Not a lot happening here on the painting front unfortunately. Busy looking for work and then working when I get it. My computer is on the way out as well, and holding together due the 2 foot fan cooling it down while I work! I’d kill for a new Intel Mac.. my old dual G5 is getting long in the tooth.

Anyway, two things…

The not so good news – My recent oil painting Sky Burial #1 didn’t make it into Spectrum 17 this year.

The AWESOME News – The pain of not getting work into Spectrum was utterly obscured by the joy of spending an entire afternoon with Syd Mead and his business partner, Roger Servick last Saturday!! Talk about a dream come true.. My friend Paul organised the Syd Mead night (18th March) here in Sydney at the Orpheum Theatre and so had a direct line to the master of futurist design himself. Syd and Roger had Saturday afternoon off so Paul and I offered to drive them around town.

Syd and Roger in 7-11. Sydney, March 2010

So our first stop was the Apple store on George St, Syd needed a power adapter for his Laptop. Half the nerds in the store were probably Syd Mead fans and had no idea he was walking past them! Mind you the Apple staff seemed to have no idea there was an elderly gentleman looking for service and also appeared ignorant of his presence.. tsk tsk Apple! Syd tells the young guy to make out the invoice to Oblagon Inc, and Paul says to him.. “Dude, you should really look that up.. like now!!”

Syd Mead at the Apple store. Sydney, March 2010

Next thing on the list was a decent coffee! The Sofitel Hotel they were staying in apparently weren’t up to the task so a stroll through the old Strand Arcade for coffee and cake was next order of business. In keeping with the theme of business, I suggested Syd get on with the paperwork and sign my copies of Oblagon, Sentury and a older book called The Guide to Fantasy Art Techniques of which he is included.

Syd Mead, the Strand Arcade. Sydney, March 2010

With the business side of things concluded we set out to achieve two objectives. Visit their old friends and find a Ford dealership – Syd and Roger wanted brochures of Australia’s Ford Falcon. The king of design was also very impressed by a new Maserati Grand Turisimo that happened to stop next to us in traffic, (who wouldn’t be!!) although he felt the logo on the rear pillar should be tilted slightly forward. So Pininfarina, pay attention! As you might have guessed, Syd talked about cars… a lot!

Syd chews the fat with the local Ford salesman. Sydney. March 2010

Syd and Roger. Sydney, March 2010

From there we headed to Watsons Bay for a wonderful late lunch at Gusto Bar and Kitchen. The food was excellent as was the great conversation. We had the place to ourselves for hours and enjoyed getting to know the man behind the Visual Futurist. It is always interesting to see beyond the ‘hero’ and meet the real person and Syd is just a regular guy at heart. A very sophisticated yet down to earth guy I might add, quick witted and always up for a laugh. His generosity is matched only by his talent and we all know how much of that he has! I cant look at Syd’s work now without acknowledging the quiet driving force behind Syd Mead Inc, that is Roger Servick, a major component to Syd’s success the many years they’ve worked together.

We finished the day off back at their hotel and snapped a few pictures. I also gave Syd one of my oil painted landscape studies as a memento of his stay and as a small thank you for all the years of inspiration he has given Paul and I.

L to R - Syd, Paul, Roger. Sydney, March 2010

L to R - Paul, Roger, Syd and myself. Sydney, March 2010

Paul and Syd at the Sofitel Hotel. Sydney, March 2010

It is a day I will remember for years to come and I feel extremely privileged to have met Syd and Roger. I also must thank my good friend Paul for making that initial connection.

Well that was my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one!

Syd Mead is coming to Australia. My mate Paul is organising the Sydney leg and so I thought I’d give a quick shout out and post the details. So if you’re in Sydney, come along, it should be an awesome night!

For those who dont know Syd Mead.. SHAME on you!! Here are the details:

——-

The Syd Mead Australian Tour 2010

Syd Mead is the most celebrated concept artist in the world today.

He was the artist behind some of the most influential science fiction of the 20th century:
BLADE RUNNER, TRON, ALIENS, STAR TREK, 2010 (to name a few).

The tour is being organized in conjunction with the CG Society, and the inaugural event in Sydney is set to be a spectacular visual experience:

On the night of Thursday the 18th of March, the premiere of the award winning film, Visual Futurist: the Art and Life of Syd Mead, will be screened at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace in Cremorne.

