Behemoth Blog

Computer Competence

2012-01-27T11:35:00.003-05:00

You wouldn’t get into a car for the first time without instruction on how to use it or even bake a cake from scratch without looking in a cookbook and learning what you need to get started. A project involving a computer is no different. You don’t need to know how the car works to drive somewhere, but you do need to get directions when you drive somewhere new. A new project is like driving somewhere new. Getting the basics, like getting directions, is part of your job getting there efficiently.

Certain things are, I feel, a requirement to doing your job in today’s workplace. There is no excuse for not knowing how to use email or a word processor and the fundamentals of a spreadsheet. Beyond that, know your individual needs. If you are in need of a website, find out what that entails. Mastering many programs takes years of training and a talent for applying that training. I am not saying you need to become an expert, but the basic concepts are essential to getting your task done right.

But how?

It’s very simple these days. Instead of «googling» yourself, try simply asking for the solution to your question. At this point in time, you are not going to be the first to ask «How do I prepare to have a website made?». Youtube and other video hosts have literally tons of tutorials on just about anything. Buy a book or take a class. Apple, for example, offers free classes all the time on how to use the computer’s basic functions. The point is to do this before you hire someone, so you have a good idea what you are asking for and what it entails. If you need to send an ad to, let’s say, a magazine, find out what you need to provide and in what format to your designer or printer. You can find out from the magazine what the prices are for each size ad and decide what you can afford. Making 3 ads is going to cost more than the five minutes it takes to find out in advance what you need to start off. You will soon be able to convey your ideas to the professionals you hire to carry them out much more easily.

In the long and short run, you will not only know more about what you asking to be done, but also know how to do it efficiently and more affordably with a lot less aggravation and stress.

Now that Apple is no longer "pro"

2012-01-25T07:01:00.001-05:00

After years of producing some really great and now essential software for video pros, Apple has abandoned them in favor of robust, but far from professional versions aimed more at consumers who need more professional features but lack the experience and training using those features entail.

The Final Cut Pro suite is of course what I’m talking about. Now basically dead, Final Cut X the much needed and anticipated FCP update wasn’t what anyone was looking for and won’t be... ever. Some cool ideas does not a professional software make. Soundtrack Pro is gone leaving Garage band and Motion was never all it was cracked to be, but a solid software (and still is) but solidly in the less than professional arena for many tasks.

This is water under the bridge and Apple has the right to do whatever it wants in term of what direction it develops it's software. The question for those of us who depended on using it is now... where to go?

Frankly.. Avid has always been a complicated and buggy pain in the ass for me. On the MAC end of things anyway. The only other affordable alternative seems to be Adobe’s suite of video products.. which in anticipation of Apple’s change of heart, seems have been upping it’s game in recent years and is ready to take on the challenge. I’ve used Premiere Pro more and more and there’s no replacement for After Effects. Integration with Photoshop and Illustrator seals the deal really. Encore is miles above Apple’s always lame DVD pro and produces really nice DVDs, in my opinion. The music software is good for fixing problems but not for producing music.. Sound track Pro still is better at that..but not really that much better as time goes on.

So off to Adobe for my next feature documentary I’m thinking. Sort of scary and not a little bit annoying... but it’s not like there’s a lot of choices in this area!

Watson

2012-01-19T15:07:00.001-05:00

Had to post something NOT in graveyard for once!

Milk of Amnesia

2011-12-16T16:41:00.002-05:00

Donna Lethal is a personal friend, actress in a couple of my films and accomplice in several other things so I wouldn’t write a review of her book unless I liked it and luckily.. I do.

Her book is fiction but taken from stories and events inspired from real life which is, considering some of the characters in this book, a very daring thing. She’s had all sorts of nasty emails as a result. This shows just how stupid some people can be. If you recognize yourself in a story in an unflattering way, but the names etc have been changed, why on earth would you tell everyone who will listen that it really is you? Wouldn’t common sense advise you to keep it to yourself? Besides... what if it really isn’t you in the end? You’ve just told the world you think you are an asshole, non?

The book is a really quick read... I read it all in almost one sitting, going from each short chapter to another, Donna’s prose dragging me along to the next one until I was done. The most disturbing elements are told with wit and humor. You may find yourself chuckling about some things we all know we really shouldn’t be chuckling about. Donna doesn't go into graphic details of things, preferring instead to keep it moving along and letting the reader to make up their own minds on what think about what’s going on. There is no psyche-babble or “deep examinations of her very soul” here, only matter of fact little vignettes of life that add up to something meaningful without having to take you by the hand to give “meaning” to it all. I like being treated as an intelligent adult and this book does just that.

My only beef with is the book itself. As a designer, it was pretty obvious what happened... someone other than Amber Sexton, designer of the excellent cover, took over the rest of the book. (It’s happened to me also.) The font is all wrong... the typography takes you away from the experience, not into it as it should. The spine (in my copy anyway) is off. The ads in the back for other New Texture books look like a high school fanzine. Chapters end visually in a very awkward fashion with a couple orphaned lines on an otherwise blank page. Only Lethal’s compelling storytelling keeps you reading because you know it’s worth it.

Buy it here. Now.

Copps Hill Burial Ground

2011-12-13T09:56:00.004-05:00

I've always loved this place, having read about it a Lovecraft story as a young person. It's sort of the perfect graveyard. Old enough, broken and tilted stones... overlooking the harbor and hidden in a maze of streets in Boston's North End.

I am hoping to put together a little book for myself using the 200 plus photos I took there, adding some personal stories and history to go with the photos. Some of the stones had graffiti on them... to be fair it mostly from the 60's in all appearances, but still you had ego wonder why some brain dead people would think it was fun to ruin grave markers in a beautiful historic setting.

Mount Auburn Cemetery

2011-12-08T13:12:00.004-05:00

I spent over 4 hours here on a Saturday morning and took so many photos my 8 gig card ran out.. first time ever. I end ed up with quite a few decent images. A few more are on my flicker page.

Boston

2011-11-30T14:50:00.003-05:00

I was in Boston for the American thanksgiving holiday. Took some shots of the city while there, but mostly spent time photographing a couple burial grounds I've been itching to do. I've been thinking of making a little book on them but in the meantime... the Boston landscape as seen from Devonshire Place where I photographed a massage studio for publicity purposes.

A few more on my flickr page.

Rollicord 120mm

2011-11-14T16:02:00.004-05:00

My first 120mm camera, which I still keep with me. Still functions. Like most other photographers who started in film many years ago, cameras were works of art and beautiful in of themselves.

I decided to go all macro and try to highlight the little things, using stacked images to get more details when needed. I am sure there are young photographers today who will have no idea what some of these controls could be.

I will post a few more on my Flickr page soon.

Graveyards of Burlington Vermont

2011-11-08T17:42:00.004-05:00

Some people think I spend too much in cemeteries. Well, maybe. I always have since I was child and it still fascinates me now. I drove around with a friend to quite a few this past weekend and we had a grand time looking around and taking photos. It wasn't without incident, as I lost somewhere in our travels my 18-55mm lens. So my cheap weekend with friends wasn't so cheap after all. I quickly replaced the lens when I returned before I could freak out about the money and not buy one. It's the lens I use most often so I really can't be without it.

macro

2011-11-08T06:30:00.001-05:00

feuille

2011-10-31T13:31:00.001-04:00

expanding on some techniques

2011-10-21T05:07:00.003-04:00

In my work, I often have to retouch photos for video and sometimes turn those photos into something that actually moves in a 3d space or has animated elements. Though I am not trying to take a single photo and turn it into a full blown 3D animated scene, I am trying to get more bang for the buck by giving a single photo more 3D space to move around in and by adding more traditional 2d animation in addition to the 3D to try and bring more life and interest. Years ago, just panning across an old photo was considered enough... not anymore!

My goal is always to keep the integrity of the original photo, which is usually an old one, but add enough to it to keep a modern viewer's interest.

Some new photos

2011-10-20T15:26:00.002-04:00

Been out and about to Mont Royal and cimetière Notre Dame des Neiges

3 Emmy Awards for Freedom Riders

2011-09-23T15:48:00.003-04:00

While I had only a small job doing some re-touching in this project, it's just another reason I was proud to have produced some work for a very worthwhile documentary.

Firelight announcement

Google + (and minus)

2011-09-21T15:07:00.001-04:00

I have been using Google + for a couple months now and, since I am not a fan of «social media» sites, I was dragged kicking and screaming to it. I have been working on a large video project and after rejecting several other solutions, my partner on the contract with me decided to use this new service to communicate.

Setting up this service could have been a lot more intuitive, it wasn’t clear what functions there were nor how to use them. When they were sorted out, we found several very helpful, however. Being able to insert images, links and movies (which are re-formatted via Youtube) let us put what we were working on in one place with our comments and questions. Setting up a «circle» for us to comment on and another for the client to access gave us the ability to freely comment between ourselves and to have «filtered» comments the clients can’t see. This is essential on a big project in case there are disagreements and on a more practical level, to talk about technical stuff that, frankly, the clients wouldn’t understand.

Problems were many, and quite serious. The most damning one is that the notifications when a comment or response is left in a circle, the email was often either not sent or sent a fairly long time after the comment was made. Some comments also never appeared on the site at all. This makes it unreliable for serious conversations.

As for the «social» aspects like video conferences etc, I can’t speak to them as we didn’t use them and frankly, like all social site gimmicks, they don’t interest me. Google also insisted I give them my phone number to use the service, which really bugs me and makes me very suspicious as to what my personal info will be used for.

Big MA 2011

2011-09-12T06:42:00.002-04:00

When my mother asked for DVD version of the documentary "Big Ma" about her mother, I thought it might be a good idea to redo many of the graphics and tighten it up a little. A big plus was You tube had a message telling me I can now upload films longer than 15 minutes so I didn't have to split it into parts!

Just for fun and practice

2011-09-12T06:34:00.002-04:00

a little rude but it's a joke between Yvon and us.

Pour une blague, j'ai décidé pour faire une copie du générique de téléséries... "Grande Ourse". Je n'ai pas très content avec les résultants. Quelques transitions n'ont pas très subtile.

stacked photos

2011-09-06T19:08:00.005-04:00

I have been hoping to try stacking photos to get more depth of field in my macro photography for years. I finally had a chance to try it out. As it turns out, the last few versions of Photoshop have the ability to do the job. There are a few separate software that do the same thing, but I am not sure they are actually better.

Stacking involves (in my case) taking a series of macro photos with different areas in focus and literally stacking on top of each other on different layers then telling photoshop to blend the layers. While blending, photoshop determines the areas in focus and masks out the blurred areas. This can give you an incredibly in focus detailed image not possible with normal macro.

