundation, made a lot more sense than trying to remove them in post.
On set we stuck small tracking markers to the main body of the hidden “brows” and took reference photographs of each actors eyebrows pre-brow removal. To keep color consistent the reference photographs we taken under the same lighting conditions as each actors main scene performance.
It was great being on set and watching a s16mm crew run though a shooting schedule of various camera moves, not to mention working with the beautiful footage from out the other end.
We chose to do the work in after effects mainly because we knew there would be some key framing involved with the eyebrow emotional movement. Tracking of the dots was relatively simple after some contrast tweaks to the footage. The actual eyebrows were cut out in photoshop from the reference photos taken of each actor. Once dropped into after effects they were repositioned and simply parented to null’s from the tracking data. Parenting kept the individual position and rotation free to reposition the brows into the desired emotional state, but keep the actors facial movements.
As far as the explosions and text goes, well I played around in fume fx (3ds max plugin) for a while trying to create an explosion worthy of removing eyebrows from a face. Fume Fx is a great plugin and I got some awesome results. How ever the simulation and render time was just too much for my old system. So after many hours spent playing in fume, I found some awesome pre matted explosion plates from detonation films which worked an absolute treat. The text is just some 3ds max extruded text with a chrome material an a custom HDRI map for reflections. Since working on CGI-Brows my Cinema 4d skills have come on leaps and bounds. Given an opportunity to recreate these titles I would of certainly created them in Cinema 4d and used an Xplode plugin for the text fracture at the end and mograph for some slicker animation.
All in all technically it was a pretty simple workflow. The beauty of this spot is in the concept and the premise not the effect. Attempting to make an effect look good but bad at the same time can actually be very challenging, but I think we pulled it off. The short has received a small amount of success winning the peoples choice award at the Virgin Media Shorts competition, being broadcast on the Virgin media network, shown in cinemas throughout the country and taking a spot in the BBC’s online film archive. Not to mention creating many discussions throughout the digital ether as to wether this is a serious working concept (god help us). Oh and I was well chuffed when it got a staff pick on the Vimeo homepage.
All that is left to say is a big thank you to all the guys at RocketSausage, the cast and crew, my effect co-conspiritor Graham Gallery.
Thursday 1 July 2010
Mixing it up..
Just been working on a few concepts for a projects. Wanted to play with some realflow.
Full animation will be up soon
Friday 25 June 2010
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