abandoned house in Vermont drawing

This was a puzzler for me to figure out how to draw. I picked it for the details, obviously, but what isn't so obvious is how much detail to draw and where. There were several false starts and changes of direction in getting what was in my head into the image.

I work from photos as a rule, have for decades. I don't know many people who can sit in one place for days or weeks to make a drawing or many people who can pose for that period of time keeping the same crazy expression you want on their face. This makes some people think there is no difference between the photo and the illustration which is never the case. So to make the point I decided to show the reference photo.

As you can see I don't draw "every leaf and blade of grass" though it might seem that way at first. Background and foreground elements are often eliminated or changed to fit what I have in mind. In this case I could have gone with a total black silhouette for the rear trees. I decided to go a textured route (but not follow what was there too closely) so the building would stand out more. I also, maybe by laziness, decided that drawing a million weeds and plants was a little much and would take away from the house itself. I also thought of adding reflections in the windows but liked the pure black as a contrast and - maybe-  over emphasized the distance of the broken blinds to add some dimension to the front of the house. I also did not draw some details I thought were distracting like the misc. wires, pipes and weeds hanging off the building.

Finally, I added a light grey wash to the rear trees so darken them further but not lose the details in the texture.



The images can be enlarged by clicking on them and this place was something I saw along my bike trip to Colchester Vermont last fall.

the Picnic... on sale now!

My new documentary, The Picnic, is now on sale as Amazon.com!

This is the story of the Million Year Picnic comic book store in Harvard Square, Cambridge - on the world's first stores dedicated to comic books and the like.

This was a long-term project, over 6 years from when I started researching to now when all the interviews are done and it's finally able to be seen. We are looking into a premier at the Brattle cinema, across the street from the store, at some point sooner than later. If it happens we will try and have a question and answer panel afterwards for those that are interested.

If you buy a copy and like it, PLEASE leave a review with many stars. If you don't like it... well don't tell anyone you saw it.

De-VFlicker plugin from seed.

MOntreal_laspe_fliker test from Vincent-louis Apruzzese on Vimeo.

First 8 seconds are untreated, then the video after the effect was applied. It's quite a difference.

This new plugin from Seed came to my attention from FCP.co today and after asking if it worked with time-lapse video and getting a positive response.. I bought it immediately. De-flicker plugins cost 100s of dollars as a rule, for too much for me to buy just in case I need it. This is only 29$ USA for Final Cut X so it's well worth it.

The Picnic - the trailer

Things are getting serious with the Million Year Picnic documentary these days as I try and get it a showing and prepare to put it on sale at Amazon.

I am also preparing a digital version for those who gave money on Indiegogo so long ago and have been so patient as i try and get this thing together.

Look Kool demo reel

Look kool_demo reel 2016 from Vincent-louis Apruzzese on Vimeo.

A demo reel from my first two seasons of the TV show Look Kool. I tried more technical things the second season, like water and smoke simulations and gave my character, Kool Kat a huge upgrade in movement and expressions. If needed, I could even make him talk... but i'm glad he doesn't since that is a nightmare to pull off well! He also got a robotic arm and was rendered as  a 2D animation in this season!

Discovery from the past...

This one of several pages of notes I took on the 80s during a Super 8 film class I was taking at the time. I had just bought a beautiful bell and Howell camera that did single frame, so I could animate, it had sound and could do 18 and 24 frames per second if I remember right.

That's right children, grandpa had to know long the roll of film was to know how long he could film a scene !

Plugin Odds and ends

Echo remover

http://www.crumplepop.com/fcpx-premiere-audio-plugin-echoremover/

This was on sale as a new plugin from Crumplepop and as I had decided 500$ was too much for the only other noise remover for Final Cut X, 50$ seemed very reasonable. It has only  couple sliders but I found it to be effective and did what it said it does. I am sure the more expensive plugin had tons of features but as I am not a sound pro, this was really perfect for making the sound on the Million Year Picnic doc a little nicer. 

Turbulence FD (with X Particles)

https://www.jawset.com

I have just stared to use this plugin, which produces realistic smoke and fire effects in Cinema 4D, but it has already been useful in the Look Kool, the Tv sow I do effects and animation for. 

http://www.tvokids.com/shows/lookkool

It was far too money for my tastes, but C4D has no way to do smoke,water or fire (unlike pretty much every other 3D program now, including free ones) but it produces great results, quickly. To really get the most out of it, you need to couple it with X particles, bing the total price to almost 1000$ CAD! I already had X Particles so I took the plunge and am hoping to get more effects work as a result. Everyone loves explosions. Besides the high price, another negative is Jawset provides links to tutorials, but doesn’t provide any themselves and many of the tuts listed cost more money. They look great but for the fee Jawset charges, there needs to be at least some basic training included. 

