So this is a bit old already, but I made this video while doing RnD for a larger project with my good friend Moses Journey. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish with just some magic markers, a latex glove, After Effects, and a healthy dose of idiocy.

For the stout of heart, I also offer the raw motion capture session which, upon review, is a lot more unsettling than it has any right to be.

Wolf & Crow asked me to be CG Supervisor on this job and, perhaps foolishly, I jumped at the opportunity. I worked as CG Supervisor, pipeline developer, VFX Artist, and cheerleader. We accomplished the Herculean task of finishing two months worth of work in something like three weeks, and nobody died in the process.

Considering how little time we had, I think it came out rather well!

Julie's First Puppet Show

It’s been sort of a running theme for a while now, so this Christmas Hilary and I decided to make her a puppet theater. We designed the thing in Adobe Illustrator, modeled it all in 3D Studio Max to help visualize everything, cut all the pieces out on the CNC Router, sanded, painted and glued it all up, then finished it off with red curtains.

I can tell she loved it because, just like the first time Mr. Dolphin said hello, she just sat right down and got to it. There was no question of what a puppet theater was, or how to play with it or anything. She walked right up to her new stage and got ready for a show – and five minutes later she was putting on a puppet show herself!

The theater is essentially a flatpack kit, cut from a single sheet of 1/4″ birch plywood. It could easily be made of MDF or even cardboard, and the design should scale up or down pretty well (within reason). For what it’s worth, I plan to release the design into the Public Domain, but my files aren’t very clean at the moment. Should anyone be interested in building a puppet theater from my plans, drop me a line and I’ll clean up the files and post ‘em here. Let me know what format(s) would be the most helpful – I’ve sort of cobbled together my own workflow, and I have no idea whether or not my files would work for a stranger.

Enjoy the photos below. I wish I’d taken better shots, but when a 3 year old gets involved the night tends to veer off track pretty quickly.

David Glicksman
3D / VFX / Motion Graphics Generalist
2130 W 28th st
Los Angeles, CA 90018
(310) 382-0688
animator@appliedesoterics.com

Skills:
2D/3D Modeling and Animation – Compositing (by various definitions) – PhotoReal and non-PhotoReal rendering – Particle FX – Dynamics/Physics – Foliage and Terrain Generation – Cloth – Fluids – CG Smoke – Destruction FX – Scripting – Pipeline and Tool Development – Realtime/Interactive Systems – Embedded Systems – Web and Database Development – Keying – Paint/Roto – MatchMove – Rig/Wire Removal – CAD/CAM – And whatever else you may need

Tools:
3D Studio Max – Maya – Cinema 4D – Mograph – Mental Ray – VRay – finalRender – Thinking Particles – Fume – Krakatoa – Glu3D – World Builder – MaxScript – After Effects (and other CS packages) – Common AE Plugins – AE Expressions and Scripting – Particle Illusion – Boujou – SynthEyes – Shake – (some) Nuke – Quartz Composer – Max/MSP – Unity – Applescript – Arduino – FileMaker – MasterCAM – ArtCAM – Mach3

Industry Sectors:
Motion Graphics – Broadcast VFX – Major Film VFX – Major Film Previz – Videogame Cutscenes – Music Videos – Web Graphics – Concert/Live Performance Graphics – Industrial Design – Interactive Environment Installations – Educational / Instructional Video – IMAX Graphics – Architectural Visualization

Clients:
Buck Design – Brand New School – Stardust – We Are Royale – Roger – Big Machine – Shadowplay Studio – SDF-1 – Imaginary Forces – ColourMovie – Pusher Media – GoodSpot – Red Engine Studio – WIT Animation – Electroland – Frank The Plumber – Paramount Pictures – Columbia Pictures – Uncharted Territory – P.O.V. – Seismic Productions – Mocean – Skip Film – And more

Education And Work:
David received his BA in Media Studies from UC San Diego, and has worked as a digital artist since 2003

With countless hours of hand-drawing crack patterns, running physics sims, debugging (cursing at) massive cache files and weird technical anomalies, developing particle systems and geometry tweaks and minute details – all while staying sensitive to composition and storytelling – it was a hell of a job.

And I think we pulled it off beautifully.

For extra credit, head on over to Art Of The Title for an in-depth interview with Gareth. I’m the one referred to as “our vfx artist”.

download mp4 (48Mb)

And here’s a brief shot breakdown, courtesy of Ari:



download mp4 (21.4Mb)

My brother, John, was born with cerebral palsy and uses adaptive technology to overcome his given difficulties. John can’t use his hands, and has trouble speaking clearly, but with his power wheelchair and an ever evolving suite of gadgets, he’s accomplished more than most people I know. He’s made it through school and college, traveled the world, given speeches for the royal family of Qatar, and lives completely independently in Los Angeles.

John drives his wheelchair with his chin. He uses his computer with a head tracking device designed for CAD technicians. He gives presentations with a synthetic voice that’s cooler than my own natural voice (his sounds like Sir Alec Guinness). Nothing really seems to get in his way. In fact, the only thing that I’d ever seen stump him was the iPhone, but even that didn’t last long.

John had been wanting the iPhone ever since that first keynote, but we kept scratching our heads and telling him he would just have to let this one go. But a few months ago, long after I’d given up hope myself, John sent me an email that ended with the infamous default signature — “Sent from my iPhone”.  I couldn’t believe what I was reading, but the next time I went to visit, sure enough, he’d figured something out.

Hilary and I were so impressed that we resolved then and there to make a video with John, to show off his innovation to as many people as possible.  Hopefully it will inspire someone to do something similar, or something even better! So without further ado, we present John Duganne: Noser!