Being completely honest - it seems that I am eternally unhappy with my showreel efforts yet forever lacking the time to really throw at creating something I am thoroughly pleased with, so behold : Something I am unhappy in moderate amounts with over on my home page.
Slightly retimed elements and applied a new shot transition to the entire reel in order to theme it a little better, better documented the beauty work for Fletcher Wilson and added the most tricky shot I did on NightShift.
In the future, I’d like to finish and add some of the FXPHD coursework I’ve done - and whilst I usually tend to stick to using non-tutorial work I think I’ve deviated far enough from the norm (what is on everyone elses fxphd reels) to justify their use.
Will also sort out the breakdown on the final shot at some stage over the next two weeks and silently update it, as well as swap out the current track with the slightly unsightly stock effect spark with the one that was used in the film.
*breathes*
It will be done, oh yes. it will be done.
‘Poppies’ by Ashley Wing - a film which features a flashback sequence on which I composited additional smoke, atmosphere and gunfire effects into, has recently been featured over on the BBC’s website here.
I’ve always believed Poppies to be a visually cool as well as poetically touching short. Hopefully the exposure serves Ash well!
When I haven’t posted for a while, it’d be easy to assume I’ve been away from Visual Effects for a little while - which is as always, the complete opposite of the truth. 
A while ago I announced I was working as a Compositor (and although I don’t like to say it, VFX Supervisor) on a micro-budget pseudo-sci-fi short. I say pseudo because having seen the film I noticed it has very little sci-fi about it other than being set on another planet.
Around the same time as this I started working as a Compositor on another short, this time by the well established editor Mark Hawtin on his film ‘NightShift’. A cool little action film. I handled some motion tracking and in-screen displays for the film, I think a total of around 20-25 shots which I only finished recently.
It’s been a real pleasure working with Mark, not only because he’s a genuinely nice guy - but also because his years of working as an editor have given him a greater appreciation of how good organisation really saves a lot of time when it comes to bringing other people in on your project. In short - the work was without any problems, fun. I hope to work with Mark again next year, although likely in a more heavyweight capacity. More on that when it happens.
After that I spent some time paid to comp in some general war visual effects on the short film ‘Picture the Past’ by director Peter Christopher Harmer, a nice little war story acted by grandchildren of men who fought. A cool little project.
Right now - what I’m up to is secret, though also takes up a large amount of my time and energy. Getting work done on the sci-fi film is going slow and as a result we’ve extended our deadlines. There is still a whole lot to do and as a result I have to admit that I am still a social caterpillar.
But that’s alright, I quite like this kind of craziness.
-Matt
Until recently I’ve been unaware of some of the major difference between Shake and Nuke, though my training over at fxphd recently covered some of Nuke’s 3D System - Something I decided to expand my understanding of and bought the SphereVFX Nuke In-Depth 3D training dvd.
The second I learnt of the readObj Node I’ve been wanting to have a play with it. The current project I’m working on has a fair amount of background extension work of corridoors that needs to be done and so far, I had camera mapped some geometry in my 3D App and was rendering it out with camera tracked motion applied to it and then finally comping it in Shake.
So, simplified that leaves my workflow like this; 3D App > Render > Composite > Render.
Being able to handle the 3d Geometry and projection within Nuke allows me to handle all of these in one move, though more importantly it means I get a realtime snapshot of the final comp - provided early warnings of problems with the camera track or overall solution.
I whipped this up pretty quick;
Using a reference photograph projected on a region of corridoor and then repeated with each region transformed further backwards in Z-Space, the final effect is convincing enough to make me believe that this workflow is probably one of the better solutions. Now all I need to do is start all over again but be really, really accurate and neat. Then we might have a finished shot on our hands.
-Matt
