Thirteen*0

It's been an interesting couple of days.

Went to another talk at COFA last night, this one about showreels. It was interesting to see the reels that people have been hired from because to be honest I thought some of them were a bit average - but upon explanation it helped me grasp what made it a good reel and why said individual had gotten that particular opportunity. Something that struck me as odd was the length of the reels - all of which extended past 2 minutes with the exception of a few which purely showcased a single (albeit impressive) project. This was something that goes against everything that I was taught throughout uni and I am still in disagreement with the longer reel times. We watched 15-20 odd reels in an hour and a half, some of which would have hit the 5 minute mark and that is just too long for a prospective employer to sit through in my mind (without stopping the reel). It depends on what you are showcasing of course, if you are showcasing compositing and including breakdowns of shots that you have worked on then yes - a reel is going to hit the 2 minute mark (dependent on the quantity of shots). But for an animation reel 1 and a bit minutes should be more than plenty to get your skills across effectively.

After the talk Liz and I stopped by a random pub on the way back to Central just to check it out, we haven't had much of a chance to explore Sydney despite having been here for months so that was good. Will definitely head back to that particular pub again! Classy and would definately be classed as a Beer Bar.

I was offered a contract After Effects Animator/Compositor job a few days ago which unfortunately clashes with heading to Wagga next week for Graduation and unfortunately the company cannot wait to do this job so I had to pass. They may be able to give me some work after I get back, but its doubtful. After months of fruitless job hunting that was a swift kick to the groin! The upside of course is that yes, someone has noticed my emails and are very willing to give me work! So that's what I need to focus on right now. I did email the company back thanking them for the offer and to definitely keep me in mind for future projects so you never know what could come of that!

Lastly, recieved a phone call from my good friend Ammon earlier in the day. He recently got engaged and has set the early date of July 17th for the Wedding in Wagga. Very happy for him and Bri and was doubly pleased when he asked me to be a Groomsman! Or rather told me! I believe it was phrased "I just need to tell you what to wear seeing as you're going to be a groomsman".

=)

Also saw lostprophets in concert back on the 27th March with my little bro! They were rather spectacular I must say! The 2 support bands were a non-event, especially the 2nd band who attempted to destroy everyone's eardrums by having the levels up high enough to cause minor tremors and as a result it was just noise! Horrible, ear shattering noise. They also covered one of lostprophets songs which I thought was plain rude. Here's some photos I took on my iPhone of the concert using the CorssProcess app - I think they turned out quite well as far as phone photos go!

Nine*7

Portfolio site V8.5 has been online for almost a week now. Go and check it out at www.dkirkland.com. With this complete and fully functional I have finally been able to move on from that (revisiting for the occasional update) to working on some vfx for my new showreel. You know, the sort of stuff that I have saying and been meaning to do for the past 4 years whilst at uni but when it comes to doing it my inspiration wavers to the point of non-existance. Uni Holidays will do that to you. So I spent a bit of time scouring through old backups of projects, both uni and personal - looking for things that need starting/finishing/touching up. One that I am focusing on at the moment is a re-envisioning of Nick and my zombie short film disaster 'Perennial' from first semester 3rd Year (2008). I was abysmally disappointed by the project, possibly due to a combination of my not taking charge as I possibly should have and letting Nick take the reigns. Mind you, I am equally at fault as he is. So you could call what I am now doing MY version of one of the scenes. Mind you, the footage isn't the ideal for this sort of work. Nor are the actor's non-existant makeup.

A brief history; Perennial originnaly appeared as a rotoscoped piece with digital backgrounds insterted and lighting added later on. It turned out ok, but not fantastic in my books. So here I am nearly 2 years later attempting something that may or may not work with the footage. I am still going to attempt digital backgrounds - which in itself makes my job harder, despite the fact that we filmed in the blue/greenscreen studio down in TV Land at CSU Wagga we were making use of the space opposed to the bluescreen itself. Thus my first hurdle - keying out the background manually using masks is a hug task, and as is attempting to get the optimum "key" from the background as is possible.

Original Footage:


Masked Footage:


So you can see there that I am getting a decent result, but I have no hope of handling that hair better than I have in the above shot. But I think once it's all blended in it may be reasonable. The major issue that I have is that obviously the actors are lacking in the appropriate makeup - due to the rotoscoping there was no reason for us to worry about makeup - time saving back then, painful now. I have a number of options however - go for the 80's Dawn of the Dead style zombies which could be achieved very easily by playing with the saturation and colour balance, or of course there is a bigger transformation that would require essentially frame by frame edits of the actors into zombies via photoshop and some motion tracking. It's not the worst idea in the world, but time-consuming and my aim is to have this completed somewhere in the week of the 11th - 17th of January. Which is also something that may or may not happen with me moving to Sydney on this coming Tuesday. We'll see. I am hoping that the masking of at least these 3 actors will be done before I move - hard push but it could be possible. After that it is a bit more straight forward (in regards to the masking). For those interested here is what the original styling looked like;

This is just one of the things that I am doing in attempts to improve on both my skills and the work that will be shown to potential employers. I am slowly making my way through the VideoCopilot tutes as well, which are great for learning and relearning quickly. We'll see how I go.