The following video was my last visual effects project during my brief time at AI Portland. Once again, I was the actor for the project. My laptop made another debut as well. Try not to judge me too harshly for running Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro.

My part was shot in the green screen studio on campus. It was shot with my Canon 5D MKII. In fact, all of it was shot with the 5D. Most of the post-processing was done in Apple Shake, but some of it was created using Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop for video, you say? Yep. I painted out some objects frame by frame in Photoshop. The painting was proving to be too difficult for the paint controls in Shake and still doing it frame by frame anyway. It was easier (and quicker) to export the frames to individual stills and use Photoshop’s advanced tools.

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One of my projects last term involved modeling an outdoor and indoor scene and animating a character named Bloke (who was already modeled and provided to us) in the interior scene.  The outdoor scene was to have the most detail and provide the establishing shot or frame of reference for the interior scene.  I choose to model a tree house in the forest.  The interior was obviously set inside the tree house and features Bloke sitting in a chair browsing his home entertainment library on a table PC.  It’s a high-tech tree house, after all. :) Most of what you see in the scene was modeled.  Some of the underbrush was created using Paint Effects within Maya.  I wasn’t going model every leaf and shrub.

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I probably should have known that starting a website upgrade at 10pm on a Saturday evening wasn’t a good idea. But, I did it anyway. I had it mostly working by 2am when I gave up and went to bed. After another 8 hrs of fiddling, fussing, and dropping more than a few other f-words today, it’s finally ready to go.

I have a new design and logo, some new functionality (Facebook and OpenID) integration, and a new layout that is ready for future projects I have cooking already. I also added a new photo blog which I hope to keep full of my latest work. There’s a few new shots up there to enjoy already with a lot more in the queue.

One of my resolutions this year was to post more often and now I’m ready to begin.

I’ve had my Motorola Droid for a little over a month now and I’ve had the chance to try quite a few apps.  Here’s a list of my favorites in no particular order, not including the stock apps that are installed by default (ie. Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, YouTube, etc.):

1. KeePassDroid (free) – a companion app to the desktop version, albeit by a separate developer.  I highly recommend the KeePass products (all free) for password storage and retrieval.  The 2.x version of the desktop app can export to a 1.x file which the Android version can read.  Drop it on your SD card and you have all your passwords at your disposal in encrypted secure form.  You only have to remember your master password.

2. Evernote (free) – create and view notes on your phone via text input, photographs, audio recordings, and file uploads.  The notes are synced automatically to the cloud through Evernote’s website (also free, but has paid service for more storage space) so you can view/edit them on any computer or via the web.  It’s like having a second brain.

3. Google Goggles (free) – I’m sure this will be installed on all Android phones in the future, but for now, you have to look for it.  Goggles lets you search the web by taking a snapshot of an item such as a book, landmark, logo, artwork, business, product, barcode, or text.  It will even attempt to “read” business cards and generate a contact for you.

4. Twidroid (free, paid version available) – easily the best Twitter app for Android.  It makes all the lists.

5. Google Voice (free) – full integration with the Google Voice service.  If you use Google Voice, you’ll want this.  If not, you won’t.

6. PingDroid (free) – uses the Ping.fm service (also free) to update multiple social networks at once.  I use it to update my Facebook and Twitter status simultaneously from my Phone.

7. Google My Maps Editor (free) – the companion to Google Maps.  Allows you to edit maps stored in the My Maps feature of Google Maps while on the go.  Great for adding new placemarks to your maps while you travel.

8. The Weather Channel (free) – get the weather report and weather bulletins for multiple locations on your phone.

9. Barcode Scanner (free) – scan barcodes or QR codes and search the web for info.  This may get replaced by Google Goggles on my phone, which shares the same functionality.

10. PicSay Pro (purchased or free edition) – allows you to edit the photos you take on the phone.  The Pro edition has more filters and effects than the free edition, but both are great for color correcting or tweaking your photos.  They both allow for adding fun clipart or text balloons to your images, but that quickly gets old.  Get the app for the filters and correction tools.  The Pro edition includes effect tools like Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, Temperature, Tint, Brightness, Adjust RGB, Sharpen, Smooth, and Blur, color adjustments such as Hue, Colorize, Grayscale, Black & White, and Duotone,  photo effects like Cross Process, Sepia Toning, Invert, Fading Colors, Soft Glow, and filters such as a simulated GND filter, Vignette, Spotlight, and several options for adding borders.  It also includes several artistic and distortion effects that I will probably never use.  It also allows for very simple masks and has a history paintbrush.  It’s pretty impressive.

