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12ft Orc Statue,
Blizzcon 2009, & VES Award!
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added | tuesday February 24th, 2009
11:43pm pst
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A great start to the
2009 so far at Blizzard Entertainment.
We just won
our second Visual
Effects Society award for Best Pre-rendered Game Cinematic last
weekend, with our director Jeff Chamberlain taking his second statue
home, and producer Philip Hillenbrand getting his first. Congrats
to them and our team for the great work for Wrath of the Lich King
cinematic! I had the great chance to meet legendary VFX Supervisor,
Dennis Muren and Lord of the Rings famed actor Andy Serkis there as
well. The photos of the event below:
Blizzcon
2009 has also been announced, bigger, and better than the previous,
this round it will take up the entire Anaheim Convention center! August
21-22, save the dates! Tickets will be on sale soon, buy them fast,
they go record breakingly quick.
Also after almost two years of being at the Blizzard campus, our
courtyard has been empty with a dirt square, but no longer...yesterday
Mike Morhaime unveiled our epic 12 foot orc statue, an extremely
detailed version of our Christmas gift two years back of the employee
only bronze orc statue.
It was crafted in New Zealand by Weta Workshop,
then shipped to China for the bronzing and finishing, then back here in
6 different pieces. Overseen by our cinematic director, Nick
Carpenter, it's as awesome as can be and will later be surrounded by
the Blizzard motto and work ethics as the cement is laid in.
Check out the photos and video below of the event. Also note how the
sun rays peak out when Nick speaks...symbolism?!
Orc Statue Unveiling
with Mike Morhaime & Nick Carpenter
Orc Statue Walk Around
Footage
Photos
of the Orc Statue Unveiling
It's funny though, the City of Irvine required Blizzard to make the
statue to withstand 8.0+ earthquakes, Hurricane force winds, and not
break should anyone try to mount it. It also had to be
environmentally safe since it was bronze, and not have anything leak
into the ground, so a broad cement foundation was needed.
CGTanra.com has asked me
to be one of their judges
for their monthly Matte
Painting challenges, I was honored to partake! Check it out
for all arists aspiring and professional for the matte painting
community.
Finally my next matte painting workshop is
starting again in March 02 to April 26, 2009. It's already full
unfortunately, but will be doing another sometime after the
summer. I look forward to seeing the new batch of students soon,
and I'll be posting some of the great student work on my website in the
future.
Hope you all had some fun holidays!
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WoW: WOTLK Launches,
Sells 2.8 Million Copies!
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added | sunday November 23rd, 2008
10:46pm pst |
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Lots of exciting
things have transpired since the last post! BlizzCon 2008 has
come and gone, this time the Starcraft II Trilogy has been announced,
along with a 1 minute sneak peak of the cinematic intro to Starcraft
II's game. BlizzCon this year sold out in a matter of minutes,
then a 3,000 ticket lottery was up for sale and that sold out soon
too. About 15,000 people showed up this year, it was super packed
let me tell you. The Main hall, if you were late for a few
minutes for a big event, you couldn't even get to stand in!
Check out some of my Flickr
photos of the event.
Also World of
Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King was just released last year with
another record breaking sales: in 24 hours, it sold 2.8 million
copies breaking the previous fastest selling game, WoW: Burning
Crusade's 2.4 million copies! We are now at 11,000,000 active
users and growing, it's been an amazing year for Blizzard and World of
Warcraft fans.
I was lucky enough to be at the developer's midnight release signings
at Fry's, Anaheim. We were there till 10am to 5:30am, but nothing
compared to some of the fans who stayed two days earlier camping out
non stop! The pictures for that here.
I'm also happy to announce that I got promoted this year to Senior
Cinematic Artist! Thanks to the producers, directors, and team at
Blizzard who have made it such an awesome place to work for. I
was lucky enough to have some of my work published in the Cinematic Art
of Wrath of the Lich King art book that was sold at BlizzCon.
Here are some of the artwork that got printed in the book:
Check them and other artwork from Wrath of the Lich King in the Matte Painting section.
If you like soundtrack music, some great scores by Derek Duke, Glenn
Stafford and Russel
Brower have it up on iTunes.
The CGWorkshop for my Matte Painting
class has also come to a close, another great round of enthusiastic
students. The 8 weeks have gone by so fast! I'll be posting a
gallery of the best work from the class soon. My next class will
probably be around late Feburary or early March of 2009. Stay tuned by
signing up for the CGWorkshop newsletter here.
D'Artiste:
Matte Painting 2 book has finally shipped from Ballistic Publishing!
