Moonscape Real Estate

Spring “break” is something of a misnomer for anyone who works full time while attending school because while I don’t have homework to deal with, I am by no means enjoying a break from anything. I did, on the other hand, enjoy some time with my dusty guitar and wrote a proper song the first time in a bit over a year. So, if you’re on Spring break, ignore the lotion and enjoy some raw and unfiltered cosmic death rays from outer space. And turn it up.

Image Metrics is a company I’ve been keeping an eye on since last summer when I was first introduced to a demo of their facial animation software and didn’t realize that I was watching a video of a girl, Emily, with her own face rendered in front of her face until the end. It seems a bit of a dubious feat until you realize that the intent was just that -to fool the viewer into thinking that there was no effect at all when suddenly you realize that her face was entirely computer generated.
There are numerous videos online demonstrating the capabilities of the software driven facial animation without the use of traditional mo-cap markers or any special makeup.
The software has great potential to profoundly impact the way facial animation is done, nevermind the potential to alter the way motion capture is done altogether.

The spring semester is underway and I’ve quickly become inundated with traditional animation methods, principles and formula’s, but moreover, this marks my first real stab at hand-drawn animation. As an impatient creature, I’m finding this to be both a frustrating and therapeutic practice, though, I’ve so far found it to be quite enjoyable. I’ve not done much sketching or doodling in ages, with my nose buried in Photoshop, but with this class comes an excuse to do so, and so begins a new outlet and a renewed appreciation of traditional animation.

I think I’ll pull out some videos from one of my favorite 2D animators, Don Hertzfeldt and do some studying.

That is to say, I’m satisfied with the stuff posted so far. Heteronyms for teh win!

So I’ve spent a bit of time refreshing myself on elementary HTML so as to make the most of my new wordpress’d website, and I’d be both happy and surprised if anyone decided to comment on my new hyper text digs. At the very least, take a look around and don’t forget to bookmark this moon because I’ll be adding more of everything in the coming days and months.

Something about this all seems so…. foreign…

This weekend marks the start of a new project in hopes that I’ll have somewhere to hide all my work, so wish me luck or some good karma, and I’ll keep plugging away at this floating chunk of moon-rock and create something perhaps a bit more grand than what you see at the moment.