Demo Reel Diary

Veritech WIP

2010-04-29T01:20:00.000-07:00

AAU Render Tax

2010-04-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd throw this up for fun. I was asked to create a scene that would tax the render farm for testing purposes.

2009-10-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is just one of many works in progress. I had the impulse to toss up a quick render.

Photoshop Phun

2009-09-26T19:28:00.001-07:00

So since I seem to have been teaching a lot of photoshop lately I decided to refresh my skills and have a little fun.

Fishie Particle Test

2009-07-07T18:45:00.001-07:00

2009-06-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

So this is my fishie model I'm currently UV mapping before putting into Mudbox for detailed sculpting. You can see my UV tile texture mapped onto it at the moment. When I worked at Perpetual Entertainment my co-worker Josh Nadelburg gave me a copy of this file and explained to me that two things that make distortion extremely apparent are cirles and text... so this file is quite effective for use in laying out UVs.

Contemplating a MEL script...

2009-05-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

So I have a concept I'm working on animating and the more I think about it the more I want to control the instanced particles (fish) with a combination of dynamics and scripting.
Bear with me as I think this through on here as my way of taking notes for myself. I need the particles(fish) to move at a variety of speeds and collide with the interior of the fish tank which should cause them to turn and swim the other direction. The particles obviously need to maintain their correction orientation in the direction of their momentum but that should be easily arranged by an aim-direction option in the instancing node. The trick is to not only give the particles their own individual velocities but to allow them to change that velocity at random intervals and have that change in velocity also adjust the speed of their swim cycle animations. I also need them to randomly choose to swim up and down on the Y axis so they aren't constantly swimming on a horizontal plane.
All that being said... I think what needs to be done is that I need to find the proper syntax to connect the current velocity of a particle on a per particle level to the speed of the instanced geometry's animation. I'm guessing there's a get attribute call that can provide me the per particle velocity value which I can then use to multiply against the speed of the animation on the instanced geometry. I'm hoping that by speeding up the particle's age it will also increase the animation speed but I may have to resort to using an instanced object sequence as opposed to a bone driven deformable fish as I'm more certain that the object sequence would behave as I intend.
So the other issue is to find a way to drive the particles to swim in a particular direction for a while and then change direction either due to a collision with the tank wall or at random and all at randomized speeds. I believe the orientation of the particles should take care of itself when colliding with a wall so I could simply rely on the collisions to turn the fish around but then they may look silly just swimming from wall to wall with no randomness to their pattern. I think I'll come back to that issue later though. I think my real question is whether or not giving them an value in a directional impulse field will affect them in world space or in local space. It would be ideal if I can have give them an impulse in their local space as then it'd be a simple matter of pointing them in the proper orientation and setting them free and when they collide with something they'll turn and continue on in the new direction. Then it'd simply be a matter of adding a random multiplier value to the impulse to change up the speeds. Well I suppose I couldn't just throw the random value directly onto the impulse... I guess I'd need to have the impulse value applied in spurts so that the fish isn't jerking around like an epileptic. Maybe if I can specify that at certain values specified in the particles age that the random value gets applied to the impulse. Say if I said any time the particle's age equals a multiple of 20 then it applies a value to the impulse within a random range. I suppose if I set the interval far enough apart I could even make the random range go from negative to positive to give the fish the option to change direction randomly (assuming this doesn't mess up my particle oriention) I suppose it wouldn't hurt to specify an amount of time to continue applying this momentum before allowing it shut off and allow it's momentum to die before the next spurt of impulse. I suppose it'd be smart to also include my random value in the Y axis to this series of motions as well. That would definitely be a random range going from negative to positive so as to allow for upwards or downward swimming.
Ok... so I'm going to attempt to tackle this one piece at a time and then when I find a solution I'll possibly add variables to allow for different sorts of fish to swim differently.

Academy

2009-04-19T13:18:00.001-07:00

So I've been working at the Academy a couple of weeks now and I'm enjoying helping people learn to combine polygons and merge verts and stuff. I also have some free time to work on my own stuff when it's slow so hopefully I'll finish something new to post here on my site soon. I was helping this one girl with 3DS Max stuff who is an architect major and I spent so much time trying to rip her bloated scene apart that she eventually said she's been considering just paying someone to fix it all for her because she is about to graduate and needs her portfolio done. I told her should could email me the files and I'd try and play with them at work when it's not too busy. Basically I'd just need to optimize the crap out of the geometry and start over with the lighting.

