VFXhack

I always wondered were that stuff came from.

Thanks to Nyarlathotep for the link

Hitler goes bananas after hearing that the film came back from the lab with a scratch on the neg that will have to be fixed in post. Classic.

Thanks to Aaron Z. for the link

These nuggets of godly wisdom from the book of Exodus have inspired many imitations from The Ten Commandments of the Mafia to The Ten Commandments of Couch Crashing here’s my entry into the fray

The Ten Commandments of Visual Effects

1. Thou shalt not covet thy cubicle buddy’s action figures.

2. Thou shalt not put thy greasy goddam fingers all over my monitor.

3. Thou shalt always use headphones.

4. Thou shalt not ship until first thou hast blurred and glowed.

5. Thou shalt not get overly excited about the latest Hollywood blockbuster based on a comic book or 80’s toy.

6. Thou shalt always pad thy hours.

7. Thou shalt not torture thy interns (they could be your boss some day).

8. Thou shalt not become too bitter too quickly.

9. Thou shalt not wear free t-shirts from Siggraph on the Sabbath.

10. If thou cannot do… thou shalt blog.

There is a thread of VFX themed “Yo Mamma” jokes rolling on VFXTALK right now. Here are some choice tid-bits.

Yo momma so fat, they had to roll her out onto a football field and film her from a blimp, just to get a good key!

Yo Mamma so fat, we had to throw away our 32 bit systems because of insufficient lightwrap!

Yo momma so fat, She crushed all my blacks

And my personal fav

Man, Yo Mamma so fat, we was talkin about node noodles and she grabbed a bowl.

UPDATE

I’ve thrown my own creation into the fray

Yo Mamma so fat she broke my clipping plane!

LINK to the full thread

I find it interesting that the VFX for this spot look as if they were done on a VIC-20. Check out the big man in all his tan on tan glory. This was a smokin’ hot machine for it’s day (a whole 5kb of RAM) and for just $299.95. Gotta love that they use GORF as one of the demos. Here’s the print add from the same campaign.

via io9

Just started this comic over at Strip Generator. Loads of fun, more to come.

LINK to the full Wireframez strip blog

Eric Alba has posted a Flickr feed of his spiffy new tracking markers. The best thing is the not-so-secret message printed on every one. Here, take a closer look.

Well played Alba.

LINK to Eric’s Website

I saw this vehicle parked in front of LA motion capture facility, House of Moves. This really shows the lengths a VFX freak will go through satisfy their obsessive compulsive itch. Check the details, my favorite being the steering yoke. Wait, maybe it’s the translucent Obi Wan on the dash.

With all the crazy hours us VFX peeps slog through on a regular basis, certain activities can get swept to the side. Reading seems to be at the top of that list. After a long day chained to the desktop it’s hard to do anything at home but veg and try to unwind. And carving out a hour or so a night for reading just doesn’t seem like the thing to do considering there are several more songs left to be unlocked on Guitar Hero (or maybe that’s just me). Lucky for me I have a about an hour and half commuting time to catch up on my book learnin. Of course holding a page full of printed words up in front of my face while I wind my way down Laurel Canyon every day might prove to be a bit problematic. Audiobooks to the rescue. Now I know some of you are saying “Audiobooks? That’s not really reading.” Well, I hate to inform you that you are wrong. All of my friends who are avid listeners have decided that as long as you listen to the whole audio program in it’s unabridged form, you can say that you have read the book. So there, print snobs. Here are my five picks for great listens picked especially for my VFX brethren.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman-

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks that are read by their author. Hearing Neil Gaiman recount many of the short stories he’s written over the years is pure magic. The tales the gamut including examples of Gaiman’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror and even a bit of poetry. There is a story set in the world of the Matrix and novella that features the continuing adventures of some of the characters masterpiece American Gods. A lot of the stories are bite-sized and easy to finish off if you’ve only got a few minutes to kill between renders.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson-

If you are a know-it-all like me, you must read this book. It gives you just enough info on about this rock that we live on to be dangerous, or at least completely annoying over cocktails. Bryson covers a wide range of scientific discoveries that you alway thought that you should know about and presents them with a mater of fact sense of humor that even makes them interesting. A word of warning though. This book shows how humans scientists use their powers of reason and observation to create “theories”. Intelligent designers might be offended.

Star Wars (Dramatized) by George Lucas-

Imagine watching the original Star Wars (episode IV, in case you just arrived in a time machine from 1976) without any visuals what-so-ever. I mean just the audio and a blank screen. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it would be a tremendously boring experience. So when, Lucas commissioned the for Radio version of his Sci-Fi classic in 1981 he made sure that it included expanded scenes not featured in the film to flesh out the radio play’s 6 1/2 hour running time. The result is a must for any Star Wars fan and includes great performances from Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels.

World War Z by Max Brooks-

I’m not a huge fan of the alternate history genre. I really couldn’t give a crap what some history nerd thinks the world would be like of the South actually won the civil war. But if you are like me, you have spent countless hours thinking to yourself “Now what would I do during a Zombie apocalypse?”. Well World War Z gives you a ground level view of what happens when the dead roam the earth on search of human flesh in the form of first person accounts from the Zombie War. If there is one thing I’ve learned from this book, if you are ever in the front lines of a confrontation with the undead, stay away from large bodies of water.

The Areas Of My Expertise by John Hodgman-

Hodgman himself reads his Farmer’s Almanac meets The Onion send up of a variety of topics from Lobsters to Hobo Matters. You’ll probably recognize Hodgman from the Daily Show and as the PC on the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials. Be careful though if you are listening on headphones while other people are around you will laugh out loud and appear to be an insane person to other join your vicinity. Take note that the list of 700 hobo names is available for free from Hodgman’s web site and takes over an hour for him to read.

LINK to hobo drawings at e-hobo

This Bollywood style dream sequence takes you inside the mind of a CG animator faced with the prospect of life after outsourcing. It’s pretty funny but falls a bit into the category of gallows humor considering all the people in this video could be replaced someday soon by their Indian counter-parts. Ah well, if you can’t laugh at yourself who can you laugh at?

(via Cartoon Brew)