I had a PC decide to not boot, and while it wasn’t a major component to the farm it was used by others and while I asked people to backup to an external drive, they weren’t. PC crashed and someone lost a lot of files.

Enter solution. I have no desire to resurrect this machine but it was a good idea to retrieve the data. So, using PenDriveLinux I built a bootable USB stick and voila, boot mount drive and copy to the external USB drive.

Check it out, PenDriveLinux, nothing easier. Download installer, get a USB stick, download Ubunto (or some .iso of your Linux distro of choice). Run installer, follow directions.. done.

There seems to be a lot of dodgy operations out there and as a freelancer, what are you to do to protect yourself. There are many answers to a myriad of circumstances and it can range from doing things yourself or involving lawyers. However, perhaps there are things you can do proactively to help yourself and as this writer has evidenced is it can work in your favour. I present the story of Epilogue Eight, how the artist protected himself.

Please, give it a read.

Linear workflow is a way of handling digital imagery at the proper linear math level where there is no gamma correction due to the fact that our digital image displays are non-linear devices.

FXPhd has a podcast that demystifies this thing called linear workflow. Browse to the page and click the link for “Compositing in Linear”

http://www.fxguide.com/fxpodcast.html

Ray tracing gets faster, yet still today it’s an ‘offline’ process, meaning you still click a render button and wait. Some applications like fprime for Lightwave and  modo’s interactive renderer have made strides to use sampling tricks and clever programming to simulate interactive ray tracing, the concept isn’t quite there.

Enter Caustic Graphics who think they have a solution combining hardware and software. With 16 patents and probably more on the way, we may see some fruition to the concept of ‘real-time’ ray tracing but I am sure for now that would still be reserved for the largely elite producers.

Here’s a quick look behind the scenes of an indie HD music filming project using a variety of gear like a RED One, Panasonic HVX… and hell through in an RC Helicopter too.

Milo is a technology preview of Natal, presented by Lionhead Studios. The implications of the technology are astounding, and the interactivity between person and machine becomes almost second nature.

Go ahead, meet Milo.

Human creativity is amazing, there is so much that can come from so little. Educated, not educated, genius, deranged whatever the case creativity comes from everywhere.

Here’s a couple of TED talks, relating to creativity that I found amusing and interesting.

Thanks to Lucas Martell for pointing these out.

I find it amazing the creativity people have, especially when being frugal. According to SPRANQ creative communications (Utrecht, The Netherlands) your ink cartridges (or ink toner) could last longer and therefore they developed the ecofont. Spranq claims possibly 20% longevity gain in your toner cartridges.

At print size, for your typical documents, it’s quite a decent font and legible. It won’t save the world, but it just goes to show that the smallest, most inconceivable thing CAN make a difference!!

One of best planning tools you can use is a storyboard to roughly time out shots or plan camera views. A few resources for storyboard templates:

Animation Meat, Xinsight, or there are options for pre-printed stock.

In the future we will delve into storyboards in more detail. Enjoy the templates.

Before we start introducing a lot of compositing workflow I thought instead to introduce the concept through a variety of concepts provided by some resources by some generous people. Before I end the suspense, I want to quickly discuss a couple of concepts. In my opinion there are two main issues that revolve around compositing and those are bit-depth and alpha mulitiplication.

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