Academy of Art

2009-04-01T02:29:00.000-07:00

So I just started a job at the Academy of Art as a Computer Animation and Visual Effects Lab Technician. I get to help the 3D newbies learn how to merge verts and combine polys. :) Today was my first day and I enjoyed it even more than I expected to. Everyone seemed friendly and the job seems to be a cakewalk with the added benefit of being able to work on my own things whenever I'm not needed by a student. Apparently I'm also able to take any course at the school tuition free which I may just decide to try out at some point. I hear there's a course on Renderman and it'd sure be nice to add that to my list of apps. Oh and there's also Nuke... which I recall meeting a couple of guys in SoCal who were making $150/hr as their base rate for doing Nuke editing. All in all I expect this job to be a good experience for me and a step towards getting my career back on track.

Burning Pictures

2009-01-19T18:49:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been spending time burning a picture of me with my x girlfriend. No... really I have. The best part is that I get to do it over and over again since it's all digital. The idea is that the picture of her and I burns away to reveal a picture of her with her new boyfriend that she acquired a month after her and I split up. I'm actually not bitter at all, especially since I was the one who let her go in the first place. Still it's not easy to walk into a party of mutual friends and see her hand in hand with a new guy so it inspired this animation from me. I figure the best stories are based in reality and it does make for a compelling story that most people can relate to. There is a version of this animation currently in my works in progress section but I've yet to add the fire I'm currently attempting to create the perfect shading for with fluid effects in Maya. It's certainly a work in progress so please don't judge this fire too harshly. I've learned a lot about how to manipulate fluid effects lately but it's a huge undertaking to teach myself all those settings and come up with a solution I find appealing aesthetically.

Topology

2009-01-12T14:02:00.001-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that I'm entirely too anal about having clean topology... even when my mesh will never deform. It must be some form of OCD that I end up spending hours upon hours pushing and pulling verts and creating new edge loops. I need to just crank something out and if I want to clean it up later that's ok.

Website Redesign... Again

2009-01-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

So I tweaked some divs, added subsections to my navbar to make navigation faster, and embedded a blogger.com blog into my about Jason section in order to streamline my blogging process. I've also been working hard on multiple projects for my new demo reel. I suppose it might make more sense to concentrate on one project at a time but I like to break up my time between them in order to keep it interesting.

Varoom TV

2008-09-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today I will once again be doing a photo shoot for the Varoom TV show. We're going back to the hangar full of multimillion dollar airplanes and it's quite a fun location to shoot beautiful models. Unfortunately I have to sign away my rights to the images from the shoot so I can't display them publicly but theoretically some of them will pop up on their website and or TV show if it ever gets sold to a network.

*I had a great time shooting with the Varoom team again though much of the staff and most of the models were different this time. I got to shoot half naked beautiful women inside historical planes and killer cars like an old school convertible jaguar. It was a very long day but it's hard to consider it work when you're having so much fun. The production staff is still attempting to determine which photographers they are going to hire on as staff photographers for the pilot episode of the show, but I feel pretty good about being asked to return for a second time shooting with them in the first place. I've got some photography skills but I think a lot of it has to do with my level of respectfullness and professionalism on the set. I just want to have a good time, make beautiful artwork, and keep everyone smiling.

Outpost Web Design

2008-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

So I've been sidetracked from my robotech project in order to help a friend by designing a website and animating some ads for his bar. I'll likely use the animation for my demo reel but I'm definitly not considering a career change into web design. I suppose I could do it fairly well if I had to but I enjoy animation and CG a whole lot more. I have to admit that I've had a good deal of fun putting this together though. I'm almost done setting up this beer pong animation after which I'll post it in my effects section.

Filtering and Sketching

2008-08-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

At the moment I've been working on a few personal CG projects as well as trying to broaden my website to include some of my sketches. I'm also adding a section of animations I created from way back in my Art Institute of Phoenix days just for kicks and to remind myself how far I've come in my skills. I'm going to make an attempt to spend more time sketching again so that I can refresh my traditional art skills and conceptualize a little more thoroughly before I jump into my 3D modeling. I have already noticed that all the photography I've done over the last few years has greatly improved my sense of lighting and composition both in my sketching and my CG work. It certainly benefits me having my hobby and my career coincide like this. I've still spent too much time doing photography but I've cut back on it a lot now that I deleted my myspace and have less emails from wannabe models looking to create a portfolio. I'm considering reorganizing my photography section into a best of each year gallery and then having the current year galleries continue to be incremental until the new year passes. I think it will further filter my work down to just the best images and will greatly cut back on the much older images I created when my skills were considerably less. I'll continue to leave the original galleries online for the sake of the models but I'll likely pull down the thumbnails to clean house a little. I'm not sure how long this process will take as I've got thousands upon thousands of images... but I think it's a worthy undertaking that I may do in stages.

