dominique wilkins

matthew ritchie

Last night, marie and i attended a rather fascinating lecture given by Matthew Ritchie at NYU's IFA. Ritchie talked a lot about how artists should use all of the available information that there is instead of reverting back to and referencing or paying homage to what has already been done (ya know, heaven hell, "the implosion of the art world"). He uses the concept of information as a source of inspiration, believes that information itself can become form, and break the space time continuum by traveling back in time. I didn't know that space time was shaped like a cone.
I respect him tremendously, I find his work fasciniting although unemotional. my only rub with the guy is that all of his lofty ideas about string theory and the shapes of the universe in isometric view are not at all evident for most normal people, and I suspect not even for quantum theorists. Regardless, I am not sure if we need to know where artists draw their inspiration from to appreciate it through our own lens, but Ritchie is certainly a good and funny talker so it might help to look at some of his interviews n' stuff.
Here are my lecture notes.

matte paintings

lately, i've been working on matte painting for our film's backgrounds. they have ended up being a mixture of miniature sets, photographic reference, and photoshop painting. 

although i am pretty happy with the way these look and ultimately think they are more beleiveable, i still remain nostalgic for the original photograph. even though things are slightly out of perspective, the original has a certain charm that the painted one doesn't. oh well. 

what do you think? (more to come soon!!)

more life

another fellow space ship builder.

i still draw nakey

this man is named chuck, a regular at spring studio. he has very strange proportions and even though he takes about a minute to get into the poses, they are well worth it.


after that i got my wisdom teef removed. back to being naive, hooray!

in other news, my film aethiopicus will be screening in front of the live nyu orchestra in march with newly composed music. hooray!

also, this is my new favorite thing ever!!!!

family reunion

hi everyone, it has been a long time, i know and i'm sorry. since i have last posted, andrew and i have had a couple shoots in the green screen room and we are moving on to some animation. finally. here is shot one:



in order to complete this spaceship, i had to take apart a few more electronic appliances including a scanner/ printer, a typewriter that mysteriously would not stop working, and a few small toys.
the outer shell of the ship was plastic air painted with metallic and acryllic paint.
this is the back rotary that probably won't be shown in the film, but it can rotate!
this is the ninja turtles hover hq playset. national wholesale liquidators was going out of business this week so i decided to get myself a little 8 dollar christmas present. unfortunately they didn't have the hypershell which, when combined with the hover hq makes the HOVER SHELL.
i rememember that the ninja turtles were so popular in my preschool that we had to have designated day when everyone brought in their turtleparaphernilia and played with it. an action show about one of the slowest animals, pure brilliance. in any case, maybe i'll be able to scrap some parts for my next space ship.
also, the mayor of blake city and JD Amato finally settled their copyright dispute in the annual egg drop. my initial designs for a rubber band ball egg didn't work so well, but sometimes you just have to try and make things bounce. am i right? a good time had by all (except for michael porcello who almost got 'shanked by a homeless man that our parachute landed on).

miniseries: SPACE SHIP TIME

hi readers! (umm, hi mom and dad) today i am assembling parts to build a space ship. This task seemed daunting at first. Do you have to go to a fancy geeky model store and purchase some babylon star wars crap? Nope.
First off, major shout out to NASA for putting their entire image library online and copyright free. You can even download OBJ files of some of their spacecrafts. So there is plenty of scientific reference to use.
Now, Any NASA scientist will tell you that there are really only two parts to any space craft: the smooth outer metal shell, and the wiry, coggy electrical inside part.

I went to home depot to find some shiny outer shell parts.



Now for the innards. We happened to have a VCR player that doesn't work in our house, (but yet we still leave it near the TV) so i got a screwdriver and starting taking things apart.


