Lazytown Post Production Crew

DSC_0128
Originally uploaded by wa_bash.

I've been browsing through old photos and found one. This was the orignal post-production crew of Lazytown Season 1. I find this very nostalgic, we are sitting/standing on the set of Sporticus' Airship.

Holidays

Oh the holidays are always a busy time and my blog has surely suffered from it. I'm still working at Buck looking forward to a nice Christmas Vacation in Colorado. Last weekend I was in New York with Lauire, we hit the streets and I got to see the madness downtown first hand...a really great time to be in the city!
Hope you all have a great Holiday!!! Much more blogging to come in 2007!

A great music video site found via motionographer.

donkey cake...works of art

Creativity never stops with Jeremy....even when the server goes down.

postrebel update

Nothing too flashy but a bit of a layout/navigation change. I'll be working on the reel and links to high-rez renders of renders, updating the models section, the photo section and the experimental section....but not now, for that matter not soon.

UNIKFREK

It is with my greatest pleasure to post content created by inspiring friends very dear to me. Expect to see more work from unikfrek, and check out her blog.....now.

antiquated textures

Check out this site. Some really nice 'old' world wall paper textures.

Buck: Budwieser: Pitch

My love for glass began with L_glass.

My Mental Ray

A resource that is going to be great. My Mental Ray is a site dedicated to Mental Ray enthusiasts. The site includes links to custom shaders, tutorials, forums, and a gallery. My favorite custom mental ray shader by the way is Lobber's Glass!

mk12

I know all of the usual sites posted on Mk12's recent reveal of their new trailer and site update. I'm not really worried about that. I just wanted to say keep your eyes on this company, I think they deserve a lot of viewer support....for good reason.

The Mill and SkyTV

I know this came out a while ago, I watched this piece again today and couldn't help but posting on it.

Buck & TV Land

Buck finished 3 spots for TVLand. I especially like the afro - to - icecream cone transition!

Marc Brunet

I was browsing CG portfolio's and Marc Brunet has some impressive digital paintings.

Petra Stefankova

I thought this artwork looked really cool, kind of like a modern take on Picasso. Perta Stefankova seems to really have control over lighting and texturing in 3d.

Project Squirrel

I'm currently working to create a photo-realistic squirrel. I'm tracking the progress from the beginning to end on my forum. I'm hoping to achieve realistic anatomy, hair and lighting as my primary goals.

As you can see my experience with hair is limited! Though with inexperience sometimes you can create radical squirrel haircuts! I'm using a plugin called shave and haircut, which...as I've read was used for kong's hair.

Cingular ads find their way to Motionographer

It's exciting to see that Buck's two new spots for Cingular made their way to Motionographer. Check out the spots if you haven't already seen them. Two 30 second spots in 4 weeks...not too bad! Go Buck. Go BBDO.

Creepy Stalker

Check out the freaky phone message my girlfriend got a while back from a guy she met once! You'll never think about a "protein shake" the same way again.

Still kickin

I've put up a new banner for my little forum, I found a design a few months ago and really like the colors and shapes and made my own version of it. Oh I've also been building my flickr page, check it out!

Jeremy's Reel

Donkey Cake is Jeremy's reel, (animation director at Buck). Some fun and funky stuff. Jeremy is on of the most talented and fun persons I've worked with.

colors/textures

I was recently introduced to a few helpful sites. One being Mayang Textures and the other being Getty Images. Thanks Thomas and Shannon.

Espaun...not stoppin'

Working at Buck I've been able to meet a few great designers. One of which is 21 year old Tomas Pena. Tomas comes from Spain, he is incredibly talented both creatively and technically, check out his work. He has also introduced me to another Spanish designer which you can see here.

Buck

Today I started working at Buck!!!

So long RTT thanks for all the photo-realistic memories

Tomorrow marks my last day working at RTT. It has been an absolute pleasure meeting and working with everyone in the LA office. In case some of your out there didn't know....RTT is one of the leading forces on the planet in photo-realistic renderings. Their technical wizardry combined with an overall genuine kindness makes for a great place to grow as an artist, work on high-end projects and meet an international crew.

Thank you! I will be in touch.

Labor Day in NY

Friday I got a chance to visit The Mill in Manhattan! This place takes their interior design really seriously! I think it's really cool to see high-end computers combined with high-end interior design. With their continued success it seems like spending a little extra cash on mod red couches and chrome orb lighting fixtures, (and panoramic views of the city) isn't a problem. Along with the high-end look of the place, the dress code seemed to follow suite, this new computer-nerd/fashionista look is pretty cool. Oh yah, and just being being in a place that is considered number 1 in the world in vfx/design is pretty inspiring.

