What is on the table right now?
I have not revealed or summed up for a while what I am currently doing and I feel that it helps, and probably does not do anything else, even myself to organize my thoughts to write something down. Normally in my year cycle I am a bit depressed in the fall-time when there is a lot less sun and I actually see it like once in a two weeks… With a luck. So this year I have been concentrating to not start that many projects and slept a bit better. Although I have been buying new hardware and learning new things. Learning and fiddling around with new things always gives a small mood-boost. All together I have again noticed that I should always do one project at the time and remember to have some time off. Which I actually did by visiting Lithuania for couple of days.
But currently I’m actually on to these things:
Started an oil painting course. 1/2 of it behind and 3 practice paintings done. Mainly those concentrated only on mixing colors and the subjects were still life cups and bottles. It was good to concentrate on on simple things subject-wise first as the color mixing was the real concern. I do think this was the best thing this fall. Every session gave me really good feeling. Continues on January and possibly then we move further on from the color mixing practices. Really worth it. Probably helps in a lot of other areas of my jack-of-all-trades nature in arts.
Built a new computer. I already wrote about that. 10Gb RAM, Windows 7 etc. Really made my living easier after got it working.
Modeling 3d for a game. Modeling just real-time 3d objects might sound like eating porridge at this stage of my career but the modeling part is actually just the process of carving out an idea. Plus there is some special stuff that matters in this project. Same as in any job – there is always a lot of specifications that can not be seen by people not familiar with the particular subject. Which makes it interesting and dull at the same time. It is a paid job though so dull things goes fine in my radar. In scale from dull to misusing icicles I have been a lot to the icicle end lately and this is not so much of it really.
Creating a layout animation at work for a real-time short/demo. Really nice project otherwise but I do get stuck a lot – especially having creative locks. Layout animation is the first time in the project that I gather up the placeholder stuff on the table to a more whole set of things. That makes it possible to get stuck on anything in the process even that it sounds easy. Although I do like to go on with a process as that might make it a lot more progressive to work with in the future. The layout animation I try to go for is much like what Pixar is doing in their process. Everything is collected to be in placeholder stage together to get some kind of idea of the whole package. Then it is refined for over 3 years in different levels and pieces by hundredfold of people and the end result is the movie. The article I wrote about that creative work should be teamwork really, really, really underlines all the problems in this project. Yes I am doing it alone and no change to that in the radar. So if you are still with me – remember the talk about icicles in the last paragraph? I do not wonder at all why even this short took 8 years: The Passenger.
Learning lighting. The thing I would like to spend a lot more money and time on anyway. Loses for oil painting as for level of interest but a subject where I can be learning forehead-deep for infinity but it does not actually make it go further without the practice. I am now in the stage that I do have a light-scale set of Strobist stuff and played around a while with it but I would need to test things more in practice. Quite sure I have red enough of the theory-side for now. I am planning to take on a project later on to do portraits of some close relatives. Moving slowly with all the photography stuff anyway as I do not have the time to run for full-time photographer-job anyway. I hope this way could teach me a lot faster about 3d-lighting too – the same way as starting photography in the first place has gave me a nice boost in understanding a lot of different creative and technical things connected to composing, painting, 3d, physics, etc.
Rethinking my photo workflow (which is made possible by my new comp.) This kind of a backfired after I found out that my super-indestructible-workflow would not really manage to fly that well. I first planned to have a pipeline where all my .CR2-files would be converted to .DNG’s and after development opened as smart-layers in Photoshop and all the edits would be done non-destructively on top of the smart layer as smart filters and additional layers, saved as .PSD’s and then when needed flattened and resized according to needs in to different sizes and formats. Actually there was only one particularly weak part and it was the filesize and saving/opening-time of the .PSD. *flush* Not entirely though. I will probably move to use DNG’s as it is better and faster than my ancient way of using TIFF as an intermediate-format.
Bought some advanced texturing tutorials from Eat3D.com. Just to go it through and learn in practice. I really need some prep-up on that one. Might drop a word or two later on. Requires some undisturbed time.
Bought JoeyL Sessions Photography tutorial DVD. Already watched a bit from the start. This is totally more “serious” kind of a thing than the first one (which I did buy too and liked a lot.) Probably will drop line or two about it when I have more to say. Link
Bought 5 books on 3d, photography, drawing and animation. The Photographers survival guide almost done. I can recommend for anyone trying to push to advertisement and such business as a photographer. Written by two art-buyers so it is kind of a different perspective but a very valuable one for understanding the business. It does concentrate mainly stating couple of points: Get to know your style, be coherent with it when marketing yourself (using a outsourced designer mentioned at least 500 times), market a lot. In addition to that there is also very practical stuff and scenarios that might happen and everything. Bundled with the book is a bunch of forms to use in different stages. Very well laid out book so it really does not feel hard to carry on. Other ones bought: Ideas for the animated short, Dynamic figure drawing, Force – dynamic life drawing for animators, Digital Lighting and rendering.
Created a maxscript exporter. For a fileformat that started from Ambrose but got tweaked so far that it is not anywhere close to it anymore. Might give it out if I get it cleaned up and simplified a bit and someone is interested. Currently it pushes out a lot of raw data and is very vulnerable for nonspecific data. Got a big help from Phaser when doing it.