Looking forward to sharing what’s next…
“The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.”
— Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2
ABOVE: LINDA HAMILTON REPRISING HER ROLE AS SARAH CONNOR IN TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, 2019.
May the 4th Be With You!
Carrie Fisher was given her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today. The illustration above was rendered by Drew Struzan, everyone’s favorite movie poster illustrator icon. We miss you Carrie!
Above: Family Guy “Blue Harvest” parody on TBS. This title was the code name for Revenge of the Jedi before it became known as Return of the Jedi.
Bottom Right: The origination story behind the code name “Blue Harvest.” George Lucas was also paying homage to Akira Kurosawa’s “Red Harvest.” Lucas borrowed many themes for Star Wars from the lore of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress.
Above: The original version of Drew Struzan’s iconic movie poster illustration for the third Star Wars film. The title was changed closer to the release date to Return of the Jedi. George Lucas felt that the Jedi being portrayed as vengeful didn’t quite line up with their core values.
Where did you experience and render your first pixel painting? Mine was at age 11 on my Commodore 64. I drew Indiana Jones with the cursor keys and had no way to save the image to my 1541 drive. If only I had remembered to take a Polaroid snapshot. Little did I know, like so many of us, I'd make a living rendering pixel paintings for nearly 3 decades while riding the waves of technological and artistic pairings of software and hardware.
In the early ‘80s our lives were forever changed as artists by a small company in Newbury, England. Art and technology were fused together and being released as the Quantel Paintbox. The Weather Channel placed the very first order after discovering it at NAB in New York, 1981. In the mid ‘90s I joined The Weather Channel Art Department, and Harriet was my new best friend.
As the broadcast industry grew so did our access to digital tools. Every couple of years we would be introduced to another game changer like Discreet Logic’s Flint/Flame/Inferno/Fire. TWC bought two Flints and one Fire initially. One day I asked my friend if I would get the chance to learn how to transition over to the Flint from the Quantel. His dry response was priceless: “read the manual,” he said.
That night I pored through the 6 inch thick binder. The next day I started the transition. From this experience I was able to do the same moving forward by reading manuals and watching VHS tapes. The Masters of Visual Effects by Puffin Designs and Brian Maffitt’s Total Training proved to be my favorite sets of training thus far.
One day while waiting for a render to finish I called Australia. I wanted to know what exactly was the D1 Desktop? It was the key to transitioning completely over to a Mac platform and gaining access to so many tools rather than using one rigid set like those found on black boxes.
By 2002 I upgraded my home studio with a Blackmagic Design Decklink card, Sony deck and monitor, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro. The gear had changed, but the end product was the same as when I was 11. Digital art.
Let’s get back to Quantel for a moment. See below what artist David Hockney thought of this new form of artistic wizardry. His reaction reminds me of my typography professor from college when QuarkXPress introduced H&Js.
Enjoy the full Quantel history here: http://quantelpaintbox.com/index.html
I’ve always had a fondness for particles. From African tsetse swarms to F5 tornadoes tearing through Tornado Alley I’ve animated, composited, and enhanced blowing blizzards, monstrous blobs, and conjuring wizards.
Particle simulations add an extra touch of detail that kicks a comp up a few more notches. Sometimes giving the sense of a windstorm pushing the hero back. The shot just feels better, richer. It’s hard to put a finger on it sometimes, but it adds an extra bit of dimension and drama to a scene. Sometimes barely noticeable and other times pulling the viewer directly into the eye of the storm.
The best compliment our talented promotions compositors and VFX artists at The Weather Channel ever got was during a Storm Week promo review by the chief of the Marketing Department:
“Where did you get that shot in the promo?” We humbly replied: “we created it by combining multiple shots, adding particle simulations, stock footage elements, and a touch of compositing wizardry.”
