ALIEN INVASION TAKE TWO

A while back I started working with photographer Cade Martin on a collaboration where he was looking for a spaceship to go with his beautiful retro woman from Mars (she must be from the French part of Mars), anyways it was fun and the image is somewhere in the portfolio section. This one here is a take that wasnt quite the final that Cade liked, but I thought I share. I modelled the breathing tube in Cinema, using a succession of - appropriately enough I think - oil tank shapes along a spline, or a bunch of splines really since I wasnt sure how far the spaceship is into the distance. Then played with it in the new Hypershot until I had something that felt like the right angle and feel.

ICON PORN

Nice to see that someone is paying attention, and nicer yet to see the otherwise obscure Xsan icon get a little press on Cult of Mac. Although I don't think there was any intent to have anyone misuse them like this. But hey, if you must. Here's the link to the Cult of Mac article with a close-up gallery of many more icons. Bring your own tissues.

WHAT RECESSION?

We’re too busy to worry and are looking for an extremely talented and 5+ years experienced Photoshop and Cinema 4D artist for high-end print advertising work. You may be able to compensate for experience with genuine hunger. But keep in mind it's not a junior or training position. Reviewing books of qualified candidates now... email resume and a portfolio link.

DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A SONG TO ME

August is just about over and just in time, I received this photo in my inbox. Thanks, Kate. Promised to keep you in the loop on the outcome of this assignment, well, here it is. And, yes, that's Bryan Davis, the photographer there... taking in the exposure. If you want to take a closer look, you can check it out on Howard and 2nd Streets in San Francisco.







Keep an eye out for the other hurler, it should be popping up today also.

LEARNING SOMETHING NEW

When we were first offered to work on this project with Bryan Davis, my first reaction was "That's disgusting!" It's about a sea of rats and an office full of what Kate politely referred to as "yuck" and me I was thinking something closer to this. But once we really embraced it... figuratively of course... questions came up: Are rats wet or dry? What PMS number is bile? What does a keyboard look like if you dip it in battery acid? Does sulphuric acid cause a carpet to catch on fire? So you start looking for reference... from chemical spills, to college binge drinking to exploding laptops, just to discover... these textures are amazing! And really nothing quite like what you expect when you get started. The other fun part of accepting this challenge is shooting HDRI at a photoshoot with a rat dompteur and discovering that rats do a better job when praised. I guess it's true... you learn something new every day.




At the photoshoot with Claude, Bryan, Owen, and Kate.




Our rats are not quite as cute and it makes no difference whether you praise them. Stay tuned for the final outcome of this mess.

COOL 4D INSTALLATION

It's been a while since I've had a chance to make an entry, gone subsurface to work on some cool stuff we can't talk about. Good thing there is some art out there we can talk about, like this incredibly precise 4D installation, my friend Aurelio shared with me...



Created by Urbanscreen. Germans... figures. Enjoy!

PHOTOSHOP 3D

Spent a little quality time with my old pal Photoshop, maybe because he's the least flakey or maybe because he loves me unconditionally... in any case, the new 3D functions were something of interest to me for a while, and I finally found the time to play with it, thanks to Lynda who has a course on the matter. The most surprising and fun tool I discovered is the image based modeling, which is where you can create an extrusion based on gray values in an image, i.e. white is high and black is low... great for creating landscapes, mountains or cities on the quick and cheap. You'll find that under 3D > New Mesh from Grayscale > Plane.


Make sure you start with an RGB image, not too high res, and check out the New Mesh from Grayscale > Cylinder and Sphere too. Pretty cool what you can do with this.

HIGH AS A KITE — ABOVE NEW YORK

A photographer friend of mine, Chris Conroy, sent me this amazing link allowing you to immerse yourself in New York. It was the final push for me to get a ticket and make that trip to New York, the trip I've been putting off for so long. But that's another post altogether... stay tuned.

2009 WEBSITE REFRESH

Thrilled and relieved to announce the new Raygun website with new work for 2009, and many small refinements and improvements. Thank you Monste from yummyink for getting my blog out of the starting blocks and thank you Claudia, Carolina, José and Sue from tompertdesign for an amazing job on the design and the Flash presentation and the tenacity to stick through all of my endless refinements and changes of mind. I hope you feel it was worth it.