While not perfect, it does make for some interesting images, even with this first try. This particular mage took a bit of additional manual manipulations and alignment to get it looking ok.

OS X - LION

2011-08-28T11:20:00.004-04:00

I didn’t exactly feel the need to run out and get Lion the day it was released, not after the problems I had with Snow Leopard not too long ago. The new laptop I bought didn’t come with Lion either, though I expected it too, and that was more a relief then a point against it. Apple did offer a free upgrade for the laptop and eventually I did take them up on it. I did this after I was sure I wouldn’t be needing the laptop for anything crucial for a while.

Backstory over, the upgrade went extremely smoothly. No compatibility issues so far at all and it all seems to work as advertised. Getting the code for the free upgrade took over a week, a common problem I discovered, but since I wasn’t in a hurry, it didn't really matter to me.

Lion does seem to slow down start-up a little bit, shut down is just as fast as before. I like many of the new features I’ve tried... the «versions» feature I have no idea where it is or how to use it yet.... the multiple desktops are much more useful than I thought and «Launchpad» is just a little less useless than I feared. I like the gestures for flipping through webpages and I really like the new calendar, Address Book and Mail updates.

I had no PPC programs on my laptop, I suspect there may be 1 or 2 on the tower though so I am not upgrading that too soon. Also, the gestures, full screen apps etc are all pluses with the portable computer... less so or useless to me on me 2 screen office computer. I also discovered the «Airdrop» feature which lets you easily transfer from one computer to another will not work with the towers, who don’t have a wifi card installed. (I recommend a software called «Drop Copy» for that anyway).

Lion, as a little plus, fixed a bug with the «Dream Chronicles-book of air» game I was playing as well!

one more

2011-08-15T06:16:00.002-04:00

before I start putting the bulk of photos on Flickr this week.

Provincetown

2011-08-12T09:13:00.003-04:00

In Provincetown for the week taking photos and relaxing with friends. Experimenting with some techniques and finding the HDR is not the best thing for sunsets.. at least I haven't figured it out yet.

Mac Book Pro 13 inch

2011-08-01T15:28:00.003-04:00

My macbook pro from over 4 years ago finally got to be too much for me. Overall it still works very well. Some dead pixels, a little slower than I’d like, not enough ram, typical stuff for an older computer. It had one terrible defect that presented itself awhile ago that finally get the better of it and made replacing it a must. It seems this model, after several years, wears down the connection between the keyboard and the rest of the computer and the only way to get it working is to smack the battery area really hard. You can imagine how professional that looks.

Since I might have some hard core work to do while I am away on a trip coming up, I bit the bullet and bought a bottom of the line macbook pro. I am pretty surprised how much I like it and how much improved it is over the older (but higher end model) I had.

The screen: is simply incredible for a laptop. there some falloff but for a portable, I’m really liking it. Going from 15 to 13 inches was no big deal either. In fact I hardly notice it.

The body: The new macbook pro is literally as thin at my old one, minus the cover. The one piece design is pretty easy to hold and the smaller form is preferable, to me anyway. I like a portable to be... portable. This is a “while I’m not in the office” computer, not a replacement for a desktop. Not having a million dollars lying around I didn’t try any of the new “thunderbolt” connections or external drives. I’m not lacking anything I need to connect to my current devices.

Operation: The transfer from old to new was so simple, even by Apple’s standards it was sort of surprising. A couple of software issues that were easily fixed by re-installing. In use it’s much, much faster than the older one, starts up extremely fast and opens software, even slow pokes like Photoshop and IN design much more rapidly than my Mac Pro tower does. The trackpad... which in general I don’t like in principal, has little odd glitches I find annoying. It’s hard to click on things sometimes or open software from the dock, instead you get the pulldown menu. Might be me not using it right but it’s not as intuitive as I’d like. The faster graphics card, 5 gigs of ram and larger hard drive help a lot.

Overall a great new tool to take on the road with me.

American Experience

2011-07-07T14:00:00.003-04:00

I've had the privilege of working on the PBS show "American Experience" a couple of times restoring and preparing photos for video as well as some animations with photos. Last year I worked extensively on the episode "Triangle Fire" and somehow, forgot to mention it in my blog.

The doc was made for the 100th anniversary of the terrible fire that took the lives of many young female workers and forever changed safety regulations throughout the United States. It is also a very important reminder in this period of time of why unions are important for not just salary needs, but safety needs as well.

See it on the PBS website.

Final Cut X

2011-06-25T09:33:00.002-04:00

Having had a chance to play with this software and read up on it’s features and what other professionals say about it I have to report FCX is not aimed at the professional film maker or editor but rather the one man show at the office who must put together the corporate videos and the small film makers working on you tube and on the internet. While being a bold step forward in many ways, it’s also a huge step backwards, away from the professional work of collaborative and high end video production.

the good:
There is plenty of interesting and worthwhile ideas in this software. The magnetic timeline, the 64 bit and Motion 5 integration, the addition of larger formats, the on screen image is much improved on my monitors, the implementation of the the sound editing and color correction as well as the ability to burn DVD (including Blu-ray) directly from Final Cut are all inspired changes. The metadata ideas are very welcome and will greatly cut down the endless searching for clips. I have no doubt that many of these features are in the future of digital editing and many other non linear editors will be embracing them as well.

the bad:
Apple’s rush to “the future” is really just a rush to get rid of features it didn’t like supporting in place of creating something much too stripped down for professional use. No multi-clip? The iphoto/imovie approach to file management is great for some one person operations and a nightmare for most anyone else. In the film/broadcast world, there might be several if not 100’s of people working on a film and this current system is not good for that. Not being able to import older projects is annoying but not a fatal flaw in my view. Apple seems to think the world has moved on from DVD but as many FCP users are editing for weddings and events or independent filmmakers who need to send their work to investors and festivals by delivering these projects on DVD, the included solution is not a solution at all. I have been already using Adobe’s Encore to make DVDs as Apple had done nothing to improve DVD Pro (now defunct) since almost a day after version 1 came out. The killing of Soundtrack Pro is also a huge loss for those of us who are not and can’t afford musicians for every small project but I supposed Garageband is more or less up to that task at this point. Sort of.

Conclusion:
If you are a video professional who found FCP too daunting to use and wanted a more full featured version of imovie, FCX is really a huge step up for you and together with Motion 5 it will up your game to new heights. If you work alone and don’t mind having all your media organized for you instead of by you (which does have it’s advantages) this will also be step forward. If, however, you are working on anything more collaborative, or complex you will find FCX lacking in basic features too important to make it’s pluses outweigh the minuses. Apple’s back peddling recently and re-writing history with statements that FCP was “never intended for real professional work flow” not to mention the recent statements the this next version would have lots of things for the professional community is just a way to avoid admitting they have decided not to support a well and hard earned user base. Though updates may come fast and furious and this may become an incredible way to make broadcast in a year or two, that may be too late to attract the professional market who can more easily move back to Avid or the ever improving Adobe suite of video products.

I personally won't be using FCX anytime soon as imovie currently fills the niche I would use this sort of software for well enough and Final Cut 7, though still slightly buggy is much more appropriate for larger projects.

Motion 5

2011-06-22T15:47:00.004-04:00

Apple released some major software this past week for video professionals and for the first time only from the Apple store. I’d love to try the new Final Cut Pro X, but 300$ for something I’m not sure I really need was a little high to pay and Compressor I rarely, if ever use as it is. Motion 5 was the logical choice for a test spin. It has some of the same new interface ideas behind it as the new Final Cut and was only 50$.

Buying:
Buying from the app store is easy, these are big downloads and then you must download even more to get some of the templates etc. So watch your bandwidth. Installation is all automatic but be prepared for some bugginess and weirdness first time you open the software.

Using it:
Not much difference from earlier versions to tell the truth. The interface is the most noticeable thing and it is a great improvement in my opinion. Getting used to it might take a little time but it’s much more intuitive overall. it’s full screen, 64 bit and much faster overall. I found it did most things I use Motion for very well but it crashes pretty often. This could be because Apple recommends you use it with a version of the OS they haven’t actually released yet. So while it was stable enough for most things, it’s not going to be a good idea for critical or professional use until this gets works out. Some feature look promising, like the tracking features. I have to say look promising because while the tracker did a pretty good job, applying the movement to another layer crashed the software every time I tried it so I have no idea if the tracking is really useful or not right now. I didn’t notice any new emitters, which is a shame since it’s one of the thing I like about Motion over After Effects. The rigging feature seems a nice way to make changes in templates easily and quickly.

Final Cut X integration etc:
This version has some serious integration with the new Final Cut X which is a welcome addition to the functionality. Not having the new FCP, I didn’t test it out. This might be a double edged sword for some people. The New FCP seem much more template and quite honestly, corporate headquarters oriented than a serious film maker’s tool. It radically changes how editing is done in a way that will benefit more those who must put together a corporate presentation or a podcast than a feature film and the Motion integration is part of that change. Both Motion and FCP can output to social media directly like You Tube, Facebook and will even burn to dvd... including Blu-ray if you have a burner. How this will work out is anyone’s guess at the moment. Apple has stopped making DVD Pro and Soundtrack Pro as well as Color. In theory many, but not all of those functions are now part of FCP. I do know that motion is hardly useful as a colour grading tool as AE is.

Conclusion:
Thought only 50$ this does mean a higher price for old time Final Cut users who upgrade. The 300$ for FCP X was the cost of the whole suite upgrade last time around. Still Buying FCP and Motion will likely handle most people’s immediate needs and it’s a damn good price. Time will tell if this is a step forward for editing or Apple’s first step away from truly professional software to more of a dumbing down of the artistic process of film making. Motion is a solid software but not much different than the last version function-wise. The 64 bit, speed bump and new interface is certainly worth 50$ or will be once the bugs are worked out.

update
the new OSX update is out and Motion has stopped crashing all the time. I also have access to try the new final cut X and will be reporting on that soon.

Not Worth The Wait

2011-06-17T06:37:00.001-04:00

I can’t speak for the other iphone apps from the iworks suite from Apple but Numbers was not worth the wait for it’s iphone counterpart.

I am not a heavy spreadsheet user and even I found important things missing. The most mystifying thing is the lack of landscape mode, if any iphone app needed it, it’s a spreadsheet software. Another thing is the lack of drop down menu support which is something else you really need on a device with limited screen space.

The interface is clunky, especially for an Apple product and the import/export functions are downright horrible. Mac doesn't seem to have a good plan for updating documents across the desktop to mobile and back arena yet. I am sure this «icloud» thing is going to address some of that but trusting my documents to be on Apple’s servers is not a comforting thought for as I mentioned in an earlier post.