At times this can be frustrating, but try and resist the urge take a hammer and smash things open because you will most likely break something that could have been interesting looking. It had to be put together by an assembly machine, so chances are there is a relatively logical way to take it apart.
And the deeper you go the more treasure you find. Here are the cogs:
and here are the weird plastic shapes

open the VCR, and here's all the JUNK

Now enjoy the fruits of your labor! Taking apart things is fun, especially when you don't need them to work. I also opened up a remote control because the plastic shell might make some great wings. But I'll save that for next time.
ps. if anyone has a working vcr, let me know cause i have this vcr tape i've been meaning to watch. thanks!

miniseries: cliffs and rocks

to make rocks: carve the desired shape out of foam, then cover with black acrylic paint (above). Next buy some spackling paste, and spread a thin layer over all or part of the rock (below). finally, cover in a light coat of black paint again and sort of wipe it off as you go with a paper towel. tada!... a rock.

these silly things are the base coat for a close up of a rock. it is a hard piece of foam, with sandpaper slashes and painted with acrylic paint. soon to be covered with some sand and stuff.

umm, tada!

miniseries: hills close and far

these cliffs were carved using a peice of wire with handles at the end, it's usually used for cutting up blocks of clay but if you sort of sift through with different rythms you can strike some really nice organic patterns.




i am slightly dissapointed in this model as the end shape is too symmetrical. this is because of an indecision to commit to improvisation or to stick to the plan. during the process, i will often discover something by accident and want to completely change directions. this is usually not smart. It is better to note the discovery and save it for later.




this is the base coat for a hill. after the acrylic i will put on cinnamon and flower to tone it down, and then spray paint. i am trying to get at more organic patterns, find asymmetry while keeping order. i am getting further away from a constructionist approach and closer to a more rythmic sort of work flow. try to mimic the natural forces that would act on form: the wind, the water, tectonic plates and all that jazz.

mini series 4: modeling and painting and ...TOX BOX

so much has happened since we've last spoken. i'll fill you in.
i ended up using the insulator foam spray to fill the holes in the foam, but i got a little carried away and sort of iced the whole thing like a wedding cake.
this stuff really expands and takes a while to set, at least a couple hours, so during this time i started submodeling, carving in details into the crater. At this point i'm not looking to drastically change the shape of the set, so i used the smaller tools available. the clay modeling tools and the pointy device worked well. After the spray dried, I spent some time picking apart the insulation foam because it got too bubbly, as you can see in this picture. I think there are better applications for this material.


I was getting pretty worried reading the warnings on the spray bottles, and I realized that I needed some serious ventilation. This sunday, my good friend George/Ben Conkin, and my new friend Alex Deschamps came over and helped me tear my room apart. Behold,... THE TOX BOX!



surrounded by trash bags and a plexiglass viewing plate, this is the perfect little fort for adhesive spraying and painting. the worker sits in the gap between the table and works while tourists can watch from the otherside of the glass. it's quite roomy, is it not?

I let alex handle most of the painting this time around while george and i worked on beginning another set. Here are some pictures in the process


for this set, i collected some sand from around the neighborhood to use that has a sort of brown coller and a fine grain. This was applied using the adhesive spray and alex did a good job building it up around where the white foam was to make it blend together. after this, spray paint of various colors were heavily applied. for the base color, spray directly straight on, but to get highlights on the edges, spray from the side.




this is the finished product. Although mistakes were made, I'm fairly happy with it. One thing we learned is that before applying sand grain, or whatever you are using, first put down a layer of acrylic paint directly onto the foam for a stronger color, then do your texture work on top of this. the inside of the crater has acrylic as the bottom layer and i think it somehow looks more convincing.

ultimately, i think we overworked it with the paint and ended up losing some of the nice detail that i carved. live and learn. in terms of our story, it is ok for this set to stand out as a bit different from the rest of our landscape, so i'm glad we did this one first.

did i mention that it has two parts?? just in case we want to get some panning shots on the inside and for easier transport. this concludes the basic process for building a crater. Big thanks again to alex and george. I will be posting much more about how to make cliffs, valleys and canyons, and hopefully a wrecked space ship.
it's almost like a trip to the zoo!