One of the best breakdowns of why Edgar Wrights films are pure genius while most comedies lose their luster after the first viewing. Watch, Learn, Laugh.
Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
A recap....also known as TLDR
Work has slowed up a bit. I have weekends again. Having the ability to get a full nights sleep and the ability to plan outings with the wife and friends took getting used to. The peace wont last more than another couple of weeks. Ive been told to expect virtually no days off all of June, so to suck up the easy days while I can.
We are working on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I am both excited and feel a little dirty about that. Next to Ghostbusters, TMNT is my favorite property and I have wanted to be a part of that universe since I was eight. However, I always have hesitations when it comes to reboots of old franchises as I rarely agree with the way they are handled. That said, its mainly because I want more of the version I loved as a child and not ready to give the series to another group of kids. What I have seen of the movie does look like a lot of fun, so every day I get a little more excited about the film.
We are also working on Guardians of the Galaxy. Im a fan of the marvel owned movies and James Gunn is one of my favorite directors, so there is nothing but excitement and anticipation for this film. I mean, talking raccoon with laser rifles...how can that be anything but glorious.
Rachel and I went to see Godzilla yesterday morning. This was another film that we worked on (if you havent noticed, the best way to get your name on a bunch of blockbusters is to be a stereoscopic compositor) and I was beaming with pride when the end credits rolled. The film was phenomenal from the script all the way thru the 3D conversion (the 3D scored almost perfect marks on one blog).
Its been awhile since Ive had the time for a good long type on here. I keep meaning to do little recaps, but I get distracted by Call of Duty or sleep. There was going to be a big End of Year wrap-up, but we spent a few weeks back home in Missouri with family and it was hard to pull myself away from all them. A short and quick summation of last year?
I got to sit in and be a part of the audience for Bruce Campbells pilot, Nightcap. In real life he is just as charming, witty and hard working as he seems in his films.
Rachel and I were in the audience for SPOILERS with Kevin Smith, who has been a icon of mine for quite awhile. I got to chat with him one on one for awhile and had him sign a comic that my Pops had bought for me a few months before he passed away.
I met Jim Butcher (Dresden Files), Neil Gaiman (Sandman and a hundred others), Chuck Pahlniuk (Fight Club), got knocked over by Patrick Rothfuss (he very was sorry and I bounce), James Ellroy, Neal Stephenson, new favorite author Stephen Blackmoore, artists Dean Yeagle, Frank Cho, Juanjo Guarnido, and the iconic and incredible Drew Struzan (on 5 different occasions).
I was able to meet actors from the Goonies, watch Elijah Wood spin the turntables at a movie shown in a cemetery, chatted with Bill Paxton (the dude is just as laid back and awesome as you'd imagine), and saw a random smattering of B-C-D list actors at the grocery store. I was able to meet the director of Godzilla who thanked us for our awesome work. We see Weird Al almost every Sunday morning (brother knows his hymns).
(photo taken at the Gallery 1988 Ghostbusters Art Show)
We are working on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I am both excited and feel a little dirty about that. Next to Ghostbusters, TMNT is my favorite property and I have wanted to be a part of that universe since I was eight. However, I always have hesitations when it comes to reboots of old franchises as I rarely agree with the way they are handled. That said, its mainly because I want more of the version I loved as a child and not ready to give the series to another group of kids. What I have seen of the movie does look like a lot of fun, so every day I get a little more excited about the film.
We are also working on Guardians of the Galaxy. Im a fan of the marvel owned movies and James Gunn is one of my favorite directors, so there is nothing but excitement and anticipation for this film. I mean, talking raccoon with laser rifles...how can that be anything but glorious.
Rachel and I went to see Godzilla yesterday morning. This was another film that we worked on (if you havent noticed, the best way to get your name on a bunch of blockbusters is to be a stereoscopic compositor) and I was beaming with pride when the end credits rolled. The film was phenomenal from the script all the way thru the 3D conversion (the 3D scored almost perfect marks on one blog).