11. FxCamera (free) – has some quick photo filters that allow you to take photographs that simulate a polariod, fish-eye lens, toy camera and others.

12. Google My Tracks (free) – uses your phones GPS to track your route and calculate trip stats such as distance, time, speed, elevation gain, and other stats usually found on dedicated GPS receivers.  Also allows you to set markers and upload your trip to Google My Maps.

13. Google Finance (free) – track your stocks from your phone, which could be depressing these days.  To cheer yourself back up try…

14. DailyStrip (free) – get your favorite comic strips on your phone everyday.  Currently 98 strips available.  Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes are my favorites. :)

15. Google Places (free) – get information and user ratings about local business and attractions based on your location or via search. Similar to Yelp.

16. Yelp (free) – similar to above, but with more data as it is a more established service with higher user base.  The current rumor (as of 12/18/2009) is Google is looking to acquire Yelp so these may merge one day.

17. Locale (free) – this is one that I use everyday, but don’t realize it.  It’s an app that lets you program your phone based on your location, time, or even battery status.  I use it to automatically silence my ringer whenever I’m at school.  Now I don’t have to worry about my phone ringing during class.  When I leave school, Locale resets my default volume automatically.  I also use it to silence my notification alerts at night.  I don’t want to get woken up just because an email arrives.  I use my phone as an alarm clock so this was a problem.  Now, it’s not.  There are also a number of plugins available for Locale that add to its functionality.

18. Amazon and Amazon MP3 (free) – shop from your phone.  Dangerous (impulse buys!), but cool.  Also useful for comparison shopping when you’re at a store.  Check to see what prices are at Amazon to see if the store is gouging you.

19. BettrFlickr (purchased) – view your Flickr account on your phone, search for photos, and upload new photos from the Share option in most photo apps, including PicSay.  I bought it mostly for the upload option.  Without it, I had to resort to using Flickr’s email service which doesn’t allow you to add them to a set.

20. ASTRO File Manager – A file browser, task manager, and more for your phone.  Also will allow you to back-up all your non-private applications.

21. Documents To Go (free, paid version available) – view MS Word or Excel documents on your phone.  The paid version is required if you wish to edit them.  Also, Powerpoint and PDF documents are supported in the paid version, but not the free one.  I was fine with the read-only version.

22. ExFlashlight (free) – turn your phone’s screen into a flashlight.  Also, has a red light for easier night vision and will flash a S.O.S code.

23. DroidLight LED Flashlight (free) – uses the Droid’s twin LED flash as a flashlight rather than the screen.

24. Shazam (free) – let it listen for a few seconds and it will identify what song you’re hearing and locate it on your favorite music store.  Works surprisingly well.

25. SportsTap (free) – follow your favorite teams and get game time alerts and stats on players.  I haven’t been able to watch the Packers or Badgers much this year, but I always know how they’re doing.  Follows the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA as well as other football, auto (NASCAR), soccor, golf, tennis, and local teams/events.

26. UltraCron Lite (free) – a basic, yet speech enabled, timer and stop watch.  I use it so I don’t forget to take the pizza out of the oven…nobody likes burnt pizza.

Others I have, but don’t use very often or haven’t fully tried yet include: UStream Broadcaster and Viewer, wpToGo (wordpress blogging), Quickpedia, OpenTable, Pandora, Last.fm, Google Sky Map, Layar, Google Listen, Mobile GA (Google Analytics), Photoshop.com Mobile, Portland Transit Lite, and Voice Recorder.

My second term has started here at the Art Institute of Portland.  I had my first class yesterday afternoon, Typography I.  I dropped it immediately after class ended.  It didn’t sound fun at all and I was the least bit interested in learning about typography.  I also dropped my Color Theory class, which I would have had this morning.   Instead, I added Intermediate Visual Effects, the next class after the Intro to Visual Effects class I took last term where I made the video from my previous post.  My remaining classes are Intro to Editing (video editing, that is), Intro to Audio, and 3D Modeling and Animation II.  Despite having only four classes this term, I think I’m going to be busier than last term since I’ve heard that all four are rather project intensive.

Last term, I had 3D Modeling and Animation I.  We modeled a local restaurant call The Chow, which was converted to a restaurant from an old gas station.  We also worked on a few ball drop animations.  The video below shows my animation of a bowling ball and a beach ball rolling and dropping off of a table and bouncing to a stop.  It then shows the model of The Chow.  I added some additional features to my model like fog, flickering patio lights, and bugs buzzing around the lights.  I think it turned out pretty well for my first time.

