Gnomon: The Making of Guardians of the Galaxy

This past Thursday I had a chance to trek up to Hollywood and visit Gnomon for their “The Making of Guardians of the Galaxy” presentation. Some really awesome artists were on hand to talk about their work and process. I was fortunate to get a great seat and really take in all of the information that Josh Herman, Andy Park, Jackson Sze, Anthony Francisco, Rodney Fuentebella and Charlie Wen shared with the group. Wish I could have taken some pictures. There’s a great recap with some pictures on Gnomon’s site.

After getting home I added a drawing of Groot to my “One Sketch a Day” sketchbook.

I am Groot!

I am Groot!

High School Inc – Sony Studios Tour

Yesterday I had the privilege of chaperoning some students from Valley High Schools New Media Academy to the Sony Studio’s lot in Culver City. Not your normal high school field trip that’s for sure. Day started out with a charter bus ride from Santa Ana to Culver City in a complete down pour. The rain finally lightened up as we arrived at the studio. Upon arrival we were greeted by some staff who brought us into their Digital Motion Picture Center on Stage 7. Here the kids were treated to some plush leather lounge chairs and a presentation on some of the current camera hardware that Sony has been developing for 4k film production. The students learned some of the technical details behind cameras, lenses and image resolution. During this part of the presentation, some of the high end cameras were passed around for the kids to look at. Afterwards, the kids were brought to a test shoot set. Here they were given some insight into how sets were built and some of the tricks used during filming. The kids were surprised to learn that they don’t film inside a real house and that what you see through the windows is really a picture that is lit to make it appear like it’s outside. Next stop, the Sony Store and the the commissary for a snack. Before heading back to the bus we stopped by the Coffee Bean & Teal Leaf that was on the campus. Nice to get a hot drink on a cold, starting to rain again day.

All in all, it was a great field trip and I don’t think I’ve seen high school students so attentive to a presentation. There didn’t even appear to be any cell phone distractions during the presentations. There certainly were many cell phone pictures taken during the day, which were probably posted all over the internet shortly there after.

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MB Workshop LA2013 – Recap

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This gallery contains 34 photos.

So the other weekend I had the chance to go to the Massive Black Workshop held at Manhattan Beach Studios. It has taken me over a week to decompress and I’m sure that I will continue to pull knowledge and … Continue reading

Space Monkey Model

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This gallery contains 4 photos.

I worked on this space monkey model a few months back going through a Digital Tutors tutorial. I don’t get to do much organic modeling, let alone characters at my day job, so it was a nice change of pace. … Continue reading

MB Workshop LA

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Just signed up to go to the MB Workshop coming up, December 5-8. Looking forward to multiple days of awesome demonstrations, mind exploding inspiration and more learning and skill development in a couple of days than I might get in a year. I’ve wanted to go to one of these workshops for the last few years, but they have never been close enough to home to allow me to go.

If you have the time to go, you should do it. If you’re already going or plan to go, let me know so we can meet up.
http://massiveblack.com/workshop/

SIGGRAPH – Day 4

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Yesterday was day 4 and it started off with a great behind the scenes talk covering shots from Iron Man 3. So much absolutely incredible work done by the folks who made that movie. Like a lot if the talks, no recording of the session was allowed. However, they did have 4 awesome maquette models of the suits up at the front which we were allowed to get pictures of.
Afterwards, on my way to the exhibit hall I ran into a good friend of mine, Chris DeSt Jeor. Who, I found out was presenting at the “Dailies” for some of his work on the Croods. Spent the afternoon checking out the exhibit hall and catching up, until it was time for his presentation. The dailies was a really fun session. A bunch of people went up and gave a 2 minute pitch about some of the work they did, the problems they encountered and how they solved them.
Day 5 is today… And unfortunately I won’t be attending the last day. However the past 4 days have been awesome. I have learned a lot, realized how much more I need to learn and have been inspired to continue to learn and develop my skills as a creative professional. Looking forward to see how my experience influences my work as I process and decompress everything that I have absorbed over the past few days. To those of you that I have met over the past few days, thank you, it was a pleasure getting to know you and I hope to see you around.

SIGGRAPH – Day 2

What a great day. Further reinforcement of the need for me to develop more skills within the mobile development arena. Met some great people at a birds of a feather event. Saw some awesome work at the computer animation festival. Enjoyed some networking at the after hours social event.
Looking forward to another day of inspiration and learning.

SIGGRAPH 2013

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I have the pleasure of attending SIGGRAPH with a full conference pass this year, thanks to a colleague of mine at work. We’ll see how many days I actually get to go based upon workload at work. But I’m not going to think about that right now… Looking forward to a lot of learning and checking out what people all over the world have been doing within the field of computer graphics, visual effects and interactive content.

Day 1 will be spent taking a Unity class. I’ve been learning Unity on my own for a little while now. Between online tutorials and trial and error, I’d say I’ve figured out a lot on my own. Having an instructor lead class will hopefully bring a lot of that knowledge together.

More updates to come…

New Media Academy

For the past 6+ months I’ve had the pleasure of being a business partner for Valley High School’s New Media Academy in Santa Anna. The other week they put on an appreciation celebration for the business partners, where we got to hear from faculty and students how our involvement had a positive affect on the students, program and campus in general. I have always enjoyed being able to give back to the arts. This experience has once again shown me that even a little bit of time can make a big difference to others.

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Gnomon Live – April 2013

I’m up, bright and early so I can make my way up to Hollywood to attend a 2 day workshop hosted by Gnomon School of VFX (Gnomon Live!). It’s going to have 10 instructors and be full of all sorts of awesome learning and inspiration. Looking forward to hearing so many talented folks talk about their work and process while being surrounded by like minded artist and maybe a few new friends.

I’m sure there will be more updates and pictures to follow over the next few days.