SEMINAR DONE!

20th post! YES! Anyways, I finally finished my 303 seminar. Its online and everything. Go on and take a look at MY SEMINAR here!

Whoot!

Blog Review

Rapidly approaching assessment, It is time to do the 500 word review of my blog, and what I have been doing on it. I have been quite happy to find that Flickr is a great place to host my photos (previously I was using village photos, which until recently had a very small amount of storage space) and Del.icio.us is one hell of allot easier to manage and access than your standard browser favourites tab.

Now why is this blog interesting? Well, more or less its a hub for me, where I put links to my other works ( like my DA site ) examples of my current works ( like my comic I am working on ) and funny stories about what happens when special effects experiments go wrong, like what happened to Ormo...

I am finding Flickr to be a good way to share photos that is saving me having to burn multiple copies of CDs. Its also turning out to be a good place to host all my other photos, like concept art and misc drawings that are unsuitable for my Deviantart page. Online storage space should never be shunned! Another surprise is that people see and comment on photos that you had only just put up. Its nice to know that someone other than yourself can see them.

I have joined the MPI104 network, and through that I came across Matt's Animators Guild which I also joined, being in a joining kind of mood.

As for my Del.icio.us, its been very helpful keeping track of all my online research for my essay. As before mentioned it is easier to manage bookmarks using Del.icio.us than firefox, and even seamlessly integrates itself into the browser.

Other than the posts, you can probably see that I have started to really customise the blog itself. Hit counter, links etc. As soon as I work out more HTML I want to make my own template with pictures and such. It'd be nice.

On with the world!

What the hey?

After a lot of assignment work everyone wants to take a little time off. This ended up with this:



shot at 2:30 in the morning during a hardcore compositing session I took a break and did a quick motion track. Im not sure why, but I think I had a couple of wires loose.

page2frame1draft

page2frame1draft, originally uploaded by seraquin.

Page two of the Demi Graphic novel. I am currently drafting the third page in PS.

One of the exciting things for me in making this is exploring Seraquin's past. He is one of the original characters from the Demi-verse and still features heavily in the main story.

The other thing I am excited about it RAIDING AN ENTIRE STARSHIP! Imagine all the things that could happen within... MWa ha ha ha ha!!!! Yes... evil lurks in the lower bays Seraquin... beware... mwa ha ha

PAGE ONE

PAGE ONE, originally uploaded by seraquin.

Demi- Blindside...

A comic based on the exploits of Seraquin, a character from the Demi-verse whom I named my DA site after.

This is page one, draft 2. Feel free to critique and comment.

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You dont have to read the backstory to get the comic, but yeah, I included it for those so inclined.

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Backstory-
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Four hundred years ago a massive war raged between humanity and their creations, the Demi Sarconis and their cousins, the Demi Toranis.

After years of bitter conflict, the exodus of the Demi Toranis and defeat after crushing defeat the Human empire was finally brought to heel by the Sarconis warlord, Demi Akara.

Having destroyed or disabled all of Earth's defenses, the Warlord took it upon herself to burn the planet to cinders. The entire surface was wiped clean of life, and so it was that the Empire collapsed into Anarchy, having lost its head of state, and Earth, the one unifying link between the planets.

Anarchy raged for three hundred years, ending only with the foundation of the Federation out of the five strongest houses. The war was finally over, and it seemed that the past could finally be left to lie.

But in places there are ghosts of the past that refuse to die, and for some the conflict continues still, from all those years ago...

BATCHING IN PHOTOSHOP!

So, lets say you have 24 photos and you have to down res them all, or maybe put a border on each and every one of them. You want to do that to the whole lot? Yes! But sortof NO! You want the computer to do it for you! Anyways, in the spirit of sharing, Amelia told me how to do it and now I pass it on to the land of the Fatal Error...

Here goes...

Example for greyscale/200dpi/7cm wide

-In photoshop open one of the images you plan to batch
-WINDOW-VIEW ACTIONS
-CREATE NEW SET(tab)
-Name the set- use an obvious name
-CREATE NEW ACTION (tab)
-Name the action- similar to above
-Press RECORD
-Red dot comes up
-Begin actions to be recorded:

IMAGE/IMAGE SIZE/WIDTH 7cm
Change resolution to 200dpi
(check that actions palette is writing the actions as you go)
IMAGE/MODE/GREYSCALE/OK
IMAGE/ADJUST/AUTOLEVELS
FILTER/SHARP/UNSHARP MASK/>200%

-HIT THE STOP BUTTON (the square black dot)
-close file, do not save


To start batching process:
-FILE/AUTOMATE/BATCH/choose set/check action
-SOURCE/open folders or import files-choose files
-supress colour profile
-DESTINATION/FOLDER/Choose folder (on a PC it must be an existing folder- you can't create a new one at this stage)
-If you want to convert TIFF to Jpeg include SAVE AS as the last action and then tick the "OVERRIDE SAVE IN COMMAND" in this dialogue box
-tick all compatability options
-OK
-Then it should start!!