Seems to me the Google online suite is much better thought out. If Apple wants to compete in enterprise more, these issues will need to be addressed. I wasn’t expected anything near a full features spreadsheet, but I was expecting something useful and this can barely make even that low goalpost. 10$ is a lot to pay for something this lacking in features and usability.

New Look

2011-06-10T06:13:00.003-04:00

Always trying new things, including the image of Behemoth media. This is the most radical departure in a long time. The portfolio/home will have a few more changes as well. I am experimenting with some HTML 5 techniques that should be ready for use in a couple weeks to add a little more interactivity. No one went to the mobile version of the site so I will use the new techniques to make the "normal" site more accessible to mobile devices such as tablets.

I think the new look is a little more universal and will hopefully give potential clients the chance to imagine their project in place of the Behemoth items. Sort of like preparing your place for sale, you have to de-personalize a bit so the prospective buyers can see themselves in your place.

HYPE html5 app

2011-06-03T15:30:00.007-04:00

The html 5 creation software HYPE has appeared on the MAC app store and has gotten a lot of attention. Not undeserved attention either. It is a great way to get basic animations, html 5 video, rounded corners and many other things normally relegated to Flash onto your site without worrying about mobile device compatibility.

Designed by a couple of ex apple employees, the interface is pretty easy to understand and use. The functionality is pretty basic at the moment but i have no doubt it will grow quickly, adding new features and functions as we all decide what exactly we want from html 5 anyway.

Strong points already present in the software are the key framing options for position, transparency, you name it. Also, the ability to have multiple scenes and then transitions from one to another is very reminiscent of early Flash versions... before it became an operating system on its own and stuck to animations and some interactivity. You can make custom slide shows, web page based presentations in practically less time ti takes to open other software. Adding buttons and functionality is a breeze and integrating into existing sites and templates is a simple copy/paste of 3 lines of code that references files saved in a dossier all nice and neat. Videos and animations can have overlays etc. All and all very well done. My only quibble is that it can't take illustrator or eps files.. might be too much to ask as it would have to rasterize them on export... but I can see a time that would be included.

I really look forward to seeing how this advances and 30$ is a very fair price. Once of the best versions 1.0 pieces of software I've seen in a long time.

Bag O heads

2011-05-19T16:31:00.002-04:00

Well I had to take a picture...

Some Hidden Object Games

2011-05-09T16:04:00.002-04:00

20000 leagues under the sea
Jack l’eventruer
Frankenstein- case of the dismembered bride
treasure island- the gold bug
time machine
Hollywood

I have to put these few games under the same review fro a few reason. Firstly they are all very similar and second, it’s just easier to lump them all in one.
Part of the HDo adventure series of games, these are all based, very loosely, on classic stories. The interfaces are pretty much the same as is the gameplay. Click to go from one location to another and find objects, as well as a couple of puzzles here and there. None of them is very hard, but all of them are diverting and amusing. The Jules Verne game follows the story well and would be a good introduction to young people to Verne’s novels. I played these all in French so I can’t speak for the english versions, but some of the names of objects were a little weird, including one I could not find in a dictionary! The graphics are all well done. The only setbacks are that the games were obviously ported from larger screen versions and finding some things is all but impossible save for luck. They all have interesting twists on the original book scenarios and give the player a little «wink wink» that they know the game is not the point of living but a nice diversion from a dull day. I big plus is that you can shut off the repetitive music in the background which will quickly drive you insane. The only one I really found lacking even at 99 cents was «Hollywood» as each scene had many of the same objects to find and overall the concept was pretty dull.

The Twelve - remastered 1270 doc on sale!

2011-04-28T09:28:00.002-04:00

My film "the Twelve" about the 15 years of fun at Boston's most divers disco is now for sale at Amazon.com! Remastered with new animations, sound and slightly longer, this film lets the employees and club goers of the time tell the story of Boston's disco hay days. 3 floors of music and a roof deck, nothing before or since has graced the club scene like the 1270 did!

buy it now!

cimetière

2011-04-25T16:17:00.003-04:00

J'adore les vieux cimetière et les espaces abandonnée. Les photos sont HDR et photoshop.

Church Illustration

2011-04-20T12:43:00.004-04:00

It's not often my dad asks for anything, so I was really happy to do this illustration he needed for a future project. It's the Immaculate Conception Church in Everett Massachusetts where I grew up. I always thought the place looked like a haunted mansion. My mother has been told it is more like Cinderella's castle.

Paul McMahon - subject of film "50 years" passes

2011-04-07T12:41:00.002-04:00

Paul McMahon and his husband Ralph Hodgdon were the subject of my film "50 Years". Last week Paul past away suddenly from a cancer he had no idea he had at the age of 78.

Paul was a confident and stage manager for Ms Dietrich for 13 years. He met her when he tried to get her autograph back stage and was hit by the hair brush she had thrown at someone in a tantrum. He handed it back to her saying, "Miss Dietrich, I believe you dropped this" and they became fast friends.

Paul was also a photographer, silversmith and writer on top of being a pioneer in the fight for gay rights. He met his husband, artist Ralph Hodgdon in Central park, New York in the 50's and they never separated after that. I met them well over 20 years ago and we maintained a very nice friendship that led to my film about them.

A fixture in gay pride parades in Boston, the sign they carried said how long they had been together and how many years they were married.

This year's sign would have said: "Together 56 years, married 7".

Review: Myst & Riven on IOS

2011-04-04T08:38:00.002-04:00

I should begin by stating up front I am not a gamer. I don’t really like 90% of the games out there on principal. I don’t want to shoot, kill, blow up etc etc things on my computer, so my reviews should be taken in that light.

Now to Myst and Riven- the sequel to Myst on iphone/ipod. THESE are the types of games I love to play. Beautifully rendered, challenging, no clock running out when you want to take your time to look at something or figure something out. They are as much about exploring a fascinating world as they are about «winning» the game. Now available in IOS, these games are a welcome sight on my ipod touch.

For those who don’t know: Myst finds you on a mysterious island where you solve puzzles and discover clues to find «Linking Books» to other islands/worlds and to progress the story. Riven is a much more elaborate variation on this theme with some stunning animations integrated into the gameplay.

If you loved the Myst series, you still will. They have been long absent from the MAC format for no reason I can fathom that makes sense. I only hope these app game versions sell well enough to do the rest of the series (which I believe is owned by more than one company now so it might be a long time working all that out). Later games in the series have been out on the Steam gaming platform, but not for MAC.

The original Myst is a little too much the original myst. I would have liked to see the improved graphics and the additional worlds added in later updated editions of the game. Riven is exactly as I remember it from the computer version, which made it a huge but well worth it, download. The real minuses in the IOS releases is the small screen size which makes some things hard to see, hard to navigate in places and you don’t get the full impact of the wonderful landscapes and vividly detailed settings. You can enlarge the images as in other games but the quality suffers greatly. I didn’t have any crashing on either game, though I did hear some people did. Bug fixes were posted pretty frequently compared to other games I could mention (and might in later reviews).

If you never played them, here’s you chance. If you miss them on your computer screen, it’s well worth a few dollars to play them over again. In my opinion, THIS is what computer gaming should be like. I know I am in the minority with that, but since these were once the most popular games of all time, there must still be a market for a little slow, thoughtful exploration left in the gaming world.

Cloud Computing

2011-04-01T07:20:00.003-04:00

«The cloud» is all the rage in computer circles these days, aggressively pushed by computer companies as a great solution to «never lose» data and have access to all your stuff where ever you are and on whatever device or operating system you are using. Sounds fantastic!

There are advantages to cloud computing. Mobile devices have limited storage and most people never back up at all, never mind enough. Forgetting to bring the powerpoint file to the meeting would be a thing of the past. You would be able to buy software once and use it across computers without the complicated and draconian agreements all software producers require these days.

However, I personally do not want my computer info in someone else's hard drive and I don’t want some «Cloud» having complete control over my data. I like my Mobileme service for transferring large files, sharing short videos and syncing my calendar and contact info across my devices, but that is as far as I want to go.

«The Cloud» can crash (or dry up), I’ve already lost and screwed up data with the simple Mobileme setup.. imagine if all my work was on there. I work in video and in print, files can be HUGE (liked 100’s of gigabytes) no service will be able to handle that for a long time in a way that will be functional. Not everyone has unlimited super fast broadband service and this will mean service providers will have another way to gouge you for more money. There is also the unavoidable fact that no one is able to be connected to the internet all the time in every circumstance. What if the software producer decides to pull the product and they erase it from your storage so you no longer have access to it? This already happens with books in Kindle and the App Store and is justified with the «you were only renting it you didn’t really own it» line... despite having paid good money for it. A cyber attack on one of these cloud systems could be disastrous for the everyone. Hackers could get into sensitive work documents. Heaven forbid you have porno on your computer, some right wing Tea Party nut job in the United States or elsewhere could decide to prosecute you (after watching it no doubt). Music and movie companies would have a field day harassing people they feel have stolen their intellectual property or just decide they want to charge you another fee for having bought it already.

So, in my mind this service, interesting and useful though it is in a limited way, is for too dangerous and intrusive in many, more serious ways.

Keep your head out of the «Clouds» .

Too Great Expectations

2011-03-13T12:25:00.005-04:00

Clients, home users and even professionals have less and less understanding of what exactly can be done on computers and not only how but who can accomplish what they can do.

Because I use a computer in my work and an proficient with certain software, I am expected to teach, update, repair and write specialized software for every operating system and every computer brand out there.

Now, I am a good driver, but no one has ever asked me to change their transmission or even assumed I would know how to do it simply because I drove them to the airport once. Why then, because I designed a business card for someone 4 years ago, do I get called asking to install a hard drive, upgrade memory or fix a software glitch?

On a more basic level, even professionals make the mistake that computer itself «should know» what they want it to do or worse, adapt to their needs, magically. What seems like a completely basic feature to me or you working in film production is likely a completely useless extra to the 30 million other people using the same type of computer or software for something else.

If you buy a professional, specialized software you have every right to expect it to do most if not all of the current functions needed to complete a task in it’s speciality. More and more the attitude that your photo editing program should do page layout as well, simply because it was expensive and you want it to to it is simply unreasonable. I’d say the «jack of all trades, master of none» problem quickly shows it’s head when a software is forced to go beyond it’s speciality.

The same is easily said when using professional workers. A designer is not a programmer. A programmer is not a photographer. The important thing here is for you to know what you need and how to get it. Just as «he drives a car, mechanics drive cars, he must be a mechanic» is an obvious logical fallacy, so is «he uses a computer, programmers use computers, he must be a programer» or «Word is software, video is edited with software, Word must edit video».

As easy as it has become to use computers, they only do what you tell them to do and what they are programmed to accomplish. This means you still have to know what to tell them. It takes effort and it’s your responsibility to make that effort. If you need something done that requires a specialist, you need to research who you need to hire and what to reasonably expect from them.

