M dot Strange's blog

If I were still making live action films I'd be pretty excited about the no budget possibilities or today... I wouldn't shoot it all on a green screen as real lighting/shadows/interaction with the subjects is important to me... BUT with a little 3d knowledge and a good grasp of compositing you can pull off some amazing stuff today... This was posted on a thread at cgsociety... will give you great ideas about what you can do with some matchmoving, camera mapping and comP... AND this is stuff ANY of you can do... with live action stuff the barrier was always the camera and ridiculous details aside DSLR optics pwn today and so do the images you can get off of them... So shoot with a DSLR and get smart and creative in comP and you can make a "big budget" film for nothing today... you just need some skills... So start at Video Copilot BUT don't stop there or else the only effects you'll know how to do are the ones everyone else who goes there knows so then all

You know I've been lucky enough to travel to a few different countries because of my last film....Thanks to the people who invited me to those places! ... and in all of those places there were always some really nice people that went out of their way to show me around and other fun thangs... I just wanted to say that I haven't forgotten any of you and thanks ^ ^ I haven't replied to 0_o or contacted many peoples because I feel like until I have my new film to show I kinda like have no purpose 0_0 So when HSM is ready to be unveiled I'll like become social again... so my apologies if I disappeared on anybody out there... I haven't forgotten ANYONE who has gone out of their way to do something nice for me and I will does my best to repay yall for your kindness... So I aint hatiN I'm just animatiN... ALSO to all the people who have donated to my lil studio fund or hooked me up with stuff... I'm very thankful and I'll do my best to do somethin special

So I've done more thinkiN and planning about how I want to do my new school thing... After checking things out a bit I decided that I will record all the lesson/tutorial vids and post them on youtube instead of doing them live... there are a few reasons for this as I want them to be archived on youtube and I will be able to make them much more focused this way.... I will have a blog where I will post the supplemental written materials and project files for each lesson... Once I start posting the new lessons I'll host a live Ustream show a few times a week for a month or so...as a supplement to the lessons where you'll be able to ask me about any of the things I cover or anything filmmaking/3d etc and I'll be able to switch over to my computer screen to show and tell thangs...techniques etc... I'll only do this for a limited time before I disappear to start work on the new film in new places so don't miss it when I doeS iT! In the end I want to make it so yo

I just watched "A town called Panic" and it was GREAT! ^_^ Here's the trailer... Those little toys had so much character I was into it from the first minute... this film is so ridiculous and hilarious! FIGHT SWORD FISH WITH COWS! ^ ^ The people who made it sure know something a lot of blokes obsessed with "pixar quality" 3d don't... this film was about as low tech as you could get BUT it had TONS of character, the writing was awesome, the voice actors perfect, and the story was compelling... I mean I've always known that character, mood and story outweigh technical complexity...cause after all we should be making films that connect with and communicate with living people NOT demo reels! I enjoyed this film more than any big budget animated feature I have seen since the "Were-rabbit" I hope these guys make more ^_^

You know working on this thang that is coming to an end soon... I've learned to deal with the cycles of inspiration--->boredom---> burnout---inspiration---> and so on... There comes times when even if what your doing is exciting and fun your brain will be all MEH and want you to procrastinate... this is where the quotas come in handy... On those days you do whatever you have to do to grind through X number of shots required to stay on task and forget about it... I'm in a burnout phase right now 0_0 So I hit my quota and do other stuff... I don't stress out about the why's I'm feeling bored and burnt out... I just go on... and after about a week the inspiration will be back and all will seem great... I think most people QUIT when they hit the boredom... and the few that make it through that quit at the burnout phase... the few that make it through that are guaranteed to complete the task... In these bored or burnt out phases...I'm NOT bored WHILE I&#

Now I'll have to say that HSM is the first thing I have created acting as a professional... not to say I have some fancy office or people working for me or anythang like that because I don't... its all about attitude... how you approach your work and how you live your life... I can say now by making this as a professional... its far less "exciting"...Why? Because a professional does his homework and is adequately prepared for all situations...he has worked out most all possible problems ahead of time and tested everything out before jumping into heavy production... So there is much less surprise... which takes some of the excitement away while working BUT leads to a much more stable mental state... which helps keep a better working pace and in the end...more and BETTER work ends up being done over time... So as I'm working now there aren't any HUGE surprises because I've already worked everything out...I just need to sit down everyday and do my quota...