Its been awhile since Ive had the time for a good long type on here. I keep meaning to do little recaps, but I get distracted by Call of Duty or sleep. There was going to be a big End of Year wrap-up, but we spent a few weeks back home in Missouri with family and it was hard to pull myself away from all them. A short and quick summation of last year?
2013 was awesome.
Living in Los Angeles affords one a lot of opportunities as a nerd (its to balance out all of the time you spend dying slowly in rush hour traffic on the 101 or 405). In 2013 (and up to now in 2014) I was able to meet all of my favorite authors, artists, and many actors and directors. A few for instances.
I got to sit in and be a part of the audience for Bruce Campbells pilot, Nightcap. In real life he is just as charming, witty and hard working as he seems in his films.
Rachel and I were in the audience for SPOILERS with Kevin Smith, who has been a icon of mine for quite awhile. I got to chat with him one on one for awhile and had him sign a comic that my Pops had bought for me a few months before he passed away.
I met Jim Butcher (Dresden Files), Neil Gaiman (Sandman and a hundred others), Chuck Pahlniuk (Fight Club), got knocked over by Patrick Rothfuss (he very was sorry and I bounce), James Ellroy, Neal Stephenson, new favorite author Stephen Blackmoore, artists Dean Yeagle, Frank Cho, Juanjo Guarnido, and the iconic and incredible Drew Struzan (on 5 different occasions).
I was able to meet actors from the Goonies, watch Elijah Wood spin the turntables at a movie shown in a cemetery, chatted with Bill Paxton (the dude is just as laid back and awesome as you'd imagine), and saw a random smattering of B-C-D list actors at the grocery store. I was able to meet the director of Godzilla who thanked us for our awesome work. We see Weird Al almost every Sunday morning (brother knows his hymns).
My shelves of autographed books literally had so many books on them that they pulled themselves out of the wall. I had to buy another heavy duty, sealed poster tube to keep all of the art and posters Ive had signed better protected. For the first time my studio, Knights End, will be listed in the credits of a film created by people I had never met before, but contacted me after seeing my reel and wanted me to do all of the visual effects for their horror film, Mile Marker 7. I've added 14 movie and television titles to my IMDB page and worked with more incredible artists and compositors than I thought possible (none of who get the thanks and adoration they deserve but are all moving on to great things).
And the icing on the ridiculously tall, 30 layer red velvet cake, is that we are expecting our first baby in September. We are excited as all get out. We are told its likely a girl. To keep our baby name choices from getting out into the Collective Consciousness, we are referring to her as codename Dr Zhivago.
(photo taken at the Gallery 1988 Ghostbusters Art Show)
I dont expect the next year to be as mind blowing. Honestly, I feel like there are probably a lot of people calling bulls--t now. But If all else slows down, being a dad sounds like it will be an experience hard to top.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing
Another of the articles from brainpicking.org by Maria Popova. Gaiman is my number one literary type. At this point I think I have all but two of the books he has written signed (thanks in large part to ebay). His word on words is the last.
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing
by Maria Popova
“Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.”
In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writingpublished in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments. After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman:
- Write
- Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
- Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
- Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
- Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
- Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
- Laugh at your own jokes.
- The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
For more timeless wisdom on writing, see Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments,Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, andSusan Sontag’s synthesized learnings.
Image by Kimberly Butler
Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
I am a huge fan of Steinbeck's work and over at http://www.brainpickings.org/ I stubbled across his six tips on writing. I wanted to bookmark it and realized I may never see it again and its something I need to keep in mind, so I am copy pasting it here. Here is the article in its entirety, but please go over to the site and spend some time.
If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we’ve been right on course with David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes John Steinbeck — Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, love guru — with six tips on writing, culled from his altogether excellent interview it the Fall 1975 issue ofThe Paris Review.
Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck
by Maria Popova
On the value of unconscious association, or why the best advice is no advice.