After the city it was out to the beach and that...is the rest of the story.

postrebel - forum

This month's new banner for the postrebel forum!

Method Studios

If you haven't heard of Method Studios you've at least seen one if not twenty to thirty of their high profile commercials. Located in Santa Monica the heart of Los Angles' VFX houses, Method Stuios employees an eclectic group of people from around the world working with high-end hardware and software. Their work is just plain cool and sometimes very humerous projects. Yesterday I was lucky enough too meet Tonie and Laurent who are both extremly nice and interesting people, similar to the work Method creates.

The Evolution of Machinima

After reading blogs concerning the release of Coke's latest ad created by Nexus studios in the UK, I wanted to talk about Machinima and it's future impact on the media. Made popular by gamers controling characters in Halo and clipping together scenes to make mini movies and eventually a series Red vs Blue the word Machinima beacame more and more familar with the gamer/filmmaker community.
With the creation of such televison shows Disney's Book of Pooh, Nickelodeon's Lazytown and PBSKids' It's A Big Big World. We can see that Machinima is not just a low-tech form for of creating contect with real-time virtual set engines.
New gaming engines such as the offset engine for the PC are uping the resolution and realtime features such as (realtime depth of field, realtime soft shadows, realtime particles casting shadows, realtime global illumination...the list goes on). All of these features are currently being used as 3d animation studios creating high-end films. With the adavancement of realtime technologies we are going to see and increase in quality and thus production value in machinima. With the merging of media's the next-gen realtime virtual set television shows are going to increase in popularity, their visuals are going to greatly improve, and the cost large 3d post production teams could start disappearing.

Flash animation extravaganza

If you have ever attempted animating in flash, or at least working in it. You might like this video.

The Getty Center

Best view of Los Angeles you can get, at least if your not a Hollywood Hill homeowner. Parking was chaos but once acomplished a very nice walk up the hill to the center was perfect for a Sunday afternoon. Skimmed the art collection, getting a bit lost in each exhibit. The architecture is massive and beautiful. Noticed that outside a demographic ranging in age from 3 years old to 70 years old were having an equal amount of a good time. This says a lot for how the place is designed and what it has to offer to everyone.
I am really out of the loop when it comes to fine art, which doesn't mean I don't appreciate it...but I found the view of Los Angeles from the center equally engaging.

Harold Belker

Tonight we went down to Culver City to the MODAA to see Harold Belker. Harold is a concept artist from Germany with work in fields ranging from furniture design, automotive concepts to concept creation for feature films. Harold does all of his designs in 2D (pencil/pen, or photoshop) and his finished sketches turn out looking like renderings from a 3D rendering engine.

I went up to Harold and introduced myself, and rambled something that you might expect along the lines of inspiration, and adoration...never-the-less it was good to meet him.
It was cool to see his designs like furniture, bike designs, matchbox cars, set up with his renderings. I always have a hard time looking at digital large prints because the pixelation and color saturation never does the product created on the computer justice. I think mediums like digital art need to be shown on calibrated LCD monitors to really show the colors and details that the artist originally intended. Relying on ink, and a printer can be scary.

I look forward to seeing more creations from Harold Belker, maybe someday I can convice him to let me take one of his sketches and create some 3D renderings for him.

TMNT

Looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is going to be made into a feature animation. This was bar-none one of my favorite cartoons growing up. I had nearly every single action figure. My friends used to meet up with our ninja turtles and we would spend hours...more like days fighting evil doers like Shredder and his foot soilders.
Looks like Warner Brothers is producing this flick along side the Weinstein Company. An animation house called Amagi in Hong Kong is doing the CG work for it. I saw the trailer and the 3D work looked rather 2D, perhaps holding to a 2D/3D hybrid look that we see in some recent Japanamai hits. Though it does indeed look like the characters are CG while the backdrops look matte painted. (As opposed to 2D characters and 3D backdrops). I think 2D matte paintings in the background is a good way to go, especially with a story that takes place in New York. Better to paint in the details of the geometry rather than model the entire city.
I think it is also good that a foreign animation house is creating the work for an American produced feature animation. Final Fantasy, created by square pictures (a japaneese owned company) hit the American market and did not do very well at all...though it did show ground breaking realism and what is truely possible it the feild of animated features. I'd like to see Eastern companies like Amagi show the CG the western culture something new as well. I see all of these great American features coming out, technically they look great....but still look the same no?