This is not to say software or people don’t claim to do things they can’t, that’s another topic. However, if you make it a requirement for someone or something to do more than they are qualified to do for any reason and it doesn’t work out, you have no one to blame but yourself for asking too much in the first place!

Slowly making progress

2011-02-26T16:02:00.005-05:00

I've been slowly working on an animation based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft.I have the street scene done and I'm working on the main room. I still have a second room and stairway and hallway to do before even starting the two characters... plus a monster. This will be one of those 5 years all by myself projects I'm thinking. Finding free models for some of the stuff helps a lot, but they need to be modified and textured for my needs so it still takes a long time.

The Twelve - remastered 1270 doc

2011-02-16T09:34:00.004-05:00

I've been working hard on re-mastering and updating my 2006 documentary "1270". It will now be called "The Twelve", be in 16:9 format for today's screens and have about 40 redone or completely new graphic animations throughout. I might try and get a new interview in there, but that seems unlikely given the time constraints and difficulty getting someone here to be interviewed, but well see how it goes. As this nears completion, I'll be taking the old version off you-tube and the new version will be the only one available and it will also be for sale on amazon. Many people asked about buying copies over the years, now they will be able to. The film is basically the same style and feeling, but just updated graphics and nicer looking video quality. Some info will be updated as well.

If you want to be ind=formed on when you can get the new version, send me an email and I'll put you on a list to be the first to know!

Unlaunch'd Voices.... launched

2011-02-04T18:51:00.003-05:00

The play "Unlaunch'd Voices",a one man show about Walt Whitman is now for sale at Amazon.com. I did the cover, the author is Michael Z. Keamy from boston who was also in several film projects of mine and the voice of "Nostro-dumbass

buy a copy now!

Apple TV

2011-02-03T09:47:00.005-05:00

I was lucky enough to receive an Apple TV recently as a gift. It’s one of those pieces of tech I’ve been pretty curious about but even with the lower price it got not too long ago, it’s hasn’t been exactly on my list of «must haves». I should say, it still isn’t but it is a lot more useful than I would have guessed. The basic concept for those of you who aren't aware, is to get content from the computer or online (or with Apple, your ipod or ipad) easily on to the TV screen.

The good:
Really works well, fast and has a nice interface. Takes nothing to install it and gives you access to Netflix, I-tunes rentals etc. I find I-tunes rentals far too costly for what you are getting but it’s available. The new «airplay» feature on iOS devices is pretty cool. A great way to show stuff on the TV without having to make a DVD or some other time consuming method.

The bad:
Missing the ability to browse the internet is a ridiculous omission in my opinion. Even many new TV sets can do it. If Apple wants people to use their device over anything else, it will need one. Apps are apparently coming for the device and that’s a good thing, it will give it more functionality and will personalize the device according to the needs of the user. «Airplay» is lacking a few features it really needs to succeed in a big way. Many apps show TV shows (such as tou.tv here in Québec) would profit from being able to use this feature. As of now, only the sound is transferred over, not very helpful. It would be amazing if you could see your game on the ipod/ipad on the tv but I’ve been told there are certain technical problems that make that difficult to accomplish. Still.. it’s something that would turn Apple TV into something much more than a «hobby» for Apple overnight.

Huge site update!

2011-01-28T08:47:00.005-05:00

Behemothmedia.com has had a major update. Mostly it's a simplification of the site, making it much more a portfolio page and less and information source of what's going on... that's what the blog is for! I also decided to host videos and photos off site as much as possible. I just saves time and resources and always for more flexibility.

I am sure it won't please everyone... it already hasn't in fact, but overall it's a step in the right direction I think. The point is to give potential clients a look at my work and that's what it does.

Not sure I'll keep that photo on the front page. I do believe that most people like to "see" who they might be hiring, but that photo I'm not so sure about.

now available at Amazon.com

2011-01-20T06:38:00.003-05:00

My film "50 years" the story of the relationship between Ralph Hodgdon and Paul McMahon (which is now well over 50 years) is for sale at Amazon!

the direct link

Please consider buying a copy and encouraging people who may like the film to do the same.

For those of you who thinks this means "I've made it"... think again. It's great thing to have happen, but my take of the sales is very small, I'd have to sell 500 a year to make what many people consider to be a below the poverty line salary. So I still need to to find new work and new clients to makes ends meet.

Amazon now has a service for artists that lets them sell music, video and books on the site. Amazon only makes a copy when an order is made. It's really quite an amazing development for independents like me!

New photos

2010-12-26T16:12:00.003-05:00

Can't travel this holiday so I spent some time taking photos around the neighborhood. Processed using the new HDR Efex Pro plugin and photoshop.

Holiday Cards

2010-12-14T16:23:00.002-05:00

Usually I try for an outdoor image but I've been housebound lately because of illness so I used some holiday tree decorations.

Back to basics

2010-11-29T20:45:00.003-05:00

I think drawing is still the most basic skill in all the visual arts. Nothing compares to learning about perspective, depth, form... you name it. It's something you can do anywhere and anytime with materials so cheap anyone can afford it... even me.

I often work from photos on complicated subjects like this guy. On vacation though I like to draw whatever is in front of me.

Since I am in the middle of some not very pleasant surgeries right now, drawing really makes things seem a little easier to deal with.

Living for the Truth - revisited

2010-11-21T15:44:00.004-05:00

I made this doc in 2001 and was never happy with it. So after upgrading to the new Final Cut Suite, I decided a severe cut was in order. 60 minutes to 7. The longer version is very dry. This is much more lively and helps hide the very bad video quality of the clips. The clips of her performing and lecturing were less integrated into the interview originally as well and I think this new treatment of them helps support and liven up the interview. She is still plugging away on Boston Neighborhood Network, claiming Obama is not really a citizen and that the Haitian earthquake was caused by an experimental bomb in a very "Tea party-ish" conspiratorial way. Disappointing, but since the interview was from 2001, I didn't find it fair to include things we didn't talk about back then.

* This might be better seen directly on Youtube as the blog seems to crop the video a bit.

further along with the Whitman design

2010-11-19T08:48:00.002-05:00

the front and back covers how they will look if the book was lying open on a table. (without the spine details for now. )

I like the "makes one face" concept, but I think keamy is leaning towards the same crop of each face.

New Design Project

2010-11-18T14:42:00.004-05:00

Just started working out a design for the printed version of a play written by Michael Z. Keamy about Walt Whitman. Working with Keamy is always great, and I thought I'd show some of the early design ideas. This will be available on Amazon's site sooner or later.

Still deciding on the right image and how much of it to show. Right now I'm going for a very "classic book collection" look.

Hdr Options

2010-11-07T10:37:00.004-05:00

I am not an HDR expert by any means, but in some ways I think that helps in deciding with software I want to use. I am very «results orientated» when it comes to work and usually the background tech doesn't interest me very much if the final product is what I was going after. So looking at these 3 options I was mostly looking at how easily I got to my goal.

Photomatix: as far as smoothnees went this one topped the others, at 100% there was very little noise to be seen and gave the most «photoreal» images. Options were limited and the interface out of date. It was the fastest processing the images of the 3. More painterly treatments of the image I found harder to control and get what I wanted.

Photoshop CS5: I huge step up from other version, I like the interface well enough and really liked the «details» slider for bringing out details in the images, something the other two was less straightforward about. The «photorealness» of the images was hard to accomplish and it takes quite a while playing around to get what you want. More illustrated looks are much easier to do.

HDR Efex Pro: Very nice interface, the best of the 3 with options to work on portions on the images and not globally all the time. Presets are fantastic starting points and there are lots of them. Images are much noisier than Photomatix, but less than Photoshop and that can be fixed with tweaking to a large extent. As slow or slower than Photoshop importing and processing the photos.

My recommendations...

All 3 are excellent choices, budget comes into play. HDR is included in CS5, the Photomatix plugin is 100$ while the HDR Efex Pro is 160$, a little steep. For a «1050’s postcard» look which I like, CS5 gave me more of what I wanted with HDR Efex a close second, Photomatix was a hands down winner in realistic treatment with HDR Efex a close second there. So a lot will come down to personal taste but I’d say, despite price a little too high, that HDR Efex Pro is the one I’ll go with. A big advantage is the speed of use. Getting what I wanted took less than 2 minutes while it took at least 30 in CS5 and never quite made it in Photomatix. (for this style of image). All 3 needed tweaking in Photoshop proper afterwards, which is to be expected I think.

HDR Efex and Photoshop : Glowing around edges much more noticeable in Photoshop

Photomatix: much more realistic, but falls short on illustrated look

FInal Cut Pro Studio 3 review

2010-10-18T16:57:00.004-04:00

Final Cut Pro Studio 3 has been out quite a while, but because of budget and fear of a disastrous upgrade attempt (almost every update i’ve bought has been problematic to say the least) I hadn’t bought the new version.

Positive start:
The upgrade price is very reasonable, I can’t complain that Apple is trying to bankrupt it’s client base, which might be said for other companies like Adobe. For the first time in a very long time, the installation was beyond smooth. I have a million serial number issues since as an early adopter to Final Cut, I bought the various programs in the suite separately and my first version was installed on OS 7 (I think) which made the command «insert the disk from your first version» an impossible task, as it wasn’t long before OSX could not read «classic» disks. This time it didn’t even ask me to re-type in my earlier version serial number. As a dyslexic, these numbers which seem longer than any alphabet is a particularly daunting task.

Final Cut:
Not too many obvious changes here, but nice ones. The export options are greatly simplified and you can drag a clip into a new sequence and the sequence will conform to the clip and all the following clips inserted with too. I find it much snappier overall in speed as well.
Motion:
This program always had it’s plusses for me but the painfully slow speed of it kept me away for using it for more than the most simple tasks. A good part of the problem might have been related to my upgrade issues as it never seemed to quite change it’s features despite a new version number. This time was a revelation. It now renders in real-time quite a few layers of emitters and video with no slowdown at all. I’ll have to re-learn it and take in all the new 3D features. While I doubt it will replace After Affects in my workflow, it will find a very important place in it.
Soundtrack:
Again, not many changes but some nice interface and workflow enhancements. This software completely ceased to function for me about a year ago with no explantation and I really missed it. Garage Band is not exactly a replacement for Soundtrack Pro, but it had to be until I got this update installed.
Colour:
A lot of promise in this colour grading software. I’ve been playing with it and find it does a great job in first and secondary colour correction and the presets are ok as well. The interface is like something from the Amiga in the late 1980’s and nothing like a modern one. Some of the values are put in by hand, no sliders and you literally have to type them in and hit return, then do ti all over again if you guessed wrong. Live updates in the image are the way to go with this sort of thing so I don’t know how it ended up like this. The node concept of constructing colour grading is likely alien to many users unless they were using Shake or maybe the Expresso system in Cinema 4D for example. (slight correction: you can adjust some numbers by using the middle mouse button, or scroll wheel,not the best solution but better than entering manually)
Compressor:
I have to confess, I rarely use this program and I’m well aware of how helpful it can be if you take the time to learn it properly. For some reason, it seems too complicated, but I suspect it’s not really at all.