I am proud to have four of my matte paintings selected and published
for this print. Check it out and support the arts with a purchase!
Cheers to everyone this Holiday Season!
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Updated Reels,
Comp/Matte Pages, CGWorkshop
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added | saturday September 6th, 2008
4:13pm pst
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It's been a while
since I've updated my comp reel, website images for the comp and matte
painting pages...ever since I've departed R&H!
So after the big release of Wrath of the Lich King cinematic,
Starcraft 2 of
last year, and the opening of my CGWorkshop
again, I thought it was time for an update.
There are now two features on the front page, since I have neglected
the Starcraft 2 shots (so naughtily), in addition to the latest Wrath
of
the Lich King shots I got to finish.
Updated compositing reel here in h.264: Hi-Res
| iPod
And matte painting reel here: Hi-Res
| iPod
Check out the Compositing and Matte Painting sections with
the latest finished images of cinematics.
I was also going to promote my updated and repeat of the matte painting
workshop by CGSociety.org, but
within two days it already was full! Last workshop in January
went pretty smoothly and the students seemed to have enjoyed the
material very much. I hope to be doing another successful 8 weeks
with the students around the world again!
And finally my visitor's log (no longer called a guest book to thwart
those spam bots!) has been upgraded and working again since last
December, view/sign in here!
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World of Warcraft:
Wrath of the Lich King Cinematic
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added | thursday August 21st, 2008
10:05pm pst
Wrath of the
Lich King painting by Wei Wang
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The cinematics are
coming much quicker than before as we get better and better at our new
pipeline, still the same
amount of work was poured into making it look as best as it can
be.
It was announced today at the Games
Conference in Leipzig, Germany at 1pm their time with phenomenal
fans supporting and cheering as it played. I wish I was there to
see it play for the first time internationally, but the Euro cost so
much now a days, couldn't plan in time to visit Leipzig.
It was such an awesome experience working on this cinematic, almost a
year now since I came aboard, and I got to do so much. I was very
lucky to be closely working with the director, Jeff Chamberlain, and
Sheng Jin my finishing lead, to get the epic look we wanted. I'd
like to thank them and the team to being so great and getting things
looking great.
For this project, I got to do some look development, pre-lighting,
lighting, rendering, compositing, and some matte painting. Arthas
got to own my soul for the duration of his cinematic!
Download
the HD Cinematic Here (98mb): Mac
| PC
View
the Streaming Versions of Cinematic Here
As you can see, we
went away from the montage approach in the two
previous WoW cinematics, and was going back to the more storytelling
aspects of the Warcraft
3 cinematics Blizzard so famously did years
ago. I thought it was a great idea, and it turned out to be one
fun
and great cinematic. Going through school and watching those awesome
Warcraft 3 cinematics, being inspired, and now getting to work on a
Warcraft cinematic on this scale, is truly something to be proud of.
This cinematic was also done using Renderman, Nuke, and Maya.
Modeling was done
in Mudbox and 3D Studio Max along with Maya. We learned a lot
through
this project as pipeline is concerned, so many new tools were developed
and shader improvements, especially ice and metal.
Congratulations to the Blizzard Film Department!
Now get ready for BlizzCon
'08 and the things to come in October, see you there ^_^
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Blizzard's Diablo 3
Announced - Cinematic Released!
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added | saturday June 28th, 2008
3:45pm pst
The Return of
the Diablo Franchise, 2008
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It's almost been a
year since we released our last cinematic, "How to Make a Better
Marine" teaser trailer for Starcraft 2 in Korea. Now we proudly present
our newest installment, the teaser to Diablo
3!
I know many fans have been
awaiting for the game update, and it's finally a reality.
Announced at the Worldwide
Invitational in Paris, France, it had a very warm welcome on the
big screen there. I wish I would have been able to go!
The Diablo 3 cinematic was modeled, animated, and lit half in Maya,
half in 3D Studio Max, and rendered using Brazil and Renderman.
Diablo 3 is the first cinematic Blizzard
has done using our new Renderman/Maya/Nuke pipepline.
Download
the HD Cinematic Here (50mb): Mac
| PC
View the Streaming Versions of the:
Cinematic, Gameplay, and Artwork
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R&H Wins an Oscar,
WoW: BC Cinematic Wins VES!
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added | wed February 27th, 2008
11:56am pst |
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Congrats to Rhythm & Hues and other VFX houses
who worked on 2007's The Golden Compass for the Oscar
win! So proud of being able to work there previously. I was
lucky enough to work right after they got nominated for The Chronicles
of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, in which Aslan and
their effects astonished me when I watched the demo reel on film
multiple times in the theater room. It was a big inspiration while
working there.