So what's new besides the portfolio? One of the new links on top is a sitemap, just for you Kate (and anybody else who wants to see all the work on one page in 2 seconds). New, too, is a link to request the printed book as well as a direct link to iTunes where you can download our Raygun app, check it out, it's only $0.00.

And then there's a link to this Blog, a space where I am planning to provide a look inside the plasma chamber of Raygun, share timesuck links and show work in progress of interesting projects as they happen, rather than put them off until the annual portfolio refresh. And, yes, I am aware that the link here to the website and the link back on the homepage to this blog is what they call an Infinite Loop. Hope you don't get trapped...

KUTIMAN

What you are about to see is a mix of seemingly unrelated YouTube clips composited together to create a unique and new work of art, called Thru You. It's amazing, and amazing too, the creativity of Kutiman, who is behind this eclectic composition of videos and sounds. And I just love that Steely Dan drummer who opens this thing... "The Mother of All Funk Chords"

OBSERVING WATER

This project has been a collaboration with photographer Claudia Goetzelmann. The idea behind was creating an aura of water around the model standing on different postures. 3D techniques were important on this scene in order to keep the model "out of the water" without damaging her make-up, hair style and shooting set. Observing the water falling has been one of the main assets on this project. A wide H2O research, studying the light, textures, shapes, movements, speed, etc. You are thirsty, aren't you?

WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE

Sand, jungle and snow... were the ingredients for this latest Land Rover outdoor campaign. Kurt Geisler from Y&R who concepted and art directed this billboard went to see the final installation on this cold winter night in New York City and sent me this picture. I love how the snow board fades into the night sky. I am really happy the message is in such a great place!

BEFORE & AFTER

On the right you can see the final digital retouched piece. Ready to mark the seven differences?

TURNING DAY INTO NIGHT

I think just about every retoucher in the Bay Area has been asked to work on this Sprint campaign by Goodby, it's just such a vast campaign, I guess. Here we were asked to find out whether we could get away with a NASCAR shot that was taken in the day time and turn it into a night time shot, then create the trademark light swirls that make up the monster cars. I thought it looked halfway decent, but in the end, the time was found to do a shoot at night after all.

NEW GILETTE BODY WASH COMMERCIAL

New Gillette Body Wash commercial. In this case the 3D has been used to cover the body of the model while having a shower. Movement, texture, speed, shape, anatomy and color have been the challenges to accomplish.

INSIDE OUT / OUTSIDE IN

Piece written by Jamie Kripke.

I had the opportunity to work with the insanely talented Michael Tompert of Raygun on this ad for EA's new game. It was a very cool experience to collaborate with another artist that looks at things so differently. As someone that creates 3D objects from scratch, he views things from the inside out, where as a photographer, I look at things the opposite way. This was totally fascinating to me, and has changed how I now look at objects.

For the record, Michael was hired by Heat (via Kate Chase) to create the image, and I was there to shoot photographic elements, and to create the feel and mood that would translate to the main image. We rented the Alameda airstrip and wet it down with a water truck, then arranged the cars into a rough approximation of the layout. We waited for the light to be just right, then started shooting like crazy in order to capture as many elements as we could. Which looked kind of like this:

Michael also did shots of everything from the car's POV so he could get the reflections right. We also did shots of the car blasting through the scene on wet pavement to get details of how the water comes out off the wheels, which was really fun to shoot, and looks kind of like this:


Then we shot a million more frames of everything, and Michael went back to his studio with a bunch of jpegs (yes, jpegs) and started work on the final image. When he sent it to me I was totally blown away. It had been through a million rounds of art direction and retouching and had taken on a life of its own. I think it looks pretty killer, but have a hard time seeing my hand in this project.


Michael insists that I did create the mood that was the starting point for the image. I guess I'll take his word for it. I had a blast on this shoot, and am hoping to do more of this kind of work.

SANTA'S VISIT

Santa Claus took some holidays this year and he decided to visit us coming all the way to California. I took him down to Santa Cruz, CA. He could not get enough surfing. That's the Christmas card I created in his honor the past 2008. Finally, he enjoyed the sun and the waves of the Pacific Ocean.