10.31.07
The Fletcher Studios 2008 Calendar
Is now available for purchase, including some classic artwork - as well as new pieces. Get your Fletcher fix all year long.
Calendars (as well as other merchandise) can be purchased here.
10.29.07
New High-Quality prints available
I’ve just joined ImageKind, a new place for prints only. From what I gather, they use the super quality, Museum grade printers. So I can be in archival quality.
My gallery can be viewed here:
Weekly Texture Map - kickin’ it up a notch
SO, a bit of an experiment, I see these new types of dropdown gates on storefronts all over town. and decided I needed it - and a challenge to get the alpha channel problem solved once and for all.
For the uninitiated: alpha channels define transparency, normally images you see in the computer world have 3, red - green - blue. The 4th, called an alpha is a gray scale image, the more black the image is, the more transparent - the more white = more opaque.
Right now, the image is a 32 bit .tga file - don’t know yet if the blog will make a thumbnail - so we’ll see. The .tga was listed as a ’security’ issue so I had to zip the file in order to upload it.
Anyway - here is a .jpg version of the image:
It was a real pain to line up and make tile-able, you’d think that with the advent of technology and the ongoing quest for ‘digital perfection’ that someone would come up with a zero-distortion lens.
10.27.07
Counting down
Had a informal meeting at Laurel Film headquarters yesterday (ok, The Director’s pad) to meet with the new web design guy and see how the new site will work, how to update it and start finalizing the design…
It looks awesome, tight - clean lines and easy to read. Has a ‘current’ feel to it, whereas the old site felt a bit ‘late 90’s-ish’, not bad mind you, just a bit dated.
Turns out that it is a Wordpress template, and that is what this very blog is produced in. Which is great, inasmuch that changes will be easy to implement, it can be done on the road and has a solid support base so researching answers is a snap…
The downfall is: guess who is gonna do it??
Bah - I like that my talents are in demand, as I’ve written before - having a talent is like having a spoiled greedy demand-all attention brat that screams constantly, “USE ME USE ME USE ME!” And the only way to quiet it is to let it run pell-mell for as long as it has steam.
Hopefully the final changes will be made this weekend and Monday it will go live - keep your eyes on: http://www.sovereigntymovie.com/
And feel free to comment on the site as soon as you see it…
10.26.07
Rapidly becoming my favorite…
Haven’t kept up with the progression on the latest painting, so here it is…
I really am starting to believe that this could be my finest work, ever. It just seems to flow in a way that feels, natural - organic. There are flaws, of course, everything I’ve ever done from the sloppiest pencil sketch to the tightest painting - has some mistake. This one is no exception; it reminds me that the nature of the universe is that there is flaw in perfection. That nothing is truly perfect.
And that there is beauty in it.
10.25.07
Weekly texture map
And now - packed dirt!
Shot this in a corn maze out in Queens. Funny, when you think of the city, you certainly wouldn’t think there was a farm in New York. They had the maze, hay rides, scarecrow stuffin’ - made me forget about the bustle of the city for a bit…
As always, click on the thumbnail below for the large version…
10.24.07
Wrap party photos
After wanting to strangle E-vite for not allowing me to post photos, I said the heck with it and slapped them up here, just click on each thumbnail for a larger version:
10.23.07
Amazed
Its Sunday night and we’re all gathered at The Director’s apartment. Heather is decked out in a t-shirt with a huge star on it. I’m surrounded by my friends, sharing drinks, stories, chips-n-salsa and pizza bites. We’ve got people from both shoots of ‘Sovereignty’ and its finally the long anticipated wrap party…There were presents. On the coffee table were envelopes stuffed with photos, taken by Elizabeth, the professional photographer hired to document the shoot. The prints look amazing. They also have small Whitman’s Sampler chocolates, a nod to a line in the film, about the effect sweets have on one of the characters…
After a speech about everyone’s hard work and dedication, the lights dim and everyone settles in to see what we labored so hard over…
Whoops! The logo for Fletcher Studios goes whipping by and I have a panicked moment when I realize, we’re watching the gag reel I put together first. My nervousness fades within seconds, as the first few chuckles turn to laughs and soon everyone is in hysterics, really digging the on set antics I captured.
With the mood elevated, the feature begins - the epic drum roll as the animated Laurel Films logo I worked on starts - and POW! The film just grabs me.
I had seen, quite literally, hundreds of iterations of the film - editing it with The Director, shaving off frames here, adjusting audio there - but all those were simply the springboard for what the movie has become. The sound was perfect. The music was right on. Everything fell together with a grace and charm that easily said: This is a 50’s TV show about perfect little suburbia…
And when it reached it’s crescendo, at the very end, I was simply - in a word - moved. I mean, come on - I worked on the set of this movie, twice. I had read the script about a thousand times, seen it played out on my computer, frame by frame, hundreds of times. And yet, this final, polished work, in its completed state somehow had me awestruck. Its emotional peak at the end was perfect - yanking the viewer out of their complacent little world, delivering a slap to the head without pointing fingers, making one think about their place in the world.
And did it without moralizing.
So, thusly engaged, we all started talking excitedly about just how powerful the film is - what is next and just how many festivals this’ll be submitted to. The Director is going to have a fundraising screening and use the proceeds to promote ‘Sovereignty’ - which will spring Laurel Films to new heights of fame, fortune and prosperity.
10.18.07
The scream heard the world over
[coolplayer width=”480″ height=”380″ autoplay=”0″ loop=”0″ charset=”utf-8″ download=”1″ mediatype=”"]
[/coolplayer]Because I’m such a geek, things like the Wilhelm Scream flat out fascinate me.
If you’ve never heard of it by its proper name, this video should explain it:
10.17.07
Weekly Texture Map
I present to you, paint-peeled bricks.
This one was a real pain, trying to line up the seams between bricks - there is always some amount of lens-distortion, no matter how good the camera is. I’ve been using Richard Rosenman’s Lens Distortion Corrector, a free plug-in, that helps reduce barrel and pincushion - my only wish is that the preview area was a bit bigger.
The other trick is that when the image is offset, there is always a color shift from one side to the other, so by using Quick Mask and a gradient, I can tweak it to get the colors just right…