Also three cheers for our very own Jeff Chamberlain, who directed last
year's World
of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade cinematic, and Scott Abeyta,
Executive Producer, as well as the great team at Blizzard for working on the awesome
trailer who won Outstanding
Cinematic for Games award from The Visual Effects Society!
We've just moved into the new campus at Blizzard as well, which
includes a gym, basketball court, vollyeball court, cafeteria, museum
and store. I'll be posting some pictures of the place after we
have open house on March 8th!
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Teaching Matte
Painting Class at CGWorkshop.com!
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added | tuesday January 22st, 2008
9:58m pst
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Welcome to 2008!
I'm proud to announce the open enrollment of my matte painting class
hosted by CGWorkshop,
part of the acclaimed CGSociety/CGTalk network of artists
worldwide. I'm very excited to be able to share my knowledge
about the
craft and greatly appreciate the opportunity. It will be intermediate to advanced level
using Photoshop, compositing, and 3D programs. You can sign up here.
They
also host a great variety of other classes for your personal enrichment
of all fields of the CG pipeline.
My matte painting demo reel has
been updated to include Hidden Valley.
Also, the Academy of Art University
has a
feature article of my work and career as an alumni, which can be viewed
here.
Hoc3d.com, a Vietnamese CG
learning website, has written a small blurb about me as well, which can
be read here.
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New Matte Painting and
Project
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added | sunday October 21st, 2007
4:43m pst |
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Been a while since I had time to do
another matte painting. This one was done for the D'Artiste Matte
Painting 2. I'm honored to have a couple of pieces included in
the new book, including the new Hidden Valley.
Check out the book when it arrives at Ballistic Publishing Online
in a few months with a bunch of great artists. Included in this
edition are master judges Dusso, Chris Thunig, and Max Dennison.
Also now working on Blizzard's next cinematic, the second expansion to
World of Warcraft -- Wrath
of the Lich King!
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BlizzCon Tomorrow +
Updated Reel with SC2 |
added | thursday August 2nd, 2007
9:50am pst
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I hope some of the Blizzard fans got to
get some tickets to this weekend's BlizzCon
before they sold out in a couple of days! It's gonna be
a my first time as well, and I'm sure it will be pretty exciting!
Demo reel updated with Starcraft 2 material, check it out here. Also the Guestbook is
back up after almost a year! Sign in here.
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Starcraft 2 Announced
with Cinematic Teaser!!
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added | tuesday May 19th, 2007
7:50pm pst
Tychus, from Starcraft 2 Cinematic Teaser, 2007
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Almost 10 years since the original
Starcraft game has been released Blizzard announces Starcraft
2 in Seoul Korea May 19th.
The game I've grown up with and inspired with through their great
gameplay and awesome cinematic cut scenes.
It's finally arrived, and I'm proud to have worked on it with such
great artists!! Check out the HD Cinematic Teaser and Gameplay ,
also the Artwork Video Here.
Korea was a blast! Being
at the Blizzard Worldwide
Invitational in Seoul as it was
announced was a once in a life time experience. Congrats to all
those involved with this project!
Check out the video coverage of the event and the replays of the great
games played at the tournament for Starcraft, Warcraft 3, and World of
Warcraft: Arena.
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Updated Demo Reel and
CGChosen Magazine
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added | monday May 7th, 2007
9:20pm pst |
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Summer block-busters are here! Spiderman 3
just opened with another record breaker $151 million dollars last
weekend! Pirates 3, Transformers, Harry Potter 5, and more will be
coming to share the wealth.
Also, the announcement of a new Blizzard
product in two weeks at the Worldwide
Invitational in Seoul, Korea; be sure to keep your ears open for
that exciting moment!! Updates: New demo
reel with Night at the Museum footage, and images in the Compositing section.
And the second issue of 3Dm3.com's CGChosen
online magazine is out, featuring my Neverending Story: The Renewal
super short film for their Fantasy theme among other artists.
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Night at the
Museum/WoW: BC Cinematic out!
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added | tuesday December 26th, 2006
5:00pm pst
Draenei, WoW: Burning Crusade Cinematic, 2006
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Happy Holidays Everyone! This
weekend Night at the Museum comes out in theaters. I just saw it
, and it looks great! Nice family movie with alot of fun VFX done from
R&H, Orphanage, and Rainmaker! Congrats on being in the top 7 VFX
films for this year on the Oscar
Bake-Off list!
Also The World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Cinematic has been out a
few weeks now as well (which looks quite awesome! Good Job all at
Blizzard!!), check it out in HD if you haven't seen it yet here.
