It's been fun.

Well it feels like the end of the road for this blog. I hit the goals I set in the first post. I still like the PXC but there isn't much to write about concerning me and my travels through it. Thought it would be good to end it rather than let it die. Kinda thought it would be a longer journey to get to the end.

Anyway life is good.

Thanks for reading.

Ho hum.

Having a good time in General but the whole blog thing is kinda dull now a days. I don't like typing compared to talking. Tony and I can't seem to get the TWIP thing going because we are never online at the same time. I might just have a go at it on my own.

Here's what I have been trying a little more recently. Painterly effects on photos in Photoshop. I am going to make a tutorial about this technique for a future torrent. For now here is a little sample done in about 2 minutes.

Slow

Man I went a week or so without a shot a little while back and now I have another week off. "Lost" is very slow with VFX stuff so far this season and "Alias" is about to teak a break for Jennifer Garner's maternity leave. Hopefully some stuff will come around or else I will have to get some commercials signed up to keep busy.

Slow for a little while.

I had the last week+ off from any matte work on Alias and Lost. During that time I tried to create some new techniques to make my job simpler and faster. Some is working out some isn't. I am using the PXC and the AE-list and reading old forum archives to glean as much info as I can for my new workflow. It's amazing how much is out there but also stunning is how much isn't out there. As much as I dislike the Athenium in it's current state I am using the Wikipedia more and more. If the Athenium truly grew to that sort of deep resource it would be great. If all the info that was in the forums was distilled into that we would have a great resource. But as it is searching the web is the best I can do right now.

I finally have 4 shots to work on this week. So back to work.

Learning.

Whew. I was totally crushed by a shot last week. I made a bad series of choices in breaking down the shot and eventually had to redo work over and over again. I even had to pull an all-nighter. It was amazingly hard to get it right. Now, a week later I know a TON more about how to do that type of shot and a lot of new tricks to tweak things. Amazing what you learn in a week. And I slacked off for the rest of the week too!

Update.

I haven't been blogging much again. It isn't because I don't have things to say. It is partly because I try to do things in the forum as much as possible. But mostly because of the TWiP podcast Tony and I have been doing. Wee did one a week ago but the software to record it let us down. Man, a whole hour and 15 minutes of interview down the drain. Next time it will be redundant by having 2 of us recording the session.

Did my first shots for Lost the other day. Nothing too neat just some clean up work on removing the crew and a road from the background of a few shots and adding a forest to another. Will post some stuff when I have neat shots to look at.

Wheeee!

I watched Alias tonight just because I knew I had 3 shots in it and so far I haven't seen anything of mine on TV. So then it happened. Back from commercial about 20 minutes into the show. First shot I have ever seen of mine nationally televised. Too cool. It was Prague out the window of an apartment with a pan to a woman inside. I kicked out 3 different versions for tests last week and finished the final on Sunday night.

The really cool thing was that all the shots looked real! I know that sounds immodest but when I sit and look at these shots for 3 days they seem so fake. Like a Photoshop collage, I see it as elements stacked up and not an overall image. But tonight they looked like they were really there. I don't have HD so tho the detail is squished and that probably helps. Maybe I need to upgrade to HD now just to watch 2 or 3 shows.