DVD pro rant:
This program hasn’t received even a backwards look from Apple since Roman Empire fell. It was a great idea but never even seemed to get the same quality output as iDVD. You could set up more complex menus but not much else. It is so far behind the times it’s a hinderance to workflow and not a help. I recommend Adobe’s «Encore» over it any day. I know Apple thinks that we’ll all be streaming movies and info tomorrow, but in reality we wont be anytime soon and not supporting Blu-ray and current DVD authoring features is shameful from a company that revolutionized the video editing market.

Conclusion:
I have to say I'm impressed. The price and features combined with the speed increases and compatibility with my current OS and hardware set-up makes me wonder how I held out so long to get this.

2 almost ready

2010-10-06T15:49:00.002-04:00

They both need to be rigged, but I'll make the 3rd before i do that. I am hoping to adapt one rig to work for each and use different morphs for each head.

Moving forward

2010-09-26T16:46:00.005-04:00

EDIT: October 5
Almost ready for rigging now I think.

She has a head now. Still very generic as I am hoping to use this as a base for some other characters as well. Edit: photo with ears added.

Edit: textures started.

4th Generation iPod Touch

2010-09-17T09:30:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week I received the new Ipod touch, something I’d ben toying with buying since they were first released a few years back. It wasn’t cheap, I bought the64 gig version, but it was less money than the lowest storage capacity iPad and for my uses, more practical. I’ve never had a smart phone or touch device, so it was all new to me and therefore likely a little more exciting than it would be to many people who are used to these sort of devices.

This is one impressive device, easy to use, fast, versatile and very useful. This new version comes with 2 cameras and can take video and also take advantage of Apple’s new «Facetime» feature. This is a feature many people will have hard time trying as it only works with new iphone and ipods touches. I only know one person who I might be able to video chat with and we haven’t been able to set that up yet. The camera quality isn’t great, isn’t terrible. I see complaints on many sites about this and I don’t quite get it.... it’s music player, not a camera after all! It’s perfectly fine for taking snaps here and there and sending images of the vase you just have to buy to the spouse for approval. «Skype» on it is a dream, if you live in a heavily covered wi-fi area as i do, it’s almost like having a cell phone without the extra fees. The mail app from apple, once you get it working which was , to say the least, a very frustrating experience for me, is fantastic and syncs seamlessly to my mall app on my computer. The ability to group apps into folders is so useful, I can’t imagine how people managed on older versions. Book reading is easier than you’d think and browsing the internet fairly simple. The lack of «flash» is not really a problem. I’ll be updating the Behemothmedia page over the next months to make it more mobile friendly and «flash» will no longer be a part of it. I imagine eventually, the player will come to Apple devices but until then, it’s not exactly crucial. Watching videos, especially after years of watching them on an Ipod classic is a dream. The next 8 hour bus trip to Boston won’t be nearly as dull.

Short comings are what I would have expected. My fingers are not small enough for fluid typing, the auto correct is a horror show if you write often in 2 languages as I do... one of them will always be «corrected» with words that are hard to remove once the ipod has decided what you meant to type. The app store is a nightmare, trying to find things can be tedious and a chore. Electronic books should not cost the same as printed ones and many apps are not updated enough, but that is more a complaint about apps in general and not limited to the touch.

Anti Social (Network) behavior

2010-09-09T10:39:00.002-04:00

I am, by nature, not a very social person so anything I say on this subject should be taken in that light. I have also been someone who embraced the new technologies and the internet from the very start. I had a «car phone», which was later a cell phone. Yes, at first there wasn’t much battery life in a portable phone despite the fact they were the size of a handbag they needed your car battery to keep you talking more than a few minutes. I was also on various profile driven sites, AOL chat, even «Friendster». I still like video chat and meeting new people that way, just no where near as much as I used to. I no longer have a cell phone (which sends most people into a fit of confusion).

As these social networks expanded and took over more and more of people’s lives I’ve found them to be the exact opposite of social. «MySpace» and «Facebook» for example give you the ability to post your activities, photos and thoughts to all your «friends» in one space at the same time. Sounds good, except there is nothing social about it. It’s no more social than writing a message on a wall on a street many people you know, and many more you don’t, pass by every day. You’ve managed to transmit personal information without any social contact whatsoever. People can know the details of your life, but not you. It’s like an interactive form letter some send out yearly. Sure it gives everyone information they might be interested in knowing but it eliminates the most important part... that the information comes from interacting with you as a real person and in person. As a result we see the real skills of socializing in groups or even one on one in the physical world suffering. I’d much rather get a short email sent from a friend to me and get feedback from the email. Better yet, a phone call or visit now and then would be nice. I still write and recieve letters sent by post now and then, it’s quite pleasant to get a letter in the mail from someone you like.

The «electronic text only» way of communicating leaves out all emotions. A cartoon happy face does not take the place of a real smile and it’s just plain impossible to tell someone’s state of mind, even if they are happy or sad from what you are reading most of the time. It is far too easy to interpret things according to your mood at the moment and not as the sender intended.

I don’t knock these avenues of communication as useless, just overused and a lazy and even cowardly way to interact. I can’t tell you how many times recently an old pal I have lost contact with has has asked for my «Facebook» page, not to get back in touch, but merely to increase their «friends» list numbers. Me, I’d rather stick to my small circle of real life friends than have 1000’s of impersonal contacts that don’t talk to me personally but to the nameless crowd, many of whom they’ve never met.

new animation project

2010-09-02T19:38:00.004-04:00

As usual, it's a long slow start to getting an animation short done. I am hoping to have the character(s) modeled and rigged by winter to start animating. I always try to do a little more each time out, this time I am hoping for a very stable rig and to animating more than one character on screen at the same time. (I did Nomi and Chog a while back, but these will be humans). I think this clay render looks promising. I really have issues getting what's in my head realized in the 3D model.... but it's gets a little easier project!

HDRI images

2010-08-22T12:12:00.003-04:00

Nothing new to many photographers, but I've never really done more than use "Bracketeer" to balance out bracketed photos in bad lighting conditions. With Photoshop CS5 there are still limited but much better options for some interesting effects. My new Nikon really helps out by giving me quality images to start with.

Above:a sample of a standard shot and after the HDRI treatment.

Does I-tunes Suck?

2010-08-04T18:45:00.004-04:00

Of course anything involving Apple software/hardware gets people’s panties in a bunch for some reason but i-tunes has crossed platforms and is no longer a «which is better» discussion. As the sole software to control your i-pod or i-phone (I-pods take a HUGE 60- 75% of music players depending when/where you find you research) i-tunes has a bigger than normal affect on how people buy and organize their music and video on portable devices. The shear amount of control this gives Apple is, I think, basically unfair, but that doesn’t mean i-tunes sucks as many would claim, nor does it say it’s the best way to do things as Apple would like us all to believe.

Many of the complaints against i-tunes I hear are extremely outdated and basically false as are many of the anti-Apple claims that never seem to die and are passed down person to person without anyone actually doing any fact checking. You can, for example, put music, movies etc you buy from other places into your itunes controlled device and it’s pretty darn easy. No, all formats are not supported, but no device supports all formats and itunes does slightly more than Zune, to name a competitor, though maybe not all the ones you are used if you are on a PC.

There are plenty of real reasons to not like this software, however.

1) It’s way too big, takes up too much space and uses too much ram.
2) The store component is too in your face. Not everyone wants to buy from Apple directly and the store itself lacks, even in the music department, a decent selection of musical tastes. While this is slowly changing, I am very wary the Apple’s prudishness with the app store doesn’t actually extend to all areas of itunes departments.
3) The app store.... I don’t think it can mentioned enough that Apple should not be telling end users what they should and should not be using the item they paid a hell of a lot of money for.
4) The censorship of the app store can easily be avoided if you could just make your own categories and could put password protection on them. If I or you or anyone else wants to watch porn, keep confidential documents secure or keep R-rated movies from the reach of their kids, it’s their right and easy enough to do. Frankly, it’s a feature that would drive even more people to use Apple’s portable devices. I’ve never understood why everything on the planet earth needs to be kid friendly to the exclusion of adult needs and sensibilities.
5) No plug-ins.... a great way to get programmers on your side and add functionality Apple mat not want to take responsibility for. Granted Apps do some of this in the i-pod touch, pad and phone, but not everyone has those things. I don’t for example.
6) This is my pet peeve with most software... too much useless «functionality». I can choose my own songs to play thank-you very much.

None of these limitations make i-tunes suck, but it does leave much room for improvement. On the competitor’s side, there isn’t much. Very few of the alternatives can provide the integration and ease of use of i-tunes and they also lack crucial features, many of them the same ones i-tunes is missing. overall, it depends on your needs whether something "sucks" or not unless the software just plain doesn't do the basics it needs to or crashes all the time etc. Many people wan to make playlists on the go, which would certainly make i-tunes suck for them. I on the other hand, could care less about that, so it's not an issue.

Low light photography

2010-07-30T14:22:00.004-04:00

Still slowly going through the functions of the new camera. With an ASA of 3500 + I was curious how concert shots etc might be.

Current work

2010-07-29T10:08:00.002-04:00

I am working on a retouching project not finished so I can't post anything yet, however I did finish a total redesign of the BADA (Boston Art dealers Association) site after doing the original a decade ago.

more photos _ Art's farm

2010-07-12T11:20:00.002-04:00

Took some photos while visiting a friend's new farm. I am pretty happy with the quality of b&w I can get from images with this new camera and some camera RAW tweaking. Click photos to enlarge.

quick fixes

2010-06-24T11:22:00.005-04:00

Recently I've had some success with my Dreamweaver font issues. Adobe, who has been basically doing its best to make me come into their main office and bitch slap each person working there (maybe they are into that? who knows?),started to personally call me about the problem. Once I spoke to a programmer, the almost year long saga ended, for the most part, pretty quickly. There are still issues, but easier to deal with ones and they don't halt work completely on any projects coming up.

The invisible text boiled down to 3 fonts that were not being seen by dreamweaver (cs4 or cs5... cs3 could see them no problem)
I was told to copy the fonts off the hard drive, delete them from the font folder and from the font book application, do a permissions repair with disk utility and them put them back on the font folder. It did work, but i've had to re-do this one extra time already for one font. I still had to play with spry menu items to get them show text as well. It did make life a little easier again, however.

