Yo! Stephan’s talking! This is awesome – about art direction at Midway Games, his history, his work on the Fifth Element etc! Oh my! Enjoy!
http://www.sidebarnation.com/my_weblog/2008/07/stephan-martini.html
This is my site and if I want to post a turtle I damn well will…. and I’m glad to actually communicate with you!
A good friend by the name of Ryan Yewell invited me to be a guest speaker on In the Lab with Leo (http://www.labwithleo.com)! Now that’s awesome! Ryan has his own segment called “Yewell’s Jewells” in which he shares free software with the rest of us. I grew up watching such shows as The Screensavers and I never imagined I’d be on a show with Leo Laporte. Being a guest speaker is awesome – the trick is to show up at lunch and you get free food….
[flashvideo file=”http://mattvogt.com/media/leo-segment.flv” /]small update: I’ve begun storyboarding the cute girl film… I’ll keep you posted!
A rejuvenating painting session’s result as I wrap up my short script!
(This page needs more art)
I’ve been seriously studying the art of filmmaking and I can’t get enough of it!
I’m in the process of making another film. I’ll be flying solo this time though. My new film’s about obsession and how your inner world creates your outer world. I’ve been considering such a project for a solid couple of months. I was surprised by the overwhelming support fellow colleagues and strangers have given me so far. Currently, I’ve written and rewritten the script many times and it’s close to completition. The next months I will be transitioning from screenwriting into the arts of production design and cinematography.
I don’t have a title yet, although the idea spawned from a CG Talk filmmaking contest’s topic “cute girl”.
Synopsis:
In the nearby future, a robot designed to feel emotion has lost his human companion, owner and lover. Struck by loneliness, the robot created his own reality of desolation. Sinking lower into depression, he finds a picture of his previous owner which sends him into an out of control spiral of obsession. Thinking he’s solved his problem by building an equivalent lover, his inner and outer worlds grow darker as his creation falls apart in his hands. Looking for a fix, he becomes haunted by her. Fueled by his obsession, the hauntings lead to his demise.
[flashvideo file=”http://mattvogt.com/media/oldMan02.flv” /]
Half hour at 500% speed = a 6 minute glimpse into my process!
During my evening reading session, I found an interesting interview with a concept artist at EA:
CGC: Your current work is very unique. Where do you find the inspiration?
Gustavo Mendonca: This may sound really silly but I believe my inspiration comes primarily from having my spirit well centered within myself or simply by being HAPPY!
I know, that may sound like space man talk. But when you think about it, every artistic expression is moved by energy. Being happy and in peace allows me to reach that “child” state of mind and sense of freedom.
Remember when you were a kid and the word impossible meant nothing to you? So there you go!
Like every artist out there I also have my favorite artists, favorite movies, books, cartoons, music. I also carry a camera with me, but I think the energy for the piece I’m designing has to come from my “guts”. I always try to foresee the finished image in my head before I start, even if just for a split second.
If a piece of artwork has a strong energy, the site of it will bridge the gap between the artist and the viewer. In the best cases the viewer will feel like he knows the artist in some way.
I couldn’t agree more! However, I’ve heard character designers purposely getting pissed off to inject attitude in their work. For example, Kratos from Gods of War was designed by some workplace “temporary assholes” at Sony Entertainment. In contrast, anger could be considered a energizing tool for creative development but what’s the point if you’re not enjoying what you do?
Most produce art because they like it, not because they’re forced to (my kind of slavery). Recently viewing some “emo styled” art commonly found at Devient Art, you can’t help it beg the question if these people are happy artists. I believe they’re expressing their negative feelings through the pleasure of art which helps them feel better.
Mentally, I get into my happy place before working on any creative en devours. This is because ideas flow easier as “passages are unblocked” due to downsizing the constant noise frustration, jealousy, and anger fill the mind with. That’s a personal note there… see, I get excited when I walk my office, I’m sure Frankenstein was gitty with excitement strutting down to his laboratory…. If where I’m sitting isn’t enriched with positive energy, I don’t think this website would be here…. Going deeper, what if some tragic event occurred in my life? Would I still paint?