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Superman DVD Out!
Updated Reel
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added | monday December 4th, 2006
9:00pm pst
Superman Returns, Fortress of Solitude, Fox 2006
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Bryan Singer's latest superhero movie,
Superman Returns, has come out on DVD! New shots added in the Compositing section.
I also updated my demo reel with new Superman footage, reflected in the
Demo Reel section.
Three more weeks until the last movie I worked on, Night at the Museum,
opens up in theatres, big T-Rex, funny holiday movie!
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R&H Poof, now
joined Blizzard Entertainment!
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added | tuesday November 7th, 2006
9:37pm pst
Ilidan
the Terror, from WC3:FT Cinematic, 2002
Tauren Shaman, from WoW Cinematic,
2004
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It's been a great 10 months at Rhythm & Hues! I'm very
grateful
for the opportunity to meet such great people and to participate in the
first Compositing Apprenticeship, which lead to three great projects.
From my supervisors, to co-workers there, thanks for the very memorable
place.
After the slew of movies that R&H would have gotten for this winter
but instead, went to
the UK, alot of us had to leave the great studio. It was sad, but
a good thing as well.
Because of that, a window opened to me to achieve one of
my dream studios, a place that has inspired me to do what I do
today, through playing their games, and watching their groundbreaking
cinematics.
The new studio is like the Pixar
or Harvard of game
studios, Blizzard Entertainment!
The perfect blend of cinematic vision, creative freedom, and gaming
entertainment studio, it was a long career goal of mine, and I thank
the people who helped me get here!
Today was my second day at work as a cinematics Compositor/Matte
Painter, and it was very unique.
At the end of the day, we had a newbie
(us four new hires) vs veteran coworkers battle with nerf guns given to
us by our producer Scott! Some cheated, they had automatic machine nerf
guns!! Thanks for the "introduction" ^^;
I look emphatically forward to Blizzard being my new home and to
be continually inspired by
the work that is produced here.
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Garfield 2 images
posted! New Reel
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added | thursday October 18th, 2006
10:49pm pst |
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A Tail of Two Kitties DVD is now out in
time for the holiday season. Check out the new feature in the Compositing Section of
Garfield, the ever mischievious cat!
Also redid demo reel, added Garfield 2 material in the Demo Reel section.
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Matte Painting Reel
added!
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added | saturday September 9th, 2006
9:03pm pst |
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Finally had the time to cut together my
matte painting reel. It now stands beside my compositing reel
with embedded H.264 Quicktime video. Check it out in the Demo Reel section and feel free to
leave any comments and and be sure to have sound up! I'm a big fan of
editing to music =0
Thanks for viewing!
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Official Night at
Museum Website unveiled
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added | wednesday August 23, 2006
9:03pm pst
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We're on super crunch time now, less than
two months till delivery date! But here's the opening of the new website here! (flash
required to enter)
Compositing wise,
the show has nasty greenscreens that are multi colored and sometimes
not even green...reflections all over the shiny museum floor are also
being a bugger for a CG shots, but things are looking great so far!
Official poster here too ^_^
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Night at the Museum
Trailer!
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added | thursday July 20, 2006
7:10pm pst
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After working on the trailer for about 3
weeks here, we finally get to see it out in theaters! Some have seen it
during the Pirates of the Carribean 2 movie (awesome fx by the way ILM!
Davey Jones was truely award winning), and some have not, like my
friends and I =(
We eagerly awaited, but it didn't play! So finally I saw it on the
internet, here it is! I just worked on one shot, the part where Ben
Stiller throws the bone towards camera and T-Rex chases after it!
Night at the museum will be out in theaters this Holiday season.
Check out the trailer here!
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R&H Spotlighted for
Marlon Brando Crystal FX!
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added | tuesday June 20, 2006
7:03pm pst
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Walt Jones, a lead lighter on Superman
Returns, created this breakdown of Marlon Brando's head, which was used
in the upcoming movie as a visual effect. Orignally done for Siggraph
'06 presentation, when shown to Brian Singer, he was so awestruck
that
he will feature it in the DVD, sources say. He even went out of
the way to get the music license to the background music, which was
from Warner Bros.' Terminator 3. It was even allowed to be leaked
onto the internet for promotion of the movie, and Rhythm &
Hues.
I think it was very well done and shows all the work involved to get
something to look the way it does on a movie, congrats to all involved!
