Client

This is dead on. Welcome to the VFX client vendor relationship.

Valley

So, it's sometime odd to work in this business, especially when you're working on something like the Lord of the Rings movies, or Avatar. With that kind of film the studio is always walking the line between keeping everything hush-hush to build anticipation and hype for the film and 'leaking' enough tidbits and on-set pictues and general info to keep the fan-boys happy. There's a 3D cinema blog called marketsaw that has heaps of Avatar related posts and it's always fun to check things like that out to see how wildly off base they usually are with their guesses and predictions. Anyway, that blog had a link to a really good youtube video on 'The Uncanny Valley' or 'Why Doing Character Work Is So Expensive'

Official

It's official, I signed new contract on Friday that will carry me through almost to the end of the show. I'm officially a 'CG Supervisor'. We're still waiting to hear back from immigration on the status of the application for residency, and having a contract extension should help. Residency will make it easier to get a home loan, and so on down the line. Hopefully the new deal will be the first domino. I'm still supposed to be in New Orleans in August. Maybe I'll take a couple days and hit the East Coast.

Cool Shit

Tom Rothman (Head of Fox) talks Avatar

IESB: So, potentially, this is a franchise?

TR: If it does well, yes, absolutely, in terms of an arena a whole new world. But for us, it isn't any of that, it isn't even the technology, it isn't even the look and the world all of which is the coolest shit I've ever seen, it isn't even any of that, it's that it's a great story. It's just a great story ...

Oh yeah, we're bad.

"Weta is running four clusters that are each equipped with 156 of HP's new 2-in-1 blade servers, and use liquid cooling to manage the heat loads. The Weta render farms currently hold spots 219 through 222 on the current Top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers."

State Of The Art Data Center For Weta Digital

IQ

Looking to break into CG? Maybe just digital photography?

Check your color IQ

I got a 3 on an uncalibrated Samsung SyncMaster 204b at work. Should've gotten a 0, but it was at work and I was trying to not waste too much time.

Day 2

I don't travel well across multiple time zones. Very jet lagged. Got up late, 10:45 local time, 5:45 biological time.   Went to Chano's for lunch. OMG best burrito in LA.  Dan L and I walked down to the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Stopped and checked out the Architecture of the Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry up close.  Both very cool.  Work took us out to eat at a fancy, of course, Mexican place.  Stayed up too late at the fourth annual Siggraph poker came.  Won a couple bucks.

Teh Werk

Sorry about not posting. I've been slammed for the last two or three weeks at work. Starting to calm down a bit. Getting ready to go to LA in August.

Promo

Just a quick news flash. I was given a field promotion to CG Supervisor on my show. It doesn't really mean anything more than recognition for the job I'm already doing, but it's official, so it's nice to be appreciated.

Post

Hitler as producer, classic.

Move

I just switched offices again at work, hopefully the last time for a while. At my new desk was a shiny new HP computer. Dual 2.66 GHz quad-core Xeon, 8 GB RAM and a Nvidia Quadra FX 4600. Oh yeah. That is a seriously bad ass desktop computer.

Queue

Tired : coming to work Sunday night.

Wired : no one else is here, so I'm making the render queue my bitch. My job is on about 600 cpus. Muhahahahahah.

Quiz

Can you get 100%? I bet you can't. I missed one. I should be fired.

Fake or Photo

Atomic

.. and that, made me think of this




I love the part when the guy's got a chopper modeled and the DI yells "Do It Again!" and thows down a slinky. Classic.

"Ring the Fucking Bell"
"I want to be an animator, sir!"
"Get up! You could be a doctor. You could be a lawyer. Ring that bell!"

Domain

Here's a little short that some guys (no one that I know) at Digital Domain put together. Pretty spot on.

Quick

One ... point ... five ... miles ... to ... work.*


* This post is made of %100 Win

Really?

Uhhh, Yeah.

I'm a little busy at work. Sorry. I stop being busy October 5th.

Review

Keeping track of the movies I've seen aside, I just had my yearly review. One, I rock. Two, I got totally, totally, surprised by a $*,*** 'merit' bonus that was accompanied by a "We know you're busting your ass, thanks". Fucking A. Now if we can just get the ****** footage for ****-*** done by tomorrow......

Worth

When is the money not worth it? I'll be here, at work, tomorrow ... again. I'm almost done with the look dev on ****** but there's a whole shitload of work left to do for the trailer. Man, I want off overtime.