What I'm doing today

David Frey is all out of gum. Virginia Logan is gonna shoot a robot.

I have to upload as much of Android Insurrection as we have. Which is actually a substantial amount although we don't have as many of the visual effects done as I'd like.
I wonder what sort of "gaaarrrrooouuuuughhht" sound Moony's gun makes. Motion tracking it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

Project London

The Project London trailer:

Trois Pommes Pandora

Somehow I missed the review of StakeLand in the New York Times.

Bill Cunningham has released his new indie comic, The Miracle Squad.

And Steve Burg.

The Shuttle

No motion blur.

This weekend we've been all about rendering dragons and shuttles.
The image without motion blur isn't moving. Yeah, we're just testing things before we put in the background plate.

With motion blur.

Cocoon

Here's the cocoon from Brian Schiavo's Lifeforce.

Fun Facts

.png files are lossless all the time. The "compression" you use on them is lossless compression.

I should make my way over to using Open EXR. Eventually I suppose we will.
Here's another render of the dragon

Eye See You

Nathan Vegdahl made this dragon opening its eye for us.

Draggin My Heart Around

Nathan Vegdahl is helping us out with animations on our Dragon Girl movie. The first step was to change up the rig on the dragon so that it worked with the latest version of Blender.
To which I say "tres cool"!

You Call This Work?

Android with Whirleydoomer

Distributor actually asked if he could have this movie by next week. Oof. Man we do not have many of the composites done. Uh. I guess I'm going to have to get to work. ;-)

Ripping off the Rippers

So there are all these sites with ripped versions of the Battle: New York Day 2 DVD on them. I have a Google Alert set up to send me everything with "Battle: New York" in it and I'm getting like 10 a day now.
Am I allowed to just think it's funny that rippers post stills from the movie

and then watermark the stills -- you know, so people don't rip them off?
Everyone gets the irony there, right? It's not just me then.
Also, are these stills arbitrary? Or are they really selects?
Another question I have is: who issues the takedown notices? I suspect that technically that's our distributor(s). I have no idea. Maybe they just want people to download the movie often so that the servers go down.

Ripping

Tina Tanzer in Battle New York Day 2

You like rips of your movies? Battle New York Day 2 has finally been ripped and distributed.
The RMTeam even captured some screen shots for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Monsters and Movies

Making a monster: Strangewerks on building the creature for Lifeform.

+++++
On finishing up the feature Project London:

You might be wondering why, after so much time, we are launching a fundraising campaign. Good question. We didn't realize how arduous and difficult it really is to make a feature length, sci-fi actioner.

To which I reply: "Ha!" Welcome to the club! ;-)

The Many Faces of Virginia Logan

When looking for dates lunch on Craigslist.

The beautiful and Charming Virginia Logan of Android Insurrection (below) and of Brian Schiavo's Lifeform (above). Sam gal, different part of the lunar month.

For hunting robots. Also, when looking for dates lunch on Craigslist.

The Three Things of the Machine

You know what our distributors don't care about? DVD extras. Well, specifically they don't care about 5.1 mixes, or commentary tracks. They maybe care a small amount about a "behind the scenes", especially if you have name talent in the picture, but that's it.
So here I am, setting up my 5.1 system. For what? I dunno. Just 'cause I guess. It sounds pretty nice actually.

The Decline of Indies on Netflix? The decline of indies? How could it get much worse? The best case scenario is selling them sixty copies. So without Netflix that's about $420 you're missing out on. Now if Netflix were to die altogether, maybe Blockbuster would pick back up and we'd get some real revenue once again...
Blender has a camera tracker. Have I mentioned this? It does not look easy to use though. ;-)