it’s alive!

Hey everyone… 1,000 pardons for not posting anything sooner, but as many of you have summised I am indeed working on some new material I can’t really discuss yet.  Of course, that’s no reason for not telling everyone sooner!  The fact is, after a year of freelance, going back to a regular work schedule really zapped the life out of me.  I started up soon after my last post, and when I get home i’m just so spent blogging really took a back seat – the last thing I want to do at home is sit back down in front of the computer…

BSG VFX: A Thousand Points Of Light

Imagine you’re driving on a moonless night in a desolate area with no street lights.  Now let’s say your car’s headlights don’t work and you’re approaching an 18-wheeler who’s decided to have some fun by turning off all his illumination.  The above image is pretty much the last thing you’d see before a bright, orange and yellow fireball reminds you to get your headlights fixed.  It’s also what you’d see on Battlestar Galactica  if we didn’t put some lights on our spaceships! 

sci-ficandy: hi tech trek

Way, way back in the footloose and fancy-free year of 2001, fellow Star Trek visual effects alum Rob Bonchune and I created renderings for a book called “Starship Spotter,” a guidebook to the magnificent flying machines of the Trek universe.  We were both CG Supervisors on Voyager at the time and used the actual computer models from the various Trek series to liven up the book with all sort of tasty imagery.

BSG nerd wins Emmy, cops open fire (almost)

 

It was the evening of September 8, 2007 and I was sitting in a taxi on my way to the Emmys.

Dressed as a Colonial Warrior.

We were already halfway to the Shrine Auditorium and there was only one thing on my mind: we weren’t supposed to win.

For almost a decade now, more and more innovative CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) meant that spaceships, once the bread-and-butter of the visual effects industry, just didn’t win Emmys anymore. Sure, “Exodus – Part II” was exciting, and I had the time of my life facing the Pegasus off against three Baseships, but it just never crossed my mind that it would come to this.

NEW YORK: day one

I’m back in my home town of NYC for a week and rather than email everyone with dazzling tidbits of my adventures, I decided to finally do what people have been screaming at me for years: START A BLOG.

So, here I am, in New York Fucking City.  It’s 3am and outside everyone is still awake, roaming the streets and enjoying the bars and restaurants that are all still open.  And what am I doing?  Screwing around on a computer and starting a blog.  Oh, and thanks to my buddy PJ for lending me a Macbook Pro to keep me company on this trip.  Without you, I’d surely be outside right now doing something stupid and/or fun [Yes, I do have my own laptop, and should again as soon as my psycho ex-girlfriend gives it back.]

Anyway, let’s set the wayback machine for 24 hours ago and see how this crazy adventure got started…