January 20, 2007
New Voyages Progress
Progress on New Voyages is moving along nicely, although we're already starting to lose track of time :) I think we just finished week 3 of this project. Final resolution, IE high detail, models are coming to completion. The Enterprise team of Rick, Paul, and Joe have finished modeling the majority of the ship and have started on texturing, and Chris should have the shuttlecraft ready to go by monday. Eric and Brett are making great progress on the interior shuttlebay and i'm looking forward to comping those into some of the greenscreen plates soon as well.
On more my side of things, Alex has done a great job of pulling frames out of Final Cut and getting them over to us on the network. With frames coming in things on the comp side can start moving a bit faster. On Friday I submitted one shot with complete effects for approval. Hopefully we can get those effects locked down so we can start working on applying them in other scenes as needed. There are probably close to 100 shots using those effects, so that would be a big boon. While i'm sure they won't approve the first version, it will at least get us started towards locking things down. In addition we're starting to pull our greenscreen keys and with the models coming together we should be able to start comping those shots.
On more my side of things, Alex has done a great job of pulling frames out of Final Cut and getting them over to us on the network. With frames coming in things on the comp side can start moving a bit faster. On Friday I submitted one shot with complete effects for approval. Hopefully we can get those effects locked down so we can start working on applying them in other scenes as needed. There are probably close to 100 shots using those effects, so that would be a big boon. While i'm sure they won't approve the first version, it will at least get us started towards locking things down. In addition we're starting to pull our greenscreen keys and with the models coming together we should be able to start comping those shots.
January 6, 2007
Star Trek: New Voyages
In the last block at school, each class takes everything they have learned and works on a group project that is designed to as accurately as possible reflect how things would be for us in a real job.
Normally what happens is the school creates a short film from the ground up, including pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. These films are typically 4-5 minutes in length and alternate between fully animated features and live-action.
However, in the real world, a visual effects artist will have little involvement in the pre-production and filming stages of a production. Typically the movie or episode, or whatever will be shot and then sent to a visual effects house for the post-production work.
In the case of our class, we get the special treat of working on a project that is not only similiar to a real world project, it is a real world project. There is a web-based fan production of Star Trek called Star Trek: New Voyages. It is really quite popular and has a huge viewership. I think I heard something like millions of downloads. In any case, they have shot episode 3 of the show, and now that episode is in our hands for post-production.
This is a great opportunity for us because what we are doing is essentially the same as a real job minus the pay :) However it also means a lot more work. Remember how I said that the student films are typically 4-5 minutes long? Well we have a 44minute episode to do, with somewhere around 400 visual effects shots. Despite that however, we're all very excited about the project. A bunch of us are Star Trek fans, or just Sci-Fi fans in general. Beyond that however, is that this show has garnered a lot of attention. This includes the attention of people in the industry and people in the Star Trek alumni so to speak. The previous episode starred Walter Koenig who played Chekov in the original show, and was written by sci-fi great, D.C. Fontana. Our episode stars George Takei who played Sulu in the original show, as well as Grace Lee Whitney who played Yeoman Rand. Our team is lead up by Ron Thorton who has ties to some of the best in Sci-Fi visual effects including Babylon 5 and Star Trek Voyager. We also are learning from Lee Stringer of Battlestar Galactica fame.
At this point, while I am allowed to say that i'm working on this project, I really can not do much more than that. I would love to show behind the scenes stuff as it is worked on, but stuff like that has to be approved before it can be released. I will however be keeping a sort of "production diary" that I will eventually release, even if it isn't until after we're done. I will also attempt to get things approved everynow and then to show you all :)
Normally what happens is the school creates a short film from the ground up, including pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. These films are typically 4-5 minutes in length and alternate between fully animated features and live-action.
However, in the real world, a visual effects artist will have little involvement in the pre-production and filming stages of a production. Typically the movie or episode, or whatever will be shot and then sent to a visual effects house for the post-production work.
In the case of our class, we get the special treat of working on a project that is not only similiar to a real world project, it is a real world project. There is a web-based fan production of Star Trek called Star Trek: New Voyages. It is really quite popular and has a huge viewership. I think I heard something like millions of downloads. In any case, they have shot episode 3 of the show, and now that episode is in our hands for post-production.
This is a great opportunity for us because what we are doing is essentially the same as a real job minus the pay :) However it also means a lot more work. Remember how I said that the student films are typically 4-5 minutes long? Well we have a 44minute episode to do, with somewhere around 400 visual effects shots. Despite that however, we're all very excited about the project. A bunch of us are Star Trek fans, or just Sci-Fi fans in general. Beyond that however, is that this show has garnered a lot of attention. This includes the attention of people in the industry and people in the Star Trek alumni so to speak. The previous episode starred Walter Koenig who played Chekov in the original show, and was written by sci-fi great, D.C. Fontana. Our episode stars George Takei who played Sulu in the original show, as well as Grace Lee Whitney who played Yeoman Rand. Our team is lead up by Ron Thorton who has ties to some of the best in Sci-Fi visual effects including Babylon 5 and Star Trek Voyager. We also are learning from Lee Stringer of Battlestar Galactica fame.
At this point, while I am allowed to say that i'm working on this project, I really can not do much more than that. I would love to show behind the scenes stuff as it is worked on, but stuff like that has to be approved before it can be released. I will however be keeping a sort of "production diary" that I will eventually release, even if it isn't until after we're done. I will also attempt to get things approved everynow and then to show you all :)
The Move to Blogger
It is often funny how things come around. I've always hosted my own blog, using Wordpress, on my own site. I have always suggested to friends and co-workers who have asked me about blogging that Wordpress and your own site was the best way to go. You had full creative control and a nice looking web address.
Yet here I am, using Blogger and for the moment using a Blogspot address. Why?
As I move into my fourth and final block at school, I found myself redesigning my own personal website. Reshaping it into a site more devoted to showing off my skills and helping me land a job in the industry. In a nutshell it had to morph from a journal type website into a portfolio type website. There was no longer any place for my blog on the front page, although it could have been moved to a subpage on the site. However the more and more I thought about it, I realized that while I wanted to retain at least one blog, I also wanted somethign quick and easy and hands-off so to speak. I wanted to not have to focus on it too much.
As a result, I decided to make the move here. I already use lots of other Google services, and Blogger is rather well known. It is easy, and efficient. And to top it all off, at least one of my classmates also uses Blogger. Eric Haas is located at http://ericatrandom.blogspot.com
So there you have it. My new blog and possibly a few other blogs, will live here powered by Blogger. I may however use some of the Blogger features to publish the blog at my own domain sometime in the near future.
Yet here I am, using Blogger and for the moment using a Blogspot address. Why?
As I move into my fourth and final block at school, I found myself redesigning my own personal website. Reshaping it into a site more devoted to showing off my skills and helping me land a job in the industry. In a nutshell it had to morph from a journal type website into a portfolio type website. There was no longer any place for my blog on the front page, although it could have been moved to a subpage on the site. However the more and more I thought about it, I realized that while I wanted to retain at least one blog, I also wanted somethign quick and easy and hands-off so to speak. I wanted to not have to focus on it too much.
As a result, I decided to make the move here. I already use lots of other Google services, and Blogger is rather well known. It is easy, and efficient. And to top it all off, at least one of my classmates also uses Blogger. Eric Haas is located at http://ericatrandom.blogspot.com
So there you have it. My new blog and possibly a few other blogs, will live here powered by Blogger. I may however use some of the Blogger features to publish the blog at my own domain sometime in the near future.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)