The screening will be followed by Syd Mead live on stage, interviewed by Jamie Leonarder (The Naked City, FBI / previous host of The Movie Show, SBS).

Syd will be available for signings after the event, and there will be very special limited edition Syd Mead Australian tour t-shirts and dvds on sale.

Come and pay tribute to the man who, for the last half century, has played such a pivotal role in the design of science fiction in film, and who’s genius has inspired countless artists around the world.

Immerse yourself in his world, and meet the man himself.

Book your tickets here: http://www.orpheum.com.au/syd-mead.htm

It is advised that you book early to avoid disappointment. The tour has already generated a great deal of interest.

contact Paul with any inquiries about the tour: nova@bigfoot.com.au

———

And for those who still dont know Syd Mead’s work, here is a sample.. enjoy!

Seeing as how today is the 20th anniversary of our beloved (or hated) piece of software, I thought I would post my old 1994 RMIT BA Photography final year portfolio. Created entirely with Photoshop v2 without layers and Strata Studio Pro v1, a basic 3D program. The first version I used was actually 1.5 but the first version I owned was v2.. and I have updated ever since.. well except for CS3,4 I’m still on CS2.

Digital imaging was still in its infancy and we were all grasping with concepts like resolution (I notice some people still are!), bit depth, scanning etc. The single layer, one undo features of v2 forced you to think about what you wanted and how you would go about achieving it. There were no books on Photoshop at the time except for Adobe’s less than stellar manual and it’s good to see things haven’t changed in 20 years in that dept!

So, is Photoshop a curse or a blessing? It’s both. I’ve learned some very bad habits with this tool and also learned to be free and work with confidence. One of the main reasons I’ve moved into oil painting is because I want to paint without using technology as a crutch. Now I’m forced to think of composition, lighting etc more carefully whereas with Photoshop, I can just slide things around until I get them right. Don’t like that building, delete it, flip it, darken it etc. It’s too easy with a hundred layers at your finger tips. Having said that, it’s awesome for tight deadlines and my career wouldn’t be where it is today without it.

So.. Happy birthday Photoshop and to all the people who have made it what it is today.. Thanks for the ride!

In these 20 years, has Photoshop improved, or is it getting fat and bloated? What was your favorite version? Let me know!

Anyway, here are some examples of my portfolio.. For those scifi fans, you might be able to pick out my influences and direct homages. It’s hard to look at these now in some ways as I see all the flaws but they are what they are and they got me a job with Digital Domain and a matte painting gig on The Fifth Element.

The photographic elements and 3D elements will be obvious, but what may not be so obvious was the fact that I did it all with a mouse, no wacom! My computer at the time was a new PowerMac 8100/80AV running System 7 with a 500Mb Hard drive, 48Mb RAM and a 44Mb Syquest drive. Photoshop installation came on 7 1.5Mb floppy disks. How far things have come!

I completed a total of 18 images for my final year folio. Here are ten of them.

Enjoy!

A quick post this evening.. Here is a oil painting study of a stand of trees in the Kiewa Valley of Victoria’s Alpine region.

Enjoy.

20 x 10″ oil on panel

This one is for you! I said in an earlier post that I would start painting more genre work, specifically, sf paintings. Well here is the second such painting Desert Storm being the first even though it isn’t apparent. In context with this new painting, it starts to fit.

This is the second in a series of works that may take shape as an illustrated SF novel. That’s a ways off from here but I am painting these with an eye to such an end and certainly with a storyline I’ve had in mind for several years now.

Sky Burial #1. 40 x 15 inches, Oil on Linen.

On a different note, I have several landscape paintings lying around and would love to see them go to good homes. The sale of any of these paintings ensures I get to keep living in mine! Most of my digital work with the except of some film work is available as high quality prints as are my oil paintings. Just let me know if anything catches your eye. I am also available for painting commissions, so dont be shy, give me a call!

As promised in part 1, here is part 2 of the matte painting projection post.

I recently finished two shots for a client that needed scenes of New York city circa 1927. This is not a literal rendition of NY city, the buildings are in all the wrong places.. but this was meant to be a more romantic idea of NY back then! Both shots centered around the Chrysler building, of which will be live action and/or 3D in the final work. The shots I’m showing here are all pre-composited. I delivered the entire Maya scene files to the client with all of the sourceimages as they were able to render out the passed they needed.

