After a longer period of quietness due to sickness and business it’s time to add a few new things to the site! Here i used a heavier HDR technique than in my previous macros. This gave it that nice soft look and of course the beautiful colors!
Captured Beauty XXXXV
Regards
It’s a classic from 1978 and i wanted to watch this movie for years. Due to my sickness over the last few days i had some time to watch a few films on my list. Now this movie gives us a young Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep. Everyone playing their roles on highest niveau.
The story is about three young men from a small industrial town in the united states, 1970s. All three go to vietnam while one of these three gets married just before they depart into the green hell. In vietnam then they find back together just to live through hell when they get captured by the enemy. With a ton of luck they make it and find a way back to the troops. All the experienced atrocities and torture changed these men. While we know them pretty extroverted, partying… they now turn out to be very quite characters. They do not seem to be able to fully understand what happened. Christopher Walken plays it so good. While our Robert De Niro character comes home and finds that nothing there has changed, particular friends still being closeminded, he is not the party guy anymore. As soon as he finds out that one of his friends is back from vietnam too he tries to find him. The character, amazingly played by John Savage, sits in a wheelchair now. Both legs amputed and one arm deaf. While he married just before he went to vietnam he now turned himself into a veterans hospital. He can’t stand it being a burden. He’s a wreck. While our Robert De Niro character tries to bring his friend home he also finds out that their other friend is still alive and still in vietnam. While the vietnam war is lost and at its end it’s our Robert De Niro character that goes back there to find his friend and fulfill his promise to bring him home. Unfortunately things don’t turn out as expected.
Like so many war movies this one specifically shows what war can do to ordinary people. People dragged out of their normal life to fight for something that actually makes no sense. It’s a 3h long movie that takes itself the necessary time to portrait even smaller details. And that’s the point. How things you experience can twist your thinking 180 degrees. It can make you go crazy or calm you down or turn you hypersensible to certain things. Amazingly portrayed by the actors in this film. If you have some time left… check it out!
For me a 8.0/10
Oh dear! That were quite some nice 2 weeks. Three awards for my ‘Gates To Elysium’ piece and now the flu. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the support! That cgchoice award really was a dream of mine. Now i got that and can scratch it off my list. Due to the flu and lack of motivation i am not really working on something right now. Except a painting i got commissioned for. My brush video should have been done right now but this damn flu rendered me useless over the last few days. So the video is set to a ‘when it’s done’ status now. Aside of that i’m trying to get that flu behind me as soon as possible. So i can finally finish up the things i have on halt now. Crazy anyway, it’s 30°c out there and i’m sitting here with a running nose and headaches! =D That are the things that make you feel alive…
Regards
If you are a serious digital artist then this award is on your list of things you want to receive someday. That is at least how i see it. I’m a long time member of CGTalk now and i have seen some really really breathtaking artwork there. I always looked up to these people and their work. I can remember a time when i was very fresh with digital art and photoshop generally. When i looked through the Cgtalk forums i dreamed of being such a great artist with such amazing vision. I never thought i could get there too. Today i made it and it means so much to me. I almost missed the mail from Paul Hellard. But then i saw his name and checked the subject line and ‘boom’. I just got up from bed and my day was already made! Hard work pays off! You just need to hold on to it and it really can pay off. =)
Thanks to the people who supported me over the last few years as well as the great digital artists on this planet who create new worlds and places that inspire people like me to create their own worlds!
Find the cgtalk post here.
This is one happy day for me!
Regards
GATES TO ELYSIUM
This is my benchmark painting for 2009. Much like my pervious big ones like ‘Artificial‘ or ‘Epica‘ this painting marks something special for me personally and in a technical way. I also used it to check out how much my, currently, new machine can take. I used Vue to render the basic 3d plate. I also rendered each part on a standalone pass. So the ground complex was done within a single Vue file, as well as the ring part. The small ships and the clouds were also rendered with single takes. That gives you the most freedom in the postwork. The hero render with the ground stuctures, landscape took about 28hrs to finish. A first try to render it failed after 8hrs with a corrupt Vue file when i tried to resume the render later. That was fun. All the other elements got rendered in a much shorter time. I also used quite some quality settings for the hero render.
