stubbysquirrel.com

So I’m working on a job where I need to have a fireplace light a room. And everyone knows the light from a fire is not a constant thing, so I needed to figure out a way to have it flicker. After messing around with a number of different ways of going about this, I found a post online talking about using a Noise node in Xpresso to drive the intensity of a light. Here’s what the setup looks like right now. It may change, but it seems to be working pretty well right now. I know this isn’t that complex of an Xpresso setup or anything, but I just thought I’d post it since I haven’t had a blog post in a little while.

While I was working on making a butterfly at work today, I used a Figure primitive as a quick stand-in for the body. I think I’ve stumbled upon the next great superhero. Behold, Butterfly Man!

And since I’m posting screenshots, here’s a look at what I was doing last night. Gotta love Lloyd Alvarez’s BG Renderer script for After Effects. It’s a great time saver and rarely ever gives me any problems. In fact, I think some renders actually go faster using BG Renderer than rendering inside After Effects.

And finally, even though this isn’t my photo, I think it’s pretty cool. Mark Paterson, who is working on the new show Archer (from the same people that made Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo), posted this photo on his twitter account. I guess you have to do what you have to do to get work done!

Here’s the theme song at Shiny Object for the week, possibly the month…

Haven’t updated in a little bit. I went to the Texas/OU game last weekend and had a great time yet again. Of course, the fact that Texas won makes it that much better. As long as Texas keeps winning, they’ll be in the National Championship, and hopefully I will be able to be there to watch in person. The offense needs some work, but the defense is insanely good this year. Have to give credit to Coach Muschamp, he knows what he’s doing!

Right now I’m working at Shiny Object until about mid December. It’s going pretty well. It’s 3D stuff so it gives me a chance to test out my C4D skills and learn some more while I’m at it. Here’s a couple of pictures I took at work this week.

A Spoon!

Dustin playing with the Canon 7D we rented

So what do I do when my computer is rendering something and all I can do is wait? Try to find funny stuff on the internet, of course! One of my friends sent me this earlier today and I’ve watched it at least 7 times. It’s quite possibly the greatest sports intro video EVER.

And here’s one I found a couple days ago. The title of it is “You are being shagged by a rare parrot,” so I’m sure you can figure out what happens. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen!

I just moved from Schertz, TX to Buda, TX. And if you have no idea where either of those places are, don’t feel bad. It’s basically moving from just outside San Antonio to just outside Austin. My friend and I signed a 6-month lease since neither of us really know where we’ll be in 6 months. I’d love to stay longer or, even better, move to Austin. We’ll see what happens though. I’m keeping busy with some work so that’s good. Still freelancing. I’d love a permanent position somewhere and all that comes with that (insurance, benefits, stable income, etc.), but I’m doing ok as a freelancer right now.

On another note, I’m looking forward to the Texas vs. Texas Tech game tomorrow. I’ll be there with my parents. I doubt it will be as exciting as last year’s game (even though we came out as the losers of that one). I’m hoping Texas will win big. We’ll see how it goes. First big night game for Texas this year, so the place should be pretty loud.

Welp, that’s all I got for now. Have a good weekend.

I’ve been working on upgrading my site for a few days now. It’s actually been going pretty well and I really like the Wordpress backend. My next step is to try and import my old blog posts from Blogger into this blog. I know most of it was useless banter, but I know there were a few good posts in there that I’d like to have. I guess I could just copy/paste posts into Wordpress if I just want to do a few rather than the whole thing. Oh well, I’ll figure it out.

I’m not exactly sure what this blog section will become. It could be random posts about things I find online that I think are cool, or it could be a more personal type of thing where I talk about what’s going on with me and my personal life… I don’t know. I guess I’ll figure it out as I go.

Finally I have something to show online from the graduate thesis film I worked on last year during my senior year of college at Texas. The director/writer/editor/etc. is Gaby Yepes. My classmate Travis Benn and I are credited as Sound Designers on the movie. There were many times we stayed up all night recording foley sound and mixing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7647666088252024089

Last week I edited together a highlight video for the 2008 Texas Longhorns. It was just for fun and to practice some editing skills. I also made the intro motion graphics. It’s nothing too fancy, but I just wanted to add a little something to the beginning of the video. There is some foul language in the music, but not too much. The video is 20 minutes long, so if you want to watch it in one sitting make sure you have that much time. Enjoy!