A quick VFX fix

I saw Rogue One this week: once on opening night, but once also a few days earlier at a private company screening. It was quite something to see my name up in the credits for a Star Wars movie. After seeing it on Friday, we came home to watch A New Hope for the continuation of the story. I have a recent Blu-ray release of both trilogies, with all sorts of digital updates, corrections, and additions. But there were some easy fixes that mysteriously were not made. I noticed one glaring problem while watching Luke practice with his lightsaber onboard the Millennium Falcon.

You can see the problem in this comparison image of two sequential frames from the movie. Mark was holding a handle with the blade attached, probably a rotating one covered with a highly reflective material. Then the camera stopped, he tried to remain still, and his lightsaber was switched out for just the handle. But as it's impossible to stay still enough, there is a noticeable jump between the two frames, looking abrupt and unnatural. This is a very old camera trick, practically dating back to the very first moving pictures.

However, with digital technology, the fix here is quite easy. It didn't take me long to figure out that the first good frame with the lightsaber turned off could be used to cover the few frames with the lightsaber on, so that there is no jump in Luke's position. The training ball was matted out so that the rotating version from the original frames would show through. Then some animated noise was added to the single frame to make it match the moving footage. Since the lightsaber's blade is missing, it could easily be added in with a shape layer and a glow effect. The benefit here is that it can be animated going down, instead of just sharply disappearing from one frame to another. You may also notice that even in this new release of the movie, the blade's color is wrong; it looks either colorless or almost green, instead of the blue we all know Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber had.

This correction was quickly done on my laptop using Photoshop and After Effects, although it probably could have been done with either program instead of both. This was just a little project that I did on a whim. In reality, it only takes a few minutes to get the shot mostly there, but as with much of this kind of work, getting that last 5% can take the most time. As an example of that, I wasn't that satisfied with the final result after posting it, so I worked on it some more and even tried putting it a bit of glow on Luke from the saber. 

Click here to watch the full-size video on YouTube.

New matte painting demo reel

My contract at ILM is almost up and it looks like it won't be extended this time. So I'm getting ready to go back to looking for more projects. Digital matte painting is always my interest, so I have been working on updating my demo reel for this kind of work. Here is the latest version.

Lucasfilm Sidewalk Festival

On Friday, I participated in Lucasfilm's annual Sidewalk Festival. Teams of four get to sign up for a sidewalk square each and are given chalk to use in creating their design. I thought it would be fun to be a part of it, but I didn't have a team. Luckily, there was a team of two that needed some extra artists and I got hooked up with them. It was only three of us, but we had a good design to work on and together we were able to get a nice representation of it on the sidewalk square. The judging happened after I had left for the day, so I don't know what the final result was, but we got a lot of positive comments from passers by. Does anyone know who this is on our picture?

Current contract

Earlier this month, I had an interview at Industrial Light & Magic, a studio I've been trying to get into for years now. This kind of work has opportunities that are very hit-and-miss, but this time was different. Instead of another phone interview, I was invited to come on the campus at the Presidio in San Francisco. That's an offer that's hard to refuse.

It sounded very promising this time, and they shortly made me an offer: a 2-month contract working as a digital paint artist on an upcoming movie to be released in December. I don't know if I can say much more than that at the moment. But it's an exciting chance and a fun place to work. The daily commute is not so fun, but it's worth it. Hopefully, this will lead to more of the same. My overall goal is still digital matte painting, so hopefully, this is a step in that direction. I've already done that kind of work professionally. Now I just need to do it for a major motion picture.

Recent work

Things have been busy these days, so my blog has suffered a bit. As usual, I'm doing digital illustration work, looking for new projects, and seeing what my next big move should be. I'm looking at trying to get some visual effects work on upcoming movies and I actually had an interview at ILM yesterday! Onsite at the Presidio in San Francisco, so that was pretty exciting. We'll see what happens.

Here are some sections from a project I finished recently. If the format or subject matter look familiar, it's for a calendar header like many I've done before. This one was fun, but really took me a long time, painting all those darn buildings. And then all the bridges. And then that inset image of the top of the bridge...

