1. LHC amazing photo gallery
   Check out this awesome collection of photos taken at the LHC site. They have such a sci-fi look to them. It’s really inspirational.
2. Cars: Unifentified Flying Mater
   Directed by Pixar’s John Lasseter, this is the 5th in the series of Cars shorts. Check it out, it’s pretty cool.
   

Tagged: cars, gallery, lasseter, lhc, pixar ]]> http://yairmore.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/this-weeks-stuff-8/feed/ 0 Caine http://yairmore.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/elevator-pitch-for-darkstage/ http://yairmore.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/elevator-pitch-for-darkstage/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:53:00 +0000 Caine http://yairmore.wordpress.com/?p=346 ]]> I just realized I didn’t have an elevator pitch for Darkstage Studio. Whenever people ask me what it’s about I use terms such as “like” and “sort of”, which do not convey much confidence…

An elevator pitch, as implied by the previous sentence, is a short description of your business or idea that you can deliver in a few words to almost anyone, and especially potential clients. Here’s a first draft.

• Darkstage studio specialized in visualization content for the horror, fantasy and sci-fi entertainment genres. My passion for these themes has motivated me to start Darkstage as a freelancer. I collaborate with studios and bring in my expertise as an animation, illustrator and 3D designer in projects related to themes of darkness, horror and macabre.

What do you think? Let me know if you have any idea that can push this pitch even more.

Asylum is a photography album of the inside and outside of many mental hospitals across the United States. The forward, written by neurologist Oliver Sacks, is an interesting review of the entire concept – how it came to be at the beginning of the 18th century and it’s decline after the 1950s. He wrote about the Kirkbride Plan – a special design of the layout of institutes that was meant to promote comfort for patients, but eventually becoming too expensive to maintain. He also discusses how mental hospitals become a place of confinement, rather than a haven.

Payne’s photographs are simply amazing. They show in great detail the outside of hospitals and the inside of wards; untended forgotten gardens and dismal corridors with paint peeling off the walls. Looking at all the abandoned corridors and rooms makes you imagine them busy with strange patients wandering around and doctors tending them. I try to picture people living and working in such a morally questionable environment.

It’s a fascinating book. Browsing it fills me with inspiration and curiosity. I wish there was more stuff to read on this subject, but I guess that’s what Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization is for.

Check out the book’s website: www.asylumbook.com.

1. Madame Talbot
Found it on from with us or against us blog. This is a website selling dark art merchandise. They have lots of posters, skeleton baby dolls and lots of other stuff linked to gothic 18th-19th century western culture (like bottles of laudanum). Great stuff!

2. Ramona Falls – I Say Fever video
I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, and I listened to it many time since. But that’s not the reason why I tell you about it. Check out the video. It’s really beautiful.

3. Fumiko’s Confession
Amazing anime clip. It’s so fast it actually tricks your brain into believing it’s falling off the hill and dodging pedestrians, trees and cats!

4. Tarboy
Found it on Coilhouse magazine blog. The style here is simply amazing. Using Flash, James Lee and Hania Lee created this fascinating action packed story featuring Tarboy, a hero born in the slavery tar pits who gets up and fights the high society robot regime. Check out the Tarboy website here.

It was held in Tel Aviv, in a very nice location (Hangar 11, Tel Aviv port). Opeth went on stage and kicked in with Heir Apparent. I swear to Satan, the impact of the first 2 notes was so astounding it made the unlikely hypothesis of the rising of His Unholiness himself and his entire entire Army of Darkness look pale and insignificant in comparison. Unfortunately, this effect did not last long, probably because I got used to the sound and everything. But the show was so great nontheless.

Once Heir was done, they quickly switched to Ghost of Perdition. And after some funnies from Mikael they played The Leper Affinity and White Cluster. During Windowpane Mikael almost swallowed his pick and missed a line, which was quite amusing (and brought many cheers from the audience). I guess he should have thought less on tits and more on playing (referring to his report on what they did at the beach before the show).

I enjoy listening to Mikael between songs. He’s so laid back talking as opposed to playing and singing. After another talk they played The Lotus Eater. Then Mikael decided to suddenly change the plans and play something off setlist, so they did Bleak, which was played fairly well, considering Opeth’s claim they did not rehearse it in a while. After that they played April Ethereal and Reverie/Harlequin Forest.

