Planktoninvasion

Some upcomming animation work from Belgium! Always great to see! I am very curious.

Here is the synopsis:

Earth's first life forms and direct descendant's from the primal soup; want to reclaim their rightful place in the world. In order for them to re-conquer the planet, they need a global water world. They plotted a dark strategy and assigned a special task force to execute the operation; codename 'Global Warming'. No matter how microscopic in size, despite the insignificance of their actions, the fact they never conquer more than a dozen square meters beach or the mind blowing stupidity of their reasoning, they blindly believe in the success of their mission!
This is the never-ending story of Plankton Invasion.

http://www.planktoninvasion.com

Beowulf TV commercial

Pretty unique way of advertising the upcomming movie Beowulf... Beowulf vs 300 (Sparta) in a shout contest (http://www.beowulfmovie.com)

over Surfende penguins en passeieren

Na lang wachten komt deze woensdag 24 oktober Surf's Up in de Belgische cinemazalen. Voor zij die gaan kijken is het misschien leuk om te weten dat er een aantal easter eggs in de film verborgen zitten.

Zoals programmeurs easter eggs verstoppen in software (virtual easter egg: Wikipedia), zo verstopt het filmmakende volkje ook van alles in de beelden die ze maken. In het geval van Surf's Up is het een UFO geworden 4 keer heel kort in beeld verschijnt.

Next one up: Beowulf

Since I finished working on Surf's Up I started working on Beowulf. In contrast to Surf's Up, which is an animated cgi (computer generated imagery) feature film, Beowulf is full cgi but not animated. Beowulf is using a process called performance capture: real actors wear a special suit with trackers stuck on it and act every shot. In addition to the track markers on the suit a maze of smaller markers (called beads) are glued on the actors face to capture the facial expressions.

Below is an example of a motion capture session. Unfortunately not one with Angelina Jolie, that is classified information, for Imageworkers' eyes only ;).
This session is actually from The Matrix.



Beowulf's cgi looks realistic in contrast to stylized or cartoony cgi (for example Surf's Up or Ratatouille). Sometimes realistic enough to make people believe that what they see is live action.

Beowulf is directed by Robert Zemeckis, who's know for Forest Gump for which he won an Oscar for best director, Back to future, Cast Away, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lift to name a few.

The actors line up includes:
Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich

Beowulf is closed to being finished and sheduled for theatrical release November 16, 2007

It will for sure spark lots of discussions about the movie making process. I would love to hear what you think of it.

Penguins everywhere!

DSC01919.jpg
Originally uploaded by wineytoe

Invasion of the penguins!

Surf's up (www.surfsup.be) is releasing in Belgian theatres on October 24. Go check it out! And here is some good advice when you leave the parking lot afterwards!

No water, No work

Today was an unexpected day off. When I arrive at work it was busier than usual around the premisses and in the garden of the studio. Lot's of people hanging out, chatting at an early hour that is usually packed with dailies, touchbase meetings, rounds, and what not.

When I got to my desk I noticed it was slightly hotter in side than normal. Got to my email to find a zillion of mails, with alaring titles like network branch down, filer pegged, database server shutdown, Culver City water pressure issue, restrooms out of order, cue taken offline, AC capacity reduced, ...

What is going on? Scrolling all the way down I read that it all began with some construction work going on in Culvercity. Someone had hit a main tube of the watersystem, which burst, causing the waterpressure to drop to a very low level over big parts of the city. First thoughts...fine... no water... that's not too bad. We are not cooking, nor brewing coffee (at least not professionally), we are a hightech company. Electricty loss would be bad.... NOT!

The sudden los in waterpressure made the airconditionning system fail. That had to be reduced in power and eventually be shut down. Still, we can work in an environment that is a few degrees hotter than usual... but wait... what about the cooling of the machine room? No cooling, means that servers, filers, routers and renderracks had to be shut down. First partially, soon pretty much all of them. There number, we are talking about thousands of computers in a confined space, makes that they produce so much heat that if they wouldn't actively be cooled, they would fail because the heat. Talking about a melt down...

They brought in huge watertrucks and a number of portable toilets (the type that is used on events). Everyone was told they could leave till 13.00 When we came back, workstations were still hung, files unaccessible, email down. A few hours later the first systems were brought back online. Limited capacity. Movies that are near their deadlines (we are talking a few weeks) get priority. We got to go home. Our systems wouldn't be fully operational before the next day. No high tech without low tech. But we enjoyed the time off. That's for sure.