If this is indeed the year of reading more and writing better, we’ve been right on course with David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, and various invaluable advice from other great writers. Now comes John Steinbeck — Pulitzer Prize winner, Nobel laureate, love guru — with six tips on writing, culled from his altogether excellent interview it the Fall 1975 issue ofThe Paris Review.
- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
- If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
- Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
- If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
But perhaps most paradoxically yet poetically, twelve years prior — in 1963, immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception” — Steinbeck issued a thoughtful disclaimer to all such advice:
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”
If you feel bold enough to discount Steinbeck’s anti-advice advice, you can do so with these 9 essential books on more and writing. Find more such gems in thiscollection of priceless interviews with literary icons from half a century of The Paris Review archives, then see the collected wisdom of great writers.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Signing an NDA between myself and Lady Gaga and how it meant my work was shown in the Louvre.
So one cool thing to happen during the recent slow period in the VFX season is that I start picking up random freelance jobs, half the time that I am recommended for by fantastic friends and fellow artists. This time I was put in touch with a gentleman from NY who was working with the Photographer (its a Cap cuz once your work is in enough big time museums you probably earned it) Robert Wilson and Lady Gaga to put her up in the Louvre in Paris. Apparently it had been a long time desire as a google search pointed to articles for the past three years mentioning her wanting to have some installation involving herself in the centuries old museum.
With her new album being titled "ArtPop" then the marketing planets aligned and it went into motion. The installation was a mixture of photography and looping videos put up in rooms throughout the Louvre, and all of the pieces mimicked a piece of artwork that was either nearby or normally seen in the same area.
I did some compositing and looping on a video that mimicked John the Baptists head on a platter, originally created by Andrea Solari in 1460. You can see my version in the image above.
A few of these videos were hung in the same room as the Mona Lisa. I have no idea if mine was one of the lucky few, but the possibility of it and my artwork being in the Louvre at all is pretty incredibly awesome for a country kid from Missouri. I've had video work in the MET in New York as a VFX artist, but this is the pinnacle of art museums in my humble opinion.
I think in total there were around 23 video pieces installed throughout the museum and I am pretty sure there were a couple other John the Baptist segments. I wished I could have managed a trip over there to see my work hung up in the vicinity of half of my art history book, but c'est la vie.
Bonus Material:
With her new album being titled "ArtPop" then the marketing planets aligned and it went into motion. The installation was a mixture of photography and looping videos put up in rooms throughout the Louvre, and all of the pieces mimicked a piece of artwork that was either nearby or normally seen in the same area.
A few of these videos were hung in the same room as the Mona Lisa. I have no idea if mine was one of the lucky few, but the possibility of it and my artwork being in the Louvre at all is pretty incredibly awesome for a country kid from Missouri. I've had video work in the MET in New York as a VFX artist, but this is the pinnacle of art museums in my humble opinion.
I think in total there were around 23 video pieces installed throughout the museum and I am pretty sure there were a couple other John the Baptist segments. I wished I could have managed a trip over there to see my work hung up in the vicinity of half of my art history book, but c'est la vie.
Bonus Material:
http://operationgaga.com/topic/19717-gagas-portraits-by-robert-wilson-at-the-louvre-museum-in-paris/
Saturday, October 26, 2013
BeetleJuice 4 hour speed paint.
Beetlejuice was on tv. My attempt was to speedpaint a frame of Beetlejuice before the movie was over. I would have managed it if the movie was as long as Lawrence of Arabia. So, 4 hour speedpaint study in photoshop. Enjoy!
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Urban Paranormal Fantasy Series. Who do you love?
My favorite book series is The Dresden Files. It takes everything that I love from the crime noir genre and mixes in all of the magic and wizardry that I also dig in order to create an incredible world that is close enough to mine to be relatable but fantastic enough to be escapist. One book involves the detective wizard Dresden riding a zombie Tyranasaurus Rex into battle, which is pretty much a standard level of amazing that this series hits with every novel. Also, Jim Butcher is just an awesome guy.