I used DAZ3D Dystopia City blocks to create the structures and techy elements. Before i could use them i had to split the original files apart with c4d to pick me the most interesting models off the pack. Required quite some time. In Vue then i used the models to create the structures. It’s much like the modellers who worked on the first starwars movies who did use old battleship modelkits to create their spaceships. I’m doing the same with these 3d models of the buildings. Take something that’s already there to create something new. Did that with my ‘Epica’ painting too but i was not as deep into 3d as i am now. Not saying that i’m a 3d specialist… by - no - means! =)
Inspiration could be, once again, Mass Effect. I think the lighting, colors and style goes the same direction the game does. It’s also my wish to have a chance to see such things with my own eyes. That would be quite a sight i guess. Of course the usual suspects like the Coruscant cityplanet from starwars and other sci-fi movies and books.
Really hope you like what you see.
Intuos3 - Photoshop cs4 - Vue7 - 7hrs Preparation & Concept Phase - 40hrs Rendertime - 20hrs Postwork
Wallpaper Pack contains: 1920×1200 Concept Wallpaper - 1680×1050 & 1280×1024 GTE Wallpaper - Print Details
Print Detail
Progress Viz
Wireframe Bows
Wireframe Ring
Regards
Basically not much happening. I actually would have tons of photo stuff to submit but i’m crazy lazy. The people who follow me on twitter know that i’m currently working on my personal benchmark painting for this year. My ‘artificial’ or ‘epica’ for this year. A lot of vue stuff in it. Sci-Fi theme. Truly mesmerizing depth. While a friend of mine can’t stand this painting… i, on the other hand, really dig it. I’m excited what you guys will say. It’ll be submitted next week. Includes wallpapers and stuff. :)
The brush video is still alive but i did not find the right time to get it done. Before i’ll finish it up i want to complete my current painting. Which is basically done already. Still fiddling around on some details. It’s basically a video where i explain how i create the custom brushes for the ship concepts i do from time to time. I setting myself a two week deadline to get the video out. Check my twitter for specific updates.
Regards
We all know the controversy about the well known books of mr. Dan Brown. It seems like you either love them or hate them. I’m a bit caught in the middle. I find it interesting how he’s able to connect various mystics of religion with modern thematics to a somehow compelling story. No i never readthe books. Of course, with the success of the books, there would be movies. The first one i thought was kind of boring to me. It was fun to watch Tom Hanks solving all these weird connections… but ultimately… it left a somehow ‘not too exciting’ taste in the back of my brain. Weird brain i have!
Now in this second movie, directed once again by Ron Howard, we follow Tom Hanks again - with a better haircut though. And what would the movie be without an as smart as sexy companion on his side, played by Ayelet Zurer. Both of them make a good team throughout the movie and, once again, it’s fun to watch that pair solving the mysteries. They even throw a few jokes at the audience.
The story basically happens ‘24′ like during one day… while the vatican is voting for a new pope. Our team has to clear up various things or some important kidnapped vatican people have to die. That’s what we see throughout most of the movie. The story delivers some nice twists and you never really seem to know who’s behind it all. Even if you might think you know who it is. So you want to know what’s going on. And that is why you are watching this movie. Once you know what happened… i would say the movie becomes very uninteresting. So from my point of view there is not much left that makes the movie interesting enough to watch again.
Overall the movie is very quiet. Not the typical hollywood KABOOM movie. Which i liked. Also the soundtrack was done by Hans Zimmer again. That cannot be a bad thing. He’s one of my favourite movie musicmakers. Therefor we have a few nice musical themes in this movie.
The vfx are overall standard. That means they were good enough to look believable. The main eyecatcher, an explosion above the clouds, looked pretty cool and really beautiful. You see that they wanted to make it look special. And it looked very nice and detailed.
So overall it is an entertaining movie that will do what it has to do for 2 hours. But, like the first movie, it’s definitely not a masterpiece.
A 6.8 from me. =)
And another try with HDR and my macro series. This time i really dig the focus that came out rather cool here. Hope you dig it as much as i do!
Captured Beauty XXXXII
Regards
This is an event taking place in germany so i will continue with some official things describing the concept of the event.
