Summer Is Here!

Only a few more days and I'll be on holiday! Yessss!

Long time no see!

Hello! I'm quite busy at the moment - at work and personally, so I haven't posted for almost a month. Things are going well. I'm working on Peter Jackson's latest movie at work. It's good fun.
Personally, I welcomed a new member to the fasmily ... the motorcycle family. This will be my summer project. It's a 1973 Yamaha XS650 that has been chopped into a Frisco Style Bopper. Needs a lot of work, a repaint of the tank, etc. etc. See you soon!

Oldschool

Hi! Yes, it took me a while to post something again. I came back from Austria and ran right into overtime work. I'm working on a new little painting and have been making a bit of music too. Hopefully I'll finish the painting so you'll get to see it soon.
What I also did was that I went through a lot of old CD backups and put them back on my current machine. Quite a nostalgic trip. Here are three images that were featured on my old webpage (Digital Illustration Outpost / guerillapixel.com). See you soon!

More Impressions from Austria

Here are some more images from Austria. Sorry for the bad editing, but I'm working on a laptop, so I'm a bit limited.
I'm leaving Austria the day after tomorrow. It was a great time and I'm glad I finally made it back after five years. I won't let another five years pass before I return.
But, I'm also glad that I am returning to my beloved Wellington - home if you want to say it like that.

Beautiful Vienna

I was in Vienna for a week, before travelling down to my dad's in the province of Styria. The weather was, and still is, fantastic. Very warm, actually a bit too warm for my tastes. Between 25-30 degrees celsius. I'm not used to that anymore.

In Vienna I walked around the city with my mother, who, in my opinion is as savvy as any professional guide. I also met a bunch of old friends I hadn't seen for up to ten years. It was like a day hadn't passed, really nice.

I went to different restaurants and also to a famous beer garden and ate a pork shank there. So unhealthy, but sooo goood!

I still need to download a ton of fotos, but here are the first impressions.




Oh and I'm having shoes made! Here you can see the shoemaker, this awesome lady, taking measures. Now she's gonna make a 'testing shoe' and then, after a few corrections, the real thing. I've always wanted handmade shoes so badly and now I finally get to do this!

Sleepy in Frankfurt

One more hour and then it's off to Vienna. Finally. I've seen enough airports for now!

Hello from Hong Kong

Gotta love the internet and free wireless. I'm on my way to Austria right now and laying over in Hong Kong. Too bad that there's not enough time to check out the city, but I'll be back one of these days.
In a few hours I'll board a plane to Frankfurt, the second long distance leg and then, finally, a plane to Vienna. I'm going to be in Austria for a month. No work. For a month. Wheee!
I haven't been back home for five years so I expect to get hit by a little bit of culture shock. I'll be taking tons of photographs to!

The photo above was taken this morning - just past the Philipines and about 1000 kms out from Hong Kong. The one below a little bit before. See you soon!

UFO ...

Ola! New silly song about a UFO ... that doesn't show. I know - pure brilliance! O_o

UFO!

Please enjoy - it's short and sweet (!??!??).

Aaaaand ... a few words I guess:

I'll be heading to Austria in a week. For the first time in five years. Very weird. It's been so long. I'm looking forward to it. What I'm looking forward to the most is not being at work for a good while. Really.

Anyway - enough babble out of me. Drop me a line! :)

Afternoon Walks

Did another walk over the hills today. Not as far as yesterday, since I had quite the headache. It was beautiful again. This time I brought my tele lens with me. I really missed it yesterday since the South Island was so visible. I was lucky since it was still quite clear today. The photo above was shot with a 200mm lens - it is slightly cropped. I always wanted to get a shot like that, but the weather was never good enough. The South Island is about 50 kms away if I remember correctly.


We had quite the thunder storm tonight. They are rare here in Wellington. So I opened the door to my deck, put the camera on the tripod and shot 30 second exposures - not a clear lightning but it lit up the skies which you can see here. If you look closely you can see the rain coming down from the clouds . This was around 10pm at night.



This one I shot a while ago. I love how tranquil it is. I like the colors too.



The cloud hook. I notice I don't get out much. All the photos I shot over the last months are either from my deck or from the neighbourhood. Oh well. Going to Austria soon and I will be loaded with memory cards and lenses.



And finally the cat. Hello cat. I love thee!

Burning ...

... out?

Anyway - here are some nice photos I took this arvo. They were taken from the ridges about 20 mins south of my house. I love Wellington and still can't believe I get to live in a place like this.

More Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Well - I thought since we're having our 10 year anniversary, I'll post some more FF stuff.

It's weird looking at those images after not having seen them for a very long time. I just remember how proud and arrogant I was during that time. I have to say that obvious mistakes just scream at me when I see those paintings. Experience makes a difference. Learning how to be a bit more humble too - because when one isn't busy telling everyone how great one is, one can pick up the great things fellow artists want to teach you.
If you're not busy behaving like a total dickhead.



The one that I'd almost let pass is the "Boa", the ship in orbit, but that was based on a wonderful clay model someone had built - maybe it was Kaneko - I'm not sure anymore. What I also realize again is how fantastic those japanese concept artists were. Truly awesome.