ABOVE : TWC EXTREME WEATHER WEEK PROMO END TITLE COMPOSITE : THE WEATHER CHANNEL PROMOTIONS GROUP | COMPOSITOR : DAVID VINSON | PRODUCERS : DORELLY HERFORD, STEPHEN CLARK, SARAH FORRESTER, AND PAT PIPER | LIBRARY : JAY TELLOCK | MANAGER : GREG STROUD | VP OF DESIGN AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR : RICK BOOTH
Whether adding snow, rain, sleet, or hail we always rose to the task at hand doing whatever it took to hold the viewer’s attention and engage with them for a few more seconds.
For ten years as a full-time or freelance broadcast designer I created detailed explainer graphics for the meteorologists at The Weather Channel (TWC) with my fellow artists, ET & BS; ranging from hurricane anatomy breakdowns to rainstorms and gully washes.
During the course of those ten years, we created a plethora of shots reminiscent of those found on the silver screen to promote Tornado Week, Flood Week, Hurricane Onslaught, Extreme Weather Week, It Could Happen Tomorrow, Storm Week, Storm Stories Avalanche, Heroes of the Storm, and Wrath of Winter. The Discovery Channel began creating dramatic promos similar to ours. After my ten-year tenure ended, I collaborated with TWC for an additional four years, while I was working full-time at Artifact Design and Outpost Pictures.
Three years later, as a Red Giant Guru, I was given the opportunity to design and animate particle effects preset packs for Red Giant Software and Trapcode Particular. I also designed a concept for a custom splatter effects engine based around Trapcode Particular for them. They passed on the concept, but you can check out the proof of concept on the “Videos” page here.
To top things off, when working as Motion Design Director at Outpost Pictures, we delivered an Indy-inspired video for Southern Living At Home complete with giant mosquitoes, flocking birds, sandstorms, splashes, dust, debris, smoke, and epic whiteouts. Over a two-year period we created three corporate marketing videos that were shown at the yearly General Incentive conference headed by Gary Wright, chief of marketing, for Southern Living At Home.
I’m pleased to share that I’ve decided to design a font based on the custom characters I created for the “Design” part of the Vinson Design logo refresh. The family is codenamed “Flux” and will feature varying weights, custom characters, upper and lowercase, small caps, and ligatures. Here is a preview of the work in progress.
I’ve also finally gotten around to utilizing the custom splatter textures I created years ago as part of a concept for Red Giant Software called SplatterFX. The concept didn’t go any further than a proof of concept, and they decided to pass. So, with that said, “Blood Type” is also underway and will be available as a free font.
Do you remember in Animal House when the Deltas stole the carbon copy sheets for the answers to the wrong exam? Yeah, some of A.I.’s architects are getting nailed for the same thing. Did Galen Erso design the first set of blueprints for how to build A.I. tools? It’s rather ingenious. Teach A.I. how to lie and cheat and steal. Then leave a breadcrumb trail to take it out of commission instantaneously.
What’s the easiest way to tell if A.I. art is using legally licensed content to build on is to look very closely at the details. A.I. generated typography wouldn’t include ligatures and glyphs because the person that taught and coded the A.I. wasn’t a graphic designer. They were just a thief plain and simple. It’s a dilemma so easy to fix: universally build all of the A.I. tools with a heavy helping of morals as the keystone of the code’s foundation. We get asked all the time if we accept the agreement to a new app we’ve downloaded, and they change those agreements all the time so we get updated ones as well that we’re again asked if we accept. Do we read the agreements? Most of the time, no we don’t. Without any hesitation we just check the box and click accept.
If every A.I. tool had a checkbox regarding accepting the agreement when using the tool just make sure there’s an algorithm in the tool’s code that checks for any illegal inputs. Have a built-in set of rules that gives A.I. a conscience, a moral compass. When the user or the tool itself decides to scrape sites like Getty without any knowledge or consent we must blame the architects and coders of the A.I. tool.
Send A.I. to preschool, kindergarten, and so on. Learn to be kind, period. Don’t steal or lie either. We can forgive A.I. because it only knows what it knows. The A.I. tool designers and coders are the ones that go to jail. The tools are just another hammer or nail.