Back to business as usual

I've recently noticed that it's been a long time since I've posted anything. As you can guess, I've been working on various freelance projects and looking for more work. I've also been checking on full-time employment, especially teaching positions. Recently, I was contacted by Tulsa Community College about a digital media instructor position. I went out there and interviewed. It was a nice facility and I did the best I could, but they ended up going with other candidates. I was disappointed, but the job starts this fall and it would be hard to make a big move like that so quickly. 

So, it's back to business as usual and I'll keep looking. I have been thinking about getting my Masters degree, since that's almost a requirement for a tenured teaching position.

My illustration work from 2015

As I was working on current projects, I was thinking about the illustrations I did last year. I did a good bit of other work like animation, design, and page layout, but as this is an illustration blog, that's what I will concentrate on. As usual, some of the images here are favorites of mine, and some I'm not so happy with. That's just how it goes in the world of commercial art.

This was a pretty major illustration, painted quite large for an exhibit background. It took a lot of work and is actually one of my favorite pieces now. I'm especially pleased with the pipe threader (that's the thing on the left side). It was almost my best piece of the year, completed quite early on.

Here's one that's not quite an illustration. It's more of a logo that I had to design, but with Photoshop I was able to make it look a bit more dimensional and give it some texture.

This one was kind of interesting: realistic but a bit conceptual as well. I've been working on mimicking photographic techniques, so I tried a bit of depth of field here by making the background out of focus. I also got to paint some figures, so that's always fun. After completing the illustration, I also did the final ad layout and design.

If you've been following my work, you may recognize this one. I did an illustration of a nice, completed shower installation. For this image, the client wanted the same layout, but a before image, showing old, ugly, and broken tile as a contrast. Sadly, I used my own shower as an inspiration for this illustration.

Here's one that never really worked, but I just had to get through it. The background elements were taken from older illustrations and incorporated into this image to save me some time. I was not able to fit all the elements in to my liking, but it fit the requirements for this job.

Another one based on a previous illustration. For this one, I had to extend the bottom and add the bridge damage and work scene around it, so the bottom quarter is new. It started out as a 3D scene, but for the addition, I just extended the canvas in Photoshop and painted in 2D elements.

Because of the complexity of something like this, I built it as a 3D model first. I also textured, lit, and rendered it, so there wasn't much more to do in Photoshop, except paint the background.

This isn't much, but it's just a small image I had to whip out quickly. With Photoshop's layer effects and vector shapes, it's pretty easy to do something like this without putting too much time into it.

Back to my usual painting of construction scenes. New client and equipment to render. It's okay, I suppose. The main thing is that the client liked it.

More construction stuff. This image went back and forth until I finally figured out what the client wanted. Again 3D made this relatively easy. The water was built from photos, based on techniques I've shared previously in this blog. A bit of final Photoshop painting, and it was done.

Now this one took some time, but I really like how it turned out. It was quite challenging and I tried some new techniques to represent artificial illumination at night, which ended up pretty successful. My initial inclination is to get by with as little work as I can and my client kept wanting more elements added. But as much as I hate to admit it, they helped the final image. I liked the final result so much that I kept on working after it was complete and approved, adding details on the far left span of the bridge, like the truck and streetlights. Anyway, this also ended up being one of my favorites.

Another quick project. Intended for a large exhibit background, it was really just a simple 3D scene textured and rendered. I also did the text and layout and it ended up doing what it needed to.

Another calendar header image. This one worked out okay, but I had hoped it would have been a bit better. Still, it's pretty good I guess.

This is a series I got through my rep. It was a pretty cool job, but the images were very large and required a lot of work. Much of the detail gets lost in these small images, but they should give you an idea of what went into the final images. The first two are panoramic images from a coal plant and the third was a cutaway view of one of the interior turbines in the plant.

This last one is really a photo editing project instead of an illustration. The background was quite complex and required a lot of hand painting to mask it out. There is some concept going on here, but it might be hard to make out.