I only did one quick shot, and actually helped out a little on another. It was a very quick turnaround. 

My skeleton cube is still going strong, this is the year I finish it! Be sure and follow the Tumblr if you have and account. The website is skeletoncube.com, which is just a fancy redirect to skeletoncube.tumblr.com. I've already decided on my next project, but some people want to see a different one, particularly something like this! I'm deciding on a puzzle box that will encompass the skeleton cube, which is also skeletal. I'm hoping to take the design of a Japanese puzzle box  mixed with a Hellraiser box, and create something unique, which will fit the cube. So you need to solve the puzzle box to open it to solve the cube. Am I insane? Time will tell on that front, as I still have a miniature steam engine to complete.

And here's the six minute making of.

http://www.fxguide.com/fxpodcasts/fxpodcast-real-steel/

A highlight from the bottom.

Stage 7: Have great compositors

DD used a similar multi-pass compositing approach as it had done with its Makebot Nuke plug-in for I, Robot. But as the Real Steelcharacters had no real translucency, the process was easier, although artists still did a multi-pass approach as a multi-channel OpenEXR.

Compositing has certain key tasks, such as:

• match the black levels

•match the highlights

• balance the mid tones match the softness, motion blur and atmospheric conditions that integrate a shot

• allow light wrap

• match lens curvature and properties.

But, as you can imagine from the company that gave birth to Nuke, the DD compositors did a lot more than just standard multi-pass compositing.  For example, in the end stadium shots there was a need for massively large stadium crowds. DD's composite team delivered live action real stadium crowds, yet they never had more than 500 extras on set. One location in Detroit was used as two locations in the film.

Last night I attended the Foundry's Midsummer Night Event of Nuke and Mari at Dreamworks in Glendale. After a harrowing hours drive from Venice to Glendale on a motorcycle, I arrived on the dot at 7pm, just as the event was starting. Let me tell you, the 10, 405, 101, and 134 at 6:30 is a PITA.  For some reason, everyone was out there. It took Gresham two hours to drive from Venice to Glendale, and he arrived the same time I did. Any way, on to the presentation.

After a brief introduction about the event and Dreamworks, our MC introduced Kevan O'Brien, Creative Specialist at the Foundry, to talk about the new cool stuff in NukeX 6.3. While I've played intermittently with the beta, I haven't gotten my hands dirty on it since I've been deep in production on a commercial using 6.2. Some of the shiny new features include a particle system, integration with Mari, enhanced spline and gridwarp tools, improved degraining (which I had the chance to use extensively during Real Steel), audio guides within Nuke, a Planar tracker, and some other niceties. But don't let me tell you, read the NukeX 6.3v1 Release Notes. Each presenter had about 20 minutes to talk about their particular piece. 

From there, Joe Farrell from Scanline VFX took over. He and I worked together at Digital Domain, as well as on previous projects in Vancouver, at least a decade ago. He presented a well documented case study of the work Scanline VFX did on Hereafter.  I had a great experience with Clint Eastwood on Flags of our Fathers, and it looks like Joe had the same on this film. Eastwood regularly works with the same crew. Joe presented the making-of certain sequences in the film, predominately the beginning tsunami sequence, which is impressive in it's own right.  The techniques presented were very similar to how Digital Domain works. This makes sense, as there is a lot of cross-pollination of ideas and workflow throughout the industry. A lot of Scanline's custom tools that I saw in the presentation we also have at Digital Domain, they are slightly different, but do accomplish the same goal.

Jack Greasley, Mari Product Manager, took over next as he introduced the new Mari 1.4 and the just released Mari 1.3.  I've never used Mari before, but the technology behind it is quite nice, and the Nuke>Mari bridge that they showed on stage is sure to help out in the future. Brandon from Bad Robot describes it in more detail in the next presentation.  I was introduced to ptex for the first time as well, and while it's been around for a while, I never use it in my day to day compositing life. It looks extremely promising.