*As a little technical side note; in order to do this I'm attempting to use adobe lightroom on my workstation to access the raid storage drives on my other machine through the network and load all the thousands of images. I suppose I'll be pushing lightroom and my network pretty hard and we'll see how they hold up. I would normally think someone would be crazy to not work locally on a project of this size but the idea of transferring all those gigs of images just to spend a ridiculous amount of hours editing and filtering them and then delete the stuff I'm not using when I'm done... uh thanks but no.*

GDC

2008-03-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

Well I suppose I ought to use this free moment to finally post another blog here. I have been using my time lately to explore new technology and broaden my skills for my demo reel. I've developed a couple of concepts I'm working on fleshing out for my reel and also for my own gratification. I'm nearly finshed with my heart breaker animation and it will be nice to have that finalized and move on to my other projects which I've started doodling concepts for. I'm still shooting the occasional model who wants a portfolio put together but I've tried to cut back on that a little to put more energy into my career. I attended the Game Developer's Conference a couple weeks ago and had a great time networking and seeing old friends from Perpetual. I'd love to get back into the game industry so I'll be working on some video game art for my reel as soon as I've finished up my final composite on the heart breaker. I've come to the realization from attending GDC that I need to teach myself Mudbox if I want to bring a lot more to the table of a game company. I have enough experience creating particles and dynamics for games but it seems that most game companies only hire one or two effects artists at the most or in some cases there isn't even any one specific person doing it. If I am able to build up my modeling skills and speed then I think I'll have a better chance of being seen as a valuable person to hire without question. I've been looking forward to playing with normal mapping anyway but I've just had too much fun with Mental Ray and my lighting simulations to spare the time to break into Z brush or Mudbox. So much to learn and I want to know it all. :P I'm actually considering starting a lighting with Mental Ray blog as I've stumbled across a couple other people who've done that and I've learned a great deal from their trials and explanations. Or maybe I'll just make it a generic 3D blog about stuff I've learned about this whole wacky process of making digital artwork.

Adventures in Scientology

2007-09-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

Ok so it's been a while since I posted anything in this column. I know there's thousands of people sitting at the computers just waiting for this post. A good majority of my friends are up to date with what's been going on in my life and my career either from myspace or from running into me out and about. For those that don't know... well this is for them and for myself. I'd been spending most of my time up until a month ago shooting models and working on graphics for Safeway when out of the blue I got an email from a producer at Golden Era Productions in Southern California. Apparently he had stumbled across my website and liked my effects work and asked me to call him at the studio to discuss some potential contract work. I was curious about the project and about the fact that Golden Era Productions is the production studio for the Church of Scientology. My knowledge of Scientology at the time was minimal so I checked out both the scientology wikipedia link and their scientology.org website. I found it fascinating how many urban legends there are based on Scientology. Well I called the phone number the next day and spoke with the producer for a few moments and he mentioned they were interested in possibly moving me down there to do some 3D Studio Max work. He then put me on the phone with the director of visual effects so that he and I could discuss the technical details of where my skill sets where at and so he could explain more about what the projects were that I'd be working on. After about a 10 minute conversation and him taking a look at my demo reel he asked if I'd be able to fly down there the next day. I was a little shocked at how quickly they wanted me to pick up and move down there but of course I was also thrilled to have the opportunity for a longer contract than I've been getting lately and the fact that they would be putting me up in a furnished apartment made the decision pretty easy. I ended up waiting until Monday to head down there just because I had already committed to a photo shoot for a pilot episode of a reality television show. The shoot was a lot of fun and I met some great models and interesting people. I immediately left the shoot to pack and drive down to Southern California the very next day. It was quite and adventure to pick up and move down there. I met a lot of cool artists some of which were staff at Golden Era and some who were contractors like myself. They had brought people from all over the world in to help them meet their deadline. So I spent a month there working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. By the end of that time I was finally dying for a day off to recover some sleep but when we finally were given a whole weekend off it was the end of the project so they let the majority of the artists go home until the next crunch period. I had a lot of fun and enjoyed everyone there but I was definitly becoming a zombie until I had a full day off to sleep in. I did learn a lot from the other artists and refreshed my 3D Studio Max skills as well which is nice. Now I'm back in the San Francisco bay area and I'm back to working on some Safeway things and my demo reel. I've got a pretty fun little project I gave myself that I'll post some screens and or test animations of soon.

Canon 5D

2007-06-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

I'm on the set for Safeway again all week this week so sleep time is minimal and my brain will be crammed with Safeway customer service knowledge by the end of the week again I'm sure. I spent some time yesterday setting up a quick camera move around my Lotus and thought I'd kick off a quick test render while I was away at work all night. I didn't bother spending time on the camera move aside from tossing the camera onto a nurbs circle and keying the point of interest. I added some depth of field but between the F-stop I was rendering at and the compression of the flash video by google it's apparently lost to digital noise. I think the modeling is coming along nicely although I don't seem to have time to spend on this project consistently so it's sort of a few hours here and a few hours there. I've got a few ideas for what to do with it when I've got it done though and I'm looking forward to putting it into some scenes with particle effects and some nice lighting. I finally added a macro photography gallery and a behind the scenes gallery as well in additiong to tweaking more of the code on my website again as I normally seem to not be able to resist that when I mess around with my site. Oh and I am pretty excited to be playing with my new Canon 5D and L series lens kit I just got. I read too many articles on professional photographers who only have one camera body on the job and when that one breaks or gets stolen they're SOL and they can't finish the job. So now I've got my 20D and my 5D and I can't wait to be able to afford a 1D mark III.