The key problem is that rushing to produce yet another A.I. tool ahead of the competition sometimes gets the algorithm completely wrong and uses brute force rather than careful consideration. Why use “a bulldozer to find a China cup?,” baddie Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Learn from George Lucas and make sure you have all of the rights for toys, etc. tidied up so A.I. will know who to contact when it doesn’t know why it keeps using Disney logos and mouse ears hidden in every piece of AI art out there. Remember those posters with the hidden images in them? Cross your eyes and the hidden image appears? Yep. Just like the weakness buried deep inside the plans for the Death Star. It’s right there in plain sight, but cannot be seen until…Boom!
Be kind, rewind, and teach A.I. a generous code of ethics and best practices during the input phases of machine learning.
“There’s nothing wrong with the planet [or A.I.] It’s the people who are f#ck3d.”
Successful industries can be defined within a construct that relates very closely to how well-oiled its machines function as a whole. Somehow I’ve broken that model on a few occasions giving me insight as to the flaws in each system. Machines, not people, scan resumes and decide, based on algorithms, if someone is a good fit for a job based on key words. A.I. can generate a resume in an instant that will get the job offer while a professional designer’s resume doesn’t fit the model Word Document format for scanning so it goes directly into the trash bin. Another major missed opportunity. Have you ever been ghosted by the machine?
“For whatever reasons, Ray. Call it fate. Call it luck. Call it karma. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.”
— Bill Murray as Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters, 1984
A few years ago I tried an experiment. I sent out 3,000+ resumes and heard back from less than 1%. Then without sending any more out I was approached by three potential top-notch employers. None of them had I sent a resume to. Two of the three went as far as presenting me an offer. I was still on what I call my “mental health walkabout” so I ended up declining both offers.
A couple of years later two more companies approached me. At one I tried interviewing for two different jobs within their organization. According to their recruiter they decided I was intentionally trying to deceive them by doing so. I figured it was a compliment that I’d like to work there in either capacity, but they didn’t see it that way. Another company pushed me through three rounds of interviews. Then out of nowhere they disappeared entirely. I reached out to their recruiter three times with no response.
Both companies black-balled and ghosted me. Thankfully, as it turned out, it was a blessing in disguise.
So, with that said, I find it rather odd I was briskly pushed aside since nearly every job I’ve ever gotten since middle school was from a soon to be lifelong friend. One job always led to another, and so on. The times I was either let go or had to step down was directly due to my poor mental health at the time.
If you know me, really know me, you know I’m a sharpshooter, but I’m also a straight shooter. My career history proves this statement is accurately assigned.
Repeat business tells the truth. I have no apologies to offer to those folks that ghosted me or anyone else that displayed poor form to any other potential candidates.
Be kind, use your manners, and never make assumptions, especially if you’re on a hiring team. It’s more hurtful to the hiring company’s reputation in the end than the individual being ghosted. Word travels fast especially by word of mouth.
A leader I follow and admire on LinkedIn pointed out I was very lucky having not gone to work for them. She pointed out if that’s how they treat someone they’re pursuing then just imagine how poorly their full-timers are treated.
Karma has guided and protected me since I started freelancing when I was 12. I learned early on that my path contained many overlapping paths of others. I am thankful to be all in one piece. My childhood passions for art, technology, and storytelling have never been stronger. I’ve been playing, not working, for decades to make a living. I’ve never liked the term work/life balance. Drop the work. We’re here to play.
Many thanks TTI for making things right. Others were not so kind. Boo!
The outline for my new book, Bipolar Coordinates, is officially underway. It will be presented as short stories of historical fiction. Somewhere between euphoria and madness I’ve managed to reach a point in my life in which I feel is the right time to share these stories.
I’m delving deeper into the realms of light and dark passing through the physical and into the metaphysical world of existence. In a stream of consciousness style I’ll be going into vivid detail as an artist pushing oil paints and layering them on a living canvas.