I wont waste time writing a synopsis of the series when it has been done by better than myself already.
What I wanted to do was look for more stories of a similar vein so that I have plenty to read in those long cold years between new adventures with Harry Dresden, Murphy and the skull Bob (and how bout that Molly Carpenter, huh?). I have made a list from a couple sites and forums and wanted your opinions on which you prefer and if there are any that I have missed (I have not read most of these). Of the ones that I have read I have found I prefer those more realistic, set in real locations (Chicago, LA, New York) and are not borderline romance novels (see Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter by the talented Lauren K Hamilton or the True Blood series). Books of paranormal romance have their merits but I want sarcasm and action with any relationship stuff to be a minor component. Very little brooding, no sparkling. Some of these books listed may involve a heavy romance component or not involve an urban setting, but as I said I have only read a few so I do not know for sure. Feel free to tell me as well as recommend other titles in the comment section!
My current list, in no particular order:
I wont waste time writing a synopsis of the series when it has been done by better than myself already.
What I wanted to do was look for more stories of a similar vein so that I have plenty to read in those long cold years between new adventures with Harry Dresden, Murphy and the skull Bob (and how bout that Molly Carpenter, huh?). I have made a list from a couple sites and forums and wanted your opinions on which you prefer and if there are any that I have missed (I have not read most of these). Of the ones that I have read I have found I prefer those more realistic, set in real locations (Chicago, LA, New York) and are not borderline romance novels (see Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter by the talented Lauren K Hamilton or the True Blood series). Books of paranormal romance have their merits but I want sarcasm and action with any relationship stuff to be a minor component. Very little brooding, no sparkling. Some of these books listed may involve a heavy romance component or not involve an urban setting, but as I said I have only read a few so I do not know for sure. Feel free to tell me as well as recommend other titles in the comment section!
My current list, in no particular order:
- Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore (Okay, I lied. This one is in order as this is one of my favorites so it made the list before the others I have not read.)
- Kate Daniels Series by Ilona Andrews
- The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan
- Iron Druid chronicles by Kevin Hearne
- Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs
- Nightside Novels by Simon R. Green
- Wereworld Series by Curtis Jobling
- Incryptid by Seanan Mcguire
- Feed Trilogy by Mira Grant
- The Hallows Series by Kim Harrison
- Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
- The Night Watch Trilogy by Sergei Lukyanenko
- The Felix Castor series by Mike Carey
- The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks
- The Myron Bolitar by Harlan Corban
- The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro
- Webmage by Kelly Mccullough
- The Dracula Tape by Fred Saberhagen
- Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia
- The Zombie Fallout series by Mark Tofu
- The Secret Histories by Simon R. Green
- The Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman
- The Hellequin Chronicles by Steve McHugh
- The Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones
- Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
- The Women of the Otherworld series by Kelly Armstrong
- Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart
- The Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacka
- The Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine
- The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks
- The Black Company series by Glen Cook
- The Dark Hunter series by Sherrilyn Kenyon
- Riftwar Cycle series by Raymond Feist
- The White Trash Zombie series by Diana Rowland
- Tome of Bill series by Rick Gualtieri
- The Demon Accords series by John Conroe
- The Grimnoir Chronicles series by Larry Correia
- The Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy
- The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross
- The Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk
- The Greywalker series by Kat Richardson
- The Imp series by Debra Dunbar
- The Remy Chandler series by Thomas E. Sniegoski
- The Anonymous Rex series by Eric Garcia
- Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout (Awesome, but not a series.)
It is by no means a comprehensive list as I assumed it to be a small genre when I first discovered it and constantly find new series to add to the list. After I wrap up reading the Feed series I plan on reading Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles, which I realize is not urban fantasy but how can you say no to a guy like this?
(pictured left at SDCC 2013 with fellow Knight, Tyler Rhoads)
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