I think one of the best songs Opeth played that night was Reverie/Harlequin Forest. And Hex Omega. They are both amazing live, even though they’re less heavy than, say, Deliverance, which they played after the encore, and was a pretty good finale to a truly awesome night. Right before Deliverance Frederik astounded everyone with an amazing killer solo.

I really enjoy Mikael’s presence on stage. He doesn’t take things too serious or false pretending. All is fun and games with Opeth, because they know they don’t need the pretension – they prove their seriousness and professionalism through their music.

It’s going to be hard for me to get back to listen to Opeth. Every record now sounds so dull and empty in comparison. Ugh, who am I kidding? I couldn’t resist and popped in Watershed a few minutes ago.

P.S. Thanks Israeli Youtubers for putting some clips online. Most of them really suck because you guys have shitty equipment, but I managed to dig the few decent ones.

This is how the site looks so far.

I’ve finished the main page along with a nice free slideshow plugin called Pikachoose. What’s left is building the rest of the pages, adding content and putting it on the interwebs.

So don’t think I gave up just yet only because I’m writing only This Week’s Discoveries posts. I’m up and well and pushing my dreams forward!

Peter Hintz
An interesting post on with us or against us published this Monday linked to the gallery of Peter Hintz. He’s a German illustrator. I can’t really tell much about him since most of the info I found out was in German. But I wanted to note him here because of his inspiring work. I really love the dynamic lines in his art, they’re so free and spontaneous. He adds up to the lines textures and splatters of color and makes interesting compositions. His bizzare and sometimes pervert subjects also fascinate me.

 

1. The Cat With Hands
   Not a new short, but an interesting horror flick worth noting.
   
2. John U. Abrahamson
   A fine dark artist. I love his combination of fallen angels, gas masks, halos and dark atmospheres. His S&M artworks are also awesome.
   
3. 9 minutes from the new ABC series “V”
   A remake of the 1983 miniseries, the upcoming V has awesome special effects, as can be seen in this little video here. Totally cool spaceship hovers over New York and excellent chopper explosion. As far as I understand, the main story is of this day’s modern society and how it deals in the face of some motherfucking large motherships hovering over major cities of the world. Yup, much like Independence Day or Immortel (ad vitam). But I must admit this thing looked pretty good. I’m looking forward to see it!
   
4. Despicable Me trailer
   Last item for this week:
   

I hope Darkstage will be up and running shortly.

Let me know what you think either here, or at Concept Feedback here.

They asked me to model the train station and do some animation sequences. What they wanted was the camera revolving around the train and the station as these objects unravel and reveal their inside to the audience.

I had a great time working with the team, especially my Animation Mentor colleague, Henrik, who supervised the project in addition of doing some materials and rendering. There were also Pavel, who did an excellent job with texturing the station and Toby who was responsible for lighting, materials and rendering. The train was modeled by Carlos.

So check out the result (there is a long intro in this video which was not part of the project, and WordPress ignores the timecode I put in the URL, so skip to 5:40):

Anyway, I have some logo ideas I wanted to put here for everyone to see and comment. I want this logo to convey the main artistic direction of Darkstage Studio, which is macbre, ironic and dark themes.

If you’re in Concept Feedback, you can also comment my design there.

No papers version

Version with papers in the background

• Dean Spanley
  I know this is not a new film, but I found out about it, yet again, thanks to the amazing The Art of the Title site.
  

• Illustrator Dave Lange
  Found out about his cool gallery on Wednesday. He draws amazing comics art and has some work inspired by Giger’s biomechanics concept. He also made some really cool horror film DVD covers. Really worth checking.
  

• Living Climate Change welcome video
  Living Climate Change is an initiative that concentrates on adapting design concepts in a society that changes for the better of our environment. This project is hosted by IDEO, a global design and innovation company. Anyway, they made a really nice promotional video. I love this kind of clear, aesthetic design. It mixes animation and live-action. Worth checking out. Also check out an entire article about this on CGArena.

This was modeled with 3dsmax 2009 and rendered with VRay. I textured it with photos I took of the original object found in my kitchen and turned the photos into textures using Photoshop.

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