Having any mental or physical challenge isn’t the end or even the beginning of anything. Rather, it’s finding ways to live in the in-between world of the present. Living in both states simultaneously – mania and depression – and creating an equilibrium between the two. For me depression is living in the past and anxiety is worrying about the future. I challenge myself to not believe in the past or future. The only time we have is now.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Having some fun with Real Lens Flares. This street sign in my neighborhood seemed appropriate as a backdrop for Maxon’s latest incarnation of lens flare tools. Like most of us I’ve added glints to many a comp. In most cases the look of the flare had nothing technically tying it into the shot. The Creative Director would just say: “make it look cool, think Transformers.”
This lens flare lab gives folks the ability to add realistic flares that will match the lenses from their shoot, not just visually striking, but accurate as well. I know a bit about photography, but was a bit intimidated by Real Lens Flares at first. I felt I needed to take a Masters-level course on cameras and lenses in order to accurately match my footage. Maybe they’ll add the ability to do automatic camera lens matching.
Technically these three examples aren’t “correct,” but they looked good to me so I ran with it. Currently there are no 3D tools built into the engine like Knoll Light Factory. If one wants to make these flares 3D then head on over to Dan Ebbert’s site. That’s where I borrowed some code for the concept project I made for what became Knoll 3D Flare for Red Giant Software 14 years ago.
Anamorphic update, March 29, 2023: In the latest Maxon One update anamorphic flares have been added to the presets for Real Lens Flares. This fairly new tool can be found under the RG VFX set of tools in After Effects. They’ve added auto-anamorphic options as well, aiding the user to design and build anamorphic flares of their own. I’m still hoping they will add 3D features similar to those in Knoll Light Factory like After Effects light-linking, camera support, and obscuration options.
3D flares update, as of the latest Maxon One update in November 2023: Real Lens Flares now supports 3D positional and light linking options. However, I could not find any obscuration controls for 3D and RGB Obscuration as found in Knoll Light Factory via the Knoll 3D Flare addition in 2009.
Another 3D flares update as of March, 2024: Real Lens Flares now supports obscuration controls, but is still not complete 15 years later.
One of the best features of Knoll 3D Flare (K3DF) that Red Giant Software gave away for free in 2009 were the included professional obscuration controls.
When the three of us were designing K3DF the last requests made by myself and Aharon Rabinowitz to Dan Ebberts was to add true 3D Obscuration that also supported RGB Color Tinting of the flare allowing the flare’s color to be influenced by all of the layers obscuring the flare as they stacked up in Z space.
Dan delivered in a huge way! He allowed for multiple layers obscuring the flare’s line of sight to the camera to additively build up and combine their colors and transparency values.
For K3DF Dan added the code so that all 3D layers’ alphas and RGB values combined within 3D space in After Effects which allowed the lights/flares to move amidst them in X, Y, and Z space without the need for making holdout mattes, usually precomps, for each layer as they obscured the lights/flares. It truly simplified the obscuration process where, for instance, a comp had a dozen or more 3D layers with animated lights and/or animated cameras. This process was just a check box. Turn it on and enjoy the magic! I was able to drop a light into a scene and move it in, around, and even through a tunnel of dozens of 3D layers with no matte world involved.
Based on the current sluggishness of Real Lens Flares on my system running an RTX 3090 (where’s GPU support?) this may be a telling sign as to why they aren’t adding true 3D Obscuration yet supporting additive 3D layer tinting and transparency influence and light color linking options. K3DF took a week to design and code by three people trying to stay ahead of the release of Video Copilot’s Optical Flares. This time there’s no real rush for Real Lens Flares, and maybe that’s a good thing considering it is rendering highly realistic flares based on actual real world data compared to the artistic flares of old. Either way I’m still looking forward to seeing what they cook up next at Maxon.
