Day 2 - 'surfs up'

Day 2, today I decided to watch 'Surfs Up' again. If anyone hasn't seen it I can not recommend it enough. Out of all of the Animated movies out there it rates way up there on my list of greats. Visually it is incredible, and don't get me started on the waves, they are freekin awesome !!, the vegetation doesn't go unnoticed either, its very stylised but still looks incredible. I also love the story and how Chris Buck and Ash Brannon brought it all together, but most of all I love the camera work. THe movie was shot like a documentary using a hand held camera for a majority of the movie, used in an animated film it looks awesome and really adds a personal touch lost when when the camera in Keyframed. Watching the making of 'Surfs Up' today and was astonished that the Sony Pictures solution to getting a hand held camera was similar to what I did for the Technical Short at Yomp Studios. Mind you SP's solution was a tad more complicated and involved a million dollar motion capture studio, where as my solution involved shooting a complex pattern pinned up on a wall, whilst listening to the audio so I could play out the scene as the camera man. In the end I would track the footage I just shot in BouJou to get a hand held camera in 3D. Where as SP's solution was real time so the camera man could see on a massive screen what was happening (I was very jealous), but both solutions had similar results.

On another note - a friend of mine sent me a link to do a 'Story Boarding' illustration course at https://www.schoolism.com/ I checked it out, this course interests me a lot as it is exactly what I need to expand my skill set as a Director. At $1000US for an online course it ain't cheap, but my mate did the 'Digital Painting with Bobby Chiu' course and was raving about how much he loved it and how much he learnt, so I would be crazy not to do it.

Speaking of Bobby Chiu - if you havn't heard of him take some time to check him out. I love his work but more importantly I love his passion for the art of illustration. He does pod casts (search on youtude) which are very (VERY) inspiring.

Oh and I rewrote my 'Monty Biggs' script again. Plus I added this Blog link to my website (crap....the pressure is now really on).