Tuesday, August 26, 2008

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! :)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

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!


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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.

Monday, August 11, 2008

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.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

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 ...




?

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

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!