new world war z trailer

The build to this film has been a long road, but its finally drawing near to its release date. Just released today a new trailer for World War Z. I worked as the Hard Surface lead on this film whilst at cinesite, and its shaping up to be a great film, very excited about this one.

I must admit though its funny working at a new vfx house, who also worked on this film, and not being involved from this side.. feels odd, a bit detached.. oh well, enjoy the trailer!

Break time?

In the 8 years I've been working in the industry, its often the little differences between companies that surprises me...for example, break time.

Now I'm not suggesting that big post production houses don't encourage break time, far from it, they actively do, what I'm interested in, is what they provide in the kitchens.

water - yes...sure

tea - yes, also a basic essential, and therefore also milk

beyond that, its anyones game, and the differences are staggering, I once worked at a company that spared no expense on their coffee machines, i mean the big big ones.. really good quality coffee, and not just one of these machines, but one on every floor, so you never had to go far for a decent coffee, trouble was... a) i don't drink coffee, and b) often i wanted to get out of the office.

Breakfast is an odd one too, most places provide basic bread and cereal, but not everyone... some only do bread, a toaster and some jams, others only do the cereal, one place (I'm not mentioning names, sorry) went really overboard having muffins, crumpets, 3 types of bread, juice, milk, cereal and fresh fruit each and every day, it was awesome... of course the side effect of this was that i was often snacking on stuff throughout the day, as it was always there...

there are ups and downs, more food available means, the more i will consume, hey its free!  and a designated kitchen area means i have somewhere to go, have a chat, a cup of tea, and basically 'take 5', but these lovely commodities aren't always available, and what happens without them? well I'm sure no workplace wants to make the worker unhappy but often the niceties are the first thing to go when purse strings are tightened, and its a shame because i feel you need a place and a reason to kick back and collect your thoughts for 5 minutes a day.

Id rather be productive and happy, than hungry and stressed with no where to go by my own desk...

now, don't read too much into this, I'm not making any specific type of statement about anywhere in particular or any resentment, just a sort of observation really, one of the first places i look at when starting at a new company is the kitchen! i think it reveals a lot about how the company treats its staf.

anyway, something to think about.

Adam

New year, new start!

so January 2013 is upon us, and for me, this year, that means a new start...with a new company.

Happy to report I've joined the ranks of MPC, very excited to be a part of this company as they really do some fantastic work and get some super films to work on. as usual can't say what i'm working on, but was very excited when i found out.

Will hopefully be making some new posts as soon as possible with insights into life at MPC and any project news I can share.

stay posted!

Design work for 22 Portsea Place

 Over the last 4 year I've worked as a freelance designer for the Kardo-Findlater art collection formerly housed at 22 Portsea Place. During that time, collectively we have run a series of interventions on one particular print, which was part of the origional collection. I thought it would be fun to share a bunch of those interventions. These are all done in photoshop over several years, but its fun to see how the origional design has been reused.

 
 

Les Mis Trailer!

So Les Miserables is released on Jan 11th, and I had a small hand in it, as mentioned in my last post, can't really say what, but this film has OSCAR written all over it! looking forward to finally getting to take my family along to see it.

for those of you that havent seen anything yet, here is the new international trailer ... looks pretty epic!


for those of you reading this.... remind me to make more posts! trying to do one a week!

Les Mis screening

So last night was the world premier of the film adaptation of the musical of Les Miserables.

BUT... more importantly the night before that was the cast and crew screening in London's Leicester square... and it was kind of awesome. I have honestly never been to such a ram packed cast and crew screening, it was quite an atmosphere just going in... and it proved to be a similar level of excitement throughout the film!

to start with we were treated to an introduction by not only the director - Tom Hooper, but also by the leading man - wolverine himself - Hugh Jackman!

Hugh gives a quick intro

Im not going to give away too much about the film, but the audience reaction was incredible, people clapped at the end of songs.... and not just once, throughout the film, it really is an epic epic production, and not just musically, visually its a treat! I must admit I was quite envious of some of the shots I didn't get to work on.

