From the world of Movie special effects...

The next blog is one from Todd Vaziri. It's called fxrant. He's a great vfx artist and comedian. Seriously, the guy can go from the minute details of putting together a special fx shot in a movie to making humorous comments about the world-at-large.
He has a long history of vfx work for various companies, but is currently a digital compositor at Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco.
A serious student of the art and science of filmmaking, Vaziri brings insights that will please hobbyists, fellow fx artists, or people who just love movies. Plus, sometimes he's just funny as hell.

A Universe of Wonders

The next website I've linked to is my latest addition, the Carl Sagan Portal. This is the webring to all things Sagan.
I remember watching Cosmos when younger and being blown away by how amazing the universe was. He made me want to look up at the sky and think about the sheer size of it all.
Part of that was due to the way Carl Sagan made science available to the everyday person, not just scientists.
He made things like traveling at the speed of light and the size of the universe seem phenomenal and amazing, and they are.
Whether it was his most popular book, Cosmos, or later works like Pale Blue Dot and Demon-Haunted World, he never lost his basic optimism that science can be accessible and exciting to everyone.
Thank you Carl Sagan.

Blogs to the right of me...

As you can see, I've linked to a few blogs that cover some of my interests, mostly art-related. The first one I'll mention is linesandcolors.com. A great blog covering fine and pop art. If you're into illustration, painting, sketch, it's all here. A great site.

09 on the horizon

So '08 is winding down. Goodbye year that was and hello what is to come. Hope everyone has a happy and safe new year.

See you on the other side.

Holiday Hangover

Okay, it's not a beverage induced hangover, but a food one. I wish it wasn't because this kind just adds inches to the belly.
The wind blew hard last night and toppled my parent's west side fence. My Labrador, Oliver, ran out and decided to spend some time loafing in someone's yard down the street. My Dad had to go looking for him in the wind and rain. He picks the worse times to run lose.
I watched Hellboy 2 last night. That was not a Hellboy story, but Guillermo del Toro took the storyline in an unexpected(to me) direction.
The visual fx were aplenty. I still don't know why directors choose to show these huge wide shots over and over though. It ruins the sense of scale to see these wide shots when perhaps a medium shot suggesting vastness beyond might be more effective. I'm referring specifically to the Golden Army chamber at the end when Guillermo shows these wide shots of the entire chamber over and over.
After a few dozen of these, I was thinking "I get it. It's big."
Anyway, that's my geeky rant for the day. Overall, I thought the film was good. It has its lighter moments too. The wisecracking repoire between Sapien and Hellboy was even more prominent than the first film.
That's it for now.

First

So this is my first post on my new blog. All of it is pretty new to me and a work in progress. There's not much here at the moment, but I'll be making changes and updates to the overall look and layout in the coming weeks.
Anyway, welcome and thanks for looking.