Welcome

I plan to use this blog to keep track of my progress with the seemingly endless list of creative projects on which I plan to work in the next few years. Whether it’s filmmaking, music, writing, martial arts, or even computer programming, creativity is in my blood—I can’t stop it. Whether what I produce appeals to anyone else is a different matter. I’d like to think it does.

At the top of my laundry list is Crawler. For the last three years, I have been working on the visual f/x for this low-budget horror movie produced by Timewarp Films. In particular, I’m working on the computer-generated title character. One thing I’ve learned in the last three years is that there’s a reason we see hundreds of names at the tail end of movie credits for visual f/x; it’s hard to do this stuff. It took at least a year to zero in on the best software to create and animate this beast. I finally settled on Softimage XSI—a godsend.

Currently, I’m on the 3rd to last scene involving the creature. After I finish the last creature shot in the last scene, and the 30-some shots of final renders, I have to address the miscellaneous f/x. For this I’ve recruited a few friends interested in f/x to help. That led to the next lesson learned (no, not “don’t hire friends”): I learned not to try to manage and do at the same time. You wind up doing a half-assed job at both. Thus, I had to concentrate on my stuff first. Once I finish the remaining creature shots, I’ll pull the gang (or what’s left of them) back together to finish the rest.

As a final note, I want to mention a project on the back burner, an amateur film project that is a mere 14 years in the making: Monster Planet.