1st Ave Machine

1st Ave Machine is a company in New York that comes up with photo-unreal organic creations. I love the work that they do because much of the 3D community today is focusing a lot of energy towards photo-realism. These guys look like that have that figured out and are taking their work to the next level. Click on the image above to view their website.

Birddy Nam Nam & Jackson and his computer Band

Two other electronic bands that were introduced to me by my good friend Api. Like the Four Tet they are European, Birdy Nam Nam being French. Fun and enjoyable to listen to, some tracks would be ideal for a funky demo reel. These bands also seem to have a nice sense of design from their websites. Click the images above to view their websites.

four tet

I happened to be thinking about The Four Tet. This is a solo electronic trubador who is really amazing to see live. He also has a cool design sense. He has a few of his tracks on his myspace account.....myspace, gag. I'm getting really sick of it. Anyway give a listen here.
The website is here.

takagimasakatsu

I was browsing one of my favorite sites Motionographer and i followed a link to takagimasakatsu. Some really amazing experimental motion graphics! Stan Brackage eat your heart out.

postREBEL

monument valley

I thought I might open a flickr account and to start by showing one of my favorite panoramas. Laurie snapped off these shots on our way to California and I stitched them together in phothsop.
The gateway to the west.

scope boy

new design in progress

I have created a new design for my blog, it mostly consists of stealing source code from other blogs I fancy, so I can't take credit for the layout. A few of my blogs were lost in the transfer, I started deleting things that shouldn't have been deleted. My blog about annoying helicopters was lost and perhaps a few others that weren't too interesting. With the onset of a better design I'm going to try to follow suite with better topics directed towards motion graphics, design, 3d animation and film!!

Still in Progress....getting Closer though!

testing testing

does this work?

Carmel By-The-Sea

I'm currently reading East of Eden, an epic novel by John Steinbeck. The majoirty of the novel takes place in Northern California's Salinas Valley. This weekend we took a road trip up Highway 1 to San Louis Obispo through Big Sir into Carmel a beautiful drive a bit foggy but a wonderful place to set eyes on for the first time. Stayed in a nice bed-n-breakfast visited the famous pebble beach golf course, went to see Nacho Libre. Anyways on the way back we got a chance to see the historical town of Salinas. It is a quaint agricultural town surround by two beautiful mountain ranges. Fun to imagine Steinbecks characters on the still preserved beautiful country side.
wabash

LA Discoveries

West Hollywood to Silver Lake to the 101 North, drive drive drive cut down through Topanga Canyon to Hwy 1 through Malibu to Santa Monica, Hwy 2 back to West Hollywood. The drive was a learning experience to say the least. A better general understanding of the sprawl, a better knowledge of the beautiful places we can't live and the not so beautiful places where we can. The length of the drive was almost as taxing as our walk to dinner one Friday night, yet another LA geography lesson and another lesson learned that if you are not walking to your car to get somewhere you better be prep the llamas and pack donkeys because it's going to be a long...long walk.
An exceptional Indian restraunt was found this weekend called flavor of India off of Santa Monica and Robertson, delicious. Chiken Tikki Masala, Nan bread, Mango Chutney, christmas lights, foliage covered patio, great service.
wabash

so it begins

wa_bash

The name wa_bash is an alteration of the word 'wabash'. I added the underscore since the word wabash was unfortuniatly already taken when I started this blog. The meaning of the name has to do with a town where I was born in Indiana in January of 1981. The town of wabash, as I am told is one of the first electrically lit cities in the United States. With this bit of history you can understand where my roots in electronics come from.
25 and a half years since I lived in Wabash (being the first six months of my life) I find myself sitting in Los Angeles starting this blog which I have been avoiding, neglecting, or just forgetting to do since I've known about them. In between Wabash and Los Angeles I have lived in Redstone Colorado, Boulder Colorado, Reykjavik Iceland, Kansas City Missouri, and Wainscott New York. I have traveled around the world on a boat, (with a bunch of lunitic college students), visiting Kyoto, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapre, Ho Chi Min, Chennai, The Seychelles, Capetown, Salvidor and Havana. I have also traveled to Denmark, London, Athens, The Greek Islands, Prague, Mexico and have road tripped the U.S. 1.5 times. Experiencing new places and things is what I love to do. I feel that Wabash is a good name for this forum since it is the very first place I have ever been.
And so the logs to come will cover places and things of interest weither they be virtual or real.

-wabash.