Saturday, December 08, 2007

crazy asian rotoscope man/ Superman 2 special edition

Haven't updated in awhile: crazy uninteresting family matters I won't bore you all with.

On the creative side, I've been getting addicted to learning Aftereffects and have been tooling around with rotoscoping and compositing- it's been really fun learning what's possible and cleaning up one of THE biggest giant disappointments of my childhood: the Superman 2 film.

In my teen years, I'd obsess about 'fixing' that film using the old vcr-to-vcr method of barbaric analog editing: now, with Aftereffects and Final Cut Pro (not to mention more advanced 3d programs)- I've been falling in love with how to 'fix' that film as best possible... may take awhile, but on the plus side, more practice is better.

The challenge has been how to find enough available footage of Superman and the Phantom Zone Criminals (as well as background elements) that can work to do a 'George Lucas' to the film.... and without reusing the same damn shot over and over and over again (though I aleady know it's unavoidable as there are so few 'flying' shots of the criminals in that film.)

Anyhow, here are two tests I've done so far.




Hope all are well and wish y'all a great holiday... looking forward to '08!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The long neglected blogspot

Hurm.
Basically, been in the battle to balance life so that I can start devoting myself daily to the LOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNGGG climb of drawing/writing again.

The "Buffy" sketch was pretty damn lame, but it was a rush job on a Wacom tablet I'd never used before- and I wanted to turn in SOMETHING for fun for the SDCC program book.

What's been happening of late?
Well, mostly in between life obligations (of which there's too many), I've been diving more and more into reading books about comic writers and artists' both on the industry once you get inside it (much uglier than it looks on the surface, not dissimiliar to working at McDonald's, with the petty politics, but less grease) and on the struggles to create what you have in mind, without editorial interference.

A good number of people that I've hung around with have been more into the amateur filmmaking/wannabe pro filmmaking over the last few years--- mixed successes. I still so far to go on my own "1000 bad films before you do a good one" list... *sigh*...

Yeah, "Vangelis" was a 40 minute project, and the one before was about 50-60 minutes with a lot of locations and scenes, but they were more about "starting what you finish regardless and learning in the process"--- and so, there's reason to be proud of something so far out of your control, but..... the results are something that still screams 'amateur', and that's painful but as time goes by, I think somewhat understandable because so many elements were being juggled with no money to cushion disasters.

Anyhow, the aspiration for 2007 is to wrap up old projects film-wise (I still have 80 hours of edits and many many special effects to deal with) and clear the slate for 2008 and start back into my first love--- writing/drawing comics, whilst balancing the books and paying the rent.

On the plus side, I think of two things:
Paul Gulacy (from what I've read) is not a rich man, but he's got a body of work that's somewhat immortalized for all time in comix history.
Rob Liefield has a lot of money. So what?

Life's short. The day is short. I'm short.
Regardless of whether you succeed or fail, ya gotta do the work in order to get better.

I just wish I hadn't dropped out of the race so many times in the past or gotten discouraged... o well.
Each day is a gift, don't waste it.