3Vis Presents 'The Foundry' & Some Visual Effects Lovin'

Hey hey guys, It's been a few days since I've posted but it's been crazy busy with office stuff but I finally got some time to post some of my thoughts.

I attended a presentation of Nuke's latest software, Mari via 3vis and it was exceptionally good. NukeX 6.1 Version 3, STORM, Ocula & Mari were all on presentation and it was mind-blowing. I also got some swag from the event which I'm rockin' to work everyday for winter.Check out Professional Artists Gather for Mari 1.1 Launch Event and it will be hosted by Ben Kittay Studio Stage 15 – Gnomon School of VFX on 1015 Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, 90038. Registration starts at 6pm and the presentation runs from 7pm to 9.30pm.

Some very kewl stuff taking place with our ACM SIGGRAPH Montreal Chapter, with presentation for Eidos Montreal to present Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Show & Tell by Strob on Iron Baby.Here's an interesting read of The Making of Avatar over at 3D World Mag and some very interesting facts such as 4,352 render machines, 34,816 CPU cores and 104TB of RAM.

To some interesting yet old news, I had a small stint with visual effects house, The Embassy right here in Vancouver a few months ago where I was mentored by VFX veteran, Stephen Pepper for a short film I worked on. The studio did some amazing work for District 9 which got nominated for 4 Oscars, check out their contribution over at CGSociety. If you're in the Los Angeles area on December 4th, check out Zbrush Central's: User Group Meeting with some amazing talent, Neville Page - Lead Creature / Character Designer and Modeler for Productions including Avatar, Star Trek and Cloverfield & Ian Joyner - Character Designer at Legacy Effects with credits Including Avatar, Iron Man 2 and Thor.

I also got some new additions to my IMDB page with The Haunting Hour, Edge of the Garden & Goodnight for Justice. I'm out, Gnite

Darvin K. Manwah: Digital Compositor at Zoic Studios (Vancouver) & Matte Painter
Online Portfolio, Personal Blog and ACM SIGGRAPH Portfolio Review Mentor

Holy Smokes It's Freezing in Vancouver & Other News

I spent most of my day indoors but today dropped to -10 degrees with tonight being -17 degrees. A very good reason to cover up and sleep BUT that's not gonna happen. Today I officially started on another movie, The Edge of the Garden with The Haunting Hour pretty much completed.

I spent a few minutes updating my site again and added 3 new images from my collection and added them throughout this blog.

Along the lines of exciting, I'm apply for the VES-Autodesk Student Award Competition for a tight deadline of November 30th and hoping it goes through.

Check out some kewl work from Henry South, a VFS Grad from the 3D Animation & Visual Effects Program at VFS, old school style and his honorable mention in the VFS' Blog

Graduating one class behind me, Jeff Merkel an animator of 3d82 finished his final titled “Le B’anana” which made it to the VFS Blog, check out his story and how he actually got into animation.

To add icening to the animation-cake, check out one of my good friends, Andy Cheung's 4-minute animated shot 'Orizuru (Paper Crane)" and his review at the Richmond Review.

Now to some sad news, after 11 years in production Asylum Visual Effects in Santa Monica is closing their doors. WTF!

Stargate Studios did some pretty kewl work for The Walking Dead, check out the article at FX Guide.

I gotta say, I love my code, check out the HTML5 Web Messaging Draft.

P.S. Birthday wishes going out to Katie Better, Kendell Sylvester & Shivani Atwaroo. Hope you guys had an awesome rockin' Birthday.

It's 12:56 AM and it's COLD, I'm off to bed guys, Peace !!!

Mattepainting & More ...

Hey hey hey guys,

I've been a bit under the weather for the past few days but I'm feeling alot better now. Spent some time this weekend recovering and recovered I am. Im my spare time I dug up some interesting links, check them out. I also made alot of changes to my website, mostly coding but some noticeable ones as well. Browse over to my site Carphology Entertainment and tell me what you think, specifically the Artwork Section.

As I'm getting better with Nuke, I want to try and complete a 15-Sec visual effects piece ever month starting this month, learning something new everytime. For the first project, I'll be making a camera projection out of my last mattepainting 'The Far Side' which should be completed and uploaded by December 1st, 2010. *Yikes*

Check out some amazing work by Bruno Wagner and Cris de Lara at CG Society.

Some amazing pics of supermodel Frida Gustavsson in 'In Bed with Roberto Cavalli'. There's also some new pics of supermodel Alejandra Alonso from Valencia, Spain.

Looking for a good laugh, check out my mid-day funny time, iJustine and with Marc’s crazy project, The Advice of Strangers.

I forgot to mention this earlier but the The Animago Conference 2010 was on 28th & 29th of October 2010. Check out some of the amazing lineups for the conference from Pixar, ILM to Scanline VFX.

Had this lying around for a bit and it seems interesting, check it out, Bondi Short Film Festival 2010

I highly recommend signing up and creating a portfolio at Behance Network, you won't regret it.

Also check out Belinda Rodriguez and the Trinidad based festival, Animae Caribe which officially started on Monday.

I got a Twitter request from Peregrin Studios located in Singapore. Gotta say, I'm liking their environment a whole lot.

Wow, now that's alot, I guess I'm making up for lost time, I'm out, G'nite

P.S. My 'Hot Chocolate Girl' is back ...

Feeling the Burn

I didn't feel super-human-like today so I ended up being home for the day. I slept till 3:30pm and got a bit of work done but I'm still trying to finish my shot for the office. Lots to get done still but I'm almost there. It's been about 3 days for this shot and it's driving me insane, hopefully a few more hours and I can get it approved.