Production Stills

2007-06-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

I just finished working on the set of the latest customer service training video for Safeway. I was hired as the still photographer to supplement the video portion of the project. The images will be used for variations on the opening sequence graphics that I sold to Safeway during the pilot project and they will also be used as content in the multimedia and web training portions of the program. I've created a new section in my photography folder for gallery viewing puposes though I haven't yet had time to filter the one gallery down to where it needs to be nor have I finished the other two days worth of images, but I felt like I wanted to set up the placeholder so it had a place to live when it gets finished. I'm also planning on adding a behind the scenes section to my photography arena as well. I have a bunch of pictures both from working on the set last week and from my previous experiences on set as a PA. Aside from photography lately I've been mainly working on my Lotus again just trying to add some details and tweak the lines to keep it fairly low polyish and somewhat efficient. Working on this Lotus has been making me think I'd like to model a Lamborghini Countach since it was my favorite car growing up.

Wordy Titles

2007-04-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

So now that things have been approved on my end for the opening sequence I created for the latest Safeway training video I have been asked to create a closing animation for each of the segments as well that should of course tie in with the theme I created for the opening. Luckily that means I'm able to tear apart the file I used for the open and rearrange it to become appropriate for the closer. An interesting design challenge however is that I've been asked to include the entire list of segment titles into the composition. Unfortunately there are quite a few titles; some of which are pretty wordy. That equates to quite a bit of text to be included in a design. I have a feeling this could require a few iterations to get to a place where everyone feels good about the design. *The link provided here is updated to reflect the latest version of the video sequence created. This version is now approved by the important people at Safeway and being inserted into the training video program. Click the thumbnail to view the quicktime movie or right click on it and click "Save Target As" if you would like to download the clip to your desktop.

Caffeine High

2007-04-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

Ah the glorious caffeine high artwork of Jason. I must be getting old cause I just HAD to sleep for 2 hours before I woke up to whip this out. I'm also trying to find to paint my myspace monster, work on my Lotus, find things to take pics of, get out for rides on my ninja and so on. For someone without a "regular job" I seem to find myself pretty busy sometimes. *The link provided here is updated to reflect the latest version of the video sequence created. This version is now approved by the important people at Safeway and being inserted into the training video program. Click the thumbnail to view the quicktime movie or right click on it and click "Save Target As" if you would like to download the clip to your desktop.

Lotus Begins

2007-03-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

I've been spending most of my time lately 3D modeling a Lotus Exige Sport mainly for fun but I'm planning on using it in my demo reel as well. Aside from that I've been spending some time working on animations for Safeway and trying to get out on photoshoots when I can get them arranged. I've also spent some time cleaning up the CSS code on this site both to make it look nicer and to have cleaner code for debugging and load time purposes. (I decided to do this mainly because I was trying to fix an issue that had been bugging me about the minimum screen size attribute not working correctly and it became apparent that I had too many tags fighting each other.) I'm still dying to add some GUI'ness to the site but I'm sort of caught up in my 3D modeling right now so I'll come back to that at a later time. I do have a couple ideas for it though when I get around to it. I'm also planning on adding a portrait section and hopefully a maternity section to my photography portfolio but I have yet to work with a pregnant model despite many offers to friends and family. (Silly girls always afraid of looking fat... you're freaking PREGGO. Get over it and capture those precious moments that you won't get to have again.)

Biker Buildoff

2007-02-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Lately I've spent the majority of my time modeling, texturing and creating animations for Safeway. I'm also trying to put some time into some personal 3D projects for both reel my reel and my own gratification. A couple of months ago I worked on a Discovery Channel TV show called Biker Build-Off. I did some camera work and it's possible I may have ended up in the background of some of the shots. Check it out on March 1st just for kicks if you want to see if I made it onto TV. I also have started using the final version of Adobe Lightroom which has some nifty new features so don't be suprised if some of my galleries suddenly get updated. Apparently the new version has the ability to directly upload web galleries to a website via ftp. While I like the simpleviewer format I'd been using for my galleries this feature will save me like four steps and make updating my site considerably easier.

Westbury vs. Fuller

New episode airs March 1, 2007 at 10pm!

PA Jobs

2006-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have been filling my time with PA jobs on various television commercials while working on my demo reel.