Here is my first video short contain visual effects that I learned in my Intro to Visual Effects course at the Art Institute of Portland.  It could use a little polish, but considering that it is my first attempt and that I shot, edited, and composited the entire thing in four days, I think it turned out pretty good.  I’m sure a year from now, I’ll be totally embarrassed to watch it.

The video is a combination of live action footage, rendered CG backgrounds modeled in Maya, several still images, and some visual effects created in Adobe After Effects.  The live action footage was shot in my apartment with my Canon 5DMK2.  The compositing and rotoscoping was done in Apple Shake (a requirement for the class), which has got to be the most crash-prone piece of software that I have ever used.  Thankfully, Apple has discontinued the product so, hopefully, I won’t have to use it much in the future.

If you are familiar with the Matrix Trilogy, you will probably recognize where the idea came from for this video.  Granted, my version is no where near as well executed as in the Matrix films, but my budget wasn’t as big either.

Enjoy!

I’ve been back in school for five weeks now.  I like some of my classes and hate others, but that’s pretty typical for a first year college student.  You often have to take general classes that only loosely pertain to your major.  One of my classes is Intro to Drawing.  We had an assignment to enlarge and copy a postage stamp using ink.  The professor provided us with a copy of a stamp enlarged to five times its original size.  We had to double it.  The assignment itself wasn’t very interesting to me and I don’t see how it even applies to anything I’ll be doing in the future, but it had to be done.  To make it more interesting, I decided to shoot a time lapse video of my work on it.  I positioned my camera on a tripod directly above my desk and took an image every 4 seconds.  We started the assignment in class so you don’t get to see it from the very beginning where I sketched a rough outline.  Rather, you join in shortly after I started inking the image, which is where I picked up at home.

So here’s 3.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back, condensed down into 2.5 minutes and set to a catchy tune.

Astonishingly enough, 3.5 hours is pretty short as far as assignments go.  I’ve discovered I can easily spend 6-8hrs or more on a single assignment for some of my classes.  Creativity takes time.  It worries me to think about how much time I’ll be spending on assignments as I progress into advanced classes.  Hopefully, they will at least be more fun.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you probably already know this, but I have decided to go back to school…again.  I guess the two bachelor degrees I already have just aren’t enough.  I’m attending the Art Institute of Portland where I’ll be working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics.  Basically, I’ll be learning how to create video special effects and 2D/3D animations.  Here’s my class schedule for the first quarter:

I get a four day weekend every week.  Sweet! :)  Classes start this Monday and run until the end of September.

I moved to Portland two and half weeks ago.  Initially, I stayed in an extend stay hotel out in Hillsboro while I applied for school and figured out where I would live.  I decided to give downtown living a try and signed up for student housing.  The school has two apartment complexes that they use for student housing.  I’m in the building called “The Arthur”.  There are single and double rooms with shared baths.  I applied for a single, but they were all full.  I am currently in a double with a roommate.  However, upon check-in, I was told a single room would be opening up in a week or two and that I was first on the waiting list.  So, it looks like I’ll be moving down the hall soon.  So much for unpacking and getting settled before classes begin.

The screen shot below was taken in Google Earth and shows downtown Portland looking southeast.  You can see the Art Institute’s location in the lower left.  The Arthur, where I live, is located in the middle to upper right by the yellow pushpin (the white building).  It’s about six blocks from school and very close to the heart of downtown Portland.  So far, I love living here.  I can walk to everywhere I need to go and there’s a MAX station just a block away if I need to go farther.  The only downside to living here is that there is no place to park my car.  I couldn’t find any long-term parking nearby.  I ended up putting my car in storage out in Beaverton.  I have to ride the MAX, take a bus, and then walk a few blocks to get to it…definitely not convenient.  I may just sell it soon and rely on public transportation, Zipcar, or car rentals in the future.

By the way, Portland is pretty amazing to look at in Google Earth.  As you can see, almost every building in the downtown and surrounding areas has been modeled in 3D.  It’s worth a look.

A couple of simple shots from a trip to the Botanic Gardens here in Denver a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been planning on trying to do some time-lapse video someday.  After the snow storm on Friday and Saturday, there was a good deal of snow on my car this morning.  Around mid-morning I noticed it was melting quite quickly and decided it would be a good chance to try to make a video.  I set up my camera, shot pictures every 30 seconds for a couple of hours (automated by remote timer, of course), and made the video in After Effects.  Here it is:

Have you ever watched snow melt?