Here are some links to it:
Rhythm
& Hues featured on Aintitcool.com
Cinematical.com's
Article on Marlon Brando's Head
CGtalk.com
thread on Marlon Brando and R&H
Direct Link to Movie | Here
| 39mb quicktime
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Night at the Museum,
and Final Garfield 2 Trailer
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added | tuesday June 6, 2006
10:01pm pst
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It's been a hectic schedule, but we
finally finished up Superman Returns! It was really great working with
all of Superman crew, and I'll see them when they come back from
their long vacations, they totally deserve it after being on the show
for months, some almost a year!
Now I'm currently working
on Night at the Museum,
and perhaps a trailer to be linked up here
soon! It's a fun movie, lots of characters, MASSIVE, blue/green
screen comps...it's like Jumanji or Zathura but inside the Museum, when
at night, they all come alive and duke it out! Starring Ben Stiller,
Robin Williams, and Owen Wilson, due out this holiday 2006.
Garfield 2 opening in a
few weeks, here's the final trailer, enjoy =0
Garfield
2 Final Trailer
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Superman VFX, 1 week left, 1 month till
premiere
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added | monday May 29th, 2006
11:06pm pst
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Right after Garfield 2, I was very
fortunate to jump onto Superman Returns!
Rhythm and Hues is finishing up the Fortress of Solitude, Ocean and
boat sequences in the movie. A very complex and demanding
movie! I've come on board to help finish the show with two weeks
left, and about 4 weeks left until the premiere of the long awaited DC
comic book based movie from director Bryan Singer.
I'm also excited to be working with Alp Altiner on one of my shots,
a great matte painter who I got to meet last year at Siggraph, and also
Dylan Cole while
at Rhythm and Hues. Very cool to see people such as them in media
while in school then finally getting to work with them after my art
school! The whole team at R&H is an inspiration to me.
Check
out the Superman Returns trailers here:
Teaser
| Trailer
| International
Trailer | Final
Trailer
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New 2006 Demo Reel, UW2 Shots Up!
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added | saturday April 1st, 2006
6:44pm pst |
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Also the official Garfield: A Tail
of Two Kitties trailer is out. Watch it before Ice Age 2 the movie this
weekend, I'll find the link to it soon...
I've finally got
my shots from Luma Pictures as well for VFX work on Underworld
Evolution, check it out in the compositing
section, now featured on the website (R.I.P Temple of
Knowledge). Some before and afters posted along with some select
shot videos (in H.264 Quicktime 7
format)
The new demo reel is up, with my first professional work
integrated! Lots of rotoscoping, digital paint, and some compositing
work. See it streaming or download it in DiVX / Quicktime full
res.
All of the 2005 news has also been archived into it's own page,
it was getting too long on the front. The Misc. Stuff section has
also been updated (where the links now reside).
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Garfield 2 International Teaser Released
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added | thursday March 23rd, 2006
10:18pm pst |
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The new Garfield 2: A Tail of Two
Kitties international teaser trailer is out! A few shots of
Garfield on which R&H worked on, but the real trailer will be
coming out in a few weeks with lotsa greatlooking shots!
Also just got my
Underworld Evolution shots for demo reel, so updates are coming big
soon!
Download
the teaser here (Quicktime Video)
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Silent Hill for Luma, Hio Rhythm &
Hues! |
added | sunday January 8th, 2006
8:57pm pst
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What an amazing five months it has been
at Luma Pictures.
My first studio in the industry, a very memorable one, and very
honorable one. It was a pleasure working there, my thanks to Ian
and
Payam who gave me a chance.
To the hilarious model/texture crew room, the cool lunch crew, a
slew
of senior coworkers there who helped me learn the ropes (Amy, Steve,
James, Pavel, Andy). To David #1 the great and strange one who
re-named me, Glenn my producer, Austin, Bryan, Joey and Thana
roto/paint team.
Thanks to Miguel, Pete, Cajun, Wendy, Ben, Ahmed, and Tim for
making
my first days at Luma the coolest (even when the days were so
hot!)
Underworld 2 has been delivered, Silent Hill
is starting at Luma, and now I venture into a new land. I now join Rhythm and Hues studios in Marina
Del Ray (but
they're really in "LA") for the company's first Compositing Apprentice
Program! They'll be teaching us ICY (similar to Shake's
compositing program) and other proprietary software at R+H, then we
will be comping shots for Garfield 2. R+H has just finished
working on The Chronicles of Narnia, and now on Garfield 2, Charlotte's
Web, Fast and the Furious 3, and Superman.
Also a new matte painting, Garden
of Simon,
uploaded, from Origin an upcoming indie feature.
Btw, Underworld 2 opens January 20th =) hope you guys have fun
with
it! I'm hoping to be updating the website with UW2 shots around the
20th...o ah!
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