Thanks go to Ameila P for this tutorial. Whoot to you!

Great balls of fire

Great balls of fire, originally uploaded by seraquin.

I think the whole punchline of the photo is that if you can do something in real life, you should. CG is all well and good, but lighting a soccorball on fire is probably the better option.

(This photo is part of a 303 assessment. We get to light balls on fire. Fun!)

Flash- Lip sync test

Well... Its been a while since I used flash to any real extent, so I opened it up and made a short lip sync test. You can take a look at it here:

Testing out Twango

Here is a test of the uploading powers of Twango, using a time lapse shot of the Wagga sports center in the afternoon. Believe it or not, thats about 20 minutes going in 47 seconds. Next time I am going to brace the camera more, as the wind was making it wobble a little too much for my linking.

An update from the land of the Fatal Error...

Hello Blogland, and welcome to yet another post by me. It has to be mentioned within the first paragraph or so that this guy here , Aka Matt, ihas hit the ground running, and thats for sure. click the link and check out his Blog. Kudos to you.

In other news the forums are finally back up, and rumour has it we might have a lab working as well, which means workshiops and general education all round. Hooray.

As Joh has mentioned in the BA-Ma blog this site is worth a lingering look- Twango, especially for those of us who are still looking for a decent place to display our wares- videos that is. Best of all it costs very little. Nothing infact, which in the land of Education is always a bonus.

In production news the Demi production pilot has been hosted on You Tube for those of you so inclined, and a new Demi Graphic novel has begun development.

So its all ahead full in the land of the Fatal error.

Keep your eye out for updates as far as the special effects situation goes. Yay.

The pains of being... well... covered in plaster...

Myself and some friends have recently been trying to make a head cast for some special effects makeup. It should have been fairly simple. It should have been over like that. It wasnt.

You see, even with liberal amounts of Vasoline, the plaster mask (about 2cm thick and very sturdy) stuck to my friends face- by the hairs. Everything. Eyebrows, eyelashes, beard regrowth. What had happened is he had had a shower beforehand, resulting in the hairs of his face being waterlogged. The Vasoline clung to his skin, but slid right off of his hairs, allowing each and every one of them to bond to the plaster.

Well...

$16 worth of bandages, $4 worth of plaster, a butter knife, spoon and trip to the hospital later he was once again plaster free. The sad thing was that the cast would have been perfect, even getting the detail of his pores. The worst thing is that eyelashes take their sweet arse time growing back...

Lesson-
-If you are using it as a lubricant, only apply vasoline to dry hair!
-Use something other than plaster if you are willing to fork out. You can find better stuff here in the form of alginates, a spongy foamy material made out of a kind of sea weed. Expensive, but designed specifically for life casting.

Interested in this sort of stuff? We experiment in Vacume forming, armour, costumes, prop creation and monster/alien/special effects mask making.

Want to know more? Drop us an email at:
monster.menagerie@gmail.com

THQ announces Company of Heroes expansion pack...

Being a big fan of Company of Heroes, I have really been looking forward to the day that Relic announces an expansion pack for it. And that day has come!

"Opposing fronts" will feature two new campaigns, and include the British forces in the game, as well as the German panzer elite.

For those with hardcore computers the game also supports Dx10 strait from the box.

Another winning point about the game is the fact that they are yusing the same approach to this expansion as they did to the Dawn of War expansion pack "Dark Crusade". Although it is an "expansion pack" it does not require the original game, and can be used stand alone.

Hopefully some official modding tools will be released with the game, but so far I dont know.

Check out the full story at IGN

Z-Brush 3... looking swish!

Pixologic's Z brush program. Its a love/hate relationship.

On one hand, its frying my brain. The combination of 2d art and 3d space, cunningly called 2.5d, is enough to make anyone bleed from the ears.

But what is mroe it the absolute potential of the program, once you work out how to use it. You thought Maya was hard? Well Z-brush is like learning how to use a computer again from scratch, but by god is it worth it!

Take a look at the Z brush 3, the next step demo reel , and let me tell you, its bloody awesome!