Besides work, I've got my photo-op on Friday with my student advisor at VFS. I'm excited yet nervous about it. I'm not much of a in-front-of-the-camera kinda person but hopefully it goes well. I'm also hoping that this weekend I'll get some time to update my blog, website and portfolio with some new content. Work's been super busy and I haven't had alot of time to do anything but work !!!

For my Nuke lovers out there: Nuke, Production Workflows, Retouching Environment Maps

The long awaited Green Lantern Trailer

And not forgetting my code monkeys: Create a jQuery Popup Bubble

And finally some history loving: Dennis Muren

I better get some snooze, another long day tomorrow ... G'nite World !!!

Monday Depart, Tuesday Arrival

I gotta say, it's not bad of a day. I got my shot approved and it's looking good. We're finishing up Haunting Hour and heading straight into a Feature Film. This one sounds interesting as it's a very technical and creative. I should be starting that one tomorrow as I wrapped up my last shot for Haunting Hour. It was fun but I'm ready to move on ... :)

This one's called 'Edge of the Garden' and I really don't know a whole lot about it. I'll be getting a brief on it tomorrow to hear what's it about. Hopefully it's something I can take on and if not something to learn without too much difficultly.

Besides that, there's alot of strong winds in the city tonight, holy smokes it almost blew me away ... Dang it I need some wind clothes now. SEARS !!!

The Animae Caribe thing is on so I'm getting a photo taken on Thursday to send to the festival for the weekend. It's exciting to always get published however small or big it might be. Lets see how this one turns out.

I better get to bed, but before I do, check out this company: Radium Reel FX. They worked on 'Katy Perry - Fireworks' Here's some Behind-the-Scenes footage of the Video

Also check out Ethan Lader who directed Bruno Mars - Just the Way You Are

... and for my code monkeys out there: Dot Net Slackers

G'nite ... and Happy 'Would-Have-Been' One Year Anniversary ...

Preppin' for Monday!

Another weekend gone by, another week to go. I finished my shot over the weekend and I'm looking forward to another tomorrow. Time's flying past so quickly it's going without notice at the moment. Hopefully I'll get to catch up soon enough.

Hopefully my small bits from ACM SIGGRAPH comes out as I'm super duper excited at the moment about it. I also have to uploaded the VAFF stuff and then get the VFS thingy going as well.

Over the weekend I turned a sunny day of filming to a snow covered day which was pretty neat I think as a visual effects show ... and in 5 hours. Hopefully I get another that's kewl just as much.

Also I made my way up to North Vancouver today which was interesting. As I already have a One-Zone bus pass it allowed me to take the seabus which is very KEWL. It was a bit cold but I liked the bleak days when they come by.

For my coding monkeys out there, check this out: How to Build a Kick-Butt CSS3 Mega Drop-Down Menu

Also thought this might be an interesting to check out: Dreamworks Animation

And my fav of them all: Summer 2011 Preview: 20 Movies We'll Be Talking About Next Year


I'm off to bed guys, g'nite ...

ACM SIGGRAPH Student Services (S3) Mentor for Mattepainting

It's official, I'm now helping out with the Mentor Program for SIGGRAPH where I'll be reviewing portfolios specific to mattepainting. I'm excited about it as I really like stuff like this. Helping out where ever I can gives a warm fuzzy feeling on the inside. My last academic stint was back at NorthGate College presenting on Graphic Design and Job Opportunities for Trinidadians in the field of art.

I also updated my website: www.carphology-entertainment.com, trying to make it a bit more interesting and user friendly, check it out and tell me what you think.

Unfortunately, I have to work tomorrow to finish off one of my shots and start another, the shot's coming along but I'm not entirely pleased with it as yet. Hopefully I'll get it done by the weekend's end.

I also got published as the Web Developer for the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and got a small blurb at the back of their Program Guide and I'll be uploading a link to that soon. There is also talk about a VFS blog thingy but lets see where it goes with that.

Well ... hoping to having a good weekend, see yah ...

Sorting My Stuff

Hey guys,

Sorrie it's been a while. We finally wrapped up 'Goodnight for Justice' and jumped straight into 'R.L. Stine's: The Haunting Hour Episode #106'. Wow, that was alot ...

I'm writing again and trying to be consistent with it. I wanted to post something here to start off and hopefully stick with it. There's alot more updates to come and some really kewl things that's been happening in my life.

I guess over the weekend I'll spend some time putting those updates together but for now, I gotta grab some snooze, another working day tomorrow.

Happy 235th Birthday to the Marines ...

Wrappin' Up Production

Today was an interesting day. We are about to wrap up Jason Priestley's western feature film, 'Goodnight for Justice' after 2 solid weeks of work. We were worried but after some long nights managed to get it done on time. As for now, we are working on breakdowns and shot previews for the producers awaiting on final approval.

In addition we started concept dev for the new kid's TV show with modeling, rigging, animating, some mattepaintings and the general look of the show. We are looking into ways of making the show more 'beautiful' from a viewing perspective, sort of an 'Avatar Effect' with great visuals.

Work has been great and really enjoying the atmosphere of the environment. I hope to work on some more visual effects and mattepaintings and the TV show starts to pick up. Looks like a good start to my career here in Vancouver.

I want to start and finish a 15 sec video every month but all based on camera projections, mattepainting and texturing of objects to develop more Nuke, Maya and Photoshop skills. Hopefully I get some time to finish some personal projects.

Darvin K. Manwah: Matte Painter & Digital Compositor
Online Portfolio, Personal Blog and ACM SIGGRAPH Portfolio Review Mentor

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