My answer is simple: Nothing would change as I choose my thoughts and before sitting down to paint, I would be clear on how I feel and change focus accordingly beforehand. Even considering that question I posed to myself, I felt on the edge of feeling good. As soon as became aware of feeling down I instantly changed focus to something more constructive so I could commit my final thoughts. Indeed,nothing changed.
And look at that! I just wrote another roundabout way of taking responsibility for your life – started with a quote, some art questions, an emotional rollercoaster then BAM back to feeling good and writing helpful stuff.
Check out the whole thing here: interview
What Daniel Dociu has been trying to do in his work is convey an emotion or a high-level, sometimes abstract, idea, rather than a technique-driven process. As an industrial designer over many years, honed his ability to design complex systems entirely in his head, he finds himself losing interest in the subject because he’s figured it all out before starting to draw. “So lately,” he explains, “I allow myself a bit of searching for shapes and connections in the drawing phase to keep myself entertained with the occasional surprise.”
Daniel has solid ideas about where style belongs in the design process. He says it should “happen” naturally over a long period of growth, as an evolution towards finding the means of expression that best resonate with one’s sensibility. He remembers struggling as a young art student to find a style of his own, only to fall into one trap or another. He was lucky enough to find a mentor who prompted him to dig deeper.
“You have to get yourself genuinely charged emotionally and/or intellectually, depending on how you are wired, regarding your subject,” explains Dociu. “You need to take a stance and have the urge to share. Manifesting that position through direct, raw forms of expression you will find yourself ‘stylistically’”.“In my opinion, technique should be an extension of your thought processes and sensibility,” explains Daniel.
“What I mean is that it should be a natural fit that best serves your own communication needs. Mechanically learning and adopting someone else’s technique usually leads to a partial match at best. It’s the reason I find tutorials and how-to books and workshops of limited relevance. They are an insight into another mind’s thinking patterns, where connections, choices and creative decisions happen differently. Exposure to as many other ideas as possible is important, but it is just as important to filter what resonates and works for the way you are wired.”
CG Society with Daniel Dociu
“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life…the remarkable thing is we have a choice each day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”
Charles Swindoll
Hope everyone had a merry Christmas. Boxing day today eh? I picked up a 500gb hard drive for 200 bucks!
Anyways, using Firefox’s stumble upon plugin, Jon found a site that will breakdown the loading times per asset of site! This will help me and my crazy 10second load up time….
http://tools.itscales.com/cgi-bin/pma-dl
good luck on the draw!
Great for environment maps or matte paintings. Composed of nine images and around an hour in photoshop!
- “Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.”
- “All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts”
- “Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results.”
- “The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs”
-James Allen (1855-1942)
The top one caught my attention. Did you “get dealt a bad hand” in life? When people don’t take responsibility for their lives they “hand the reins” over to someone or something else – giving up the naturally good feeling of being in control… sure they’re easy to make fun of, granted such external insults determine their internal state of happyness, but the complaining or their nonacceptance of “what is” becomes common ground. The first point seriously forced me to grow within in order to produce the circumstances I wanted – love those fundamental truths.
Reference Image Sites ordered by awesomness:
- http://mattvogt.com/photography/
- http://google.com/images
- http://flickr.com
- http://corbis.com
- http://gettyimages.com
- http://photogateway.com
- http://ditto.com
(sorry for the shameless plug at the top)
Bruno Gentile, an inspirational concept artist/illustrator has shared with us a couple video tutorials showing how he made the following images:
Processes can be found at:
http://www.hydropix.com/tutorial.htm
Thank him too 😉
Being unaware of the potential WordPress had to offer, I simply installed it to /blog of the root of “mattvogt.com”. Most people’s portfolio/tutorialio sites have a blog that they share their news and thoughts etc… My entire site is my blog (without the complaining).
Doing this spawned an issue: How do I get people to go from mattvogt.com to mattvogt.com/blog ?
For your information, Google doesn’t index URLs that use 301 redirects by writing a htaccess file in the root (oops).
For the time being, my site isn’t listing in Google because of the above experiment (Read why here). I’m currently trying php forward that can be found at the bottom in the link below:
http://www.seocompany.ca/seo/url-redirect.html
The ball’s in Google’s court now….
The best time of the year is upon us. Nature varies her colors and I get excited to go snowboarding.