ABOVE : KNOLL 3D FLARE RELEASED FOR KNOLL LIGHT FACTORY IN 2009. NOTE THE SIMPLE, YET POWERFUL OPTIONS WITHIN THE PLUG-IN (BOTTOM RIGHT) AND THE STRAIGHTFORWARD, DOCKABLE CONTROLS (GREAT ADDITION AHARON!). I WAS ALWAYS BLOWN AWAY AS TO HOW SNAPPY KNOLL LIGHT FACTORY WAS IN THE PRE-3.0 DAYS.
When I was nine my father surprised me with quite a gift when he returned from a business trip: the Raiders of the Lost Ark The Illustrated Screenplay that was chocked full of storyboards, and at it’s heart a story that redefined the Hollywood hero. I was enamored with the visual effects planning I discovered near the back of the book. There were the blueprints revealing how the masters at ILM would create the most spectacular movie ending filled with “lightning, fire, the power of God or something,” warned Indy to the government stooges.
I cherish this fascinating book to this day. I even have two copies; one for the collector in me, and the other the original that my father gave me as a kid. Spielberg’s description of the spontaneity of generating ideas goes to show us that they can come rushing in at any moment, even in the middle of the night. I can totally relate. I’ve created some of my best work, as a child and also professionally, between the hours of 11 p.m. ‘til dawn the next day.
The forward, written by Steven Spielberg, struck me like the bolt of lightning it described in such visceral detail of the incarnation of the creative process:
– Introduction excerpt from Steven Spielberg, Los Angeles, California, June 1981, from Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Illustrated Screenplay
I’ve been “on-ice,” so to speak, for the past five years. My life has finally settled down so I can focus on my career again.
Struggling with my bipolar (manic-depression) has taken me from superhero to supervillain in a roller coaster ride of vibrant realities and darkest of delusions. Three months ago I was ready push forward and start taking on contract work again. Then suddenly my medication was adjusted due to a major health risk due to lithium toxicity. Lithium was my mood stabilizer for thirteen years, and when it was removed my brain decided to take me on a carnival cruise to hell and back. The delusions and hallucinations were obvious signs that something was going awry.
I checked in with my psychiatrist much more often, and within just a few days in this altered state I was rushed to the hospital. Three or four days later I found myself back at The Carolina Center for Behavioral Health; my home away from home. I was so relieved when I realized where I was. I cannot stress how important the generously kind staff and friends I’ve made on the units there. I’ve been there six or seven times since 2018, and I am so thankful for their care and attention to getting me stabilized. At one point my own psychiatrist was their fearless leader.
I also have Favor of Greenville to thank for the year I spent attending weekly noon meetings, nightly skills training, and visits to patients at The Carolina Center to share my experiences. Every connection made strengthened my will to continue to fight and win my battle with bipolar. It’s incredibly enlightening and humbling to hear others’ stories, and how well they line up with mine. By shedding light on our challenges we realize we’re all in this together. There is truly strength in our numbers.
The purpose of me sharing my story gives me the opportunity to do my part in chipping away at stigma surrounding mental health. So many folks I’ve highly admired like my Uncle Bobby, Jim Carrey, Phil Tippett, Carrie Fisher, Richard Dreyfuss, Virginia Woolf, Sting, Buzz Aldrin, Winston Churchill, Linda Hamilton, David Harbour, Dick Cavett, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ted Turner, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Frank Sinatra, Halsey, Francis Ford Coppola, Selena Gomez, and diagnosed posthumously are Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock to name just a few, all fight the battle. There’s a couple of books I’ve added to my recommended to the right and down of this post that opened my eyes in the early days and weeks when I was first diagnosed at thirty-seven.
It’s amazing how the creative mind and mental health challenges go hand in hand. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison does a deep dive into the creative spark for so many artists throughout history. In An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, also by Kay Redfield Jamison, she shares her own personal struggles with her mental health. Her words serve as a beacon for so many of us when we find ourselves heading into the dark side of our minds.
I’m thankful to say I’m doing quite well now and able to fully harness my creative lightning once again.
“Last night, Darth Vader came down from Planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t take Lorraine out, that he’d melt my brain.”
— Crispin Glover as George McFly in Back To The Future, 1985