It did not fix the times problem in Pages... "fl" combinations still turn into a symbol i've never seen before.

Backwards Compatibility

2010-06-22T13:18:00.001-04:00

What ever happened to idea of backwards compatibility? You know that the new version of software will open in an older version or you can save as an older version so clients and other people not yet up to date, or even in the case of the page layout, printers can still work with you without paying for expensive software upgrades or you having to keep 100 versions of the same software on your system.

This seemed to be the standard not so long ago, but more and more software companies seem to be forgoing this very useful feature to force upgrades. Pagemaker, for example could save to quite a few older versions, while Indesign can only save one version back. Photoshop, on the the hand is pretty good at opening files whether they are older or newer than what you have. After Affects and many others don’t even give you the “one back option”. I now have version 6.5, CS3, 4 and 5 on my system... a huge waste of space. I have to keep Indesign all the way back to CS3 and still save those files to CS2 for a couple printing places.

I don’t get it... back compatibility is a great feature, it allows you to update and promote new features to reluctant clients while still being able to service their needs. I’ve found it actually encourages people to upgrade since they know they can still do business with those who haven’t.

Of course some features won’t work and there will be some cases where it just isn’t possible to go back even one version... but I think that is very rare. I say let’s bring back the past a little and add this feature back into the standard of every new upgrade. If you MUST rake your customers over the coals more than you normally do, proved a plugin for older versions at extra cost.

Nikon D5000 SLR

2010-06-01T17:14:00.006-04:00

Having been a photographer most of my life, the last few years have been tough, my Nikon prosumer point and shoot model basically died a slow death and with little work coming in, there was no way to replace it. Recently a couple of good contracts allowed me to think about getting a new camera and finally this past weekend, I did.

Bought at L.L. Lorzeau (which had a great deal and as a serious camera only store, incredible selections and service) I also bought what I consider essential extras. Remote shutter release, extra battery and polarized lens filter. The kit came with 2 lenses, 18-55 and 55-200mm with an anti-shake feature. I also got a superb macro lens. Yes I went over the budget I had set, but it was worth it, I am the sort of person who might sell his house before going without a camera.

So far, I am over the top happy about it. The images are really good and it's a gi-normous upgrade from the other digital cameras I've been used to using. Looking forward to some portrait shots to see how it fairs in that department. I also have been excited to do some time lapse stuff and long exposure work that the other camera and even past cameras just could not do. According to the specs this one should handle it all very well.

So far the video function is not very impressive. The quality isn't that great, but good enough to not take a video camera on vacation, but not film anything serious with. At least not without a lot of post work.

Click on images for larger versions.

Adobe CS5 Master Suite test

2010-05-19T08:21:00.003-04:00

Though only using a testing version and not having the chance to look into everything in detail, I have been playing around with the CS5 suite and getting to use some software I was curious about but never touched before. Overall for those who don’t like to read through an entire article. Some welcome changes but not worth the huge price to upgrade in my opinion. Basically you seem to be paying mostly for more stable software, which for the most part it is. Stability should be a bug fix for free, not a paid upgrade.

The biggest disappointment is Premiere Pro, it had issues with sound, rendering, exporting you name it. I was hoping to use it in place of updating Final Cut Pro. I like some of the new ways things are set up and the media exporter integration is very nice, but if the final product is missing sound or if it takes 5 times as long to edit something because of render issues, it’s a step back not forward. Soundbooth was a new one for me and it’s excellent, though I was hoping for better ability to make music from clips like sound track pro has. Could just be unrealistic expectations on my part. After Effects is fine, I haven’t had any footage to try the new rotoscoping features. So far I haven’t had reason to switch from my CS3 version. That could change if I get deeper into it. EDIT: many of these issues did not appear when I started a project from scratch as opposed to importing an older project. Many of the issues may be a result of importing older versions that already have rendered files associated with them.

Photoshop, as usual, gets the best updates, the content aware fill is nice but not perfect, a good start for a complicated fill job. Like content aware scaling, I suspect the feature is less useful than it is impressive (when working on an ideal file for that feature) in the real world. The new paint brushes and colour mixing features are quite amazing, many artists will really profit from them. Best thing is the constant crashing seems to have stopped from CS4.

Dreamweaver STILL has the same text not visible issue I’ve had since Apple updated to Snow Leopard and Adobe has not been able to do anything about for over 8 months. Dreamweaver CS3 does not have this problem. Indesign is nothing to write home about and frankly, it’s a shame, not because adobe doesn’t have a great layout program, bit more because it’s almost impossible to get printers to update the software. Many are still on CS2 and you can only save to one version behind. So no matter what Adobe does, unless you work with all up to date print companies, the latest version sits on computer opening any indesign file you click on despite telling the finder use an older version. (A very annoying bug!)

Fireworks, finally stable, Flash... like the Flash Catalyst idea except that older versions of Flash did this very thing with components in effect, without having to leave Flash. Illustrator has some nice updates, but the main one, the perspective drawing is a little premature.

Encore I like a lot, it’s got a learning curve if you are used to other similar software but the end product was really professional.

Not sure I’d pay the upgrade of close to 1000$ (canadian) for what amounts to a few new features and one additional software I’d like to have (Encore).

Is the world still in world wide web?

2010-05-10T13:30:00.002-04:00

More and more when I search for things on the www I find myself locked out. “Sorry, this video is not available in your country” sort of messages appear more and more. I am sorry, but don’t put your info on the world wide web if the world can’t see it. I am in Canada, virtually all the clips I want to see are shown here, just at times I might miss them. I can watch them on TV, copy to see later even, but not on the “information super highway”. The weird thing is, these clips are shown for free in any case, so what’s the harm?

It seems the web, which once promised a free flow of information to anyone anywhere is pretty much under the control of whatever corporation decides what it wants you to see or not. I am all for protecting your copyrights and all that, but once something is on the airways, copied to millions of videos, Tivo’d and put on the web (in the USA) for free, you’ve really no reason to restrict it from being seen online. No wonder so many people illegally download stuff... it’s easier than seeing it legally!

It’s just sad to see the internet going this way, we had a good thing for a while, but as they say, good things don’t last!

April news

2010-04-01T08:57:00.001-04:00

There are some pretty interesting things going on in tech April. None of them are affordable to be right now because work is so bad, but we can dream.

Of course you’d be living in a cave if you didn’t know the Ipad was coming out. Press has changed from «just a big iphone» to a must have device as it’s uses are more apparent. I don’t have an Iphone, nor an Ipod Touch so for me it would be a great little device for trips or sitting in front of the TV to catch up on emails and a great device to show off work to clients. I like that you can use pages and Numbers with it as it means I could update my blogs and write on it while away, making bringing the laptop less obligatory on short trips. Like the Ipod when it came out, it will take a little time for people to realize what they will use it for... but I have a feeling it will get used!

Abobe releases CS5 soon too, though photoshop has the splashiest updates and it seems, most of the updates released to press so far, it’s still not on my must buy or die list. For one thing, CS4 is still not showing text correctly on my tower and Adobe has made very little effort to solve the issue. You might say they’ve made a negative effort even, just sending me links to «fixes» that don’t apply to my situation and in one case, was not even for my OS! I also have a feeling that the price will be too high, but in this economy, almost any price is to high as it is. Some of the features, like mixing colours as you would paint are pretty amazing and the «Intelligent fill» which is a follow-up to the «intelligent scale» form last time looks very impressive. Like the last time though, impressive as the tech is, in real life application, you will find yourself looking for ways to use these features rather than them filling some need in the everyday workflow. I imagine the new fill will be like the old scale in that it will work well in very specific problems that fall into certain parameters but in many cases you’ll fall back into using whatever techniques you were doing all along. In situations that do warrant the function, however, it will be amazing and fast. Another problem with Adobe updates is they come too quickly lately. Most printers are still on Adobe CS2 for InDesign, making it impossible to use those features in many projects as you can only save to the previous version and only if you don’t use any new features. I haven’t seem much on Dreamweaver as far as improvements go, another sign that once Adobe bought out the competition, they let just let the Macromedia products wither. Except for Flash, of course, which they have totally turned into a monster no one wants to deal with now.

After settling some Final Cut Pro issues, I think I’d update to the new version of that, which is really well priced before buying any of the new stuff this April. For once, I’ll let other get burned and adapt late!

Walk With Me

2010-03-09T15:20:00.001-05:00

Logo design for Oneil Junior, dog walking service, Boston

Do Do bird

2010-03-08T16:50:00.004-05:00

I am working on another animated character, but for what is a mystery... even to myself. I hope to get deeper into C4D Bodypaint for the final textures and develope a very stable rig and maybe some "canned" animations like running, walking etc to use in tests.

Art does not Equal Money

2010-02-17T08:14:00.004-05:00

One comment I hear quite often, bothers me quite a bit. It’s when someone shows they have an artistic talent, makes the mistake of showing people, and then have to hear comments like, «You should sell your art and make millions!». I know it seems like a completely positive thing to say, but the reality is it just makes the artist feel like a total loser.

Why? Think about it... how realistic is that statement? If someone could make a million dollars doing something they love that easily.. wouldn’t they be doing it already? Almost all those making the statement don’t buy art themselves... where do they think these «millions of dollars» will come from? As a result the artist ends up thinking they have somehow failed in exploiting their talents or worse, they think that they actually can make tons of cash and will crash into depression when they discover winning the lottery is more likely. The statement also devalues the personal statement and drive to make the art into a simple product anyone can make and sell.

Success, the type of success these comment speak to, is extremely rare in the art world. For every Andy Warhol, there are 2 million people who never even get a chance to show their work, no matter how fantastic it is, in the local café. Face it, the most successful artists are dead ones.

The same is true for creative jobs, like I have. If you are anyway involved in making movies or TV shows, you are assumed to be raking in the dough. A film like «Avatar» might cost ½ a billion to make, but that doesn’t mean each technician made 1 million each. In fact many make less salary than your average person despite having very rare and specific skill sets that involve constant retraining and experimenting to keep up to date. I might charge 50$ an hour for contract work, which seems like a lot until you realize getting 40 hours of paid work a week is actually impossible, that my computer system to do the work cost 5 000$, that the software to do the work costs even more, plus updates every 18 months... you see what I mean. Also a small filmmaker like myself will work alone for years on a film that will costs hundreds of dollars (not including time and already existing hardware etc) and they won't even make that money back.... ever. No matter how many hits they get on Youtube.