Reelsmart Motion Blur

http://revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/motion/

This is a pretty amazing plugin. It does one thing, which is to put a motion blur on things in After Effects, Motion etc (each program added costs more). Again, not cheap but C4D motion blur can look great but at a HUGE time cost in rendering and this basically adds a almost nothing in terms of render time and has a lot more control. For the TV show this means a clip that would have taken 2 hours to render out can be reduced to 45 minutes and I can play with the amount using keyframes and test blurs without having to re-render in C4D. Plus the site has quite a few video tutorials to take you from knowing nothing to very competent in a  short period of time. 

Sketchbook pro 7

I wasn't going to buy this version as I was happy enough with the last one and pissed off enough they had raised the price and made the app store version a rent only application, following in the rape your loyal customers trend Adobe started a couple years ago.

Then why buy it now? 2 reasons. The end of the month they will stop selling the stand alone version online, only the rented version will be available and Autodesk had a huge sale, bringing the price down to what it should have been to start with.

Version 7 isn't much different for the previous version in everyday use. There are some for the better interface changes and new features that could be useful or at least interesting to play with. Perspective grids and a flip book feature for animations among them.

The most welcome aspects of this new version were not mentioned in any press release I have seen, however. A HUGE problem has been the locked layers in earlier incarnations. Now there is a default background layer which saves time, and the locked layers stay locked when you exit and restart the program (finally!).

Its hard to say how much improvement there is in the pen and brush tools as they were already way above any other software I've drawn in but there were improvements there as well.

So unless they change their marketing strategy , this will be the last upgrade I buy. Hopefully by buying the newer version, I will be able to hold on to it though the new few years of OS updates.

New Acrobat drawing

I have a chance over the last couple weeks to do a new drawing in between my current TV show contract. I had started another but it was not coming out very well so I decided to do yet another acrobat. I will have less and less time to even think about my own work as the next couple months play out so it was really important I get something done while I could.

How important is it to be seen?

A little philosophical at the end of the year I guess, but how important is it as an artist to be seen or more to the point for his or her work to be seen by others? 

In some forms of art, it’s the reason for doing it in the first place. I don’t really care if anyone knows it was me that made a documentary but I do hope people will find it and see it since the reason for it’s existence was to attract attention to a subject I thought was being neglected. If no one sees it, no matter how good it is artistically or how well it transmits the information it’s supposed to relay, it has failed. But if even one person sees it and it says something to them, it has succeeded... in my eyes, anyway. When it comes to my photography and drawing, it’s nice to think people see and like it but I will keep doing it even if I am the only one (and I often am) who looks at it even once after it’s done. 

How important is it for me, the maker of the thing to be seen? I’d like to say not important at all, but in the real world, you have be noticed in order to do more of what you want to do effectively in many cases. Celebrity shouldn’t matter, but we all know it does. I much prefer that my work speak for itself. 

If one is trying make a living at something, being noticed takes on a whole new dimension. My personal projects might not make a huge splash but they are like a calling card to people who might hire me for their projects. Getting hired in turn lets me continue with my own work. Ideally, my work would get enough notice that it generates money that lets me do my own thing without having to be hired by anyone else. In this scenario being seen is in service to my work not an end unto itself. If I were independently wealthy, I’d get a lot more of my personal projects done than I do because I get work from doing them. 

Except for this blog, I don’t do social media. Frankly, I don’t like that sort of attention.  If you are lucky it can get you noticed, especially recently where news shows look at likes, tweets and followers more than the substance of the story itself. The big problem is social media isn’t interested in promoting art, it promotes outrage and scandal and a lot of terrible ideas over good ones. Being seen on social media doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It doesn’t even mean those that clicked on your link looked at what they clicked on. I can be used as a way to show that your work is getting some sort of attention… sort of a bargaining chip in a job interview. Getting seen is harder than most realize. 300 hours of video is uploaded to You Tube every minute and the chance is close to zero that any of them will get seen by more than a few people. Social media is a lottery more than it is a real plan to get noticed.

While being seen is important, who looks is much more important than how many. Being seen by one person who can progress what you want to do to is much more important than a 1000 «  likes »  from people who have no real interest in your work. On a personal level, those looks and likes can be motivating, especially if you get positive feedback from others you admire or who do something similar to what you are doing. 

For me, if my work is seen by me and I don’t hate it and want to keep going and doing more, I’m happy enough. If it gets seen by someone who can do something that lets me do more of what I want to do, even better. In the end being seen doesn’t change what I actually do in the end. That comes from inside me.