I’ve been busy all day today getting Suncoast Studios projects in order. Millard and I have been talking about resurrecting the documentary we started back in 2005, so I decided to move the entire Production Portal from chewbode.com to its permanent home at Suncoast Studios. I had to recreate all of the blog entries and upload all of the data, properly building the Portal as I went. While doing this, I realized there were several other things up here that needed to move including the Transformers models I build for the TFMod Team’s Battlefield 1942 mod, the Pleaseeasaur video edit I did for MutantMall.com, and the final submitted edit of My First Job. So, all that’s done now and it’s properly organized up under the SCS site and the old references up here have been removed. I also spent some time here fixing the look and feel of the blog,...
Category: Studio
High Definition Reappearance
I recently made the jump to an HDTV. My old TV, which was a Philips-Magnavox 60” rear projection, was really starting to show its age, and with devices like my AppleTV and the HDTV cable box, I was starting to feel that I was getting behind the times. So, I picked up a Mitsubishi WD-65734 65” DLP monster. I’ve had it for about a week now, and I’m thoroughly impressed. Very vivid colors, tons of inputs, and great 1080p performance. Of course, I had to go into the settings of my first generation X-Box and set it for 1080 and continued the trend with the AppleTV, cable box, and Wii (well, the Wii I was able to just set to widescreen because it only supports 720). I then decided to get a PlayStation 3 from my local Rent-A-Center to see what it was like and Oh. My. God. I’ll have...
Hell Month
There have been a shitload of things going on lately. I think the fact that I haven't logged in and posted a blog entry is testament to that. So, here's the skinny: At work, we moved into our new building back on February 7th. Well, actually, it was the weekend of the 5th and 6th, but we officially opened the doors on the 7th. So, we've been there for almost a month now. Since the first day, we've encountered numerous problems that have resulted in me needing to be at the office a lot. Last week alone (Monday thru Sunday), I spent about 115 hours at the office. That means that over 68% of the ENTIRE week was spent there; the rest of the time was sleeping and, on Saturday, getting my haircut and running a few errands. This week looks to be very similar, as it's currently 2:24am and...
Banal
Well, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted, so here I am again. Things have been busy lately, as usual. Most of my time has been spent working on IT stuff for my day job. We’re still in the process of moving into our new building, but there’s the potential of a new client coming on board that’s thrown a wrench into the process. Regardless, I’ve been busy getting last-minute things finished up in the server room. The only things left now are the fire-suppression system and the cleanup, and I hope that’s all done this week. We have a large IT audit going on right now and that’ll take up the rest of my week. I have to implement some new stuff and test some old stuff. I need to focus on getting that done today. Because of all the crazy hours, I’ve fallen off the wagon and...
A Little Sore, A Lot Busy
Things have been crazy at the office this past week, preventing me (out of sheer exhaustion) from posting any entries up here. We’re still on target to begin our office move next week, but I’m starting to doubt whether it’ll really happen. There are a few factors outside of our control influencing the move, and those deadlines seem to be slipping. In any case, it seems that my body isn’t used to standing all day anymore and the lifting and bending I’m doing is beginning to take its toll on my lower back. I’m sure it’ll just be a matter of time before my muscles remember how to do all this. This weekend is going to be full of Suncoast Studios work. I plan to spend tons of time working on Eman’s project. I feel bad that I haven’t been able to spend more time on it, as I know...
Disks and Discs
Well, it looks like tomorrow night I’ll be finished with erasing these spare hard drives. I’ve decided that I’m going to donate the 10 GB, the three 40 GB, and the 80 GB drives to work. We have plenty of computers that are constantly dying on us, usually because of hard drive failures, so these will be nice to have around. I’m burning a DVD for Millard right now, and after that I’ll start installing LightWave. I need to jump back in the job for Eman. I want to knock it out of the ballpark. In the meantime, I’ll work on the Suncoast Studios Publishing site. Shauna and I watched Lost (Season 3, Disc 3) last night. I sent all the NetFlix discs back today, so we may have more episodes to watch this weekend. Assuming I’m not working, which will likely be the case. It’s gotten cold here in...
Oraganizing and Updating
I’ve been busy at work here in the studio. I’m not really doing any SCS work, per se, but I’m getting things organized, cleaned, fixed, etc. I’ve been shredding a bunch of old paperwork that means nothing to anyone anymore. That, along with organizing the paperwork on my desk, should put me in a much better mood today. I hate clutter, especially in my work area. I reorganized the closet in the studio and got all of the 1K lights back in there that I leant to work while our new office was being built. Other than being a bit dusty and having a little paint on them, they’re all still in great order. I’ll find time at some point to clean them up; most likely by the time I have a new production about to be shot. After years of using the application, I finally purchased DVD Profiler today....
Sick and Weak Week
I’ve been battling a cold for the past week. It hit me the night before Thanksgiving, and got progressively worst through Monday night. Even though I took the day off from work Monday, Tuesday I felt well enough to head back into the office. Unfortunately, the aching, soar throat and congestion caught back up with me today. So, in general, Thanksgiving went off well. I went and picked my mom, sister and brother-in-law up and they stayed up at our place for the entire day. I dropped them back off later that night. We had the usual turkey, stuffing, pashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole and rutabagas. There was delicious pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. On Black Friday, I took the day off, partly because I needed a break from work, partly because I was sick (I still did work from home most of the day). I ventured...
Send In The Renders
Ah, the weekend. I am ever so glad it's here. It's a time to wash away the stresses of the week and turn your energies inward, hopefully accomplishing some housework, finishing some projects, or just being entertained. I'm about to lay out my master plan for the next two days... Here we go... I'm currently outputting the final 35mm render for Tangible Entertainment. Some interesting specs on the project: 467 frames of animation 24 frames per second 19.45 seconds of footage Final output resolution: 4,096 x 1,968 pixels 1.85:1 aspect ratio (Flat/Academy Aperture) Current total render time (approximated): 6 days I've been contacted by another filmmaker out in L.A., who wants me to do a title animation for him as well. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but he's pretty well-known in certain internet circles, and I'm sure people in Hollywood know him. We're...
Lights. Camera. Action?
I went to a lighting shop in town today and got four new 250 Watt, 3200K tungsten floods for Suncoast Studios. I also picked up another aluminum case and tear-apart cube packing and have built out the carrying case for all of the bulbs I have. I also tested them all to make sure that they're working fine. These bulbs are great lights, but only last 20 hours each and the color temperature starts to change after only three hours. I'm currently sitting in the studio sipping a Diet Coke blogging, taking a break from working on the Tangible Entertainment project. I think I'll have a 95% correct version by the end of the night. After I ship the low res animatic off to them and get approval, I'll render it out at full 2K film resolution. I may be doing a shoot all next week. I'm not 100% sure...