They are also night scenes which makes them a little hard to see, sorry..

The 3D models were provided by the client which I used as is, or modified as needed. The main animated camera was also provided by the client. The second shot still has a lot of jitter due to the tracking of the live action that had yet to be smoothed out which explains why the camera feels a little weird. There was no art direction on these shots other than the client’s brief.

I did all of this using Maya. I assume there is a similar, if not more efficient approach in other 3D apps. Nuke however may make the approach through Maya obsolete! One other thing to mention, I’ve taken the Model to Painting approach. Some people paint first then build a rough model to match the painting. The technique outlined below works either way.

Anyway, so the steps go something like this:

1. I set up the basic composition and placement of the buildings within the scene except for the Chrysler building.

2. Render/Play the shot and look for parallax shifting between the fg buildings and mg, bg buildings.

3. Place PROJECTION camera/s so as to get the best coverage of the model relative to the MAIN animated camera.

4. Render out hi-res still/s of the model/s. This can be flat shaded or GI, up to you.

5. Paint the render/s in Photoshop as you want them to look. I usually label the images with info, version number etc. These notes wont appear on the model, don’t worry. Do NOT crop the image! If it’s a pixel out from the original still render, it wont line up with the model when you project it back again.

6. Project those painted images back through the same PROJECTION camera/s and assign that new LAMBERT shader (as INCANDESCENCE) onto the original model.

Make sure you select PERSPECTIVE under Proj Type. Under the Camera Attributes section, Link to Camera – This is the original camera you used to render the model. Name that PROJ camera something obvious like – Bldg_5_PROJ or PROJ_cam_A.

7. Render scene and you’re done!

Click here to see the final animation on my Youtube page.

What I’ve outlined here is fairly simplistic. I had 7 Projection cameras on this shot, for a total of 10 shaders assigned to various buildings and one bg cyc.

Here are two more images for the buildings on the right of camera.

And here is the video of shot 1. The fg building with the TIMES sign was also done using the same projection techniques. The ‘flat’ appearance of the windows in the Chrysler building would not cut it for a final feature, but this was for a test to help pitch a project and the final part of the Chrysler building as seen in this shot is to be replaced with live action.

Click here to see the NY shot 1.
These shots are pre-composited and the gamma is a little up on the youtube vids. I’ll see if I cant adjust at some point.

Anyway, I hope that helps demystify the matte painting projection process in Maya a little. Let me know if I’ve only confused you even further!!

Been a hellishly busy several weeks which has been both a blessing and a curse! Good for the cash flow, not so good for oil painting! Been working with SOAP Creative here in Sydney on a James Bond website promotion thingy.. I cant say much more than that and will post more when I can.

I rolled straight into a matte painting job after the Bond gig.. the task.. create New York in 1927! This is big and I had approx two weeks to complete it. It’s taken two and half actually. Matte painting projection was the primary approach, Maya being the 3D tool of choice and of course Photoshop CS2.

Projected matte painting, for those who don’t know of it, is a method of mapping your 2D matte painting onto 3D geometry. For you old school folks, it’s like projecting a 35mm slide of an image onto white blocks of wood in a pitch black room.

Imagine those white blocks of wood are scale models of real buildings and you’re projecting your 35mm slide of the exact same building onto that model (perfectly aligned of course… impossible with a slide projector I know, but stay with me here..)

Now you pick up your handicam and start filming as you walk towards the model and perhaps move around the model a little. Traditional 2D matte paintings have always been limited to.. well, 2 dimensions. You cant go around anything within the painting. You can zoom in, move up and down the painting but the sense of 3 dimensional space is lacking. Same as projecting a 35mm slide onto a screen, you can walk up to it, move it up or down but it will always look 2D.

Projecting that 2D image onto a 3D object allows you to push beyond the 2D realm cheaply and more cost effectively than going full 3D. It only works in some situations and has certain limitations, but if your camera is moving in one direction with perhaps a little drift this way or that, projection is the way to go.

I was taught a fancy trick at Digital Domain by a dude named Eric Hanson.. Use INCANDESCENCE mapping. This has the advantage of A/ Allowing the matte painter to paint the lighting onto the object/scene in a way that only a matte painter can and B/ Doesn’t use a single 3D light within the scene, so rendering time is dramatically reduced. If the lighting needs changing, then it’s back to Photoshop and a re-paint, but the rendering time becomes consistent, predictable and fast.