It’s perfectly reasonably to want to make such hopeful (yet misguided) statements to someone who’s work you admire. Most people work in offices, where many things, like the cost of software and hardware for example are covered by the company and never thought of. So unless you have a way to get this creative friend of yours into a situation where they can actually make some money off their talent, please refrain from making them feel it’s a given they will, or worse, that it’s their fault somehow that they haven’t done it already. Instead, if you like it that much, offer to buy it for a reasonable price for the time and effort put into making it. Now THAT would be a true compliment!

Fini!

2010-02-03T19:20:00.003-05:00

It looks terrible here on the blog so you might want to just go to you-tube to see it

youtube link

To Flash or not to Flash your clients

2010-01-28T12:25:00.002-05:00

It was THE thing online for many years... every client had to have a Flash site, even if they no idea what it was. I worked with a print designer who kept saying he wanted «the flash» in his site. Turns out «the flash», to him, was a simple html rollover, but because it changed something on the page, it was Flash to him.

It was and is still an amazing technology. It came on the scene when a fast connection was 56k by your telephone line, yet I was able to design pretty complex and interesting interactivity with it... all under 800k per animation to keep loading under a couple minutes. (Yes, people actually use to wait minutes to load sites back then). It still is the only good way to get decent animation in light files online.

Why all the hate now, then? There are some very good reasons for this. Early excesses was one thing. Sites with flash became so damn complicarted they took forever to download and usually for no other purpose than to satisfy the needs of some bored or badly trained web designer to show off. Spinning logos were everywhere... elaborate web intros with no «skip this intro» buttons were a plague on early internet browsers. It became more and more associated with bad design, excess and annoying download times.

Another big problem was the over reaching of the format. It’s practically it’s own operating system now. It’s animation tools have become secondary to it’s developement tools and though there has been recent improvement in the user interface, it’s still an incomprehensible mess to non programmers. It’s really lost it’s way as it has tried to be an animation program and a developement platform at the same time.

Personally I love what flash brings to the table animation-wise for the web... limited interactivity is great... small fun games, interesting presentations for your site, it all works for me. Under Adobe, however, it has gone far beyond what many designers and certainly what animators need or even want. Instead of enhancing the experience, it’s become something to avoid. I still use it, for small animations, but I don’t even tell the client it’s Flash sometimes. That’s how bad the reputation has become.

I say drop the pretense that it’s an everything platform and go back to the basics... an internet format for interactive animations that loads quickly. Make it something to be desired, not avoided once again.

À venir / coming soon

2010-01-03T10:19:00.005-05:00

voice - recorded

thanks to Michael Z. Keamy

model - rigged and ready (I think)

thanks to Cactus Dan, C4D Café and Denis LeClerc

La vielle de Noël

2009-12-25T08:07:00.002-05:00

version "zoomify" pour voir plus les détails

"zoomify" version to see more details

another murale

2009-12-02T16:08:00.004-05:00

The SDC village complex murale. St Cathernine Montréal, village gai

click photo for larger image

New web site

2009-12-01T07:09:00.003-05:00

TriFury, a club for triathletes in Massachusetts (USA) has hire me for remaking the team web site. It is still missing some archival information and the forum is not yet ready but the site itself is done. Because of possible changes in the menus and the need to update certain sections easily, I've used spry menus and spry html databases in the coding.

Photos 11 Novembre

2009-11-28T15:11:00.002-05:00

2 panoramiques et 2 de Watson sûr Mont Royal!

OS X 10,6,2 the update

2009-11-11T14:54:00.005-05:00

Well it arrived and did nothing to fix my issues with Dreamweaver or the Flash plugin.. other issues I had managed to work around with help from all the forums. The Dreamweaver issue is the worst. I have to open the computer in "Safe mode" to use it (The flash plugin also works in this mode... but many other things do not). I am pretty sure the problem is with Adobe at this point and sent in a request for support. I don't have much confidence they will help, but it's always worth a try.

So now, I'm stuck waiting for Adobe. Sadly issues with their stuff is a lot harder to work around than with MAC.

update:
re-installed Dreamweaver CS3 and it works fine. Of course i am not getting any use of the CS4 features I paid so much for, but i can get some work done in a reasonable period of time now. Hopefully something will happen that sheds some light on this issue and I can just get back to doing my work and not researching fixes for broken software all day!

New website client updates

2009-10-25T12:27:00.004-04:00

George Macneil's photography site received a complete overhaul recently. I went for a much more simplified interface and increased the amount of photos available for viewing by over 3 times.

Also Art Maps Boston got a facelift. Since the site's launch there have been a few changes in the gallery scene in boston and this reflects that. Dana Wynne once again provides the excellent map design.

m. Fetische

2009-10-04T07:56:00.002-04:00

I actually finished this film almost a year ago but had trouble getting music for it... Soundtrack pro to the rescue again! The version on my site is a small size, but better quality and in 16:9 format like it should be.

Help Forums

2009-10-01T07:57:00.006-04:00

Forums are, in many cases, the best way to get help when oyu have a problem, especially a computer problem. Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Abobe and the like are not exactly forthcoming all the time when there are problems with their products and prefer not to talk about it. end users, on the other hand, nick pick every issue and in many cases find work arounds and solutions. My recent on going problems after installing Snow Leopard on my new tower highlighted some of the best and worst and the do’s and don’ts of using forums.

Asking for help:

Be clear what the problem is or as clear as possible. Make sure to state what you have done already to solve it. Don’t demand that you get an answer in 5 seconds... the other users are no different than you and are not sitting at thier computers hoping to answer your question. No matter how big a company is, they can not just write a solution to your problem and send out a new release that afternoon... it may takes months so be prepared to wait!

Giving help:

READ the question and the other responses. I can’t tell you how many people tell you to «fix permissions» on your MAC... a 1st step most people take and mostly does nothing. It’s npt a bad suggestion, but once it’s been suggested and it always is, saying it the 5th time is not helpful. Do not blame the victim... maybe the computer came with the software already on it, in any case, while it’s often good to wait, it’s these early adopters that are finding the bugs before you get the nerve to update yourself. Not everyone is a computer genius so be clear enough that a typical end user can understand your response.

Do:

Ask for help and give your advice on the forums, if something works, let others know it did.

Don’t:

Blame people for having a problem or knowing less than you do or expect an answer and solution right away, if at all.

My pet «help» peeves:

Software companies too cheap or lazy to make a MAC version now assume you will be willing to run out but a copy of windows and run «Boot Camp» just to use thier product. Others save important bug fixes for the next point upgrade and expect you to pay for something they should have got right in the first place.

In summary... respect the people asking the question and the people taking the time to give a solution, whether is works or not. Read the responces before adding your own and try the solutions before complaining nothing is working!

more panoramas

2009-09-21T09:35:00.004-04:00

My sister got married in the states this weekend and I took some panoramas near the location of the wedding.

ABcdaire

2009-09-14T08:14:00.007-04:00

J'ai créé un ABCdaire pour les élèves de mon chum. Voici, quelques images.

C4d, Mac OS updates....

2009-09-07T17:15:00.006-04:00

Yes more udate:

but more serious this time... it appears Snow leopard is causing complete havoc on many macs, including my new tower. It crashes whenever you open a dialogue box from an application. IN other words you can't place an image, save, save as, export or anything else that requires opening the dialogue box. So far it's affect every Adobe product, Cinema 4D, Apple's own Mail program... so it pretty much a system wide wide bug. I has not affected my laptop - yet. If you read the Apple or Adobe programs you get an idea how very serious this problem is... Apple had better take back some of those Vista ads and get to work on fixing this, TODAY!

Never ending article on updates:

Looks like Apple may have broken records with the patch they put out today. Time will tell if it handles this problem or not.

Cinema 4D has gone to an 11,5 update. Normally ,5 updates are small... but this one includes some heavy duty improvements and features including bucket rendering and dynamics for Mograph. At 700$ in this terrible job market... I just can't afford it. 300$ I would take the chance, but not 700$. Even Apple computer's Final Cut Pro upgrade price was lowered by 200$. I wish Maxon had the sense to realize how really bed it is out there for those of us end users. If I got a really Mograph heavy, very well paying job, it might be worth the update, but it looks like I'll be staying put for now.

OS X is upadted as well. At 35$, it's not a big deal to make the change over. There have been a few issues. Even Adobe Cs$ programs crash until the "get used" to the new system now and then. Even "Safari", Apple's own browser just crashed while I tried to upload the image for this article. Second try, no problem however. I hav enoticed some great improvement in speed and most software plays well (Cyberduck and Cool Iris are 2 exceptions). The new Quicktime X seems a waste of space for now as I use Quicktime pro and have use of many of the features other than just playing movies in a pretty box. It will be interesting to see how quicktime developes as a software over the next year of so.

Update: Dreamweaver seems to crash like hell constantly now. Every time anything changes in the OS... Dreamweaver seems to be the worst in Adobe's line of software for crashing in my experience.

update update:

the new Behemoth media site is up!

Montréal Fierté 2009

2009-08-19T19:33:00.002-04:00

thème: Fiesta

mon thème: les chiens

Premiere Pro (CS3) testing

2009-08-14T07:10:00.003-04:00

Recently I’ve been able to start using Adobe Premiere Pro (version CS3) on my MAC. I’ve long been curious about it in comparison to Final Cut Pro, especially recently since Premiere has been adding useful features by leaps and bounds while Final Cut seems to be stuck in a cave. It’s too soon for a real review, but I do have some first impressions.

It’s slow in many ways. Some of this might be I am not accustomed to how it works, but just simple cuts, rendering ect are certainly slower than Final Cut. Using the razor tool is a little annoying becuase of this.

Importing from tape was no problem at all. Even the sync was good which is a big problem still with FInal Cut Pro with my Sony deck and Sony cameras.

Overall... it’s pretty easy to transition from one software to the other. I am looking forward to trying the tight intergration between After Effects and Premiere. Intergration is truly essential these days and round trip editing between software is not just nice, but truly a timesaver on complicated projects.

I can see that Premiere is not on the multi-editor/ collaborative level as Final Cut... but I work alone in the editing room so that’s not really an issue for me.

As a quick impression. I can see myself using this software more and more for my personal work anyway. I still need to try exporting setting out ect... as I said it’s too early for a real review, but I can see why many independent productions are not shying away from using Premiere these days.

Update or not?

2009-07-29T10:09:00.004-04:00

The new Final Cut Pro... should I update or not?

The real question is if can I even get the update now if I wanted to? Apple is not very helpful with Final Cut Pro issues, even simple ones like my serial number never works and hasn’t for several versions now. I’ve tried to get email, phone and snail mail help the last 2 years, but no one even responds to my requests except for the «you need to get the extended service plan for 800$» line... really? To fix a serial number issue? I am sorry, it’s the companies responsibility to support it’s product especially on such a simple, basic level. I did get some help more recently (because I had just spent 5 grand on a new system) but nothing they told me worked, they should have just offered me a new set of disks to avoid the issue from coming up again.