“Dich juckt es in den Fingern, du willst dich endlich mal wieder kreativ beweisen?
Du weißt, dass Photoshop kein Laden ist und Illustrator kein todbringender Videospiel-Endgegner?
Dann bist du genau richtig bei SCHMIERN & KOPIERN - dem gnadenlosen MIXED PHOTOSHOP UND ILLUSTRATOR BATTLE!
Am 20.MAI kannst du in Schwäbisch Hall gegen andere schmierwütige Mulitmediakünstler und Grafiktitanen aus ganz
Deutschland antreten bis die Pixel fliegen. Ein spannender Wettbewerb bei dem sich derjenige behauptet, der die
genialsten Einfälle mit der besten Beherrschung der Grafiksoftware vereint.Was auf und vor den Bildschirmen
alles passiert wird live auf mehrere Leinwände übertragen - begleitet von den scharfzüngigen
Kommentaren der Moderatorin ANNI MATION und Host SHAWN STEIN.
FREIER EINTRITT, SNACKS UND GETRÄNKE und dazu natürlich allerhand digitale Schmierereien stillen die Sensationslust
eines jeden medieninteressierten Besuchers. MITMACHEN oder ZUSCHAUEN oder beides ist strengstens erlaubt.
Anmeldungen zum Wettkampf werden bis zum 11.5. an der Fachhochschule für Gestaltung entgegen genommen.“
Regards
“Forget everything you know about star trek.” You could use that phrase but i won’t. I just came home from seeing the movie on the big screen and i’m somehow happy. Happy about the way how they attacked the biggest of all problems of the huge startrek series/franchise. The extensive and superdetailed timeline. There is no way around it. It’s like a big wall that blocks every try of being creative with startrek. You have to keep in mind everything that happened, or will happen. If you dare to not keep the details in mind… every little trekkie would yell at you for not being correct! That’s a problem! A big problem!
Now the flesh and bone trekkie could say that the new startrek kind of ‘raped’ the old continuity of the whole series. But i would not go that far. As a fan i was always in the middle of startrek and starwars. I liked both series. Startrek always was a bit too slick for my taste. Starwars had the dirty, gritty look i love. Startrek has the connection to mankind as a race. While starwars doesn’t have that. So i’m writing here from a pretty neutral position.
The first hour of the movie you kind of wonder what’s actually happening. Some of our main characters get introduced and they do it in a very nice way. My biggest concerns was the role of ‘bones’. But Karl Urban kind of kicks the mood of Deforest Kelley really good. Then the story turns a bit and we begin to understand what’s actually going on. It’s pretty cleverly solved how they connected the old startrek storyline with the one in the new movie. But it also means that we have to push aside everything we knew about startrek so far. The acting, through the bench, worked pretty good. The overall cast seems to perfectly fit into their roles. It’s a remarkable thing, while having so many characters to cover, they managed to give each of them a decent part of the movie. I really really liked that. It was nice to see how every piece came together. Though sometimes you have to remind yourself that it’s a hollywood movie and nothing really realistic. So there are a few situations that may make you roll your eyes. What strikes me most is the energy this movie has. It’s looking good. It got life. It feels cool. It’s funny! Yes! There are a few very funny moments in the movie and the audience laughed more than one time during the film. Loved that.
The VFX were stunning. There’s actually nothing more i can say. It just looked great. The Vulkan city… in these mountains… beautiful. The space stuff. The fighting stuff. Really good! The one thing that kind of bothered me a bit where the quick cuts. Same with the transformers movie (and i don’t think it’ll get better in the 2nd one). Before you even understand what you just saw you get the next cut served… it’s just too fast… or am i just getting old here? Nonetheless it’s top notch fx work there. Makes me think of, once again, how i would love to be a part of something like that.
Overall that movie is quite a must see. For everyone. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a trekkie or not. It’s for everyone. It’s shiny new! It’s tasty!
Oh and by the way…
There’s this moment where Kirk gets away with the oldtimer in the beginning of the movie… when that song started to play… i was totally there. I LOVED that part. That song kind of reflects the whole movie in combination with what we knew about startrek so far. Time for something new!
Go see it!
8.2/10
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