I will usually render the object flat shaded or with a basic global illumination pass. It will look something like this:

Then I paint it up..

Before I show you the New York shot, here is an example of how I used the technique to great effect on Vincent Ward’s recent Blossom Hill Wine TV commercial, look for the shot of the train going over the viaduct. The viaduct, the train and background were all 2D images projected onto 3D. Yes, even the train!

I’ll leave it there and post a more in depth ‘how to’ soon.. Including the New York shot, so stay tuned!

Yesterday morning, the head of Dept of Industrial Design at Newcastle TAFE called me to apologise for his student’s poorly drafted email, (see last post, ‘How NOT to contact a professional artist!’).

I called this gentleman back today and we had an interesting chat. He had taken this issue up with the student’s direct teacher who.. didn’t think there was anything wrong with the email and/or approach made by the student! What?!

I was floored!

Well Mr Teacher who thinks that was ok.. Looks like very few of your students will ever make it out there in industry if you advocate that sort of approach. Because they WILL get out there and they WILL come up against working professionals who DO NOT tolerate poor communication skills and equally poor manners!

Dear, Wanye

im an  industrial design student, engaged in my major design project, which is visualising a Philip K. Dick short story “the trouble with bubbles”

do you have any advice on approaching conceptual design for a futuristic society.

Is there a preferred format for presenting concepts to clients within the film industry?

i appreciate that you may be busy and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

S. W.

I received this email from a young man studying Industrial Design here in NSW, Newcastle TAFE, north of Sydney. First mistake, he got my name wrong! The other mistakes are too obvious to go into here suffice to say that I’m a little saddened that we pump these kids out of our education system without some of the most basic communication skills.

Unfortunately he has made a bad first impression and that can have fatal consequences for your future career.

Did he exhaust all other options before contacting me? Did he even spend five minutes on Google? Doesn’t look like it. He expected answers to be handed to him on a platter. It took me all of five minutes to track down who he was, where he lived (city), what school he went to and what year he is studying. I then contacted his head of dept and passed on his email.

So if you’re reading this young Mr. S.W, Google is your friend.. so is the spell checker and punctuation! Once you have clarified your thoughts and questions AND exhausted all other options, contact me again and I’ll do what I can to help.

As artist’s we communicate with imagery, we assume that writing is irrelevant as the images will speak for themselves, but when you’re out there in industry, your first port of call will most likely be through writing. Be clear, succinct (I’m not so good at that part) and make sure you’ve done your research. There is no excuse these days what with the world wide interweb or whatever it’s called..!

Now that ol’ grandpa has said his piece, he’s off for a little lie down!

I’ve been asked about the lighting set up in my painting studio, so I thought I would post some pics and a brief description.

My studio is quite small as I’m using the second bedroom in my 2 bedroom apt as my painting studio, the first being used as my digital studio (I sleep in the main room!), so space is limited. The room has built in robes with mirrored doors. This is a bonus as it allows me the ability to not only view my paintings from a longer distance, but also back to front. So what I lack in distance to the painting front on, I gain in reflected distance.

The obvious thing in the photo is my lighting set up. I wanted to be able to paint day or night and not have to worry about exterior light variations. My experience as a studio photographer kicked in and I bought a pair of Manfrotto Auto-poles. They basically telescope up and clamp against the ceiling. This allows me to clamp lights onto them and reduces the footprint at the floor saving more space. I’d have to use stands with legs otherwise and they would get in the way.

The light source is supplied by two compact flouro’s, daylight balanced at 5000 – 5500k. Equivalent power output is supposed to be that of a 120W incandescent bulb. They run cool which means I dont cook in the summer months and they use much less power than a standard tungsten bulb. Total cost of that set up was approx A$500. That was the two poles, three light heads (one is in the cupboard and could be used as a modeling light), the bulbs, two Manfrotto Superclamps (to hold the lights). The light heads were el cheapo units and I have no idea what brand they are! You could probably get all of this cheaper if you bought 2nd hand too.

You could save some money and run one pole across horizontally from wall to wall and suspend the lights too..

Anyway, I hope that was informative..

Ciao!