Another issue is the update itself. Apple has really dropped the ball on all it’s pro products and this update does very little to make me feel otherwise. Sure it’s a lot cheaper now, but it’s still way behind Adobe premiere in features! DVD Pro is so out of date it’s becoming useless as an authoring tool and this update ignores the product completely. Only Motion seems to get any attention worth mentioning these days. If updating to Premiere wasn’t so expensive, I’d drop Final Cut to tell the truth. There isn’t enough professional editing work that requires Final Cut coming my way, in fact most projects these days (they are few and far between in this economy) are easily handled by my older version of Final Cut or even Imovie.

I’d love some of the newer features, the colour correction software and whatever bug fixes came along with the updates, but I think it will be a long time before I can afford to update and there really seems to be no pressing need.

photos - Provincetown 2009

2009-07-26T20:48:00.003-04:00

à venir / coming soon

2009-07-08T17:44:00.004-04:00

Je vais mettre en jour le site web principal pour Behemoth Media bientôt. En effet le concept c'est la même, mais moins compliqué en navigation. En plus, je vais ajouter les nouveaux clips de démonstration (showreels) et les sections pour expliquer tout les travaux je fais pour certains les clients. (Client en vedette).

I will be updating the main site for Behemoth media soon. It will not change much but will easier to navigate. Also look for new showreels and "client focus" links that better display all the things I do with a single client.

Requin 2009

2009-07-02T10:11:00.003-04:00

I revisit this animation to test my processor speed etc, every 2 years or so. This time a re-made the shark, saving thousands of unneeded polygons. The render time was still 12 hours... down from 4 days this time with three, not one shark.

Nostalgia - 1270 boston

2009-06-23T16:40:00.007-04:00

On YouTube I have the completed longer version of my documentary about one of Boston's greatest bars from the days when Boston actually had 30 or so gay bars at one time. I made a shorter more concise version for a festival but this one has stuff many of the people interviewed liked in it. It was the third of 3 films I made about gay history (maybe 3 and 1/2 if you count "46 Years" to "50 Years" as separate films). It took 3 years to get the research done and the interviews set up and 8 months to edit and get the graphics done.

I tried to get the History project in Boston interested but they were pretty cold and unresponsive (as they have always been when I've tried to contact them to tell the truth). In fact, while many people showed up to see it and were happy it was made, in general not many people, particularly younger gay people, seem to not care at all where their roots are. I am glad at someone, even if it was only me, managed to get something done before no one remembers Boston's quite interesting gay past.

More photos

2009-06-14T17:09:00.002-04:00

I find children's play parks really creepy. The play"animals" always look like something (to me) that should give kids nightmares and complexes. So of course I feel the need to photograph them whenever possible.

Chog est mort / Chog has died

2009-06-07T07:42:00.002-04:00

The inspirations for "Nomi et Chog" are both gone now. Chog was a little joy his whole life. His owner, Tobias Allen was with him.

Les inspirations pour "Nomi et Chog" sont morts maintenant. Tobias Allen, son maître était à côté le petit Chog à la fin.

Le Murales de Montréal

2009-06-04T17:58:00.004-04:00

Lentement, je vais faire une grande collection des photos de murales de Montréal. Quand je trouve le temps, je sors avec mon appareil de photos numérique et pris quelques photos et après, j’enlève les lampadaires et les arbres qui bloquent l’art pour une vue claire et sans obstruction.

2009-06-01T18:26:00.005-04:00

This post stems from a nice conversation I had with a poster in the commentary section. This is a conversation I’ve had in various forms with clients as well so I thought it might be good to bring up.

Many people are under the impression that a site is more “advanced” if it has more stuff on it, moving stuff.... stuff that links you to other places... sound effects... animated buttons.. CSS, PHP ASP any number of letter combinations will do. Fact is unless you have a reason, and it better be a good one, to load a site down with anything but basic html,you are just making a crappy site. “Advanced” is not technology, or not just technology I should say. “Advanced” means fast functional and easy to use and find things.

EVERYONE wants animation on their sites again, after a decade of shying away after the flash heavy sites of the mid-90’s. The reason is simple... most people don’t know what FLASH is anymore, even though they see examples of it all the time, modems are so much faster, you don’t wait for 10 minutes to see a 700K animation that only tells you, in the most round-about way possible, you’ve reached the site you were looking for. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

I am all for animations where they work well, and I’m all for programming solutions where they do the best job getting the info to the browser faster. But too many people start their list of needs now with I want “a flash intro” or an “animated gallery” before they even know what the content of the site will be.

It’s the content that decides what the site needs, not the tech. Otherwise you are just making a version of Homer Simspon’s web page, which was so bogged down with animated gifs and no content, that it crashed the internet. (Old episode.. if you’ve seen it you know what I mean!)

As in science, the simplest solution is almost always the correct one.

Lovecraft project

2009-05-24T08:48:00.003-04:00

In about a year I will start a short animated film based on a H.P. Lovecraft story. I've been slowly taking photos for reference and textures, plus I've come a long way building the outdoor sets. I have another short film to do before this, but this one will be the most complicated effort to date, with full sets, lighting and multiple human characters. These photos are a quick preview.

Souvenirs tech

2009-05-13T20:08:00.003-04:00

I started my tech love not with computers, but with cameras. I loved photographs and photography. I had a super 8 Bell and Howell to make films (I really miss that thing) and a series of cameras. While I embraced digital photography from the start, I have to admit... it misses something. The real fun of taking photos was in the processing, the waiting to see how it turned out and then seeing what you could do in a darkroom to make it better.

A darkroom could be anywhere you could shut out all the light, in my case it was almost always a bathroom in my apartment. At the end of my “film” career I actually had a darkroom set up permanently in my studio... always ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

It’s hard to believe that an enlarger at one time was high tech... but it was. There were all sorts of upgrades and accessories you could get.. all sort so papers and lights and chemicals to choose from. All that was nothing compared to seeing an image appear, like magic on paper right before your eyes, however. All the new digital tech in the world can’t compare to that sensation. One that, sadly is lost pretty much forever. The new way of doing things is simply too efficient, too convenient, too easy to makes corrections with and simply too cheap to go back to now.

I’ve always felt that it was the limitations you work with rather than the advantages that make great art. So, while in many ways I am doing thing now I could only dream of before, there is something lacking I can’t put my finger on. Maybe something will replace that feeling... only time and progress will tell.

Podcasts and online tutorials

2009-05-10T11:24:00.002-04:00

Less and less companies and software developers are including manuals or any form of documentation with their products. Personally, I think this is a big mistake. How on earth anyone is supposed to actually learn the software or research something they have a question about is a complete mystery. For the prices they are charging for software these days, the least they can do is include a book telling you how to use it! If you do get a book (even a small “quickstart quide”) you’ll find as a rule, they are no help at all. Often they are poorly written or merely excuses to sell you additional software, which you won’t be able to figure out how to use either.

Luckily for those of us not able to hire private tutors or pay for extended and expensive courses provided by some software companies, the internet has been filling in the learning gaps with forums, online tutorials done by users and podcasts. These are great resources for information, to ask questions and to connect with fellow, frustrated end users struggling to find out what/how and when to use certain features in their preferred computer programs.

Podcasts require the free i-tunes program from Apple and that you make an account, but a vast majority of podcasts are free. Not all are created equal... some are terrible some are wonderful.. some are just ego venues for people who think they know more than they do so take what you hear with a grain of salt.

Forums, can easily be given the same cautions and offer additional interactivity and resources. You can actually ask specific questions on things that are making you pull your hair out. Another benefit of forums is you tend to find out which problems are really lack of knowledge and which are merely limitations in the software or worse... undocumented bugs. I can’t say how many times I’ve discovered in forums crippling bugs and work arounds to avoid them. Some forum members are quite generous with their programming skills and will even offer fixes they’ve made free to anyone who wants to risk using them. Virtually all the major companies have user forums now and they are usually not monitored so as a rule, you can get good, information without marketing spin.

Online tutorials give in depth, function specific instruction. Sometimes they are downloadable for free, sometimes you have to buy a dvd (which can be quite pricey). It’s hard to assess how helpful they might be before you buy them. Forums can help as fellow members are more than happy to share problems they had with things they wasted money on.

Some podcasts I use:
Photoshop User TV
Creative Cow

A couple of forums I use:
C4D cafe
C4D portal

le piège des pigistes

2009-04-26T20:08:00.003-04:00

Technology has made my job and millions of others, possible. It’s become a trap for many who live off contract work like me.

One thing we have the advantage over a big company for example, is we can usually crank out projects in record time. A big department of designers/artists will almost always be slower as there are a lot more people to satisfy. As a contractor you usually only need to satisfy the clients you dealing with. The other advantage is also the trap. The technology we use to get it done so fast.

Many bigger companies wait until 3 versions and many years have past before they finally shell out a huge amount to upgrade their software or hardware, all at once. Contractors depend on those upgrades to keep ahead of the competition. More efficient software and hardware saves time and for an hourly contractor, time is literally money. So, oddly, the people with the least money buy the most expensive stuff to stay competitive while the big boys who can well afford regular upgrades do it in big chunks and are always years behind what can be done technically. Of course some places keep up to date but that’s not exactly common. On any project I work on alone, the client gets very up to date features and functions older versions didn’t have while almost every time I work with an established partner business, I have to hope I have an old version to re-install (or in some cases I have buy the old one again) and try to make up for the lack of functionality I’ve come to expect for the last 2 or 3 years. Yet they land the big and more important, stable clients. Seems unfair, and it is, but that’s the world we live in.

So if we don’t keep up, we lose our edge and if we do.. we stay poor. I often wonder if suddenly, Behemoth became one of those huge companies with 100’s of artists working for it... would I still insist on staying so up to date and would that be avoiding one trap, for another? And as tech loving geeks.. do we want to escape in the first place?

2 Versions Apart

2009-04-16T11:51:00.003-04:00

I made this model of a camera I owned at the time in version 9 of Cinema 4D and rendered it a variety of ways. Global Illumination was called something else then... I forget what as was ambient occlusion, but either was a little out of my processor range. As it was It took 20-40 minutes to render a single image.

With version 11 and my new computer set-up, this was a still along render (10 minutes). But, to be fair, I used all bells and whistles and really see a big difference. No matter what I did with lighting before, the camera always seems to be “floating” above the surface. No such problem with my current settings. I almost put back in the 80’s 3D render standard... the black and white checker board floor but it was just too embarrassing.

This model is quite complicated, I really tried to get in as much real detail as possible. With the new lighting and render engine, that detail pays off in very real looking image.. in my opinion!