Follow this link to see a shot-by-shot breakdown of the VFX work done to the upcoming director’s cut DVD of George Lucas’s THX 1138. It’s pretty neat to see what compositing can do these days. Some of the shots don’t add blatant CGI, look seamless, and expand the scope of the film. Too bad Lucas couldn’t resist some of the showier stuff.
For a variety of reasons the last SW:Revelations shot needs to be done by the end of the week!
To do list:
The family went shopping and I got the itch to do some sketching. So I sat down with Photoshop, found a reference photo of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and started sketching. I’m trying to find my own style, but I’m definitely still in the imitation phase. Today I was imitating the styles of Ashley Wood and Bengal with some Shane Glines thrown in. When I have more time I’ll post links to their sites.
The sketch doesn’t look like Sarah Michelle Gellar very much, but that wasn’t the point. I was trying to get the pose to feel natural and dynamic. Style was semi-real, but leaning towards comic book or cartoony like in Batman the Animated Series. The colors were desaturated and messy to make it feel less computery.
Turned out pretty decent and makes me want to practice drawing more.
The director asked for some smaller ships flying near the big cargo ships. So I ended up building this model yesterday. 
It looks pretty simple in a still frame. This model is supposed to be seen in motion and usually in the midground or background. The geometry is really basic so it won’t bog down the computer during animation and rendering. Most of the detail is in the texture maps.
I’m not too happy with these renders, but have to admit that the model is probably more detailed than it needs to be for its purpose.
I can’t believe how long it’s been since my last post! Lots of things going on to keep me busy. My daughter got sick (she’s fine, but we did have to go to the very expensive emergency room late one night). Then I got sick again. Then my wife went on a church retreat. So I didn’t do any solid work on my projects for a good two weeks at least.
Right now I’m focusing on getting the Star Wars fan film shots finished. I’m really pounding hard on them, but I only get a couple iterations done per day because my hardware is so old and slow. The first shot contains the opening title crawl and is over 2500 frames long! Rendering and compositing the whole thing is excruciatingly slow.
Not much happening on the writing front. I jotted notes down for my daughter’s story and drew some thumbnails for page layouts. I’d start on some paintings, but my computer is bogged down rendering the Star Wars shots.
The Barnes & Noble writing group disbanded due to lack of interest. I never did make it back for the second meeting. Oh, well.