The painting of the city scape was meant to be a matte painting but really only passes as mediocre concept art. One thing in defense: back then we hardly had any easily available photographic reference and nifty things like AO, GI and FG were missing too, so even 3D didn't help that much. Well - at least it should have helped me a bit more with perspective. Eeek.



The crater one is another version of the crater posted below. This one doesn't look like an anus and I actually kinda like it. Still - I'd do things entirely different. The lack of a thought out atmosphere is disturbing though. So is the lack of lighting on the clouds.

It really rocks my world a bit to think that this was 10 years ago. I met some really cool people back then and made some really good friends there. Especially my friend Remo - who still lives in Hawaii to this day. Need to visit him again soon.

I also miss the Japanese artists I got to work with. Absolute pros and talented to the T. I made friends with a few of them and would love to see them again one day. At least my good friend Hiroyuki Seshita, who was such a cool guy. Might happen, who knows.

Since digital cameras weren't any good or affordable back then, I have only a few photos from that time - but I'm glad I scanned this one. It's my friends Neville, Jeff and me (on the far left) in Kauai. We chartered a Hughes 500 helicopter, having landed in the middle of a broken volcano chimney. I remember the pilot (behind us) telling us that one could only get there by chopper. There were no doors in the heli, so I was hanging out of it during much of the flight. Sweet times, sweet times.


If anyone would have told me 20 years ago in Austria, that one day I'd be living in Hawaii, zooming around in a chopper, I'd have asked them for a hit from their crack pipe. And now? Now it's already 10 years ago!!!

Now, what do we learn from this? If you get to do something cool, work on something cool or are just in a great situation - look around, enjoy, memorize, photograph and share. And don't be a dickhead.

Talk to you soon.

10 years ago ...

... yes boys and girls, 10 years ago - Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within. I miss Hawaii :(

Most of the designs were done by fantastic concept artists - I did the illustrations over the line art. Funny looking at that stuff again. Time surely goes by quickly ...

?

Recent Song

Here's the first song I've made in about, well, almost a year. Since one can't upload mp3's on blogger, I made this little video. I rendered some cheesy mid 80s style 3D atrocities so you've got something moving to look at. Don't look to long though, otherwise you'll get sick - rather listen to the music. Might make you sick too though ;) See you soon!

PS: Eeeek - just noticed that the upload applies a BRUTAL compressor to the whole thing. I redid the upload and applied a quite tight compression to the audio track. Hopefully it'll sound a bit better than the first upload. And if someone knows a free site where one can upload files / mp3's to link to, please be so kind and let me know. Thanks :)




UPDATE:

Here's the song for download:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6821268

Thanks for the offers though, guys!

Studio Update

With the help of my lovely girlfriend I redid my studio. I got an awesome keyboard stand that makes all the difference. With my recent switch to Logic Express (still running Reason in the BG) I can finally record audio and get to use my old analogue synths and microphones again. Very happy. Finished one track last week and am currently working on another one. I love making music. Keeps me in balance - expecially when works wearing me out.

Old Kong Matte

Here's one of the backgrounds I did for Kong. Painting starts a the greenbelt behind the Rex. Original painting is over 8K wide and was used for a few shots.

Quickie

Done in Artrage ...

One Last Smoke ...

Done in Artrage ...

Madre Mio!

Still 'tossing the overtime salad" ... Eeeek! At least I'm cranking out on some cool stuff here at work ;)

Painting While On the Phone ...

Hey! Nothing to write home about at all. I usually talk to my girlfriend on the phone. And while I'm doing that I'm quite often painting. Being on the phone makes my paint mind flow more easily. This is just a little sketch - I call it "Parrotfish". Well, hey - at least I'm painting ;)

And now ...

... I'm at home, sick. Great. Still not getting to paint. Grrr. I can just think about painting - which I do quite often these days. I'm having some new ideas and the desire to go back to some old ones. Either way - without time, neither will happen, haha.

I will visit Austria for the whole month of September - after not having been there for FIVE years! Time goes by so quickly. I'm looking forward to it! Anyway - I better get some more sleep.

Still Alive ...

... but still working like a mother! I hope that pretty soon things will go back to normal and I can finally return to making my own art. Right now I just don't have the energy. Worked over the weekend. Worked 15 hours yesterday - you get the picture. Speaking of picture - I still have time to take some quick photos. Here you go. See you soon!

My Stars!

Holy moly! Omg! Well .. not really - took this image yesterday - part of the milky way. Gotta love the southern night skies.
I took this with a Canon 40D and the 50mm f1.4 and ISO 800 and 8 seconds exposure. The picture you see was created from four separate exposures, that I then stacked together in Photoshop to reduce noise and get more dynamic range. It's not a stellar image ( sorry for the bad pun ) but still pretty interesting and once again confirms that the 50mm prime 1.4 is my favourite lens.

And there's also the moon rising above the fogs of Seatoun. Shot from my balcony.

Aquatic Dweller Update

Argh. Not happy with this yet. This is really total work in progress - will probably change quite a bit. Also note- there is no 'under water' treatment on it yet. And all kinds of other stuff missing. But feel free to give me some pointers anyway - maybe this helps me finishing this sucker nicer than I intended. Further down you should find the initial sketch that led to this. See you soon!