So I've been keeping ABYDOS II progress under wraps for a while, and a good chunk of that has been related to scheduling--Spring saw slowdowns regarding college (which is resuming... uh, tomorrow, actually...), and I was away from my computer for a good chunk of Summer, but beyond that, I've been hard at work!  I'm pleased to announce that filming has FINISHED for the sequel, and that I'm a good chunk of the way through the visual effects and CGI!  This has definitely been quite an adventure, but it's coming to a close!  I should have a full teaser up soon (for real this time); I was originally planning a smaller, comedic one-shot take just to say we were done filming, but I decided a more relevant video would work better.  On a separate note, I've extracted and rigged some a number of 3D models from BIONICLE G2's mobile games, Mask of Creation and Mask of Control (which anyone interested can download from here and here , respectively)!  Unfortunately,...

Because, clearly, the BIONICLE content thus far was not enough. I actually published this around April, but felt I had to choose between this and the eye-tracking post and went with the latter.  Oddly enough, this video become easily my most watched video, having surpassed 1,000 views by this point (early four times as many views as my next most-watched video and over seven times ABYDOS' view count).  I think this is the first time I actually used Photoshop on a special effects project: unlike my live action work, where I have a physical camera and can record record the wall behind my actors and actresses (if someone jumps really high in a movie, for instance, I'd have to record the empty background to get the effect correctly), Tahu essentially stays in one place during the shot, meaning I had to remove him digitally.  After some initial masking work in After Effects, I ultimately took to Photoshop to manually remove him from the background; I'm feeling particula...

I think I should stop trying to fit puns into the title.  And I think this is the first time I've even tried to do that.  This title is almost Fun with Filters -level bad. Before you can ask why I've done another BIONICLE thing with my sister so soon after the last related post, I've done another BIONICLE thing with my sister!  (Plus the last thing I've posted on was actually released around half a year ago so they're just posted really close together.)  Just to clarify, all of the story, camerawork/puppetry, audio effects, and color grading (as well as most of the voices) were done by Leena, and Onua and Tahu were voiced by Zorg Valtapaz (the Jedi in Star Wars -VIII [which was far less controversial than the actual VIII] and Djebauti in ABYDOS ), making this a three-person work overall.  Now then, on to the technical details! For the eyes I used a feathered mask of a white layer for each eye (sometimes using more than one layer), giving them some colo...

Some thought it wouldn't happen.  Had I left the world of mutant monkey heads?  Had I forgotten that Yoda was still an unfinished project, and that five years ago I had promised his return in Japanese? Fortunately, it occurred to me to do something!  So, for the 5th anniversary of my previous Yoda post and my 100th post on this blog, I'm glad to present my latest variant on Yoda! I'd been thinking about this project on and off; in 2016 I'd replaced the cylindrical lightsaber with one from a different project (similar to my replacing a spherical hand with my sound project's claw), googled a tutorial to get a glowing lightsaber effect, modified the hut's door a bit and added some image textures from a fan texture pack in a version I dubbed mark 4.5, but not having the artist's permission to share it, I decided it was best to to try again.  A little while later, I decided to go for a bit more of an overhaul featuring a much more accurate hut--apparent...

    So a few months ago, my sister Leena made a custom version of the widely used song meme "We Are Number One" and asked that I do the visuals based on some premade animations.  It was only half a year later that I remembered to do a blog post on it!  Without further ado, here's my contribution to BIONICLE fandom:     Most of the work here was simply video editing in Premiere, but there were a few points where I ended up adding original elements and visual effects--for instance, I made Ekimu's saxophone in Adobe Illustrator while paying attention to the surrounding art style.     The main changes I made were actually all based around masking and animating those masked elements in After Effects, using the same technique I used for the hand in my "Fire Hand" short.  I used a bit of motion tracking for some of the masks, but a lot of the motion was manual (e.g. masking Leena's signature yellow Miru Nuva over Sportacus' ...

So, as many in the tech world know, Apple recently switched to a new photo format for their iDevices with iOS 11 forward.  While the new format is vastly superior to JPG, it was all but entirely incompatible with Windows programs. However, thanks to a college class in JavaScript, I managed to download and jury-rig the official HEIF format website into a file reader!  It seems Chrome/Edge are incompatible as of this writing, so thus far only Firefox seems to work.  Here's a link to the program: https://mega.nz/#!9xwWgCSA !6G3mvAjN_zB7iYzhVEkuGsulNjPFCsoZubSfpUTHQw4   This is far from a perfect viewer, so I plan to keep working on and rewriting the program as necessary (#1 on the agenda would be compatibility with more browsers).  In the meantime, though, have fun with the program!   UPDATE 1/3/2018: I've run a direct copy of the website on other browsers, and apparently Chrome (and presumably the other browsers) somehow can't load the special images b...

    Not quite related to CGI or special effects, but as I've been exploring the filmmaking process between creating ABYDOS and doing pre-production for the sequel, I think it'd be good to share what I've learned from it, both in terms of crimes against filmmaking mistakes I've made and things I've happened to learn along the way.  Best to keep in mind that I'm far from a professional, so these suggestions are more from my experience as a no-budget science-fiction pseudo-horror indie-film writer than a professional screenwriter/director, but if you're in such a position as well, perhaps some of these may prove useful to you.  Without further ado, here we go: Keep the script open to your cast     This suggestion is probably obvious to many, but it was one of the things I'd seriously messed up on while filming ABYDOS.  I'd kept the script fairly closed and would only reveal brief portions of the script at a time, thinking the relative lack ...