FX Wars #14, First Previz!

Awright! Here's my first previz for my fx wars sequence. It's gonna be in the open category. Not going to have much time for modelling, so I'm gonna try to do as much as possible in post.

www.alvinvfx.com/temp/fxWarsPreviz01.zip

=)

Oldie Cameras!

I came across this site called Junk Store Cameras, the owner reviews and used a whole chunk of old cameras, it's both interesting and entertaining! You have to check out the Gala Section!

http://junkstorecameras.com/

And the gala section @ http://merrillphoto.com/galacollection.htm

3D Scanner from ya webcam!

Got this hit whilst searching for stuff at work, it looks extremely interesting. All you need is a webcam (I think my DV Cam may work better? Not sure if it has wdm drivers...) and a little time to set up a calibrated platform for the object to work with.

http://www.cs.tu-bs.de/rob/david.html

I'm not a hardcore modeler, and for solo projects, it may be a great time saver. The mesh would probably need TONS of cleanup, but I'd just use it as a reference to get my proportions correct and re-model a new mesh over it.

Check this out!

Kaki left me a link to this cool clip on youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTi4zOdz09I

HK Post house and FX Wars!

http://www.digitalmagic.com.hk/galleries.html

And oh, FX Wars is starting up again @ CGTalk, the topic this time is Disintegration!

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=139&t=452203

Still haven't figured out which effects to do. I definitely have forgotten the effects from Indiana Jones, Mummy Returns and a few others. Don't have those on dvd, time to rent or buy?

Random Links

Funnies! http://www.dinoignacio.com/movies.html

Spent the weekend battling minor PC problems (-urge-to-format-strong-), but otherwise it's still rainy, and not much chance to bring my bike out and stretch my legs :(

I spend awhile today playing the flute again, it is simply a delight to be able to play along (or best as I could) with Scott August's New Fire album. The few songs I played along to were in G and F#, perfect for the new flute. I used to "play" parts of "Heart Of the Sky" (which is in the key of G) on my A flute, and it's a simple pleasure to be able to finally play in key. It's kinda like Karaoke, only with a musical instrument :)

"Mockingbird Canyon" was in F#, could keep up for the slower parts, but I'm still not used to the reach of the F# flute. I guess my paws aren't as big as I thought :P

I need to knock my head

The flute sound better now. Why? 'cause I was using a wrong fingering for the hi notes! Duh! I simply played my usual tunes exactly as my Sparrow Hawk on the new flute, but evidently, the fingering is slightly differnt.

Time for more practice :)

Flute Pics!

Here's a pic of my new AO PF Flute along side my training flute, a Sparrow Hawk from High Spirits. I've only spent about an hour on the new PF Flute, and am loving it. The finish is frankly, quite bad. Plus it doesn't look like the picture on the Amon Olorin Flutes website. It sound great, and as mentioned I can now play along with some of my favourite tracks. I think it is a great buy for two keys, and won't hesitate to recommend it. I'm going to be looking for leather strips of sorts to decorate this new flute :)

The key of G has a finger spacing quite larger than my Sparrow Hawk, so I'm still unable to perfectly cover all the holes, F# is quite a bit larger (check the pic!), and I am going to take a looong while before I can play on F# properly :) As mentioned before, the higher notes are quite easy to overblow, hope it's just my flute :)

Will post more pictures of the bird (or block) tomorrow :)

Yay, let's gripe.

Awright, haven't updated in months... what's new on my side? Nothing much, busy with work and all. If anything, I'm gonna be posting stuff here 'cause lots of guys in my office are posting stuff on their blogs too, so gonna join in the fun :)

Today's gripe: RAM. Took me about half an hour to figure out the post codes and all, seems like one of the pieces of ram in my main pc died. Yep. Was halfway through the Win2k (YES IT IS SO OLD) bootup, when it dropped to dos, and refused to boot. Spending some time on my dad's PC I figured the beeps then set things right. Now, i'm only on 1gb of ram, thankfully I'm not doing any heavy projects. Well that should change with the next VFX Wars on cgtalk :)

I just got my "belated" christmas present today! Yipee! It's a plastic NA Flute. I'll post pics, maybe even a YouTube test. For the NA Flute players, it's a two in one plastic flute with G and F# keys (woo!). G is totally lovely, I can now play along with some of Scott August's New Fire tracks... Love that CD. The G and F# are quite a different beast from my High Spirits A flute, for the first time, breath control became very important. I have to control my breathing significantly so as not to overblow the higher notes. The first few minutes of practice, I thought something was wrong with the flute, even took out my tuner, but it seems it's just operator error :)

Check back soon :)