Now that might just be a software box to most BUT after spending the past 18 months using it pretty much everyday for 10+ hours a day...after spending the previous 3 years on it making my last film...it means a little more to me... It has allowed me as an artist/filmmaker person FIRST and technical person SECOND to completely realize all my creative visions easily and quickly... When geeks get to talking about 3d apps they tend to talk about what the packages are missing...which is a concern IF YOUR NOT THE RESOURCEFUL...the way I look at it... You often trade complexity/flexibility for ease of use/speed... When it comes to 3d apps Houdini has to be the most flexible... I've been playing with the learning edition and yes it is powerful and complex BUT I wouldn't try to do my one man 3d animation show with it... the workflow is way too complex and slow... yes procedural stuff is great BUT when making a film with like a STORY and CHARACTERS and tons of more important things goi

Ya know in the world of DIY filmmaking and animation it seems that the people who are the most dishonest on the state of this lil world... are the ones with the most followers... By this lil world I mean filmmaking and animation etc... Theres TONS of TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUE preachers out there who see the glass as half empty and TONS of people who want to agree with them.. WHY because THEY ARE AFRAID...this can be applied to bigger populations but I'll stick to the film angle... If you were forced to say to yourself its not the technology that's stopping me from making great things...and its not the technique that's stopping me from making great things...you would have to look in the mirror and say ITS MY FAULT I'M NOT MAKING GREAT THINGS... and of course through my time in this life I have learned that humans really REALLY hate facing the truth...especially about themselves... we love to make excuses and blame other people and other things never wanting to look in t

I wonder if the Iron Sky d00ds are going to do festivals? I keep going back and forth when thinking about HSM and film festivals... On one hand with my last film it was in like the "best" film festival er whatever in Sundance but I thought the films in the festival itself and the whole experience was FAILING hard so why would I do that again? On the other hand I want YALL to be able to see it on a big screen at least once hopefully the first time you see it AND there were some fests like the Waterloo animation festival that were fun and I know the people at Fantasia in Montreal appreciated it... Now here's the thing... I would be doing a film festival a great service in letting them play HSM...As its rare to have a SINGULAR filmmaker creating and presenting crazy 3d animated feature films...So I would be giving them instant validation NOT vice versa... What can a film festival offer me? Money? NO they take my money and give me nothing back! An audience? NO! I'll

Ya know if your going to get in on this one man army 3d filmmaker thing you better LOVE computers because your going to spend a lot of time using them... fixing them... thinking about them...... reinstalling software on them... checking them... worrying about them... sitting on front of them again for 12 hours like yesterday and the 90 days in a row just like yesterday 0_o Talking about them to people who don't really care about them... riding your bike to Fry's to get hard drives to install in them.... and yeh after all the time and energy I spend on them... I STILL LOVE THEM! I LOVE HARDWARE I LOVE SOFTWARE (MAKES OUT WITH WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE DISK) ^ ^ Seriously after HSM I'm looking forward to using Zbrush 4, learning Houdini and Nuke, the NEXT version of Cinema 4d 0_0 and of course building a new rig ^ ^ GEEK LIFE MAYNE! Imma tattoo a heatsink across my chest er something....

You know if your going to learn how to do one thing in life it would probably be HOW TO HUSTLE... Cause to get things done NO MATTER WHAT you gotta be a lil bit of a HUSTLA! Urban dictionary describes teh Hustle as this... Anythin you need to do to make money... be it sellin cars, drugs, ya body, ya weird ass cartoons on DVD.  If you makin money, you hustlin. I been workin two jobs, tryna stay on my hustle and make this money, na mean? So if you know about teh hustle you would never ask someone how they do what they do if you can't see a way to do it through non-hustla spectacles... Skip to the 7:15 mark of this video to see an example of me hustlin... I made almost $400 that night! ^ ^ Once you learn how to hustle you won't worry about how to make money with your film etc cause you trust your inner hustler to make it happen no matter what by any means necessary... So before you start complaining about "how hard it is to be an independent filmmaker" get out

My style is no style ^ ^ So after spending the past month completing just %2 of the films animation as it was crazy shit I did some calculations... the last shot I did took 2 days to do and 4 days to render... NOW if I made the whole film at that pace it would take 8 years to animate and 16 years to render 0_0 based on the number of shots I'm doing... I'm on shot #1142 btw... So now I'll be back to normal speed this month that will take me to the %93 mark then in September I will complete that task... then I will take 2 weeks off in October after finishing animation...On that break I will analyze all the shots and make a list of ones that need special matte paintings and visual fx and also I will list any additional shots I want to do.... then when I get back to work I will start editing and compositing shots and doing those special shots at the same time.... I already did a ton of comp tests before production so the composting/"look" phase should be a cut a