Been a busy monkey here so I have not been doing enough of my daily CGI or postings here. Much apology, such sorry. But anyways, I recently did some CPG renders for Butler Bros out of Austin that came out really well. Getting the foil looking like that was fun to figure out. Check out the full gallery and read up on it at their site. Butler Bros Real Good Gum Campaign.
Adidas Winterize
Photographer Ryan Unruh asked me to lend a hand with the post and CGI for a project with Camp Grizzly for Adidas. The concept was to have weather changing and swirling around the photographs of the product. We had less then a week to concept, build, render and composite these files. A bit of a hectic week but very happy with the results. Used Modo and a few particle sims to render out the FX and sweeps. Assembled in Photoshop. On Behance.
Client Adidas
Agency: Camp Grizzly
Photographer: Ryan Unruh
CGI and Retouching: Daniel Kopton / Danklife.
Hate the new healing brush in CC2015? Change it back!
The new healing brush in Photoshop has been universally hated by any retoucher I talk to. Seems like Adobe listened "kinda" and gave us a way to roll it back with the newest Photoshop. Just have to get into prefs and a text editor. It's not as hard as it looks. The link will take you to the tech page.
Solution
Follow these steps:
- Install the Photoshop CC 2015.1 update.
- Use Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac OS) to create a plain text file.
- Type the text:
- LegacyHealingBrush161 1 into the text file for Photoshop CC 2014 and earlier healing brush algorithm (i.e. Legacy), non-realtime user interface feedback
- Save the file as PSUserConfig.txt to your Photoshop settings folder:
- Windows: [Installation Drive]:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 Settings\
- Mac OS: //Users/[User Name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 Settings/
Now I need a roll back to the previous liquify since the new one puts a 1 pixel grey border on anything I run it on....
Music!
Have some news on the music front to report on. In "Old News" a old band of mine called International Grey just had a EP from 2010 reissued which you can check out. A Post Rock project with keyboards and all that stuff. You can read a bit about the project in this interview with the Guitarist Jeremy Wilkins. Lots of dynamics and textures in this one.
But coming back to modern timelines you can here two new tracks I recorded of the new Punk project I am in called Trouble Cuts at Bandcamp. Power trio line up that has a lot of energy and hooks. Keep an eye out for our shows around town.
Particle Simulation render
Fun simulation I have been tweaking on trying to get really clean. With some help from the Modo forums I was able to get it to look the way I wanted. Might be used by a record label shortly, we shall see if that comes to pass!
Daily Doodle project
Been doing a "Daily Doodle" project for about 7 months now where I try to do something in Modo everyday. I seem to swing and miss more often then not but it has been a great learning experience in a few ways. My Modo chops have been improving leaps and bounds of course but it is interesting how it has helped me concept ideas and approach creating. Simple is always better when the goal is just to knock something out in a day. But I hate to recycle ideas and I am slowly learning that it is OK to do that as people view that as your "style". Interesting stuff for sure
Here is a sample of them that I have really enjoyed and I wanted a place to post them where they can be seen at a higher res. Did the gym render this weekend and a lot of experimenting with scale. The boards are not big, the whole sphere and wires bit is as big as a basketball. ;). You can see them as I make them by checking out my Instagram account to the left.
New Work in the Wild:Nike Doernbecher
Proud to have been brought on board by Photographer Ryan Unruh to do the post for Nike Doernbecher, a pretty awesome charity.
"Twelve years later, the Freestyle Collection has raised over $11 million to help expand the hospital’s pioneering research, support clinical care, purchase state-of-the-art equipment, recruit new experts and subsidize the cost of care for families in need."
Did all the post and came up with the fun little CGI boxes to put them all in. Great shooting by Ryan made it easy to snap it all together. Check em out!
Autumn in the air
Having some lovely autumn weather right now and was motivated to work on a CGI landscape piece. Few things I am not happy with but overall I enjoy this one.
Shoot At Oddball Tattoo
So the last post was all about getting the Vivitars fired up and this one shows the results. Because they are so small you get razor sharp light on your subjects. Man, they are moody things to work with though. Moody but worth it.
Getting the old boys fired back up.
Doing some portraits tomorrow and the good old Vivatars are coming out of storage for that sharp pin point lighting I need. Much dusting, cleaning of contacts, jiggling batteries and remembering what power setting "Purple" is.
New Work in the Wild: NIKE SOCCER WOMEN’S CLEAT PACK FOR 2016
New work released into the wild today. Nike women's cleat pack for 2016 is live on the Nike site. Shot by Ryan Unruh I built up the CGI stadium and grass. Few "out of memory" errors later and VIOLA, here ya go. Enjoy!
New Work in the Wild
Made a new illustration for Predator Friendly Records for their 2015 sampler. Fun little cassette tape piece.
New work in the wild
A project we did with Empire Green Creative for Riddell just went live. Bunch of images on insatgram as well. Look for it in the portfolio soon.
LaCrosse Boots- Extreme Tough
Posted a project to the Behance Portfolio that has a fun animated gif of the build. LaCrosse Boots - Extreme Tough.
Music Matters
Just something to listen to during your work day. Gotta love a 15 minute guitar solo.
How to age gracefully
How to age gracefully. VIA Kottke.org
Army- Tools for the job.
Just posted a new project to Behance. Photographer Patrik Giardino asked me if I would help build up some images for a United States Army project late 2013 into early 2014. Here are the builds that made it all happen. Great shooting by Patrik to capture all of this.
Client: Army
Photographer: Patrik Giardino
Post: Danklife
Kingwhale fabric Landscapes
Kyle Wiley at Eight Day asked me if I could shoot some fabric samples for him and make them look like landscapes while showing off different aspects of the material. Here are the results. Used my trusty Dedolights and tilt shift 90mm. Full Portfolio on my Behance site.
Awesome Path Tracing video.
This really explains this all clearly, love it!
Create Everyday.
Fired off a really succesful cloth simulation today. Either I took my smart pills or the 901 update fixed some of the dynamic issues I was having with softbodies. Tons of polys here and I was able to run the sim and tweak things without the whole project crashing / dragging to a stop.
Sims are like setting up a elaborate mouse trap to me. Build up all this stuff, then fire it off and watch the reaction. You can never really know how it will all react.