Its released Jan 11th in the Uk, and I thoroughly recommend you go see it, its pretty amazing. Well done to everyone at The Mill who put in the long hours to get this thing to the screen! Great work.

making of Dr Who

The mill have released a making of from the first episode of Dr Who i worked on! great behind the scenes info

my work on this was the modelling, sculpting and texture of the ankylosaurus, - the two dinosaurs that appear behind the blast doors at the beginning and smash the corridors to pieces.

and the textures of the pterodactyl - which has to be upresed for close up work.

great episode to get to work on, really enjoyed it and superb work by the mill, was lucky to be a part of it!

move to The Mill and Dr Who

well.... im sorry...

its been ages since ive posted.... really too long! , ive totally let this blog slide into oblivion.... i dont mean to, it just happens

of course the good news, is that a lot has happened since i last posted! when i last left you, I was working on WWZ at Cinesite, sadly that has now come to an end, but no bridges were burnt, its all part of the industry I work in, simply put, they had no work to do... so ...i left

and I am now working at Mill Film/Tv a division of "The Mill"... and I love it! , its a great place to work, very friendly, great work, and all in all, im happy things have turned out this way. Nothing bad to say against Cinsite, but being lead modeller has challenges that are tough and for 9 months I did very little modelling and a lot of scheduling! ... its great to be back modelling, and whats more texturing! have finally had the time to pick up Mari, and despite a bumpy start, its a fantastic program, I havent touched photoshop in months! Mari i like a cross between mudbox and photoshop, makes incredibly detailed textures incredibly easy! love it.

... so what have I been working on? well about 5 or 6 different things since we last spoke, and saldy i can only mention 1... the others will come soon, and hopefully i will remember to post about them, oh and i did a tiny bit of work on the new sky one series "Sinbad" ...but the big one..... the big one, i can tell you about is....

DR WHO!!!!

dr...friggin who!... was very excited when i found that out, its a real cult icon of a show! ... I've worked on two episode this season and a bunch of characters... first up airing this saturday on an episode entitled "dinosaurs on a spaceship"...well there are some dinosaurs, wont go into detail, but really happy with how it came out, got to model, sculpt, texture a few beasties.... its a cracking episode!

the other ep i worked on, sadly i cant talk about, but its really big and im super excited about it!

anyway, will endevour to appear here more, have loads of projects on the go with swifty scooters, trained monkey, more tutorials, a ninja turtle and 3D artist magazine! so stay tuned! please!

Adam

(oh and those images above....sadly not my dinosaur..... its another one!)

WWZ is a trilogy???

Apparently....according to Brad Pitt, WWZ is going to be a series of films, a trilogy no less. It seems this is the trendy thing to do these days, announce that the film your working on is one of many, does this create hype? buzz? I'm not sure it does, i mean look what happened witht he Golden Compass! That film was based off a trilogy of books, the trailers made mention of the series as a trilogy and then just before the film came out, it was edited to be one stand alone film with a very loose ending, just in case.... I think you have to be supremely confident in the quality of your film to announce its going to be a Trilogy or else your gonna look like an idiot! But hey, its far more likely that its just a marketing ploy to drum up interest in the film.

Sooooo, what does this mean for the VFX? well very little is my honest answer, I have worked on franchsied filmed before and it very rarely stays with the same company, with the odd exception of something like Transformers and Star wars, which has always been done by ILM. Harry Potter, Narnia, the Batman films, all done by different post houses, and why? because they out bid each other, maybe the VFX looks good, but perhaps the working relationship between the VFX house and the production broke down? who knows, but more often that not, a new film means you go back to the drawing board on the VFX! nothing is secure in post production and the simple development in software means that in as little 2 years, a company that handle 80/90 percent of the VFX in one film may not get any in its sequel.

anyway, here is the origional article from which these thoughts stem:

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=85621

first decent shots of john carter are here!

as usual, I have been terrible at updating my news section - really the whole site needs updating, but finally Disney have realised some decent screen shots of the John Carter of Mars, and behold a beautiful render of an airship! which I worked on.

In additon to which, there is a nice little review from Harry Knowles at ain't it cool news on these pics.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/52084

finally we come to the big write up....

disney screened about 20 minutes of the film to a select group of press and reviewers.....

AND THEY LOVED IT!

you can check the first one here:

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/1145066/john_carter_our_thoughts_on_20_minutes_of_footage_that_weve_seen.html

This sort of write up actually gets me excited about the movie and I worked on it! This may be the sort of film , that whilst your working on it, you become quite detached because it consumes so much of your life, for me it was over a year and half, i know plenty of people that worked on it for over 2 years...but maybe just maybe its going to be the massive blockbuster we all hoped it could be...will just have to wait and find out now...

fingers crossed.