Super 8 Bad Robot Productions Supervisor Brandon Fayette was there to talk about the Nuke>Mari bridge, and let me tell you, it's definitely something that I see being used for future environmental projection and matte painting work. He also showed the new Denoise tool in NukeX 6.3 with plate footage from Super 8, and that got a lot of cheers and wows from the audience. It is as awesome as he made it out to be. We were using the alpha for a long time, and the same one he was using, I'm sure. After his entertaining presentation, the floor was opened up for questions, and from there, mingling!

I met a bunch of people that I worked with in the past who were there to see what was new. Gresham, Howard, Martin, Emi, and Rohini were but a few! After a few words of where everyone was at and what they were doing, I did the drive back home in 20 minutes. Not too bad when there's no traffic.

On the show front, I've done several tests and spec work for a bunch of shows that we're hoping to get. I can't name any of them unfortunately, but they're going to be big! Like most studios, we continually bid on work that is roughly a year to two years away, sometimes more, but that all depends on whether the bigger studios want to fund those projects.   I've also just completed a commercial here, my first one at Digital Domain.  I did two Chevy commercials up at Tippett. This one here was a little, different, shall we say. It was fun, nonetheless! 

On the business front, we're continuing to improve VFXWages under the hood, and improve some back-end work. We've transitioned to new servers, which will make our service to you much better. If you've been following my Twitter, I am also experimenting with Android apps, and deciding on how to package the information from the website and give it to you in the palm of your hand. We are adjusting the way we have users enter wages, as well as display and access our graphs.  There's still a market out there, and we're hoping to get there very soon.

Let's recap what's been happening in the world of visual effects, and how we fit into it.  During late summer there was a number of recent discussions concerning freelance wages, unions, committees, you name it. There have been a plethora of blogs out there that are decidedly more appropriate, and there has been momentum on that front.  I've removed myself from speaking about it, simply because of the time constraints I have, and there are people way more eloquent than me discussing and organizing things.  I'm going to link o them here. Both VFXSoldier and VFXLaw have been good for the community, way more so than I have, and while they both choose to remain anonymous, I heartily recommend their blogs for reading!  Often, anonymity is the smart choice.  There was recently an IAMA on Reddit entitled 'IAMA vfx artist for 14 years, and it sucks and I don't care anymore' or something to that effect.  Professionals can often get stigmatized for what they may post online, even if it's unrelated to the company they work for!  Personally, I'm not anonymous, anyone can contact me, and I have received flack for posting opinions here, on CGTalk (most definitely, banned from there for talking about salaries and wages!), and on VFXTalk.  

Since July/August of last year, I've been heavily involved in the next big show (well, one of the next big shows!) that Digital Domain is doing, Real Steel. There is a production website for this, steelgetsreal.com, where you can see the trailer for the film, released last month, mind you, full frame Flash content on that site. I'm one of four lead compositors on the show, which encompass a number of amazing effects, several of which you can see in the trailer.  We have a pretty big compositing team, almost 30 or so, and roughly seven of them under me. The robot names have not been released yet, so I'm not going to mention them. However we are doing a fair number of robots! And no, this is no relation to the fighting robots of Rock'Em Sock'Em.  I think some other company is trying to get that off the ground. From what I've heard and read, this is more a story piece than a film about robots fighting.  I'm hoping it does well.

For this show, we ended up getting another comp intern. Well actually, two!  One of them is working directly with me, while the other is working with another lead.  This time around there was less instruction, and more production.  The interns are actually having to complete production shots! Shouldn't be too difficult, right? :) Time will tell.  They've been extended to the end of the show, very similar to how Tom, my intern from last year fared.  Speaking of Tom, he's now back at Digital Domain in our roto/paint department, proving his worth. 

On the outside vfx side of things, you may have seen my machine shop from the previous post six months ago.  I'm currently working on a aluminum puzzle cube, similar in fashion to a Rubiks Cube. There are several differences of course, one being that mine is made of metal. The other being that it's see-through. What? You say?  Check out the other website I created for it, Skeleton Cube.com. I put the website up last week in about an hour, and will continue to update it with pictures as the work progresses.

I am hoping to update the blog a little more frequently! Keep visiting, or click that RSS feed up there on the right.